Most (English speaking) people can read any book written in plain English. That doesn't mean a book written in plain English can't be highbrow, and will be fully understood by its readers.
You can play chess whatever your skill level, but it takes a great deal of thought and reason to be able to win it. This is in contrast with a game based upon luck or reflexes.
I don't think it's smearing science, indeed in some ways it's keeping intact science's integrity in the face of "ID" and other anti-science movements.
String theory appears, for the most part, to be a very smart, very compelling, system that could be used to explain how the universe works. As such, it's easy to get lost in the excitement and forget that the current evidence for it is, well, not what it could be.
The author is saying "We should hold off and be careful about how we portray this, especially in relation to other scientific principles like relativity. It clearly isn't in the same class." That's absolutely right to do, and it helps prop up the scientific method if there's this kind of auditing going on all the time. It's no more defaming science than it is for someone to come up with a new "test" for relativity, who then does that.
It's actually worse than that, they frequently refer to "London" when they mean "Britain".
Trust me, I've lived here (in the US) for about eight years now. Still, my Brother used to say "Miami" when he meant "Florida" so you can't just blame the Americans for these kinds of slips.
Probably worth pointing out that not all batteries for those particular models were built by Sony. I have a recent T60, and the battery's a Sanyo.
You can determine whether the product number of your battery without even turning it over (or, in my case, coming home from work to take a look) by typing:
I kind of agree with you, and at the same time I really don't want a situation where every time someone acts like a jackass, they get jailed.
I'd love it to be easier to be compensated by people acting like jackasses though. Some way of, without having to spend a lot of time and effort, "fine" people $10 every time they do something deliberately against me in bad faith. That would certainly cut down on the jackassery. The problem is finding a workable, no false positives, mechanism for doing it.
Believe it or not, the USSR had a constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech too.
A Bill of Rights is useless unless enforced. Which is why the ACLU is on the case. That is one saving grace of the current mess, we do, at least, know that the government will be dragged into court over this (which isn't something that would have happened in the USSR.)
The Bluray drive is part of the design of the PS3. Games can and will rely upon it. It's an integral component like the CPU and the RAM, and it's not as if you can opt to replace it with something else. It's easier to come up with an argument that Dell shouldn't force you to buy a keyboard and mouse with their PCs than it is that Sony shouldn't force you to buy a Bluray drive with the PS3.
Yeah, I've seen those, but these are presumably not of the final product. I'm thinking it's going to be hard to judge how good it is until it's sold, I assumed you'd seen it. (I can't find anything other than a European release date.)
I may be missing your point here, but you are aware that there's no strong evidence either way to suggest that Atlantis really existed, and Plato (to whom the earliest references to the city and island are attributed) claims it was destroyed in an earthquake?
Further, why exactly would a set of high temperatures 10k years ago mean that the recent rises in CO2 levels are incapable of raising the temperatures again today? Why is there no evidence, so far, that the cause of the temperature rises is to do with some kind of "natural" process, especially given the number of right-wing thinktanks exploring the possibility?
Ok, so let's suppose this is true, and IBM would really do that:
What legal right would that leave IBM with to continue to distribute Linux-based systems? From the General Public License:
7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.
It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.
This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License.
Hard to see what kind of agreement IBM could come to with SCO that would mean its competitors wouldn't, at the very least, be able to indemnify themselves from action from SCO by obtaining one single copy of Linux from IBM.
The page you linked to referenced 18fps, not 16fps, as the point at which the eye ceases to see flicker for a movie. But as they point out, this is due to a number of factors, including the "blur" (which I assume is very visible on film-based media but is less likely to appear in an FPS as that's, essentially, three dimensional anti-aliasing.)
Interesting link. Given the limitations of modern monitors, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of research into how to create appropriate "blur" in the future (if there isn't already.)
