Re:This is good, but..
on
Spammers Busted
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I don't want to make a presumption here, but most of the proposed "improvements" in the e-mail system have been bad for ALL of the following reasons: 1) Centralised control allowing censorship. * 2) Ease of central monitering of communications. 3) Proprietary issues.
* I don't see how you could stop spam without enabling whoever made the decision about what was "spam" to censor anyone they wanted.
That said, I'd love to see all those small island nation / crime havens brought to heel. The spam, though, is really a very small issue. Billions of dollars in costs, yes, but compared with all the money launderers and tax cheats doing business out of island nations, it's chump change.
According to the Economist, the movie industry makes a good portion of their money off of DVDs, not so much off theatre receipts, which is why they're so worried about online piracy.
The upshot of the article you can't read is that, even in this sluggish economy, spending on entertainment is UP, but advertising revenues are still DOWN, and so are entertainment profits (DOWN.)
Unfortunately, the story is "Premium Content" so I can't post the link (my room-mate subsrcibes in print.)
Of course, the Economist also thinks that piracy is responsible for the decline in CD sales (it is to laugh.)
The beginning of the book is neat. It has mystery, it's fairly funny, the futurism is cool and well (not perfectly, but well) thought out.
The ending of the book, like the ending of Earth (and of the last uplift books, and everything else David Brin has ever written) is pointless mysto-magical claptrap. Once the book starts to wind down it becomes dreadfully predictable.
So, the first half, which the reviewer didn't much care for, is a fine, fun mystery/futuristic novel with an unusual hook (story told from multiple viewpoints which are really one person) which is skillfully used to tell a complex story.
The last 100 pages are something of a letdown, they're predictable and they drag on endlessly.
My advice: read the book until the mystery is solved, and then skip to the last twenty pages for the conclusion.
Do too! We very clearly can tell who advertises in the NY Times, and we can also count the number of times they use certain words or write artices for or against a certain view. They can be then compared to other newspapers from other publishers.
You can't compare search results from google with those from altavista? Indirect evidence abounds for either a search engine OR a newspaper.
Slashdot never claimed to be fair.
Newspapers, however, DO claim to be fair. Does this claim of fairness open them up to investigation anytime they make an editorial decision someone doesn't like?
If the new york times carries a story unfavorable to my company, do I get to insist that they turn over their editorial proceedings to a court selected expert for review?
I do not! I am not entitled to definitive proof that the new york times editorial board is fair. They can claim to be fair until they're blue in the face, and if you want to believe that Fox News is impartial, that's your call. I think Fox News is a mouthpiece for the extreme right; do I get to subpoena their internal records?
The same reasoning applies to be google - they claim to be fair, you can believe them, or not.
To deal with the particulars at hand:
It is up to the people at google to determine what constitutes human judgement on a particular site, and what constitutes human judgement on a practice that they may have noticed at one, particular site. We have only SearchKing's word that they were singled out by name.
EVEN IF there was definitive proof that SearchKing was singled out rather than caught in a particular practice (there is not,) Google doesn't owe SearchKing an explanation. Google is free to single people out for exclusion from it's search engine if it so wishes, it can be as arbitrary as it wants because that is what freedom means.
If this causes you to trust google any less, that is your call, but the courts and the government should stay the hell out of the entire affair.
I think some referee needs to be monitoring Google's movements so that they cannot making under-the-table changes to the formula while claiming their not.
We have no way of knowing that the new york times does not alter their reporting to suit their advertisers.
We have no way of knowing that slashdot's moderation system is not somehow keyed to a secret agenda. There is evidence that the editors strip people of the ability to moderate without ANY PUBLIC SCRUTINY WHATSOEVER! (Gasp!)
Consumer Reports could have a vendetta against General Electric and GE would be basically screwed. There is no government watchdog.
The point is - just because people listen to publcation X does NOT give anyone the authority to regulate what X can say, how, or why X can say it. If the editors of X want to be sleazy, it is their right. The decision as to what constitutes sleazy or improper behavior belongs to the editors of X. The law intrudes on this in only a few areas - the legal, medical and financial professions only, for the most part. These three areas have special features that do not apply to google.
I look at it this way: the people at google have developed a reputation for utility and authenticity, and a technology that backs that reputation (two seperate things.) These things together give them power.
You are proposing a major power-play; you are saying, they have all this power, but they should not be in exclusive control of that power. Someone should referee them to make sure they don't abuse it. This means - some of their power should be taken away and placed in the hands of the public sphere.
In the case of power derived primarily from material wealth it so happens I agree with you. Individuals who amass material wealth have far too much power in our society.
In the case of reputation or know-how, I disagree totally.
No governing agency should ever be able to go "people listen to you, so now we're going to start regulating what you say." Doing so not only impinges on the freedom of the party with a reputation, google in this case, but on the freedom of all those individuals who looked at google and were impressed with its quality.
Likewise, no governing agency should ever be able to say, "you have unique skills, so now we're going to regulate how you apply them."
In closing - the Editors of google are entitled to their freedom of conscience. Google belongs to them, the prestige and technology behind google are theirs and no-one should be able to co-opt their work for some other purpose.
What we slashdotters need to do is to get involved in supporting the campaigns of legislators with the courage to speak out against corporate excesses, like.... Fritz Hollings?
And, when a legislator sells out, we need to join together in working toward their ouster, like... Fritz
President Bush signed a law last summer prohibiting students from countries considered sponsors of terrorism from working with germs and toxins most likely to be used for bioterrorism.
I'm a computational biologist, but not an expert on biological weapons, by any means. Let me say at the outset: the government has no business regulating scientific inquiry. I'm sure other people will argue this point eloquently and what they may say about AI research applies to biology as well.
