Why, exactly, would you ever begin to think that the car would suddenly become "uncontrollable", regardless of what speed it is traveling just due to a failure of electronics?
I know of at least one person (through my girlfriend) who died because her friend in the passenger seat thought it'd be a fun joke to lean across and turn the keys off in the ignition. The sudden unexpected loss of electronic brakes and power steering caused the driver to lose control, and drive off the road. I know of another person who had a serious accident because his mentally disabled passenger thought it'd be funny to pull up the hand brake and stop the car on a high speed road along the side of a hill. I personally nearly had what could have been a serious accident when I lost power steering as the car I was driving stalled in an awkward part of a road. I feel quite fortunate that I noticed quickly enough that the car wasn't responding as I'd expected it to, and was able to recover.
Even if you can still force the brakes or the steering, suddenly and dramatically changing how the car will react is asking for trouble. Sometimes a driver will be able to stop safely, but don't be surprised if it results in a serious accident.
Being that there is a UNIX version of Photoshop (OS X) it should not be too difficult to wrap the inners with an X GUI outers.
...which does cause me to wonder why Adobe hasn't released a Linux build or two. Considering how popular it is, I would have thought there was quite a serious market of people wanting to run Photoshop in Linux, and that might make it worth doing even if it wasn't a trivial port.
Does Adobe have some conflicting interests here that I've missed?
As rule of thumb, may be it is better for you to invert in general Computer Science formation (generic OS, compiler understanding, computer architecture, algorithmic complexity, et al), not just the "follow the last wave formation". Most people doesn't ever consider that it is dangerous to be extremely especialized. This applies to any platform-specific developing environment.
I agree, but as someone who's been working as a.Net programmer in my daytime job for the last 5 months, I'm not convinced that a good understanding of computer science is beneficial to getting a job, unless you're lucky enough to find someone who understands what they're hiring for.
During my last two job searches, most recruitment agents struck me as being ignorant when it came to understanding what they were hiring for. If an employer had asked them to find a driver for their bright blue truck and the recruitment agents were acting with the same level of skill and understanding, they would have put forward all the people they could find with blue bicycles. Any people looking for work who only had experience driving trucks that weren't blue would have been turned away as not worth putting forward as an applicant.
After these experiences, I don't find it very surprising that certain recruitment companies are reporting to CNN that they're having trouble finding.Net programmers. As far as I'm concerned, a recruitment agency that claims this probably isn't very good at looking for good.Net programmers. In the end, I got my job through a friend. I was put through a 2 day crash course about.Net API's, it's going nicely, and I feel fortunate that the seem to be considering me as quite valuable to have around.
I realise I'm most likely missing things, but I don't fully understand why the GPL2 wouldn't cover this, simply through its definition of source code. From section 3 of GPL2:
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
In short, the first sentance seems to cover it in my eyes. If the provided code can't be usefully modified without a private key (because it won't run on its intended hardware), then I'd certainly consider that private key to be part of "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it". The "special exception" of sentance 3 could, by its own words, only apply if the signing key is already included with the hardware.
If Dell released a Dell-signed binary and Dell source code for running on Dell systems, I'd definitely consider everything required to recompile modified Dell code as the "preferred form of source code", including a key to sign it with.
The GPL3 (which I haven't carefully read) seems to make this requirement more explicit if I understand it correctly, and perhaps that's why it's worth having, but does it really cover anything in this area that the GPL2 didn't cover already?
I find it rather hypocritical when many slashbots trash corporations for creating genetically modified foods yet they see absolutely no problem creating genetically modified people. Either genetic modification is OK or it isn't, do we really need decisions made on the basis of how much you hate someone?
I can only speak for myself, but my problem with GM crops isn't the act of genetically engineering foods. It's the attitude of the (mostly) giant corporations that do it.
Monsanto, for instance, doesn't primarily use genetic modification to improve food quality. It uses genetic modification to produce grow-once-and-die seeds that make it impossible for farmers to create their own seed supply for future years, forcing them to rely on Monsanto as a sole producer.
Overall I see genetic modification of foods as having some great potential if it's done very carefully, and in a way that won't significantly risk the loss of food quality or diversity among species... keeping in mind that this isn't necessarily how it's going right now. What irks me most, though, is the way it's being primarily used at present. it's being used for the sole benefit of large corporations, with no benefit or even a negative benefit going back to the farmers and consumers.
Staying in lane is easy. Realizing that the truck in the junction ahead hasn't made eye contact and is about to pull out in front of you is harder.. and you can't automate that.
If the truck is also automated, and if there's sufficient reliable communication between the two vehicles to indicate each other's intent, it probably can be automated. To be most efficient, this would probably require a trusted road network that might only allow trusted and authenticated automated vehicles to drive on it, or any automated vehicle would have to assume that anything not communicating was a potential hazard. But I get the impression that people in a country like Japan might just accept such a road network that would require modified vehicles.