If everyone thinks that no one will pay 600 for a console you are dreaming. I have seen people waiting in line to spend 800 on a XBOX360 which you could get for 400. It will be *THE* item to get at xmas. Sony has said as much as that they can not make enough. Make it scarce and the percived value will go up.
While this is true, remember the entire reason you noticed these people doing this was because their actions were absurd and unusual.
I wouldn't want to build-out an established market presense on the back of a tiny minority of people with (waaaaaay) more money than sense.
Supposedly the PS3 comes with GNU/Linux, supplied in some usable form (from an end-user's perpective.) Assuming this is correct, it shouldn't be hard for the average Slashdotter to find a use for their's.
That's assuming, of course, it doesn't play any other neat tricks. Example: The Wii will come with a version of Opera, the web browser, which means you can use it as a way to browse the web in the living room without buying any more software. Is this useful? Well, I wouldn't buy a $250 Wii, let alone a $600 PS3, for this feature alone, but it might make for a useful toy, a locked down web browsing box, for those who need such a thing.
I'm only responding to this somewhat rude and false comment because it's been modded up.
The GP, while being pedantic, is correct. The GPL does not allow you to "violate copyright" any more than a shop allows you to "steal products" in exchange for money.
Essentially, if you're copying something according to the conditions of a valid license granted to you by the copyright holder, then you're not violating copyright, by definition. Therefore a license doesn't allow you to "violate copyright", because once it allows you to do something, it isn't violating copyright any more!
(Likewise, to use the shop analogy, if you pay for something and walk out of the shop, you're not being "allowed to steal" the item in question, because it's no longer stealing, by definition.)
That was the GP's point.
That said, the GP is being overly pedantic, it was fairly obvious what the GGP meant, however badly worded it was.
I subscribed to New Scientist about five years ago and during that year there were THREE (count 'em) major stories, including two cover stories, centered around The Matrix, including the bizarre claim that we must live in "The Matrix" (you know, the movie, Neo, Trinity, Morpheous, Agent Smith) because, like, it's a certainty that technology will one day reach the point we can implement such a thing, ergo we must therefore already have done it and this is the simulation.
I believe it's a shadow of its former self, although when I read its former self, I was so young I can't really make a judgement as to whether it reported "good science" or not.
There are a number of right wingers who argue that science is a religion, and therefore things like Evolution shouldn't be treated as having more credibility than Creationism and ID because, like, they're all the same, right. Magazines like New Scientist, by constantly hyping the unscientific as the scientific, do so much to re-enforce that view and undermine science in the process. It's a terrible magazine, and I'd rather see it die completely than gain the credibility associated with a revamp.
A patent legally allows a patenter to prevent others from using a technology without permission that the patenter was first to discover and make public.
Note the differences:
1. Someone may profit from a technology patented by someone else as long as they have permission (or the patenter doesn't explicitly prevent them.)
2. This isn't about "an inventor's idea", it's about a technology that happens to have been discovered by an inventor. I don't think the phrase "profiting from an inventor's idea" covers, for example, me discovering, at the age of 9, without ever coming across the idea before, that a pretty easy way to show a cursor on screen without using up memory is to XOR the memory representing that cursor with a pattern. That's my damned idea. The fact someone else had the same idea before I did and managed to patent this doesn't mean I'm profiting from their idea because I never came across their idea.
That's what you get when you get Chris Farley to ask the questions.
"Hey, do you remember, er, like that game where, er, er, the Ninja... you're the Ninja, and, er, you have to do that thing with the joystick, and, er, you get the bonus screen?"
Given the amount of crap I've been told by "informed consultants" I have to disagree.
I think it's a good idea, especially for out-of-contract phone sales. One thing I'm surprised by is that Motorola doesn't generally sell unlocked cellphones directly in the US, and I'd like to see them change that habit. But selling out-of-contract is good, and putting the entire thing in a vending machine makes it very clear cut what you're getting.