It's a good idea to keep something in mind - the history of the entire field of computer science is heavily intertwined with the rise of the modern intelligence apparatus here in the US. Likewise, nuclear technology. The same is NOT true of my field (biology.)
However, while you can use your m4d sk1llz to annoy uncle Sam, they're not really dangerous. The danger is in NCB (non-conventional) weapons:
1) Nuclear weapons technology is already restricted up the wazoo.
2) Chemcial weapons technology requires a great deal of industrial infrastructure. The cat is out of the bag. All sorts of foreigners know chemistry. The oil industry is incredibly secretive anyway. Government intrusion into chemical engineering is unlikely.
3) Biological weapons are extremely difficult to make. HOWEVER, my colleagues and I are doing our best to make molecular biology as easy as possible. There's a shortage of technicians; we train people without discriminating against Pakistanis. Advances in the field make molecular biology easier, quicker, cheaper and increase your yield.
The point is that molecular biology technology, used only once in a successful terrorist context (the Anthrax, mailed by a former Marine who had no trouble getting clearance; you know he's guilty), is POTENTIALLY the most dangerous of all. The only reason I don't need security clearance to do molecular biology is because Uncle Sam failed to get in at the ground floor - molecular biology has always been very much an international effort. Of course, US military labs remain the exception.
So, we (biologists) need to be ready and determined to resist the intrusion of security concerns into our laboratories; the pressure to do so will be fierce.
How about a serious discussion
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Starcraft
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· Score: 2
The author is a nutcase and a crank, so is the reviewer.
A number of points (I'm a biologist) that need consideration: 1) How narrow is the range of conditions that would allow life to arise? We have exactly 1 observation on this point, the Earth. 2) How broad are the range of conditions under which life might persist, once formed? Again, we have only the earth to look at, but the range of conditions found on the earth, were life is found, are broad indeed. 3) When these conditions exist, how likely are the events required for life to form? To endure? Evidence indicates that life began fairly quickly in the formation of the early earth - therefore, we are inclined to believe that these events are LIKELY. The confidence we can have in this estimate is very much open to debate. 3) Once life has formed, will it always evolve into complex life? It took aeons (billions of years) for complex life - which I define as Eukaryotic single celled organisms, which are our immediate single-celled acnestors - to arise on earth - therefore, we are inclined to believe that these events are UNLIKELY, if they happen randomly. It is possible that other events (the oxygenation of the atmosphere, for example) are effectively precursors to the rise of complex cells, and these pre-requisite events might just take a long time, but still be LIKELY. I don't think so, though.
My best guess? Yes, extra-solar life exists. However, the first extra-solar life we find will be boring to anyone other than a micro- or molecular- biologist.
Some features of the earth which might be key to any of the above: a) An early solar event caused the formation of dense planets fairly close to the sun. b) Our moon reduced the number of large objects that have struck the earth's surface throughout it's history. c) The earth's temperature has always been such that liquid water can exist on the surface. d) The atmosphere and photodensity on the early earth were such that complex molecules could exist in shallow water without being totally shredded by radiation. e) Nonetheless, the atmosphere and photodensity were such that radiation triggered chemical events still occurred in shallow water with some frequency. f) The earth has a seismically active core, which releases chemicals (such as certain metal ions) which might be relatively scarce otherwise, and which helps to counteract certain effects of erosion, and to sustain others for longer periods.
Things which are weak Silly String Little Girls Good
Things which are strong Steel The forces binding nuclei together Evil
I don't see how I can make it clearer than that.
No, they can make soldiers who are always afraid
on
Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
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· Score: 5, Insightful
My fine colleagues at the hhmi (look to my e-amil address) have discovered a gene that REPRESSES the fear response.
In general, the thing you can do with that knowledge is to REMOVE the genes effect; it is far more difficult to enhance the gene. Overexpressing the gene (so that it was always on) would almost-certainly produce nasty brain defects.
"When we compared the mouse strains, we saw a powerful enhancement of learned fear in the knockout mice,"
Emphasis added.
Once they understand WHAT IT IS THAT THE GENE INHIBITS, then they may be able to make some fearless mice.
A "pre-announcement" is marketspeak for a deliberate leak. i.e. the Tivo people have not yet given a press release/conference on the topic (officially announcing it) but they have chosen to leak it to the press in an unofficial capacity.
Now - can anyone tell me how it is that they're still losing money with half a million *paying* customers? That's, like, serious cashflow.
I see two ways this could work, depending on how most people configure themselves.
1) The plurality opinion, among those who care enough to broadcast, dominates what is "credible." Aliens kidnap people. School prayer should be mandatory. The list goes on. The internet is already like this.
2) The service fragments into cliques. You only hear from people who agree with you. Within any given clique, whatever you already believe to be true - this is credible. Nothing else is. The internet is already like this.
The big advantage to this is that it will give anti-p2p lawyers brain hemmorhages. As soon as p2p is a delivery vehicle, even secondarily, for political speech, it is sacrosanct. Untouchable. Yippee.
Now, if the Common Ancestor was an extremophile, the mesophile eubacter and archaebacter should have SEPERATE adaptations to the surface environment. This does not seem to be the case.
If the Common Ancestor were a mesophile, the extremophile eubacter and archaebacter can be expected to have SEPERATE adaptations to high temperature and pressure. This DOES seem to be the case.
Now, the question is complicated by the fact that genetic exchange between eubacteria and archaebacteria HAS occured. However, the amount of gene transfer that would be required to place the common ancestor of the two lineages in an undersea vent or something similar would be rather drastic.
Oh, the first organsisms where definitely chemosynthetic. I have no doubt about that.
However, there is reason to think that they lived near the point of contact between the water and atmosphere. This was the ancient atmosphere, which had no appreciable oxygen content, but nonetheless, these organisms didn't live deep underground, like on Io.
