so I click through to the article, hoping to see an interesting technical discussion of cosmic-ray fluxes, ionization, and climactic effects.
But what I get is a long ideological/political rant, wrapping up with a "BUY MY NEW BOOK!!!1!" bit of crap.
Sheesh. Talk about false advertising.
#1. Yes, ionization can cause clound condensation. It's been known since the 20's, or even earlier. Try looking up "cloud chamber". The fact that some Danish guy set up a little cloud-chamber in his basement is NOT major news! You can buy little kits for doing this stuff for $100 or so. It's a high-school science project, fercryinoutloud!
#2. The question is whether ionization is the DOMINANT mechanism, or a small contributor, for meterological cloud formation. And the linked article doesn't even begin to address this.
#3. Yes, there are correlations between weather and cosmic-ray fluxes. There were underground experiments in central italy (more or less directly east of Rome) that showed a correlation between cosmic-ray flux and the weather two weeks later in Venice (much further north). Wow! Cosmic-rays cause that? No they don't, both are affected by the average temperature of the atmosphere, with the two-week lag coming from the way seasonal changes differ from south to north.
#4. There's a fair amount of fluctuation in the SOLAR cosmic-ray flux, the stuff that causes auroral activity. But those are low-energy particles, and stop rather high up in the atmosphere (the ionosphere), well above any clouds or other weather. They do produce 14C (via (p,n) reactions on atmospheric 14N), so the various 14C dendrochronology studies gives some relevant data about long-term variations. But in any case, if the SOLAR cosmic-ray fluxes where driving the Earth's weather, you'd see a VERY strong 11-year cycle. You don't.
#5. The higher-energy cosmic-rays that penetrate to the toposphere and below are known to be extra-solar origin (they're amazingly isotropic), but their exact source is not known with any great certainty. What can be said with great certainty, as a result of decades of measurement, is that the flux of these high-energy cosmic-rays is constant, once you take into account the varying attenuation effects from the atmosphere (with its thickness changing with temperature and pressure).
Whatever is (or isn't) causing global warming, it isn't the cosmic-rays. Those that wish to place the blame on cosmic-rays are either ignorant, disingenuous, or both.
been to the supermarket lately? Checked out the fruits and vegetables?
Wow. So many of them are sold shrinkwrapped. I wonder why that is? Freshness? Make it easier at the checkout?
Now how long do you think it will take before some "bright" marketeer/lawyer decides that it costs almost nothing to stick a slip of paper with an EULA in with your tomatoes? Want to make tomato sauce? Nope! Not allowed. Buy the can.
(one sure-fire veggie EULA term: no using to pelt the execs and politicians that let this happen)
It's time to grab shrinkwrap licensing by the neck, force it into the toilet, and drown it.
My oldest: it's a microVAX. Not only does it "still run", but it has been running continuously* since 1988.
(used for DNS and other low-impact services now)
*continuous, except for minor h/w and s/w upgrades, a total of 10 days downtime in 15 years. I have to reboot it every few years just to make sure I remember how to reboot.
You seem to think that someone was watching the experiment and could look at their watch when the neutrinos arrived. Wrong.
The neutrino events were found on the data tapes some days (or weeks) later. The Kamiokande experiment just had a drifting computer clock to tell the time. No GPS. No NTP. IIRC, they were several minutes off and had no way to correct.
There are important results that hinge on having the correct time (to within milliseconds) of the neutrino burst (neutrino mass limits, supernova models, etc.), and Kamiokande had to try and match their events with IMBs to try and get the time.
Frankly, I think IMB and Kamiokande should have gotten the prize for 1987A, but they don't like to split Nobel's too many ways...
Davis built the Homestake experiment, which was a radiochemical experiment to look for solar neutrinos. NOT a water-Cerenkov experiment.
Kamiokande (Koshiba's experiment)was a water-Cerenkov experiment, however the IMB experiment (another water-Cerenkov experiment, near Cleveland) also saw the neutrinos from supernova 1987A *and* IMB had an atomic clock, so they could get accurate arrival times, which the japanese experiment couldn't.
Kamiokande confirmed Davis' results, but so did gallium experiments in what was then the USSR and in Italy.
"[the net is]
too big, too important, too political to be treated as something for only a band
of talented engineers to preside over."
