OK call me overly sensitive, I usually am against Political Correctness, but this is a serious issue. DEADLY serious.
I'm glad this low tech method of booby trap detection is being used.
My nit however is in leading the article with the "It's Funny, Laugh" icon.
There is a humorous element in using a humorously named children's toy for sure, but I still chafe at the juxtaposition of the Monty Python foot with something that is in actuality so far removed from humor.
Well the cheapest thing is never to send any landers/orbiters to Mars ever again, but I'm fairly certain we will be sending more of both. Micro-Probes need not be a budget busting accesory to add if you are already committed to going to Mars, again the Huygens analogy.
Are these the same Axions cited in Wikipedia? And that I remember being written up about in New Scientist?
There have been various ongoing experiments involving coupling them to photons with high magnetic fields and even creating ghost photons that appear after a beam of photons is shot through a strong magnetic field at a wall. Being coupled to Axions in some fashion by the magnetic field the photons reappear on the other side of the wall purportedly to illuminate a surface, if however weakly so.
Actually I thought about your objection and decided it isn't necessarily so. It might be possible to make the delivery of such micro-probes one of the mission objectives of a suitably designed orbiter.
To elaborate the micro-probes would be ideally wedded in data communication to such an orbiter already. Thus why not house them in the orbiter until needed? Orbiters periodically need orbital adjustments, low altitude orbiters need periodic orbital boosts. I don't know how efficient this would be for re-boosting, but the launch of the micro-probes/micro-landers could boost the orbiter -- they could be launched/jettisoned gun-fashion.
For best short term reception the micro-probe could be shot slightly forward of the orbiter (OK I'm simplifying some tricky orbital mechanics here that may actually involve shooting aft) such that the orbiter trailed the probe before the probe entered the atmosphere then the orbiter could pass close overhead as the probe entered the atmosphere, then most crucially maintaining line of sight long enough for the probe to land ala Cassini-Huygens. Orbiters typically involve orbits that maximize terrain covered, so eventually they would come around to a micro-probe launching opportunity, and since they would have very similar orbits (having started from the same orbital point) very little fuel would be needed for the described flyby telemetry receiving scenario.
Being housed interim on the orbiter, the micro-probes need not be engineered to survive the rigors of space on their own, nor independently receive ground control, nor remain powered up continuously.
It would be cool if NASA could keep a few micro-probes in reserve in Mars orbit that could be de-orbited as needed to investigate these kinds of phenomenon as they are discovered. Nothing large and complicated like a rover, just a very hi-resolution camera and some very basic devices to measure the local environment. The real trick would be getting pinpoint accuracy on the landing. To save weight and increase simplicity they need not even be designed to survive landing, just to deliver a high speed data squirt to an orbiter as they collect the most relevant and valuable data on their way down by parachute. If they do survive the landing they only need enough power to last long enough to send a few more surface condition measurements -- again the emphasis on cheap and expendable.
At the other end of the scale we need to develop landers that can investigate hard to get to locations like the very bottom of Valles Marineris. I assume this is where what little atmosphere there is would be the most dense, warm, and possibly moist. This would also be the most sheltered location on Mars from all forms of ionizing radiation.
Instead of making cars safer for the elderly, how about eliminating the need for piloted driving totally? I'm guessing we could slash our over 40 thousands deaths per year to a mere fraction of this if all vehicles were autonomous. Now that cars can navigate autonomously as proven by the DARPA grand challenge and with assist by GPS and WiFi it should be orders of magnitude cheaper to put this in place than a decade ago -- we need only the political will to get the job done. No more drunk drivers and likely and end to grid lock. There might be fuel savings as well as cars are allowed to slip stream on one another in spacing to tight for humans to maintain at highway speeds. Autonomous micro-deliveries might reinvent shopping and food service.
It is time to embrace our technology enhanced future.
