The difference is that most companies have their users or employees sign EULAs or waivers to protect the company from its actions.
So the question becomes -- is Bitcoin mining covered in the E-Sports EULA? If so, no harm and no foul. It still stinks, but legally that should cover them.
'Red Thunder' is a relatively recent series of sci-fi novels by John Varley, written with a young adult audience in mind. Varley avoids the adult content of his usual works -- there's even a character in the book who forbids the children from swearing -- so I'm sure it could pass muster for middle school.
The plot of the books is rich in science content and wonder. An autistic inventor and his brother discover a new power source, and a gang of young kids decide to build a rocket using that power so that they can be the first on Mars. There's a lot of opportunity in this book for teaching kids about air pressure, spaceflight, and the logistics of building a (small) space program.
Here's a link to a bunch of reviews of Red Thunder. I have not yet red the sequels so I can't vouch for whether they'd be okay for middle school students, but I believe Varley intended the entire series to be teenager-friendly. (You might want to warn them that the rest of Varley's books can be very adult, however.)
I also wanted to recommend The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Heinlein. It has excellent science content, from how rocks thrown off the moon can become deadly missiles when they fall to Earth, to moon base design, radar techniques, and AI. The only problem is that I can't remember how much sexual content there is in the book. I know there's some discussion of bigamy, but I forget what is and is not shown.
Note to moderators: If you feel the urge to moderate this, please do not hit the 'Funny' button. As ridiculous as it sounds, I am being completely serious:
I would like to see a Brony political party.
The planks of such a party would be the same as those that keep Equestria running well: The Elements of Harmony. Each of the elements are concepts that we need very badly in American politics right now:
Honesty -- Transparency and accountability should be a cornerstone of any government. Kindness -- The purpose of government should be to help the poor and disadvantaged. The rich do not need help. Loyalty -- Politicians should be loyal to their constituents and to America, not to corporate lobbies or foreign investors. Generosity -- Liberal use of government power is good when such intervention is requested. Be generous and quick to help those who ask for it, but do not interfere with industries or states unless absolutely necessary. Laughter -- A political candidate and party should be able to laugh at themselves. Not a consideration for governing, but it would help immensely with the dreadful campaign season.
I would *love* to see the Elements of Harmony adopted by a political party. I feel they are well thought-out principles for a just and harmonious society, and out current political system has gotten very far from any harmonious ideal.
I used to believe that I had EM hypersensitivity. Whenever I turned on the wireless hub in my home for visitors, I got a headache. But I forced myself to leave it on, and after a while I realized that it had no effect on me. If anything it was the blinking blue and red lights on the hub that were causing my headaches. I covered those up and have been living happily with a wireless network for years, now.
Psychology is stronger than science. If you believe in something it will become true for you, and your belief can be passed to others if you preach about it. I think EM hypersensitivity is a psychosomatic illness, but that's not to minimize how disruptive it can be to the individual.
On the other hand, bees are small and have antennae, so I can easily believe that they are sensitive to EM effects. More study needs to be done here.
HiRISE has 0.3 meter resolution, so about 100x that of the Landsat sensors. However, HiRISE only has three bands -- green-blue, red, and a near-IR band. The new LDCM satellite has 12 bands, so it collects a lot more spectral information.
Spatial resolution is easy. Spy satellites have had absurd spatial resolution for decades. Spectral bandwidth is hard.
The first Lunar image was yesterday (3/26). It's pretty cool from a calibration standpoint, but don't expect to ever see that image. It's not meant for public consumption, and most people wouldn't consider it a very good snapshot of the moon. It's stretched and the image is small so not many details can be seen. As a calibration source, however, it's exactly what we wanted.
Landsat takes images in several infrared bands -- a chlorophyll band, two shortwave IR bands, and with the new instrument we have a cirrus band, a shallow water coastal ultraviolet band, and two thermal IR bands as well. This is not a instrument designed for mapmakers or Google pictures (although it can be used for them.) This is a scientific instrument, and it will help us see where vegetation is damaged, where crops are ripe, what is happening to coral reefs, and the effects of climate change all around the globe.
