Bingo! you win the prize for the most clueless comment of the day.
Wow, you must not read many comments if you're giving that prize to this comment.
Isn't there anyone left on the internet who's mature enough to disagree with someone without being a jackass about it? I realize this is Slashdot, but still, it's really disheartening. It's sad to see an otherwise insightful post like yours needlessly turned into flamebait.
Actually, one has freedom to copy one's own work or anything that's in the public domain. We have the freedom to copy anything that is not protected by a copyright.
"Your work" is supposed to cease being "your work" after a reasonable term. The current copyright terms are unjustifiably long, IMO. Moral rights and legal rights don't always agree.
Yay, someone who can read! TXG1112 makes a good point as well.
Also from the Wikipedia article:
Ironically, accusing an opponent of ad hominem can itself be an example of ad hominem if it is worded as an insult: [...] "My opponent is resorting to logical fallacy to win. [...]"
Wow, glad you've got all the answers for everyone.
Cancer is not usually like a car wreck. It's not a roll of the dice followed by sudden, unexpected death. Very often, there are good estimates of the amount of time left -- at least on the order of do you have days or months or years. In some cases, maybe you get little to no warning, but hell, you might get run over a bus while you're taking that long walk trying to get some perspective. There's no way you have enough information about the parent poster's condition to draw any of the conclusions you try to draw.
If I learned I was going to die within the month, then I'd probably drop everything and make the most of it. If I learned I was probably going to die within the decade, I don't think I would change much of anything, since the odds of dying in any given decade are already pretty high. You can't just put your life on hold and curl into a fetal ball and hide.
Anyway, right now would be a really good time to climb down off your high horse and learn to respect others. Do it fast.
They may become obsolete for retaking the class, but other than perhaps in subjects like law (which may change substantially over relatively short times), the information in them is still valid. It's still as good a reference as it ever was.
If Redhat is signing their code so that it can be identified as originating from them, I can design my own "DRM" hardware that will only run binaries that have that signature. Now you cannot build your own versions and run them without Redhat's private key. Who is responsible for ensuring that you can build your own version? Redhat was not knowingly involved in this "DRM" implementation at all so it's unreasonable to ask them for their private key. I am not distributing GPL software at all, so its requirements certainly can't apply to me.
It sure is a shame that you are having trouble finding high quality free stuff out there. A tragic injustice, really. What is the world coming to? How dare these unwashed masses soil your delicate ears with the filth of sub-par MP3 files? After all you've done for them?
Yess... because the SMS had PHANTASY STAR. That was the most enjoyable RPG I've ever played, possibly the most enjoyable game. The sound effects and music were great, and the suspense at times was incredible. I'm sitting here trying to list the awesome moments and there are just too many. The worlds were just so well put together, it really felt like you were there. Final Fantasy had a similar feel, but to me it was just a bit less visceral. It also seemed a lot easier and less complicated.
The two plots you point out aren't really examples of precision errors. Rather, they are errors brought about by not tracking the distinction between "positive 0" and "negative 0." You'll have this problem to some degree no matter how many bits of precision you've got if you don't track the sign of your numbers that round to 0.
Uhh, okkkkaaaaaaaaaay... except it's not crap. It's good enough for my purposes. No, it's not 96 kHz 24-bit studio quality recordings, but I got exactly what I expected and what I paid for.
What I'm saying is that it's up to each consumer to decide whether they're getting a good deal for their money. I haven't seen Apple make any false claims about what they sell. If you think it's crap, fine, don't buy it.
Well, I think that transcoding path does negate a substantial part of the blogger's argument, even if it is lossy. Unless you are bothered by the artifacts, you can get out of the DRM pit without much effort. If you are bothered by them, then buy the CD.
I see your point, though, and do agree that it'd be better to be able to get the digital files without the DRM shackles. However, the current compromise seems reasonable to me.
It really depends on whether you're bothered by the artifacts. I don't tend to listen to music under particularly ideal conditions, so I don't personally care that my AAC->WAV->MP3 has minor artifacts. I don't know that I've ever noticed anything except when I sit down and try to. For me, the convenience of getting the music and the reasonable price is worth tolerating less than the finest possible audio quality since I don't notice the difference anyway.
I'll note that this was my opinion before I downloaded anything from them. I've so far downloaded exactly one song, so I don't really have much reason to try to rationalize that dollar. I'm quite objective when I say that I'm not at all unhappy with my purchase.
