"Clean fusion" is a myth. Even if we leave aside the radioactivity of deuterium and tritium, fusion produces neutrons. These neutrons bombard everything in the vicinity. If fusion goes big-time, that means that just as with fission reactors, very large quatitites of radioactive waste will be generated. Remember, most fission-plant waste is not fuel, but other substances that are exposed to the neutrons. Of course, fusion is better on other fronts, but not all that much cleaner.
Yahoo! needs to go beyond what Google offers. This is partly true because Google is #1 and "inertia" among web users matters, but this is only one reason that Yahoo! needs to get its act into high gear. The ther reason is Google Labs. Google is focusing resources on research right now (one of the reasons that an IPO would be inappropriate, since research is a risky use of money). In the long run, Yahoo! will have to compete with Google's research, since otherwise they'll be chasing a moving target. Even if Yahoo! reaches Google's standards, Google will always be ready to roll out a few more features. The question is: Can Yahoo! persuade its shareholders to back that kind of long-term commitment to R&D in today's economy?
The Berne Convention and WIPO treaties obligate the US to apply the same standards to foreign and domestic works. The treaties also specify that works are "copyrighted at birth" -- even if there is no copyright notice!
I'm afraid the fact a foreign distributor does not or will not license a creative work in the US doesn't change the fact that the work is automatically protected under US law. Even worse, because of the rarity, the file may be judged to have a "street value" of $1000 (particularly if there are multiple files). This triggers the No Electronic Theft Act, which means you can not only be sued, but also be arrested and sent to federal no-parole prison! It's unfair, but it's the law.
Having said that, I'd distribute the stuff anyway.
Obviously this is a first crack at the FX. I'd bet serious money that within six months of its release, a version will be ready that requires only one slot. Consumers hate incoveniences like this -- what if a cap on the motherboard gets in the way of one slot? Moreover, those who wait six months are more likely to be price-conscious consumers -- which means their systems are less likely to have gobs of space open (cheaper mobos = fewer slots).
Although this may not violate the DMCA (depending on how courts construe "circumvention"), it violates several other criminal statutes. First, it violates the No Electronic Theft Act, which criminalized copyright violations even without a profit motive. While the Act requires a value of $1000 of content to trigger its provisions, courts have allowed this threshold to be met by production or "black market" prices rather than realistic costs. In addition, this may violate the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act, which criminalized unauthorized access to servers. While this was intended as an anti-hacking law, perhaps it could be extended to unauthorized intrusion into one's own server (Tivo) if (and this is a HUGE if) owning the thing doesn't automatically authorize one to access it.
While the second of these is speculative, the first can and has been used to prosecute warez folks so I have no doubt the Justice Department of John Ashcroft would use it should entertainment companies begin wailing about TV piracy.
The United States is a signatory to a treaty banning the use of weather modification as a weapon. So is virtually every other country on the planet (it was one of those feel-good gestures during the Cold War that didn't really cost either side anything).
"But really, let's admit to it, the creativeness required to think up faking an error screen to get users to click on it (think reaction vs. action) is genius. I'm not sure this suit has any merit at all...and even if it does it really shouldn't."
What on earth does this mean? If the suit has merit, that means that the advertising was both deceptive and harmful. I admire a good grifter as much as the next guy, but these people are still thieves (or perhaps vandals) and that kind of shst ought to be against the law. Nor are laws against fraud the sort of bad laws (like, say, the DMCA) where a bit of civil disobedience is tolerable. There are three reasons that fraud like this (Bonzi Schemes, if you'll excuse the pun) should be illegal:
1. Harm to end users. Whether it's lost time, lost money, spyware-infested PCs, or just a general devaluation of warning messages (making their computer cry wolf...) the results are harmful for users.
2. Harm to the market. When users are confused about whether something is an advertisement, they make decisions on bad information. This rewards the wrong sort of economic behavior -- the company that can best trick people wins instead of the company with the best product.
3. Harm to society. We don't want our best and brightest to believe that the easiest way to get ahead is to steal or hurt other people. We would like them to go into productive activities that generate new wealth, not unethical and deceptive practices that siphon off wealth from others.
So yeah, if the suit has merit then it should have merit. This is exactly the kind of thing that users, the market, and society as a whole need a good set of laws to handle.