Analogy: If normal Google map pictures are made with a camera, you can consider Landsat images to be made with a Star Trek-like planet scanner. 'Scan for life/minerals/fire' is something Landsat can do that normal cameras can not.
Landsat doesn't blur any images it collects. But it only collects at 15 meter resolution, at max. So yes, you can see Area 51 in Landsat images, but not at any detail that will affect national security.
These pictures continue our 40-year record of watching the Earth. Because Landsat has such a complete record, we gain a lot of understanding about how the Earth changes with the seasons and over time. LDCM will enable us to continue that record out into the future. So yes, these pictures will help a lot.
Disclaimer: I work on the LDCM project, and in fact I created that first PR image. It's a shame they chose Colorado because the OLI (Operational Land Imager) instrument was built there. We are looking at some stunning images, and the new data this instrument is collecting will knock scientists' socks off for years to come.
My apologies -- that pricing is what I see at NetVibes. These Reader replacements are starting to blur together in my mind. I may have to pace my evaluation of them, so that I don't get confused.
(Also apologizing for the unterminated bold text.:) )
I have a confession to make. I'm forbidden from surfing the web at work, so I SSH into my own BSD shell account and browse using Lynx. Yes, Lynx, the text-only web browser. It's surprisingly functional on a lot of websites, and for some bizarre reason Google Reader has a page optimized for Lynx. 80-90% of my RSS reading is through a text-only browser.
I don't see any other services meeting that need. Feedly, or any other 'app', is a non-starter. All the services I've tried so far do not work under Lynx. I think it's the end of text-only web browsing for me -- for the entire world, in fact. That's a shame; text-only browsing is much faster, and with the ability to pipe web pages to Linux commands there's a lot of power there as well.
I feel that a subtle and powerful knowledge is passing from this world.
That's great if you only read your feeds from one machine. I use five (home PC running Windows and Opera, Android Tablet running Chrome, Android Tablet running Dolphin, Work PC running Windows and Firefox, and remote BSD account on which I websurf using Lynx. Yes, goddamnit, Lynx.)
A web-based RSS reader is necessary if you use multiple machines and OSes.
I'm with you. I was a big user of Bloglines, then Reader, and never saw a big reason to use Twitter, G+, or Facebook.
This seems to me to be a symptom of the Old Guard/New User syndrome. We in the Old Guard used power tools on the Internet -- shell accounts, news aggregators, Usenet, etc. Those power tools are no longer being supported because the New Users want social networking and pretty graphics.
All I can say that if they try to take away my shell account I will blackout the Eastern Seaboard. Don't think I can't. Don't underestimate the power of the shell side.:)
I'd glady pay $12-$36 per year for a good Reader alternative (or for Reader itself.)
However Newsblur Premium, if I'm reading the web page correctly, looks like it costs $500.00 / month. I assume it's priced like that for professional news organizations. That's wayyyy outside of my price range.
Feedly requires the use of gestures on any tablet or phone. Everything is done with swiping, with a difference between long and short swipes. I don't trust gesture commands on a screen as small as my phone, and I hate gestures in general. (Oh, why have we strayed from the almighty command line?)
Actually, Blizzard did want players to continue playing D3, because they received a cut of every real-money transaction in their marketplace. That was a secondary source of income for Blizzard.
Hopefully enough players have quit that game to send a signal that they need to design a good game first, and not spend all their time figuring out how to connect a vacuum hose to their player's wallets.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference is that most companies have their users or employees sign EULAs or waivers to protect the company from its actions.
So the question becomes -- is Bitcoin mining covered in the E-Sports EULA? If so, no harm and no foul. It still stinks, but legally that should cover them.
What's preventing us -- normal people -- from doing the same thing with corporate-created images? Just the threat of lawyers?
It seems to me that watermarking is about to be much more prevalent. That's the only way to make metadata that can't easily be stripped off.
'Red Thunder' is a relatively recent series of sci-fi novels by John Varley, written with a young adult audience in mind. Varley avoids the adult content of his usual works -- there's even a character in the book who forbids the children from swearing -- so I'm sure it could pass muster for middle school.