Why not spend a decade concentrating our efforts on designing and building radically new heavy launch lift concepts? While we are far from being able to build a space elevators, we could build both launch assist catapults and orbit assist tethers.
Greece ranks way above US across the board???
Come on, wasn't Greek just trashed as barely being above China in this regard just last Tuesday by everyone on Slashdot? Greek Blog Aggregator Arrested
This survey is a joke. I just don't know exactly what the agenda is, but it is far from accurate or fair.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying US should be number one (or even close), just that the E.U. rates too high given the spotty track record of many of its members.
Sure they can deny it, but in their cases there should be a money trail and source code.
I'll bet over 50% of computers have had at least some minor level of compromise at sometime, should
we jail 50% of the population?
If you own a computer and someone else, an uncle for instance downloads some kiddy porn on it while you
are away are you responsible for this? You should only be held responsible for your actions directly.
I wouldn't kick if there were some kind of (minor) penalties for your computer becoming part of a bot-net if it was proven your action were reckless, no virus software, no firewall, and then only if there was prior notification this would be the outcome of unsafe security practices.
The Greek police will arrest you on suspicion of spamming. Given the coincidence they have followed as "reasonable grounds" it would seem anyone that gets a virus or trojan that might scan your address book is in jeopardy if they visit Greece. This is just crazy.
I see a couple of problems with your theory. While times of scarcity might decrease fertility overall so subjects can concentrate all their energy on a few offspring likely to survive, it doesn't in mamalian species change gender roles. Some fish and lizards can change sex due to environmental clues to maximize their reproductive chances, but this isn't homosexual behavior as it still leads to reproduction. In general without predators prey species expand until mass starvation ensues rather than going homosexual for the good of the heard. While it increases stress on the rest of the population (call it the tragedy of the reproductive commons) individuals are driven by evolution to maximize their own reproductive chances or at least very close relatives. While there is hive behavior, individual hives fight just as selfishly for reproductive advantage over other hives as individuals do in non-hive species.
This essay it has nothing to do with hormone levels, though lower testosterone levels could possibly trigger passivity. Whether passivity could cause lower testosterone levels I have no idea. It is often easy to confuse cause and effect in these cases, and simplistic analysis often leaves out confounding variables.
This is just a different flavor of something to find interest in, not something to displace all else.
Initially this will have some interest due to the novelty, it will wane some and perhaps even die, but something like it will eventually work well enough and hold interest with enough people to be viable, especially if it custom tailored the news for you.
If and when AIs eventually become powerful enough, the majority of our daily discourse will probably be with them. Don't think so? How many people talk to their pets?
I believe Minority Report used retina scans, but that nit aside facial recognition works to a degree and will only get better. Security cams will eventually upgrade to HDTV resolutions, perhaps augmented with very high resolution stills when a potential match is made. This will all take more processing power, but all mighty god Moore will eventually gives us this day our daily CPU load.
About false positives. So what? Eyewitnesses make mistakes also. Eventually, perhaps very soon, machines will surpass humans in this arena just as they have in others. Can anyone here on Slashdot defeat Deep Blue at Chess?
As to the legality or ethics, what can be done will be done, at least in public areas. If it would be legal for a human to do (they haven't outlawed humans scanning for suspects in public areas) then it will be legal for machines to do despite the unease many will feel knowing they are constantly being watched.
I'm aware this is a common resolution for desktop LCD, as for the odd aspect ratio, that has to do with the size of the larger glass they cut these things from, rather than throw away usable glass they choose sizes that use up all the glass. I know all this, but if you are going to have a full 20" display then make the dotpitch such that you can get a full 1080p picture out of it and support easily showing the 1080p on external HDTV (though that probably is doable with this rig as a 2nd monitor in some fashion).
There are full 1080p displays in 15" and 17", why not this EXPENSIVE 20"?
It's wide screen, but it isn't even 1080p? Its some weird in between 720p and 1080p res of 1680x1050.
What I really want is a 10" at full 1080p.