There is even more reason to think that the common ancestor of the archael and eubacterial lineages (the single cell from which all present day life decended) lived in shallow, salt water.
I think you'd have a hard time recouping the energy required to pump all that water 2 miles down. These aren't like underground oil deposits, here, where the pressure is sufficient to make the oil guyser to the surface.
Why do you think deep bacteria are descended from shallow-water organisms?
Archabacteria and Eubacteria have a common ancestor which almost certainly dwelled in a tide pool (or similar environment in ancient earth.) You can see this when you look at the genetic tree.
-- sounds like a good place for a fragile life form to begin.
I don't want to go into the arguments about why life probably began on the surface of rock in the bottom of a partially evaporated, oily pool, but that is the most likely place for life to have begun. It is POSSIBLE that life arose underground somewhere, died out, and was replaced by the descendents of surface dwelling organisms (that is to say, all known life.) However, it is not the most likely scenario.
Firstly, even an ELE wouldn't blot out the sun COMPLETELY. Secondly, it would only do so for a relatively short period of time - after a century at most, photodensity at the equator would be up to 50% of present levels (enough to farm algae.)
Now, it is true that these chemosynthetic bacteria are a sustainable source of calories, and probably convert geothermal energy (which is where the chemicals they eat come from, in an eventual sense) to sugar at a more efficient rate than a geothermal powerplant could. So, if the earth were ripped from the sun, you might be reduced to this as an option.
However, the industrial costs to recover the buggers would be fucking immense! The technology required simply to break even on drilling up all that rock - I don't want to go there. The geysers at yellowstone don't produce surplus calories to feed very many people.
We'd be better off stockpiling glucose, or making it chemically from energy produced by nuclear / petrochemical reactors.
Secondly, in either event, write off 99.95% of the human race. Waive, chilren.
In the event of an ELE, the remnant of the human race can live on stored food, or on truly synthetic nutrients (eating electricity is what this amounts too) until the particulate level drops enough to begin farming again, less than a century if you're willing to live on strained algae.
In the event of a nuclear winter, same story except your "farms" have to be enclosed to prevent the crops from being irradiated, and they have to be on land. If the rest of the world is tenderly merciful with Australia you might be able to grow food outdoors pretty quickly, mate.
Sundry #1) Most of these bacteria are archaebacteria. They come from the SAME great lineage of life (there are two - archaea and eubacteria) as we do, or at least as our cellular DNA. These deep dwelling bacteria are more closely related to you or I than they are to the bacteria with which most of us are familiar in our day to day lives. That's not very close - still about a billion years, give or take.
Sundry #2) This means that although these bacteria dwell deep beneath the earth, and may very well out-mass all terrestrial life, they are DESCENDED from shallow-water dwelling organisms, just like we are. Life could adapt and survive beneath the crust of IO, but that does NOT mean that it could ARISE there.
Sundry #3) The pressure-survivability of bacteria is a cute trick that should surprise no-one. Bacteria are just soap bubbles full of protein. Extremely TINY soap bubbles. There are three ways to kill them: 1) Pop the soap bubble. Heat can do this, or sound waves, but not pressure the likes of which can be found on earth; the soap bubble is elastic. This doesn't mean the bacteria can BREED under very high pressures (though some can) merely that high pressure won't kill them. 2) Crunch up the protein. Proteins are just chemicals, so again, heat can destroy them, but pressure can't; extremely high pressure might cause lethal aggregation of proteins but evidently it doesn't. Enough TIME will ruin the proteins. 3) Crunch up the DNA. Heat, not pressure! Vibration can do this as well. Mostly, time can be a culprit here.
So, a bacteria might survive the high pressures of being embedded inside a piece of precambrian rock, unable to reproduce. However, TIME, by way of random chemical events, would destroy the DNA inside the bacteria.
The DNA inside of any bacteria able to reproduce is maintained by evolution - but that which maintains it also changes it.
The upshot - it is impossible to recover DNA from an organism that lived millions of years ago. Sorry.
Than oligopolies are not your friend. Any time you have a cartel that makes their money by controlling a means of distribution, they will fight tooth and nail against anything that threatens to make the distribution DIFFERENT in any way (except in exact ways of their choosing, of course). Just different - they hate open-ness, too, but it's change that they hate. Why?
Because they derive their profits by gaming the system. Any change in the rules by which the system works is a threat to them - the fact that their sector, whatever it may be, might expand overall is irrelevant. They're on top now because they're perfectly situated to control things as they stand. Now that an oligopoly is in place, and everything is arranged to their liking, they don't want to rock the boat.
In IT you notice it particularly, but it is also true in energy, in agriculture, in real eastate and even in manufacturing.
My personal belief is that if this goes unchecked it will be the death of western civilization (assuming our contempt for our own environment doesn't get us first, except that is really part and parcel of the same phenomenon.)
The cruising speed of a typical commercial jutliner is about 550 mph.
The speed of sound is about 761 mph (sea level, bleah bleah.)
What can be do to help? (Destroy the oligolopoly)
on
Cringely on P2P
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· Score: 1, Troll
You read to the end of this article, and you say to yourself, "What can I, as a nerd, do to help bring about the downfall (and total destruction) of the recording and publishing industries, the scum?"
1) Boycott! You can make a stand by boycotting that which sucks, which has been systematically drained of content and depth by hateful music executives, which is to real music as hardened canola oil is to actual cheese.
2) Contribute technical expertise to p2p. p2p could work better, it could be more secure, it could be more distributed. Defenses could be erected against DoS attacks, faked files, and so on. Get involved!
3) Rip it yourself! Take that enormous movie collection and send it to useNET! The more people that do this, the more difficult it is to prosecute any single person. Downloading free music may not be civil disobedience, but POSTING it definitely is.
4) Vote, run for office and stuff No, actually, scratch that. It doesn't matter, the system is rigged. Overthrowing our corrupt institutions in order to restore true democratic control might be a good idea, but see item #6.
