If there are already crowds around you, then you have no expectation of privacy
On the contrary, I'd say that everyone has an expectation that their day-to-day public activities are reasonably anonymous. In other words, you expect that it would be difficult for someone to know exactly how you spent your entire day, and that they would have to go to the expense of hiring one or more people to follow you to obtain this information (similar to how you expect privacy in your home, even though someone can spy through a window using binoculars.
The problem is that security cameras, combined with face-recognition software, makes it possible to automatically track a large number of people. Think cookies and web bugs, only for real life, and you can't turn them off. Worried yet?
Will it be GPL'd? Does that mean that if I print out the article on Phylum Nematoda and hand it in for my Biology report, I have to GPL my report card?
What if I just use a bit of the information in a report? Must it be GPL'd?
...from Steve Jobs to spell serious trouble for Linux:
"Release Mac OS X for x86"
The Mach kernel is very cross-platform, and Apple already has Mac OS X running on x86 in their labs. Only minor tweaking and testing and the Word Of Jobs stand between it and shipping.
Will it happen? Depends on whether Motorola can deliver on faster CPUs. If not, Apple has no choice.
You're quite wrong, I'd say. Mac OS X is Unix, perhaps more so even than Linux (it is based on BSD, which, for nitpickers, is more Unix than Linux). You can drop into the shell, and you'll barely even know it's Mac OS X, aside from the somewhat different directory structure. Also, the Mach kernel is cross-platform, and, indeed, deep in the Apple labs, Mac OS X is running on Intel hardware.
This is the real threat to Linux--Mac OS X for x86. Suddenly, you have an OS that does everything Linux does and can even run Linux binaries (thanks to BSD Linux-binary compatibilty), and has a nice GUI. Three things stand in the way:
1) Steve Jobs. If he doesn't like it, it will get "Steved".
2) Minor performance tweaking and testing.
3) A deal with Insignia Solutions to license Virtual PC code and create Red Box (an environment in which Windows apps can run).
For many years, auto insurance has cost more for men than for women. Insurance companies discriminate on the basis of whether you have a Y chromosome. Is this somehow different than what we call "genetic discrimination" now?
Only in one respect--you can determine someone's sex without performing a genetic test. Still, people have no control over surrendering information about their sex, nor can they determine it.
If it's OK to discriminate for car insurance on the basis of sex, why not health insurance on the basis of other factors?
The privacy commisioner position was probably created after that HRDC (Human Resources Development Canada) scandal where it was discovered that the government had been collecting a huge database of personal information. HRDC was also involved in another scandal where they lost a billion dollars (yes, they have no idea where it went). The database was ultimately disbanded, but....
Let me get this straight--government in France does something stupid, and you use this as evidence that corporations are evil? This is a recurring theme on Slashdot--government does something evil, at the behest of a corporation, and we blame corporations for wanting something in their own interest, not government for caving in. This is completely ass-backwards.
The solution to these kinds of stupid laws (DMCA, UCITA, etc.) is not socialism/communism and more government. It's campaign finance reform so that nobody can buy off politicians, and less government. We have to enforce separation of government and corporate interests. If corporations are disbarred from forming high-powered lobby groups or making huge "soft money" campaign contributions, their power over government will evaporate.
Remember, without government co-operation, the worst a corporation can do is make crappy products you don't have to buy. It's the government that has the power of the gun, and thus the government that people should fear most.
The difference between Capitalism and Socialism is that Capitalism allows you to choose which bastards fuck you over. With socialism, it's always the government screwing you.
As we all know, the government doesn't do anything well, so being screwed by them is like bad sex with the same partner for your whole life... Capitalism at least allows you to try some different partners and positions for being fucked over.
...to see such a sweet OS crippled by lack of proper GUI design.
This is obviously a troll. So is this:
Its really sad to see such a sweet machine crippled by lack of proper mouse buttons.
When the Slashdot editors insist on trolling on the front page, why do we expect to see rational commentary in the comments area? The recent Hooters link and other total crap posted on/. has shown just how far downhill we've come. The sad thing is that it's the editors that are dragging Slashdot down.
The essence of the difference is that light travels at a constant (damn fast) velocity in a straight line, while smoke diffuses through a volume.
