Tomas Jefferson also owned slaves, and thought the wealth of America was in its agriculture and not its manufacturing. I know a bit of history too.
Obviously if you think it's justified to take another person's work without paying for what that person wants for it, you've never written a line of code or had an original thought in your life. Nothing is stopping anyone from making their own Photoshop and giving it away to the world for free. It's called GIMP.
Just because it's not a loss doesn't me you have the right to it. That's like saying "Hey, he wasn't using that car, so why does he care that I stole it."
All I'm saying is that the BSA misrepresents the monetary losses by claiming pirated software is a lost sale. But that does not make it right to steal.
No kidding, I stirred the hornets’ nest. Well I can play that smart guy game. So 'pirating' isn't stealing because it's really 'copying' and idea which doesn't exist. Well the chemicals in my brain I real, and the ideas they create are used to create real things.
So how about all these smart guys show what they’ve created. I'll start. As you can see, this 'not real' idea is used in the very real automotive industry, and generates very real millions for my former employer. It's kind of nice to own a car that doesn't rust quite as fast as it might have otherwise... but what the heck, it's just an idea. Nobody should have paid me anything.
The BSA isn't right, nor is it wrong. I might understand stealing a loaf of bread because you're hungry, *might*, but stealing software because you can't afford it doesn't fly with me. Nor does misrepresenting facts and figures to confuse and obfuscate public policy, ala "lobbying", fly with me either. 2.5 cents.
For how long have you been suffering from comprehension problems ?
Apparently for 7 minutes minus the few seconds it took to read your post? How does an all volunteer military create desperate young men with no other option?
Exactly. 50% of the country are self described conservatives. The whole OT is mute. If there was a model for a bajillion cable news stations for every political ideology that exists, there would be a bajillioin cable news outlets. Well that model doesn't work. There half a dozen cable news outlets, and only one of them caters towards conservative view points. Believe it or not, I really don't think global warming is a greater threat than our national debt. I don't think stories of backwards desert savages living in the 7th century throwing rocks at each-other all day while waiting for the caliphate to return is a greater concern than nuts-o' fanatics who want to kill me (and poison my precious bodily fluids:P) I don't give a fart who Jullian Assange is and what he's doing to save me from myself. Maybe when I want to 'veg out on TV trash for a bit I'd like to 'veg out on TV trash that doesn't call me stupid every 5 minutes.
If all these smart guys used their brains they'd figure out that maybe Fox is popular because it's the only game in town. Maybe Fox is successful because it has a guaranteed 50% market for Viagra and golf commercials, since 50% of Viagra eaters and golf swingers (or is it the other way around) are conservatives who watch Fox.
But hey, why not act all snobbish and elitist instead. After all, your only smart if you say your smart... I mean, your only smart if you think your smart but get other people to say your smart so you don't sound snobbish and elitist. Yea, we're so clever and smart. Fox is bad, but political blogs that don't copy and paste Fox and CNN are even worse.Let's all go post how smart are friends are on Facebook, and hope they post how smart we are.
There are many public domain patents, and non patentable public domain, generated by 'the government' that are totally free. Such as the stuff that make the Internet the INTERNET, that were never charged anything to anyone. All government generated papers are public domain, unless they are black but that's secret squirrel type stuff. And most of the folks creating these things work only for a contractor who contracted with the government... your Lockheed's and Raytheon's for example, so it's not like these government labs cut paychecks to individuals.
These 'rules' do not apply to grants to university professor types. The idea behind those is to pay smart people to build smart things. The smart people patent them and thus teach the world how to do the same in exchange for a temporary monopoly. Of course, you are then free to build a better mousetrap off that patent, and then patent it. That's the theory anyway. The alternative is to keep your ideas a secret, and have stifled inventions and permanent monopolies maintained at great expense and paranoia. I know which method I prefer.
It only creates progress in the incentive for new work to be done. It stiffles progress when others want to extend that work or improve on it or use it to create new work. The patent rights hold back innovation in this way.
Wow what? The whole point of a patent is to grant a temporary monopoly in exchange for teaching your 'art' to the world. If someone patents a better mousetrap, you can build upon that and patent the improved version. This is exactly how it works, and is why every patent cites countless other patents.
You are talking about 'trade secrets.' For example, a patent might utilize a certain processes; however the materials used to make the materials in that process are trade secrets. These non patented inventions are to keep others from using your ideas and/or improving them while still having the protection of a patent. There is a whole new paranoia about them, just like the Coke formula. If you figured out that formula for Coca-cola, you could patent it and prevent coke from selling any new Coke to any person who had not drank a Coke before your patent.
