Re:DCMA and copyright to the rescue
on
Star Wars on DVD
·
· Score: 1
Last I heard, media did not lose its copyright until 70 years after the death of the creator/copyright holder. Disney sued to get that law because Mickey Mouse was about to become Public Domain a few years back.
This sounds really interesting, though I haven't yet crawled out from under my rock long enough to experiment with DVD. What exactly does region coding do? ---------------------
...If you look at our genome it is clear that "evolution... must make new genes from old parts...
Sooo... where did the first gene get its old parts from? And from where did the creatures that appeared in the Pre-Cambrian Explosion get their old genes? Regardless of what you think happened in the interim, there are gaps that cannot be accounted for in the continuum of macro evolution. To these, one can logically insert intelligent design.
This, being outside the realm of science, can neither be proved nor disproved. However, when using an inference to the best explanation, there must be a cause to the genes, and there is not an infinite regress of genes. Materialist scientists can give no explanation to the sudden appearance of DNA, nor can they give any reason to the "Pre-Cambrian Explosion" of life. Theists can, and that explanation is God. Occam's razor actually supports the theist's claim!
Or think about a laptop for the extreme-sports set, which gets jounced around all day in a backpack dangling off of someone hanging onto a cliff with three fingers.
What the heck are you taking a laptop up a cliff for anyways?!? ---------------------
I wonder how many people remember that laptops should be turned off or put to sleep before they carry them around. Active read-write heads are guaranteed to loose data when they are bumped, while I have not lost anything on mine, nor have I damaged the drive, either HD or Floppy. ---------------------
I have a fairly old IBM laptop, and the HD is a little larger than a credit card, with the usual 17mm height. I've seen several more of these, so I know they're very popyular, even though my particular and higly specific model only existed for about a year. And I really want more data capacity on it! When is somebody going to engineer a "bigger" HD for that? ---------------------
(Just wanted to see if I could make it to the first post!)
It looks like the Palm Pilot is quickly going to surpass Star Trek's data PADD-- all the functionality, without being dependent on the Enterprise's main computer core!
Dr. Besenbacher said the perspective piece was not meant as a prediction, but to inspire researchers to brainstorm about the newly discovered phenomenon.
I suppose that's what you have to say when you speak without thinking first. Someday humans will realize that Ford Prefect was right-- when a human's mouth opens, his brain stops working. (Thank God \. is all done in the fingertips!)
************
Meanwhile, other researchers have been building tiny motors inspired by machinery inside living cells. The so-called biomolecular motors run on adenosine triphosphate, or ATP for short, the same energy-rich molecule that powers chemical reactions within cells.
Why do I have sudden images of AI, spider-like robots crawling around fields of human batteries?... I'm not usualy technophobic, but this idea really frightens me-- robots so small you can't see them zipping around my bloodstream parasitically thriving on my energy. Yikes!
Dr. Montemagno's group grafted nickel propellers onto the central shafts of 400 biomolecular motors. Of those, 395 remained motionless, when immersed in a solution full of ATP. But 5 spun.
I like those odds-- 1.2% chance of an energy sucker. But if they become self-replicating-- well? The story, "Nightmare Number 3" comes to mind (I believe it's by Stephen Vincent Benet?).
Not surprisingly, readers on slashdot applaud this "advancement."
And others condemn any advancement outright. Reply: "Boo hoo" is right-- this is an important breakthrough. I think there is something to entering thsi research with CAUTION, though. Marc Stiegler's The Gentle Seduction comes to mind. How far are we willing to go with technology, so long as it comes on slowly?
People find it acceptable to cut the helpless animal open, attach wires to it, study it, and then likely euthanised it.
Actually, they probably will monitor it for a long time to monitor the long-term effects of the electrodes on the monkey's brain.
As for using monkeys instead of humans, there are laws against using humans for high-risk experiments such as this which imply manslaughter to Murder-1. Monkeys, no matter how unfortunate it seems, are not proteced by laws regarding manslaughter. Since primate physiology is the most similar to humans, it makes sence to use a monkey to test the system first. This way they can prove it's relative safety to the Feds before practicing on a human and avoid being attacked for murder by the AMA and FBI.