The plot of the books is rich in science content and wonder. An autistic inventor and his brother discover a new power source, and a gang of young kids decide to build a rocket using that power so that they can be the first on Mars. There's a lot of opportunity in this book for teaching kids about air pressure, spaceflight, and the logistics of building a (small) space program.
Here's a link to a bunch of reviews of Red Thunder. I have not yet red the sequels so I can't vouch for whether they'd be okay for middle school students, but I believe Varley intended the entire series to be teenager-friendly. (You might want to warn them that the rest of Varley's books can be very adult, however.)
I also wanted to recommend The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Heinlein. It has excellent science content, from how rocks thrown off the moon can become deadly missiles when they fall to Earth, to moon base design, radar techniques, and AI. The only problem is that I can't remember how much sexual content there is in the book. I know there's some discussion of bigamy, but I forget what is and is not shown.
I'm not proposing we adopt all of Equestria's model of governance, just that some of their ideas would help what we have now.
That said, I'd vote for Celestia if she ran for president of America. no question.
Note to moderators: If you feel the urge to moderate this, please do not hit the 'Funny' button. As ridiculous as it sounds, I am being completely serious:
I would like to see a Brony political party.
The planks of such a party would be the same as those that keep Equestria running well: The Elements of Harmony. Each of the elements are concepts that we need very badly in American politics right now:
Honesty -- Transparency and accountability should be a cornerstone of any government.
Kindness -- The purpose of government should be to help the poor and disadvantaged. The rich do not need help.
Loyalty -- Politicians should be loyal to their constituents and to America, not to corporate lobbies or foreign investors.
Generosity -- Liberal use of government power is good when such intervention is requested. Be generous and quick to help those who ask for it, but do not interfere with industries or states unless absolutely necessary.
Laughter -- A political candidate and party should be able to laugh at themselves. Not a consideration for governing, but it would help immensely with the dreadful campaign season.
I would *love* to see the Elements of Harmony adopted by a political party. I feel they are well thought-out principles for a just and harmonious society, and out current political system has gotten very far from any harmonious ideal.
I used to believe that I had EM hypersensitivity. Whenever I turned on the wireless hub in my home for visitors, I got a headache. But I forced myself to leave it on, and after a while I realized that it had no effect on me. If anything it was the blinking blue and red lights on the hub that were causing my headaches. I covered those up and have been living happily with a wireless network for years, now.
Psychology is stronger than science. If you believe in something it will become true for you, and your belief can be passed to others if you preach about it. I think EM hypersensitivity is a psychosomatic illness, but that's not to minimize how disruptive it can be to the individual.
On the other hand, bees are small and have antennae, so I can easily believe that they are sensitive to EM effects. More study needs to be done here.
HiRISE has 0.3 meter resolution, so about 100x that of the Landsat sensors. However, HiRISE only has three bands -- green-blue, red, and a near-IR band. The new LDCM satellite has 12 bands, so it collects a lot more spectral information.
Spatial resolution is easy. Spy satellites have had absurd spatial resolution for decades. Spectral bandwidth is hard.
The first Lunar image was yesterday (3/26). It's pretty cool from a calibration standpoint, but don't expect to ever see that image. It's not meant for public consumption, and most people wouldn't consider it a very good snapshot of the moon. It's stretched and the image is small so not many details can be seen. As a calibration source, however, it's exactly what we wanted.
Landsat takes images in several infrared bands -- a chlorophyll band, two shortwave IR bands, and with the new instrument we have a cirrus band, a shallow water coastal ultraviolet band, and two thermal IR bands as well. This is not a instrument designed for mapmakers or Google pictures (although it can be used for them.) This is a scientific instrument, and it will help us see where vegetation is damaged, where crops are ripe, what is happening to coral reefs, and the effects of climate change all around the globe.
Analogy: If normal Google map pictures are made with a camera, you can consider Landsat images to be made with a Star Trek-like planet scanner. 'Scan for life/minerals/fire' is something Landsat can do that normal cameras can not.