I know it's contrary to/., but you want to really increase quality patents, increase their duration by 20 years.
I agree with all of this. I bitched and moaned in the other thread last night that complained about worthless PhDs and a foreign takeover of the scientific community, or some such conspiracy.
Unrated to this reply, but back OT, while I love The Journal Nature, I really do not think the chair of the religion department at Columbia is exactly qualified to tell a fresh post-doc that their degree is worthless because their thesis was on the mitosis of toilet bacteria and their first job is investigating HIV in humans for big Pharma. I mean, really? The whole point of advanced education is to specialize so you can show the world that you can become an expert at something, and by contrast, anything!
There is probably some truth to this. I'm not a professor, I just work at a University. The only students I see are the graduate students, and occasional undergrads, who actually show up to do their lab work. So that's my 2.5 cents.
My son complained about cheaters in his CS department a lot. In my own experience, I've had plenty of papers borrow ideas of myself and colleagues without approbation from all over the globe. 2.5 cents.
P.S It's a lot easier to get caught than it is to cheat with any kind of chance of success. These guys will not go far in life, but I wouldn't hold it against a population as a whole. One of the best technicians I've ever had was an Iraqi who accepted the position of, quite literally, 'test tube cleaner.' He loved the job, learned how to do the basics and worked his way up. Great guy who now works at Lawrence Liver-more doing incredible research for DOE secret squirrel type stuff.
Sorry, are you saying there's no-one available better than the Chinese guy you've described? (since we seem to be talking "better" in the sense of knowing the difference between AC and DC) Did you choose him or was politics involved?
It's not that no one else was available. The truth is, only Chinese are readily available. I didn't choose him, but I did have imput during the interview. I really like the guy. He's very observant, incredibly mature academically, and polite. There was definitely no politics involved. My list of CVs consisted of Chinese, and Asians in general, with a smattering of Indians and Middle Easterners. There was one application from a Caucasian sounding name, you can never tell, but we never heard back about an interview.
It's a crappy job if you only want money. Experimentation in a materials surface laboratory is tedious at best. My real point was that no education is complete by virtue of graduating. In the West, students are sorely lacking in theoretical skills. In the East, their universities do not seem to be doing a good job in the practical skills area, but this is just from my own one off observation.
That was certainly the experience I witnessed in both undergraduate and graduate school.
Again I'm calling BS on this, at least in science. Where I work, almost the entire graduate department seems to be Chinese. But these are smart guys, and gals. They have a lot to learn, but they earned their way here.
But the real truth for the lack of 'white' in most science departments nowadays is this; foreigners are paying full tuition. Simple stupid.
doesn't matter how mediocre they are, why get 1 mediocre scientist in America thats going to bitch and whine about pay, when you can get 5 mediocre scientist in India who will suck your ass for cheaper all together
And these days, that Chinese or Indian scientists will probably be of higher calibre than the American. There are still some excellent American STEM grads, but on average, their quality has been on the decline for at least a few decades.
Guess what, America? If someone else is willing to do your job for a quarter of what you are, well, they are going to get the job and you aren't going to. That's what you get for pricing yourselves out of the market. There's nothing wrong with that - it's simple economics. Either you compete with the world's best, or you suffer the loss of those industries and all that they bring to your economy.
America has made it's choice: STEM is not worth the bother. That's a valid choice to make. Over the next decades you will get to experience the consequences of your choice.
Spoken like people who don't know what their talking about. I've got a Chinese post-doc working for me right now who I'm training to take over my position after I retire. The kid is really smart, and given a couple of years will probably work out. However, right now he doesn't know how to use a screwdriver. He wants his own private parking space. He thinks the lunch hours should be standardized - he hates how I may eat at 11:00 one day and 3:00 the next. He doesn't think he gets paid enough. He doesn't know the difference between AC and DC current, a big thing in my field to not know. Finally, he wants his own office since I have my own office, which is nothing more than a communal library but I digress.
Now, he can do math like nobody's business. Nobody at my place of work, or in the department at the university we use, can do math like he can. So there's that. But he's education is just as lacking as anyone else. You do not get that PhD with a slap on the fanny and told "Congratulations, now you know everything and have nothing else to learn."