* * *
If this was being done to a dog, or a *gasp* human...
Are you volunteering? Step up to the plate. If you're going to condemn the scientific community for not being willing to use human subjects, then you had better be willing to be a subject!
This happened once, by the way. There was a doctor by the name of Erich Hippke in the early 1940's, working in a little Bavarian village by the name of Dachau-- perhaps you've heard of it? Jews and political prisoners became the unwilling human subjects of a curious surgeon who wanted to know just how much strain the human body could take before dying.
He exposed his "lab animals" (to use your term) to extreme cold, vacuums, severe impacts, etc., all in the name of science, and for the benefit of the Third Reich. Twins were of special usefulness, because if one died, he would have a second subject who was nearly identical for a control group.
And the most convenient part was, there was no need to euthanize the subjects, because his experiments killed every one sooner or later....
There's a lot to think about before you begin advocating human test subjects!
THe awful cynic in me must surface at some point...
So, what happens when the electronics backfire? A circuit in my brain is controlling an object, which slips and grounds itself, or a faulty wire causes a feedback loop. How big do ehte capacitors need to be to prevent feedback loops from frying my brain?
Granted, this is supposed to be used to control one's own paralyzed body... Suppose they develop a servant robot instead? As with the Matrix (because I'm sure it will eventually be suggested, so why not by me first?), you plug your brain-to-computer link in to the system, and viola! you're in an alternate body. What happens when you forget that it's not your real body, and it steps in front of a semi?
There are a lot of kinks to work out here, I think, before the system will be safe enough to be practical.
This has actually been done as part of treatment programs for paralized people.
It seems to me that is the point of the original article. I wonder how breakthrough this study is, getting a monkey to move a robot, if someone else is already making brainwave-to-arm machines?
More importantly, what does this mean for using recently deceased individuals as canon fodder in the next ground war?
Actually, if you read the Napster web page on the deal, you will see that the idea is a simple, two-tiered system. A flat rate (strongly suggested $4.99) for a series of perks, and normal, unlimited access will continue to be free.
People should be very careful before passing judgements about the way the system will work. I think most of this is over-emotional reactionism, just like when NBC declared Florida a Gore state at 8:00 Tuesday!
---------------------
Considering the quality difference between a midi and a wave or mp3 file, I'm not impressed. I consider that wasted hard drive space.
Seriously, for the avid music listener, $5 a month is not any serious commitment, especially when one considers how much people do spend on CD's on a regular basis. I'm a college student, and I can certainly attest that $5 is a much happier alternative to $20, $30, or even $40 a month needed to gain the collection of music I have now.
Also, I like being able to get individual songs, instead of the entire CD. I have a Cake song that I particularly like, but I don't relly like Cake, and would never buy a cd from them just for this one song. I like the options, and with a steady income, $5 is not a bad deal. ---------------------
Well, after a very tense night, the Florida polls came in at 11:25 PST, and the electoral vote was launched to 271 for Bush, 249 for Gore, with only Oregon and Michigan to go.
It was a racous celebration in my dorm lounge! ---------------------
Chess players are, of course, world class lunatics. The incidence of madness and just plain wonky behaviour in world class players is astonishing.
But this behavior is not limited to chess players. My personal favorite spectator sport, Hockey, is filled with superstitious individuals. For example, Patrick Roy of the Colorado Avalanche will never touch a blue line, and before each game writes the name of hs four children on the sides of his stick, tapes it first up from the blad, then writes the names again, and tapes it back down from the head to the blade. There are many other games whose players are fiercely superstitious, too.
Actually, I know a lot of "nerds" (including myself) who really enjoy snowboarding, which seems to be a huge contradiction to some people. But I still enjoy a good game of chess, even though I lose most of the time...
Slashdot Mirror
Last I heard, media did not lose its copyright until 70 years after the death of the creator/copyright holder. Disney sued to get that law because Mickey Mouse was about to become Public Domain a few years back.
-=TK
This sounds really interesting, though I haven't yet crawled out from under my rock long enough to experiment with DVD. What exactly does region coding do?