If I had a dollar (OK, a thousand bucks) for every person who has posted a negative comment about this license (keep politics out of licenses, this is anti-democratic, blah whine blah whine...)AND has also posted something like "cracking software is wrong...if you don't like the license terms then don't use it, that would be stealing...just because M$ has crappy licenses doesn't mean you should steal their stuff...warez is bad, m'kay..." I would be a wealthy man indeed....
It's simple. If you don't like the terms of the license, then don't use the fscking software! OK, if you're an anarchist I'll make an exception -- but the average/.er strikes me as more of a "government should protect property and do nothing else" type. No one's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to use this software (and if they are, then I'm sure the authors will make an exception for you).
The only valid objections I've seen to this system are vagueness (which can be remedied by referencing a document with lots of case law behind it, like the US Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or whatever it is the European Union uses) and the idea that simpler licenses are better (fine -- then don't use software that has a license with too many clauses for your taste).
Some people think software and politics don't mix. Tell that to the folks behind the Great Firewall of China. Oh wait, you can't. I happen to think that software and handing over my hard-earned cash shouldn't mix. But they do.
PC Gamer did not "ream it a new one." PC GAMER gave Outpost a 93% -- one of their highest ratings ever! When asked about this around the time Outpost 2 came out, they said that no one who worked there way back then was still around to explain the bizarre score. I don't really hold the current magazine responsible for that drivel, but PC GAMER has always been a tad less reliable than other major PC game magazines. Having said that, it is much prettier than other mags; like pr0n, I may occasionally read the articles but usually just look at the pictures.
1. Minor complaint: The article headline is backwards. These sites are biased toward the incumbents, as the article notes.
2. If we want less bias, have a nonpartisan agency write the bios and update the pages. Something like the Congressional Budget Office -- not immune to politics, but one step removed from the process and beholden to no single representative.
3. Incumbents win over 90% of Congressional races and have for some time, so the bias issue really isn't all that important. There is so much inherent bias in the fact that incumbents get to do newsworthy things in front of cameras that websites don't really change anything.
4. The real scandal about government websites, especially the Congressional ones, is the almost total lack of content. The home pages should include all votes cast by the representative -- Thomas is clunky and difficult to use. As the artcile notes, it would also be nice to know when the official is up for re-election. Personally, I'd also like to see links to FEC campiagn finance reports on the same page to make correlating funding sources and voting patterns easier, but asking Congress to commit mass political suicide is probably not a realistic option.
Several people have pointed out the fact that this statement about the Sherman Anti-Trust Act is incorrect. However, it is also wrong to say that it was only used against unions. It was passed as an antitrust measure: it banned any "conspiracy in restraint of trade." It was first used against corporations but when more corporate-friendly Administrations took power they interpreted strikes to be "conspiracies in restraint of trade" (and the courst agreed with them). The law was therefore meant to ban trusts and ended up banning both trusts and strikes -- it did not ban unions, however, since only the act of striking actually restrained trade.
I like the analogy, since Congress thought they were protecting the little guy (little artist, that is) with the DMCA. That's why it passed so overwhelmingly -- if representatives had seen it as a tool to entrench big business against consumers, researchers, and programmers, there would have been more opposition. It still probably would have passed, but perhaps with a few amendments to satisfy other interests besides those of copyright holders.
What makes this so cool to me is that Adventure translates so neatly into three dimensions. The same maze in 3d will probably be harder than it was in 2d (though the crappy 2600 joysticks made it more work). I'd love to see Pac-Man (and not the Atari version!) made into a Quake 3 level. Unfortunately, the Nintendo platform games that supplanted the Atari-style games won't lend themselves to this treatment, as a single level would be loooong.....
BTW, isn't this whole thing massive trademark (Adventure (TM) IIRC) and copyright (the mazes, artwork, etc) infringement? After all, the owner of Atari's IP might want to make a modern version themselves -- they did Combat! after all.....
Annoying use of "terrorism"
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Am I the only one that's getting tired of every world leader referring to the activity of their rivals as being "terrorism"? It reminds me of how, during the Cold War, every problem a nation faced was either blamed on "communist subversion" or "imperialist aggression."
Computer viruses as terrorism? Well, maybe if they're targeted to drop planes from the sky, cause nuclear power plant malfunctions, etc -- but everyday preparation for infowar is not terrorism.
