I don't know about "every problem", but what are the alternatives?
You just seem to dislike open markets. Am I to infer Central Planning is more effective?
You imply laws are passed in a open market fashion, and they maybe after a fashion this is so by side effect of effective lobbying, but no one suggests that this is a correct solution.
You dislike the idea of pollution credits obviously, but fail to show how pollution is increased by use of pollution credits, or fails in its intent to redress certain inequities in the patch work of pollution regulation we have. You just have a gut feeling people shouldn't be given permission to pollute, but this is what regulation is all about, how much and to what end.
Spam is an example of "the tragedy of the commons"
Some type of barrier to access is the only way to solve it. By making it an open market everyone has access, but they indulge their use as makes economic sense. The beauty of open markets is that they are self regulating. Call it an emergent behavior from enlightened self interest.
I am not saying these gentleman have the correct solution for spam, but to just denigrate it because it has open market as a model
is unfair. Open or Free markets work well in many situations, they also fail in many situations. Many times failures attributed to open or free markets are really failures of regulation, that only free certain aspects of a market but leave others restricted.
The only thing we should be concerned with is does the solution work and is it fair. Lets not discard it simply because you dislike open markets, and may I also infer capitalism?
So the problem becomes not so much a one of analog vs. digital, but layout and intuitiveness. I agree a collection of dials is easier to read than a collection of digital readouts, but green/yellow/read bar indicators might be another step up. So lets design thus: an analog bar meter with green/yellow/read areas above its digital readout "exact" value. We're all in the Green! Looks good. Hey what's that in the Red? Granted something like 10% of males are color blind, but you could choose colors with slightly different hues, such that most color blind people could discriminate.
Analog dials do have one virtue in a control environment, they are often tied mechanically or pneumatically to the system thy monitor, and are immune to software errors or power glitches (though pneumatic ones can get stuck). For real redundancy, use all three.
I still maintain a single digital readout on a watch says it all, and about as quickly as you could want. The degrade-with-distance argument works for wall clocks. Maybe when my eyes start to go and my arm isn't long enough for a critical focus, I'll see the value to analog wristwatches, which is what I thought the original parent comment was about.
I have never bought this analog is easier to read quickly or more intuitively than digital argument. I for one can read time more quickly and accurately from a digital watch, and I have never mistakenly put my digital watch on upside down, and inferred the incorrect time from reading it. Add to this the tendency for really "cool" looking watches to have only 4 hour marks, or even just one silly dot at 12 high. Watches are analog as a fashion statement period. The altimeter example doesn't really wash, because the speed with which the hands are moving is often more important than what they are pointing to as in:
Ooooh My God I'm dropping fast!!!
Time doesn't speed up or slow down such that I can see the change in the way the hands on my watch move (and even if it did/does I would be changing with it to a net no change). Else it might be suppior to digital.
That you tend to say things like it's a quarter to six when using an analog watch versus
It 5:45 doesn't slow me down one tick either, or make being close to six feel more palpable. If anything it just shows how hard it is to read an analog watch, and thus we just guess at the time instead or really knowing it.
To the moderator(s) who marked this redundant: I am at work right now, and the site linked to is blocked. This is the first complete post of the article text and is much appreciated (one earlier failed to get the complete text). As often as sites get slashdotted and go down, it is prudent for one or two of the early posters to post the text (which is often all we are interested in without all the bandwidth hogging ad stuff).
Since this was posted A.C., it doesn't appear to be a case of Karma whoring, and even if it where, I would gladly give up the mod points to view the article.
Chances are the moderator(s) who marked the parent to this post redundant, will not see this comment of mine. But I for one appreciate the effort to include the text so all can see. Perhaps the moderator(s) thought the text had already been posted in full (it hadn't). Even so, this was a very early post and should have been given the benefit of the doubt that earlier article text postings hadn't shown up yet.
Save negative mods for when they are really needed.
Like the guidelines say, focus on modding up.
Thankfully, most moderators modded this up informative, not redundant.
Good points all, thanks for the insightful answers. I didn't mean to imply open source is the same a communism (just to be clear). There seems to be a tendency to confuse Communism, which in some sense has never really been tried as a governmental model, and totalitarianism. I am not a communist, but I wince at hearing Communism always equated with evil -- it may be failed, it may not be unworkable, but in and of itself it is probably not evil. That totalitarian regimes are evil I would take as a given.
