Some people are talking about traffic analysis, but it seems to me that the best way to use this would be to post images on the web (ideally, with no HTML files linking to them).
In each message, you'd give a URL to the location of your next transmission. Maybe also a date and time period when it will be available.
And, if you used public web access points like internet cafes to transmit and receive your images, your activity would probably be pretty darned hidden.
Firstly, to respond to an earlier post, the article did say "billions of Earths in our galaxy," not in the entire universe. It was the very first sentence, for heaven's sake.
The biggest question in my mind, with regards to this article, however, is the following statement:
there could be about 30 billion planetary systems in the Milky Way alone; and a great many of these systems are very likely to include Earth-like worlds, say researchers.
"Say researchers" is a pretty glib way to support such a big statement. Since current planet-finding techniques can only pinpoint gas giants, I suspect we can really have no idea what percentage of planetary systems contain earth-like planets. So it's this logical jump that is really the issue. And the article is a little thin on the explanation of this reasoning.
Finally, I would say that a figure that's calculated using sound statistical methods is never optimistic nor pessimistic, it's just that, in this case, the margin of error might very well be something on the order of plus or minus 30 billion.
Re:An oldy but a goody
on
Pet Bugs?
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· Score: 4, Funny
...the original PC-Basic 1.0 interpreter, that was shipped with PC/DOS 1.0, would report that 1 + 1 = 1.999999. Needless to say version 1.1 was shipped shortly thereafter.
If they had a sense of humour, they would have shipped version 1.0999999.
The fact that some people seem to get so emotional about bills seems to indicate that money is a substantial part of their identification with their national identity.
It's only money. I find this a bit troubling. And I'm not even American.
I suspect in most parts of the world, this is a no-brainer.
In fact, take a HUGE amount of liquid nitrogen. Pump it into the ground, below the bedrock, with as much force as possible. Then, when hell freezes over, users might start backing up their own data.
This is just a thought off the top of my head, but... this is just a multi-tiered pricing system. Really not much to write home about.
Also, it seems to me that unless they jack their prices to some totally insane amount, it would still be worth getting your music on-line as opposed to on CD at the store.
The first CEO that demands there people learn Dvorak lay out will get a nice bonus from the increased productivity.
Assuming you're talking about a software company, I could not disagree more. I think any difference in productivity would be small and it would be next to impossible to establish faster typing as the reason. (If you're not talking about a software firm, then you might possibly be right, and I have nothing to say.)
I think there are other things that contribute to software development productivity. Good and open communications between developers and a quick bug catching process that gets bugs fixed before they become panic-mode fixes... these two things by themselves would completely dwarf any productivity increases due to better typing.
The one place where I do believe that a mechanical skill would help productivity in a software firm is a twofold skill: touch-typing (either QWERTY or Dvorak), along with deep familiarity of a text editor. When I see some people poking away at their keyboards, it leads me to believe that my skill in the above two areas really does increase my productivity.
When I have sudden "what if?" flashes, it means I can bang out a quick test twice as fast as someone else, which means I can try twice as many different options. It also means that I don't mind taking the extra time required to format my code nicely, or even document it (gasp!), because for me, it's not that much extra time.
In the end, I believe it means I can produce either twice as much code, or in the same amount of time, I can produce code that's twice as good in quality.
But they are happy to use a non-peer reviewed press release to publicize their findings. [...] the way this news was released is pretty irresponsible.
I have to say, I'm a little tired of hearing the same kind of comments over and over, bemoaning irresponsibility and "bad science."
I can't find any evidence that these people prepared a press release (if you can show me one, then I might agree with your position). A "press release," remember, is written up and handed to the press. If a journalist comes knocking and you answer some questions, that's not a press release. It seems to me likely that the latter is what happened here.
And if an eager journalist does come knocking, I would prefer to talk to them myself, rather than leaving them to get their information from people who might not know what they're talking about. Nor do I think it's a really good idea to be doing scientific work in secrecy (yes, even secrecy from journalists). I, personally, would want to be able to impress on them what's certain and what's not. If they ignore me, then they are the ones being irresponsible, not me.
Now, the whole cold fusion story was poorly handled precisely because the scientists didn't merely talk to the press, they themselves took it to the press before they took it to a peer-reviewed journal. There's a very, very big difference, IMHO.