Trying to buy an out-of-contract phone from a shop is a PITA. In 99% of cases, the salesman will attempt to pressure you into renewing a contract or even switching carriers. You can't just walk in and expect to see the price you'll be paying.
I dislike salespeople, especially in areas where I know more about the subject than they clearly do, but I absolutely cannot stand businesses that force you to deal with them just to have basic questions like "How much does this phone cost?" answered, especially businesses that give salespeople incentives to steer customers towards "solutions" that have little to do with what they want.
Bring on the vending machines. Bring on simpler, up-front, pricing and ultimately the devaluation of contracts.
Despite the price drop being announced for Japan for now, I seriously doubt they'll stick to the $500/600 prices for the US models given the importance of this console to their long term plans and the competition from Microsoft and Nintendo.
I also don't doubt that the day PS3s come out in stores will be the day Microsoft does something dramatic with the XBox 360 to make it even more attractive. Maybe they'll ship "Revision 2", with HDMI and an HD-DVD drive, in each box without raising prices. Maybe they'll remove the low end model and ship the existing high end model in its place, at the low end price. There's a whole bunch of ways they can play it.
This round in the console war is going to do serious financial damage to Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo at least will be ok given they're producing something that clearly enough people will want to be profitable, and that isn't being sold at a loss. Sony and Microsoft, however, need to play this game for five years, with production costs unlikely to drop in line with retail prices. Sony has to hope that they can get enough revenues from increased sales of HDTVs (but how to measure that increase will be difficult) and long term entrenchment of Bluray to mitigate some of the costs due to them. Microsoft doesn't even have that to fall back on, and I suspect they'll be damaged the most by whatever comes out, especially if they're getting a three pronged attack from Nintendo, Sony, and Apple (iTV.)
Right now, I think Microsoft has the most to lose. And as a result, I think it's going to compete hardest with Sony.
My predictions:
- Bluray will be the next Laserdisc. DVDs will continue to be the VHS.
- Nintendo will be in first or third place, but their marketshare will simply not matter in the over-all scheme of things. They'll be profitable, of course.
- Sony will probably narrowly beat out Microsoft, but both will emerge from the fight limping.
- There will be no "XBox 3". Apple will annihalate Microsoft's attempts at entering the media STB market. Given this leaves them largely as a games console and games infrastructure manufacturer, Microsoft will see Nintendo as their only "equal" competitor when what they wanted to do was take down Sony. The focus on consoles would also undermine (as it is today) their PC operating system business. They'd be better of licencing common infrastructure technologies to their rivals.
But a lot can change in five years.
Disclaimer: I like Nintendo and like what they're doing. I'm not a fan of Microsoft as the epitome of lock-in, proprietary, technologies, and I dislike Sony even more because of their media business's recent tactics and their failure to reform the industry towards open systems. But I'm trying to be objective.
What you did was extrapolated to an extreme and showed how that could be bad
No, I gave a perfectly reasonable example of something that a law on Network Neutrality would likely ban. It's hard to see a way of wording a law on NN that wouldn't ban it. After all, it is a system where some traffic receives "special treatment" due to a financial relationship between the provider and the ISP. It is the very opposite of network neutrality, yet it is perfectly reasonable and, indeed, even desirable.
I also gave a clear map of how the issue can be dealt with, pointing out that requiring ISPs to live up to minimum levels of service would deal with the issue without tying their hands. My solution is workable. It doesn't prevent any ISP from providing premium services.
What's the problem with my solution, and why is the demonstrably flawed Network Neutrality principle better than it?
Most dictionaries haven't been updated since the International Astronomer's Union updated the definition in August. To malign did mean "to speak harmful untruths about; speak evil of; slander; defame" but now means, thanks to a last minute vote by a small group of angry astronomers, "To speak badly of, while clearing a path with one's own gravitas."
I hope this factoid, erm, sorry the term is now "Dwarf Fact", helps.