You blow a puff of smoke. For the sake of argument, we'll assume there is a discrete "smoke front", and that, inside this, the smoke is evenly distributed. When the smoke occupies a sphere of radius 1, we'll say the concentration of smoke within the sphere is 1. When it occupies a sphere of radius 2, the concentration has dropped to 1/8.
You emit a pulse of radiation. When it reaches a distance of 1, the power is 1. When it reaches a distance of 2, the power is 1/4.
If you have people smoking in a poorly-ventilated room, the level of smoke exposure is nearly constant, no matter where in the room you are. The same is not true of cell-phone radiation, unless the walls are perfectly reflective of the radiation (not gonna happen).
I agree with this but don't you think that the people carrying out the research thought about it ? The research was done by reputable scientists, I know that doesn't mean that they don't make mistakes but it would surprise me if they overlook stuff like that.
Reputable scientists, like all people, make mistakes. Doing this kind of research and taking into account every variable is almost impossible. All he claimed was there was a correlation, not a cause-and-effect relationship.
No, cigarette smoke does not follow the inverse-square law. Cigarette smoke occupies a volume of space (and drifts according to air currents, etc.), while a radiation pulse occupies a spherical shell (think surface area). Cigarette smoke also persists in the air.
It's also worth noting that the risks of second-hand smoke have apparently been greatly exaggerated. The EPA changed their normal risk threshold for declaring something a dangerous carcinogen with second hand smoke (probably political reasons).
Normally, the threshold is a doubling of risk of cancer over the course of long-term exposure. With long-term exposure to second-hand smoke (i.e. someone living for 40 years with a smoker--a lot more than most people get), the risk is only 1.4 times normal. By comparison, drinking pasteurized milk is, over the course of your lifetime, a higher cancer risk. My source for this is the Wall Street Journal (although not perfect, probably more reliable than the Sunday Times).
Finally, the jury is still out on whether first-hand cell phone radiation causes cancer. Leaping to conclusions about second-hand radiation is incredibly premature.
In short, the inverse square law says that a bystander 1 metre away will receive 0.25% of the radiation of the cell phone use. Read my earlier post for details.
Disclaimer: I'm a physics student. This means I know a bit about the subject, but certainly not everything.
The mechanism by which the radiation might cause cancer is uncertain but it is known that the watery contents of the eye assists the absorption of radiation.
The watery portion of the eye would only experience very mild thermal effects (heating). Microwaves aren't ionizing radiation.
Other research showed that cells called melanocytes found in the uveal layer started growing and dividing more rapidly when exposed to microwave radiation.
Since uveal melanoma starts within such cells, there is a ready-made mechanism by which mobile phone radiation might help to initiate cancer, especially in people with a genetic predisposition to the condition.
This is a poor explanation. If microwaves cause unusual growth rates among the melanocytes, then microwave radiation could act as a promoter, not an initiator, of cancer. Ultraviolet light is both a promoter and an initiator, because it is high-enough energy to ionize DNA molecules and cause mutations. Microwaves are non-ionizing, so there is no known mechanism by which they could act as an initiator.
As for increasing growth rate of melanocytes, this is hardly surprising. Melanocytes reproduce and produce pigment in response to electromagnetic radiation (this is how you tan). It would have to be shown that melanocytes reproduce at an unusually high rate when exposed to microwaves (of the levels emitted by cell phones), as compared with the reproduction rate from exposure to sunlight. In short, until someone shows that melanocytes react more strongly to cell-phone level radiation than to sunlight, this is a straw man.
When the results were analysed they found the cancer victims had a much higher rate of mobile phone use,
They found a correlation. That's not the same as cause-and-effect. One strong factor that many people overlook is socio-economic effects. For instance, perhaps affluent Brits are more likely to own cell phones and more likely to go on vacations to places to sunny places. People who are normally exposed to low levels of ultraviolet light (i.e. Brits) who suddenly find themselves in sunny climates have very little skin pigment, and are much more prone to get cancer-causing sunburns (or perhaps eye damage) than those accustomed to those levels of sun.
though Stang cautions that his study needs confirmation
Good for him. It sounds like he's a responsible scientist who's found a correlation worthy of further increase. He also has at least the beginnings of a mechanism to explain the correlation. Unfortunately, the Sunday Times has done the usual media thing, and overreacted. One study does not a fact make.