I know this is technically possible as my Nokia 770 is 800x480 and is only 4 inches wide display.
Granted 200dpi makes for some squinting at times, but on the whole it works great especially with Opera's zoom function
(which maintains font anti-aliasing). I'd love a full 1280x720 at 300dpi if they could squeeze it into the same space. I might look odd as hell, but with a bluetooth keyboard you could dangle such a contraption off the brim or a special hat for long sessions of typing instead of having to hunch over to see the small screen.
Off course the Nokia 770 doesn't have anywhere near the horse power of this rig, on the other hand I have yet to drain the battery with one day's average use (seriously). Why not concentrate on making a "Luggable" like the original Macs? A slightly downsized tower that has a handle on top and a detachable LCD on the side? Doesn't even need to be able to run off batteries -- leave that to the real laptops you take on business trips.
And where the hell are those direct to eyeball laser scanners that where suppose to change everything?
Better Yet, Go Multi-Tier
on
DIY Iris Scanning?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I personally would like to see multi-tier biometric authentication built into the OS. Log on with a password and a finger scan; any File I/O challenge with voice recognition; visit a secure site, submit to iris scan. Mix it up, occasionally challenge with authentication questions when actions seem either dangerous (downloading executables) or deviate from usual usage patterns. How aggressive to be in challenging for authentication and what types should be settable by the user. This kind of thing might be very useful in keeping your teenage kids from downloading Kazza like malware on your family computer, not just keeping your computer secure from crooks and spys.
For what it is worth I'm finding the Nokia 770's 200dpi inch screen to be great for reading, though I haven't yet downloaded the FBReader maemo offers. The Nokia fits in my back pocket is solid, rugged, and has good battery life. At 800x480 it is also great for websurfing or blogging on the go. If I find a good supply of affordable or free reading I definitely plan on using this as my eBook reader. I have already downloaded Moby Dick and 20000 Leagues Beneath the Sea to round out reading some classics -- they are very readable with the Notes application, but it doesn't save your place (you could mark where you were, but that's not very quick or handy).
Not only is the resolution 800x480, but the Opera browser appears to be antialiasing the fonts as well. Very readable especailly with the magnify icon, which maintains smoothly formed fonts instead of pixelating them. I assume FBReader would do the same for whatever size font you find most comfortable to read.
Had mine just over a week now. It came with 2005 also and I was a little disappointed, but I upgraded it to 2006 and now it seriously rocks. This gives it Google Talk and the ability to load Gizmo which I did. The upgrade is easily done from USB. Try going through the 2006 upgrade, it is likely you do have a hardware problem, but who knows.
Also download the emencoder software to your desktop and start converting videos for 770 use. The 770 doesn't handle many codecs directly with the default player (GPlayer is available), but unless you are viewing a lot of podcasts or YouTube directly I think you will find optomizing your videos on the desktop and then USB downloading them into the 770 a pretty good solution. Emencoder seems to handle everything and crunch it down to rideculously small size files.
Hope you resolve your hardware problems soon (hope I don't run into any), but in general the 770 is a much better solution for the linux gadgeteer than the EXPENSIVE puny cellphone mentioned here.
Slashdot Mirror
OK call me overly sensitive, I usually am against Political Correctness, but this is a serious issue. DEADLY serious.
I'm glad this low tech method of booby trap detection is being used. My nit however is in leading the article with the "It's Funny, Laugh" icon.
There is a humorous element in using a humorously named children's toy for sure, but I still chafe at the juxtaposition of the Monty Python foot with something that is in actuality so far removed from humor.
Well the cheapest thing is never to send any landers/orbiters to Mars ever again, but I'm fairly certain we will be sending more of both. Micro-Probes need not be a budget busting accesory to add if you are already committed to going to Mars, again the Huygens analogy.
Are these the same Axions cited in Wikipedia? And that I remember being written up about in New Scientist?
