I'm not sure the strict numbers back this up
on
Browsing Alone
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm a biologist, but I also have a degree in comp stat, by the way.
I'd like to see (and I have not) numbers comparing heavy net users with the rest of the population in terms of civic involvement, do you vote, and so forth. Now, of course, heavy net use corrolates with wealth, and wealth corrolates with voting, showering on a daily basis, going to church, not being addicted to drugs, etc. etc. However, with a large enough sample to control for that, I'd like to see how heavy net users measure up.
If heavy net users vote more often and are more likely to be members of community organisations - and I don't pretend the know whether or not that is true - that pretty much kills Jon's argument. You can argue that they voted even more and were in even more community associations before the net became popular, but that is pretty weak.
I also want to see how net use affects your social life, dependent on age. To a certain extent, people in our age bracket (20-somethings; I have a university address b/c I'm a grad student. IANA Teenager!) use the net heavily because we are nerds. Not joiners, I might say. That's more true of people ten years older than I am, and less true of my little brother's generation.
Remember the UCLA 2001 Internet Census? We had a story about it back in early december; and it is worth a second read if you're interested in this topic. In particular, scroll past all the marketing bullcrap down to page 55. Buried in the middle of the document you find a lot of fascinating stuff about how people feel the Internet impacts their social lives - positively, if not overwhelmingly so.
On page 59 is the most interesting single result in the whole report. People around the age of 17 are about 33% likely to say that it is easier to meet people online than in person (compared to about 10% of older people.) That is a strange, and a little bit disturbing, trend, but it points to increasing socialisation on the net, whatever you may think of p2p and filterware.
That is very informative. Let me amend my post to say:
:)!!!
I was kidding! I'd assumed that was obvious.
I pretend to accuse them of being behind the "sources" the journalist talks about; it would be exceedingly difficult to make a case with those if the journalist was in on it (and therefore not cooperating with the plaintiff,) correct? If, for example, the Journalist didn't preserve copies of the original statements? Not that I think that is really what happened.
Anything you say I'll interpret as legal advice in formulating my own schemes to manipulate the stock market:)
It just proves that there is a conspiracy to cover it up.
Obviously, AOL has been spreading rumors that there is no takeover in order to prevent Red Hat's stock price from rising so that they can acquire it in a hostile action. None of the signs are there, so it must be true.
AOL's real problem is that they've reached the logical conclusion of their intellectually insulting business strategy of eating fish that are bigger than they are. There are no fish bigger than they are. They're trying to acquire the public sector but they don't quite get it.
Likewise, of course if you ask somebody, "would you pay 3c a page for good content?" They say "well, of course, I support artists, I'd pay that even if I didn't have to bleah bleah fair use bleah bleah." It's practically a religious thing for people, like myself and, lets be frank, everyone else on Slashdot, who download gigs of Mp3s.
However, when you actually look at the numbers for this - Penny Arcade doesn't get a tenth of a cent in micropayments per pagehit. Now, maybe some people are making that up in buying coffee mugs, whatever, the point is, when you look at how people actually behave, they don't pay the three cents per page when you demand it, they go read something else.
Is this because PayPal is too bulky? I'm sure that that is part of it, and that if it were easier to make micropayments than half of the people who say they'd make them really would.
Actually, because the Farscape name/logo isn't really worth any marketing juice in and of itself, I'd think that maybe the people who made the game had bought the license because they were fans of the show; that ought to be a good sign, generally speaking. Really expensive licenses - Harry Potter comes to mind - are the ones that produce really dreadful mass market games.
Anyway, I can allready tell that I don't like the game. However much of an improvement the game play, plot, whatever are over Diablo II (and I'm not saying it is better; just for sake of argument) the game is ugly. I realise that this is a subjective judgement but take a second look at those screenshots. The detail level is fairly high but the element of wonder or the unexpected, not to mention artistry, is just completely absent. Crates in piles and explosions (10th screenshot)! How delightfully unexpected.
You look at the circular buildings in the eighth screenshot, and you can tell no real thought was put into "how would we make these buildings look cool, alien, inhuman, unexpected, strange?" You can point to all sorts of things (first screenshot, for example) and say "well, that's weird." But the only thing I like is the white vehicle in the fourth screenshot, which looks pretty cool.
Which is too bad, because the farscape show looks really good. The totally lunatic design was the best thing about the show; it's fun for the same reasons good Dr. Who is fun, because a trashcan with deelybobs glued onto it rolls onto the screen and you say "damn, that trashcan looks COOL". Only, instead of a traschan it'd be a muppet, but it's the same thing. If the game were really trippy eyecandy, I could see playing it even if it were dreadful.
P.S. I tried to post links to the screenshots I'm talking about but they don't work, so I just supplied numbers.
Doing this would be, in the long run, a death sentence for Adobe. The only reason for existence that Adobe really has, right now, is that if you put documents in their format(s), everyone will be able to read them, because Adobe has gone to a lot of trouble to make acrobat reader ubiquitous; which in turn provides Adobe's other products with unthinkable amounts of free advertising. I don't want to reignite the religious argument about the merits of different formats - but suffice to say that.pdf isn't enough better, intrinsically, than the various free formats to be worth paying money for.
If they cut off support for 50% of the human race, they will cease to be the defacto standard really quick.
This is a good thing. Having a proprietary standard for scanned document transmission over the web sucks 'til donkey jiz runs down its chin. How many universities do you know who spring to put Acrobat Writer on all of their workstations? If I hand out documents as.ps files, half of my students can't even read them. The sooner adobe implodes (preferably, as in this case, from its own stupidity), the better.
Yes, I am aware that they also make Photoshop, which is not proprietary format dependent (and even worth buying) so they will not actually implode and vanish with a little "pop" should.pdf pass away; however, they will lose the biggest (only?) edge they have.
Firstly, Religious Tolerance online does not recognise/list Linux distros, or the open source software movement, as ethical systems. Send e-mail to ocrt@religioustolerance.org to get this corrected. Seriously, I bet we can get them to include it as a religion. They include Scientology, after all.
Secondly, it is important that we tip off "investigators" from the counter-cult movement about this new, occult Linux distribution (former Linux programmer, now saved, reveals Satan's plan for open source software!). Nothing drums up good PR like being an instrument of the great beast. Religious Tolerance keeps a list of these fruitcakes. These people have suffered fundamental damage to the credulity centers of their brains and will believe anything packaged as evidence of Satan's machinations.