I would kill for an American post doc, however what American post doc would work for me when she can work for wall street earning 4x as much and have a lot more fun. If she still wants to do science, she can afford to do it on her own time in her own way, which is basically the science dream. If she decides she would like to become an experimentalist later on, she can return to the field without worrying about money nearly as much as my Chinese post-doc who went straight from University in China to a laboratory in America.
General System Order 1) - Fly someone to France and then to Detroit. Have them download the Linux flavor of your choice and fly back to Iran. Install your Linux flavor of your choice on clean hardware with resin filled USB ports, locked cases, and a network with no internet connection. Buy a DSL line and connect to a single terminal for all your goat porn needs.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure Oppenheimer didn't need Linux to make yellow cake.
Seriously, this is just ridiculous. The real problem isn't that they are being abused by western 'cyber worms,' but that so many people who hate our way of doing things refuse to think that our way of doing things may actually be better than their way of doing things. I'm not talking about politics here, just good old fashioned system security. Stop freaking pirating MS Windows and expecting your super secret high tech 1970s science experiment to work correctly.
2.5 cents of not knowing WTF is really happening over there. Spend some time to learn how the Internet actually works before bitching about how it works.
I used 2 blades for 25 years. I got a free 5 blade razor in the mail. It was a hell of a lot better of a shave. So yeah, some times new stuff is an improvement.
I remember reading an article on a plane that talked about the history of razor blade counts. Long story short, way back in the 1800s there was experimentation with the number of blades on a razor. They even had a picture of a massive 30+ blade razor to shave your whole face at once. My point is, sometimes old technology can be made better. Like stereograms from the 1800s. Anyway, I'm with you. Sometimes new is better, sometimes its just cool and neat.
My vision is better than the rest of the universe, Pecosdave, and I *DID* see a loss of luminosity and colors
As for the loss of brightness while watching avatar in 3D experienced by the OT, well you are looking through polarized lenses. Each eye will see darker light since 50% of the light is being blocked by the polarized filters, roughly speaking without knowing exactly what kind of polarization is going on here. Crank down the brightness on your home TV by 1/4 to 1/3 and I'd bet it be comparable since the eye does not 'see' brightness linearly. No super vision will matter either, since your eyes will still see less light then they normally would, even if it were to appear brighter to you than to me and my -2.5 diopter lenses and crossed eyes.
I don't know what the big fuss is. Sometimes 3D programs are really fun, and the 3D sports are a lot of fun to watch at the store. I'm a cheap ass and wont be buying right now, but isn't it always up to early adopters on what will become 'market' dominate and what wont, sucker or not?
To be honest, I do not really understand what the hell Internet 2 actually means, but I know I've got it at work here in Cleveland. All the components are certainly off the shelf switches and routers, at least in the lab I work at, so I'm not sure it's all that different than commercial equipment except for one simple fact - my "trace rout" is very few hops from origin to destination. I'm told, and believe this to be the case, that the whole point of Internet 2 is reduced latency and increased throughput. Whatever Internet2 is, It matters for me, and everyone else who likes metal that doesn't rust and such, when I need to manipulate an instrument located at Raleigh from 700 miles away while receiving very large data sets and images in real time.
This summary is such FUD, and the article is nearly so. The author is a Medical Doctor, and if Doctor's had their say humans would have never gone to low orbit in the first place! Physics tells us Moore's Law is not a Law, but rather an idiom that expresses human ingenuity in the field of electronics. Moore's Law does not say transistors can get indefinitely small, it says people can build cheaper and cheaper transistors on larger and larger circuits. I can double the payload capacity of LEO vehicles tomorrow. Give me a 747 at 40,000ft and a rocket, and I'll put up twice the cargo for half the cost of a conventional rocket launched from sea level. Physics says I can do that. I'm not sure what point the author is trying to make with Moore's law, but the comparison between human ingenuity in spaceflight and electronics, and the laws of nature, is mute. Just because it hasn't happened, doesn't mean it is impossible.
Mistaking a large Keynesian space program that explicitly prohibits large leaps in engineering is a common mistake people make when it comes to the impossibilities of space travel. The space station was built, in part, because NASA and Congress didn't know what to do with the large 'space truck.' What do you do when you've got giant reusable vehicles with a HUGE cargo hold? Apparently, you build a space station with it!