Still, why doesn't China just take Open Source products or Copyleft or GPL source and just do whatever the hell they want with it? They could put in whatever secret patches they want and distribute binaries free of charge as a great Communist benefit to its masses (China still claims to be Communist I believe, even it falls short in many of the details). It's hard to see how we could retaliate trade-wise, since this would not be directly stealing products from corporations. Granted we are unhappy about various other copyright infringements, but only where salable products are involved. Companies like Microsoft have made such a big deal about accusing Open Source of being communistic in nature, I'm not sure we could bring action to bear if China choose to abuse Open Source. Microsoft and others probably consider this a future possibility if they don't cooperate with China to some degree on customization. Then again one has to wonder what things our government has Microsoft put in for both foreign and domestic consumption.
To my shame I use Microsoft products at home and work, but ever year I spend more an more work keeping my platforms stable, and I really don't trust what's going on under the hood. I don't think Open Source will solve human rights violations in China (they'll do whatever they want with their software), but more and more I see it as the only long-term viable Operating System option for the world.
As the last big bastion of Communism, why isn't China dedicated to only using open source software? I mean seriously why isn't there some kind of National edict that only open source software can be used? I can't believe any weapons programs they have would rely critically on Windows, the vast majority of national security stuff is Unix , and even if they stole such applications China would keep the Windows or Sun or IRIX boxes needed for these apps secret and out of public view.
It could be that Linux was not a reasonable alternative when computers started to infiltrate China, or that Linux didn't/doesn't offer enough Chinese character support. Chinese consumers would probably have loved Instant Messenger and Phone over Internet which were probably proprietarily tied to other Windows platforms around the world a few years ago, and may still be to some degree, and which initially have allowed many middle class Chinese to circumvent State spying and censorship.
Given that these factors are no longer as strongly in effect, should we encourage China to keep its addiction to Microsoft products because it keep China dependant and Western technology, and brings money into American coffers (which I am not saying is a bad thing). Whether China should go open source to me is rather moot, but one has to wonder what deals are made under the table, and what moneys are transferred directly to the pockets of corrupt politicians to keep China snorting Microsoft products. Of course the same questions could be asked here in America.
As a final note, Amnesty International makes pretty much unfounded claims against Microsoft, Nortel, and Cisco. But given the past human rights abuses of the Chinese government, and given that they tend to be tough trading partners -- one has to wonder if these companies have given any technical aid or assistance for filtering-banning-monitoring in order to keep these contracts. To what degree are Microsoft and other companies required to disclose the terms of their contracts with foreign governments and how do we know the terms of these deals are being honestly adhered to? This last question is not rhetorical, maybe some slashdotter out there knows.
I still feel my heart pounding. This was a well written piece and connects us to these events in an emotional way. I have never felt so connected to these poor braves souls as I do now, and I feel tears welling in my eyes as I write this. Why should this emotional connection be a good thing? It reminds of the fragility of life, how mortal we all are, and motivates us to ensure these types of tragedies to not happened in future.
We see here how the astronauts lives depended critically on technology performing flawless during a complex series of steps, and begs us to wonder how many times in our own life we also depend on technology performing a flawless series of steps. This doesn't just have to be your car your job, but perhaps you live close to a nuclear power plant. One could easily imagine a series of assumptions in this environment leading to even more tragic consequences.
I will not go into my job description, and this is little in my everyday performance of it to remind me that at times peoples' lives might depend on me having done it correctly and not having cut corners. We are all part of very complex web of interactions both personal and technological. Poignant descriptions of events likes these are a wake up call and a reminder we all have responsibilities to those around us to do our best everyday.
You've got some good facts, I'm not sure they directly address the original start of this thread about not fighting violence with violence which I find more than a bit Pollyannaish.
So here is a list of the bad people we supported, no argument. Wish we hadn't. So is this case closed, we are bad or evil people? More importantly I don't see the "killing in the name of business" reason you claim. Geopolitics is involved to be sure, and your chosen half-decade was at the height of the Cold War. We were not the only players. Economics may be a contributing factor in considerations, but I'll bet far less than say, oh I don't know, maybe the French? Whose government was found to be directly implicated in the intentional sinking of a Green Peace boat -- an act motivated solely for unadulterated economic reasons.