This BBC article wasn't even that poorly written, either. There was a bit of poor word choice ("two areas close to Pathfinder [...] have the spectral signature of chlorophyll." - I think "a spectral signature consistent with that of chlorophyll" would have been more accurate); but it wasn't all that bad, I think.
If the stylus had ever been faster and more efficient than those "lowly keyboards not so different from the ones that powered the Smith Coronas and Ollivettis of yesterday," then nobody would have bothered with those Smith Coronas and Ollivettis in the first place.
I'm not sure why the article starts by making fun of the venerable keyboard, since it serves such a different purpose.
Now, if you told me that this laser pen might replace the mouse (which, in fact, the rest of the article seems to do), that would be a different story. It seems to me that a pen could do everything that a mouse can, and, in most respects, do it better.
I should admit beforehand that I haven't read the article, because I don't like Cringley very much, but I have given some thought to the application of "Open source" to things like books, movies, and TV.
I think my conclusion is "No."
Software is something we use every day, and if there's a new improved version, then it's eagerly snapped up and put to use.
Movies, stories, and TV aren't like this. People don't re-read a book unless it's an absolutely exceptional one, and given that that's the case, you're not likely to believe that it should be touched up.
Granted, recent movie trends might be proving me incorrect, but if they started releasing E.T. every few years, insisting that it's improved from the last one, would you continue to go?
The only way the "Open" concept applies, IMHO, is in facilitating a more two-way (or N-way) communication, instead of the traditional one-way medium, and I think there are only very superficial resemblances with the philosophies of open-source software.
Re:Biologists and Psychologists Abuse this...
on
Digital Biology
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· Score: 2
Far be it for me not to bite back.:-)
Steam engines take in stored energy, release it , and move down a track. [...] The cells taken in ATP, release it, and move down some track.
Well, I think that's a rather superficial similarity, and it's not quite comparing apples to apples. If the brain converted sugars into mechanical energy and chugged its way along the spine, I would be more inclined to agree with you.
A computer, on the other hand, is filled with logical gates that make straight-forward, well-defined decisions like AND, OR, or NOR. I hate to remind you, but there are many people that don't seem to have any connection with logic.
Just because the base components are logic gates doesn't mean that the final output of the whole system needs to be logical. Why, there are probably huge numbers of people who would already describe computers as being unpredictable, irrational, and self-destructive... and this is when they weren't even programmed to be that way! (Okay, that's a half-joke.) (But only half.)
So just for the sake of argument, I think that the computer metaphor is moving in the wrong direction. Your track isn't pointed in the right way. You took in that energy, but it's not helping us at all.
I'll have to agree that the computer analogy doesn't help that much, and it's a point of argument whether it gives us any more insight into human psychology than a steam engine metaphor.
However, I didn't say the analogy was good; I just said it's better. And I would maintain that the computer, which, after all, helps us to make decisions (with varying degrees of perceived and real effectiveness), is closer to the brain than a steam engine, whose purpose is not related to decision making.
Re:Biologists and Psychologists Abuse this...
on
Digital Biology
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· Score: 2
My psych professor explained our language lecture using layman's computer terminology, instead of psychology.
My understanding is that psychology has always chased the latest technology in its efforts to explain the mechanics of the brain. The brain has been compared to steam engines and grain mills, in their time (so I hear).
The biggest irony is when psychologists describe the brain as a neural network (the kind that's been modeled in computers), because the origin of idea for the neural network was the workings of neurons in the brain!
For this reason, many people insist that computer neural networks should be called artificial neural networks. Indeed, the artificial neural network is an interesting mathematical algorithm that takes its inspiration from "real" neural networks. It was never meant to be a model of the human brain by any stretch of the imagination.
You have to admit, though, the analogies are getting better. The brain is definitely more like a computer than a steam engine.
But aside from that, they are just plain and simple a Bad Idea. [...] Regardless of the resolution, you're still dealing with pixels...
I must take issue with you there... I think the idea is sound; poor resolution merely points to a bad implementation, or insufficient technology to properly realize the Good Idea.