Besides, terrorism is almost always the weapon of the weak (excluding "terror" against one's own population). Strong countries find lobbing a few missiles to be much more effective. There is real danger of full-scale conventional war if Taiwan declares independence from China, and I suspect that computer viruses will be the last of their concerns.
Prestige: Saying you own a Mac says something about you that saying you own a Dell or a Compaq doesn't. It conveys an artsy, "I like what computers can do but I don't like computers" image. The people who most want to project this image typically travel in more educated social circles (and thus are more likely to have been educated themselves).
Cost: As mentioned in the summary, Macs cost more. I bet if you did a survey that isolated the price of the system instead of the brand, much of the brain gap would disappear. I suspect that those who buy a premium Dell are more intelligent by the usual tests....
Market: Apple has always sold to education and graphic design markets. The education market is, of course, likely to attract a number of well, educated consumers.
Any other "correlation not causation" explanations?
A number of posters have noted that most people have little of importance on their hard drives. I'm not so sure. One of the trends in historical research has been to refocus analysis on the lives of ordinary people. As it turns out, this is a problem since ordinary people didn't tend to write in the public record. Often, things that were incredibly popular are virtually undocumented because no one thought them important enough to preserve.
Let me offer one example. When historians want to document the impact that computers and the "information revolution" had on people's lives, there's only so much value in the Wired archives, for example. How did everyday people (not e-publishers or the digital literati) interact with machines and each other? This kind of research depends on many small bits of information, and if there is sytematic bias in which (or whose) information gets preserved then research will inevitably be limited by that bias. In short, don't underestimate the value of large numbers of seemingly unimportant documents.
This raises the question: what can be done to preserve the electronic record created by everyday users? Is any preservation medium cheap and easy enough to become ubiquitous in off-the-shelf systems?
It's a truism that you can't talk about politics or religion without offending people. Offensiveness is not just a necessary evil in a free society, it can also be an important social good. If people aren't deeply moved by speech, it is unlikely to have much effect. That's why actions like wearing an anti-Catholic T-shirt, burning a flag (American, Israeli, Palestinian, etc), or holding a Black Power march through a rich white neighborhood are so effective at getting attention -- they strike at the core of what people believe about society and the world.
Saying "I oppose this or that bit of Catholic doctrine" is just pecking at the surface if your real problem is with the fundamental tenets of Catholicism -- the role of the Vrigin Mary, for example. Those T-shirts are important because they let other doubters in an overwhelmingly Catholic country know that you're not only against Catholicism but you're brave enough to flaunt it in the face of censure (not the same thing as censorship) by the majority.
Censoring offensiveness is therefore not only repressive (and heavily biased in favor of the status quo and the majority), but also an attack on the most important socio-political speech there is. It also shows deep insecurity about one's ability to defend one's own beliefs, and a bizarrely vague approach to "slander," but it would be wrong even if it could be applied consistently.
The a-bombs used on Japan were airbursts, which generate little fallout compared to ground-bursts (mostly parts of the weapon itself, most or all of which is vaporized depending on the yield). Nuclear waste is worse for three reasons:
1. There's a heck of a lot more of it. 2. It tends to be composed of unusually long-lived isotopes. The fissionable stuff used in weapons has a much shorter half-life (though by-products can still be pretty nasty). The stuff we take from reactors is not as radioactive but is much longer-lived. 3. The particular isotopes is nuclear waste tend to be high in stuff like strontium-90, which the body mistakes for potassium (not a good thing).
Remember, the Chernobyl explosion was several orders of magnitude worse (in terms of contamination, obviously not in terms of the blast itself) than the Hiroshima-Nagasaki weapons. Fortunately, Yucca seems to be less risky than most spots -- but if someone managed to blow it up (don't ask how) it would create a terrible catastrophe.
Bah. Collusion only works where there are a small number of players and barriers to entry are high. Compared to say, airlines, rental car companies have an easy time accomodating an influx of customers -- they can simply buy more cars whereas airlines have to find more gates (and you don't just walk down the street to Joe's Auto Dealership for a 747).
Moreover, there are dozens of smaller players in the rental car market, even though a few companies control a large percentage of the market. This makes it likely that collusion at the top will create incentives for smaller players to expand. Example: Enterprise expanded from a small company, in part by allowing young people to rent cars when the major players raised the minimum age for renting to 25.
Thus, collusion exists and may in fact occur in the rental car market, but is unlikely to have enough staying power in the face of competition from small firms to alter prices for very long.