If implemented well, automated vehicles would certainly be able to travel much faster, closer together and more safely than human-controlled ones. It'd reduce congestion, decrease travel time, make travel times more predictible, and reduce a lot of people's frustration at the cost of letting people control their own vehicles.
Why pay for advertising when you can get someone else to do it for you for free?
This is speculation, but perhaps it's because this particular someone who does it for free will also advertise your less-rich but higher quality competitors for free, giving them an advantage in the marketing.... if only because producing quality is harder than simply getting attention by spending. Cast doubt over the legality of Google's business model, and you can once again win by spending more money on marketing.
I find it quite irritating that some books are out to trick their readers, and there are many I'd prefer had never been written simply because it means I spend more time having to argue with and correct people on certain topics if they've been taking rubbish sources seriously. But the thought of non-fiction books having to be factually correct seems quite far-fetched. If publishers and authors could be sued for providing factually wrong books in a non-fiction category, then categories such as "New age" would be illegal, simply because authors who publish in them tend to be out to swindle their readers in one way or another by definition, and the publisher's probably in it for the sales. (Okay, I see New Age as fiction, but many book shops, publishers and people don't.)
Some of the best satire can come from effectively lying to an audience, and I don't see how you could cleanly distinguish it. Peter Jackson is just an example of someone who's done this, having faked an historical documentory (see Forgotten Silver) and lied about its origins to get it on TV. He had a lot of gullible people thinking they were seeing actual history, including the TV network, before he revealed it was all made up. What's the difference? Could he have been sued by the network? Possibly, but he took that chance and he wasn't, and now Forgotten Silver is considered a work of art.
As sad as I think it is that there are some really crappy books out there, and people who believe them, I'm not sure how rules could be made to fairly place responsibility on a publisher. Personally I think that fact checking should come from peers after publication, and it should be the responsibility of the reader to check if the facts have been checked. Hopefully anything that's actually important enough and relied on by enough people will have its facts checked, resulting in either confirmation, or a very embarassed author and publisher. There are always reputations to go on. In the case the article speaks of, the publisher is hopefully now being made to look more than a little stupid, and I'd like to think that Oprah's Book Club reputation is probably suffering a bit more than it was previously if its followers ever cared about this sort of thing. I've never followed her book club myself, but that's for good reason.
The question is, when will the history books conclude that he is the worst president ever to run the USA.
That's an interesting claim to make. Not one I necessarily disagree with, but there have been quite a few other awful presidents. (Disclaimer: I'm not an American either, but from outside I find US Federal politics quite fascinating.)
On the topic, Wikipedia has an historical compilation of US Predident ratings from a variety of different sources. James Buchanan's right down there as one of the worst-rated Presidents, and probably for good reason (eg. fostering an environment to encourage the US Civil War and all that). Roosevelt, Lincoln and Washington seem to be the favourites.
The only two sources that rated President Bush have so far been a 2002 poll and a 2005 poll, which rate him at 23rd and 19th respectively... about average. Considering his presidency is still ongoing and people's views are very polluted, right now though, they're probably not very objective.
"In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn, in response to local law, regulation or policy," the internet company said in a statement issued yesterday.
That's quite interesting. I just ran a search for "tibet" on google.cn. I can't read the first two results, but the third and fourth results, at first glance, look very pro-Tibet-independence.
Perhaps Google hasn't launched this new site yet, or perhaps it's returning different results due to my IP address not being in China. Can anyone confirm?
It doesn't make any grammatical or mathematical sense, because there's no value higher than 18% to multiply by 3 that results in 18%. These figures are meaningless as the article presents them.
This isn't exactly important in the context of this story, but it's a lazy and ambiguous form of writing that seems to be coming up a lot in what might be expected to be reliable sources. It's sad that slashdot editors don't pick up on this sort of thing, but it's even sadder that the journalists and editors of the articles don't write clearly in the first place.
Watching the Nightly News is simply a chance for me to discuss the day's events with other people. I've already read all the 'big' stories of the day by 6/7 o'clock and I usually get more details to boot.
I agree, I think. In my local area at least, the only reason to watch television journalism is to get additional moving pictures of certain events. Anything resembling journalism is dismal. Nightly news contains a few facts combined with large amounts of subjective speculation (stated as fact or near to it), and much self-glamorisation of the journalists who spend a lot of time exagerrating their own importance.
There are a couple of radio shows I enjoy that discuss news and events in a much more objective context without the self-hype, and I like newspapers that publish people's letters, simply because it makes it easier to identify which issues are contriversial and what some of the other views happen to be. In effect, this is also how the Internet tends to work. Even though it's necessary to be cautious of information sources, at least the sources are there, and it's clearer what the different sides of an argument are.
