If a DNA scanner relies on trade secrets on how it works then that is a serious problem. On the other hand, if it relies on patents and methods that have passed through some sort of peer review then there is no problem. The issue here is secrecy. If a person is charged with a crime and is presumed to be innocent then the proof that a crime was committed relies on how that proof was obtained and not a government or commercial agency who says "trust me."
This is an argument for a strong patent system that actually works. That is people in the patent office perform a real peer review on specific applications of technology.
You betcha! After 6000 years the life will come to worship us as their creators just as we worship the dude from Jupiter who terra-formed earth. It's like having your own pet, but they can feed themselves! It would be the best of both worlds.
Not to mention the upcoming movie with Russel Crowe as the private eye who goes deep underground to catch these murderous thugs. Hours of film with Mr. Crowe staring at a computer screen typing away with his shirt off while chatting with the evil villian played by some totally hot babe also sitting at a computer. So not only do the cops and robbers evolve but so does our entertainment industry. I can't wait...
Yeah it's easy to say that after you hear what someone else did. But take note from the article:
The technique seems especially outdated now that computers and technology have become such a normal part of everyday life, Naomi Baron, an American University Latest News about American University linguistics professor told the Post-Intelligencer.
This took someone with one of them thar pee-ach-dee's to figure this thing out. So don't be so smug!
How do you define a "student." I didn't see it in the FAQ. Do you have to be enrolled in an accredited program as a full time student? Can I take a class at the local community college and call myself a student?
You joke, but... I once worked at one of our governments lab and shared an office with a biologist who liked to take lunch walks on the grounds. He occasionally came back with plants that he picked wondering what they were. One day he came back with a plant that he had never seen. When he looked it up he found that it was on the state's endangered species list! He was quite distressed, but was glad to find that it wasn't on the federal list. Fortunately, the state list didn't mean much, and it was quite common in the neighboring state where it was considered a weed.
Needless to say, he was much more careful from then on.
I actually tried this *once*. It seemed like a great idea on paper. I would train people to do something useful, and they could go to potential employers and pretend to have some sort of useful experience.
It was awful, and I will never do it again. I ended up spending all my time fixing stupid mistakes, and it was more work than just doing it myself. Especially since the ultiumate solution was to convert to linux, and set up a server to dish out rpm's and schedule updates via crontabs.
uhmmm... it seems that many of us here are quite eager committ the same sin and out people explicitly. I've prepared an equivalent statement below only using aliases to protect the people involved:
"Selma and Patty Simpson have resigned from their positions at the Springfield Linux Gazette. They sited differences between themselves and their boss, Mr. C.M. Burns. When Burns was asked about an article written by Side Show Bob which identified local nuicance Bart Simpson, Burns was quoted as saying, "Excellent." Ironically, Side Show Bob's article and the resulting attention has only served to promote Bart Simpson as an icon well beyond the confines of our dear Springfield."
When Turner first acknowledged problems with the O'gara article he used some weasel words and stopped short of apologizing. I was critical of him and his staff, but now he has really stepped up to the plate and did the right thing. It will certainly be a costly action on his part, and he has shown a lot of class and integrity. I was critical of him before, but I was wrong.
Kudos to a group of people who made a difficult decision and did the right thing.
as we believe that all creatures were created by god, and any effigy of a creature (ie. created by man & science) is an abomination against christ.
I realize that you were trying to be funny, but in some parts of Kansas large, pink, fuzzy poodles are considered the work of satan. Then again, so are a lot of other things... but the poodle thing I can understand.
The encounter, at roughly 23,000 mph, is expected to kick up dust and leave behind a large crater, though scientists don't know for sure just what will happen since they have never attempted anything like this before.
I couldn't find anything in either article about the instrementation other than that they have cameras. Is that the only thing they've got? If so, then an image won't be able to do anything than generate more questions and add little insight. Besides, at these speeds they will be something like 1/2 mile out when the last picture is taken.
Unfortunately, it is not so easy. First and foremost, change is hard. *ANY* change causes discomfort. In this case you have some people turned into ad hoc system admins out of necessity rather than desire who will have to install a new piece of software in a heterogeneous environment. The admins will not be happy.