Remember, the suit doesn't allege that monitoring is improper. After all, people have the right to give up privacy just as they have the right to privacy. Without the ability to give up some of our rights, we couldn't make binding contracts (ie without the threat of repossession -- burgalary in a different context -- who would offer credit to high-risk borrowers?) The lawsuit alleges consumers weren't properly notified. If the language of the contract is changed, the threat of lawsuits ends (well, the current suit continues, but future ones are avoided).
So what will happen? Businesses have the power to put these things in the contract and make the penalties for driving too fast or out of area clear to the customer. Most customers will be willing to forego their positional privacy in return for the car. Those who intend to speed or drive out of area will use non-monitoring rental agencies. These in turn will find themselves stuck with the worst customers, the ones who put their vehicles at risk. Most will probably switch to monitoring, though some may simply charge high rental rates and cater to this customer base.
The outcome: Absent new laws to restrict monitoring, most customers will be monitored and fined when they screw up. Knowing this, fewer customers will speed or drive out of area, reducing rental rates (rental agencies would like to simply pocket the profits from safer driving, but since so much competition exists in the industry prices in most mid-sized or larger areas will probably fall). The risky drivers will pay extra for the privilege to speed and drive where they want without monitoring. Everyone wins -- the car companies have lower costs, the consumers pay more rational prices that reflect the value they place on speeding/privacy/unrestricted destination, and the highways get a very tiny bit safer due to reduced speeding.
This isn't Big Brother -- it's more like being a Nielsen family. Give up privacy for savings? Why deny me that right? This isn't a utopian future here, but it isn't dystopia either. We should really retain a sense of perspective here.
If they're from Russia they're cosmonauts. That said, they have, IMO, worse food than American astronauts. But then again, I'm not Russian so I can't appreciate the succulent flavor of sturgeon with jellied sauce or chicken paste with plums. Much more info is available on this page.
Astro/cosmo-nauts tend to lose their appetites and experience changes in their sense of taste after 60 to 80 days anyway, so the gourmet stuff is most useful at the beginning of the trip. After that, a much less, um -- subtle -- approach is required. According to this story people in space crave spicy, garlicky food as their sense of taste diminishes (Cosmonauts asked NASA to send garlic and onions).
But in the end, any trip to Mars will have to grow its own food. This story from last year about the Russian Mars plans mentions that this is exactly what they intend to do. Mmmm...wheat and quail.
The article quotes the designers as wanting to bring the fruits of India's software revolution to the poor. But the Simputer still costs more than a year's salary even for the average Indian. Imagine a $40K computer (US per capita income) being touted as a way the American poor could use computers! Even though the Simputer supports smart cards so people can share the device and store personal info on the card, I suspect this will merely make it affordable for (Indian) middle-class families rather than the poor. I suspect the poor would have more appreciation for clean water, reliable sources of electricity, a working health care system, and a food stamp program than a Simputer that costs more than a year's pay.
The purpose of an exam is to draw distinctions between those that learned the material and those that didn't. I speak as a (non-CS) professor when I say that difficult exam conditions or "unrealistic" tests are hard, but not unfair. Why? Because even though you (the student) find it more difficult to write code than type code, every other student in the class labors under the same conditions. If you still score worse than your classmates, we can't blame it on the pen and paper (though it may be the case that you're not a good test taker -- but then again, that's always a hazard when trying to measure academic performance).
Yes they do. Remember all those poor LVs over Britain in World War I? Incendiary bullets = exploding zeppelins. This is one reason Germany eventually abandoned them for attacks on London. Remember, the Hindenburg was the biggie civilian disaster but there were plenty of military ones, particularly during active combat.
There's a reason zeppelins were abandoned....
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....and it wasn't just that the H-filled ones had a habit of exploding. These things were horribly prone to accidents because they are all but impossible to control in high winds. Today we have wonderful doppler radar to inform us about severe storms, but there are still dangers from ordinary gusts of wind. Does anyone else remember seeing the footage of those poor fellows dangling from the mooring lines when a dirigible was swept upward by a gust when trying to land? As billboards, these do fine -- but military hardware undergoing constant use in unpredictable conditions has to be a bit more reliable. What's wrong with nice slow prop-driven aircraft and 'copters?