Vista does look like it's seriously going to be a helluva flop, but because of a very simple reason: users don't need it! No, they don't care about security, they don't want to know about WinFS (which isn't there anyway), they certainly don't care about.NET 2.
What matters is that they don't want to buy a new Dell in order to use... what exactly?
Vista almost certainly won't be a flop. What matters is that when people do buy a new Dell, or whatever else, they're likely to get it whether they want it or not. Vista will become popular for exactly the same reason that previous versions of Windows became popular, because Microsoft withdraws support from its older releases and forces it at people if they want to keep the software running that they've pre-invested in.
The OS could be totally secure and only allow the installed apps to affect the logged-in user. They'll still be there annoying that one user, though, since the user is the one who said it was okay to put them there.
I don't really disagree with you that spyware could be a problem if there's motivation, but in my own experience Linux does have some fundamental architectural and use differences that I think would benefit more than you're suggesting. One that someone else pointed out in another response, which I think was a good point, is that people using Linux tend to go to their distro's repository for software rather than directly to the vendor. The nature of Open Source means that it's more realistic for third parties to offer their own customised versions of any package, which is effectively what happens.
Furthermore, one of the biggest problems I've had with Windows spyware is that it simply ties itself so tightly into the operating system. Windows is full of proprietary formats and configurations that are hidden away from the user, making it more difficult to get at them. Windows tends to make it complicated to view and edit configuations without special tools, whereas Unix apps tend to put it all in text files, sometimes with a tool for editing but usually still editible by hand. The reason we need anti-spyware tools in Windows (yet another third party application) is because there's no readily standard way to examine and fix all the configuration information without it.
With an appropriately configured Linux or Unix system, it's much more predictible as to what any spyware can do. Given that most of the configuration exists in open and readily accessible formats, it becomes more realistic to monitor what's going on in a user's configuration files than it is in Windows, and if necessary clean it out.
Anyways, the world is dying because the resources were squandered by humans.
I can't claim to be an expert on this, but I was actually thinking that such a seed bank could be quite relevant in a potential disaster that's probably less obvious than simply squandering resources. In particular, a large amount of food production, especially in the developed world (I don't know about other places), is essentially dictated by a small number of massive corporations which are very specific about what crops they'll grow.
A good example is with potatoes -- there are about 200 different varieties of potato, but my understanding is that only four or five of them are seriously grown on a large scale in the US. Some of the former varieties are probably extinct by now, or close to it, simply because their original habitats have been wiped out and nobody grows them. Everyone's growing the same thing, everyone's eating the same thing, and there's very little variety.
Someone can correct me on this if they know otherwise. My point is, though, that the lack of variety that's generally encouraged when a small number of corporations control it, makes it much more lokely that a disease or other biological threat could just wipe the whole lot out.
Keeping a seed bank would be one way to make sure that the older varieties remain available if it ever becomes very important to retrieve them in the future. Reading the article, it seems that this is probably the sort of thing they're thinking about.
But I'm annoyed by all these stupid studies making statements based on unprecise conditions, which will not allow to deduce verifyable conclusions, but will be picked up by the press (and slashdot) nonetheless.
I can't speak for this study in particular, but when I'm unsure I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the scientists concerned. Scientists simply get misrepresented and quoted out of context so frequently that it's not really funny any more. I've had first-hand experience several times of being quoted incorrectly and completely out of context by journalists, and I've seen it happen to other people frequently.
With a few radical exceptions, scientists who carry out this or any kind of research are usually very specific about what their studies mean, and careful not to overstate the relevance (at least when speaking to people who aren't familiar with typical research language), or understate the assumptions and limitations.
Keep in mind that this is one newspaper's edit (the SMH) of another newspaper's story (The Telegraph). Both newspapers target general readership, yet they're trying to summarise the results of a scientific publication. Even though this story appears to do a better job than most of stating what was actually in the study, it's no substitute for actually going to your nearest academic library, issuing the journal, and reading it for yourself. There's no evidence that the journalists of either newspaper made an effort to contact the study's author's directly -- the quotes that appear could easily have been lifted from the publication, and given out of context. Even if the authors were contacted, it wouldn't be unusual for authors to be mis-quoted (accidentally or deliberately); a lot of journalists are notorious for putting a spin on their work to justify a more interesting headline, even in what you might think are respectable and well managed publications.
However, I would object strenuously Xorg and a window manager was fused into the kernel and made intrinsically dependant on firefox. That's the key difference. Any componant of any Linux distro can be replaced at will. When available, the distro will include several alternatives for the same basic functionality.
Absolutely, and the best part of this in my mind is that even the Kernel's replacable. If I decided I didn't like the Linux kernel for some reason, I'd be able to replace it with a different build or fork, or even with a fundamentally different design of kernel (eg. BSD, with a little effort), and still have the overall system function smoothly.