I said:
The enemies we've foughtusing mostly special forceshave not, with the notable exception of Somalia which turned out as a disaster, really fought back.
shilly said:
The Nazis didn't fight back? The original modern special forces were the SAS, formed in WWII. The SAS is generally considered to be a success...
We fought the Nazis using mostly special forces? If I implied that individual engagements fought using mostly special forces were a failure, I apologise, but I think that that is clearly not what I meant. I don't know enough about the engagements the SAS fought to talk in detail, anyway.
When we've fought entire wars, such as in grenada, haiti and panama, using exclusively special forces, the enemy has just caved. When we tried to do that in Somalia, they did not cave and it was a bloodbath.
My point is - if your enemy is really going to fight back (like the Nazi's did) special forces are not going to be able to win the war. They still have a very valid role supporting an actual army, but you do need the actual army.
This is directed at legislators. As PR, it's pretty poor, and against form for microsoft - it admits that a problem exists (remember their old slogans about how windows was fast and reliable?) If they can convince legislators (who are, to some or extent or another, in MS' pocket) that they're doing something, than they can convince legislators to abandon the proposal to make software vendors liable for security failures, which could open up MS to unlimited liability.
I wouldn't be so quick to jump on the special forces bandwagon (which goes by more buzzwords than anything.) The enemies we've fought using mostly special forces have not, with the notable exception of Somalia which turned out as a disaster, really fought back. Special forces are great for routing an allready demoralised enemy - Alexander the great knew that. Now, in a world where, for political reasons, we never fight anyone who's going to fight back, yeah, special forces are the way to go, because you can't even use anybody else.
The real interesting thing about these exoskeletons is not the heavy ordinance they let a soldier carry - the chinese make an automatic grenade launcher that is man-portable, for christ's sake (you'd have to be nuts to try firing it without pinning it to the ground, though.) If you're really concerned about improving the firepower of your man on the ground, there are a lot cheaper ways to do it - stinger missiles, RPGLs - than to put him inside a killer robot, is my point.
Also, I'm not really impressed with how tough giant robots are supposed to make people. If you recall, back in 'nam the soldiers rode OUTSIDE their APCs for safety. Of course, the vietnamese fought back. If all your enemy is gonna do is pop off a few light rounds at you while you stomp around, you're better off in Voltron.
The issue is portage of supplies. The sheer weight of a soldier's gear (food, water, ropes, kits, knives and guns, and so on) make the exoskeleton really attractive for that purpose. It's also a convenient platform to integrate all of these cool tactical and communications gadgets we want our soldiers to cart around, which have been making the problem of portage even worse. This does mean we could fit every man with sidewinder missiles and a tac nuke, but delta force paratroopers can allready reduce a hundred men each to hamburger, I just don't see the percentages.
I agree that poor implementation of the rules that they are proposing - including implementation that, due to influence by lobbyists from big software vendors, punished small outfits like consultants but let MS publish crap with impunity - could be disastrous.
Nevertheless, this latest round of security disasters - and the poor quality of MS' cleanup - has been an absolute blight. Furthermore, the consequences for MS have been mild enough that if we don't do something to change the rules of the software game, it is going to happen again, and it the fallout could be much worse.
There is a wide legal history for freedom of speech ending when it causes harm to others.
You don't need to open that whole kettle of worms at all, in this case. The right to say something does not equate with the right to sell it - unless it is sold for the purpose of communication (which commercial software is not.)
People who write software and then sit on it, or only give it to a few friends, cannot and should not be able to be held accountable for their software not working - unless (like yelling "FIRE!" in the middle of a crowded theatre) there is clear evidence of malicious intent (computer viruses.)
Someone who distributes software for free ought to be required to disclaim any warranties, which they allready do, and that is fine.
On the other hand, when you sell a piece of software there is an implied warranty of merchantability that you cannot disclaim. Extending that warranty to include security is not a free speech issue. Your right to write any code you want is still protected, you just cannot necesarilly sell it.
By extension, however, code written for the purpose of communication - including "here is how you write DeCSS" or the example code in a CS textbook - would still be protected, and you'd still have a right to sell it, whether or not it worked or was secure.
If you trust vaccines to do their job, then those who *aren't* vaccinated should only be a danger to themselves and others who aren't vaccinated.
Nonsense. If a vaccine is 75% effective on an individual basis, you can practically eliminate it by vaccinating everybody. The disease can still spread as an epidemic if only half of the people are vaccinated.
As vaccination rates have fallen, in those places where they have fallen (the best exmplae I can think of is in Russia), childhood mortality from the formerly vaccinated diseases has RISEN, even among the still-affluent. That is a country fact.
None of the vaccines injected into children have ever been tested for their carcinogenic, mutagenic,or teratogenic potential. Not a single one.
Of those individuals for whom full medical records are available (which is a lot of people) no link has been found between: 1. vaccination and cancer, 2. vaccination and damage to the germ line and 3. vaccination and somatic birth defects. People have looked, people have looked HARD, and even doing statistical tricks to account for differences in wealth among the vaccinated vs. unvaccinated populations (I find these tricks highly suspect, myself) no link has been found. How then are you going to justify a controlled study? Listening to Pink Ffloyd could cause cancer as well, but no studies have been done! Ooh, scary!
Now, I can see why a lay person would be skeptical of those statements. Monsanto (or was it Union Carbide?) makes very similar statements (except false) about how low doses of PCBs are harmless (PCBs definitely cause cancer.) I have degrees in both molecular biology and statistics, so I know what's bullshit by reading the actual research papers - short of that, the only advice I can give is that people trying to make a buck are usually lying; this applies to nutrition gurus as much as it does to Conglomerated Megadeath. I work in structural biology; I have no professional interest in vaccines.
Polio was a massive failure resultant from sheer hubris on the part of the public health community, and I can see why it would trouble people. However, the costs of that failure (while high) are far outweighed by the benefits of immunisation elsewhere - I would say that all medical malpractice of the last century is dwarfed by the elimination of smallpox.
One book I can definitely recommend is Laurie Garrett's "Betrayal of Trust," which is a laymen level review of the history of public health, which covers all of this very well.
It is true that certain vaccines seem to cause seizures. However, the problem is being vastly overstated (varying from statistical fudging to outright lies; I've seen raw data) in the reems of anti-vaccination literature circulating on the web. Furthermore, the more serious allegations (of causing epilepsy or autism) are completely unjustifiable, statistically. Not only is the evidence to support a link between vaccination and either condition absent, but the evidence that we do have would be >99% likely to reveal such a link, if it existed.