Translation: So now it's the turn of the suits, the MBAs, the marketing types, the politicians, the moronic pinheads of the world, to try and take over the net and turn it to their purpose.
Here, have an Outlook Virus.
Re:What else can these guys hack?
on
Home Improvement
·
· Score: 1
C'mon, we're talking *russians* here..
They'd build a still first. If they haven't already.
..so now I'll have to start coding a REALLY VIOLENT FPS game where the players hunt down
pinheaded lawyers and blast them to bloody twitching bits of flesh.
One reason the dark ages were "dark" because so few records of that time have survived...while earlier and later eras were (relatively) well documented.
We're now entering the new digital dark age, where all records are digital...
Slashdot and 2600, linked together in their cause and in their need,
will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like
good comrades to the utmost of their strength.
Even though large
tracts of Napster and many old and famous software projects have fallen or may
fall into the grip of the Gestapo^H^H^H^H^H^H^HRIAA and all the odious apparatus of DCMA
rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall
fight in chat-rooms, we shall fight on the Peer-to-Peer networks, we shall fight
with growing confidence and growing strength on the Internet, we shall
defend our fair use and free speech rights, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the
web, we shall fight by cracking their CDs, we shall fight in the
courts and in the media, we shall fight in the TCP/IP packets themselves; we shall never
surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this
Freedom or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our
web-servers beyond the seas, armed and guarded by SSL, would
carry on the struggle, until, in Ghod's good time, the New Internet, with
all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation
of the old.
From the CNN article: The paper said weeks of interviews with
U.S. law enforcement officials and other
experts disclosed details of how extremists hide maps and photographs of
terrorist targets in sports chat rooms, on pornographic bulletin boards and other
popular Web sites.
Lt. Klink: Officer Krupke, what are you doing looking at those porno websites?
Krupke: I'm, uh, looking for...terrorist messages....yeah, yeah, that's it!
Those devious terrorists are hiding messages
in these image files. See where they've cleverly disguised the map to their secret base in the Grand Teton mountains?
Klink:They're hiding messages on porno sites? Oh my god! Alert the media! Good work, Krupke...keep on the lookout for more messages!
server1: SMTP server ready. server1:-bugs/gripes to postmaster@... server1:-unsolicited commerical e-mail is NOT authorized to access this service server2: hey, want some spam? server1: you're in MAPS, your access is illegal, go fuck yourself
Remember that most anti-hacking laws are stated in terms of "unauthorized access to a computer". That *should* include connecting to the SMTP port to send spam, when it is explicitly stated that such usage is unauthorized.
The main "idea" behind trademarks is to prevent consumer confusion...that a distinctive logo, etc. for product A doesn't get confused with product B.
So it makes some sense that if the "smell of fresh cut grass" labels a brand of tennis balls, that smell is part of their trademark.
That's the philosophy...then there's the law..
That is, someone has to go through the process of registering a trademark. Can you register a trademark for someone else? Sure, with their permission. How about without their permission? Just put their name in the "owned by" space and pay the fee...
Because, if *anyone* should have the trademark on the "distinctive characteristic" of software bugs, it's got to be Microsoft. We should be kind (just like the guy that renewed their domain name) and register that trademark for them: the sensation of rampant software bugs.
Of course, if MS *owns* that trademark (however acquired) "due diligence" requires them to protect that IP and make sure that no one infringes.
That means that no one else can have bugs in their software. Microsoft must be the ONLY one.
Well, I get most of mine from CERN. It's free, it's open source.
But, of course, it's not for the types that have to have their hands held. No glitz to it at all.
But if you need complete elliptic integrals of the 2nd kind, and demand 10-place precision, they're hard to beat.
Oh yeah, about 10 years ago they bundled in a little program with their libraries..something to make it easier to get at the documentation. Called it "WWW.EXE" as I recall.
unlike other "trademark" stories here, it's hard to see how trademarking a scent (and vigorously defending the trademark with nastygrams to 'infringers' and their ISPs) would cause the kind of chilling effect on free expression that trademarking words and phrases has produced.
So I'm all for it.
In fact, I propose that all current trademarks be hereby abolished, and ONLY scents may be trademarked in future. Well, maybe tactile sensations too...