Slashdot Mirror
Most (English speaking) people can read any book written in plain English. That doesn't mean a book written in plain English can't be highbrow, and will be fully understood by its readers.
You can play chess whatever your skill level, but it takes a great deal of thought and reason to be able to win it. This is in contrast with a game based upon luck or reflexes.
Chess?
I don't think it's smearing science, indeed in some ways it's keeping intact science's integrity in the face of "ID" and other anti-science movements.
String theory appears, for the most part, to be a very smart, very compelling, system that could be used to explain how the universe works. As such, it's easy to get lost in the excitement and forget that the current evidence for it is, well, not what it could be.
The author is saying "We should hold off and be careful about how we portray this, especially in relation to other scientific principles like relativity. It clearly isn't in the same class." That's absolutely right to do, and it helps prop up the scientific method if there's this kind of auditing going on all the time. It's no more defaming science than it is for someone to come up with a new "test" for relativity, who then does that.
Trust me, I've lived here (in the US) for about eight years now. Still, my Brother used to say "Miami" when he meant "Florida" so you can't just blame the Americans for these kinds of slips.
Probably worth pointing out that not all batteries for those particular models were built by Sony. I have a recent T60, and the battery's a Sanyo.
You can determine whether the product number of your battery without even turning it over (or, in my case, coming home from work to take a look) by typing:
$ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info
at a GNU/Linux prompt.
I know what you mean. I still miss his music on "Who's Line is it Anyway".
I kind of agree with you, and at the same time I really don't want a situation where every time someone acts like a jackass, they get jailed.
I'd love it to be easier to be compensated by people acting like jackasses though. Some way of, without having to spend a lot of time and effort, "fine" people $10 every time they do something deliberately against me in bad faith. That would certainly cut down on the jackassery. The problem is finding a workable, no false positives, mechanism for doing it.
Believe it or not, the USSR had a constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech too.
A Bill of Rights is useless unless enforced. Which is why the ACLU is on the case. That is one saving grace of the current mess, we do, at least, know that the government will be dragged into court over this (which isn't something that would have happened in the USSR.)
The Bluray drive is part of the design of the PS3. Games can and will rely upon it. It's an integral component like the CPU and the RAM, and it's not as if you can opt to replace it with something else. It's easier to come up with an argument that Dell shouldn't force you to buy a keyboard and mouse with their PCs than it is that Sony shouldn't force you to buy a Bluray drive with the PS3.
Yeah, I've seen those, but these are presumably not of the final product. I'm thinking it's going to be hard to judge how good it is until it's sold, I assumed you'd seen it. (I can't find anything other than a European release date.)
I didn't think the DS browser had been released yet. Do you have a link?
I may be missing your point here, but you are aware that there's no strong evidence either way to suggest that Atlantis really existed, and Plato (to whom the earliest references to the city and island are attributed) claims it was destroyed in an earthquake?
Further, why exactly would a set of high temperatures 10k years ago mean that the recent rises in CO2 levels are incapable of raising the temperatures again today? Why is there no evidence, so far, that the cause of the temperature rises is to do with some kind of "natural" process, especially given the number of right-wing thinktanks exploring the possibility?
Ok, so let's suppose this is true, and IBM would really do that: What legal right would that leave IBM with to continue to distribute Linux-based systems? From the General Public License:
Hard to see what kind of agreement IBM could come to with SCO that would mean its competitors wouldn't, at the very least, be able to indemnify themselves from action from SCO by obtaining one single copy of Linux from IBM.
The page you linked to referenced 18fps, not 16fps, as the point at which the eye ceases to see flicker for a movie. But as they point out, this is due to a number of factors, including the "blur" (which I assume is very visible on film-based media but is less likely to appear in an FPS as that's, essentially, three dimensional anti-aliasing.)
Interesting link. Given the limitations of modern monitors, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of research into how to create appropriate "blur" in the future (if there isn't already.)