As far as your hollistic medical advice goes - I'm afraid that the statistics don't back you up there, either. A good diet and regular exercise do reduce your risk of getting infectious diseases, I'll grant - but it's not as much protection as you seem to think, especially if everyone (or 25% of people, or 50% of people, is sick). Children, however, have fragile/developing immune systems anyway, regardless of how you exercise them or feed them. It was not so long ago that 33% of the human race died of disease before reaching age 18. The well fed children did better, but not as much better as present day, vaccinated children do. It is true that PART of that improvement can be credited to improvement in sanitation, especially for diptheria, there are other diseases which we combat almost exclusively through vaccination.
If I gave you the impression that influenza virus responds to antibiotics, I apologise - I suggest you might give a closer reading of my post. There are, however, antiviral drugs (such as protease inhibitors against HIV) and virii do display characteristics similar (although not identical) to bacteria as regards acquiring resistance.
However, there are vaccines against bacteria, as well. Diptheria, for example. My point was that controlling the spread of diptheria using vaccines helped to reduce the diversity in circulating diptheria, reducing the chance that antibiotic resistance will arise.
This is off topic, however, these are both common myths that have to be dispelled.
In fact, it may be the case that over-vaccination is leading to adaptation of infectants to the vaccine.
You have them confused with antibiotics. If you give someone an insufficient dose of antibiotics, their bacterial population will develop resistance.
Vaccines do not target the infectant directly - instead, they target the immune system of the person, alerting it to the possibility of that infectant. Without getting too long or over-technical, periodically, in a disease with a large enough population of microbes (influenza) vaccines become obsolete, but this happens whether or not you use them. A given vaccine, if it's going to go obsolete, starts to become obsolete faster once you start using it - but it does you no good sitting on a shelf. Get your flu shots.
Using vaccines, you can clear a population of a disease, which, long term, cuts down on the genetic diversity available to the organism which helps to PREVENT the rise of antibiotic resistance in the same organisms, in the future.
In addition, it is quite common for vaccines to cause severe reactions in children, as can be attested to by this link (top hit on Google, "Vaccines"
The argument that vaccines cause autism, or palsy, or anything else besides a sore arm, is extremely weak. It does not stand up to scientific scrutiny - periodically, the symptoms of autism arise, just by chance, around the age when children are vaccinated. Autism rates are not higher among vaccinated children. The vaccines which we presently give children have been studied to death, and they are safe.
When introducing a new vaccine, there is a certain risk that it will cause (for example) strong allergic reactions in a certain percentage of patients. We have a number of these dangerous vaccines stockpiled, but we don't give them to children. These dangerous vaccines are only given out (this hasn't happened in the US for quite a while) when the disease they protect against becomes endemic.
Now, the failure of parents to participate in these public health measures does not only impact the health of their own but on all the other children that their children come into contact with. I'm a great believer in draconian, absolute power for public health authorities.
throwing money at a (social) problem never makes it go away, and usually makes it bigger.
That is a rather sweeping generalisation to make, but not germane, in any case.
I recommend you go against the grain and read the article which talks about how open source software might help to bridge the digital devide, rather than jumping off on this tangent.
The deeper problem is that most of the lower classes have no interest in the culture of the net, and if given computers would not take advantage of the rich human content of the web.
Really? You got any research to back that up? Do you want to read the UCLA internet usage report which was on slashdot a month or so ago?
I'm certain that poor people are proportionally less interested in the slashdotesque, and therefore, more likely than not, are proportionally less interested in whatever aspects of net culture the typical slashdot reader favors.
The root problem is that the lower class is comprised mostly of poor civic citizens,
Calvinist prick.
There is a digital divide, but it is a symptom of a larger cultural divide, and giving out computers will not fix the problem.
When did I propose giving anyone computers? I compared the lack of computers (not given away) with the lack of health care (theoretically given away.) When I was talking about how our resources would best be spent, I was talking about technical time/inventiveness, not money - although, certainly, technical inventiveness can be sold.
The article is not about giving computers away - it is about how open source software may help reduce the cost (I said required economic sacrifices) for the poor/minorities to get computers.
I don't buy this whole "Digital Devide" concept.... people I chat with on IRC are what would be considered very poor in the US sense, and have basically put together computers from with others have thrown out.
That is vaccuous reasoning.
It is true that poor people can get computers (my parents managed when I was a kid) but that does not mean that there isn't a digital divide. A well organised, informed or minimally well connected working class person can get health care for their kids - it may not be great but it will meet their basic needs. Are you going to argue, therefore, that the lower vaccination rates among poor children don't reflect inferior access to health care? After all, the resources are theoretically available to vaccinate all those poor children.
people whining about the "digital divide" are mostly rich people who couldn't imagine what it is like to actually have to work hard to get the things you need.
I'm a whining rich person because I want to see their kids vaccinated, while I get health care from my fellowship?
The fact of the matter is - and the article has these statistics so I'm not going to repeat them - poor people are less likely to have computers. This has a number of impacts on their lives, both economic and cultural, which have also been rehashed endlessly. If ways can be found to get computers for more of them, or to reduce the economic sacrifices they have to make to get them, can we all agree that it is a good thing?
In terms of overall benefit to the culture of the net - which is richer in human content (as opposed to fast, or [.] flashy, or a "rich media experience", but that stuff isn't important anyway) the more people are on it, we're better off spending resources to get the working class connected, than on any buzzing, bleeping toy (like the 40+" flat screen I've been eyeing, ) you could imagine.
It isn't as huge a deal as the failure to get children vaccinated (criminal to my mind - but my background is in biology), but that doesn't mean it is nothing.
Minority children have less computers in their schools. This digital divide is definitely narrowing - and the very poorest schools (in terms of percent children in poverty) have more computers per student than average, because of all the federal money they get; however, most of those are alternative or remedial schools, and I doubt they have more computers than alternative or remedial schools in wealthy districts.
Anyway, as we are well remember from all that fallout with companies supplying computers to schools in exchange for running ads (there was a slashdot story about it but I can't find it), the money for schools to pay for computers is still a major issue, especially in poor schools. That is where organised promotion of open source can really make it's mark - and, hopefully, propogate as an ethic among the next generation.
I'm not a Chemistry whiz, but my old textbook says that the energy of reduction for 2 chlorine ions to form chlorine gas (Cl2) and 2 electrons is -1.36 volts- so I don't see why this reaction would occur spontaneously.