Second, openoffice may not support Office formats in the future. Add the expectation that everybody in these people's world do not think twice when assuming that everybody must be able to deal with office files.
Finally, openoffice does not look exactly like nor does it print out exactly like office. For example, some documents that are on one page in office might be 2 pages in openoffice. When it comes to processing cover sheets this is bad bad bad!
When computers become something that people understand rather than have to put up with then your arguments will hold true.
Actually, I wonder if any movement that is instigated over something as worn out as the "current state of Trek" will doom this thing for the long term future. I doubt that any studio watching this will want to get mixed up with the passions generated by people who can motivate the quote from the article below. When the studio execs decide to cut and run from a series, especially an expensive one like a sci-fi show, the last thing they would want to do is have to deal with the people who are just a little bit too wrapped up in a teevee show for their own good. It's a no win proposition.
TrekUnited is now looking into the future and will continue to explore other means of bringing back Star Trek: Enterprise or another series. In light of Paramount's rejection of our current proposal, the campaign will restructure itself and discuss future approaches. We believe that in any case, we have shown and want to keep showing that Star Trek lives on through the fans, their optimistic vision of the future, and their commitment to make a difference, together. We will build upon our achievements of uniting fans world-wide in the past two months and intend to continue to establish a global fan organization and uplifting community for all Star Trek fans.
MS doesn't like OSS in the retail/commerical industry - which this is not.
Actually, Microsoft has never said that open source is bad for commercial work. They have consistently said that BSD type licenses are fine but GPL is bad. The problem that they have with the GPL is that they feel that it can pollute other projects that touch it. (I like to think of this as the "clingy" theory of the GPL.)
Microsoft is right about what the GPL does, but they are wrong to think that it kills business. ALthough, it might put a dent into their business model.
If you want to argue with Microsoft you have to at least understand what they are saying and why. Otherwise it just comes down to two separate hissy fits....
Judging from all the links on slashdot to groklaw I just assumed that groklaw is the legal section. Groklaw usually has the legal stories first with better commentary from a person who has a pretty good idea of the law. (Not that that ever mattered on slashdot...)
Cable is not entirely free of local government influence. Many cable operators are granted special privileges by local governments and in return accept some (okay few) restrictions such as price controls (supposedly). The cable operators want to work out deals with local governments that give them a monopoly but do not want government restrictions. They shouldn't be able to have it both ways. Either they are free from the government or they are not.
Having said this, this is loco in that it is a federal mandate and not local. I am assuming that this guy probaly calls himself a "conservative." That word doesn't seem to mean the same thing I was told back when I was young...
Way back when... I had a PHB who was just learning how to use a workstation and had not used a mouse before. He was actually a very bright guy, and he taught himself how to use the machine. One day we were watching him and one of us said, "You know if you turn the mouse around and use it the other way it is a bit more intuitive." He turned the mouse around and was quite happy with the results.
Moral of the story: Don't assume that people can just play with something and get it correct. People have an enormous capacity to compensate for their own ignorance.
Actually this quote was way off base. The director of the scientific computing/applied math program at Columbia has a set of graphs he uses in his talks. One graph demonstrates the computational power as a function of time due to hardware advances. The other demonstrates the time it takes to invert large, linear systems over time due to advances in mathematics. Over time the mathematicians are doing as good as or better than the hardware advances. The conclusion is that we can't solve the big problems without investing both in hardware and algorithm development.
Is this news? These things have been heavily promoted by Oakley all summer. For example, if you watched any of the tour de france coverage you would have seen cyclists wearing them. Putting the story here is just one more way to get free publicity.
Then again, I'm just pissed that Oakley hasnt given me a free pair yet...
Three Stanford professors serve on Oracle's board of directors, and CEO Larry Ellison has pledged $10 million to the university as director of the Ellison Medical Foundation. Across San Francisco Bay behind a range of hills is PeopleSoft, which has been fighting Oracle's hostile takeover attempt for the last year.
Seems like there is a bit of a conflict of interest on all sides here. Big surprise that this is an expensive bust...
You are probaly right which is a shame. When I was just a lad everybody used hp calculators with rpn. In our calculus class I do not remember anyone having a problem with the chain rule. The idea of a composite function was almost inate partly because of the way you enter equations into an rpn calculator.