Slashdot Mirror
"Clean fusion" is a myth. Even if we leave aside the radioactivity of deuterium and tritium, fusion produces neutrons. These neutrons bombard everything in the vicinity. If fusion goes big-time, that means that just as with fission reactors, very large quatitites of radioactive waste will be generated. Remember, most fission-plant waste is not fuel, but other substances that are exposed to the neutrons. Of course, fusion is better on other fronts, but not all that much cleaner.
Yahoo! needs to go beyond what Google offers. This is partly true because Google is #1 and "inertia" among web users matters, but this is only one reason that Yahoo! needs to get its act into high gear. The ther reason is Google Labs. Google is focusing resources on research right now (one of the reasons that an IPO would be inappropriate, since research is a risky use of money). In the long run, Yahoo! will have to compete with Google's research, since otherwise they'll be chasing a moving target. Even if Yahoo! reaches Google's standards, Google will always be ready to roll out a few more features. The question is: Can Yahoo! persuade its shareholders to back that kind of long-term commitment to R&D in today's economy?
The Berne Convention and WIPO treaties obligate the US to apply the same standards to foreign and domestic works. The treaties also specify that works are "copyrighted at birth" -- even if there is no copyright notice!
I'm afraid the fact a foreign distributor does not or will not license a creative work in the US doesn't change the fact that the work is automatically protected under US law. Even worse, because of the rarity, the file may be judged to have a "street value" of $1000 (particularly if there are multiple files). This triggers the No Electronic Theft Act, which means you can not only be sued, but also be arrested and sent to federal no-parole prison! It's unfair, but it's the law.
Having said that, I'd distribute the stuff anyway.
Obviously this is a first crack at the FX. I'd bet serious money that within six months of its release, a version will be ready that requires only one slot. Consumers hate incoveniences like this -- what if a cap on the motherboard gets in the way of one slot? Moreover, those who wait six months are more likely to be price-conscious consumers -- which means their systems are less likely to have gobs of space open (cheaper mobos = fewer slots).
Still, I want one. Now.
Although this may not violate the DMCA (depending on how courts construe "circumvention"), it violates several other criminal statutes. First, it violates the No Electronic Theft Act, which criminalized copyright violations even without a profit motive. While the Act requires a value of $1000 of content to trigger its provisions, courts have allowed this threshold to be met by production or "black market" prices rather than realistic costs. In addition, this may violate the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act, which criminalized unauthorized access to servers. While this was intended as an anti-hacking law, perhaps it could be extended to unauthorized intrusion into one's own server (Tivo) if (and this is a HUGE if) owning the thing doesn't automatically authorize one to access it.
While the second of these is speculative, the first can and has been used to prosecute warez folks so I have no doubt the Justice Department of John Ashcroft would use it should entertainment companies begin wailing about TV piracy.
The United States is a signatory to a treaty banning the use of weather modification as a weapon. So is virtually every other country on the planet (it was one of those feel-good gestures during the Cold War that didn't really cost either side anything).
"But really, let's admit to it, the creativeness required to think up faking an error screen to get users to click on it (think reaction vs. action) is genius. I'm not sure this suit has any merit at all...and even if it does it really shouldn't."
What on earth does this mean? If the suit has merit, that means that the advertising was both deceptive and harmful. I admire a good grifter as much as the next guy, but these people are still thieves (or perhaps vandals) and that kind of shst ought to be against the law. Nor are laws against fraud the sort of bad laws (like, say, the DMCA) where a bit of civil disobedience is tolerable. There are three reasons that fraud like this (Bonzi Schemes, if you'll excuse the pun) should be illegal:
1. Harm to end users. Whether it's lost time, lost money, spyware-infested PCs, or just a general devaluation of warning messages (making their computer cry wolf...) the results are harmful for users.
2. Harm to the market. When users are confused about whether something is an advertisement, they make decisions on bad information. This rewards the wrong sort of economic behavior -- the company that can best trick people wins instead of the company with the best product.
3. Harm to society. We don't want our best and brightest to believe that the easiest way to get ahead is to steal or hurt other people. We would like them to go into productive activities that generate new wealth, not unethical and deceptive practices that siphon off wealth from others.
So yeah, if the suit has merit then it should have merit. This is exactly the kind of thing that users, the market, and society as a whole need a good set of laws to handle.