---------------------
I highly reccommend you look up and read a book called "Science and Christianity: Four Views." You might find it a little enlightening.
---------------------
Sooo... where did the first gene get its old parts from? And from where did the creatures that appeared in the Pre-Cambrian Explosion get their old genes? Regardless of what you think happened in the interim, there are gaps that cannot be accounted for in the continuum of macro evolution. To these, one can logically insert intelligent design.
This, being outside the realm of science, can neither be proved nor disproved. However, when using an inference to the best explanation, there must be a cause to the genes, and there is not an infinite regress of genes. Materialist scientists can give no explanation to the sudden appearance of DNA, nor can they give any reason to the "Pre-Cambrian Explosion" of life. Theists can, and that explanation is God. Occam's razor actually supports the theist's claim!
---------------------
Are you a Coloradan or a Democrat (or both)?
---------------------
Or think about a laptop for the extreme-sports set, which gets jounced around all day in a backpack dangling off of someone hanging onto a cliff with three fingers.
What the heck are you taking a laptop up a cliff for anyways?!?
---------------------
A monthly scandisk and defrag helps to prevent this, as well as data loss. An ounce of prevention and all that jazz...
---------------------
One word: BACKUPS!!!
---------------------
Why not try shutting down or sleeping your notebook before moving it?
---------------------
I wonder how many people remember that laptops should be turned off or put to sleep before they carry them around. Active read-write heads are guaranteed to loose data when they are bumped, while I have not lost anything on mine, nor have I damaged the drive, either HD or Floppy.
---------------------
I have a fairly old IBM laptop, and the HD is a little larger than a credit card, with the usual 17mm height. I've seen several more of these, so I know they're very popyular, even though my particular and higly specific model only existed for about a year. And I really want more data capacity on it! When is somebody going to engineer a "bigger" HD for that?
---------------------
(Just wanted to see if I could make it to the first post!)
It looks like the Palm Pilot is quickly going to surpass Star Trek's data PADD-- all the functionality, without being dependent on the Enterprise's main computer core!
---------------------
Dr. Besenbacher said the perspective piece was not meant as a prediction, but to inspire researchers to brainstorm about the newly discovered phenomenon.
I suppose that's what you have to say when you speak without thinking first. Someday humans will realize that Ford Prefect was right-- when a human's mouth opens, his brain stops working. (Thank God \. is all done in the fingertips!)
************
Meanwhile, other researchers have been building tiny motors inspired by machinery inside living cells. The so-called biomolecular motors run on adenosine triphosphate, or ATP for short, the same energy-rich molecule that powers chemical reactions within cells.
Why do I have sudden images of AI, spider-like robots crawling around fields of human batteries?... I'm not usualy technophobic, but this idea really frightens me-- robots so small you can't see them zipping around my bloodstream parasitically thriving on my energy. Yikes!
Dr. Montemagno's group grafted nickel propellers onto the central shafts of 400 biomolecular motors. Of those, 395 remained motionless, when immersed in a solution full of ATP. But 5 spun.
I like those odds-- 1.2% chance of an energy sucker. But if they become self-replicating-- well? The story, "Nightmare Number 3" comes to mind (I believe it's by Stephen Vincent Benet?).
---------------------
And at least two primary sources before the objective historian will believe it's true!
---------------------
Not surprisingly, readers on slashdot applaud this "advancement."
And others condemn any advancement outright. Reply: "Boo hoo" is right-- this is an important breakthrough. I think there is something to entering thsi research with CAUTION, though. Marc Stiegler's The Gentle Seduction comes to mind. How far are we willing to go with technology, so long as it comes on slowly?
---------------------
People find it acceptable to cut the helpless animal open, attach wires to it, study it, and then likely euthanised it.
Actually, they probably will monitor it for a long time to monitor the long-term effects of the electrodes on the monkey's brain.
As for using monkeys instead of humans, there are laws against using humans for high-risk experiments such as this which imply manslaughter to Murder-1. Monkeys, no matter how unfortunate it seems, are not proteced by laws regarding manslaughter. Since primate physiology is the most similar to humans, it makes sence to use a monkey to test the system first. This way they can prove it's relative safety to the Feds before practicing on a human and avoid being attacked for murder by the AMA and FBI.