Where's the line? Every shmuck who's written a media player is going to want it bundled. So do you have to include JoeMedia also?
I don't think the issue is so much whether or not Microsoft should bundle applications with Windows. It's more about whether Microsoft should be allowed to prevent vendors of Windows from deciding how much or how little of Windows they want to distribute, and what applications they want to distribute with it.
The funny thing is people get more worked up about terrorism which kills relatively few people worldwide then they do about barelling down the highway at 100 mph while drunk and not wearing a seatbelt.
I'll be one of the first to agree that the US stance on terrorism seems completely overboard, and that there's a disturbing amount of apparent (if not obvious) corruption and ulterior motives active in terrorism legislation.
That said, I don't think it's unfair to point out that if authorities completely ignored the threat of terrorism, there would be a much bigger chance that a small number of terrorist actions could easily kill (and/or maim/injure) several million or tens of millions of people in the space of a year, whether by a massive nuclear explosive attack, by subversively releasing deadly diseases amongst large US populations, or whatever else.
Of course, there are methods of reducing the likeliness of this that don't involve slamming down a fist in the name of terrorism. One place to start might be for the US government to take a serious look at and review its long term strategy for foreign policy and how it treats people in other nations. Terrorism might be inevitable in the world no matter how nations act towards each other, but most of it seems to just be more symptomatic of a much more serious problem.
This will ensure that the bill fails. We should be glad that it is so ridiculous that it has no chance of passing, rather than only being semi-crazy like the DMCA.
Considering it seems so unlikely on the surface, it makes me concerned that getting the bill passed isn't the actual point.
After all, it wouldn't be the first time that members of an industry have proposed something "ludicrously ridiculous" so that law-makers might be convinced that it's entirely rational and reasonable to meet half way... at either "ludicrous" or "ridiculous".
It is perfectly correct to teach the fact of evolution, for it is a fact. It is an observed phenomenon, or fact, if you like. The Theory of Evolution is the theoretical construct explaining how evolution operates, the mechanism involved and the consequences of these mechanisms.
No argument there, although personally I'd prefer that the focus was on teaching how to recognise evolution as a scientific theory rather than simply throwing established facts at students.
If students are simply taught evolution because we know it's right without clearly demonstrating why it's more right than the next "fact" that someone on the street (or in the media), tells them, I'm not sure it really teaches them much at all. It certainly shouldn't be surprising if they come out of the education system completely missing the point.
Corporate pigs shipping work out to places that have NO health and safety laws... all in the name of short term shareholder profits. These bastards have NO ethics... how would they feel if they themselves were on the breadline with no job protection and the only work available being dirty, shit jobs exported from countries that should know better
I don't particularly disagree with you, but I do wonder if this would get as much attention if it were Indian companies testing on disadvantaged Indian citizens, and then on-selling their products overseas, as opposed to foreign companies going there to do things that are considered unethical at home.
I despise corporate ethics in general, but if a government also makes it allowable in the first place, I think part of the responsibility should also lie with the government and society that it represents.
I think the whole idea of this program is sick. The gist of it is to laugh at people who think something great is going to happen to them, so that the audience can go "Ha ha" when it turns out they've been had.
I agree absolutely -- I find these types of programs quite disgusting.
There's a very good reason why researchers these days are (usually) required to get ethical approval before they run psychological experiments on humans, and it's much more for the life-long wellbeing of the subjects than it is for the researchers.
I find ridiculous that television producers can get away not only with treating people in ways that mimic some serious experimental conditions, but humiliating them in front of millions of people afterwards, and then having none of the controls, simply because it's not in their commercial interests to do so. Trying to buy them out afterwards for good press is irrelevant.
I didn't think it was too bad in straying from the novel. Personally I felt a bit put off by the religious theme, but I don't think it's fair to criticise it for that, because it's taken directly from the books. My specific issue, however, is that I read the books before I recognised that theme, and so now the films come across quite differently.
Anyway, apart from holding up to the novel, I did think it was a little tacky in places. My main gripe was with the special effects, and the way they were directed. For a movie that clearly had such a high budget and such capable people for effects, I noticed more than a few times that the camera moved away from a scene where we would have seen and effect that could have added a lot to the story. A good example of this was when the witch was about to zap someone and turn them into stone, for instance.
I have little doubt that this is a lot to do with Disney's influence on the film-making process, which just irritates me. The movie shows a lot of battle and violence scenes, but hardly a drop of blood, if any. I don't want to seem morbid by saying this -- I just think it's deceptive and irresponsible to glorify war without showing the consequences, and in hindsight I found it quite irritating and offensive that it was handled this way.
Anyway, those were my thoughts. I enjoyed the movie for the most part, especially the opening sequences when the children were in London, and particularly when I tried to ignore the religious overtones. I think it could have benefited from some different decisions in its portrayal of violence, though. I thought got the point for representing WW2, but completely missed it in Narnia.