I won't argue with you that HCl vapor is bad for you, but it's certainly nowhere near as deadly as chlorine gas.
The question of whether or not a reaction proceeds spontaneously also depends on the concentrations of the reactants/products. Even with 10M HCl, the equilibrium concentration of Cl2 is really small - but it isn't zero. Actually, the Cl2 is fairly likely to break down into two Cl-s when it hits your screen (cathode ray tube = electron gun, after all.)
Anyway, I've been told by other people in the lab's I've worked in that it's the tiny amounts of chlorine gas from the HCl that irritate your eyes, and not the HCl gas, itself. For one thing, the HCl is driven into Cl2 because I don't think HCl is very volatile, but Cl2 sure is (so it floats away and can't turn back into HCl.) I don't know what would accept the electrons (probably water, to make 2 OH- and 1 H2) if you look up the voltage for that half cell and subtract it from 1.36 volts, you can calculate the equilibrium concentrations. Keep in mind that 10M HCl is about 50% water, and that the "starting" OH-, Cl2 and H2 concentrations (the products) are all three of them basically zero.
I'm a flavor of socialist myself, so I'm all for a more equitable distribution of that wonderful semiconductor laden stuff - in theory.
Computers, however, are a bit of a problem. Yes, I know the government puts them in libraries and schools allready, but computers (nowadays) are a communication device, and it is very easy to make them into a propoganda device. Government paying to put propoganda into libraries, and unfortunately public schools, is basically unavoidable (you can have meritocrats make the decisions, but that hurts as often as it helps,) but in people's homes? Everyone's homes?
It may just be the capitalist mind control rays making me say this, but - most of the people who get these computers aren't going to be especially computer literate, and if some flemmish speaking prole gets a computer from the government he is unlikely to reconfigure it when he gets home from a long day at the football riot;). If people use them regularly, which if you give them to everyone for free is likely, the software you bundle them with (and the homepage they come preconfigured with) becomes a major issue. It is a serious tool that they can use to direct the nature of an emerging sector of public discourse. I can't even concieve of all the possible ways it could be abused, and the belgian government has a world class history of gratuitous acts of evil.
Alternatively, they can sell it to the highest bidder - if I were M$ I'd give them the OS and help pay for the machines (which have gotta be cheap at the moment) so that I could bundle all this.net crap with it.
...it permeabilises your skin
um, not sure what it means but it sounds a bit nasty, really....
There are some substances that cannot pass through your skin and into your blood (in appreciable amounts), but if you dissolve them in acetonitrile they pass through your skin in much greater amounts. The effect is even more striking with DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) - if you dissolve methanol (wood alchohol) in DMSO, and poor it on rats, the rats go blind.
It has been suggested that you might use a stream of DMSO as a delivery system for chemical agents (a death squirt gun), but it's only barely feasible (DMSO is volatile, and fairly expensive, and if the gun leaks on you you die...) so, really, dart guns are a clearly superior technology.
I regularly clean my monitor with a soft lint-free cloth and a 10M solution of HCl.
I believe you can find enlightenment by embracing the tangential.
Chlorine gas (which HCl releases in small amounts) is bad for your eyes. 10M HCl also burns cheap plastics, and isn't especially good at disolving oily residue. If you have metal deposits on your moniter, HCl is the way to go, otherwise, no.
The secret moniter cleaning solution only lab chemists new about (until now)- 50% water, 50% acetonitrile. Unlike cheap malt liquor (which I used to clean my moniter with - seriously) it doesn't leave a stink or a funny residue.
Two things to remember - only use it in a well ventilated area (which you should have for your computer anyway, in case it starts putting off Ozone) and try not to spill it on yourself, it permeabilises your skin (although not as much as DMSO.)
PS -- i know they're evil. that makes this seem *more* strange, not less.
They had to stop being evil because they were one of the few sources of domestic evil that hadn't given Bush a big wad of cash. So, when the president announces he's going to go after evil, who's he going to target? Monsanto, who gave him money? No, these people. And their insurers knew it; keeping those servers in their offices was a huge liability.
. Now for Jupiter to become a star it would have to be around the order of 100 times more massive than it is now (though that's still much less massive than the sun).
Well, that may or may not be true. The question is - can you get Jupiter's core under enough pressure to undergo fusion? The fact that it is undergoing fission now is relevant because fission of the sort occuring in Jove's core also requires considerable (although lesser) density/pressure. The heavy elements may also provide a source of high energy alpha particles to help fusion get started (like in a modern H bomb which uses fissioning technitium as a trigger.)
So, PV = nRT, right? Well, if Jupiter were hit by a uranus-sized object moving perpendicular to the orbital plane -
1) It would put off huge amounts of heat (q = delta T / S) which might increase the pressure in Jupiter's core enough to ignite it.
2) The actual impact would involve a lot of force, as well - the whole planet would deform like a ball bouncing off the wall of a squash court. This would constrict the volume available to the core (lowering V, raising P) as well as causing huge differentials in density (raising n locally) as the planet bounced back into shape.
I'm not sure if that would be enough to do it, but once Jupiter is "lit", the fusion processes in it's core WOULD put off enough heat to be self-sustaining.
Also, the nuclear reactions going on inside the Earth and Jupiter's cores are fission based (decay of unstable elements). This is completely different from what's happening in the Sun so comparing this to what was happening in the early stages of the solar system is pointless.
Actually, fusion is decay of unstable elements as well - heavy hydrogen nuclei are hit by other heavy hydrogen nuclei and "decay" into helium nuclei. The fission at earth and jupiter's cores is NOT spontaneous decay like you see in a sample of carbon 14 that is left to sit (at least not mostly). It's collision-mediated decay, a slow form of chain reaction like you see in a detonating U235 bomb. That is to say, like nuclear fusion, the fission that occurs in the earth's core is collision mediated.
Thank you for pointing that out though, since I agree that my previous post certainly didn't draw a distinction between the two.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a biologist, but I also have a degree in comp stat, by the way.
I'd like to see (and I have not) numbers comparing heavy net users with the rest of the population in terms of civic involvement, do you vote, and so forth. Now, of course, heavy net use corrolates with wealth, and wealth corrolates with voting, showering on a daily basis, going to church, not being addicted to drugs, etc. etc. However, with a large enough sample to control for that, I'd like to see how heavy net users measure up.
If heavy net users vote more often and are more likely to be members of community organisations - and I don't pretend the know whether or not that is true - that pretty much kills Jon's argument. You can argue that they voted even more and were in even more community associations before the net became popular, but that is pretty weak.