We have been living continuously in low orbit for decades without a single fatality. The only Americans who have ever died in space died coming and going, but once you’re up there it has been statistically much safer. One would think moving a group of humans 60-100M km over 9-15 months would be quite possible. We've been living in hostile environments here on Earth for almost a century now with submarines, where a person can't exactly go out for a walk 600ft under water. And in the last 40 years or so, the crews of big submarines have continuously lived underwater for months on end. We know how live in enclosed environments for long periods. If 200 men can go months on end without killing each other, I think a dozen over the hill astronauts might be able to do the same.
The hard part of going to Mars is leaving Earth and then landing safely, landing being the most difficult but NOT impossible feat. Physics tells us that all the elements needed to create breathable air, fuel, water and return fuel for indefinite exploration of Mars can be found on Mars. Physics tells us the power needed to make these compounds can be made on Mars as well. All with ‘current’ technology despite the "low grade" resources, as claimed by the author!
Physics tells us all the hazards of interplanetary travel can be reduced or mitigated. Physics tells us radiation can be reduced with shielding, as can micro meteorite impact dangers.
If you want to really learn what Physics says we Can and Can't do, I'd suggest checking out on of the all time greatest book on the subject, "Spacetime Physics"by Taylor and Wheeler from you public library.
You think that's science fiction? How about this. Physics tells us it's possible to put all the DNA of earth on a tiny little probe the size of a dime, complete with tiny robots, that can be quickly accelerated to large fractions of c and travel between stars in decades. These probes can smash into planets and build life for us. Why send our descendants in large cumbersome bodies when you can send the information needed to create them. The technology to do this doesn't exist yet, but we are developing it Now. And physics doesn't say anything here is impossible.
Net Neutrality is simple, and the analogy I like to use is this: Your ISP is like UPS and FEDEX, they simply deliver the goods you order on a timely and consistent fashion. How would you like it if UPS rang the door bell and said, sorry, there will be a surcharge for this delivery from Bob's Spoons since you went over your package limit for the month, but if you buy your spoons from the UPS store there will not be a surcharge. That's Net Neutrality in a nutshell.
But hold the horses! How many times do you hears these words "From the producers of Friends..."? I strongly believe in the not to distant future it is more likely that movie and television producers will simply offer their content on their own "gateway" (website/application) for modest fees, ala the 99-cent eBook's and hit singles, than fork over control to major network and movie studios as it is down now. Consider how much money a studio or producer makes when Netflix streams a movie? I don't know the answer, but my guess is not much. Would they rather make a paltry 2-3 cents an episode streaming via Netflix, or perhaps 99 selling their episode online from their own gateway? Take a hit show that costs $100 million to produce 11 episodes and has 300 million global viewers. Using my model that's $200 million dollars in profit, instead of the $6-$10 million of 'chump change' they might get out of Netlix that the content makers so disdain.
In other words, the current model works like this: Content Producer -> Major Studio AND/OR Content Distributor -> Content Deliverer.
My model works like this: Content Producer AND Distributor -> Content Deliverer.
That battle, no matter the outcome of the Contemporary Providers vs. Distributors vs. Deliverers, will be short lived. Once "The producers of Friends", or more likely their 21st century descendants who manage to get investments outside Hollywood, wake up and start selling their hit show on their own website (and financing it outside the major studios) AT&T literally won't have any 'traditional' content to deliver (160 channels of 24/7x365 'noise'). Well, they'll try... but you can either pay to watch crummy AT&T produced shows, or subscribe to your favorite show, or site, for a couple bucks a month. The analogy now becomes... "I'm going to charge you more for Internet Service because I can." And the war transforms from Net Neutrality to good ole' Utility Monopolies and Regulation, which takes us all the back to square one... "Why the FRACK do we legally license Internet Monopolies when anyone can do it better/cheaper/faster if they were allowed."
I'm an idealist, obviously, but I believe that these entrenched business models will not go quietly. But you can't fight the tide, and the writing is on the wall... JIMHO.
Wouldn't that still lead to a tyranny of the minority? Kind of like how a lot of tiny little Caribbean and Pacific nations happily take bribes from richer and larger nations in order to get what they want in these wonderful World Forums, like eating whales. Is this going to be like the UN, will there be a Security Council? Will there be quarterly meetings where a bunch of blowhards try to look serious while talking to an large empty room?
Government isn't the problem. Government helped create this Internet thingy. Politicians are the problem. More specifically, politicians whose only goal in life is to earn as much graft and kickbacks from corruption as possible.
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Tomas Jefferson also owned slaves, and thought the wealth of America was in its agriculture and not its manufacturing. I know a bit of history too.
