As someone outside the US, with academic friends, I know of quite a few left wing (and not so left wing) academics who are refusing to visit or move to the US while the political climate is as it is. These people object to measures such as compulsory fingerprinting and other things they see as violations of human rights for non-US citizens.
Surely such academics staying in their 'home' countries reduces the lure of the US as a 'brain magnet' and reduces the number of US citations, publications and awards? If it gets too serious is there a the danger that the US will lose its critical mass of overseas brains and never regain it's 'brain magnet' status? Is this an unforseen consequence of the 'war on terror'?
The critical thing is to have a communications system in place, able to distribute these nanodesigns. 'Nanoright holders' will demand that they have exclusive publishing rights on the network. Their claimed reasons will be to prevent 'piracy' and enhance security, while their real reason will be to prevent competition from legitimate alternatives (such as open/free nanotechnology). Getting a 'open' nanomanufactuing plant is only half the battle. The other half is in estabilishing the means to freely share nanodesigns.
But one of the advantages of a book is being able to 'flick' through it at high speed, which would require a high refresh rate. I guess having a search function may alleviate this drawback, but it still wouldn't be as intuitive or as fast (if hopping backwards and forwards). Perhaps 'hopping backwards and forwards' might be solved by having 'memory' buttons or tabs on the screen to memorise positions in the book?
Isn't 'special relativity' just a special case of 'general relativity', as the name implies? That is, general relativity includes constancy of light speed, inertial frames (as a special case) and all the results of special relativity.
What's the bet that Microsoft's next 'TCO Survey' includes a column with a big number in it for Linux and a big fat zero etentered for Windows?
I guess that's what M$'s 50 million bought them. Another phantom 'cost' which they can use as an allegation against Free Software.
I reckon the 'public' won't see past the M$ spin, to appeciate that by its nature Free/Open Software is continually being checked for copyright infringements.
>"Some of the best minds in biotech are in India,"
Given that some of the best minds are overseas, isn't it a tad arrogant to view it all as 'outsourcing'? In some cases, the US is probably buying overseas expertise, which is not available in the US? Consequently, the US is benefiting and learning from India (and others), not the other way around.
Think so? Have you ever done any of the following:
Recorded a television show for personal use,
sworn in public,
waited in the middle of an intersection before turning right,
Jay walked at traffic lights,
Drunk a glass of wine/beer at a picnic in a park or other public place,
Walked out of a bottle shop without having your bottle of wine in an opaque bag?
Yes, all of these are illegal in at least some parts of Australia. The only reason you are not officially a criminal is that the police chose not to enforce the law that day. The day an officer choses to enfore the law, will you use the defence "I did nothing wrong"?
It's quite telling that Pauline Hanson went into gaol a bigot and came out with her eyes opened. Frankly, I think you are hiding behind the law and using it to avoid having to think about issues that are not black and white.
An Australian senate committee has been set up to inquire into the effects of the
Free Trade Agreement. Submissions are open until April 30th.
This is an opportunity to voice opposition to copyright extensions, and extensions to patents and 'DMCA issues' and be heard.
These submissions do make a difference (I submitted to a previous inquiry on
broadband access). This
is an opportunity for us to put a point view forward. It is hard for an
inquiry to draw a conclusion contrary to the majority of submissions (or
for the government to ignore the results of such an inquiry).
In addition, results are usually published, forming a permanent record
of opposition.
If caught, one could deny that the alleged log is a true record of the 'conversation'. In the absence of traits, such as the sound of a voice, the only way the other party could prove the authenticity of a type written log would be to produce their own illegal recording.
Wouldn't improving "overall net efficiency", by addressing all aspects of a system, be an excercise in optimisation?
Hasn't it been pretty well proven that too much manual optimisation doesn't pay off? The time taken to optimise delays entry to the market, causing the optimised product to be obsoleted by newer (unoptimised) technology.
