The apple is not just a symbol representing his death by cyanide. According to Andrew Hodges' excellent biography The Enigma of Intelligence, Turing's body was found with a half-eaten apple beside his bed. There were also jars of cyanide in the house- one of Turing's hobbies was seeing how many chemicals he could synthesize from household products. Although the apple was not analysed by the pathologist doing the post mortem, the cause of death was clearly cyanide poisoning and it was assumed at the inquest that he had dipped the apple in cyanide... Hodges suggests that he may have chosen this method to allow his mother to believe his death had been an accident.
What if you don't want to watch BBC? Why doesn't BBC just run a subscription model like HBO or use advertisements?
Yep, this is how new channels are funded. But the license fee is a historical artefact... when it began, the BBC was the only channel. If you bought a TV, you were going to watch the BBC on it because there was nothing else to use it for, so it made sense for the license fee (read as 'subscription fee') to be compulsory for anyone who bought a TV.
Why not use adverts? Firstly, because people don't like watching ads and complain at every suggestion that the BBC should be funded this way. Secondly, the BBC historically has the aim of producing quality public service broadcasting, which would be compromised by the need to pursue advertising revenue. (Of course, the extent to which the BBC achieves this is debatable, but that's the theory.)
Why not subscription? Well, the license fee is effectively a subscription. The only problem with this interpretation, as you say, is that you are forced to pay wether you want to watch the BBC or not - but in practice the number of people who own a TV without ever using a BBC service is extremely small (I'd be very surprised if it was as high as 1 percent). Not really fair on that small number, of course, but the license has been in place for fifty-odd years now; people are just used to it.
In short, the license fee is a typically British solution of the form, 'it's only slightly broken so don't bother fixing it'.
Take a look at the FAQ from the biodiesel.org site. They claim: Biodiesel also has a positive energy balance, generating three or more units of energy for every unit required to make it.
Wouldn't a star orbiting that close have a fairly easily recognizable wavelength shift, red if leaving, blue if coming?
No. The shifts in the wavelength spectrum are caused by changes in relative velocity (same as an ambulance siren rising in pitch as the ambulance drives towards you, then falling as it passes and moves away). The distance to the star makes no difference to the size of the shift - only it's velocity relative to us is important. The reason it doesn't help in this case is that the star, if it exists, has a very long orbital period around the sun, making it's closest approach into the Oort Cloud only once every 26 million years. So, you'll only see the spectrum change from blue- to red-shifted if you observe it over tens of millions of years.
What the hell does this have to do with my rights online?
Right. Open source initiative founded and gains popularity as a reaction against the restrictive licences of proprietary software. Microsoft regularly criticised for shrinkwrap licenses which restrict software buyers' legitimate rights. Government of a major industrial nation rules that at least one of the typical terms of software licenses is not valid. Yes, you're quite right, I can't see why that would be of any interest to slashdot readers.
Right, so the worry is that any NSA implemented code may contain a backdoor so subtle that even outsiders reading the source may miss it. So what about this?
The NSA provide their design for an access control system, in detail. Other , non government-affiliated coders (the more paranoid the better) write the actual code. The NSA then audits their code and confirms that it meets the specification. The government and corporations get their NSA approved secure linux, the paranoid know that no actual NSA code is in the kernel. Or wouldn't this be workable?
This is an open and shut case of logical analysis.
Yes, everyone thinks that, and comes to the wrong conclusion,as you did. There's a discussion of the answer here - if you switch your choice your chances of winning are 2/3, if you stick, 1/3. The subtlety in the statistical argument derives from the fact that the host is giving you more information half way through the game, which the simplistic statistical interpretation you give doesn't take into account. But if you're still not convinced, the best way to provide evidence is to run a Monte Carlo simulation of the game, or to calculate every possible combination - which is what guy's co-workers were doing.
Interesting article you linked to there. Since it's a former CIA agent justifying spying on allies we should hardly expect honesty, but I find the justification he uses interesting:
Stop blaming us and reform your own statist economic policies. Then your companies can become more efficient and innovative, and they won't need to resort to bribery to compete.