Sadly, the lawyers will probably jump all over this. It's not like science, truth, or facts ever had any place in the courts...
Second-hand cell-phone radiation is not a threat, due to the inverse-square law. The cell phone is 5 cm (2") from the user's head, whereas it's probably at least a metre (3'3") from your head. That means you recieve about one quarter of one percent of the radiation the user does. Hardly significant.
Probably wouldn't work. The human body is mostly water, which as you may know, has an incredibly high heat capacity. The laser could cause blindness or moderate burns, but not death. To quote the greatest movie of all time (well...), Blazing Saddles, "Don't shoot him, you'll just make him angry."
We know all about drunk, armed rednecks--we have Alberta. (Think Texas, but colder, and with moose instead of whatever wimpy game you have down there.) We also know what real beer is (hint--it's not that watery stuff you drink).
Besides, your drunk rednecks are just as much of a danger to themselves as to others. We'll just airdrop some strong Canadian Beer beforehand, and they'll all be in a drunken stupor when we arrive.
..this is how we plan to take over Earth. Our spaceborne regiments of hockey-stick armed toothless warriors will plunge towards the Whitehouse and burn it (again) just as the Presidential transition is taking place, eliminating both of your "great leaders". This will leave you with no choice but to bring back Jimmy Carter.
Essentially leaderless, you Americans will be easy pickings for our elite spacedivers. Imagine the surprise advantage of having a regiment of troops show up out of nowhere. Once military objectives have been achieved, we will appropriate your radio stations, and subject you to Canadian content, 24-7. Those Americans who do not kill themselves after two continuous hours of Celine Dion will be given the option of slavery or becoming part of FROG (France Reconnisance Operations Group).
Our next objective will be Buckingham Palace. A quick, effective strike on the Royal Family will destroy the tabloid industry and thus destabilize the world economy. Demoralized and destitute, the rest of the world shall fall beneath the crunch of our hockey skates.
?T-?\s nukes. China has the delivery system to get them to (parts of) the US. China even has them pointed this way. The Chinese government also doesn't give a shit about human life. Hell, one of the army-controlled newspapers there even published a sixteen-page supplement on invading Taiwan, and mentioned using fucking neutron bombs (neutron bombs kill people, leave the building intact). MAD doesn't work if one of the two parties is insane.
It's possible the US could end up in a war with China, (maybe over Taiwan). This is why a missile defense system is a good idea. I have nothing against the Chinese people, and nuking them to punish their government for nuking us would hardly be fair (this is where MAD falls flat). It would be much better to ensure that they can't nuke the US. There are two ways to do that--a first strike, or anti-ballistic missile technology. Which do you prefer?
As for suitcase nukes, those would necessarily be low-yield, and there are quite possibly already measures in place to detect those.
The de Broglie relation tells us that light (and, indeed all matter and radiation) has a momentum equal in magnitude to Planck's constant divided by the wavelength of the radiation/particle (yes, matter has a wavelength).
By my (quick) calculations, if the laser produces a beam at 600nm with 1 gigawatt of power, the beam delivers about 3.3 Newtons of force, assuming the photons are absorbed. If they're reflected, the force increases, but the calculations get slightly messy. A nearly perfectly reflective surface might feel about 6 Newtons... If that's concentrated to a spot 1 cm in diameter, that's about 42,000 Pascals of pressure. Not huge, but nothing to laugh at. There's also that 1 gigawatt of energy...
b) Solar is very cost effective if you allow the companies to charge more for it *and* require people to pay for it when the company provides it. You just need to pass a law which requires people to pay the additional costs for solar AND pay the company and extra 1% or 2% profit on top (multiplied by the percentage of the power which is solar).
I'm not sure I understand--let me try to summarize this. You're saying, "solar is very cost-effective, it just costs more". WTF? Have you no economic sense whatsoever? By the same token, generators run by people on hamster wheels are cost-effective.
Slashdot Mirror
If there are already crowds around you, then you have no expectation of privacy
On the contrary, I'd say that everyone has an expectation that their day-to-day public activities are reasonably anonymous. In other words, you expect that it would be difficult for someone to know exactly how you spent your entire day, and that they would have to go to the expense of hiring one or more people to follow you to obtain this information (similar to how you expect privacy in your home, even though someone can spy through a window using binoculars.