* * *
If this was being done to a dog, or a *gasp* human...
Are you volunteering? Step up to the plate. If you're going to condemn the scientific community for not being willing to use human subjects, then you had better be willing to be a subject!
This happened once, by the way. There was a doctor by the name of Erich Hippke in the early 1940's, working in a little Bavarian village by the name of Dachau-- perhaps you've heard of it? Jews and political prisoners became the unwilling human subjects of a curious surgeon who wanted to know just how much strain the human body could take before dying.
He exposed his "lab animals" (to use your term) to extreme cold, vacuums, severe impacts, etc., all in the name of science, and for the benefit of the Third Reich. Twins were of special usefulness, because if one died, he would have a second subject who was nearly identical for a control group.
And the most convenient part was, there was no need to euthanize the subjects, because his experiments killed every one sooner or later....
There's a lot to think about before you begin advocating human test subjects!
---------------------
THe awful cynic in me must surface at some point...
So, what happens when the electronics backfire? A circuit in my brain is controlling an object, which slips and grounds itself, or a faulty wire causes a feedback loop. How big do ehte capacitors need to be to prevent feedback loops from frying my brain?
Granted, this is supposed to be used to control one's own paralyzed body... Suppose they develop a servant robot instead? As with the Matrix (because I'm sure it will eventually be suggested, so why not by me first?), you plug your brain-to-computer link in to the system, and viola! you're in an alternate body. What happens when you forget that it's not your real body, and it steps in front of a semi?
There are a lot of kinks to work out here, I think, before the system will be safe enough to be practical.
---------------------
Rrgh! Somebody moderate this flamebaiter!
---------------------
This has actually been done as part of treatment programs for paralized people.
It seems to me that is the point of the original article. I wonder how breakthrough this study is, getting a monkey to move a robot, if someone else is already making brainwave-to-arm machines?
More importantly, what does this mean for using recently deceased individuals as canon fodder in the next ground war?
---------------------
Do you have a source document to back up this claim?
---------------------
Actually, if you read the Napster web page on the deal, you will see that the idea is a simple, two-tiered system. A flat rate (strongly suggested $4.99) for a series of perks, and normal, unlimited access will continue to be free.
People should be very careful before passing judgements about the way the system will work. I think most of this is over-emotional reactionism, just like when NBC declared Florida a Gore state at 8:00 Tuesday!
---------------------
Considering the quality difference between a midi and a wave or mp3 file, I'm not impressed. I consider that wasted hard drive space.
Seriously, for the avid music listener, $5 a month is not any serious commitment, especially when one considers how much people do spend on CD's on a regular basis. I'm a college student, and I can certainly attest that $5 is a much happier alternative to $20, $30, or even $40 a month needed to gain the collection of music I have now.
Also, I like being able to get individual songs, instead of the entire CD. I have a Cake song that I particularly like, but I don't relly like Cake, and would never buy a cd from them just for this one song. I like the options, and with a steady income, $5 is not a bad deal.
---------------------
Well, after a very tense night, the Florida polls came in at 11:25 PST, and the electoral vote was launched to 271 for Bush, 249 for Gore, with only Oregon and Michigan to go.
It was a racous celebration in my dorm lounge!
---------------------
Chess players are, of course, world class lunatics. The incidence of madness and just plain wonky behaviour in world class players is astonishing.
But this behavior is not limited to chess players. My personal favorite spectator sport, Hockey, is filled with superstitious individuals. For example, Patrick Roy of the Colorado Avalanche will never touch a blue line, and before each game writes the name of hs four children on the sides of his stick, tapes it first up from the blad, then writes the names again, and tapes it back down from the head to the blade. There are many other games whose players are fiercely superstitious, too.
---------------------
Actually, I know a lot of "nerds" (including myself) who really enjoy snowboarding, which seems to be a huge contradiction to some people. But I still enjoy a good game of chess, even though I lose most of the time...
---------------------