Forgive me for not doing the research, but would China's or Russia's or Europe's lists be shorter for supporting questionable regimes? We made bad choices, let's make better ones now. But lets talk about recent direct use of force. Was invading Afghanistan a business decision? Seems to me this action would not have happened without the harboring of Bin Laden. You assume Iraq is about oil, because they have oil, but what is the proof? I think Iraq gave ample provocation for its regime's ouster, and we can now try to get a beachhead for democracy in the Arab world. Al Quada is still around, but incredibly they have chosen to fight us in Iraq where their Muslim brothers are paying the price. Should we quail from the fight, and concede Iraq to a fanatical fundamentalist religious sect?
We can squabble about how we came to be in the place we are, but it doesn't negate the fact that we have no choice but to apply force as needed now, but be sure the follow through is the support of regimes that do treat their citizens humanly.
I knew someone would play the big business is evil or big business is our religion card.
You are not giving me facts here, just assertions and statements, which to you I'm sure seem quite self evident. The US has supported bad regimes in the past and even now. We live in a world of compromises. If all nations were democracies with free press and free speech, I believe there would be far less inequity.
I don't believe they all have to have our flavor of capitalism (or even capitalism at all), and in developing countries a period communism may be the superior economic choice.
So please give me some specifics of what we should be doing now. How do we fight terrorism? Don't just rant to me about how evil we are, with the implied we-deserve-it that entails.
I also prefer to live in a country that won't sign a treaty, rather than sign one to gain trade advantage by signing and not honoring. Ooooo the EVIL USA, won't sign this paper, that we ourselves have no intention of honoring. Bah.
The problem of fighting violence with violence is that you become that which
you fight against
Just what is it we become? I doubt we will become zealots killing in the name of religion, though this would please some. No, you just want to float some ill defined evil as that which we will morph into. Please explain to me how you fight
violence without using violence? Most would agree that self defense is a inalienable right. If my only reasonable way of bringing an attack to an end is to kill my attacker, then I would say it is justified and not evil.
There is a large percentage of Slashdot posters that think the US is irredeemably evil, or the the Bush administration is evil. That somehow a better, gentler, kinder foreign policy would have staved off these woes. Why is this believed?
What evidence is there that the other major powers in the world are less evil than the USA, because if they are not less evil, why would react positively to selfless acts on the part of the US? 911 would have happened whether Gore won or
not, planning for it was in progress for years before the actual event. We will never know whether a Gore administration would have dealt with the crisis better or not, this isn't my point. My point is that Global Terrorism wasn't brought to us as result of the 2000 year election, it was brewing for a long time and finally arrived.
I for one am a tit-for-tat with a little bit of forgiveness, the only long term
winning strategy. And while I may get shouted down for this belief, I think this is just the trend the USA seems to show on the world stage. We have racial divisions and religious divisions and political divisions within the USA, but from all this contention comes a moderation to all view points, which is reflected in our foreign policy.
I am not defending the Patriot Act, I have not read all of its particulars, but
I am saying we do have to react to foreign aggression (provoked or not). Just moaning about war is bad, violence is evil will not make the world better as its
adherents think it will.
Certainly we have overreacted in some areas to terrorism, our freedoms are in peril, but we must also make sane choices to preserve life and limb. Merely succumbing to an endless liberal litany of we-had-it-coming-for-not-being-nicer will
solve nothing, and never really asks the question about how effective being nicer actually would be. Where's the proof? I'm not saying we shouldn't be to a degree tolerant, but we can't be appeasers either.
One last world, not all other political systems are just "different". I hesitate to use the world evil, but I do believe a system that respects freedom of speech and freedom of religion are superior. I am an agnostic, but thank GOD I live in a society that doesn't tell me how to worship. I have no problem with our
government pursuing strategies that will open up closed societies to this which
democracy and secularism which I believe are more enlightened views.