While this is true, remember the entire reason you noticed these people doing this was because their actions were absurd and unusual.
I wouldn't want to build-out an established market presense on the back of a tiny minority of people with (waaaaaay) more money than sense.
Supposedly the PS3 comes with GNU/Linux, supplied in some usable form (from an end-user's perpective.) Assuming this is correct, it shouldn't be hard for the average Slashdotter to find a use for their's.
That's assuming, of course, it doesn't play any other neat tricks. Example: The Wii will come with a version of Opera, the web browser, which means you can use it as a way to browse the web in the living room without buying any more software. Is this useful? Well, I wouldn't buy a $250 Wii, let alone a $600 PS3, for this feature alone, but it might make for a useful toy, a locked down web browsing box, for those who need such a thing.
I'm only responding to this somewhat rude and false comment because it's been modded up.
The GP, while being pedantic, is correct. The GPL does not allow you to "violate copyright" any more than a shop allows you to "steal products" in exchange for money.
Essentially, if you're copying something according to the conditions of a valid license granted to you by the copyright holder, then you're not violating copyright, by definition. Therefore a license doesn't allow you to "violate copyright", because once it allows you to do something, it isn't violating copyright any more!
(Likewise, to use the shop analogy, if you pay for something and walk out of the shop, you're not being "allowed to steal" the item in question, because it's no longer stealing, by definition.)
That was the GP's point.
That said, the GP is being overly pedantic, it was fairly obvious what the GGP meant, however badly worded it was.
I subscribed to New Scientist about five years ago and during that year there were THREE (count 'em) major stories, including two cover stories, centered around The Matrix, including the bizarre claim that we must live in "The Matrix" (you know, the movie, Neo, Trinity, Morpheous, Agent Smith) because, like, it's a certainty that technology will one day reach the point we can implement such a thing, ergo we must therefore already have done it and this is the simulation.
I believe it's a shadow of its former self, although when I read its former self, I was so young I can't really make a judgement as to whether it reported "good science" or not.
There are a number of right wingers who argue that science is a religion, and therefore things like Evolution shouldn't be treated as having more credibility than Creationism and ID because, like, they're all the same, right. Magazines like New Scientist, by constantly hyping the unscientific as the scientific, do so much to re-enforce that view and undermine science in the process. It's a terrible magazine, and I'd rather see it die completely than gain the credibility associated with a revamp.
Well, ask the neighbour who kindly let you use his or her open network to change the SSID.
You did ask permission, right? I mean, there's no risk it's a neighbour who doesn't actually know his or her network is insecure?
I wouldn't put it like that.
A patent legally allows a patenter to prevent others from using a technology without permission that the patenter was first to discover and make public.
Note the differences:
1. Someone may profit from a technology patented by someone else as long as they have permission (or the patenter doesn't explicitly prevent them.)
2. This isn't about "an inventor's idea", it's about a technology that happens to have been discovered by an inventor. I don't think the phrase "profiting from an inventor's idea" covers, for example, me discovering, at the age of 9, without ever coming across the idea before, that a pretty easy way to show a cursor on screen without using up memory is to XOR the memory representing that cursor with a pattern. That's my damned idea. The fact someone else had the same idea before I did and managed to patent this doesn't mean I'm profiting from their idea because I never came across their idea.
That's what you get when you get Chris Farley to ask the questions.
"Hey, do you remember, er, like that game where, er, er, the Ninja... you're the Ninja, and, er, you have to do that thing with the joystick, and, er, you get the bonus screen?"
"Erm, yep. Yep Chris, I do"
"That was awesome!"
Given the amount of crap I've been told by "informed consultants" I have to disagree.
I think it's a good idea, especially for out-of-contract phone sales. One thing I'm surprised by is that Motorola doesn't generally sell unlocked cellphones directly in the US, and I'd like to see them change that habit. But selling out-of-contract is good, and putting the entire thing in a vending machine makes it very clear cut what you're getting.