But, I guess I'm just a stupid n00btard because I have different priorities than you.
The microwaves are absorbed by water molecules and little else. Each water molecule has a cross section for absorption -- basically, there is some probability that a given quantum will be absorbed by each molecule it passes. The cross section is relatively small, which means that the depth to which a typical microwave will penetrate before being absorbed is relatively large. The absorption of microwaves into your food (or your brain) is relatively inefficient. As a result, the energy radiates through the volume fairly evenly and is absorbed throughout the volume.
This is in contrast to higher frequency radiation, such as infrared, which is absorbed much more efficiently. As a result, the energy carried by the radiation is almost completely dumped at the surface.
This is part of why microwaves are able to cook more quickly than a traditional oven. You don't have to wait for heat to diffuse from the surface to the inside of the food. As you point out, the process is not completely uniform -- as you penetrate deeper into an absorptive medium, the amount of energy reaching that depth does decrease. The rate at which the energy decreases is characterized by optical depth.
The optical depth of pure water is a couple centimeters at 2.45 GHz and will increase a bit since foods / brains are not pure water. If the optical depth is 5 cm, about 60% of the radiant microwave energy will be deposited in the first 5 cm, 60% of the remaining in the next 5 cm, etc.
Anyway, I completely agree that this guy is a moran. My point was only that you can't just say, e.g., that since I'm hit by much higher power visible/IR radiation when I step outside, there is obviously no danger. High intensity microwave radiation is not something that occurs naturally on Earth and it has characteristics that are different from "natural" Earthly electromagnetic radiation. That said, when you do the more complex analysis, you find there is no rational basis for concern.
There is some rational basis for concren, even at low power levels. The heating occurs within the volume of the brain rather than at the skin surface and diffusing inwards. If that milliwatt were focussed into a small region, it could cause substantial localized heating.
That said, it'd take some very strange circumstances to actually find a focussed beam, since the antennas are generally roughly isotropic.
Well, to some degree the fee is to recover some of those costs in the first place. You're not just paying for the copy of the record you're requesting, your fee is helping to pay for the work that goes into maintaining all the records. When the budgets are worked out, an estimate of the fee income goes in to it.
Not to say I disagree that the fees can be excessive, but it does cost more than a photocopy and a stamp for the county to be able to give you a birth certificate, e.g.
You're using "censorship" in a nonstandard way -- one that is contrary to the spirit of its normal use.
If someone forces me not to share something I have created, that is censorship. If someone coerces me to "decide" not to share something that I actually want to share, that is forced self-censorship.
However, if I freely choose not to share something I have with you, it is not censorship.
Under copyright laws, I have certain rights to decide which of my creations to distribute to whom. Exercising those rights is not censorship. I am under no obligation to share my creations with you. If I deny you redistribution rights, I'm not censoring you -- you're free to express your own ideas. You're not free to express mine, to the extent that I'm granted control over the reproduction of my expressions.
As far as I can tell, this is simply Google respecting a copyright holder's wishes. If someone had threatened the video's creator with punishment should they allow it to be distributed in the U.S., then it would be indeed censorship, but I don't see any indication of that. It appears that the creator has simply elected only to share his creation in certain parts of the world.
Most variations of ID *don't* assume a diety. Perhaps most of its strongest supporters hope for that outcome, but a diety is not the issue here. ID proposes that the creator might even be smart aliens, robots, or humans who time-traveled.
Ok, maybe true, I don't know. But the ones who raise the ruckus *do* assume a deity. Like it or not, they've effectively taken over that term from those who might use it for less biased endeavors.
Deity or not, I think it's a pretty tenuous claim that ID of any form is on the same scientific footing as the theory of evolution as the origin of species.
Also, note that there is a difference in the non-falsifiability of SETI's proposition (there is intelligent life in the universe) and that of ID/Creation Science's proposition (god created the universe).
In principle, given enough resources and technology, one could answer the question "Is there intelligent life in the universe?" with a definitive yes or no [1]. If you've looked everywhere and you haven't found it, then it's not there. Search is done, question answered, SETI is done.