When I finished my doctoral dissertation (some 13 years ago), one of the things you have to do as part of the "finishing up" paperwork is to fill out a form for University Microfilms...they're the service that archives dissertations in the US.
One of the checkboxes was:
Do you want to copyright the dissertation?
I checked NO.
A couple of hundred pages, myriad graphs, eight years of intense work. (And no, it wasn't something wimpy like comp-sci).
So yes, some of us have put our (work, if not money) where our mouths are.
The dialectizer is great, BofA should get a public drubbing for their obtuseness. Humorless gits.
But if there's any kind of legal basis for shutting down the dialectizer, it's also applicable to the Anonymizer services.
And I'm *quite* sure there are (commercial/governmental) interests that would really, really like to shut down Anonymizer so that they can track everyone on the net.
...I think I'm doing to trademark the words: you are violating our trademark and threaten all the fscking lawyers that "dilute" my oh-so-valuable trademark..
I think this is really a free speech issue. We're not talking about a competing product here, just Joe Shmoe using a trademarked phrase.
The usual corporate butt-kissers will say "this isn't a free speech issue, the gov't isn't doing this". Bollocks. Neither I (nor octopod) has signed any contract with IDG...but if we use those "for dummies" words and persist, IDG will use the power of the courts to try and shut us up. Who gave IDG the right to do that?
How is that different from Janet Reno hauling you into court for publishing stuff the gov't finds embarassing? Oh, I guess the person prosecuting the case is better paid, and it only takes a majority of jurors rather than all of them to screw you over
Violating the 1st Amendment for Dummies "The government allows free speech. We've subcontracted the enforcement to the private sector, since they don't have these quaint restrictions."
But there's something interesting about UCITA, the idea that someone can be held to a "clickwrap", or "shrinkwrap" when the usual contractual element of "meeting of minds" may in fact not be present.
Send a 6 year old into a s/w store to buy a copy of "Learning to Read v1.0". If they have the cash, the store will certainly sell the s/w, but did the kid read the shrinkwrap? What if (obvious in this hypothetical) they can't read?. Were they *legally competent* to agree to the terms? Can the store clerk make those determinations?
I suggest that many of us who operate web sites put up notices: "by entering this web site (beyond the main page) you agree..."
To pay $10,000 per SPAM sent to anyone on this domain
To pay $1M for the privilege of adding addresses in this domain to your net-filtering "blacklist"
To release the owners of this website from all previous shrink/clickwrap agreements on commercial products previously entered into by the person browsing and/or their employer.
If a "clickwrap" agreement can be made to stick, then stick it to them!. We have a lot more of the web than they do, they must agree to our terms to access it.
And our terms should be to make UCITA onerous, so that it's tossed out.
Slashdot Mirror
so I click through to the article, hoping to see an interesting technical discussion of cosmic-ray fluxes, ionization, and climactic effects.
But what I get is a long ideological/political rant, wrapping up with a "BUY MY NEW BOOK!!!1!" bit of crap.
Sheesh. Talk about false advertising.
#1. Yes, ionization can cause clound condensation. It's been known since the 20's, or even earlier. Try looking up "cloud chamber". The fact that some Danish guy set up a little cloud-chamber in his basement is NOT major news! You can buy little kits for doing this stuff for $100 or so. It's a high-school science project, fercryinoutloud!
#2. The question is whether ionization is the DOMINANT mechanism, or a small contributor, for meterological cloud formation. And the linked article doesn't even begin to address this.
#3. Yes, there are correlations between weather and cosmic-ray fluxes. There were underground experiments in central italy (more or less directly east of Rome) that showed a correlation between cosmic-ray flux and the weather two weeks later in Venice (much further north). Wow! Cosmic-rays cause that? No they don't, both are affected by the average temperature of the atmosphere, with the two-week lag coming from the way seasonal changes differ from south to north.
#4. There's a fair amount of fluctuation in the SOLAR cosmic-ray flux, the stuff that causes auroral activity. But those are low-energy particles, and stop rather high up in the atmosphere (the ionosphere), well above any clouds or other weather. They do produce 14C (via (p,n) reactions on atmospheric 14N), so the various 14C dendrochronology studies gives some relevant data about long-term variations. But in any case, if the SOLAR cosmic-ray fluxes where driving the Earth's weather, you'd see a VERY strong 11-year cycle. You don't.