I don't know what other objections you have, but it seems to me that the possible advantages make it a no-brainer with regards to whether the basic concept is sound. Digitizing the whiteboard can give you so many abilities:
Scrolling
Save and clear
Drawing basic shapes easily (that is, even more easily than normal), like rectangles, circles
Now that I've wasted WAY too much company time doing this, I must report that I was able to get from Slashdot to one of my personal web sites with only 6 jumps.
It wasn't six clicks, because I didn't count things like splash screens, click-through ads, and drilling into a site's "Links" page.
But I'm happy to report that I was able to get to my site with only five intervening web sites. I won't post actual links here, but you're welcome to try and follow along (if you're so inclined)...
Slashdot Article: "Nintendo GameCube Clone Out In Japan" (go to "Related Links")
IGN: GameCube DVD (go to "Affiliates" page)
Drew's Script-O-Rama (go to "Links" page, under "Friends of the Rama")
The Shishi-Odoshi Homepage of Ari-Matti Saren (go to "Some Links")
The International Shinkendo Federation (go to their "Links" page)
Nihonto Page of Alan Quinn (see his recommended links)
Japanese Castles - This is my page!
Of course, now I've posted, you can just hit the URL beside my name and get there in two clicks...
I should also say that this is not a silly attempt at advertising. I don't make any money off my web site. It's just a silly attempt at demonstrating the interconnectedness of the web, and the oneness of human knowledge (yeah, that's it).
But partial obfuscation might be enough
on
Abusing the GPL?
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· Score: 2
the overall point is that once the end product is GPL'd, it won't take long for someone in the bazaar to figure out a meaning for "asdfgh", and do a s/asdfgh/meaningfulName/g through the whole thing.
Well, many people have already piped in with the "preferred form" clause forbidding obfuscated code, but if this were not the case, I don't think you would need total obfuscation to be able to abuse the GPL.
If you re-obfuscate your code with every new release, and release often enough that everyone else spends all their time just de-obfuscating, then nobody will even bother trying any more.
Of course, once one release is de-obfuscated, someone could fork it and roll their own release, but merging the crooked company's changes into their version would be a major pain in the ass. It would still amount to the company having a choke-hold on their branch of the code.
Like I said though, it seems (fortunately) that the GPL already forbids this.
My best language is English, by far, but I grew up with Japanese in the home. My Japanese vocabulary is small, so it's a common experience for me to hear Japanese and recognize it as Japanese, but to be unable to understand it fully because of my limited vocabulary.
Once, while flipping through TV channels, I came upon a newscast that was being given in Korean. I'm not sure if it was the person's accent, but it sounded just like Japanese to me. I listened for a good ten seconds firmly convinced I was hearing Japanese, and I could almost feel my language circuits spinning madly, trying to make syntactic sense of the sounds. All the while, I just thought it was another case of insufficient vocabulary.
Anyways, it took an astonishingly long time for me to realize that I couldn't even separate the sentences into their constituent words, let alone figure out what those words mean.
I'm really not sure how much I agree with the article, but my experience would suggest that the sounds of Korean were similar enough to get past this "filter," leaving me convinced I was hearing Japanese, and trying to establish the meaning of phrases I couldn't possibly understand.
This supreme court ruling was (as far as I can see) a resolution of a conflict between a municipal bylaw and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (Not much of a contest, if you ask me...)
Since on-line postings probably don't fall under municipal law (anybody know for sure?), I rather doubt this would apply in those cases.
why does anyone even need 20 seconds much less 20 yeas of copyright after they are dead? are they collecting royalties in the after life?
In a way, yes. The rights can pass to your next-of-kin, that is, your estate, or whomever you may have given it to explicitly in your will. They are the ones who would continue to collect.
The article says: "Google's core consumer search business is free and is funded largely by advertising."
But where? Has anyone seen this advertising? It's certainly not in the form of banners... I've always wondered how Google supports itself.
Re:Random Rant on the purpose of Science
on
Arguing A.I.
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· Score: 2
Some would argue you're not an objective, disinterested observer, and therefore biased, and should recuse yourself from questions like that.
Yes, to a certain extent, there is some truth to that position.
Of couse, this attitude is based on the absurd notion of the objective observer...
Exactly. There is no one in the world free of bias. In fact, if the opinion of a segment of the population were being ignored during important social or political decision-making (even if they were willingly refraining from participation), I think that would be biased.