Obviously if you think it's justified to take another person's work without paying for what that person wants for it, you've never written a line of code or had an original thought in your life. Nothing is stopping anyone from making their own Photoshop and giving it away to the world for free. It's called GIMP.
Just because it's not a loss doesn't me you have the right to it. That's like saying "Hey, he wasn't using that car, so why does he care that I stole it."
All I'm saying is that the BSA misrepresents the monetary losses by claiming pirated software is a lost sale. But that does not make it right to steal.
No kidding, I stirred the hornets’ nest. Well I can play that smart guy game. So 'pirating' isn't stealing because it's really 'copying' and idea which doesn't exist. Well the chemicals in my brain I real, and the ideas they create are used to create real things.
So how about all these smart guys show what they’ve created. I'll start. As you can see, this 'not real' idea is used in the very real automotive industry, and generates very real millions for my former employer. It's kind of nice to own a car that doesn't rust quite as fast as it might have otherwise... but what the heck, it's just an idea. Nobody should have paid me anything.
Well I guess we should all just go to your place of work and 'pirate' whatever it is you do for a living. Yar!!!
The BSA isn't right, nor is it wrong. I might understand stealing a loaf of bread because you're hungry, *might*, but stealing software because you can't afford it doesn't fly with me. Nor does misrepresenting facts and figures to confuse and obfuscate public policy, ala "lobbying", fly with me either. 2.5 cents.
For how long have you been suffering from comprehension problems ?
Apparently for 7 minutes minus the few seconds it took to read your post? How does an all volunteer military create desperate young men with no other option?
Exactly. 50% of the country are self described conservatives. The whole OT is mute. If there was a model for a bajillion cable news stations for every political ideology that exists, there would be a bajillioin cable news outlets. Well that model doesn't work. There half a dozen cable news outlets, and only one of them caters towards conservative view points. Believe it or not, I really don't think global warming is a greater threat than our national debt. I don't think stories of backwards desert savages living in the 7th century throwing rocks at each-other all day while waiting for the caliphate to return is a greater concern than nuts-o' fanatics who want to kill me (and poison my precious bodily fluids :P) I don't give a fart who Jullian Assange is and what he's doing to save me from myself. Maybe when I want to 'veg out on TV trash for a bit I'd like to 'veg out on TV trash that doesn't call me stupid every 5 minutes.
If all these smart guys used their brains they'd figure out that maybe Fox is popular because it's the only game in town. Maybe Fox is successful because it has a guaranteed 50% market for Viagra and golf commercials, since 50% of Viagra eaters and golf swingers (or is it the other way around) are conservatives who watch Fox.
But hey, why not act all snobbish and elitist instead. After all, your only smart if you say your smart... I mean, your only smart if you think your smart but get other people to say your smart so you don't sound snobbish and elitist. Yea, we're so clever and smart. Fox is bad, but political blogs that don't copy and paste Fox and CNN are even worse.Let's all go post how smart are friends are on Facebook, and hope they post how smart we are.
There are many public domain patents, and non patentable public domain, generated by 'the government' that are totally free. Such as the stuff that make the Internet the INTERNET, that were never charged anything to anyone. All government generated papers are public domain, unless they are black but that's secret squirrel type stuff. And most of the folks creating these things work only for a contractor who contracted with the government... your Lockheed's and Raytheon's for example, so it's not like these government labs cut paychecks to individuals.
These 'rules' do not apply to grants to university professor types. The idea behind those is to pay smart people to build smart things. The smart people patent them and thus teach the world how to do the same in exchange for a temporary monopoly. Of course, you are then free to build a better mousetrap off that patent, and then patent it. That's the theory anyway. The alternative is to keep your ideas a secret, and have stifled inventions and permanent monopolies maintained at great expense and paranoia. I know which method I prefer.
It only creates progress in the incentive for new work to be done. It stiffles progress when others want to extend that work or improve on it or use it to create new work. The patent rights hold back innovation in this way.
Wow what? The whole point of a patent is to grant a temporary monopoly in exchange for teaching your 'art' to the world. If someone patents a better mousetrap, you can build upon that and patent the improved version. This is exactly how it works, and is why every patent cites countless other patents.
You are talking about 'trade secrets.' For example, a patent might utilize a certain processes; however the materials used to make the materials in that process are trade secrets. These non patented inventions are to keep others from using your ideas and/or improving them while still having the protection of a patent. There is a whole new paranoia about them, just like the Coke formula. If you figured out that formula for Coca-cola, you could patent it and prevent coke from selling any new Coke to any person who had not drank a Coke before your patent.