#5. The higher-energy cosmic-rays that penetrate to the toposphere and below are known to be extra-solar origin (they're amazingly isotropic), but their exact source is not known with any great certainty. What can be said with great certainty, as a result of decades of measurement, is that the flux of these high-energy cosmic-rays is constant, once you take into account the varying attenuation effects from the atmosphere (with its thickness changing with temperature and pressure).
Whatever is (or isn't) causing global warming, it isn't the cosmic-rays. Those that wish to place the blame on cosmic-rays are either ignorant, disingenuous, or both.
been to the supermarket lately? Checked out the fruits and vegetables? Wow. So many of them are sold shrinkwrapped. I wonder why that is? Freshness? Make it easier at the checkout? Now how long do you think it will take before some "bright" marketeer/lawyer decides that it costs almost nothing to stick a slip of paper with an EULA in with your tomatoes? Want to make tomato sauce? Nope! Not allowed. Buy the can. (one sure-fire veggie EULA term: no using to pelt the execs and politicians that let this happen) It's time to grab shrinkwrap licensing by the neck, force it into the toilet, and drown it.
My oldest: it's a microVAX. Not only does it "still run", but it has been running continuously* since 1988.
(used for DNS and other low-impact services now)
*continuous, except for minor h/w and s/w upgrades, a total of 10 days downtime in 15 years. I have to reboot it every few years just to make sure I remember how to reboot.
I just filtered out all mail with a @ in it!
Works great! 100% of the spam is blocked.
Oh, wait
You seem to think that someone was watching the experiment and could look at their watch when the neutrinos arrived. Wrong.
The neutrino events were found on the data tapes some days (or weeks) later. The Kamiokande experiment just had a drifting computer clock to tell the time. No GPS. No NTP. IIRC, they were several minutes off and had no way to correct.
There are important results that hinge on having the correct time (to within milliseconds) of the neutrino burst (neutrino mass limits, supernova models, etc.), and Kamiokande had to try and match their events with IMBs to try and get the time.
Frankly, I think IMB and Kamiokande should have gotten the prize for 1987A, but they don't like to split Nobel's too many ways...
Davis built the Homestake experiment, which was a radiochemical experiment to look for solar neutrinos. NOT a water-Cerenkov experiment.
Kamiokande (Koshiba's experiment)was a water-Cerenkov experiment, however the IMB experiment (another water-Cerenkov experiment, near Cleveland) also saw the neutrinos from supernova 1987A *and* IMB had an atomic clock, so they could get accurate arrival times, which the japanese experiment couldn't.
Kamiokande confirmed Davis' results, but so did gallium experiments in what was then the USSR and in Italy.
It's only 0.6 seconds from power-on to BSOD!
Translation: So now it's the turn of the suits, the MBAs, the marketing types, the politicians, the moronic pinheads of the world, to try and take over the net and turn it to their purpose.
Here, have an Outlook Virus.
They'd build a still first. If they haven't already.
OR maybe I'll just e-mail them to you. All of them. And encourage all my friends to do the same.
Anybody have a GIF of Jack Valenti I can use?
We're now entering the new digital dark age, where all records are digital...
Slashdot and 2600, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Napster and many old and famous software projects have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo^H^H^H^H^H^H^HRIAA and all the odious apparatus of DCMA rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in chat-rooms, we shall fight on the Peer-to-Peer networks, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength on the Internet, we shall defend our fair use and free speech rights, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the web, we shall fight by cracking their CDs, we shall fight in the courts and in the media, we shall fight in the TCP/IP packets themselves; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Freedom or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our web-servers beyond the seas, armed and guarded by SSL, would carry on the struggle, until, in Ghod's good time, the New Internet, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
The paper said weeks of interviews with U.S. law enforcement officials and other experts disclosed details of how extremists hide maps and photographs of terrorist targets in sports chat rooms, on pornographic bulletin boards and other popular Web sites.
Lt. Klink: Officer Krupke, what are you doing looking at those porno websites?
Krupke: I'm, uh, looking for...terrorist messages....yeah, yeah, that's it! Those devious terrorists are hiding messages in these image files. See where they've cleverly disguised the map to their secret base in the Grand Teton mountains?