As you say, the article is bigoted, but these misconceptions about European economics are ones that many Americans seem to share - I think the article is aimed not at Europeans, but at those among the Wall Street Journal's primarily American readership who may be uneasy with the CIA's actions.
Either that, or he's just astonishingly stupid.
This story is not about lyricists specifically, it's about the difference between ownership of the rights to publishing and sound recording. If you perform a cover version, you own rights to that specific version of the song, but you have to pay royalties to the original writers of the song (as represented by their publisher). These publishing rights cover both the lyrics and the music.
In the case of musicians who write their own music, you earn money both from selling recordings (which the record company typically owns copyright to) and being paid publishing (which can be in the hands of the record company, a separate publishing company, or the artist themselves) if someone else records your song, or if it gets played on the radio.
I started doing some research on whether Goddard had any influence on von Braun. I didn't find anything conclusive either way
From Nasa's page on Goddard: Yet, several score of the 1750 copies of the 1920 Smithsonian report [by Goddard about the feasibity of sending a rocket to the moon] reached Europe. The German Rocket Society was formed in 1927, and the German Army began its rocket program in 1931.
The founder of the German Rocket Society was Hermann Oberth, who had done theoretical work on rocketry for his doctoral thesis (although it was rejected) in the early twenties. Oberth would have been one of the few people in Europe who would have been interested in Goddard's work and taken the implications of it seriously. In the early thirties Oberth took on von Braun as an assistant. It seems fairly certain that Oberth would have followed Goddard's career with interest, and that von Braun would therefore have been aware of Goddard's experiments.
Hm. I'd guess by the fact that the answer is in Neal's FAQ his plan didn't work, and he just recieved vast numbers of email from Linux fans demanding to know the reasons for the change instead, but it's interesting to know the reason. Thanks.
Stephenson's points about not linking his fiction too closely to real-world companies are interesting - I wonder if this has any bearing on an oddity in Cryptonomicon : Linux is disguised (barely) under the name Finux - however, if I recall correctly, Windows and Be are identified by name. I'd be interested to know the rationale behind this.
Not a high school paper - note that it's actually signed at the bottom 'Hakim Bey' - an American 'underground' (whatever that means nowadays) writer. If you're bored, have a look here , among many other places on the web (including the EFF archive) for some of his writing. It's often incoherent, but usually in an eloquent, interesting way.
I just wish ICANN had the authority to babysit the domains already here. Kick all commercial activity out of.org
Uh, I believe they're attempting to (see The Register ),
and it would have been a good idea if the distinctions between.org other TLDs had been maintained from the start, but what do you do with the many people who own.org domains, and have established a presence on the web, but are not non-profit organisations? The problem is that VeriSign (Network Solutions) were willing to sell.org domains to anybody who would pay, but now VeriSign are giving up control of.org (in return for continuing their monopoly over.com and.net adresses), and now ICANN are talking about requiring all owners of.org domains to be registered non-profit organisations. Many.org owners would have to register new names, perhaps readvertise their sites etc.
One of your other points (keep.com for American/International companies) has similar problems - there are many companies worldwide which have.com domains, but under this description would be forced to change. Unless American-only companies were also forced to change to the.us domain, this would be interpreted as pro-US bias and be widely criticised around the world. (Yes, I know the internet originated in the US, but you can't ignore the fact that it's now worldwide).
Basically, the idea of enforcing the naming conventions for TLDs now, while desirable in practice, has the problem that it can't really be seen as fair - requiring owners of domain names registered in good faith to rename as a result of ICANN/VeriSigns' flawed policy in the past. I can see a better argument for allowing no new registrations in violation of the naming conventions, but then you have to ask wether there's much point, given the number of existing 'misnamed' domains.
The main reason why capitalism works infinitely better than socialism is that capitalism exploits the greed inherent in human beings whereas socialism forces people at penalty of hard labor, inprisonment, execution or all of the above to work for the "greater good" of society
Your use of the word 'socialism' is not really accurate there - the sectors of most European economies which Americans tend to class as socialist are not based on coercion, but I see the point you're getting at. However, De Soto is not talking about the difference between capitalism and 'socialism'/communism here - he accepts that capitalism is a more successful system when it works. The question is why, when so many third world countries have ostensibly capitalist economies, does capitalism appear to fail (and, btw it is this very failure that makes extremem leftist solutions attractive to the poor in these countries).