The Origin of Species is one of the most important and influential books in human history, and it remains the single most important book in evolutionary biology. Yet it wasn't peer reviewed, and I seriously wonder how well Darwin's theory would have fared if he had been subjected to peer review.
I'm not sure I agree, because realistically The Origin of Species has been peer reviewed over time. It's been criticised, compared with research, and it's held up. This is why the scientific community takes it seriously. Anyone can publish a book or an article that's not peer reviewed, even today, just as Darwin did. If it's significant, it'll be peer reviewed anyway, and future citations and research built on it will depend upon how well it survives that review.
Personally I think the biggest problem of open publication is when people aren't judging the information they receive with skepticism. This is well demonstrated by this guy. Ken Ring [2] [3] claims to be able to predict the weather mechanically, entirely by the actions of the Moon. The consequence of this is that he produces an annual almanac with weather predictions a year in advance, selling it for the RRP of NZ$44.95. (Approx US$30.) When it comes down to it, his theories are complete rubbish if you're lucky enough to actually be able to find accurate enough details of what they are.
It might seem that the obvious test is to compare his predictions with what actually happens. Nobody with any standing has bothered to do this, however, because as well as real scientists preferring to focus on their own thing rather than speak out publicly, his system isn't actually testable once you take into account all the exceptions that he states, for as much as it appears genuine to people who buy his books. Unfortunately, however, is that he has a publisher who gets him frequent radio and television interviews so he can spout and promote his ideas with an aura of authority as far as the general public is concerned. The media likes people with radical ideas, however spurious, and people listen to the media.
On the surface it might seem that this is pretty harmless, but we're at the point where people are putting their safety on the line with this guy's weather predictions.
Slashdot Mirror
I know of at least one person (through my girlfriend) who died because her friend in the passenger seat thought it'd be a fun joke to lean across and turn the keys off in the ignition. The sudden unexpected loss of electronic brakes and power steering caused the driver to lose control, and drive off the road. I know of another person who had a serious accident because his mentally disabled passenger thought it'd be funny to pull up the hand brake and stop the car on a high speed road along the side of a hill. I personally nearly had what could have been a serious accident when I lost power steering as the car I was driving stalled in an awkward part of a road. I feel quite fortunate that I noticed quickly enough that the car wasn't responding as I'd expected it to, and was able to recover.
Even if you can still force the brakes or the steering, suddenly and dramatically changing how the car will react is asking for trouble. Sometimes a driver will be able to stop safely, but don't be surprised if it results in a serious accident.
Does Adobe have some conflicting interests here that I've missed?
I agree, but as someone who's been working as a .Net programmer in my daytime job for the last 5 months, I'm not convinced that a good understanding of computer science is beneficial to getting a job, unless you're lucky enough to find someone who understands what they're hiring for.
During my last two job searches, most recruitment agents struck me as being ignorant when it came to understanding what they were hiring for. If an employer had asked them to find a driver for their bright blue truck and the recruitment agents were acting with the same level of skill and understanding, they would have put forward all the people they could find with blue bicycles. Any people looking for work who only had experience driving trucks that weren't blue would have been turned away as not worth putting forward as an applicant.
After these experiences, I don't find it very surprising that certain recruitment companies are reporting to CNN that they're having trouble finding .Net programmers. As far as I'm concerned, a recruitment agency that claims this probably isn't very good at looking for good .Net programmers. In the end, I got my job through a friend. I was put through a 2 day crash course about .Net API's, it's going nicely, and I feel fortunate that the seem to be considering me as quite valuable to have around.
I realise I'm most likely missing things, but I don't fully understand why the GPL2 wouldn't cover this, simply through its definition of source code. From section 3 of GPL2:
In short, the first sentance seems to cover it in my eyes. If the provided code can't be usefully modified without a private key (because it won't run on its intended hardware), then I'd certainly consider that private key to be part of "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it". The "special exception" of sentance 3 could, by its own words, only apply if the signing key is already included with the hardware.
If Dell released a Dell-signed binary and Dell source code for running on Dell systems, I'd definitely consider everything required to recompile modified Dell code as the "preferred form of source code", including a key to sign it with.
The GPL3 (which I haven't carefully read) seems to make this requirement more explicit if I understand it correctly, and perhaps that's why it's worth having, but does it really cover anything in this area that the GPL2 didn't cover already?
I can only speak for myself, but my problem with GM crops isn't the act of genetically engineering foods. It's the attitude of the (mostly) giant corporations that do it.
Monsanto, for instance, doesn't primarily use genetic modification to improve food quality. It uses genetic modification to produce grow-once-and-die seeds that make it impossible for farmers to create their own seed supply for future years, forcing them to rely on Monsanto as a sole producer.