I also want to see how net use affects your social life, dependent on age. To a certain extent, people in our age bracket (20-somethings; I have a university address b/c I'm a grad student. IANA Teenager!) use the net heavily because we are nerds. Not joiners, I might say. That's more true of people ten years older than I am, and less true of my little brother's generation.
Remember the UCLA 2001 Internet Census? We had a story about it back in early december; and it is worth a second read if you're interested in this topic. In particular, scroll past all the marketing bullcrap down to page 55. Buried in the middle of the document you find a lot of fascinating stuff about how people feel the Internet impacts their social lives - positively, if not overwhelmingly so.
On page 59 is the most interesting single result in the whole report. People around the age of 17 are about 33% likely to say that it is easier to meet people online than in person (compared to about 10% of older people.) That is a strange, and a little bit disturbing, trend, but it points to increasing socialisation on the net, whatever you may think of p2p and filterware.
That is very informative. Let me amend my post to say:
:)
:)!!!
I was kidding! I'd assumed that was obvious.
I pretend to accuse them of being behind the "sources" the journalist talks about; it would be exceedingly difficult to make a case with those if the journalist was in on it (and therefore not cooperating with the plaintiff,) correct? If, for example, the Journalist didn't preserve copies of the original statements? Not that I think that is really what happened.
Anything you say I'll interpret as legal advice in formulating my own schemes to manipulate the stock market
I'm a biologist, and now I'm curious.
It just proves that there is a conspiracy to cover it up.
Obviously, AOL has been spreading rumors that there is no takeover in order to prevent Red Hat's stock price from rising so that they can acquire it in a hostile action. None of the signs are there, so it must be true.
AOL's real problem is that they've reached the logical conclusion of their intellectually insulting business strategy of eating fish that are bigger than they are. There are no fish bigger than they are. They're trying to acquire the public sector but they don't quite get it.
Without going on too much of a tangent, people asked by pollsters say they go to church every week but actually they don't.
Likewise, of course if you ask somebody, "would you pay 3c a page for good content?" They say "well, of course, I support artists, I'd pay that even if I didn't have to bleah bleah fair use bleah bleah." It's practically a religious thing for people, like myself and, lets be frank, everyone else on Slashdot, who download gigs of Mp3s.
However, when you actually look at the numbers for this - Penny Arcade doesn't get a tenth of a cent in micropayments per pagehit. Now, maybe some people are making that up in buying coffee mugs, whatever, the point is, when you look at how people actually behave, they don't pay the three cents per page when you demand it, they go read something else.
Is this because PayPal is too bulky? I'm sure that that is part of it, and that if it were easier to make micropayments than half of the people who say they'd make them really would.
Just my 0.02$ per page.
Actually, because the Farscape name/logo isn't really worth any marketing juice in and of itself, I'd think that maybe the people who made the game had bought the license because they were fans of the show; that ought to be a good sign, generally speaking. Really expensive licenses - Harry Potter comes to mind - are the ones that produce really dreadful mass market games.
Anyway, I can allready tell that I don't like the game. However much of an improvement the game play, plot, whatever are over Diablo II (and I'm not saying it is better; just for sake of argument) the game is ugly. I realise that this is a subjective judgement but take a second look at those screenshots. The detail level is fairly high but the element of wonder or the unexpected, not to mention artistry, is just completely absent. Crates in piles and explosions (10th screenshot)! How delightfully unexpected.
You look at the circular buildings in the eighth screenshot, and you can tell no real thought was put into "how would we make these buildings look cool, alien, inhuman, unexpected, strange?" You can point to all sorts of things (first screenshot, for example) and say "well, that's weird." But the only thing I like is the white vehicle in the fourth screenshot, which looks pretty cool.
Which is too bad, because the farscape show looks really good. The totally lunatic design was the best thing about the show; it's fun for the same reasons good Dr. Who is fun, because a trashcan with deelybobs glued onto it rolls onto the screen and you say "damn, that trashcan looks COOL". Only, instead of a traschan it'd be a muppet, but it's the same thing. If the game were really trippy eyecandy, I could see playing it even if it were dreadful.
P.S. I tried to post links to the screenshots I'm talking about but they don't work, so I just supplied numbers.
Doing this would be, in the long run, a death sentence for Adobe. The only reason for existence that Adobe really has, right now, is that if you put documents in their format(s), everyone will be able to read them, because Adobe has gone to a lot of trouble to make acrobat reader ubiquitous; which in turn provides Adobe's other products with unthinkable amounts of free advertising. I don't want to reignite the religious argument about the merits of different formats - but suffice to say that .pdf isn't enough better, intrinsically, than the various free formats to be worth paying money for.
.ps files, half of my students can't even read them. The sooner adobe implodes (preferably, as in this case, from its own stupidity), the better.
.pdf pass away; however, they will lose the biggest (only?) edge they have.
If they cut off support for 50% of the human race, they will cease to be the defacto standard really quick.
This is a good thing. Having a proprietary standard for scanned document transmission over the web sucks 'til donkey jiz runs down its chin. How many universities do you know who spring to put Acrobat Writer on all of their workstations? If I hand out documents as
Yes, I am aware that they also make Photoshop, which is not proprietary format dependent (and even worth buying) so they will not actually implode and vanish with a little "pop" should
Firstly, Religious Tolerance online does not recognise/list Linux distros, or the open source software movement, as ethical systems. Send e-mail to ocrt@religioustolerance.org to get this corrected. Seriously, I bet we can get them to include it as a religion. They include Scientology, after all.
Secondly, it is important that we tip off "investigators" from the counter-cult movement about this new, occult Linux distribution (former Linux programmer, now saved, reveals Satan's plan for open source software!). Nothing drums up good PR like being an instrument of the great beast. Religious Tolerance keeps a list of these fruitcakes. These people have suffered fundamental damage to the credulity centers of their brains and will believe anything packaged as evidence of Satan's machinations.
I said:
The enemies we've fought using mostly special forces have not, with the notable exception of Somalia which turned out as a disaster, really fought back.
shilly said:
The Nazis didn't fight back? The original modern special forces were the SAS, formed in WWII. The SAS is generally considered to be a success...
We fought the Nazis using mostly special forces? If I implied that individual engagements fought using mostly special forces were a failure, I apologise, but I think that that is clearly not what I meant. I don't know enough about the engagements the SAS fought to talk in detail, anyway.