I think most at NASA would tell the reason that Hubble is being abandoned is due the remaining shuttle being designed to service the ISS. I believe Columbia was the last shuttle that could easily reach the orbit of the Hubble, and be equipped to service it. Plus there are scarce enough mission slots now to maintain the ISS. NASA is also now looking ahead to "The James Webb Space Telescope" Hubble's successor.
That said I wouldn't argue that a build up of the manned space program could be a cover for taking the high ground in space. Control of the skies is what gives the US such a commanding advantage in wars these days. Certainly a reason the US is none too happy to see Europe launching Galileo its own GPS system.
I won't debate whether this makes the US evil or not, but it could be seen as prudent in maintaining a lead militarily. To expect China to remain to peaceful purposes only in space may be a bit naive. At this point I don't support nor condemn US space initiatives. I wait to see if this all turns out to be political rhetoric. We all rejoiced in the science and progress of the Apollo era, but without a cold war to drive it there would have been slower progress in space. Now that the world has become a more dangerous place again, we may see such programs again. A boon for science, but with a cloud inside the silver lining.
Not being a sysadmin or manager, paying for a distro wouldn't be my call to make. As for the all caps, that was just because my word processor doesn't complain when I spell Linux that way, and thought maybe that was the more grammatically correct form. I will be sure and use the appropriate troll avoiding "Linux" capitalization in future.
I would think "intent" would be the defining attribute in being a troll or not, and I wasn't. I did get a +5 on the post, and am not unhappy about that. This has been an informative thread for me however, in seeing what other people consider trolling so that I can avoid it. Still it's interesting to bump into people ready to jump down my throat for comments they feel uniformed or insincere. I do like getting replies, so I probably do tend to couch my verbiage in a confrontational tone from time to time, more so when replying to a reply, that could be considered trollish I guess, but only when it is the first post in a thread.
"The Ape With No Name" wanted me mod'ed down, I don't like to be mod'ed down. Who does? Perhaps I misunderstand what a troll is, I thought it was similar to a flamebait, but just offering obnoxious comments. You seem to understand it as an unabashed effort to acquire mod points just to acquire them. Maybe that is the better definition, I don't know. I have Excellent Karma, I can't go higher, and have been at Excellent for over a year, maybe two. I really don't need to whore for karma as has been suggested here.
I have strong opinions, I offer them freely and often. I like seeing the occasional +5, but I wouldn't say I troll for them. That TAWNN thinks I had some Machiavellian two prong plan to acquire points I think says more about TAWNN's world view than about me.
I was certainly not trying to be a troll. Let me be a little more clear, I REALLY LIKE LINUX. That doesn't mean I can't pass along my honest experience to support a claim in the article that LINUX may take five to ten years to raealy catch on, on the desktop. What Linus have given us has great potential to transform the way we do computing, but its not quite their yet for the average user, and even Linus seems to think this is true. Does this still make me a troll?
I have used UNIX the majority of my computing career and LINUX for over five. But at work we are still struggling to get to rh9.0 with many systems at 7.2 and 8.0 though the are now considered depricated. We recently had to reconfigure a machine back to 7.1 to regenerate data for a client who is still using 7.1. Not only this, but our code is notoriously unstable if not running on the OS revision and patch level it was compiled on. I'm sure some will flame about the skill of our sysadmins and make script maintainers, but I think that would be unfair. We produce a lot of floating point intensive code that depends critically on the underlining OS calls, and while the code may run, it becomes quite a chore to justify to the customer (government) why the results may differ from earlier versions. This tendency for code to be brittle with compiler and OS upgrades is not something we observe under IRIX and SunOS, the two other platforms we support, and have supported for longer than LINUX.
I am not saying that SunOS or IRIX are superior, just that the upgrades come at a more manageable pace, and tend not to break our code base when upgrading compilers. I think the reason Linus thinks five to ten years before really conquering the desktop is based on two things. By then LINUX should have slowed down in its development and will be a beast you can run two to three years before upgrading. Secondly, Windows will probably sink under the weight of it is haphazard code base, which is guided not by what is best for users and cleanest in design, but what makes sense commercially to support and lock-in their other products in as covert way as possible to keep from running afoul of the antitrust laws.
Yes, he has only given us the best, most stable, FREE OS in the world. My God! Doesn't he realize he owes us every waking and sleeping minute giving us more for free, than to relax and just do some little quick projects for himself. He really has some nerve!