There have been various ongoing experiments involving coupling them to photons with high magnetic fields and even creating ghost photons that appear after a beam of photons is shot through a strong magnetic field at a wall. Being coupled to Axions in some fashion by the magnetic field the photons reappear on the other side of the wall purportedly to illuminate a surface, if however weakly so.
Actually I thought about your objection and decided it isn't necessarily so. It might be possible to make the delivery of such micro-probes one of the mission objectives of a suitably designed orbiter.
To elaborate the micro-probes would be ideally wedded in data communication to such an orbiter already. Thus why not house them in the orbiter until needed? Orbiters periodically need orbital adjustments, low altitude orbiters need periodic orbital boosts. I don't know how efficient this would be for re-boosting, but the launch of the micro-probes/micro-landers could boost the orbiter -- they could be launched/jettisoned gun-fashion.
For best short term reception the micro-probe could be shot slightly forward of the orbiter (OK I'm simplifying some tricky orbital mechanics here that may actually involve shooting aft) such that the orbiter trailed the probe before the probe entered the atmosphere then the orbiter could pass close overhead as the probe entered the atmosphere, then most crucially maintaining line of sight long enough for the probe to land ala Cassini-Huygens. Orbiters typically involve orbits that maximize terrain covered, so eventually they would come around to a micro-probe launching opportunity, and since they would have very similar orbits (having started from the same orbital point) very little fuel would be needed for the described flyby telemetry receiving scenario.
Being housed interim on the orbiter, the micro-probes need not be engineered to survive the rigors of space on their own, nor independently receive ground control, nor remain powered up continuously.
It would be cool if NASA could keep a few micro-probes in reserve in Mars orbit that could be de-orbited as needed to investigate these kinds of phenomenon as they are discovered. Nothing large and complicated like a rover, just a very hi-resolution camera and some very basic devices to measure the local environment. The real trick would be getting pinpoint accuracy on the landing. To save weight and increase simplicity they need not even be designed to survive landing, just to deliver a high speed data squirt to an orbiter as they collect the most relevant and valuable data on their way down by parachute. If they do survive the landing they only need enough power to last long enough to send a few more surface condition measurements -- again the emphasis on cheap and expendable.
At the other end of the scale we need to develop landers that can investigate hard to get to locations like the very bottom of Valles Marineris. I assume this is where what little atmosphere there is would be the most dense, warm, and possibly moist. This would also be the most sheltered location on Mars from all forms of ionizing radiation.
Uhhh... What train stops at your front door or Wal-Mart?
Instead of making cars safer for the elderly, how about eliminating the need for piloted driving totally? I'm guessing we could slash our over 40 thousands deaths per year to a mere fraction of this if all vehicles were autonomous. Now that cars can navigate autonomously as proven by the DARPA grand challenge and with assist by GPS and WiFi it should be orders of magnitude cheaper to put this in place than a decade ago -- we need only the political will to get the job done. No more drunk drivers and likely and end to grid lock. There might be fuel savings as well as cars are allowed to slip stream on one another in spacing to tight for humans to maintain at highway speeds. Autonomous micro-deliveries might reinvent shopping and food service.
It is time to embrace our technology enhanced future.
Why not spend a decade concentrating our efforts on designing and building radically new heavy launch lift concepts? While we are far from being able to build a space elevators, we could build both launch assist catapults and orbit assist tethers.
Ahhh... not that promoting ones "Privacy Advantage" might not obvoscate deficiencies on those other more important metrics?
And trusting someone that puts a bunch of numbers on a paper can be equally dangerous.
There are lies, damn lies -- and statistics
Greece ranks way above US across the board???
Come on, wasn't Greek just trashed as barely being above China in this regard just last Tuesday by everyone on Slashdot?
Greek Blog Aggregator Arrested
This survey is a joke. I just don't know exactly what the agenda is, but it is far from accurate or fair.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying US should be number one (or even close), just that the E.U. rates too high given the spotty track record of many of its members.