If I had a dollar (OK, a thousand bucks) for every person who has posted a negative comment about this license (keep politics out of licenses, this is anti-democratic, blah whine blah whine...) AND has also posted something like "cracking software is wrong...if you don't like the license terms then don't use it, that would be stealing...just because M$ has crappy licenses doesn't mean you should steal their stuff...warez is bad, m'kay..." I would be a wealthy man indeed....
/.er strikes me as more of a "government should protect property and do nothing else" type. No one's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to use this software (and if they are, then I'm sure the authors will make an exception for you).
It's simple. If you don't like the terms of the license, then don't use the fscking software! OK, if you're an anarchist I'll make an exception -- but the average
The only valid objections I've seen to this system are vagueness (which can be remedied by referencing a document with lots of case law behind it, like the US Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or whatever it is the European Union uses) and the idea that simpler licenses are better (fine -- then don't use software that has a license with too many clauses for your taste).
Some people think software and politics don't mix. Tell that to the folks behind the Great Firewall of China. Oh wait, you can't. I happen to think that software and handing over my hard-earned cash shouldn't mix. But they do.
PC Gamer did not "ream it a new one." PC GAMER gave Outpost a 93% -- one of their highest ratings ever! When asked about this around the time Outpost 2 came out, they said that no one who worked there way back then was still around to explain the bizarre score. I don't really hold the current magazine responsible for that drivel, but PC GAMER has always been a tad less reliable than other major PC game magazines. Having said that, it is much prettier than other mags; like pr0n, I may occasionally read the articles but usually just look at the pictures.
1. Minor complaint: The article headline is backwards. These sites are biased toward the incumbents, as the article notes.
2. If we want less bias, have a nonpartisan agency write the bios and update the pages. Something like the Congressional Budget Office -- not immune to politics, but one step removed from the process and beholden to no single representative.
3. Incumbents win over 90% of Congressional races and have for some time, so the bias issue really isn't all that important. There is so much inherent bias in the fact that incumbents get to do newsworthy things in front of cameras that websites don't really change anything.
4. The real scandal about government websites, especially the Congressional ones, is the almost total lack of content. The home pages should include all votes cast by the representative -- Thomas is clunky and difficult to use. As the artcile notes, it would also be nice to know when the official is up for re-election. Personally, I'd also like to see links to FEC campiagn finance reports on the same page to make correlating funding sources and voting patterns easier, but asking Congress to commit mass political suicide is probably not a realistic option.
Several people have pointed out the fact that this statement about the Sherman Anti-Trust Act is incorrect. However, it is also wrong to say that it was only used against unions. It was passed as an antitrust measure: it banned any "conspiracy in restraint of trade." It was first used against corporations but when more corporate-friendly Administrations took power they interpreted strikes to be "conspiracies in restraint of trade" (and the courst agreed with them). The law was therefore meant to ban trusts and ended up banning both trusts and strikes -- it did not ban unions, however, since only the act of striking actually restrained trade.
I like the analogy, since Congress thought they were protecting the little guy (little artist, that is) with the DMCA. That's why it passed so overwhelmingly -- if representatives had seen it as a tool to entrench big business against consumers, researchers, and programmers, there would have been more opposition. It still probably would have passed, but perhaps with a few amendments to satisfy other interests besides those of copyright holders.
What makes this so cool to me is that Adventure translates so neatly into three dimensions. The same maze in 3d will probably be harder than it was in 2d (though the crappy 2600 joysticks made it more work). I'd love to see Pac-Man (and not the Atari version!) made into a Quake 3 level. Unfortunately, the Nintendo platform games that supplanted the Atari-style games won't lend themselves to this treatment, as a single level would be loooong.....
BTW, isn't this whole thing massive trademark (Adventure (TM) IIRC) and copyright (the mazes, artwork, etc) infringement? After all, the owner of Atari's IP might want to make a modern version themselves -- they did Combat! after all.....
Am I the only one that's getting tired of every world leader referring to the activity of their rivals as being "terrorism"? It reminds me of how, during the Cold War, every problem a nation faced was either blamed on "communist subversion" or "imperialist aggression."
Computer viruses as terrorism? Well, maybe if they're targeted to drop planes from the sky, cause nuclear power plant malfunctions, etc -- but everyday preparation for infowar is not terrorism.