The important point is that for capitalism to work as you suggest, it must succesfully exploit the greed inherent in human beings - that is, people must have a chance to achieve that life of luxury you mention. In many third world countries this is not the case because, although there is a free market economy, it isn't based on property rights. In a succesful free-market economy, almost all businesses require credit to get started - which requires collateral. In an agrarian economy, collateral usually means the land you own, but ownership is only meaningful if it can be legally defined, defended in court etc. This leads to the poor being reluctant to consider long term business ventures, simply because they don't have confidence that their current assets can be relied on long-term. The solution, according to De Soto, is not just a free market economy, but translating the already-accepted informal understandings of property ownership (ie. my land is here, my neighbours begins there, we both agree on this) to a formal legal framework.
It's just Eric Raymond's homepages. The text of the jargon file is there, various open source advocacy stuff (like The Cathedral and the Bazaar), stuff on fetchmail etc... There are a few pages of libertarianism/gun advocacy but nothing wildly offensive, I would have thought.
The homepage of the translation project for the Philodemus texts found at Herculaneum is here. No more details of the image enhancement techniques unfortunately, but some nice photos of some of the papyri.
Why not just have an agreement saying that what the employee comes up with on his own time is his, and what he does on company time is the companies?
That's normally reasonable, and quite obvious in the case of eg manufacturing industries, but when the job involves intellectual creativity some interesting grey areas could arise...
Example: Your employer sets you to solve problem x. In the pub on Friday night a solution occurs to you... you spend part of the weekend working it out, then develop the idea fully the next week at work. The idea was created by you on your own time... but you wouldn't have thought of it at all if your employer hadn't assigned the problem to you, so who owns the solution?
In this case I think the employer would have a legitimate claim, and in Malpas case they didn't, but the line between your time and the companies time is not always clear-cut... particularly as one of the arguments managers, consultants, and probably every other well-paid professional uses to justify their large salaries is that they don't work nine-to-five but are willing to take their work home with them. Probably a better division is between 'working on the employer's projects' and 'working in your free time on projects in an unrelated field'
Re:when you're the leader of the free world
on
Hannibal's Return
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· Score: 1
Yeah, I know I shouldn't be wasting time responding to this, but...
when you're the leader of the free world...The world looks to America for leadership and sacrifice (no, not the whole world, but most of it).
Appointed leader by whom? Accountable to whom? This strange delusion that America has a divine mission to 'save the world' and that every other nation in the world recognizes this is precisely the reason the rest of the world classes Americans as arrogant. World War II is a particularly bad example of American troops being the 'first to respond' - the USA refused to become involved in the war until it's own interests were threatened (the bombing of Pearl Harbour) - Hitler was primarily stopped by the Soviet Union.
I must say that I never read the book (neither one) and also didn't see the first movie
You might be interested to know that this is actually the third Lecter story - the first was the novel Red Dragon, made into the film Manhunter by Michael Mann, the creator of Miami Vice in 1986. Lecter was played by Brian Cox... although the production seems very eighties in style, it's still as good a film as Silence of the Lambs.
Not nonsense, but perhaps with limited application (though I'm not an expert either). A few points-
One of the main problems with cheap mics is the self-noise of the mic, along with an inability to capture high frequency detail. But as to your suggestion... mic response varies with frequency, and also distance from the central axis, so rather than one tuning fork you would want a range of test tones, measured in various locations around the mic... maybe also responses to transient signals as well. This won't improve signal to noise ratio or improve the clarity of the recording, but it can change the tonal characteristics of the mic - I believe this is more or less the way the mic simulator effect I mentioned works.
Active soundproofing - your system might be useful in removing constant sources of background noise. Unfortunately, background is usually not constant over time - it's the passing car outside, the neighbour slamming a door, the floorboard creaking only when you move - the sound of the hard drive being accessed is particularly annoying, to the extent that some companies are now starting to offer specially soundproofed drives for music use. The algorithm would have to distinguish between instrument sound and unwanted background (perhaps trying determine the origin of the sound a multiple mic setup?)... not trivial at all.