The problem is that security cameras, combined with face-recognition software, makes it possible to automatically track a large number of people. Think cookies and web bugs, only for real life, and you can't turn them off. Worried yet?
That was supposed to be a joke. Guess I'm not as funny as I thought...
Will it be GPL'd? Does that mean that if I print out the article on Phylum Nematoda and hand it in for my Biology report, I have to GPL my report card?
What if I just use a bit of the information in a report? Must it be GPL'd?
...from Steve Jobs to spell serious trouble for Linux:
"Release Mac OS X for x86"
The Mach kernel is very cross-platform, and Apple already has Mac OS X running on x86 in their labs. Only minor tweaking and testing and the Word Of Jobs stand between it and shipping.
Will it happen? Depends on whether Motorola can deliver on faster CPUs. If not, Apple has no choice.
You're quite wrong, I'd say. Mac OS X is Unix, perhaps more so even than Linux (it is based on BSD, which, for nitpickers, is more Unix than Linux). You can drop into the shell, and you'll barely even know it's Mac OS X, aside from the somewhat different directory structure. Also, the Mach kernel is cross-platform, and, indeed, deep in the Apple labs, Mac OS X is running on Intel hardware.
This is the real threat to Linux--Mac OS X for x86. Suddenly, you have an OS that does everything Linux does and can even run Linux binaries (thanks to BSD Linux-binary compatibilty), and has a nice GUI. Three things stand in the way:
1) Steve Jobs. If he doesn't like it, it will get "Steved".
2) Minor performance tweaking and testing.
3) A deal with Insignia Solutions to license Virtual PC code and create Red Box (an environment in which Windows apps can run).
For many years, auto insurance has cost more for men than for women. Insurance companies discriminate on the basis of whether you have a Y chromosome. Is this somehow different than what we call "genetic discrimination" now?
Only in one respect--you can determine someone's sex without performing a genetic test. Still, people have no control over surrendering information about their sex, nor can they determine it.
If it's OK to discriminate for car insurance on the basis of sex, why not health insurance on the basis of other factors?
The privacy commisioner position was probably created after that HRDC (Human Resources Development Canada) scandal where it was discovered that the government had been collecting a huge database of personal information. HRDC was also involved in another scandal where they lost a billion dollars (yes, they have no idea where it went). The database was ultimately disbanded, but....
Let me get this straight--government in France does something stupid, and you use this as evidence that corporations are evil? This is a recurring theme on Slashdot--government does something evil, at the behest of a corporation, and we blame corporations for wanting something in their own interest, not government for caving in. This is completely ass-backwards.
The solution to these kinds of stupid laws (DMCA, UCITA, etc.) is not socialism/communism and more government. It's campaign finance reform so that nobody can buy off politicians, and less government. We have to enforce separation of government and corporate interests. If corporations are disbarred from forming high-powered lobby groups or making huge "soft money" campaign contributions, their power over government will evaporate.
Remember, without government co-operation, the worst a corporation can do is make crappy products you don't have to buy. It's the government that has the power of the gun, and thus the government that people should fear most.
The difference between Capitalism and Socialism is that Capitalism allows you to choose which bastards fuck you over. With socialism, it's always the government screwing you.
As we all know, the government doesn't do anything well, so being screwed by them is like bad sex with the same partner for your whole life... Capitalism at least allows you to try some different partners and positions for being fucked over.
If Rob had actually spent any time using LinuxPPC, he would know that you have many options, such as these:
:-)
a) Get a 3-button USB mouse. It's fully supported.
b) Map control-click and command-click to buttons 2 and 3.
c) Use the CLUI, like a real man
...to see such a sweet OS crippled by lack of proper GUI design.
/. has shown just how far downhill we've come. The sad thing is that it's the editors that are dragging Slashdot down.
This is obviously a troll. So is this:
Its really sad to see such a sweet machine crippled by lack of proper mouse buttons.
When the Slashdot editors insist on trolling on the front page, why do we expect to see rational commentary in the comments area? The recent Hooters link and other total crap posted on
The essence of the difference is that light travels at a constant (damn fast) velocity in a straight line, while smoke diffuses through a volume.