I teach calculus to students who use the TI, and so many more students just do not get the chain rule. It is amazing. Moreover, it is damn near impossible to try to connect the idea to the way they think about functions and the way they key them into the calculator. The tools we use really can constrain the way we think, and rpn calculators really make you back up and rethink what a function is.
Once we finalize our design and we determine exactly which open source code we will use, we will then disclose the nature and extent of the Open Source and free code that is used.
Shouldn't they be keeping track of this sort of thing as they go. This isn't going to help fight the view that open software is like the wild west with little regard to "intellectual" property. (Is that property owned by self absorbed smart people?)
Slashdot Mirror
If a DNA scanner relies on trade secrets on how it works then that is a serious problem. On the other hand, if it relies on patents and methods that have passed through some sort of peer review then there is no problem. The issue here is secrecy. If a person is charged with a crime and is presumed to be innocent then the proof that a crime was committed relies on how that proof was obtained and not a government or commercial agency who says "trust me."
This is an argument for a strong patent system that actually works. That is people in the patent office perform a real peer review on specific applications of technology.
You betcha! After 6000 years the life will come to worship us as their creators just as we worship the dude from Jupiter who terra-formed earth. It's like having your own pet, but they can feed themselves! It would be the best of both worlds.
Not to mention the upcoming movie with Russel Crowe as the private eye who goes deep underground to catch these murderous thugs. Hours of film with Mr. Crowe staring at a computer screen typing away with his shirt off while chatting with the evil villian played by some totally hot babe also sitting at a computer. So not only do the cops and robbers evolve but so does our entertainment industry. I can't wait...
This took someone with one of them thar pee-ach-dee's to figure this thing out. So don't be so smug!
How do you define a "student." I didn't see it in the FAQ. Do you have to be enrolled in an accredited program as a full time student? Can I take a class at the local community college and call myself a student?
Actually, I was wondering if I could get one those unscramble thingies so that I could figure out what my PHB was saying. Or do I really want to know?
You joke, but... I once worked at one of our governments lab and shared an office with a biologist who liked to take lunch walks on the grounds. He occasionally came back with plants that he picked wondering what they were. One day he came back with a plant that he had never seen. When he looked it up he found that it was on the state's endangered species list! He was quite distressed, but was glad to find that it wasn't on the federal list. Fortunately, the state list didn't mean much, and it was quite common in the neighboring state where it was considered a weed.
Needless to say, he was much more careful from then on.
Okay... So besides
internet browsers,
web servers,
perl,
mail,
spam filtering,
open protocols like tc/pip,
hell, the web as we know it,
and ssl,
what has open source done for us? Nothing!
</Pythonesque>
I actually tried this *once*. It seemed like a great idea on paper. I would train people to do something useful, and they could go to potential employers and pretend to have some sort of useful experience.
It was awful, and I will never do it again. I ended up spending all my time fixing stupid mistakes, and it was more work than just doing it myself. Especially since the ultiumate solution was to convert to linux, and set up a server to dish out rpm's and schedule updates via crontabs.
uhmmm... it seems that many of us here are quite eager committ the same sin and out people explicitly. I've prepared an equivalent statement below only using aliases to protect the people involved:
"Selma and Patty Simpson have resigned from their positions at the Springfield Linux Gazette. They sited differences between themselves and their boss, Mr. C.M. Burns. When Burns was asked about an article written by Side Show Bob which identified local nuicance Bart Simpson, Burns was quoted as saying, "Excellent." Ironically, Side Show Bob's article and the resulting attention has only served to promote Bart Simpson as an icon well beyond the confines of our dear Springfield."
When Turner first acknowledged problems with the O'gara article he used some weasel words and stopped short of apologizing. I was critical of him and his staff, but now he has really stepped up to the plate and did the right thing. It will certainly be a costly action on his part, and he has shown a lot of class and integrity. I was critical of him before, but I was wrong.
Kudos to a group of people who made a difficult decision and did the right thing.
I couldn't find anything in either article about the instrementation other than that they have cameras. Is that the only thing they've got? If so, then an image won't be able to do anything than generate more questions and add little insight. Besides, at these speeds they will be something like 1/2 mile out when the last picture is taken.