But anyway, we're talking about the difference between a home recording sound which can, with skill and experience be pretty good, and the slick, polished sound of the pro studio, which record labels and radio stations seem to consider important. Personally, I have no idea why - I think you're absolutely right that increasing numbers of musicians will find the tradeoff of slightly worse quality/much cheaper recording acceptable. It might prevent you from becoming the next Robbie Williams... but that's not exactly a disaster!
Slashdot Mirror
The apple is not just a symbol representing his death by cyanide. According to Andrew Hodges' excellent biography The Enigma of Intelligence, Turing's body was found with a half-eaten apple beside his bed. There were also jars of cyanide in the house- one of Turing's hobbies was seeing how many chemicals he could synthesize from household products. Although the apple was not analysed by the pathologist doing the post mortem, the cause of death was clearly cyanide poisoning and it was assumed at the inquest that he had dipped the apple in cyanide... Hodges suggests that he may have chosen this method to allow his mother to believe his death had been an accident.
Yep, this is how new channels are funded. But the license fee is a historical artefact... when it began, the BBC was the only channel. If you bought a TV, you were going to watch the BBC on it because there was nothing else to use it for, so it made sense for the license fee (read as 'subscription fee') to be compulsory for anyone who bought a TV.
Why not use adverts? Firstly, because people don't like watching ads and complain at every suggestion that the BBC should be funded this way. Secondly, the BBC historically has the aim of producing quality public service broadcasting, which would be compromised by the need to pursue advertising revenue. (Of course, the extent to which the BBC achieves this is debatable, but that's the theory.)
Why not subscription? Well, the license fee is effectively a subscription. The only problem with this interpretation, as you say, is that you are forced to pay wether you want to watch the BBC or not - but in practice the number of people who own a TV without ever using a BBC service is extremely small (I'd be very surprised if it was as high as 1 percent). Not really fair on that small number, of course, but the license has been in place for fifty-odd years now; people are just used to it.
In short, the license fee is a typically British solution of the form, 'it's only slightly broken so don't bother fixing it'.
Take a look at the FAQ from the biodiesel.org site. They claim:
Biodiesel also has a positive energy balance, generating three or more units of energy for every unit required to make it.
No. The shifts in the wavelength spectrum are caused by changes in relative velocity (same as an ambulance siren rising in pitch as the ambulance drives towards you, then falling as it passes and moves away). The distance to the star makes no difference to the size of the shift - only it's velocity relative to us is important. The reason it doesn't help in this case is that the star, if it exists, has a very long orbital period around the sun, making it's closest approach into the Oort Cloud only once every 26 million years. So, you'll only see the spectrum change from blue- to red-shifted if you observe it over tens of millions of years.
Right. Open source initiative founded and gains popularity as a reaction against the restrictive licences of proprietary software. Microsoft regularly criticised for shrinkwrap licenses which restrict software buyers' legitimate rights. Government of a major industrial nation rules that at least one of the typical terms of software licenses is not valid. Yes, you're quite right, I can't see why that would be of any interest to slashdot readers.
Right, so the worry is that any NSA implemented code may contain a backdoor so subtle that even outsiders reading the source may miss it. So what about this?
The NSA provide their design for an access control system, in detail. Other , non government-affiliated coders (the more paranoid the better) write the actual code. The NSA then audits their code and confirms that it meets the specification. The government and corporations get their NSA approved secure linux, the paranoid know that no actual NSA code is in the kernel. Or wouldn't this be workable?
Yes, everyone thinks that, and comes to the wrong conclusion,as you did. There's a discussion of the answer here - if you switch your choice your chances of winning are 2/3, if you stick, 1/3. The subtlety in the statistical argument derives from the fact that the host is giving you more information half way through the game, which the simplistic statistical interpretation you give doesn't take into account. But if you're still not convinced, the best way to provide evidence is to run a Monte Carlo simulation of the game, or to calculate every possible combination - which is what guy's co-workers were doing.