5) Political Violence. You may think that because you've been a stereotypical social outcast, don't play sports and have never kissed a girl, that the option of political violence is closed to you. That's what the establishment wants you (and, to be fair, everyone else) to think! Don't let "the man" control you. Channel all of that inventiveness, sexual frustration and technical knowhow into a love of mayhem. Theodore Kaczynski was a great terrorist and an outstanding nerd - you think your case mod is l33t - did you make your own SCREWS? If only half a dozen people concocted technically feasible plans to kill random record company executives through the mail, it would do wonders for our cause.
6)WORLD DOMINATION We can establish enlightened rule by those qualified to understand the way the world really works. As masters of the human race we could end all our problems in one fell swoop. Without seizing control of the reigns of government, there's no way we can kill ALL the record company executives, who only recently gained the #1 slot (pushing long time leader, "lawyers", to #2 on the hitlist charts.)
Locking it up in the glass of a CRT is a pretty damned good way to keep discarded lead out of the water table. In fact, I can't think of a better one. Can you?
My argument is that 99.9% of environmental scientists are neither chemical nor physical engineers.
Unfortunately, the reverse is true. 99.9% of chemical and physical engineers are not environmental scientists.
Environmental science is hardcore - it requires chemistry, biology, earth science AND a specialised series of courses. I picked the university of sydney at random (high google page rank,) but the requirements are similar here at Columbia.
The environmental scientists know their chemistry - the chemical engineers don't know their biology, meteorology or geology, which is where the problem lies (I don't want to badmouth everyone in that discipline; I'm a molecular biologist but I make an effort to keep abreast of the broader context of my work. I know some chemical engineers who are quite savvy on what happens outside of a synthesis facility.)
This whole affair just goes to prove one of the great truisms of post-soviet russia: "Everything they said about communism was a lie, but everything they said about capitalism is true."
Look, now that the government has been stealing people's organs for a while, it's clear that there's a lot of money to be made.
The department of energy closed down their online scientific resources to avoid competing with the private sector, so DARPA should follow suit and stop harvesting people for their organs.
It is unfair for entrepeneurs such as myself, who kidnap people and evicerate them to support my drug habit^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfamily, to have to compete with publically funded organ harvesters and traders. These are services that could be more profitably^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hefficiently provided by the private sector. Think of how many of your tax dollars are WASTED stealing organs for local government officials, when those same tax dollars could be apportioned to local government, and then used constructively to buy me a new mercedes.
Remember - when I steal your organs and sell them to the highest bidder, the consumer wins.
They're against it because he's for it?
on
Don't Stymie Nanotech
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· Score: 5, Insightful
So, okay, he (Prof. Reynolds) makes a strong case against prohibition (of course, as a ccientist, I'm easy to persuade that R&D should never be banned outright.) Military secrecy is something I dislike, again, because secrecy is not good for science. Neither of these proposals are being floated in reasonable circles anyway, so this is something of a straw man proposal.
So, why does he oppose even modest regulation? From the paper, as it is academic in nature, it can be difficult to tell what policy he advocates, but I'm pretty sure he favores the lassez-faire option. He makes some arguments about deregulation generally which I regard as pretty vaccuous. Requiring companies to use the best available technology encourages other companies to research it and then force the first company to buy.
Anyway, to answer your question - the reason we'd want to regulate nanotechnology is because it might be dangerous. The thousands and thousands of completely harmless applications of nanotechnology - basically just material science - don't need any special regulation. It is only when the nanotechnology begins to resemble a living organism that the need for regulation comes into play. The fear, and it is remote but still legitimate, is that someone would make tiny robots that would breed out of control and become a social problem.
He points to biotechnology (which is basically unregulated, except in so far as it is also medical) as a big success. It has been - SO FAR. As yet, we have had no environmental catastrophes resultant from biotech, and the medical errors have been fairly small in scope, and would have been prevented if existing laws/procedures had been followed.
However - that doesn't mean that what we're doing is safe. It means, either, that what we've been doing is safe OR that we've been lucky. Personally, I think biotech is "pretty safe," but that agro-biotech (Monsanto, in particular) has too much free reign.
In any case, until we have a better idea of what nanotechnology will actually be like, it is premature to discuss regulation to make sure it is safe. Banning nanotechnology outright would be impossible for the reasons he has mentioned. Banning specifically self replicating nanotechnology, though I think it inadvisable, WOULD be feasable. Regulating self-replicating nanotechnology is probably desirable.
There are eukaryotic bacteria. AFAIK, the term bacteria refers to the kingdoms Monera and Protisa collectively
ProtisTa, but it does not.
There are three domains (super-kingdoms) of living things:
Eubacteria- or "True Bacteria." Most human disease agents are of this type. The mitochondria (our symbiotes) are eubacteria, as are chloroplasts (plant symbiotes.) Mycoplasma are eubacteria.
Archaebacteria - A different lineage of small, simple cells ("bacteria"). These cells, although they lack organelles (such as Mitochondria) are more closely related to us than they are to eubacteria; so, they might be thought of as Eukaryotic bacteria. However, they do not have nuclei so they are not karyotic.
Eukaryotes - Includinng Protistans, Plants, Animals and Fungi (or some other assortment of kingdoms depending on your taxonomic preference.) Any cell with organelles falls into this domain.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't want to make a presumption here, but most of the proposed "improvements" in the e-mail system have been bad for ALL of the following reasons:
1) Centralised control allowing censorship. *
2) Ease of central monitering of communications.
3) Proprietary issues.
* I don't see how you could stop spam without enabling whoever made the decision about what was "spam" to censor anyone they wanted.