Overall I see genetic modification of foods as having some great potential if it's done very carefully, and in a way that won't significantly risk the loss of food quality or diversity among species... keeping in mind that this isn't necessarily how it's going right now. What irks me most, though, is the way it's being primarily used at present. it's being used for the sole benefit of large corporations, with no benefit or even a negative benefit going back to the farmers and consumers.
If the truck is also automated, and if there's sufficient reliable communication between the two vehicles to indicate each other's intent, it probably can be automated. To be most efficient, this would probably require a trusted road network that might only allow trusted and authenticated automated vehicles to drive on it, or any automated vehicle would have to assume that anything not communicating was a potential hazard. But I get the impression that people in a country like Japan might just accept such a road network that would require modified vehicles.
If implemented well, automated vehicles would certainly be able to travel much faster, closer together and more safely than human-controlled ones. It'd reduce congestion, decrease travel time, make travel times more predictible, and reduce a lot of people's frustration at the cost of letting people control their own vehicles.
This is speculation, but perhaps it's because this particular someone who does it for free will also advertise your less-rich but higher quality competitors for free, giving them an advantage in the marketing.... if only because producing quality is harder than simply getting attention by spending. Cast doubt over the legality of Google's business model, and you can once again win by spending more money on marketing.
I find it quite irritating that some books are out to trick their readers, and there are many I'd prefer had never been written simply because it means I spend more time having to argue with and correct people on certain topics if they've been taking rubbish sources seriously. But the thought of non-fiction books having to be factually correct seems quite far-fetched. If publishers and authors could be sued for providing factually wrong books in a non-fiction category, then categories such as "New age" would be illegal, simply because authors who publish in them tend to be out to swindle their readers in one way or another by definition, and the publisher's probably in it for the sales. (Okay, I see New Age as fiction, but many book shops, publishers and people don't.)
Some of the best satire can come from effectively lying to an audience, and I don't see how you could cleanly distinguish it. Peter Jackson is just an example of someone who's done this, having faked an historical documentory (see Forgotten Silver) and lied about its origins to get it on TV. He had a lot of gullible people thinking they were seeing actual history, including the TV network, before he revealed it was all made up. What's the difference? Could he have been sued by the network? Possibly, but he took that chance and he wasn't, and now Forgotten Silver is considered a work of art.
As sad as I think it is that there are some really crappy books out there, and people who believe them, I'm not sure how rules could be made to fairly place responsibility on a publisher. Personally I think that fact checking should come from peers after publication, and it should be the responsibility of the reader to check if the facts have been checked. Hopefully anything that's actually important enough and relied on by enough people will have its facts checked, resulting in either confirmation, or a very embarassed author and publisher. There are always reputations to go on. In the case the article speaks of, the publisher is hopefully now being made to look more than a little stupid, and I'd like to think that Oprah's Book Club reputation is probably suffering a bit more than it was previously if its followers ever cared about this sort of thing. I've never followed her book club myself, but that's for good reason.
That's an interesting claim to make. Not one I necessarily disagree with, but there have been quite a few other awful presidents. (Disclaimer: I'm not an American either, but from outside I find US Federal politics quite fascinating.)
On the topic, Wikipedia has an historical compilation of US Predident ratings from a variety of different sources. James Buchanan's right down there as one of the worst-rated Presidents, and probably for good reason (eg. fostering an environment to encourage the US Civil War and all that). Roosevelt, Lincoln and Washington seem to be the favourites.
The only two sources that rated President Bush have so far been a 2002 poll and a 2005 poll, which rate him at 23rd and 19th respectively... about average. Considering his presidency is still ongoing and people's views are very polluted, right now though, they're probably not very objective.
That's quite interesting. I just ran a search for "tibet" on google.cn. I can't read the first two results, but the third and fourth results, at first glance, look very pro-Tibet-independence.
Perhaps Google hasn't launched this new site yet, or perhaps it's returning different results due to my IP address not being in China. Can anyone confirm?
What is meant by "three times lower"?
It doesn't make any grammatical or mathematical sense, because there's no value higher than 18% to multiply by 3 that results in 18%. These figures are meaningless as the article presents them.
This isn't exactly important in the context of this story, but it's a lazy and ambiguous form of writing that seems to be coming up a lot in what might be expected to be reliable sources. It's sad that slashdot editors don't pick up on this sort of thing, but it's even sadder that the journalists and editors of the articles don't write clearly in the first place.
I agree, I think. In my local area at least, the only reason to watch television journalism is to get additional moving pictures of certain events. Anything resembling journalism is dismal. Nightly news contains a few facts combined with large amounts of subjective speculation (stated as fact or near to it), and much self-glamorisation of the journalists who spend a lot of time exagerrating their own importance.