The question "Did god create the universe?" is different. If you look everywhere and exhaust every method he could have used to leave a message or a sign, there is no way to disprove the statement "He just doesn't want to be found." Such a creator may live outside the rules of physics. Thus, even given infinite resources, you can't decide this question in the negative. [2]
Whether or not you choose to accept it, this is an important distinction between science and non-science. It's not to say that non-scientific questions aren't interesting -- they've certainly consumed a lot of CPU cycles of a lot of philosophers over the years.
Notes [1]: If you object that we might live in an open universe (i.e., one that is expanding and will never collapse back on itself), then it's quite reasonable to restrict the question to "Is there intelligent life in the universe situated so that we can communicate with it?" This is sort of implicit in the original question and doesn't indicate a weakness in my distinction.
[2]: This restricts the set of "intelligent design" type theories that are on equal footing with the SETI program. Basically, only those that include the restriction that the creator is necessarily detectable are suitable for scientific inquiry. If your hypothesis is that he exists but may be fundamentally undetectable, then just go home... you're wasting telescope time.
You'll note that I don't say that SETI is not science, I say that it's not a scientific experiment. An experiment is a procedure intended to determine whether a hypothesis is true or not. If it can't give the negative result, it's not an experiment. I thought the original poster erred in trying to describe it as one. It's properly described as a search or investigation made up of a number of distinct experiments.
I have no problem with investigating whether there are signs of an intelligent creator. In fact, I am quite sympathetic to the general idea of an intelligent design type program. I personally think it's going to fail, but I wouldn't fault someone who wanted to pursue it. As for whether it should be funded -- well, as I said before, I don't think so. I also don't think SETI should be funded, so that's not a proof of my bias.
The problem with most of the ID work I'm aware of is that it's simply tied to the Christian creation myths. Quite simply, the searches are too tightly constrained to be of much value, IMO. The SETI constraints of what they're looking for are tied in a reasonable way to technological limitations -- basically, they'll look for any signal that they can detect. The ID I've seen people fighting to include in curricula seems intent on fitting a specific, complex creation myth to facts.
Partly there is a vocabulary problem, which traces back to the change from "creationism" to "creation science" to "intelligent design." There simply is no good word to describe the agnostic scientific search for an intelligent creator. Certainly, I've not seen any popular calls for support for such a program. Perhaps once upon a time "intelligent design" was the term for this, but it is now just a new word for Christian creationism.
So, ok, don't condemn everyone who studies ID because most of the people who support it are lousy scientists... Ok. But just because something *can* be studied in a rational, responsible, scientific method doesn't mean it belongs in elementary school curriculum. That should be reserved for basic principles and examples of good use of the scientific method. I think that evolution theories are a much better example of this. Furthermore, there is little to no question that evolution in some form occurs. There's a *LOT* of doubt as to whether anything having to do with ID occurs. As such, its inclusion on the same footing in a science is irrational and irresponsible.
Although I agree with the heart of your message, I think you mischaracterize the "scientificness" of SETI a bit. The overall SETI program is not really a scientific *experiment* by the usual definition, for just the reason that its hypothesis is not really testable. Rather, it is a program of scientific exploration -- a *search*. A search can only terminate with a positive discovery, exhaustion of possible areas to look, or flat out giving up. There is nothing SETI could find that would disprove their basic hypothesis.
The reason it is a scientific endeavor, however, is just what you point out -- each individual search is handled in a cautious scientific manner. The experimentalists behave like responsible scientists and attempt to find avenues to explain their result without needing their hypothesis (intelligent origin) to be true.
What you don't see them doing is ignoring alternative, simpler explanations in order to try to convince the world that they've found a signal from an intelligent origin. They don't find evidence for their conclusion where other scientists see pulsars. In fact, they readily and openly admit that they've never found a sign of intelligent life. It's in their FAQ. This is responsible scientific inquiry.
Now, as some have pointed out, this is not very different from those who would like to look for signs of intelligence in DNA sequences. And, IMO, they're right. There is no reason that a search for a signal in DNA would be fundamentally less scientific than SETI if it were operated in a responsible way. However, given what we do know about the universe, I think you can make a pretty good argument that an alien intelligence is more likely to try to communicate via radio than via DNA. Overall, though, I don't personally feel that either search is a wise investment. The actual odds of detecting an alien intelligence even if it's out there and attempting to be detected are very near to 0 and I think the $4-$5 million per year inveted in that search would be better used toward other scientific ends.