Stop blaming us and reform your own statist economic policies. Then your companies can become more efficient and innovative, and they won't need to resort to bribery to compete.
As you say, the article is bigoted, but these misconceptions about European economics are ones that many Americans seem to share - I think the article is aimed not at Europeans, but at those among the Wall Street Journal's primarily American readership who may be uneasy with the CIA's actions.
Either that, or he's just astonishingly stupid.
In the case of musicians who write their own music, you earn money both from selling recordings (which the record company typically owns copyright to) and being paid publishing (which can be in the hands of the record company, a separate publishing company, or the artist themselves) if someone else records your song, or if it gets played on the radio.
From Nasa's page on Goddard:
Yet, several score of the 1750 copies of the 1920 Smithsonian report [by Goddard about the feasibity of sending a rocket to the moon] reached Europe. The German Rocket Society was formed in 1927, and the German Army began its rocket program in 1931.
The founder of the German Rocket Society was Hermann Oberth, who had done theoretical work on rocketry for his doctoral thesis (although it was rejected) in the early twenties. Oberth would have been one of the few people in Europe who would have been interested in Goddard's work and taken the implications of it seriously. In the early thirties Oberth took on von Braun as an assistant. It seems fairly certain that Oberth would have followed Goddard's career with interest, and that von Braun would therefore have been aware of Goddard's experiments.
Hm. I'd guess by the fact that the answer is in Neal's FAQ his plan didn't work, and he just recieved vast numbers of email from Linux fans demanding to know the reasons for the change instead, but it's interesting to know the reason. Thanks.
Stephenson's points about not linking his fiction too closely to real-world companies are interesting - I wonder if this has any bearing on an oddity in Cryptonomicon : Linux is disguised (barely) under the name Finux - however, if I recall correctly, Windows and Be are identified by name. I'd be interested to know the rationale behind this.
The usual stuff, I suppose... moussaka, dolmades, retsina, some guys playing the bouzouki...
Oh, geek bar. Sorry.
Not a high school paper - note that it's actually signed at the bottom 'Hakim Bey' - an American 'underground' (whatever that means nowadays) writer. If you're bored, have a look here , among many other places on the web (including the EFF archive) for some of his writing. It's often incoherent, but usually in an eloquent, interesting way.
Uh, I believe they're attempting to (see The Register ), and it would have been a good idea if the distinctions between .org other TLDs had been maintained from the start, but what do you do with the many people who own .org domains, and have established a presence on the web, but are not non-profit organisations? The problem is that VeriSign (Network Solutions) were willing to sell .org domains to anybody who would pay, but now VeriSign are giving up control of .org (in return for continuing their monopoly over .com and .net adresses), and now ICANN are talking about requiring all owners of .org domains to be registered non-profit organisations. Many .org owners would have to register new names, perhaps readvertise their sites etc.
One of your other points (keep .com for American/International companies) has similar problems - there are many companies worldwide which have .com domains, but under this description would be forced to change. Unless American-only companies were also forced to change to the .us domain, this would be interpreted as pro-US bias and be widely criticised around the world. (Yes, I know the internet originated in the US, but you can't ignore the fact that it's now worldwide).
Basically, the idea of enforcing the naming conventions for TLDs now, while desirable in practice, has the problem that it can't really be seen as fair - requiring owners of domain names registered in good faith to rename as a result of ICANN/VeriSigns' flawed policy in the past. I can see a better argument for allowing no new registrations in violation of the naming conventions, but then you have to ask wether there's much point, given the number of existing 'misnamed' domains.
Your use of the word 'socialism' is not really accurate there - the sectors of most European economies which Americans tend to class as socialist are not based on coercion, but I see the point you're getting at. However, De Soto is not talking about the difference between capitalism and 'socialism'/communism here - he accepts that capitalism is a more successful system when it works. The question is why, when so many third world countries have ostensibly capitalist economies, does capitalism appear to fail (and, btw it is this very failure that makes extremem leftist solutions attractive to the poor in these countries).