You are giving the university implicit permission to use your work as a metric of deciding how well you have learned the course material. Since you know ahead of time that your work will be submitted to plagiarism detection software, you give them permission to do so in exchange for them performing their metric service. You don't have to give them permission, as this student didn't, in which case they can just give you zero. Schools have for years put requirements on how assignments will be turned in. Years ago the standard was hand written in pen. Hey! Paper producers and pen manufactures are producing a profit off my work! This plagiarism service is not disseminating your work directly for profit, it is protecting your work by preventing others from using as theirs and profiting off it more directly. You may hold the copyright for any material you produce, but I would say by turning it into a school you have implicitly given them permission to catalog and archive it, for purposes of comparing to other past essays and improving how their metric service is conducted. The fact that they outsource this one particular aspect of producing a metric should be fine, as long as it doesn't violate this one implied privilege given.
I think you might have legal grounds to kick if the school decided to cull through 20 years of essays to produce a book "Best Essays of the Last Twenty Years," without informing you or asking for permission to include your material.
At first blush it seems to be a good argument "so and so is making money off my work without my permission"
Last time I looked, the college itself is making money off other people's work in general, and your only compensation is a diploma (assuming you finish).
I'm unaware of any prohibition of the schools making a students work public, though they may have to take pains to make sure the author's name is removed. So if they put this work on the web, aren't search engines making a profit off this work? That is a battle that has already been fought and lost.
All of that is an aside. The college takes on the roll of an employer here, and has full rights to whatever works you produce. When I was in college, I constantly heard grumbles (far more justified) about professors assigning graduate students programming tasks that the professors would collect and string into marketable products. At the University of Illinois professors are allowed to profit from side projects, though this is not true for all universities.
As for fear of false positives, that would be a legitimate complaint if the plaggerism detector merely turned back a yeah/nay response. The article says it returns a fitness number of originality. I would assume when the number gets too low, you the teacher can request the most offending example that it was supposedly plagereized from. Now it becomes a human decision again, by comparing the two papers. I would also imagine this side by side check would only be done on students whose papers consistently come back with low fitness numbers. Assuming this is the way it is applied, I don't have much of a problem with it. The alternative is to just realize that good plagerizers will get the same grades on essays as everyone else, now that so much searchable material is available on the web.
Reef divers are stunning tropic fish with cyanide to capture them. The result is not only stunned and dead fish, but large areas of dead coral. How ironic "Finding Nemo" which has a message of leaving fish in the wild, has caused the trade in clown fish to explode.
Along comes some domesticated fish alternative that could really take the pressure off of endangered species, and we're knocking it down because the public is ignorant about how evolution works and the over exaggerated risks of Gene Manipulation. I suspect a large undercurrent here is not the danger, but the Christian backlash at altering God's creatures. How unnatural.
Call me a snob, but I work out often, and I don't believe this isometric system
will do much for overall health.
I do three types of exercise:
Free Weights
Machine (Nautilus)
Aerobic
Now I'm not saying isometric is bad for you, just that I've never seen anyone build muscle with or or get good cardio vascular from it. It can provide toning when used in conjunction with other exercise types.
I personally think people will be bored with isometric exercise, because you don't feel any movement (granted here you have game feedback). But motion is what
really gets you the next immersion level. I used to do computerized rowing machine, and I really enjoyed chasing my computer opponent in the other boat.
Isometric won't condition you for real athletic performance in the real world.
The same reason I use a mix of machine and free weights. The free weights train your body for how to lift against real mass in the real world, and though you may not realize it, you will be be adapted to say helping your significant other
move the couch around the room a dozen times until its "Fung Shui"
I suppose its possible to get the heart rate up for cardio with isometric, but it seems unlikely for most. Again, motion is the key to health. Get moving until you work up a moderate sweat and maintain for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour to really get cardio benefits.
I like the idea of linking computer games and workouts, I have a friend that is
hooked on Dance-Dance-Revolution and it works well for him. I just don't think
this cheap-o scheme of isometric will catch on, or more importantly really give
the advertised benefits.