I installed it and it looked ok... one thing I wonder -- will it work better than iTunes on my laptop?
My laptop has a fairly small hard drive and I don't intend to keep my entire music collection on it. I rather think of it as an iPod -- my landlocked disk has my real library on it, and some subset lives on the laptop at any one time. When I'm on my home network, I want to have access to my whole library, but when I'm out and about, I would like to easily see what subset is local. I have found that iTunes, at least in the obvious mode of use, is horrible for this. It expects to index your library and have it available at all times. If it's in random play mode, it'll skip over the missing stuff, but when you browse through the library, you only find out that a song is not available after you try to play it -- then the little "missing" icon lights up.
I haven't played with Songbird enough to see if it handles this any better. But, as this is thread is about to go off the front page, I thought I'd ask if anyone knows a media player that's better about this. Currently, winamp looks like the best bet (plus XMMS when I am in Linux), but it'd be nice to have something with better library management. Anyone know of anything? Can Songbird handle this kind of environment?
Well, as the parent points out (and which I don't dispute, even as I ask for more details) is that the U.S. has a much lower population density than many of these other countries. If all you plan to do is wire your population centers, your life is a lot easier. As my numbers indicate, per square km, the U.S. isn't much richer than India. Per capita is a different story since India's population density is roughly 10 times that of the U.S.
GDP per capita is the better measure of personal wealth. However, when you're laying network pipes, you're trying to cover your land area (or at least the inhabited parts of it) not run a pipe to each person. Obviously my statistic is mostly numerical wanking and doesn't really tell you much about this either, since you wouldn't expect to spend a significant fraction of the GDP on network infrastructure. However, it is true that it would take a substantially higher outlay per capita to wire the U.S. than it would a less densely populated region.
Anyway, I'm not sure why an economic discrepancy would make it less important to compare apples to apples. What I want to know is, quantitatively, how do connectivity options and costs in the U.S. really compare to those in other places. Without quantitative apples-to-apples information, there's no basis for claims that ISPs in the states suck. Personally, I suspect it's true, but suspicion based on anecdotes is not a rational basis for much of anything. When you're trying to solve a hard problem, the first step is to find out exactly what the problem is.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, you must not read many comments if you're giving that prize to this comment.
Isn't there anyone left on the internet who's mature enough to disagree with someone without being a jackass about it? I realize this is Slashdot, but still, it's really disheartening. It's sad to see an otherwise insightful post like yours needlessly turned into flamebait.
Actually, one has freedom to copy one's own work or anything that's in the public domain. We have the freedom to copy anything that is not protected by a copyright.
"Your work" is supposed to cease being "your work" after a reasonable term. The current copyright terms are unjustifiably long, IMO. Moral rights and legal rights don't always agree.
Also from the Wikipedia article:
Wow, glad you've got all the answers for everyone.
Cancer is not usually like a car wreck. It's not a roll of the dice followed by sudden, unexpected death. Very often, there are good estimates of the amount of time left -- at least on the order of do you have days or months or years. In some cases, maybe you get little to no warning, but hell, you might get run over a bus while you're taking that long walk trying to get some perspective. There's no way you have enough information about the parent poster's condition to draw any of the conclusions you try to draw.
If I learned I was going to die within the month, then I'd probably drop everything and make the most of it. If I learned I was probably going to die within the decade, I don't think I would change much of anything, since the odds of dying in any given decade are already pretty high. You can't just put your life on hold and curl into a fetal ball and hide.
Anyway, right now would be a really good time to climb down off your high horse and learn to respect others. Do it fast.
Thanks!
They may become obsolete for retaking the class, but other than perhaps in subjects like law (which may change substantially over relatively short times), the information in them is still valid. It's still as good a reference as it ever was.
If Redhat is signing their code so that it can be identified as originating from them, I can design my own "DRM" hardware that will only run binaries that have that signature. Now you cannot build your own versions and run them without Redhat's private key. Who is responsible for ensuring that you can build your own version? Redhat was not knowingly involved in this "DRM" implementation at all so it's unreasonable to ask them for their private key. I am not distributing GPL software at all, so its requirements certainly can't apply to me.
This seems like a serious problem.
Never played either. It had a whole slew of fun but now obscure games.
Yeah, when you do an emerge it'll detect that the old profile has been deprecated and give you explicit instructions for updating to the new one.