There are a couple of radio shows I enjoy that discuss news and events in a much more objective context without the self-hype, and I like newspapers that publish people's letters, simply because it makes it easier to identify which issues are contriversial and what some of the other views happen to be. In effect, this is also how the Internet tends to work. Even though it's necessary to be cautious of information sources, at least the sources are there, and it's clearer what the different sides of an argument are.
Vista almost certainly won't be a flop. What matters is that when people do buy a new Dell, or whatever else, they're likely to get it whether they want it or not. Vista will become popular for exactly the same reason that previous versions of Windows became popular, because Microsoft withdraws support from its older releases and forces it at people if they want to keep the software running that they've pre-invested in.
I don't really disagree with you that spyware could be a problem if there's motivation, but in my own experience Linux does have some fundamental architectural and use differences that I think would benefit more than you're suggesting. One that someone else pointed out in another response, which I think was a good point, is that people using Linux tend to go to their distro's repository for software rather than directly to the vendor. The nature of Open Source means that it's more realistic for third parties to offer their own customised versions of any package, which is effectively what happens.
Furthermore, one of the biggest problems I've had with Windows spyware is that it simply ties itself so tightly into the operating system. Windows is full of proprietary formats and configurations that are hidden away from the user, making it more difficult to get at them. Windows tends to make it complicated to view and edit configuations without special tools, whereas Unix apps tend to put it all in text files, sometimes with a tool for editing but usually still editible by hand. The reason we need anti-spyware tools in Windows (yet another third party application) is because there's no readily standard way to examine and fix all the configuration information without it.
With an appropriately configured Linux or Unix system, it's much more predictible as to what any spyware can do. Given that most of the configuration exists in open and readily accessible formats, it becomes more realistic to monitor what's going on in a user's configuration files than it is in Windows, and if necessary clean it out.
I can't claim to be an expert on this, but I was actually thinking that such a seed bank could be quite relevant in a potential disaster that's probably less obvious than simply squandering resources. In particular, a large amount of food production, especially in the developed world (I don't know about other places), is essentially dictated by a small number of massive corporations which are very specific about what crops they'll grow.
A good example is with potatoes -- there are about 200 different varieties of potato, but my understanding is that only four or five of them are seriously grown on a large scale in the US. Some of the former varieties are probably extinct by now, or close to it, simply because their original habitats have been wiped out and nobody grows them. Everyone's growing the same thing, everyone's eating the same thing, and there's very little variety.
Someone can correct me on this if they know otherwise. My point is, though, that the lack of variety that's generally encouraged when a small number of corporations control it, makes it much more lokely that a disease or other biological threat could just wipe the whole lot out.
Keeping a seed bank would be one way to make sure that the older varieties remain available if it ever becomes very important to retrieve them in the future. Reading the article, it seems that this is probably the sort of thing they're thinking about.
I can't speak for this study in particular, but when I'm unsure I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the scientists concerned. Scientists simply get misrepresented and quoted out of context so frequently that it's not really funny any more. I've had first-hand experience several times of being quoted incorrectly and completely out of context by journalists, and I've seen it happen to other people frequently.
With a few radical exceptions, scientists who carry out this or any kind of research are usually very specific about what their studies mean, and careful not to overstate the relevance (at least when speaking to people who aren't familiar with typical research language), or understate the assumptions and limitations.
Keep in mind that this is one newspaper's edit (the SMH) of another newspaper's story (The Telegraph). Both newspapers target general readership, yet they're trying to summarise the results of a scientific publication. Even though this story appears to do a better job than most of stating what was actually in the study, it's no substitute for actually going to your nearest academic library, issuing the journal, and reading it for yourself. There's no evidence that the journalists of either newspaper made an effort to contact the study's author's directly -- the quotes that appear could easily have been lifted from the publication, and given out of context. Even if the authors were contacted, it wouldn't be unusual for authors to be mis-quoted (accidentally or deliberately); a lot of journalists are notorious for putting a spin on their work to justify a more interesting headline, even in what you might think are respectable and well managed publications.
Absolutely, and the best part of this in my mind is that even the Kernel's replacable. If I decided I didn't like the Linux kernel for some reason, I'd be able to replace it with a different build or fork, or even with a fundamentally different design of kernel (eg. BSD, with a little effort), and still have the overall system function smoothly.
I don't think the issue is so much whether or not Microsoft should bundle applications with Windows. It's more about whether Microsoft should be allowed to prevent vendors of Windows from deciding how much or how little of Windows they want to distribute, and what applications they want to distribute with it.
I'll be one of the first to agree that the US stance on terrorism seems completely overboard, and that there's a disturbing amount of apparent (if not obvious) corruption and ulterior motives active in terrorism legislation.