When we've fought entire wars, such as in grenada, haiti and panama, using exclusively special forces, the enemy has just caved. When we tried to do that in Somalia, they did not cave and it was a bloodbath.
My point is - if your enemy is really going to fight back (like the Nazi's did) special forces are not going to be able to win the war. They still have a very valid role supporting an actual army, but you do need the actual army.
This is directed at legislators. As PR, it's pretty poor, and against form for microsoft - it admits that a problem exists (remember their old slogans about how windows was fast and reliable?) If they can convince legislators (who are, to some or extent or another, in MS' pocket) that they're doing something, than they can convince legislators to abandon the proposal to make software vendors liable for security failures, which could open up MS to unlimited liability.
I wouldn't be so quick to jump on the special forces bandwagon (which goes by more buzzwords than anything.) The enemies we've fought using mostly special forces have not, with the notable exception of Somalia which turned out as a disaster, really fought back. Special forces are great for routing an allready demoralised enemy - Alexander the great knew that. Now, in a world where, for political reasons, we never fight anyone who's going to fight back, yeah, special forces are the way to go, because you can't even use anybody else.
The real interesting thing about these exoskeletons is not the heavy ordinance they let a soldier carry - the chinese make an automatic grenade launcher that is man-portable, for christ's sake (you'd have to be nuts to try firing it without pinning it to the ground, though.) If you're really concerned about improving the firepower of your man on the ground, there are a lot cheaper ways to do it - stinger missiles, RPGLs - than to put him inside a killer robot, is my point.
Also, I'm not really impressed with how tough giant robots are supposed to make people. If you recall, back in 'nam the soldiers rode OUTSIDE their APCs for safety. Of course, the vietnamese fought back. If all your enemy is gonna do is pop off a few light rounds at you while you stomp around, you're better off in Voltron.
The issue is portage of supplies. The sheer weight of a soldier's gear (food, water, ropes, kits, knives and guns, and so on) make the exoskeleton really attractive for that purpose. It's also a convenient platform to integrate all of these cool tactical and communications gadgets we want our soldiers to cart around, which have been making the problem of portage even worse. This does mean we could fit every man with sidewinder missiles and a tac nuke, but delta force paratroopers can allready reduce a hundred men each to hamburger, I just don't see the percentages.
Well, I'm scared too.
I agree that poor implementation of the rules that they are proposing - including implementation that, due to influence by lobbyists from big software vendors, punished small outfits like consultants but let MS publish crap with impunity - could be disastrous.
Nevertheless, this latest round of security disasters - and the poor quality of MS' cleanup - has been an absolute blight. Furthermore, the consequences for MS have been mild enough that if we don't do something to change the rules of the software game, it is going to happen again, and it the fallout could be much worse.
There is a wide legal history for freedom of speech ending when it causes harm to others.
You don't need to open that whole kettle of worms at all, in this case. The right to say something does not equate with the right to sell it - unless it is sold for the purpose of communication (which commercial software is not.)
People who write software and then sit on it, or only give it to a few friends, cannot and should not be able to be held accountable for their software not working - unless (like yelling "FIRE!" in the middle of a crowded theatre) there is clear evidence of malicious intent (computer viruses.)
Someone who distributes software for free ought to be required to disclaim any warranties, which they allready do, and that is fine.
On the other hand, when you sell a piece of software there is an implied warranty of merchantability that you cannot disclaim. Extending that warranty to include security is not a free speech issue. Your right to write any code you want is still protected, you just cannot necesarilly sell it.
By extension, however, code written for the purpose of communication - including "here is how you write DeCSS" or the example code in a CS textbook - would still be protected, and you'd still have a right to sell it, whether or not it worked or was secure.
If you trust vaccines to do their job, then those who *aren't* vaccinated should only be a danger to themselves and others who aren't vaccinated.
Nonsense. If a vaccine is 75% effective on an individual basis, you can practically eliminate it by vaccinating everybody. The disease can still spread as an epidemic if only half of the people are vaccinated.
As vaccination rates have fallen, in those places where they have fallen (the best exmplae I can think of is in Russia), childhood mortality from the formerly vaccinated diseases has RISEN, even among the still-affluent. That is a country fact.
None of the vaccines injected into children have ever been tested for their carcinogenic, mutagenic,or teratogenic potential. Not a single one.
Of those individuals for whom full medical records are available (which is a lot of people) no link has been found between: 1. vaccination and cancer, 2. vaccination and damage to the germ line and 3. vaccination and somatic birth defects. People have looked, people have looked HARD, and even doing statistical tricks to account for differences in wealth among the vaccinated vs. unvaccinated populations (I find these tricks highly suspect, myself) no link has been found. How then are you going to justify a controlled study? Listening to Pink Ffloyd could cause cancer as well, but no studies have been done! Ooh, scary!
Now, I can see why a lay person would be skeptical of those statements. Monsanto (or was it Union Carbide?) makes very similar statements (except false) about how low doses of PCBs are harmless (PCBs definitely cause cancer.) I have degrees in both molecular biology and statistics, so I know what's bullshit by reading the actual research papers - short of that, the only advice I can give is that people trying to make a buck are usually lying; this applies to nutrition gurus as much as it does to Conglomerated Megadeath. I work in structural biology; I have no professional interest in vaccines.
Polio was a massive failure resultant from sheer hubris on the part of the public health community, and I can see why it would trouble people. However, the costs of that failure (while high) are far outweighed by the benefits of immunisation elsewhere - I would say that all medical malpractice of the last century is dwarfed by the elimination of smallpox.
One book I can definitely recommend is Laurie Garrett's "Betrayal of Trust," which is a laymen level review of the history of public health, which covers all of this very well.
It is true that certain vaccines seem to cause seizures. However, the problem is being vastly overstated (varying from statistical fudging to outright lies; I've seen raw data) in the reems of anti-vaccination literature circulating on the web. Furthermore, the more serious allegations (of causing epilepsy or autism) are completely unjustifiable, statistically. Not only is the evidence to support a link between vaccination and either condition absent, but the evidence that we do have would be >99% likely to reveal such a link, if it existed.
As far as your hollistic medical advice goes - I'm afraid that the statistics don't back you up there, either. A good diet and regular exercise do reduce your risk of getting infectious diseases, I'll grant - but it's not as much protection as you seem to think, especially if everyone (or 25% of people, or 50% of people, is sick). Children, however, have fragile/developing immune systems anyway, regardless of how you exercise them or feed them. It was not so long ago that 33% of the human race died of disease before reaching age 18. The well fed children did better, but not as much better as present day, vaccinated children do. It is true that PART of that improvement can be credited to improvement in sanitation, especially for diptheria, there are other diseases which we combat almost exclusively through vaccination.