It sure is a shame that you are having trouble finding high quality free stuff out there. A tragic injustice, really. What is the world coming to? How dare these unwashed masses soil your delicate ears with the filth of sub-par MP3 files? After all you've done for them?
Yess... because the SMS had PHANTASY STAR. That was the most enjoyable RPG I've ever played, possibly the most enjoyable game. The sound effects and music were great, and the suspense at times was incredible. I'm sitting here trying to list the awesome moments and there are just too many. The worlds were just so well put together, it really felt like you were there. Final Fantasy had a similar feel, but to me it was just a bit less visceral. It also seemed a lot easier and less complicated.
Plus Myau was the greatest character ever.
Interesting (although unforgivably badly formatted) document.
The two plots you point out aren't really examples of precision errors. Rather, they are errors brought about by not tracking the distinction between "positive 0" and "negative 0." You'll have this problem to some degree no matter how many bits of precision you've got if you don't track the sign of your numbers that round to 0.
Uhh, okkkkaaaaaaaaaay... except it's not crap. It's good enough for my purposes. No, it's not 96 kHz 24-bit studio quality recordings, but I got exactly what I expected and what I paid for.
What I'm saying is that it's up to each consumer to decide whether they're getting a good deal for their money. I haven't seen Apple make any false claims about what they sell. If you think it's crap, fine, don't buy it.
Well, I think that transcoding path does negate a substantial part of the blogger's argument, even if it is lossy. Unless you are bothered by the artifacts, you can get out of the DRM pit without much effort. If you are bothered by them, then buy the CD.
I see your point, though, and do agree that it'd be better to be able to get the digital files without the DRM shackles. However, the current compromise seems reasonable to me.
It really depends on whether you're bothered by the artifacts. I don't tend to listen to music under particularly ideal conditions, so I don't personally care that my AAC->WAV->MP3 has minor artifacts. I don't know that I've ever noticed anything except when I sit down and try to. For me, the convenience of getting the music and the reasonable price is worth tolerating less than the finest possible audio quality since I don't notice the difference anyway.
I'll note that this was my opinion before I downloaded anything from them. I've so far downloaded exactly one song, so I don't really have much reason to try to rationalize that dollar. I'm quite objective when I say that I'm not at all unhappy with my purchase.
But, I guess I'm just a stupid n00btard because I have different priorities than you.
The microwaves are absorbed by water molecules and little else. Each water molecule has a cross section for absorption -- basically, there is some probability that a given quantum will be absorbed by each molecule it passes. The cross section is relatively small, which means that the depth to which a typical microwave will penetrate before being absorbed is relatively large. The absorption of microwaves into your food (or your brain) is relatively inefficient. As a result, the energy radiates through the volume fairly evenly and is absorbed throughout the volume.
This is in contrast to higher frequency radiation, such as infrared, which is absorbed much more efficiently. As a result, the energy carried by the radiation is almost completely dumped at the surface.
This is part of why microwaves are able to cook more quickly than a traditional oven. You don't have to wait for heat to diffuse from the surface to the inside of the food. As you point out, the process is not completely uniform -- as you penetrate deeper into an absorptive medium, the amount of energy reaching that depth does decrease. The rate at which the energy decreases is characterized by optical depth.
The optical depth of pure water is a couple centimeters at 2.45 GHz and will increase a bit since foods / brains are not pure water. If the optical depth is 5 cm, about 60% of the radiant microwave energy will be deposited in the first 5 cm, 60% of the remaining in the next 5 cm, etc.
If you have access to the IoP Physics Education journal archives, there is a nice article about the physics of microwave ovens. If not, I can at least back up my claim of a 2 cm optical depth for pure water (first paragraph of section 2).
Anyway, I completely agree that this guy is a moran. My point was only that you can't just say, e.g., that since I'm hit by much higher power visible/IR radiation when I step outside, there is obviously no danger. High intensity microwave radiation is not something that occurs naturally on Earth and it has characteristics that are different from "natural" Earthly electromagnetic radiation. That said, when you do the more complex analysis, you find there is no rational basis for concern.
There is some rational basis for concren, even at low power levels. The heating occurs within the volume of the brain rather than at the skin surface and diffusing inwards. If that milliwatt were focussed into a small region, it could cause substantial localized heating.