You blow a puff of smoke. For the sake of argument, we'll assume there is a discrete "smoke front", and that, inside this, the smoke is evenly distributed. When the smoke occupies a sphere of radius 1, we'll say the concentration of smoke within the sphere is 1. When it occupies a sphere of radius 2, the concentration has dropped to 1/8.
You emit a pulse of radiation. When it reaches a distance of 1, the power is 1. When it reaches a distance of 2, the power is 1/4.
If you have people smoking in a poorly-ventilated room, the level of smoke exposure is nearly constant, no matter where in the room you are. The same is not true of cell-phone radiation, unless the walls are perfectly reflective of the radiation (not gonna happen).
I agree with this but don't you think that the people carrying out the research thought about it ? The research was done by reputable scientists, I know that doesn't mean that they don't make mistakes but it would surprise me if they overlook stuff like that.
Reputable scientists, like all people, make mistakes. Doing this kind of research and taking into account every variable is almost impossible. All he claimed was there was a correlation, not a cause-and-effect relationship.
No, cigarette smoke does not follow the inverse-square law. Cigarette smoke occupies a volume of space (and drifts according to air currents, etc.), while a radiation pulse occupies a spherical shell (think surface area). Cigarette smoke also persists in the air.
It's also worth noting that the risks of second-hand smoke have apparently been greatly exaggerated. The EPA changed their normal risk threshold for declaring something a dangerous carcinogen with second hand smoke (probably political reasons).
Normally, the threshold is a doubling of risk of cancer over the course of long-term exposure. With long-term exposure to second-hand smoke (i.e. someone living for 40 years with a smoker--a lot more than most people get), the risk is only 1.4 times normal. By comparison, drinking pasteurized milk is, over the course of your lifetime, a higher cancer risk. My source for this is the Wall Street Journal (although not perfect, probably more reliable than the Sunday Times).
Finally, the jury is still out on whether first-hand cell phone radiation causes cancer. Leaping to conclusions about second-hand radiation is incredibly premature.
It sounds like he's a responsible scientist who's found a correlation worthy of further increase.
Uh, that should be research, sorry.
In short, the inverse square law says that a bystander 1 metre away will receive 0.25% of the radiation of the cell phone use. Read my earlier post for details.
Disclaimer: I'm a physics student. This means I know a bit about the subject, but certainly not everything.
The mechanism by which the radiation might cause cancer is uncertain but it is known that the watery contents of the eye assists the absorption of radiation.
The watery portion of the eye would only experience very mild thermal effects (heating). Microwaves aren't ionizing radiation.
Other research showed that cells called melanocytes found in the uveal layer started growing and dividing more rapidly when exposed to microwave radiation.
Since uveal melanoma starts within such cells, there is a ready-made mechanism by which mobile phone radiation might help to initiate cancer, especially in people with a genetic predisposition to the condition.
This is a poor explanation. If microwaves cause unusual growth rates among the melanocytes, then microwave radiation could act as a promoter, not an initiator, of cancer. Ultraviolet light is both a promoter and an initiator, because it is high-enough energy to ionize DNA molecules and cause mutations. Microwaves are non-ionizing, so there is no known mechanism by which they could act as an initiator.
As for increasing growth rate of melanocytes, this is hardly surprising. Melanocytes reproduce and produce pigment in response to electromagnetic radiation (this is how you tan). It would have to be shown that melanocytes reproduce at an unusually high rate when exposed to microwaves (of the levels emitted by cell phones), as compared with the reproduction rate from exposure to sunlight. In short, until someone shows that melanocytes react more strongly to cell-phone level radiation than to sunlight, this is a straw man.
When the results were analysed they found the cancer victims had a much higher rate of mobile phone use,
They found a correlation. That's not the same as cause-and-effect. One strong factor that many people overlook is socio-economic effects. For instance, perhaps affluent Brits are more likely to own cell phones and more likely to go on vacations to places to sunny places. People who are normally exposed to low levels of ultraviolet light (i.e. Brits) who suddenly find themselves in sunny climates have very little skin pigment, and are much more prone to get cancer-causing sunburns (or perhaps eye damage) than those accustomed to those levels of sun.
though Stang cautions that his study needs confirmation
Good for him. It sounds like he's a responsible scientist who's found a correlation worthy of further increase. He also has at least the beginnings of a mechanism to explain the correlation. Unfortunately, the Sunday Times has done the usual media thing, and overreacted. One study does not a fact make.