Sure they can deny it, but in their cases there should be a money trail and source code.
I'll bet over 50% of computers have had at least some minor level of compromise at sometime, should we jail 50% of the population?
If you own a computer and someone else, an uncle for instance downloads some kiddy porn on it while you are away are you responsible for this? You should only be held responsible for your actions directly.
I wouldn't kick if there were some kind of (minor) penalties for your computer becoming part of a bot-net if it was proven your action were reckless, no virus software, no firewall, and then only if there was prior notification this would be the outcome of unsafe security practices.
If find this link in the main story to be just as alarming or worse: Swedish programmer in Greek spam probe protests innocence
The Greek police will arrest you on suspicion of spamming. Given the coincidence they have followed as "reasonable grounds" it would seem anyone that gets a virus or trojan that might scan your address book is in jeopardy if they visit Greece. This is just crazy.
I see a couple of problems with your theory. While times of scarcity might decrease fertility overall so subjects can concentrate all their energy on a few offspring likely to survive, it doesn't in mamalian species change gender roles. Some fish and lizards can change sex due to environmental clues to maximize their reproductive chances, but this isn't homosexual behavior as it still leads to reproduction. In general without predators prey species expand until mass starvation ensues rather than going homosexual for the good of the heard. While it increases stress on the rest of the population (call it the tragedy of the reproductive commons) individuals are driven by evolution to maximize their own reproductive chances or at least very close relatives. While there is hive behavior, individual hives fight just as selfishly for reproductive advantage over other hives as individuals do in non-hive species.
At the risk of seeming to be a crank I wrote a paper on possible evolutionary adaptive features to homosexuality in my Slashdot.org journal recently. Here is an alternate explanation for the persistence of homosexuality in the human population: Submissiveness's Role in Sustaining Homosexuality as an Evolutionarily Adaptive Trait
This essay it has nothing to do with hormone levels, though lower testosterone levels could possibly trigger passivity. Whether passivity could cause lower testosterone levels I have no idea. It is often easy to confuse cause and effect in these cases, and simplistic analysis often leaves out confounding variables.
Java would be opened with 30-60 days
within methinks
Make
The date he dug up came alive
Just
Date he dug up came alive
I really need to proofread better.
DAMN I miscounted on the last one!
Make that...
His dying ended it... well mostly
Galactic archeologists discover ancient Earth civilization
Brain eaters starve after vanquishing Earth
Honest man found; is a transexual
Honest politician found... killed by lobbyist
Honest lawyer found... no cases won
Night came unexpectedly. Where's the Sun?
She stole hearts; damn organ trader
Flame lasted all night; didn't matter
He faced his fear. It won.
She liked him, especially with ketchup
The date he dug up came alive
He lamented finding backwards Wishing Well
He knew better, but better left
He scanned Hell; it seemed nice.
Devil in details damns bean counters.
It arched skyward, kept arching... duck!
Dying put an end to it... mostly
I read Google News a lot.
I would watch robot races.
Millions have watched the Mars rover robots.
This is just a different flavor of something to find interest in, not something to displace all else.
Initially this will have some interest due to the novelty, it will wane some and perhaps even die, but something like it will eventually work well enough and hold interest with enough people to be viable, especially if it custom tailored the news for you.
If and when AIs eventually become powerful enough, the majority of our daily discourse will probably be with them. Don't think so? How many people talk to their pets?
I believe Minority Report used retina scans, but that nit aside facial recognition works to a degree and will only get better. Security cams will eventually upgrade to HDTV resolutions, perhaps augmented with very high resolution stills when a potential match is made. This will all take more processing power, but all mighty god Moore will eventually gives us this day our daily CPU load.
About false positives. So what? Eyewitnesses make mistakes also. Eventually, perhaps very soon, machines will surpass humans in this arena just as they have in others. Can anyone here on Slashdot defeat Deep Blue at Chess?