Trying to buy an out-of-contract phone from a shop is a PITA. In 99% of cases, the salesman will attempt to pressure you into renewing a contract or even switching carriers. You can't just walk in and expect to see the price you'll be paying.
I dislike salespeople, especially in areas where I know more about the subject than they clearly do, but I absolutely cannot stand businesses that force you to deal with them just to have basic questions like "How much does this phone cost?" answered, especially businesses that give salespeople incentives to steer customers towards "solutions" that have little to do with what they want.
Bring on the vending machines. Bring on simpler, up-front, pricing and ultimately the devaluation of contracts.
Despite the price drop being announced for Japan for now, I seriously doubt they'll stick to the $500/600 prices for the US models given the importance of this console to their long term plans and the competition from Microsoft and Nintendo.
I also don't doubt that the day PS3s come out in stores will be the day Microsoft does something dramatic with the XBox 360 to make it even more attractive. Maybe they'll ship "Revision 2", with HDMI and an HD-DVD drive, in each box without raising prices. Maybe they'll remove the low end model and ship the existing high end model in its place, at the low end price. There's a whole bunch of ways they can play it.
This round in the console war is going to do serious financial damage to Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo at least will be ok given they're producing something that clearly enough people will want to be profitable, and that isn't being sold at a loss. Sony and Microsoft, however, need to play this game for five years, with production costs unlikely to drop in line with retail prices. Sony has to hope that they can get enough revenues from increased sales of HDTVs (but how to measure that increase will be difficult) and long term entrenchment of Bluray to mitigate some of the costs due to them. Microsoft doesn't even have that to fall back on, and I suspect they'll be damaged the most by whatever comes out, especially if they're getting a three pronged attack from Nintendo, Sony, and Apple (iTV.)
Right now, I think Microsoft has the most to lose. And as a result, I think it's going to compete hardest with Sony.
My predictions:
- Bluray will be the next Laserdisc. DVDs will continue to be the VHS.
- Nintendo will be in first or third place, but their marketshare will simply not matter in the over-all scheme of things. They'll be profitable, of course.
- Sony will probably narrowly beat out Microsoft, but both will emerge from the fight limping.
- There will be no "XBox 3". Apple will annihalate Microsoft's attempts at entering the media STB market. Given this leaves them largely as a games console and games infrastructure manufacturer, Microsoft will see Nintendo as their only "equal" competitor when what they wanted to do was take down Sony. The focus on consoles would also undermine (as it is today) their PC operating system business. They'd be better of licencing common infrastructure technologies to their rivals.
But a lot can change in five years.
Disclaimer: I like Nintendo and like what they're doing. I'm not a fan of Microsoft as the epitome of lock-in, proprietary, technologies, and I dislike Sony even more because of their media business's recent tactics and their failure to reform the industry towards open systems. But I'm trying to be objective.
No, I gave a perfectly reasonable example of something that a law on Network Neutrality would likely ban. It's hard to see a way of wording a law on NN that wouldn't ban it. After all, it is a system where some traffic receives "special treatment" due to a financial relationship between the provider and the ISP. It is the very opposite of network neutrality, yet it is perfectly reasonable and, indeed, even desirable.
I also gave a clear map of how the issue can be dealt with, pointing out that requiring ISPs to live up to minimum levels of service would deal with the issue without tying their hands. My solution is workable. It doesn't prevent any ISP from providing premium services.
What's the problem with my solution, and why is the demonstrably flawed Network Neutrality principle better than it?
Actually you're both correct.
Most dictionaries haven't been updated since the International Astronomer's Union updated the definition in August. To malign did mean "to speak harmful untruths about; speak evil of; slander; defame" but now means, thanks to a last minute vote by a small group of angry astronomers, "To speak badly of, while clearing a path with one's own gravitas."
I hope this factoid, erm, sorry the term is now "Dwarf Fact", helps.