That said, it'd take some very strange circumstances to actually find a focussed beam, since the antennas are generally roughly isotropic.
Well, to some degree the fee is to recover some of those costs in the first place. You're not just paying for the copy of the record you're requesting, your fee is helping to pay for the work that goes into maintaining all the records. When the budgets are worked out, an estimate of the fee income goes in to it.
Not to say I disagree that the fees can be excessive, but it does cost more than a photocopy and a stamp for the county to be able to give you a birth certificate, e.g.
You're using "censorship" in a nonstandard way -- one that is contrary to the spirit of its normal use.
If someone forces me not to share something I have created, that is censorship. If someone coerces me to "decide" not to share something that I actually want to share, that is forced self-censorship.
However, if I freely choose not to share something I have with you, it is not censorship.
Under copyright laws, I have certain rights to decide which of my creations to distribute to whom. Exercising those rights is not censorship. I am under no obligation to share my creations with you. If I deny you redistribution rights, I'm not censoring you -- you're free to express your own ideas. You're not free to express mine, to the extent that I'm granted control over the reproduction of my expressions.
As far as I can tell, this is simply Google respecting a copyright holder's wishes. If someone had threatened the video's creator with punishment should they allow it to be distributed in the U.S., then it would be indeed censorship, but I don't see any indication of that. It appears that the creator has simply elected only to share his creation in certain parts of the world.
Ok, maybe true, I don't know. But the ones who raise the ruckus *do* assume a deity. Like it or not, they've effectively taken over that term from those who might use it for less biased endeavors.
Deity or not, I think it's a pretty tenuous claim that ID of any form is on the same scientific footing as the theory of evolution as the origin of species.
Also, note that there is a difference in the non-falsifiability of SETI's proposition (there is intelligent life in the universe) and that of ID/Creation Science's proposition (god created the universe).
In principle, given enough resources and technology, one could answer the question "Is there intelligent life in the universe?" with a definitive yes or no [1]. If you've looked everywhere and you haven't found it, then it's not there. Search is done, question answered, SETI is done.
The question "Did god create the universe?" is different. If you look everywhere and exhaust every method he could have used to leave a message or a sign, there is no way to disprove the statement "He just doesn't want to be found." Such a creator may live outside the rules of physics. Thus, even given infinite resources, you can't decide this question in the negative. [2]
Whether or not you choose to accept it, this is an important distinction between science and non-science. It's not to say that non-scientific questions aren't interesting -- they've certainly consumed a lot of CPU cycles of a lot of philosophers over the years.
Notes
[1]: If you object that we might live in an open universe (i.e., one that is expanding and will never collapse back on itself), then it's quite reasonable to restrict the question to "Is there intelligent life in the universe situated so that we can communicate with it?" This is sort of implicit in the original question and doesn't indicate a weakness in my distinction.
[2]: This restricts the set of "intelligent design" type theories that are on equal footing with the SETI program. Basically, only those that include the restriction that the creator is necessarily detectable are suitable for scientific inquiry. If your hypothesis is that he exists but may be fundamentally undetectable, then just go home... you're wasting telescope time.
You'll note that I don't say that SETI is not science, I say that it's not a scientific experiment. An experiment is a procedure intended to determine whether a hypothesis is true or not. If it can't give the negative result, it's not an experiment. I thought the original poster erred in trying to describe it as one. It's properly described as a search or investigation made up of a number of distinct experiments.
I have no problem with investigating whether there are signs of an intelligent creator. In fact, I am quite sympathetic to the general idea of an intelligent design type program. I personally think it's going to fail, but I wouldn't fault someone who wanted to pursue it. As for whether it should be funded -- well, as I said before, I don't think so. I also don't think SETI should be funded, so that's not a proof of my bias.
The problem with most of the ID work I'm aware of is that it's simply tied to the Christian creation myths. Quite simply, the searches are too tightly constrained to be of much value, IMO. The SETI constraints of what they're looking for are tied in a reasonable way to technological limitations -- basically, they'll look for any signal that they can detect. The ID I've seen people fighting to include in curricula seems intent on fitting a specific, complex creation myth to facts.
Partly there is a vocabulary problem, which traces back to the change from "creationism" to "creation science" to "intelligent design." There simply is no good word to describe the agnostic scientific search for an intelligent creator. Certainly, I've not seen any popular calls for support for such a program. Perhaps once upon a time "intelligent design" was the term for this, but it is now just a new word for Christian creationism.