Isn't this pointing to a requirement for better automated design software, able to do optimisation in essentialy zero time. Any optimisation between manufacturers will require their design tools to automatically exchange data. I can't see too many manufacturers being prepared to swap such detailed design information (unless they are 'open source').
Femto straps her/his tinfoil hat securely on before continuing...
The following has no evidence to back it and is idle speculation.
Could such moves lead to an attempt to shut down the distributed email system as we know it? Consider the following scenario:
Set up generous mail services such as google's new mail service and hotmail.
The majority of users register with these free email services.
Set up a.mail domain for 'approved mail servers' only.
The free mail services register in the.mail domain. The registration fee discourages users from running their own servers, driving them to the free services.
The free mail services stop accepting email from outside the.mail domain. The majority of users don't care, as they are free mail account holders.
Set major nodes in the Internet to block mail traffic from outside the.mail domain. Again, the majority don't care and the 'approved' free services go along with it as it drives more users their way.
Make it a condition of being in the.mail domain that your database be available for searching. The remaining small email servers areeliminated. Noone hears (or cares about) their screams.
All email is not stored in central, conveniently searchable, databases.
Complete paranoia, but the cynic in me says 'what if'?
The tags would be designed to be no heavier or larger than the tags scientists already use for tracking birds.
Also, the tags might even help the preservation of birds: a) birds become valuable data carriers, adding incentive to preserve them b) the tags can be used for comprehensive scientific tracking of flight paths. This data could be fed into existing conservation programs.
One of the problems with a global 'community based' wireless network is how to connect continents.
Imagine building a small data reception/storage/transmission unit which could be attached to the leg of a bird. As the bird flies overhead, data is beamed from the ground to the transponder box on the bird's leg, where the data is stored. Somewhere else on Earth, there is a second ground station which queries the transponders attached to any birds which fly nearby. If the earth station finds a packet with its address (possibly multicast), it downloads it and processes it.
One bird is pretty useless for data transmission. Imagine whole flocks of migratory birds though. The bandwidth might become substantial and the flight patterns predictable. Non-migratory birds could serve a use in metropolitan area networks. Even if flight paths are not predictable, perhaps random flight paths will suffice to get some data through?
Another use could be to circumvent international firewalls and censorship. Imagine flocks of birds flying into China, each carrying a few megabytes of banned news, politics and books on their leg. A new form of 'eternity' service (well, at least the life time of a bird) could also be born. Imagine if a bird could carry a ROM (with transmitter) and fly around distributing something which has otherwise been removed from the Internet.
Yes, this is a little 'off the planet' but I don't think there are any technical obstacles to it actually working. Despite the date I'm serious.
And this suits the patent office just fine. It keeps them in a job.
It also suits the government just fine. They're making money out of the patent office. Think of the patent system as an 'innovation tax'.
The government's shortsighted thinking is: Let's extract 10c from this thing now (and kill it in the process), ignoring the fact that we can extract $1000 from it later without killing it and the nation's future.
>That will have to be quite a bit, since it will take 500 trillion watts to ignite the pellet in the first place.
Power is not the same as energy. It is energy per unit time. It is rubbish to say there will have to be a large energy output because the input power is high. By way of example, 500 trillion watts for a femtosecond = 500 joules. This is not an unreasonable amount of energy, contrary to the attempt to imply otherwise by shouting '500 trillion'.
Central control has a tendency to breakdown, or become corrupted/perverted over time. Centralised control also impairs the ability of the Internet to route around such 'damage'.
A (the only??) long term solution is to have a completely decentralised Internet. A corollary of a decentralised Internet is no IP addresses, no domain names, no coordinating body to make bad decisions.
How to do this? Beats me. It's an active research topic. The closest I have seen is freenet, but it still has a long way (and many answerless problems to be solve) before it can be said to work properly.
Anyone know of any other projects/research which are heading in a similar direction?
Drape the object to be cooled in hessian. Set up a water drip system to keep the hessian damp. Evaporation (powered by the sun's energy) will cool things down. Solar power does not have to be electrical!