Unfortunately, it is not so easy. First and foremost, change is hard. *ANY* change causes discomfort. In this case you have some people turned into ad hoc system admins out of necessity rather than desire who will have to install a new piece of software in a heterogeneous environment. The admins will not be happy.
Second, openoffice may not support Office formats in the future. Add the expectation that everybody in these people's world do not think twice when assuming that everybody must be able to deal with office files.
Finally, openoffice does not look exactly like nor does it print out exactly like office. For example, some documents that are on one page in office might be 2 pages in openoffice. When it comes to processing cover sheets this is bad bad bad!
When computers become something that people understand rather than have to put up with then your arguments will hold true.
Please send all donations to capt.Hij@slashdot.org on paypal.com.
Actually, Microsoft has never said that open source is bad for commercial work. They have consistently said that BSD type licenses are fine but GPL is bad. The problem that they have with the GPL is that they feel that it can pollute other projects that touch it. (I like to think of this as the "clingy" theory of the GPL.)
Microsoft is right about what the GPL does, but they are wrong to think that it kills business. ALthough, it might put a dent into their business model.
If you want to argue with Microsoft you have to at least understand what they are saying and why. Otherwise it just comes down to two separate hissy fits....
Judging from all the links on slashdot to groklaw I just assumed that groklaw is the legal section. Groklaw usually has the legal stories first with better commentary from a person who has a pretty good idea of the law. (Not that that ever mattered on slashdot...)
Cable is not entirely free of local government influence. Many cable operators are granted special privileges by local governments and in return accept some (okay few) restrictions such as price controls (supposedly). The cable operators want to work out deals with local governments that give them a monopoly but do not want government restrictions. They shouldn't be able to have it both ways. Either they are free from the government or they are not.
Having said this, this is loco in that it is a federal mandate and not local. I am assuming that this guy probaly calls himself a "conservative." That word doesn't seem to mean the same thing I was told back when I was young...
Way back when... I had a PHB who was just learning how to use a workstation and had not used a mouse before. He was actually a very bright guy, and he taught himself how to use the machine. One day we were watching him and one of us said, "You know if you turn the mouse around and use it the other way it is a bit more intuitive." He turned the mouse around and was quite happy with the results.
Moral of the story: Don't assume that people can just play with something and get it correct. People have an enormous capacity to compensate for their own ignorance.
Actually this quote was way off base. The director of the scientific computing/applied math program at Columbia has a set of graphs he uses in his talks. One graph demonstrates the computational power as a function of time due to hardware advances. The other demonstrates the time it takes to invert large, linear systems over time due to advances in mathematics. Over time the mathematicians are doing as good as or better than the hardware advances. The conclusion is that we can't solve the big problems without investing both in hardware and algorithm development.
Is this news? These things have been heavily promoted by Oakley all summer. For example, if you watched any of the tour de france coverage you would have seen cyclists wearing them. Putting the story here is just one more way to get free publicity.
Then again, I'm just pissed that Oakley hasnt given me a free pair yet...
Three Stanford professors serve on Oracle's board of directors, and CEO Larry Ellison has pledged $10 million to the university as director of the Ellison Medical Foundation. Across San Francisco Bay behind a range of hills is PeopleSoft, which has been fighting Oracle's hostile takeover attempt for the last year.
Seems like there is a bit of a conflict of interest on all sides here. Big surprise that this is an expensive bust...
You are probaly right which is a shame. When I was just a lad everybody used hp calculators with rpn. In our calculus class I do not remember anyone having a problem with the chain rule. The idea of a composite function was almost inate partly because of the way you enter equations into an rpn calculator.
I teach calculus to students who use the TI, and so many more students just do not get the chain rule. It is amazing. Moreover, it is damn near impossible to try to connect the idea to the way they think about functions and the way they key them into the calculator. The tools we use really can constrain the way we think, and rpn calculators really make you back up and rethink what a function is.
Once we finalize our design and we determine exactly which open source code we will use, we will then disclose the nature and extent of the Open Source and free code that is used.
Shouldn't they be keeping track of this sort of thing as they go. This isn't going to help fight the view that open software is like the wild west with little regard to "intellectual" property. (Is that property owned by self absorbed smart people?)