If I gave you the impression that influenza virus responds to antibiotics, I apologise - I suggest you might give a closer reading of my post. There are, however, antiviral drugs (such as protease inhibitors against HIV) and virii do display characteristics similar (although not identical) to bacteria as regards acquiring resistance.
However, there are vaccines against bacteria, as well. Diptheria, for example. My point was that controlling the spread of diptheria using vaccines helped to reduce the diversity in circulating diptheria, reducing the chance that antibiotic resistance will arise.
I hope that clarifies it.
This is off topic, however, these are both common myths that have to be dispelled.
In fact, it may be the case that over-vaccination is leading to adaptation of infectants to the vaccine.
You have them confused with antibiotics. If you give someone an insufficient dose of antibiotics, their bacterial population will develop resistance.
Vaccines do not target the infectant directly - instead, they target the immune system of the person, alerting it to the possibility of that infectant. Without getting too long or over-technical, periodically, in a disease with a large enough population of microbes (influenza) vaccines become obsolete, but this happens whether or not you use them. A given vaccine, if it's going to go obsolete, starts to become obsolete faster once you start using it - but it does you no good sitting on a shelf. Get your flu shots.
Using vaccines, you can clear a population of a disease, which, long term, cuts down on the genetic diversity available to the organism which helps to PREVENT the rise of antibiotic resistance in the same organisms, in the future.
In addition, it is quite common for vaccines to cause severe reactions in children, as can be attested to by this link (top hit on Google, "Vaccines"
The argument that vaccines cause autism, or palsy, or anything else besides a sore arm, is extremely weak. It does not stand up to scientific scrutiny - periodically, the symptoms of autism arise, just by chance, around the age when children are vaccinated. Autism rates are not higher among vaccinated children. The vaccines which we presently give children have been studied to death, and they are safe.
When introducing a new vaccine, there is a certain risk that it will cause (for example) strong allergic reactions in a certain percentage of patients. We have a number of these dangerous vaccines stockpiled, but we don't give them to children. These dangerous vaccines are only given out (this hasn't happened in the US for quite a while) when the disease they protect against becomes endemic.
Now, the failure of parents to participate in these public health measures does not only impact the health of their own but on all the other children that their children come into contact with. I'm a great believer in draconian, absolute power for public health authorities.
throwing money at a (social) problem never makes it go away, and usually makes it bigger.
That is a rather sweeping generalisation to make, but not germane, in any case.
I recommend you go against the grain and read the article which talks about how open source software might help to bridge the digital devide, rather than jumping off on this tangent.
The deeper problem is that most of the lower classes have no interest in the culture of the net, and if given computers would not take advantage of the rich human content of the web.
Really? You got any research to back that up? Do you want to read the UCLA internet usage report which was on slashdot a month or so ago?
I'm certain that poor people are proportionally less interested in the slashdotesque, and therefore, more likely than not, are proportionally less interested in whatever aspects of net culture the typical slashdot reader favors.
The root problem is that the lower class is comprised mostly of poor civic citizens,
Calvinist prick.
There is a digital divide, but it is a symptom of a larger cultural divide, and giving out computers will not fix the problem.
When did I propose giving anyone computers? I compared the lack of computers (not given away) with the lack of health care (theoretically given away.) When I was talking about how our resources would best be spent, I was talking about technical time/inventiveness, not money - although, certainly, technical inventiveness can be sold.
The article is not about giving computers away - it is about how open source software may help reduce the cost (I said required economic sacrifices) for the poor/minorities to get computers.
I don't buy this whole "Digital Devide" concept. ... people I chat with on IRC are what would be considered very poor in the US sense, and have basically put together computers from with others have thrown out.
That is vaccuous reasoning.
It is true that poor people can get computers (my parents managed when I was a kid) but that does not mean that there isn't a digital divide. A well organised, informed or minimally well connected working class person can get health care for their kids - it may not be great but it will meet their basic needs. Are you going to argue, therefore, that the lower vaccination rates among poor children don't reflect inferior access to health care? After all, the resources are theoretically available to vaccinate all those poor children.
people whining about the "digital divide" are mostly rich people who couldn't imagine what it is like to actually have to work hard to get the things you need.
I'm a whining rich person because I want to see their kids vaccinated, while I get health care from my fellowship?
The fact of the matter is - and the article has these statistics so I'm not going to repeat them - poor people are less likely to have computers. This has a number of impacts on their lives, both economic and cultural, which have also been rehashed endlessly. If ways can be found to get computers for more of them, or to reduce the economic sacrifices they have to make to get them, can we all agree that it is a good thing?
In terms of overall benefit to the culture of the net - which is richer in human content (as opposed to fast, or [.] flashy, or a "rich media experience", but that stuff isn't important anyway) the more people are on it, we're better off spending resources to get the working class connected, than on any buzzing, bleeping toy (like the 40+" flat screen I've been eyeing, ) you could imagine.
It isn't as huge a deal as the failure to get children vaccinated (criminal to my mind - but my background is in biology), but that doesn't mean it is nothing.
Minority children have less computers in their schools. This digital divide is definitely narrowing - and the very poorest schools (in terms of percent children in poverty) have more computers per student than average, because of all the federal money they get; however, most of those are alternative or remedial schools, and I doubt they have more computers than alternative or remedial schools in wealthy districts.
Anyway, as we are well remember from all that fallout with companies supplying computers to schools in exchange for running ads (there was a slashdot story about it but I can't find it), the money for schools to pay for computers is still a major issue, especially in poor schools. That is where organised promotion of open source can really make it's mark - and, hopefully, propogate as an ethic among the next generation.
I'm not a Chemistry whiz, but my old textbook says that the energy of reduction for 2 chlorine ions to form chlorine gas (Cl2) and 2 electrons is -1.36 volts- so I don't see why this reaction would occur spontaneously.
I won't argue with you that HCl vapor is bad for you, but it's certainly nowhere near as deadly as chlorine gas.
The question of whether or not a reaction proceeds spontaneously also depends on the concentrations of the reactants/products. Even with 10M HCl, the equilibrium concentration of Cl2 is really small - but it isn't zero. Actually, the Cl2 is fairly likely to break down into two Cl-s when it hits your screen (cathode ray tube = electron gun, after all.)