Nope. The new MP3 format is still in the lab. Nothing supports it. For the time being, measured by number of supporting devices, ogg has the lead in the surround sound stakes against MP3 (ie. 1 > 0).
I once got short changed by $20 by an ATM. In this case it detected the error, beeped at me for a minute then shut down. It was five minutes past closing and the bank staff were still inside the bank, so I banged on the glass door until one of them came over. As expected, he wouldn't open the door after hours, but by yelling though the door I convinced him to check, on the banks system, that the correct amount had been deducted from my account. He was able to tell me that the error had been detected and sure enough the account was consistent when the next statement arrived.
Slashdot Mirror
Surely such academics staying in their 'home' countries reduces the lure of the US as a 'brain magnet' and reduces the number of US citations, publications and awards? If it gets too serious is there a the danger that the US will lose its critical mass of overseas brains and never regain it's 'brain magnet' status? Is this an unforseen consequence of the 'war on terror'?
The critical thing is to have a communications system in place, able to distribute these nanodesigns. 'Nanoright holders' will demand that they have exclusive publishing rights on the network. Their claimed reasons will be to prevent 'piracy' and enhance security, while their real reason will be to prevent competition from legitimate alternatives (such as open/free nanotechnology). Getting a 'open' nanomanufactuing plant is only half the battle. The other half is in estabilishing the means to freely share nanodesigns.
But one of the advantages of a book is being able to 'flick' through it at high speed, which would require a high refresh rate. I guess having a search function may alleviate this drawback, but it still wouldn't be as intuitive or as fast (if hopping backwards and forwards). Perhaps 'hopping backwards and forwards' might be solved by having 'memory' buttons or tabs on the screen to memorise positions in the book?
Isn't 'special relativity' just a special case of 'general relativity', as the name implies? That is, general relativity includes constancy of light speed, inertial frames (as a special case) and all the results of special relativity.
I guess that's what M$'s 50 million bought them. Another phantom 'cost' which they can use as an allegation against Free Software.
I reckon the 'public' won't see past the M$ spin, to appeciate that by its nature Free/Open Software is continually being checked for copyright infringements.
Given that some of the best minds are overseas, isn't it a tad arrogant to view it all as 'outsourcing'? In some cases, the US is probably buying overseas expertise, which is not available in the US? Consequently, the US is benefiting and learning from India (and others), not the other way around.
Think so? Have you ever done any of the following:
Yes, all of these are illegal in at least some parts of Australia. The only reason you are not officially a criminal is that the police chose not to enforce the law that day. The day an officer choses to enfore the law, will you use the defence "I did nothing wrong"?
It's quite telling that Pauline Hanson went into gaol a bigot and came out with her eyes opened. Frankly, I think you are hiding behind the law and using it to avoid having to think about issues that are not black and white.
An Australian senate committee has been set up to inquire into the effects of the Free Trade Agreement. Submissions are open until April 30th. This is an opportunity to voice opposition to copyright extensions, and extensions to patents and 'DMCA issues' and be heard.
Submissions may be emailed to: FTA@aph.gov.au
More details are on the web page: http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/freetrade_c tte/
These submissions do make a difference (I submitted to a previous inquiry on broadband access). This is an opportunity for us to put a point view forward. It is hard for an inquiry to draw a conclusion contrary to the majority of submissions (or for the government to ignore the results of such an inquiry).
In addition, results are usually published, forming a permanent record of opposition.
Also, check out the 'copyrightaustralia' yahoo group and an associated web page. Regards
The only catch being that the whole thing is probably a scam and the spammers have no intention of paying anyone anything.
If caught, one could deny that the alleged log is a true record of the 'conversation'. In the absence of traits, such as the sound of a voice, the only way the other party could prove the authenticity of a type written log would be to produce their own illegal recording.
Hasn't it been pretty well proven that too much manual optimisation doesn't pay off? The time taken to optimise delays entry to the market, causing the optimised product to be obsoleted by newer (unoptimised) technology.