That said, I'd love to see all those small island nation / crime havens brought to heel. The spam, though, is really a very small issue. Billions of dollars in costs, yes, but compared with all the money launderers and tax cheats doing business out of island nations, it's chump change.
According to the Economist, the movie industry makes a good portion of their money off of DVDs, not so much off theatre receipts, which is why they're so worried about online piracy.
The upshot of the article you can't read is that, even in this sluggish economy, spending on entertainment is UP, but advertising revenues are still DOWN, and so are entertainment profits (DOWN.)
Unfortunately, the story is "Premium Content" so I can't post the link (my room-mate subsrcibes in print.)
Of course, the Economist also thinks that piracy is responsible for the decline in CD sales (it is to laugh.)
The beginning of the book is neat. It has mystery, it's fairly funny, the futurism is cool and well (not perfectly, but well) thought out.
The ending of the book, like the ending of Earth (and of the last uplift books, and everything else David Brin has ever written) is pointless mysto-magical claptrap. Once the book starts to wind down it becomes dreadfully predictable.
So, the first half, which the reviewer didn't much care for, is a fine, fun mystery/futuristic novel with an unusual hook (story told from multiple viewpoints which are really one person) which is skillfully used to tell a complex story.
The last 100 pages are something of a letdown, they're predictable and they drag on endlessly.
My advice: read the book until the mystery is solved, and then skip to the last twenty pages for the conclusion.
Do too! We very clearly can tell who advertises in the NY Times, and we can also count the number of times they use certain words or write artices for or against a certain view. They can be then compared to other newspapers from other publishers.
You can't compare search results from google with those from altavista? Indirect evidence abounds for either a search engine OR a newspaper.
Slashdot never claimed to be fair.
Newspapers, however, DO claim to be fair. Does this claim of fairness open them up to investigation anytime they make an editorial decision someone doesn't like?
If the new york times carries a story unfavorable to my company, do I get to insist that they turn over their editorial proceedings to a court selected expert for review?
I do not! I am not entitled to definitive proof that the new york times editorial board is fair. They can claim to be fair until they're blue in the face, and if you want to believe that Fox News is impartial, that's your call. I think Fox News is a mouthpiece for the extreme right; do I get to subpoena their internal records?
The same reasoning applies to be google - they claim to be fair, you can believe them, or not.
To deal with the particulars at hand:
It is up to the people at google to determine what constitutes human judgement on a particular site, and what constitutes human judgement on a practice that they may have noticed at one, particular site. We have only SearchKing's word that they were singled out by name.
EVEN IF there was definitive proof that SearchKing was singled out rather than caught in a particular practice (there is not,) Google doesn't owe SearchKing an explanation. Google is free to single people out for exclusion from it's search engine if it so wishes, it can be as arbitrary as it wants because that is what freedom means.
If this causes you to trust google any less, that is your call, but the courts and the government should stay the hell out of the entire affair.
I think some referee needs to be monitoring Google's movements so that they cannot making under-the-table changes to the formula while claiming their not.
We have no way of knowing that the new york times does not alter their reporting to suit their advertisers.
We have no way of knowing that slashdot's moderation system is not somehow keyed to a secret agenda. There is evidence that the editors strip people of the ability to moderate without ANY PUBLIC SCRUTINY WHATSOEVER! (Gasp!)
Consumer Reports could have a vendetta against General Electric and GE would be basically screwed. There is no government watchdog.
The point is - just because people listen to publcation X does NOT give anyone the authority to regulate what X can say, how, or why X can say it. If the editors of X want to be sleazy, it is their right. The decision as to what constitutes sleazy or improper behavior belongs to the editors of X. The law intrudes on this in only a few areas - the legal, medical and financial professions only, for the most part. These three areas have special features that do not apply to google.
I look at it this way: the people at google have developed a reputation for utility and authenticity, and a technology that backs that reputation (two seperate things.) These things together give them power.
You are proposing a major power-play; you are saying, they have all this power, but they should not be in exclusive control of that power. Someone should referee them to make sure they don't abuse it. This means - some of their power should be taken away and placed in the hands of the public sphere.
In the case of power derived primarily from material wealth it so happens I agree with you. Individuals who amass material wealth have far too much power in our society.
In the case of reputation or know-how, I disagree totally.
No governing agency should ever be able to go "people listen to you, so now we're going to start regulating what you say." Doing so not only impinges on the freedom of the party with a reputation, google in this case, but on the freedom of all those individuals who looked at google and were impressed with its quality.
Likewise, no governing agency should ever be able to say, "you have unique skills, so now we're going to regulate how you apply them."
In closing - the Editors of google are entitled to their freedom of conscience. Google belongs to them, the prestige and technology behind google are theirs and no-one should be able to co-opt their work for some other purpose.
What we slashdotters need to do is to get involved in supporting the campaigns of legislators with the courage to speak out against corporate excesses, like.... Fritz Hollings?
And, when a legislator sells out, we need to join together in working toward their ouster, like... Fritz
Damn, my head exploded again.
Anyway, my point is this - Disney is not the worst corporation out there. Fritz' may be 0wn3d by Disney, but at least he doesn't belong to AT&T. I may not like Disney's plans for DRM, but they've never sponsored the overthrow of a national government (ITT, the predecessor of AT&T, aided Pinochet in establishing a military dictatorship in Chile. Search the page for ITT.)
So, would AT&T abuse their power to suborn Democracy? They already have. I sure don't trust them.
President Bush signed a law last summer prohibiting students from countries considered sponsors of terrorism from working with germs and toxins most likely to be used for bioterrorism.
I'm a computational biologist, but not an expert on biological weapons, by any means. Let me say at the outset: the government has no business regulating scientific inquiry. I'm sure other people will argue this point eloquently and what they may say about AI research applies to biology as well.