Besides, terrorism is almost always the weapon of the weak (excluding "terror" against one's own population). Strong countries find lobbing a few missiles to be much more effective. There is real danger of full-scale conventional war if Taiwan declares independence from China, and I suspect that computer viruses will be the last of their concerns.
Prestige: Saying you own a Mac says something about you that saying you own a Dell or a Compaq doesn't. It conveys an artsy, "I like what computers can do but I don't like computers" image. The people who most want to project this image typically travel in more educated social circles (and thus are more likely to have been educated themselves).
Cost: As mentioned in the summary, Macs cost more. I bet if you did a survey that isolated the price of the system instead of the brand, much of the brain gap would disappear. I suspect that those who buy a premium Dell are more intelligent by the usual tests....
Market: Apple has always sold to education and graphic design markets. The education market is, of course, likely to attract a number of well, educated consumers.
Any other "correlation not causation" explanations?
A number of posters have noted that most people have little of importance on their hard drives. I'm not so sure. One of the trends in historical research has been to refocus analysis on the lives of ordinary people. As it turns out, this is a problem since ordinary people didn't tend to write in the public record. Often, things that were incredibly popular are virtually undocumented because no one thought them important enough to preserve.
Let me offer one example. When historians want to document the impact that computers and the "information revolution" had on people's lives, there's only so much value in the Wired archives, for example. How did everyday people (not e-publishers or the digital literati) interact with machines and each other? This kind of research depends on many small bits of information, and if there is sytematic bias in which (or whose) information gets preserved then research will inevitably be limited by that bias. In short, don't underestimate the value of large numbers of seemingly unimportant documents.
This raises the question: what can be done to preserve the electronic record created by everyday users? Is any preservation medium cheap and easy enough to become ubiquitous in off-the-shelf systems?
I think you misread my post, since that's what I said:
"The stuff we take from reactors is not as radioactive but is much longer-lived."
It's a truism that you can't talk about politics or religion without offending people. Offensiveness is not just a necessary evil in a free society, it can also be an important social good. If people aren't deeply moved by speech, it is unlikely to have much effect. That's why actions like wearing an anti-Catholic T-shirt, burning a flag (American, Israeli, Palestinian, etc), or holding a Black Power march through a rich white neighborhood are so effective at getting attention -- they strike at the core of what people believe about society and the world.
Saying "I oppose this or that bit of Catholic doctrine" is just pecking at the surface if your real problem is with the fundamental tenets of Catholicism -- the role of the Vrigin Mary, for example. Those T-shirts are important because they let other doubters in an overwhelmingly Catholic country know that you're not only against Catholicism but you're brave enough to flaunt it in the face of censure (not the same thing as censorship) by the majority.
Censoring offensiveness is therefore not only repressive (and heavily biased in favor of the status quo and the majority), but also an attack on the most important socio-political speech there is. It also shows deep insecurity about one's ability to defend one's own beliefs, and a bizarrely vague approach to "slander," but it would be wrong even if it could be applied consistently.
The a-bombs used on Japan were airbursts, which generate little fallout compared to ground-bursts (mostly parts of the weapon itself, most or all of which is vaporized depending on the yield). Nuclear waste is worse for three reasons:
1. There's a heck of a lot more of it.
2. It tends to be composed of unusually long-lived isotopes. The fissionable stuff used in weapons has a much shorter half-life (though by-products can still be pretty nasty). The stuff we take from reactors is not as radioactive but is much longer-lived.
3. The particular isotopes is nuclear waste tend to be high in stuff like strontium-90, which the body mistakes for potassium (not a good thing).
Remember, the Chernobyl explosion was several orders of magnitude worse (in terms of contamination, obviously not in terms of the blast itself) than the Hiroshima-Nagasaki weapons. Fortunately, Yucca seems to be less risky than most spots -- but if someone managed to blow it up (don't ask how) it would create a terrible catastrophe.
Bah. Collusion only works where there are a small number of players and barriers to entry are high. Compared to say, airlines, rental car companies have an easy time accomodating an influx of customers -- they can simply buy more cars whereas airlines have to find more gates (and you don't just walk down the street to Joe's Auto Dealership for a 747).
Moreover, there are dozens of smaller players in the rental car market, even though a few companies control a large percentage of the market. This makes it likely that collusion at the top will create incentives for smaller players to expand. Example: Enterprise expanded from a small company, in part by allowing young people to rent cars when the major players raised the minimum age for renting to 25.