Sadly, the lawyers will probably jump all over this. It's not like science, truth, or facts ever had any place in the courts...
Second-hand cell-phone radiation is not a threat, due to the inverse-square law. The cell phone is 5 cm (2") from the user's head, whereas it's probably at least a metre (3'3") from your head. That means you recieve about one quarter of one percent of the radiation the user does. Hardly significant.
Probably wouldn't work. The human body is mostly water, which as you may know, has an incredibly high heat capacity. The laser could cause blindness or moderate burns, but not death. To quote the greatest movie of all time (well...), Blazing Saddles, "Don't shoot him, you'll just make him angry."
We know all about drunk, armed rednecks--we have Alberta. (Think Texas, but colder, and with moose instead of whatever wimpy game you have down there.) We also know what real beer is (hint--it's not that watery stuff you drink).
Besides, your drunk rednecks are just as much of a danger to themselves as to others. We'll just airdrop some strong Canadian Beer beforehand, and they'll all be in a drunken stupor when we arrive.
Have you ever seen us play hockey? I rest my case.
..this is how we plan to take over Earth. Our spaceborne regiments of hockey-stick armed toothless warriors will plunge towards the Whitehouse and burn it (again) just as the Presidential transition is taking place, eliminating both of your "great leaders". This will leave you with no choice but to bring back Jimmy Carter.
Essentially leaderless, you Americans will be easy pickings for our elite spacedivers. Imagine the surprise advantage of having a regiment of troops show up out of nowhere. Once military objectives have been achieved, we will appropriate your radio stations, and subject you to Canadian content, 24-7. Those Americans who do not kill themselves after two continuous hours of Celine Dion will be given the option of slavery or becoming part of FROG (France Reconnisance Operations Group).
Our next objective will be Buckingham Palace. A quick, effective strike on the Royal Family will destroy the tabloid industry and thus destabilize the world economy. Demoralized and destitute, the rest of the world shall fall beneath the crunch of our hockey skates.
?T-?\s nukes. China has the delivery system to get them to (parts of) the US. China even has them pointed this way. The Chinese government also doesn't give a shit about human life. Hell, one of the army-controlled newspapers there even published a sixteen-page supplement on invading Taiwan, and mentioned using fucking neutron bombs (neutron bombs kill people, leave the building intact). MAD doesn't work if one of the two parties is insane.
It's possible the US could end up in a war with China, (maybe over Taiwan). This is why a missile defense system is a good idea. I have nothing against the Chinese people, and nuking them to punish their government for nuking us would hardly be fair (this is where MAD falls flat). It would be much better to ensure that they can't nuke the US. There are two ways to do that--a first strike, or anti-ballistic missile technology. Which do you prefer?
As for suitcase nukes, those would necessarily be low-yield, and there are quite possibly already measures in place to detect those.
The de Broglie relation tells us that light (and, indeed all matter and radiation) has a momentum equal in magnitude to Planck's constant divided by the wavelength of the radiation/particle (yes, matter has a wavelength).
By my (quick) calculations, if the laser produces a beam at 600nm with 1 gigawatt of power, the beam delivers about 3.3 Newtons of force, assuming the photons are absorbed. If they're reflected, the force increases, but the calculations get slightly messy. A nearly perfectly reflective surface might feel about 6 Newtons... If that's concentrated to a spot 1 cm in diameter, that's about 42,000 Pascals of pressure. Not huge, but nothing to laugh at. There's also that 1 gigawatt of energy...
b) Solar is very cost effective if you allow the companies to charge more for it *and* require people to pay for it when the company provides it. You just need to pass a law which requires people to pay the additional costs for solar AND pay the company and extra 1% or 2% profit on top (multiplied by the percentage of the power which is solar).
I'm not sure I understand--let me try to summarize this. You're saying, "solar is very cost-effective, it just costs more". WTF? Have you no economic sense whatsoever? By the same token, generators run by people on hamster wheels are cost-effective.