Slashdot Mirror
Some people are talking about traffic analysis, but it seems to me that the best way to use this would be to post images on the web (ideally, with no HTML files linking to them).
In each message, you'd give a URL to the location of your next transmission. Maybe also a date and time period when it will be available.
And, if you used public web access points like internet cafes to transmit and receive your images, your activity would probably be pretty darned hidden.
Just a thought off the top of my head.
Firstly, to respond to an earlier post, the article did say "billions of Earths in our galaxy," not in the entire universe. It was the very first sentence, for heaven's sake.
The biggest question in my mind, with regards to this article, however, is the following statement:
there could be about 30 billion planetary systems in the Milky Way alone; and a great many of these systems are very likely to include Earth-like worlds, say researchers.
"Say researchers" is a pretty glib way to support such a big statement. Since current planet-finding techniques can only pinpoint gas giants, I suspect we can really have no idea what percentage of planetary systems contain earth-like planets. So it's this logical jump that is really the issue. And the article is a little thin on the explanation of this reasoning.
Finally, I would say that a figure that's calculated using sound statistical methods is never optimistic nor pessimistic, it's just that, in this case, the margin of error might very well be something on the order of plus or minus 30 billion.
If they had a sense of humour, they would have shipped version 1.0999999.
The fact that some people seem to get so emotional about bills seems to indicate that money is a substantial part of their identification with their national identity.
It's only money. I find this a bit troubling. And I'm not even American.
I suspect in most parts of the world, this is a no-brainer.
In fact, take a HUGE amount of liquid nitrogen. Pump it into the ground, below the bedrock, with as much force as possible. Then, when hell freezes over, users might start backing up their own data.
:-)
This is just a thought off the top of my head, but... this is just a multi-tiered pricing system. Really not much to write home about.
Also, it seems to me that unless they jack their prices to some totally insane amount, it would still be worth getting your music on-line as opposed to on CD at the store.
Wouldn't it?
This is drifting off-topic, but what the heck.
The first CEO that demands there people learn Dvorak lay out will get a nice bonus from the increased productivity.
Assuming you're talking about a software company, I could not disagree more. I think any difference in productivity would be small and it would be next to impossible to establish faster typing as the reason. (If you're not talking about a software firm, then you might possibly be right, and I have nothing to say.)
I think there are other things that contribute to software development productivity. Good and open communications between developers and a quick bug catching process that gets bugs fixed before they become panic-mode fixes... these two things by themselves would completely dwarf any productivity increases due to better typing.
The one place where I do believe that a mechanical skill would help productivity in a software firm is a twofold skill: touch-typing (either QWERTY or Dvorak), along with deep familiarity of a text editor. When I see some people poking away at their keyboards, it leads me to believe that my skill in the above two areas really does increase my productivity.
When I have sudden "what if?" flashes, it means I can bang out a quick test twice as fast as someone else, which means I can try twice as many different options. It also means that I don't mind taking the extra time required to format my code nicely, or even document it (gasp!), because for me, it's not that much extra time.
In the end, I believe it means I can produce either twice as much code, or in the same amount of time, I can produce code that's twice as good in quality.
Just MHO. Mostly off-topic. Moderate at will.
For those who haven't caught on yet, this is why the MPAA and RIAA dislike technology so strongly.
Yeah, they're under attack... from the clones!
Ba-dum bum.
But they are happy to use a non-peer reviewed press release to publicize their findings. [...] the way this news was released is pretty irresponsible.
I have to say, I'm a little tired of hearing the same kind of comments over and over, bemoaning irresponsibility and "bad science."
I can't find any evidence that these people prepared a press release (if you can show me one, then I might agree with your position). A "press release," remember, is written up and handed to the press. If a journalist comes knocking and you answer some questions, that's not a press release. It seems to me likely that the latter is what happened here.
And if an eager journalist does come knocking, I would prefer to talk to them myself, rather than leaving them to get their information from people who might not know what they're talking about. Nor do I think it's a really good idea to be doing scientific work in secrecy (yes, even secrecy from journalists). I, personally, would want to be able to impress on them what's certain and what's not. If they ignore me, then they are the ones being irresponsible, not me.