The important point is that for capitalism to work as you suggest, it must succesfully exploit the greed inherent in human beings - that is, people must have a chance to achieve that life of luxury you mention. In many third world countries this is not the case because, although there is a free market economy, it isn't based on property rights. In a succesful free-market economy, almost all businesses require credit to get started - which requires collateral. In an agrarian economy, collateral usually means the land you own, but ownership is only meaningful if it can be legally defined, defended in court etc. This leads to the poor being reluctant to consider long term business ventures, simply because they don't have confidence that their current assets can be relied on long-term. The solution, according to De Soto, is not just a free market economy, but translating the already-accepted informal understandings of property ownership (ie. my land is here, my neighbours begins there, we both agree on this) to a formal legal framework.
Bryan Singer's intent is to be very faithful to the spirit and legacy of the original show.
Please don't.
It's just Eric Raymond's homepages. The text of the jargon file is there, various open source advocacy stuff (like The Cathedral and the Bazaar), stuff on fetchmail etc... There are a few pages of libertarianism/gun advocacy but nothing wildly offensive, I would have thought.
The homepage of the translation project for the Philodemus texts found at Herculaneum is here. No more details of the image enhancement techniques unfortunately, but some nice photos of some of the papyri.
That's normally reasonable, and quite obvious in the case of eg manufacturing industries, but when the job involves intellectual creativity some interesting grey areas could arise...
Example: Your employer sets you to solve problem x. In the pub on Friday night a solution occurs to you... you spend part of the weekend working it out, then develop the idea fully the next week at work. The idea was created by you on your own time... but you wouldn't have thought of it at all if your employer hadn't assigned the problem to you, so who owns the solution?
In this case I think the employer would have a legitimate claim, and in Malpas case they didn't, but the line between your time and the companies time is not always clear-cut... particularly as one of the arguments managers, consultants, and probably every other well-paid professional uses to justify their large salaries is that they don't work nine-to-five but are willing to take their work home with them. Probably a better division is between 'working on the employer's projects' and 'working in your free time on projects in an unrelated field'
Seems to be the one here
when you're the leader of the free world...The world looks to America for leadership and sacrifice (no, not the whole world, but most of it).
Appointed leader by whom? Accountable to whom? This strange delusion that America has a divine mission to 'save the world' and that every other nation in the world recognizes this is precisely the reason the rest of the world classes Americans as arrogant. World War II is a particularly bad example of American troops being the 'first to respond' - the USA refused to become involved in the war until it's own interests were threatened (the bombing of Pearl Harbour) - Hitler was primarily stopped by the Soviet Union.
You might be interested to know that this is actually the third Lecter story - the first was the novel Red Dragon, made into the film Manhunter by Michael Mann, the creator of Miami Vice in 1986. Lecter was played by Brian Cox ... although the production seems very eighties in style, it's still as good a film as Silence of the Lambs.
One of the main problems with cheap mics is the self-noise of the mic, along with an inability to capture high frequency detail. But as to your suggestion ... mic response varies with frequency, and also distance from the central axis, so rather than one tuning fork you would want a range of test tones, measured in various locations around the mic ... maybe also responses to transient signals as well. This won't improve signal to noise ratio or improve the clarity of the recording, but it can change the tonal characteristics of the mic - I believe this is more or less the way the mic simulator effect I mentioned works.
Active soundproofing - your system might be useful in removing constant sources of background noise. Unfortunately, background is usually not constant over time - it's the passing car outside, the neighbour slamming a door, the floorboard creaking only when you move - the sound of the hard drive being accessed is particularly annoying, to the extent that some companies are now starting to offer specially soundproofed drives for music use. The algorithm would have to distinguish between instrument sound and unwanted background (perhaps trying determine the origin of the sound a multiple mic setup?) ... not trivial at all.
But anyway, we're talking about the difference between a home recording sound which can, with skill and experience be pretty good, and the slick, polished sound of the pro studio, which record labels and radio stations seem to consider important. Personally, I have no idea why - I think you're absolutely right that increasing numbers of musicians will find the tradeoff of slightly worse quality/much cheaper recording acceptable. It might prevent you from becoming the next Robbie Williams ... but that's not exactly a disaster!
Yep, thanks.