Landsat doesn't blur any images it collects. But it only collects at 15 meter resolution, at max. So yes, you can see Area 51 in Landsat images, but not at any detail that will affect national security.
These pictures continue our 40-year record of watching the Earth. Because Landsat has such a complete record, we gain a lot of understanding about how the Earth changes with the seasons and over time. LDCM will enable us to continue that record out into the future. So yes, these pictures will help a lot.
Disclaimer: I work on the LDCM project, and in fact I created that first PR image. It's a shame they chose Colorado because the OLI (Operational Land Imager) instrument was built there. We are looking at some stunning images, and the new data this instrument is collecting will knock scientists' socks off for years to come.
Ah yes, you don't like your inanimate object blamed, so you want to push the blame off on some other inanimate object.
How about we just blame the person?
The problem here is that it is very difficult to ban people.
I know, right? Best as I can figure, it happened sometime in 2010, but I still can't wrap my brain around it.
If this research pans out then the 2020s might become the Jurassic era. Then you'll really see some heads spin.
Government installation -- cellphones at my office get zero reception. There's too much concrete and faraday cages around me.
My apologies -- that pricing is what I see at NetVibes. These Reader replacements are starting to blur together in my mind. I may have to pace my evaluation of them, so that I don't get confused.
(Also apologizing for the unterminated bold text. :) )
I have a confession to make. I'm forbidden from surfing the web at work, so I SSH into my own BSD shell account and browse using Lynx. Yes, Lynx, the text-only web browser. It's surprisingly functional on a lot of websites, and for some bizarre reason Google Reader has a page optimized for Lynx. 80-90% of my RSS reading is through a text-only browser.
I don't see any other services meeting that need. Feedly, or any other 'app', is a non-starter. All the services I've tried so far do not work under Lynx. I think it's the end of text-only web browsing for me -- for the entire world, in fact. That's a shame; text-only browsing is much faster, and with the ability to pipe web pages to Linux commands there's a lot of power there as well.
I feel that a subtle and powerful knowledge is passing from this world.
That's great if you only read your feeds from one machine. I use five (home PC running Windows and Opera, Android Tablet running Chrome, Android Tablet running Dolphin, Work PC running Windows and Firefox, and remote BSD account on which I websurf using Lynx. Yes, goddamnit, Lynx.)
A web-based RSS reader is necessary if you use multiple machines and OSes.
I'm with you. I was a big user of Bloglines, then Reader, and never saw a big reason to use Twitter, G+, or Facebook.
This seems to me to be a symptom of the Old Guard/New User syndrome. We in the Old Guard used power tools on the Internet -- shell accounts, news aggregators, Usenet, etc. Those power tools are no longer being supported because the New Users want social networking and pretty graphics.
All I can say that if they try to take away my shell account I will blackout the Eastern Seaboard. Don't think I can't. Don't underestimate the power of the shell side. :)
I'd glady pay $12-$36 per year for a good Reader alternative (or for Reader itself.)
However Newsblur Premium, if I'm reading the web page correctly, looks like it costs $500.00 / month. I assume it's priced like that for professional news organizations. That's wayyyy outside of my price range.
Feedly requires the use of gestures on any tablet or phone. Everything is done with swiping, with a difference between long and short swipes. I don't trust gesture commands on a screen as small as my phone, and I hate gestures in general. (Oh, why have we strayed from the almighty command line?)
Actually, Blizzard did want players to continue playing D3, because they received a cut of every real-money transaction in their marketplace. That was a secondary source of income for Blizzard.
Hopefully enough players have quit that game to send a signal that they need to design a good game first, and not spend all their time figuring out how to connect a vacuum hose to their player's wallets.
His story wasn't rejected by the corporation. The consumers caused an uproar that would have hurt business. This is capitalism at work.
Now, if you take a logical leap you might conclude that 'capitalism at work' is 'the end of democracy'. Then you might be onto something.
If you're tossing the old ladies across the street in a parabolic arc, I don't think that qualifies as 'helping'.
If he was a really brilliant microbiologist, death wouldn't have stopped him.