I know it's contrary to /., but you want to really increase quality patents, increase their duration by 20 years.
I agree with all of this. I bitched and moaned in the other thread last night that complained about worthless PhDs and a foreign takeover of the scientific community, or some such conspiracy.
Unrated to this reply, but back OT, while I love The Journal Nature, I really do not think the chair of the religion department at Columbia is exactly qualified to tell a fresh post-doc that their degree is worthless because their thesis was on the mitosis of toilet bacteria and their first job is investigating HIV in humans for big Pharma. I mean, really? The whole point of advanced education is to specialize so you can show the world that you can become an expert at something, and by contrast, anything!
Interferometry is the short answer. The long answer is, no, it wouldn't be insurmountable to pick up Casey Kasem 50ly away with a good array.
I was going to go with the large orbital rectal probe manufactory...
There is probably some truth to this. I'm not a professor, I just work at a University. The only students I see are the graduate students, and occasional undergrads, who actually show up to do their lab work. So that's my 2.5 cents.
My son complained about cheaters in his CS department a lot. In my own experience, I've had plenty of papers borrow ideas of myself and colleagues without approbation from all over the globe. 2.5 cents.
P.S It's a lot easier to get caught than it is to cheat with any kind of chance of success. These guys will not go far in life, but I wouldn't hold it against a population as a whole. One of the best technicians I've ever had was an Iraqi who accepted the position of, quite literally, 'test tube cleaner.' He loved the job, learned how to do the basics and worked his way up. Great guy who now works at Lawrence Liver-more doing incredible research for DOE secret squirrel type stuff.
Sorry, are you saying there's no-one available better than the Chinese guy you've described? (since we seem to be talking "better" in the sense of knowing the difference between AC and DC) Did you choose him or was politics involved?
It's not that no one else was available. The truth is, only Chinese are readily available. I didn't choose him, but I did have imput during the interview. I really like the guy. He's very observant, incredibly mature academically, and polite. There was definitely no politics involved. My list of CVs consisted of Chinese, and Asians in general, with a smattering of Indians and Middle Easterners. There was one application from a Caucasian sounding name, you can never tell, but we never heard back about an interview.
It's a crappy job if you only want money. Experimentation in a materials surface laboratory is tedious at best. My real point was that no education is complete by virtue of graduating. In the West, students are sorely lacking in theoretical skills. In the East, their universities do not seem to be doing a good job in the practical skills area, but this is just from my own one off observation.
That was certainly the experience I witnessed in both undergraduate and graduate school.
Again I'm calling BS on this, at least in science. Where I work, almost the entire graduate department seems to be Chinese. But these are smart guys, and gals. They have a lot to learn, but they earned their way here.
But the real truth for the lack of 'white' in most science departments nowadays is this; foreigners are paying full tuition. Simple stupid.
doesn't matter how mediocre they are, why get 1 mediocre scientist in America thats going to bitch and whine about pay, when you can get 5 mediocre scientist in India who will suck your ass for cheaper all together
And these days, that Chinese or Indian scientists will probably be of higher calibre than the American. There are still some excellent American STEM grads, but on average, their quality has been on the decline for at least a few decades.
Guess what, America? If someone else is willing to do your job for a quarter of what you are, well, they are going to get the job and you aren't going to. That's what you get for pricing yourselves out of the market. There's nothing wrong with that - it's simple economics. Either you compete with the world's best, or you suffer the loss of those industries and all that they bring to your economy.
America has made it's choice: STEM is not worth the bother. That's a valid choice to make. Over the next decades you will get to experience the consequences of your choice.
Spoken like people who don't know what their talking about. I've got a Chinese post-doc working for me right now who I'm training to take over my position after I retire. The kid is really smart, and given a couple of years will probably work out. However, right now he doesn't know how to use a screwdriver. He wants his own private parking space. He thinks the lunch hours should be standardized - he hates how I may eat at 11:00 one day and 3:00 the next. He doesn't think he gets paid enough. He doesn't know the difference between AC and DC current, a big thing in my field to not know. Finally, he wants his own office since I have my own office, which is nothing more than a communal library but I digress.
Now, he can do math like nobody's business. Nobody at my place of work, or in the department at the university we use, can do math like he can. So there's that. But he's education is just as lacking as anyone else. You do not get that PhD with a slap on the fanny and told "Congratulations, now you know everything and have nothing else to learn."