Isn't this pointing to a requirement for better automated design software, able to do optimisation in essentialy zero time. Any optimisation between manufacturers will require their design tools to automatically exchange data. I can't see too many manufacturers being prepared to swap such detailed design information (unless they are 'open source').
The Quick Hack.
The following has no evidence to back it and is idle speculation.
Could such moves lead to an attempt to shut down the distributed email system as we know it? Consider the following scenario:
Complete paranoia, but the cynic in me says 'what if'?
I can hear the 'Department of Homeland Security' salivating already about that volume of searchable data.
Also, the tags might even help the preservation of birds: a) birds become valuable data carriers, adding incentive to preserve them b) the tags can be used for comprehensive scientific tracking of flight paths. This data could be fed into existing conservation programs.
One of the problems with a global 'community based' wireless network is how to connect continents.
Imagine building a small data reception/storage/transmission unit which could be attached to the leg of a bird. As the bird flies overhead, data is beamed from the ground to the transponder box on the bird's leg, where the data is stored. Somewhere else on Earth, there is a second ground station which queries the transponders attached to any birds which fly nearby. If the earth station finds a packet with its address (possibly multicast), it downloads it and processes it.
One bird is pretty useless for data transmission. Imagine whole flocks of migratory birds though. The bandwidth might become substantial and the flight patterns predictable. Non-migratory birds could serve a use in metropolitan area networks. Even if flight paths are not predictable, perhaps random flight paths will suffice to get some data through?
Another use could be to circumvent international firewalls and censorship. Imagine flocks of birds flying into China, each carrying a few megabytes of banned news, politics and books on their leg. A new form of 'eternity' service (well, at least the life time of a bird) could also be born. Imagine if a bird could carry a ROM (with transmitter) and fly around distributing something which has otherwise been removed from the Internet.
Yes, this is a little 'off the planet' but I don't think there are any technical obstacles to it actually working. Despite the date I'm serious.
And this suits the patent office just fine. It keeps them in a job.
It also suits the government just fine. They're making money out of the patent office. Think of the patent system as an 'innovation tax'.
The government's shortsighted thinking is: Let's extract 10c from this thing now (and kill it in the process), ignoring the fact that we can extract $1000 from it later without killing it and the nation's future.
Got my SI prefixes wrong. 500 trillion * 1 femto second is 0.5W. My mistake. The correction is in favour of my argument though!
Power is not the same as energy. It is energy per unit time. It is rubbish to say there will have to be a large energy output because the input power is high. By way of example, 500 trillion watts for a femtosecond = 500 joules. This is not an unreasonable amount of energy, contrary to the attempt to imply otherwise by shouting '500 trillion'.
A (the only??) long term solution is to have a completely decentralised Internet. A corollary of a decentralised Internet is no IP addresses, no domain names, no coordinating body to make bad decisions.
How to do this? Beats me. It's an active research topic. The closest I have seen is freenet, but it still has a long way (and many answerless problems to be solve) before it can be said to work properly.
Anyone know of any other projects/research which are heading in a similar direction?
I hope their research is better than their PR. Or maybe their technology really is unique!
By any other name it's GNU Privacy Guard and the "web of trust". A verified, accountable network of friends.
Drape the object to be cooled in hessian. Set up a water drip system to keep the hessian damp. Evaporation (powered by the sun's energy) will cool things down. Solar power does not have to be electrical!
Nope. The new MP3 format is still in the lab. Nothing supports it. For the time being, measured by number of supporting devices, ogg has the lead in the surround sound stakes against MP3 (ie. 1 > 0).
I once got short changed by $20 by an ATM. In this case it detected the error, beeped at me for a minute then shut down. It was five minutes past closing and the bank staff were still inside the bank, so I banged on the glass door until one of them came over. As expected, he wouldn't open the door after hours, but by yelling though the door I convinced him to check, on the banks system, that the correct amount had been deducted from my account. He was able to tell me that the error had been detected and sure enough the account was consistent when the next statement arrived.