So, ok, don't condemn everyone who studies ID because most of the people who support it are lousy scientists... Ok. But just because something *can* be studied in a rational, responsible, scientific method doesn't mean it belongs in elementary school curriculum. That should be reserved for basic principles and examples of good use of the scientific method. I think that evolution theories are a much better example of this. Furthermore, there is little to no question that evolution in some form occurs. There's a *LOT* of doubt as to whether anything having to do with ID occurs. As such, its inclusion on the same footing in a science is irrational and irresponsible.
Although I agree with the heart of your message, I think you mischaracterize the "scientificness" of SETI a bit. The overall SETI program is not really a scientific *experiment* by the usual definition, for just the reason that its hypothesis is not really testable. Rather, it is a program of scientific exploration -- a *search*. A search can only terminate with a positive discovery, exhaustion of possible areas to look, or flat out giving up. There is nothing SETI could find that would disprove their basic hypothesis.
The reason it is a scientific endeavor, however, is just what you point out -- each individual search is handled in a cautious scientific manner. The experimentalists behave like responsible scientists and attempt to find avenues to explain their result without needing their hypothesis (intelligent origin) to be true.
What you don't see them doing is ignoring alternative, simpler explanations in order to try to convince the world that they've found a signal from an intelligent origin. They don't find evidence for their conclusion where other scientists see pulsars. In fact, they readily and openly admit that they've never found a sign of intelligent life. It's in their FAQ. This is responsible scientific inquiry.
Now, as some have pointed out, this is not very different from those who would like to look for signs of intelligence in DNA sequences. And, IMO, they're right. There is no reason that a search for a signal in DNA would be fundamentally less scientific than SETI if it were operated in a responsible way. However, given what we do know about the universe, I think you can make a pretty good argument that an alien intelligence is more likely to try to communicate via radio than via DNA. Overall, though, I don't personally feel that either search is a wise investment. The actual odds of detecting an alien intelligence even if it's out there and attempting to be detected are very near to 0 and I think the $4-$5 million per year inveted in that search would be better used toward other scientific ends.
I installed it and it looked ok... one thing I wonder -- will it work better than iTunes on my laptop?
My laptop has a fairly small hard drive and I don't intend to keep my entire music collection on it. I rather think of it as an iPod -- my landlocked disk has my real library on it, and some subset lives on the laptop at any one time. When I'm on my home network, I want to have access to my whole library, but when I'm out and about, I would like to easily see what subset is local. I have found that iTunes, at least in the obvious mode of use, is horrible for this. It expects to index your library and have it available at all times. If it's in random play mode, it'll skip over the missing stuff, but when you browse through the library, you only find out that a song is not available after you try to play it -- then the little "missing" icon lights up.
I haven't played with Songbird enough to see if it handles this any better. But, as this is thread is about to go off the front page, I thought I'd ask if anyone knows a media player that's better about this. Currently, winamp looks like the best bet (plus XMMS when I am in Linux), but it'd be nice to have something with better library management. Anyone know of anything? Can Songbird handle this kind of environment?
Well, as the parent points out (and which I don't dispute, even as I ask for more details) is that the U.S. has a much lower population density than many of these other countries. If all you plan to do is wire your population centers, your life is a lot easier. As my numbers indicate, per square km, the U.S. isn't much richer than India. Per capita is a different story since India's population density is roughly 10 times that of the U.S.
GDP per capita is the better measure of personal wealth. However, when you're laying network pipes, you're trying to cover your land area (or at least the inhabited parts of it) not run a pipe to each person. Obviously my statistic is mostly numerical wanking and doesn't really tell you much about this either, since you wouldn't expect to spend a significant fraction of the GDP on network infrastructure. However, it is true that it would take a substantially higher outlay per capita to wire the U.S. than it would a less densely populated region.
Anyway, I'm not sure why an economic discrepancy would make it less important to compare apples to apples. What I want to know is, quantitatively, how do connectivity options and costs in the U.S. really compare to those in other places. Without quantitative apples-to-apples information, there's no basis for claims that ISPs in the states suck. Personally, I suspect it's true, but suspicion based on anecdotes is not a rational basis for much of anything. When you're trying to solve a hard problem, the first step is to find out exactly what the problem is.