Now, the whole cold fusion story was poorly handled precisely because the scientists didn't merely talk to the press, they themselves took it to the press before they took it to a peer-reviewed journal. There's a very, very big difference, IMHO.
This BBC article wasn't even that poorly written, either. There was a bit of poor word choice ("two areas close to Pathfinder [...] have the spectral signature of chlorophyll." - I think "a spectral signature consistent with that of chlorophyll" would have been more accurate); but it wasn't all that bad, I think.
SF author Larry Niven proposed a beer mug that [...] automatically, silently refilled itself from the keg.
Hmm, in that case, the obvious course of action is to eat the mug.
If the stylus had ever been faster and more efficient than those "lowly keyboards not so different from the ones that powered the Smith Coronas and Ollivettis of yesterday," then nobody would have bothered with those Smith Coronas and Ollivettis in the first place.
I'm not sure why the article starts by making fun of the venerable keyboard, since it serves such a different purpose.
Now, if you told me that this laser pen might replace the mouse (which, in fact, the rest of the article seems to do), that would be a different story. It seems to me that a pen could do everything that a mouse can, and, in most respects, do it better.
Quick, Robin! The Bat-Shark-Repellent!
Quick, Tuna! The Shark-Bat-Repellent!
(Batman and Sharkman flee each other with great speed, leaving Robin and Tuna to battle for good and evil.)
Uh, forgive my sudden bout of uncontrollable silliness.
I should admit beforehand that I haven't read the article, because I don't like Cringley very much, but I have given some thought to the application of "Open source" to things like books, movies, and TV.
I think my conclusion is "No."
Software is something we use every day, and if there's a new improved version, then it's eagerly snapped up and put to use.
Movies, stories, and TV aren't like this. People don't re-read a book unless it's an absolutely exceptional one, and given that that's the case, you're not likely to believe that it should be touched up.
Granted, recent movie trends might be proving me incorrect, but if they started releasing E.T. every few years, insisting that it's improved from the last one, would you continue to go?
The only way the "Open" concept applies, IMHO, is in facilitating a more two-way (or N-way) communication, instead of the traditional one-way medium, and I think there are only very superficial resemblances with the philosophies of open-source software.
Far be it for me not to bite back. :-)
Steam engines take in stored energy, release it , and move down a track. [...] The cells taken in ATP, release it, and move down some track.
Well, I think that's a rather superficial similarity, and it's not quite comparing apples to apples. If the brain converted sugars into mechanical energy and chugged its way along the spine, I would be more inclined to agree with you.
A computer, on the other hand, is filled with logical gates that make straight-forward, well-defined decisions like AND, OR, or NOR. I hate to remind you, but there are many people that don't seem to have any connection with logic.
Just because the base components are logic gates doesn't mean that the final output of the whole system needs to be logical. Why, there are probably huge numbers of people who would already describe computers as being unpredictable, irrational, and self-destructive... and this is when they weren't even programmed to be that way! (Okay, that's a half-joke.) (But only half.)
So just for the sake of argument, I think that the computer metaphor is moving in the wrong direction. Your track isn't pointed in the right way. You took in that energy, but it's not helping us at all.
I'll have to agree that the computer analogy doesn't help that much, and it's a point of argument whether it gives us any more insight into human psychology than a steam engine metaphor.
However, I didn't say the analogy was good; I just said it's better. And I would maintain that the computer, which, after all, helps us to make decisions (with varying degrees of perceived and real effectiveness), is closer to the brain than a steam engine, whose purpose is not related to decision making.
My psych professor explained our language lecture using layman's computer terminology, instead of psychology.
My understanding is that psychology has always chased the latest technology in its efforts to explain the mechanics of the brain. The brain has been compared to steam engines and grain mills, in their time (so I hear).
The biggest irony is when psychologists describe the brain as a neural network (the kind that's been modeled in computers), because the origin of idea for the neural network was the workings of neurons in the brain!
For this reason, many people insist that computer neural networks should be called artificial neural networks. Indeed, the artificial neural network is an interesting mathematical algorithm that takes its inspiration from "real" neural networks. It was never meant to be a model of the human brain by any stretch of the imagination.
You have to admit, though, the analogies are getting better. The brain is definitely more like a computer than a steam engine.
But aside from that, they are just plain and simple a Bad Idea. [...] Regardless of the resolution, you're still dealing with pixels...