Thus, collusion exists and may in fact occur in the rental car market, but is unlikely to have enough staying power in the face of competition from small firms to alter prices for very long.
Remember, the suit doesn't allege that monitoring is improper. After all, people have the right to give up privacy just as they have the right to privacy. Without the ability to give up some of our rights, we couldn't make binding contracts (ie without the threat of repossession -- burgalary in a different context -- who would offer credit to high-risk borrowers?) The lawsuit alleges consumers weren't properly notified. If the language of the contract is changed, the threat of lawsuits ends (well, the current suit continues, but future ones are avoided).
So what will happen? Businesses have the power to put these things in the contract and make the penalties for driving too fast or out of area clear to the customer. Most customers will be willing to forego their positional privacy in return for the car. Those who intend to speed or drive out of area will use non-monitoring rental agencies. These in turn will find themselves stuck with the worst customers, the ones who put their vehicles at risk. Most will probably switch to monitoring, though some may simply charge high rental rates and cater to this customer base.
The outcome: Absent new laws to restrict monitoring, most customers will be monitored and fined when they screw up. Knowing this, fewer customers will speed or drive out of area, reducing rental rates (rental agencies would like to simply pocket the profits from safer driving, but since so much competition exists in the industry prices in most mid-sized or larger areas will probably fall). The risky drivers will pay extra for the privilege to speed and drive where they want without monitoring. Everyone wins -- the car companies have lower costs, the consumers pay more rational prices that reflect the value they place on speeding/privacy/unrestricted destination, and the highways get a very tiny bit safer due to reduced speeding.
This isn't Big Brother -- it's more like being a Nielsen family. Give up privacy for savings? Why deny me that right? This isn't a utopian future here, but it isn't dystopia either. We should really retain a sense of perspective here.
If they're from Russia they're cosmonauts. That said, they have, IMO, worse food than American astronauts. But then again, I'm not Russian so I can't appreciate the succulent flavor of sturgeon with jellied sauce or chicken paste with plums. Much more info is available on this page.
Astro/cosmo-nauts tend to lose their appetites and experience changes in their sense of taste after 60 to 80 days anyway, so the gourmet stuff is most useful at the beginning of the trip. After that, a much less, um -- subtle -- approach is required. According to this story people in space crave spicy, garlicky food as their sense of taste diminishes (Cosmonauts asked NASA to send garlic and onions).
But in the end, any trip to Mars will have to grow its own food. This story from last year about the Russian Mars plans mentions that this is exactly what they intend to do. Mmmm...wheat and quail.
The article quotes the designers as wanting to bring the fruits of India's software revolution to the poor. But the Simputer still costs more than a year's salary even for the average Indian. Imagine a $40K computer (US per capita income) being touted as a way the American poor could use computers! Even though the Simputer supports smart cards so people can share the device and store personal info on the card, I suspect this will merely make it affordable for (Indian) middle-class families rather than the poor. I suspect the poor would have more appreciation for clean water, reliable sources of electricity, a working health care system, and a food stamp program than a Simputer that costs more than a year's pay.
The purpose of an exam is to draw distinctions between those that learned the material and those that didn't. I speak as a (non-CS) professor when I say that difficult exam conditions or "unrealistic" tests are hard, but not unfair. Why? Because even though you (the student) find it more difficult to write code than type code, every other student in the class labors under the same conditions. If you still score worse than your classmates, we can't blame it on the pen and paper (though it may be the case that you're not a good test taker -- but then again, that's always a hazard when trying to measure academic performance).
Yes they do. Remember all those poor LVs over Britain in World War I? Incendiary bullets = exploding zeppelins. This is one reason Germany eventually abandoned them for attacks on London. Remember, the Hindenburg was the biggie civilian disaster but there were plenty of military ones, particularly during active combat.
....and it wasn't just that the H-filled ones had a habit of exploding. These things were horribly prone to accidents because they are all but impossible to control in high winds. Today we have wonderful doppler radar to inform us about severe storms, but there are still dangers from ordinary gusts of wind. Does anyone else remember seeing the footage of those poor fellows dangling from the mooring lines when a dirigible was swept upward by a gust when trying to land? As billboards, these do fine -- but military hardware undergoing constant use in unpredictable conditions has to be a bit more reliable. What's wrong with nice slow prop-driven aircraft and 'copters?