That said, I don't think it's unfair to point out that if authorities completely ignored the threat of terrorism, there would be a much bigger chance that a small number of terrorist actions could easily kill (and/or maim/injure) several million or tens of millions of people in the space of a year, whether by a massive nuclear explosive attack, by subversively releasing deadly diseases amongst large US populations, or whatever else.
Of course, there are methods of reducing the likeliness of this that don't involve slamming down a fist in the name of terrorism. One place to start might be for the US government to take a serious look at and review its long term strategy for foreign policy and how it treats people in other nations. Terrorism might be inevitable in the world no matter how nations act towards each other, but most of it seems to just be more symptomatic of a much more serious problem.
Considering it seems so unlikely on the surface, it makes me concerned that getting the bill passed isn't the actual point.
After all, it wouldn't be the first time that members of an industry have proposed something "ludicrously ridiculous" so that law-makers might be convinced that it's entirely rational and reasonable to meet half way... at either "ludicrous" or "ridiculous".
No argument there, although personally I'd prefer that the focus was on teaching how to recognise evolution as a scientific theory rather than simply throwing established facts at students.
If students are simply taught evolution because we know it's right without clearly demonstrating why it's more right than the next "fact" that someone on the street (or in the media), tells them, I'm not sure it really teaches them much at all. It certainly shouldn't be surprising if they come out of the education system completely missing the point.
I don't particularly disagree with you, but I do wonder if this would get as much attention if it were Indian companies testing on disadvantaged Indian citizens, and then on-selling their products overseas, as opposed to foreign companies going there to do things that are considered unethical at home.
I despise corporate ethics in general, but if a government also makes it allowable in the first place, I think part of the responsibility should also lie with the government and society that it represents.
I agree absolutely -- I find these types of programs quite disgusting.
There's a very good reason why researchers these days are (usually) required to get ethical approval before they run psychological experiments on humans, and it's much more for the life-long wellbeing of the subjects than it is for the researchers.
I find ridiculous that television producers can get away not only with treating people in ways that mimic some serious experimental conditions, but humiliating them in front of millions of people afterwards, and then having none of the controls, simply because it's not in their commercial interests to do so. Trying to buy them out afterwards for good press is irrelevant.
I didn't think it was too bad in straying from the novel. Personally I felt a bit put off by the religious theme, but I don't think it's fair to criticise it for that, because it's taken directly from the books. My specific issue, however, is that I read the books before I recognised that theme, and so now the films come across quite differently.
Anyway, apart from holding up to the novel, I did think it was a little tacky in places. My main gripe was with the special effects, and the way they were directed. For a movie that clearly had such a high budget and such capable people for effects, I noticed more than a few times that the camera moved away from a scene where we would have seen and effect that could have added a lot to the story. A good example of this was when the witch was about to zap someone and turn them into stone, for instance.
I have little doubt that this is a lot to do with Disney's influence on the film-making process, which just irritates me. The movie shows a lot of battle and violence scenes, but hardly a drop of blood, if any. I don't want to seem morbid by saying this -- I just think it's deceptive and irresponsible to glorify war without showing the consequences, and in hindsight I found it quite irritating and offensive that it was handled this way.
Anyway, those were my thoughts. I enjoyed the movie for the most part, especially the opening sequences when the children were in London, and particularly when I tried to ignore the religious overtones. I think it could have benefited from some different decisions in its portrayal of violence, though. I thought got the point for representing WW2, but completely missed it in Narnia.
I'm not sure I agree, because realistically The Origin of Species has been peer reviewed over time. It's been criticised, compared with research, and it's held up. This is why the scientific community takes it seriously. Anyone can publish a book or an article that's not peer reviewed, even today, just as Darwin did. If it's significant, it'll be peer reviewed anyway, and future citations and research built on it will depend upon how well it survives that review.
Personally I think the biggest problem of open publication is when people aren't judging the information they receive with skepticism. This is well demonstrated by this guy. Ken Ring [2] [3] claims to be able to predict the weather mechanically, entirely by the actions of the Moon. The consequence of this is that he produces an annual almanac with weather predictions a year in advance, selling it for the RRP of NZ$44.95. (Approx US$30.) When it comes down to it, his theories are complete rubbish if you're lucky enough to actually be able to find accurate enough details of what they are.
It might seem that the obvious test is to compare his predictions with what actually happens. Nobody with any standing has bothered to do this, however, because as well as real scientists preferring to focus on their own thing rather than speak out publicly, his system isn't actually testable once you take into account all the exceptions that he states, for as much as it appears genuine to people who buy his books. Unfortunately, however, is that he has a publisher who gets him frequent radio and television interviews so he can spout and promote his ideas with an aura of authority as far as the general public is concerned. The media likes people with radical ideas, however spurious, and people listen to the media.
On the surface it might seem that this is pretty harmless, but we're at the point where people are putting their safety on the line with this guy's weather predictions.