The idea that one dominant OS would be bad from a virus susceptibility standpoint is not new. What amused me some years back was the Government charging Microsoft under antitrust laws, while at the same time agencies like NASA where issuing edicts that all software would be migrated to Windows. This in response to the large fraction of NASA engineers and Scientists using Mac, and then have file
format inconsistencies.
With Linux emerging as the platform of choice for scientific applications, I would imagine NASA has had to have changed this policy, so I would like to hear from some NASA people what the current policies are.
One thing is clear, open source is being demonized by people with vested interests, and are trying to pass actual laws along the lines of "This is Godless and Communistic." I personally think open source is a really good fit for OS and language design. These are foundations on which everything else rests. Without open source you don't know if what you are building lies over a fault line or an artisian well.
I'm sure Microsoft is cutting deals behind closed doors with various governments about putting in code to "track the bad guys". It's not just a matter of having stuff in there you don't know about, but having it steal your processor cycles, and having unintended interactions. And since it's black box and probably DRM, it will probably become illegal to deactivate it. And since you can't rip it
out, or should even know it's in there, someone comes along with a real killer virus exploit that turns on your own DRM against you.
I could indeed be wrong, but I think you would be surprised how easy it is to tag some patterns as of possible biological origin based on various symmetries either being evident or not. Many natural non biological processes are randomly fractal in nature, while biological process often have branching regular fractal symmetries or semi-random walks that are hard to create non biologically. This is likely to be easier than identifying specific structures with high accuracy as is needed by say counting white blood cells. We only care that structures have the types of patterns we are looking for, not be specific cell types.
Since we are looking for mathematically defined patterns, the vast majority of imagery data can be rejected without a so much as a howdy-do back to Earth. We can develop and test this system on earth with random sterile samples, and samples that have had biologic activity, possibly fossilized. What is important is to develop the algorithms now, because future missions will have the CPU horse power to do our scans, regardless that they may lag cutting edge consumer technology due to testing, final design lock in, radiation hardening, and power rating. Moores law still applies, though somewhat delayed.
In fact this could be opened as a contest for the best computer algorithm to identify biological patterns vs non biological patterns, and could even have spin-off applications. I might even taka a crack at this.
Until quite recently a dumb remote controlled microscope might have been like looking for a bacterium in a haystack, the bandwidth for sending back images would severely limited how many objects could be analyzed. A dumb microscope might have been useful on Viking only because it sat in one place for so long, and while it was continuing to send valuable data, the really data intensive image data would have become less and less useful once a full scan was completed. It also had a bowl of soup that might have been teaming with beasties.
Bandwidth is quite a bit better this time around, but I would still agree a dumb remote microscope would be a poor investment. But the computer advances that make the rovers autonomous could make the microscope autonomous. Platelet and white blood cell counts are now automated in hospitals, as are some cancer cell type scans. We may not know exactly what we are looking for, but we can probably program what we think are likely features marking possible biological origin. It would be adaptive also, sending back only one example each of what it considers images of interest if it sees a lot of recurring patterns. Of course it wouldn't be completely autonomous, if we see a picture with a particularly intriguing feature type, we would give a "look for more of these" command. It's hard to say how many images could be scanned and evaluated without feedback from Earth, but I'll bet with current PC grade hardware it could scan over 10 gigabytes of image data an hour, and with specialized support hardware 100 gigabytes to a terabyte an hour. It wouldn't have to save all that data (nor could it), but it only need save 2 types of images. Priority for transmission (but compressed and cropped), and full detail for requested transmission. If something looks real intriguing you give a "Send Full Detail" command.
Now I'm sure just such schemes are on the blackboards at NASA, but I suspect that NASA culture is more populated by Planetary Geologists than Planetary Biologists. This because the former always gives returns and success (plus they help you get your probe landed safely). If you poll members of Congress you will find many think Earth is God's only abode of life in the universe (or a least a sizeable portion of their constituency do). As a result many frown on too many big money expenditures on directly looking for evidence life outside of Earth (SETI fund axing as an example). Either because they know by faith these efforts are doomed to fail, or because they fear an upset-the-applecart result. As a Rocket Scientist you would be in a better possition to judge whether any of what I just speculated is true.