It's a good idea to keep something in mind - the history of the entire field of computer science is heavily intertwined with the rise of the modern intelligence apparatus here in the US. Likewise, nuclear technology. The same is NOT true of my field (biology.)
However, while you can use your m4d sk1llz to annoy uncle Sam, they're not really dangerous. The danger is in NCB (non-conventional) weapons:
1) Nuclear weapons technology is already restricted up the wazoo.
2) Chemcial weapons technology requires a great deal of industrial infrastructure. The cat is out of the bag. All sorts of foreigners know chemistry. The oil industry is incredibly secretive anyway. Government intrusion into chemical engineering is unlikely.
3) Biological weapons are extremely difficult to make. HOWEVER, my colleagues and I are doing our best to make molecular biology as easy as possible. There's a shortage of technicians; we train people without discriminating against Pakistanis. Advances in the field make molecular biology easier, quicker, cheaper and increase your yield.
The point is that molecular biology technology, used only once in a successful terrorist context (the Anthrax, mailed by a former Marine who had no trouble getting clearance; you know he's guilty), is POTENTIALLY the most dangerous of all. The only reason I don't need security clearance to do molecular biology is because Uncle Sam failed to get in at the ground floor - molecular biology has always been very much an international effort. Of course, US military labs remain the exception.
So, we (biologists) need to be ready and determined to resist the intrusion of security concerns into our laboratories; the pressure to do so will be fierce.
The author is a nutcase and a crank, so is the reviewer.
Nevertheless, it would be nice to have a serious discussion on the possibility of extrasolar life.
A number of points (I'm a biologist) that need consideration:
1) How narrow is the range of conditions that would allow life to arise? We have exactly 1 observation on this point, the Earth.
2) How broad are the range of conditions under which life might persist, once formed? Again, we have only the earth to look at, but the range of conditions found on the earth, were life is found, are broad indeed.
3) When these conditions exist, how likely are the events required for life to form? To endure? Evidence indicates that life began fairly quickly in the formation of the early earth - therefore, we are inclined to believe that these events are LIKELY. The confidence we can have in this estimate is very much open to debate.
3) Once life has formed, will it always evolve into complex life? It took aeons (billions of years) for complex life - which I define as Eukaryotic single celled organisms, which are our immediate single-celled acnestors - to arise on earth - therefore, we are inclined to believe that these events are UNLIKELY, if they happen randomly. It is possible that other events (the oxygenation of the atmosphere, for example) are effectively precursors to the rise of complex cells, and these pre-requisite events might just take a long time, but still be LIKELY. I don't think so, though.
My best guess? Yes, extra-solar life exists. However, the first extra-solar life we find will be boring to anyone other than a micro- or molecular- biologist.
Some features of the earth which might be key to any of the above:
a) An early solar event caused the formation of dense planets fairly close to the sun.
b) Our moon reduced the number of large objects that have struck the earth's surface throughout it's history.
c) The earth's temperature has always been such that liquid water can exist on the surface.
d) The atmosphere and photodensity on the early earth were such that complex molecules could exist in shallow water without being totally shredded by radiation.
e) Nonetheless, the atmosphere and photodensity were such that radiation triggered chemical events still occurred in shallow water with some frequency.
f) The earth has a seismically active core, which releases chemicals (such as certain metal ions) which might be relatively scarce otherwise, and which helps to counteract certain effects of erosion, and to sustain others for longer periods.
I've been waiting for this topic for a long time!
Things which are weak
Silly String
Little Girls
Good
Things which are strong
Steel
The forces binding nuclei together
Evil
I don't see how I can make it clearer than that.
My fine colleagues at the hhmi (look to my e-amil address) have discovered a gene that REPRESSES the fear response.
In general, the thing you can do with that knowledge is to REMOVE the genes effect; it is far more difficult to enhance the gene. Overexpressing the gene (so that it was always on) would almost-certainly produce nasty brain defects.
"When we compared the mouse strains, we saw a powerful enhancement of learned fear in the knockout mice,"
Emphasis added.
Once they understand WHAT IT IS THAT THE GENE INHIBITS, then they may be able to make some fearless mice.
A "pre-announcement" is marketspeak for a deliberate leak. i.e. the Tivo people have not yet given a press release/conference on the topic (officially announcing it) but they have chosen to leak it to the press in an unofficial capacity.
Now - can anyone tell me how it is that they're still losing money with half a million *paying* customers? That's, like, serious cashflow.
I see two ways this could work, depending on how most people configure themselves.
1) The plurality opinion, among those who care enough to broadcast, dominates what is "credible." Aliens kidnap people. School prayer should be mandatory. The list goes on. The internet is already like this.
2) The service fragments into cliques. You only hear from people who agree with you. Within any given clique, whatever you already believe to be true - this is credible. Nothing else is. The internet is already like this.
The big advantage to this is that it will give anti-p2p lawyers brain hemmorhages. As soon as p2p is a delivery vehicle, even secondarily, for political speech, it is sacrosanct. Untouchable. Yippee.
Behold, ygdrassil, the tree of life:
Common Ancestor
Mesophile = surface dwelling (basically)
Extromphile = hot vent dwelling (basically)
Now, if the Common Ancestor was an extremophile, the mesophile eubacter and archaebacter should have SEPERATE adaptations to the surface environment. This does not seem to be the case.
If the Common Ancestor were a mesophile, the extremophile eubacter and archaebacter can be expected to have SEPERATE adaptations to high temperature and pressure. This DOES seem to be the case.
Now, the question is complicated by the fact that genetic exchange between eubacteria and archaebacteria HAS occured. However, the amount of gene transfer that would be required to place the common ancestor of the two lineages in an undersea vent or something similar would be rather drastic.
The first person to drive the beautiful Mrs. Malda to file for a restraining order gets their name in a slashdot story.
Or.... is that how Rob met his better half?