I would kill for an American post doc, however what American post doc would work for me when she can work for wall street earning 4x as much and have a lot more fun. If she still wants to do science, she can afford to do it on her own time in her own way, which is basically the science dream. If she decides she would like to become an experimentalist later on, she can return to the field without worrying about money nearly as much as my Chinese post-doc who went straight from University in China to a laboratory in America.
General System Order 1) - Fly someone to France and then to Detroit. Have them download the Linux flavor of your choice and fly back to Iran. Install your Linux flavor of your choice on clean hardware with resin filled USB ports, locked cases, and a network with no internet connection. Buy a DSL line and connect to a single terminal for all your goat porn needs.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure Oppenheimer didn't need Linux to make yellow cake.
Seriously, this is just ridiculous. The real problem isn't that they are being abused by western 'cyber worms,' but that so many people who hate our way of doing things refuse to think that our way of doing things may actually be better than their way of doing things. I'm not talking about politics here, just good old fashioned system security. Stop freaking pirating MS Windows and expecting your super secret high tech 1970s science experiment to work correctly.
2.5 cents of not knowing WTF is really happening over there. Spend some time to learn how the Internet actually works before bitching about how it works.
I used 2 blades for 25 years. I got a free 5 blade razor in the mail. It was a hell of a lot better of a shave. So yeah, some times new stuff is an improvement.
I remember reading an article on a plane that talked about the history of razor blade counts. Long story short, way back in the 1800s there was experimentation with the number of blades on a razor. They even had a picture of a massive 30+ blade razor to shave your whole face at once. My point is, sometimes old technology can be made better. Like stereograms from the 1800s. Anyway, I'm with you. Sometimes new is better, sometimes its just cool and neat.
My vision is better than the rest of the universe, Pecosdave, and I *DID* see a loss of luminosity and colors
As for the loss of brightness while watching avatar in 3D experienced by the OT, well you are looking through polarized lenses. Each eye will see darker light since 50% of the light is being blocked by the polarized filters, roughly speaking without knowing exactly what kind of polarization is going on here. Crank down the brightness on your home TV by 1/4 to 1/3 and I'd bet it be comparable since the eye does not 'see' brightness linearly. No super vision will matter either, since your eyes will still see less light then they normally would, even if it were to appear brighter to you than to me and my -2.5 diopter lenses and crossed eyes.
I don't know what the big fuss is. Sometimes 3D programs are really fun, and the 3D sports are a lot of fun to watch at the store. I'm a cheap ass and wont be buying right now, but isn't it always up to early adopters on what will become 'market' dominate and what wont, sucker or not?
To be honest, I do not really understand what the hell Internet 2 actually means, but I know I've got it at work here in Cleveland. All the components are certainly off the shelf switches and routers, at least in the lab I work at, so I'm not sure it's all that different than commercial equipment except for one simple fact - my "trace rout" is very few hops from origin to destination. I'm told, and believe this to be the case, that the whole point of Internet 2 is reduced latency and increased throughput. Whatever Internet2 is, It matters for me, and everyone else who likes metal that doesn't rust and such, when I need to manipulate an instrument located at Raleigh from 700 miles away while receiving very large data sets and images in real time.
This summary is such FUD, and the article is nearly so. The author is a Medical Doctor, and if Doctor's had their say humans would have never gone to low orbit in the first place! Physics tells us Moore's Law is not a Law, but rather an idiom that expresses human ingenuity in the field of electronics. Moore's Law does not say transistors can get indefinitely small, it says people can build cheaper and cheaper transistors on larger and larger circuits. I can double the payload capacity of LEO vehicles tomorrow. Give me a 747 at 40,000ft and a rocket, and I'll put up twice the cargo for half the cost of a conventional rocket launched from sea level. Physics says I can do that. I'm not sure what point the author is trying to make with Moore's law, but the comparison between human ingenuity in spaceflight and electronics, and the laws of nature, is mute. Just because it hasn't happened, doesn't mean it is impossible.
Mistaking a large Keynesian space program that explicitly prohibits large leaps in engineering is a common mistake people make when it comes to the impossibilities of space travel. The space station was built, in part, because NASA and Congress didn't know what to do with the large 'space truck.' What do you do when you've got giant reusable vehicles with a HUGE cargo hold? Apparently, you build a space station with it!