As to the legality or ethics, what can be done will be done, at least in public areas. If it would be legal for a human to do (they haven't outlawed humans scanning for suspects in public areas) then it will be legal for machines to do despite the unease many will feel knowing they are constantly being watched.
I'm aware this is a common resolution for desktop LCD, as for the odd aspect ratio, that has to do with the size of the larger glass they cut these things from, rather than throw away usable glass they choose sizes that use up all the glass. I know all this, but if you are going to have a full 20" display then make the dotpitch such that you can get a full 1080p picture out of it and support easily showing the 1080p on external HDTV (though that probably is doable with this rig as a 2nd monitor in some fashion).
There are full 1080p displays in 15" and 17", why not this EXPENSIVE 20"?
It's wide screen, but it isn't even 1080p? Its some weird in between 720p and 1080p res of 1680x1050.
What I really want is a 10" at full 1080p.
I know this is technically possible as my Nokia 770 is 800x480 and is only 4 inches wide display.
Granted 200dpi makes for some squinting at times, but on the whole it works great especially with Opera's zoom function (which maintains font anti-aliasing). I'd love a full 1280x720 at 300dpi if they could squeeze it into the same space. I might look odd as hell, but with a bluetooth keyboard you could dangle such a contraption off the brim or a special hat for long sessions of typing instead of having to hunch over to see the small screen.
Off course the Nokia 770 doesn't have anywhere near the horse power of this rig, on the other hand I have yet to drain the battery with one day's average use (seriously). Why not concentrate on making a "Luggable" like the original Macs? A slightly downsized tower that has a handle on top and a detachable LCD on the side? Doesn't even need to be able to run off batteries -- leave that to the real laptops you take on business trips.
And where the hell are those direct to eyeball laser scanners that where suppose to change everything?
I personally would like to see multi-tier biometric authentication built into the OS. Log on with a password and a finger scan; any File I/O challenge with voice recognition; visit a secure site, submit to iris scan. Mix it up, occasionally challenge with authentication questions when actions seem either dangerous (downloading executables) or deviate from usual usage patterns. How aggressive to be in challenging for authentication and what types should be settable by the user. This kind of thing might be very useful in keeping your teenage kids from downloading Kazza like malware on your family computer, not just keeping your computer secure from crooks and spys.
For what it is worth I'm finding the Nokia 770's 200dpi inch screen to be great for reading, though I haven't yet downloaded the FBReader maemo offers. The Nokia fits in my back pocket is solid, rugged, and has good battery life. At 800x480 it is also great for websurfing or blogging on the go. If I find a good supply of affordable or free reading I definitely plan on using this as my eBook reader. I have already downloaded Moby Dick and 20000 Leagues Beneath the Sea to round out reading some classics -- they are very readable with the Notes application, but it doesn't save your place (you could mark where you were, but that's not very quick or handy). Not only is the resolution 800x480, but the Opera browser appears to be antialiasing the fonts as well. Very readable especailly with the magnify icon, which maintains smoothly formed fonts instead of pixelating them. I assume FBReader would do the same for whatever size font you find most comfortable to read.
Had mine just over a week now. It came with 2005 also and I was a little disappointed, but I upgraded it to 2006 and now it seriously rocks. This gives it Google Talk and the ability to load Gizmo which I did. The upgrade is easily done from USB. Try going through the 2006 upgrade, it is likely you do have a hardware problem, but who knows.
Also download the emencoder software to your desktop and start converting videos for 770 use. The 770 doesn't handle many codecs directly with the default player (GPlayer is available), but unless you are viewing a lot of podcasts or YouTube directly I think you will find optomizing your videos on the desktop and then USB downloading them into the 770 a pretty good solution. Emencoder seems to handle everything and crunch it down to rideculously small size files.
Hope you resolve your hardware problems soon (hope I don't run into any), but in general the 770 is a much better solution for the linux gadgeteer than the EXPENSIVE puny cellphone mentioned here.