Oh, the first organsisms where definitely chemosynthetic. I have no doubt about that.
However, there is reason to think that they lived near the point of contact between the water and atmosphere. This was the ancient atmosphere, which had no appreciable oxygen content, but nonetheless, these organisms didn't live deep underground, like on Io.
There is even more reason to think that the common ancestor of the archael and eubacterial lineages (the single cell from which all present day life decended) lived in shallow, salt water.
I think you'd have a hard time recouping the energy required to pump all that water 2 miles down. These aren't like underground oil deposits, here, where the pressure is sufficient to make the oil guyser to the surface.
Why do you think deep bacteria are descended from shallow-water organisms?
Archabacteria and Eubacteria have a common ancestor which almost certainly dwelled in a tide pool (or similar environment in ancient earth.) You can see this when you look at the genetic tree.
-- sounds like a good place for a fragile life form to begin.
I don't want to go into the arguments about why life probably began on the surface of rock in the bottom of a partially evaporated, oily pool, but that is the most likely place for life to have begun. It is POSSIBLE that life arose underground somewhere, died out, and was replaced by the descendents of surface dwelling organisms (that is to say, all known life.) However, it is not the most likely scenario.
Important in what sense?
Firstly, even an ELE wouldn't blot out the sun COMPLETELY. Secondly, it would only do so for a relatively short period of time - after a century at most, photodensity at the equator would be up to 50% of present levels (enough to farm algae.)
Now, it is true that these chemosynthetic bacteria are a sustainable source of calories, and probably convert geothermal energy (which is where the chemicals they eat come from, in an eventual sense) to sugar at a more efficient rate than a geothermal powerplant could. So, if the earth were ripped from the sun, you might be reduced to this as an option.
However, the industrial costs to recover the buggers would be fucking immense! The technology required simply to break even on drilling up all that rock - I don't want to go there. The geysers at yellowstone don't produce surplus calories to feed very many people.
We'd be better off stockpiling glucose, or making it chemically from energy produced by nuclear / petrochemical reactors.
Secondly, in either event, write off 99.95% of the human race. Waive, chilren.
In the event of an ELE, the remnant of the human race can live on stored food, or on truly synthetic nutrients (eating electricity is what this amounts too) until the particulate level drops enough to begin farming again, less than a century if you're willing to live on strained algae.
In the event of a nuclear winter, same story except your "farms" have to be enclosed to prevent the crops from being irradiated, and they have to be on land. If the rest of the world is tenderly merciful with Australia you might be able to grow food outdoors pretty quickly, mate.
Sundry #1)
Most of these bacteria are archaebacteria. They come from the SAME great lineage of life (there are two - archaea and eubacteria) as we do, or at least as our cellular DNA. These deep dwelling bacteria are more closely related to you or I than they are to the bacteria with which most of us are familiar in our day to day lives. That's not very close - still about a billion years, give or take.
Sundry #2)
This means that although these bacteria dwell deep beneath the earth, and may very well out-mass all terrestrial life, they are DESCENDED from shallow-water dwelling organisms, just like we are. Life could adapt and survive beneath the crust of IO, but that does NOT mean that it could ARISE there.
Sundry #3)
The pressure-survivability of bacteria is a cute trick that should surprise no-one. Bacteria are just soap bubbles full of protein. Extremely TINY soap bubbles. There are three ways to kill them:
1) Pop the soap bubble. Heat can do this, or sound waves, but not pressure the likes of which can be found on earth; the soap bubble is elastic. This doesn't mean the bacteria can BREED under very high pressures (though some can) merely that high pressure won't kill them.
2) Crunch up the protein. Proteins are just chemicals, so again, heat can destroy them, but pressure can't; extremely high pressure might cause lethal aggregation of proteins but evidently it doesn't. Enough TIME will ruin the proteins.
3) Crunch up the DNA. Heat, not pressure! Vibration can do this as well. Mostly, time can be a culprit here.
So, a bacteria might survive the high pressures of being embedded inside a piece of precambrian rock, unable to reproduce. However, TIME, by way of random chemical events, would destroy the DNA inside the bacteria.
The DNA inside of any bacteria able to reproduce is maintained by evolution - but that which maintains it also changes it.
The upshot - it is impossible to recover DNA from an organism that lived millions of years ago. Sorry.
Than oligopolies are not your friend. Any time you have a cartel that makes their money by controlling a means of distribution, they will fight tooth and nail against anything that threatens to make the distribution DIFFERENT in any way (except in exact ways of their choosing, of course). Just different - they hate open-ness, too, but it's change that they hate. Why?
Because they derive their profits by gaming the system. Any change in the rules by which the system works is a threat to them - the fact that their sector, whatever it may be, might expand overall is irrelevant. They're on top now because they're perfectly situated to control things as they stand. Now that an oligopoly is in place, and everything is arranged to their liking, they don't want to rock the boat.
In IT you notice it particularly, but it is also true in energy, in agriculture, in real eastate and even in manufacturing.
My personal belief is that if this goes unchecked it will be the death of western civilization (assuming our contempt for our own environment doesn't get us first, except that is really part and parcel of the same phenomenon.)
The cruising speed of a typical commercial jutliner is about 550 mph.
The speed of sound is about 761 mph (sea level, bleah bleah.)
You read to the end of this article, and you say to yourself, "What can I, as a nerd, do to help bring about the downfall (and total destruction) of the recording and publishing industries, the scum?"
1) Boycott!
You can make a stand by boycotting that which sucks, which has been systematically drained of content and depth by hateful music executives, which is to real music as hardened canola oil is to actual cheese.
2) Contribute technical expertise to p2p.
p2p could work better, it could be more secure, it could be more distributed. Defenses could be erected against DoS attacks, faked files, and so on. Get involved!
3) Rip it yourself!