We have been living continuously in low orbit for decades without a single fatality. The only Americans who have ever died in space died coming and going, but once you’re up there it has been statistically much safer. One would think moving a group of humans 60-100M km over 9-15 months would be quite possible. We've been living in hostile environments here on Earth for almost a century now with submarines, where a person can't exactly go out for a walk 600ft under water. And in the last 40 years or so, the crews of big submarines have continuously lived underwater for months on end. We know how live in enclosed environments for long periods. If 200 men can go months on end without killing each other, I think a dozen over the hill astronauts might be able to do the same.
The hard part of going to Mars is leaving Earth and then landing safely, landing being the most difficult but NOT impossible feat. Physics tells us that all the elements needed to create breathable air, fuel, water and return fuel for indefinite exploration of Mars can be found on Mars. Physics tells us the power needed to make these compounds can be made on Mars as well. All with ‘current’ technology despite the "low grade" resources, as claimed by the author!
Physics tells us all the hazards of interplanetary travel can be reduced or mitigated. Physics tells us radiation can be reduced with shielding, as can micro meteorite impact dangers.
If you want to really learn what Physics says we Can and Can't do, I'd suggest checking out on of the all time greatest book on the subject, "Spacetime Physics" by Taylor and Wheeler from you public library.
You think that's science fiction? How about this. Physics tells us it's possible to put all the DNA of earth on a tiny little probe the size of a dime, complete with tiny robots, that can be quickly accelerated to large fractions of c and travel between stars in decades. These probes can smash into planets and build life for us. Why send our descendants in large cumbersome bodies when you can send the information needed to create them. The technology to do this doesn't exist yet, but we are developing it Now. And physics doesn't say anything here is impossible.
Net Neutrality is simple, and the analogy I like to use is this:
Your ISP is like UPS and FEDEX, they simply deliver the goods you order on a timely and consistent fashion. How would you like it if UPS rang the door bell and said, sorry, there will be a surcharge for this delivery from Bob's Spoons since you went over your package limit for the month, but if you buy your spoons from the UPS store there will not be a surcharge.
That's Net Neutrality in a nutshell.
But hold the horses! How many times do you hears these words "From the producers of Friends..."? I strongly believe in the not to distant future it is more likely that movie and television producers will simply offer their content on their own "gateway" (website/application) for modest fees, ala the 99-cent eBook's and hit singles, than fork over control to major network and movie studios as it is down now. Consider how much money a studio or producer makes when Netflix streams a movie? I don't know the answer, but my guess is not much. Would they rather make a paltry 2-3 cents an episode streaming via Netflix, or perhaps 99 selling their episode online from their own gateway? Take a hit show that costs $100 million to produce 11 episodes and has 300 million global viewers. Using my model that's $200 million dollars in profit, instead of the $6-$10 million of 'chump change' they might get out of Netlix that the content makers so disdain.
In other words, the current model works like this: Content Producer -> Major Studio AND/OR Content Distributor -> Content Deliverer.
My model works like this: Content Producer AND Distributor -> Content Deliverer.
That battle, no matter the outcome of the Contemporary Providers vs. Distributors vs. Deliverers, will be short lived. Once "The producers of Friends", or more likely their 21st century descendants who manage to get investments outside Hollywood, wake up and start selling their hit show on their own website (and financing it outside the major studios) AT&T literally won't have any 'traditional' content to deliver (160 channels of 24/7x365 'noise'). Well, they'll try... but you can either pay to watch crummy AT&T produced shows, or subscribe to your favorite show, or site, for a couple bucks a month. The analogy now becomes... "I'm going to charge you more for Internet Service because I can." And the war transforms from Net Neutrality to good ole' Utility Monopolies and Regulation, which takes us all the back to square one... "Why the FRACK do we legally license Internet Monopolies when anyone can do it better/cheaper/faster if they were allowed."
I'm an idealist, obviously, but I believe that these entrenched business models will not go quietly. But you can't fight the tide, and the writing is on the wall... JIMHO.
How about ".protest"?
Wouldn't that still lead to a tyranny of the minority? Kind of like how a lot of tiny little Caribbean and Pacific nations happily take bribes from richer and larger nations in order to get what they want in these wonderful World Forums, like eating whales. Is this going to be like the UN, will there be a Security Council? Will there be quarterly meetings where a bunch of blowhards try to look serious while talking to an large empty room?
Government isn't the problem. Government helped create this Internet thingy. Politicians are the problem. More specifically, politicians whose only goal in life is to earn as much graft and kickbacks from corruption as possible.
Didn't read the story did you? NaziMohammed.com is good to go. Mohammed.Nazi may be a bust though.