I must take issue with you there... I think the idea is sound; poor resolution merely points to a bad implementation, or insufficient technology to properly realize the Good Idea.
I don't know what other objections you have, but it seems to me that the possible advantages make it a no-brainer with regards to whether the basic concept is sound. Digitizing the whiteboard can give you so many abilities:
I think the list can go on and on.
Now that I've wasted WAY too much company time doing this, I must report that I was able to get from Slashdot to one of my personal web sites with only 6 jumps.
It wasn't six clicks, because I didn't count things like splash screens, click-through ads, and drilling into a site's "Links" page.
But I'm happy to report that I was able to get to my site with only five intervening web sites. I won't post actual links here, but you're welcome to try and follow along (if you're so inclined)...
Of course, now I've posted, you can just hit the URL beside my name and get there in two clicks...
I should also say that this is not a silly attempt at advertising. I don't make any money off my web site. It's just a silly attempt at demonstrating the interconnectedness of the web, and the oneness of human knowledge (yeah, that's it).
the overall point is that once the end product is GPL'd, it won't take long for someone in the bazaar to figure out a meaning for "asdfgh", and do a s/asdfgh/meaningfulName/g through the whole thing.
Well, many people have already piped in with the "preferred form" clause forbidding obfuscated code, but if this were not the case, I don't think you would need total obfuscation to be able to abuse the GPL.
If you re-obfuscate your code with every new release, and release often enough that everyone else spends all their time just de-obfuscating, then nobody will even bother trying any more.
Of course, once one release is de-obfuscated, someone could fork it and roll their own release, but merging the crooked company's changes into their version would be a major pain in the ass. It would still amount to the company having a choke-hold on their branch of the code.
Like I said though, it seems (fortunately) that the GPL already forbids this.
My best language is English, by far, but I grew up with Japanese in the home. My Japanese vocabulary is small, so it's a common experience for me to hear Japanese and recognize it as Japanese, but to be unable to understand it fully because of my limited vocabulary.
Once, while flipping through TV channels, I came upon a newscast that was being given in Korean. I'm not sure if it was the person's accent, but it sounded just like Japanese to me. I listened for a good ten seconds firmly convinced I was hearing Japanese, and I could almost feel my language circuits spinning madly, trying to make syntactic sense of the sounds. All the while, I just thought it was another case of insufficient vocabulary.
Anyways, it took an astonishingly long time for me to realize that I couldn't even separate the sentences into their constituent words, let alone figure out what those words mean.
I'm really not sure how much I agree with the article, but my experience would suggest that the sounds of Korean were similar enough to get past this "filter," leaving me convinced I was hearing Japanese, and trying to establish the meaning of phrases I couldn't possibly understand.
Interesting.
So is 64-bit for a normal user going to do much?
Extra computer power will always find a way to get used up in frivolous ways by the sex trade, trust me.
This supreme court ruling was (as far as I can see) a resolution of a conflict between a municipal bylaw and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (Not much of a contest, if you ask me...)
Since on-line postings probably don't fall under municipal law (anybody know for sure?), I rather doubt this would apply in those cases.
anti-water! A new sports drink for the new millenium...
Yeah, and heartburn like you wouldn't believe...
Oh, the possibilities for tag lines: "It's got BITE!" "A real taste explosion!" "It has quite a kick to it, doesn't it?"
why does anyone even need 20 seconds much less 20 yeas of copyright after they are dead? are they collecting royalties in the after life?
In a way, yes. The rights can pass to your next-of-kin, that is, your estate, or whomever you may have given it to explicitly in your will. They are the ones who would continue to collect.
That's my understanding anyway. IANAL neither.
The article says: "Google's core consumer search business is free and is funded largely by advertising."
But where? Has anyone seen this advertising? It's certainly not in the form of banners... I've always wondered how Google supports itself.
Some would argue you're not an objective, disinterested observer, and therefore biased, and should recuse yourself from questions like that.
Yes, to a certain extent, there is some truth to that position.
Of couse, this attitude is based on the absurd notion of the objective observer...
Exactly. There is no one in the world free of bias. In fact, if the opinion of a segment of the population were being ignored during important social or political decision-making (even if they were willingly refraining from participation), I think that would be biased.