Take that enormous movie collection and send it to useNET! The more people that do this, the more difficult it is to prosecute any single person. Downloading free music may not be civil disobedience, but POSTING it definitely is.
4) Vote, run for office and stuff
No, actually, scratch that. It doesn't matter, the system is rigged. Overthrowing our corrupt institutions in order to restore true democratic control might be a good idea, but see item #6.
5) Political Violence.
You may think that because you've been a stereotypical social outcast, don't play sports and have never kissed a girl, that the option of political violence is closed to you. That's what the establishment wants you (and, to be fair, everyone else) to think! Don't let "the man" control you. Channel all of that inventiveness, sexual frustration and technical knowhow into a love of mayhem. Theodore Kaczynski was a great terrorist and an outstanding nerd - you think your case mod is l33t - did you make your own SCREWS? If only half a dozen people concocted technically feasible plans to kill random record company executives through the mail, it would do wonders for our cause.
6)WORLD DOMINATION
We can establish enlightened rule by those qualified to understand the way the world really works. As masters of the human race we could end all our problems in one fell swoop. Without seizing control of the reigns of government, there's no way we can kill ALL the record company executives, who only recently gained the #1 slot (pushing long time leader, "lawyers", to #2 on the hitlist charts.)
Locking it up in the glass of a CRT is a pretty damned good way to keep discarded lead out of the water table. In fact, I can't think of a better one. Can you?
Yes.
My argument is that 99.9% of environmental scientists are neither chemical nor physical engineers.
Unfortunately, the reverse is true. 99.9% of chemical and physical engineers are not environmental scientists.
Environmental science is hardcore - it requires chemistry, biology, earth science AND a specialised series of courses. I picked the university of sydney at random (high google page rank,) but the requirements are similar here at Columbia.
The environmental scientists know their chemistry - the chemical engineers don't know their biology, meteorology or geology, which is where the problem lies (I don't want to badmouth everyone in that discipline; I'm a molecular biologist but I make an effort to keep abreast of the broader context of my work. I know some chemical engineers who are quite savvy on what happens outside of a synthesis facility.)
This whole affair just goes to prove one of the great truisms of post-soviet russia:
"Everything they said about communism was a lie, but everything they said about capitalism is true."
Look, now that the government has been stealing people's organs for a while, it's clear that there's a lot of money to be made.
The department of energy closed down their online scientific resources to avoid competing with the private sector, so DARPA should follow suit and stop harvesting people for their organs.
It is unfair for entrepeneurs such as myself, who kidnap people and evicerate them to support my drug habit^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfamily, to have to compete with publically funded organ harvesters and traders. These are services that could be more profitably^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hefficiently provided by the private sector. Think of how many of your tax dollars are WASTED stealing organs for local government officials, when those same tax dollars could be apportioned to local government, and then used constructively to buy me a new mercedes.
Remember - when I steal your organs and sell them to the highest bidder, the consumer wins.
I'm a molecular biologist myself, so as a rule I'm all for nanotechnology. However, the fact that the libertarian nutjob who wrote the PRI article support unfettered research makes me think regulation must be needed. He thinks the constitution guarantees the right to overthrow the government through armed struggle.
So, okay, he (Prof. Reynolds) makes a strong case against prohibition (of course, as a ccientist, I'm easy to persuade that R&D should never be banned outright.) Military secrecy is something I dislike, again, because secrecy is not good for science. Neither of these proposals are being floated in reasonable circles anyway, so this is something of a straw man proposal.
So, why does he oppose even modest regulation? From the paper, as it is academic in nature, it can be difficult to tell what policy he advocates, but I'm pretty sure he favores the lassez-faire option. He makes some arguments about deregulation generally which I regard as pretty vaccuous. Requiring companies to use the best available technology encourages other companies to research it and then force the first company to buy.
Anyway, to answer your question - the reason we'd want to regulate nanotechnology is because it might be dangerous. The thousands and thousands of completely harmless applications of nanotechnology - basically just material science - don't need any special regulation. It is only when the nanotechnology begins to resemble a living organism that the need for regulation comes into play. The fear, and it is remote but still legitimate, is that someone would make tiny robots that would breed out of control and become a social problem.
He points to biotechnology (which is basically unregulated, except in so far as it is also medical) as a big success. It has been - SO FAR. As yet, we have had no environmental catastrophes resultant from biotech, and the medical errors have been fairly small in scope, and would have been prevented if existing laws/procedures had been followed.
However - that doesn't mean that what we're doing is safe. It means, either, that what we've been doing is safe OR that we've been lucky. Personally, I think biotech is "pretty safe," but that agro-biotech (Monsanto, in particular) has too much free reign.
In any case, until we have a better idea of what nanotechnology will actually be like, it is premature to discuss regulation to make sure it is safe. Banning nanotechnology outright would be impossible for the reasons he has mentioned. Banning specifically self replicating nanotechnology, though I think it inadvisable, WOULD be feasable. Regulating self-replicating nanotechnology is probably desirable.
There are eukaryotic bacteria. AFAIK, the term bacteria refers to the kingdoms Monera and Protisa collectively
ProtisTa, but it does not.
There are three domains (super-kingdoms) of living things:
Eubacteria- or "True Bacteria." Most human disease agents are of this type. The mitochondria (our symbiotes) are eubacteria, as are chloroplasts (plant symbiotes.) Mycoplasma are eubacteria.
Archaebacteria - A different lineage of small, simple cells ("bacteria"). These cells, although they lack organelles (such as Mitochondria) are more closely related to us than they are to eubacteria; so, they might be thought of as Eukaryotic bacteria. However, they do not have nuclei so they are not karyotic.
Eukaryotes - Includinng Protistans, Plants, Animals and Fungi (or some other assortment of kingdoms depending on your taxonomic preference.) Any cell with organelles falls into this domain.
Does that clear things up?