Anyway, I've been told by other people in the lab's I've worked in that it's the tiny amounts of chlorine gas from the HCl that irritate your eyes, and not the HCl gas, itself. For one thing, the HCl is driven into Cl2 because I don't think HCl is very volatile, but Cl2 sure is (so it floats away and can't turn back into HCl.) I don't know what would accept the electrons (probably water, to make 2 OH- and 1 H2) if you look up the voltage for that half cell and subtract it from 1.36 volts, you can calculate the equilibrium concentrations. Keep in mind that 10M HCl is about 50% water, and that the "starting" OH-, Cl2 and H2 concentrations (the products) are all three of them basically zero.
Can I ask how this post got "insightful" and the one it responds to got "funny"? Shouldn't that be reversed?
Lieutenant, don't give me straight lines.
I'm a flavor of socialist myself, so I'm all for a more equitable distribution of that wonderful semiconductor laden stuff - in theory.
;). If people use them regularly, which if you give them to everyone for free is likely, the software you bundle them with (and the homepage they come preconfigured with) becomes a major issue. It is a serious tool that they can use to direct the nature of an emerging sector of public discourse. I can't even concieve of all the possible ways it could be abused, and the belgian government has a world class history of gratuitous acts of evil.
.net crap with it.
Computers, however, are a bit of a problem. Yes, I know the government puts them in libraries and schools allready, but computers (nowadays) are a communication device, and it is very easy to make them into a propoganda device. Government paying to put propoganda into libraries, and unfortunately public schools, is basically unavoidable (you can have meritocrats make the decisions, but that hurts as often as it helps,) but in people's homes? Everyone's homes?
It may just be the capitalist mind control rays making me say this, but - most of the people who get these computers aren't going to be especially computer literate, and if some flemmish speaking prole gets a computer from the government he is unlikely to reconfigure it when he gets home from a long day at the football riot
Alternatively, they can sell it to the highest bidder - if I were M$ I'd give them the OS and help pay for the machines (which have gotta be cheap at the moment) so that I could bundle all this
It's not like pop music should be taken as a personal affront by anyone.
MTV Exec: Evidently, the thing people who read this slashdot web-thingy hate most is when puppy dog eyed young men sing bubblegum and dance in unison.
MTV VP: Ex-cellent. (ala Monty Burns) Cancel 'Daria' and run a four hour special on where O-Town buys their jeans. That'll show 'em.
MTV Exec: After that, they hate AOL.
MTV VP: We'll stream babble from an AOL chatroom across the bottom of the screen.
MTV Exec: Yes, my master. Soon it will be time to reveal ourselves.
What, are you so insecure you can't stand it that some boy band is more popular with teenage girls than you are?
Yes, but I judge women purely on their secondary sexual characteristics, so on the pop music front it pretty much balances out.
N'Sync isn't running around the country raping your girlfriends and daughters.
That's a tautology, since we slashdotters have neither.
...it permeabilises your skin
um, not sure what it means but it sounds a bit nasty, really....
There are some substances that cannot pass through your skin and into your blood (in appreciable amounts), but if you dissolve them in acetonitrile they pass through your skin in much greater amounts. The effect is even more striking with DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) - if you dissolve methanol (wood alchohol) in DMSO, and poor it on rats, the rats go blind.
It has been suggested that you might use a stream of DMSO as a delivery system for chemical agents (a death squirt gun), but it's only barely feasible (DMSO is volatile, and fairly expensive, and if the gun leaks on you you die...) so, really, dart guns are a clearly superior technology.
I regularly clean my monitor with a soft lint-free cloth and a 10M solution of HCl.
I believe you can find enlightenment by embracing the tangential.
Chlorine gas (which HCl releases in small amounts) is bad for your eyes. 10M HCl also burns cheap plastics, and isn't especially good at disolving oily residue. If you have metal deposits on your moniter, HCl is the way to go, otherwise, no.
The secret moniter cleaning solution only lab chemists new about (until now)- 50% water, 50% acetonitrile. Unlike cheap malt liquor (which I used to clean my moniter with - seriously) it doesn't leave a stink or a funny residue.
Two things to remember - only use it in a well ventilated area (which you should have for your computer anyway, in case it starts putting off Ozone) and try not to spill it on yourself, it permeabilises your skin (although not as much as DMSO.)
PS -- i know they're evil. that makes this seem *more* strange, not less.
They had to stop being evil because they were one of the few sources of domestic evil that hadn't given Bush a big wad of cash. So, when the president announces he's going to go after evil, who's he going to target? Monsanto, who gave him money? No, these people. And their insurers knew it; keeping those servers in their offices was a huge liability.
Either that, or they ran afoul of the Tick.
"Knock off all that evil!"
. Now for Jupiter to become a star it would have to be around the order of 100 times more massive than it is now (though that's still much less massive than the sun).
Well, that may or may not be true. The question is - can you get Jupiter's core under enough pressure to undergo fusion? The fact that it is undergoing fission now is relevant because fission of the sort occuring in Jove's core also requires considerable (although lesser) density/pressure. The heavy elements may also provide a source of high energy alpha particles to help fusion get started (like in a modern H bomb which uses fissioning technitium as a trigger.)
So, PV = nRT, right? Well, if Jupiter were hit by a uranus-sized object moving perpendicular to the orbital plane -
1) It would put off huge amounts of heat (q = delta T / S) which might increase the pressure in Jupiter's core enough to ignite it.
2) The actual impact would involve a lot of force, as well - the whole planet would deform like a ball bouncing off the wall of a squash court. This would constrict the volume available to the core (lowering V, raising P) as well as causing huge differentials in density (raising n locally) as the planet bounced back into shape.
I'm not sure if that would be enough to do it, but once Jupiter is "lit", the fusion processes in it's core WOULD put off enough heat to be self-sustaining.
Also, the nuclear reactions going on inside the Earth and Jupiter's cores are fission based (decay of unstable elements). This is completely different from what's happening in the Sun so comparing this to what was happening in the early stages of the solar system is pointless.
Actually, fusion is decay of unstable elements as well - heavy hydrogen nuclei are hit by other heavy hydrogen nuclei and "decay" into helium nuclei. The fission at earth and jupiter's cores is NOT spontaneous decay like you see in a sample of carbon 14 that is left to sit (at least not mostly). It's collision-mediated decay, a slow form of chain reaction like you see in a detonating U235 bomb. That is to say, like nuclear fusion, the fission that occurs in the earth's core is collision mediated.
Thank you for pointing that out though, since I agree that my previous post certainly didn't draw a distinction between the two.