Klink:They're hiding messages on porno sites? Oh my god! Alert the media!
Good work, Krupke...keep on the lookout for more messages!
Krupke:Yes SIR!
server1: SMTP server ready.
server1:-bugs/gripes to postmaster@...
server1:-unsolicited commerical e-mail is NOT authorized to access this service
server2: hey, want some spam?
server1: you're in MAPS, your access is illegal, go fuck yourself
Remember that most anti-hacking laws are stated in terms of "unauthorized access to a computer". That *should* include connecting to the SMTP port to send spam, when it is explicitly stated that such usage is unauthorized.
Intel's development path:
But will it work with your nose?
So it makes some sense that if the "smell of fresh cut grass" labels a brand of tennis balls, that smell is part of their trademark.
That's the philosophy...then there's the law..
That is, someone has to go through the process of registering a trademark. Can you register a trademark for someone else? Sure, with their permission. How about without their permission? Just put their name in the "owned by" space and pay the fee...
Because, if *anyone* should have the trademark on the "distinctive characteristic" of software bugs, it's got to be Microsoft. We should be kind (just like the guy that renewed their domain name) and register that trademark for them: the sensation of rampant software bugs.
Of course, if MS *owns* that trademark (however acquired) "due diligence" requires them to protect that IP and make sure that no one infringes.
That means that no one else can have bugs in their software. Microsoft must be the ONLY one.
Damn, wouldn't that be nice!
But, of course, it's not for the types that have to have their hands held. No glitz to it at all.
But if you need complete elliptic integrals of the 2nd kind, and demand 10-place precision, they're hard to beat.
Oh yeah, about 10 years ago they bundled in a little program with their libraries..something to make it easier to get at the documentation. Called it "WWW.EXE" as I recall.
I still have it on a backup tape.
So I'm all for it.
In fact, I propose that all current trademarks be hereby abolished, and ONLY scents may be trademarked in future. Well, maybe tactile sensations too...
Dibs on hot wet slippery & pungent!
One of the checkboxes was:
- Do you want to copyright the dissertation?
I checked NO.A couple of hundred pages, myriad graphs, eight years of intense work. (And no, it wasn't something wimpy like comp-sci).
So yes, some of us have put our (work, if not money) where our mouths are.
Have you open-sourced some code today?
> Agreed, I hope Yahoo tells them to get stuffed, and that this serves an example to
> overseas sites threatened by stupid US laws.
Yahoo needs to reply to this with a single word:
"Merde!"
But if there's any kind of legal basis for shutting down the dialectizer, it's also applicable to the Anonymizer services.
And I'm *quite* sure there are (commercial/governmental) interests that would really, really like to shut down Anonymizer so that they can track everyone on the net.
Scary...
I think this is really a free speech issue. We're not talking about a competing product here, just Joe Shmoe using a trademarked phrase.
The usual corporate butt-kissers will say "this isn't a free speech issue, the gov't isn't doing this". Bollocks. Neither I (nor octopod) has signed any contract with IDG...but if we use those "for dummies" words and persist, IDG will use the power of the courts to try and shut us up. Who gave IDG the right to do that?
How is that different from Janet Reno hauling you into court for publishing stuff the gov't finds embarassing? Oh, I guess the person prosecuting the case is better paid, and it only takes a majority of jurors rather than all of them to screw you over
Violating the 1st Amendment for Dummies
"The government allows free speech. We've subcontracted the enforcement to the private sector, since they don't have these quaint restrictions."
But there's something interesting about UCITA, the idea that someone can be held to a "clickwrap", or "shrinkwrap" when the usual contractual element of "meeting of minds" may in fact not be present.
Send a 6 year old into a s/w store to buy a copy of "Learning to Read v1.0". If they have the cash, the store will certainly sell the s/w, but did the kid read the shrinkwrap? What if (obvious in this hypothetical) they can't read?. Were they *legally competent* to agree to the terms? Can the store clerk make those determinations?
I suggest that many of us who operate web sites put up notices: "by entering this web site (beyond the main page) you agree ..."
If a "clickwrap" agreement can be made to stick, then stick it to them!. We have a lot more of the web than they do, they must agree to our terms to access it.
And our terms should be to make UCITA onerous, so that it's tossed out.