I totally agree about a return sample mission, but with a smart microscope it might be cheaper to return a few grams of really high priority samples, than several pounds of randomly chosen rocks -- OK not totally random chosen;-)
BTW I am a Computer Scientist and work in the Field of Image Processing.
Slashdot Mirror
You just seem to dislike open markets. Am I to infer Central Planning is more effective?
You imply laws are passed in a open market fashion, and they maybe after a fashion this is so by side effect of effective lobbying, but no one suggests that this is a correct solution.
You dislike the idea of pollution credits obviously, but fail to show how pollution is increased by use of pollution credits, or fails in its intent to redress certain inequities in the patch work of pollution regulation we have. You just have a gut feeling people shouldn't be given permission to pollute, but this is what regulation is all about, how much and to what end.
Spam is an example of "the tragedy of the commons"
Some type of barrier to access is the only way to solve it. By making it an open market everyone has access, but they indulge their use as makes economic sense. The beauty of open markets is that they are self regulating. Call it an emergent behavior from enlightened self interest.
I am not saying these gentleman have the correct solution for spam, but to just denigrate it because it has open market as a model is unfair. Open or Free markets work well in many situations, they also fail in many situations. Many times failures attributed to open or free markets are really failures of regulation, that only free certain aspects of a market but leave others restricted. The only thing we should be concerned with is does the solution work and is it fair. Lets not discard it simply because you dislike open markets, and may I also infer capitalism?
Analog dials do have one virtue in a control environment, they are often tied mechanically or pneumatically to the system thy monitor, and are immune to software errors or power glitches (though pneumatic ones can get stuck). For real redundancy, use all three.
I still maintain a single digital readout on a watch says it all, and about as quickly as you could want. The degrade-with-distance argument works for wall clocks. Maybe when my eyes start to go and my arm isn't long enough for a critical focus, I'll see the value to analog wristwatches, which is what I thought the original parent comment was about.
Ooooh My God I'm dropping fast!!!
Time doesn't speed up or slow down such that I can see the change in the way the hands on my watch move (and even if it did/does I would be changing with it to a net no change). Else it might be suppior to digital.
That you tend to say things like it's a quarter to six when using an analog watch versus It 5:45 doesn't slow me down one tick either, or make being close to six feel more palpable. If anything it just shows how hard it is to read an analog watch, and thus we just guess at the time instead or really knowing it.
Since this was posted A.C., it doesn't appear to be a case of Karma whoring, and even if it where, I would gladly give up the mod points to view the article.
Chances are the moderator(s) who marked the parent to this post redundant, will not see this comment of mine. But I for one appreciate the effort to include the text so all can see. Perhaps the moderator(s) thought the text had already been posted in full (it hadn't). Even so, this was a very early post and should have been given the benefit of the doubt that earlier article text postings hadn't shown up yet.
Save negative mods for when they are really needed.
Like the guidelines say, focus on modding up.
Thankfully, most moderators modded this up informative, not redundant.
Still, why doesn't China just take Open Source products or Copyleft or GPL source and just do whatever the hell they want with it? They could put in whatever secret patches they want and distribute binaries free of charge as a great Communist benefit to its masses (China still claims to be Communist I believe, even it falls short in many of the details). It's hard to see how we could retaliate trade-wise, since this would not be directly stealing products from corporations. Granted we are unhappy about various other copyright infringements, but only where salable products are involved. Companies like Microsoft have made such a big deal about accusing Open Source of being communistic in nature, I'm not sure we could bring action to bear if China choose to abuse Open Source. Microsoft and others probably consider this a future possibility if they don't cooperate with China to some degree on customization. Then again one has to wonder what things our government has Microsoft put in for both foreign and domestic consumption.
To my shame I use Microsoft products at home and work, but ever year I spend more an more work keeping my platforms stable, and I really don't trust what's going on under the hood. I don't think Open Source will solve human rights violations in China (they'll do whatever they want with their software), but more and more I see it as the only long-term viable Operating System option for the world.
It could be that Linux was not a reasonable alternative when computers started to infiltrate China, or that Linux didn't/doesn't offer enough Chinese character support. Chinese consumers would probably have loved Instant Messenger and Phone over Internet which were probably proprietarily tied to other Windows platforms around the world a few years ago, and may still be to some degree, and which initially have allowed many middle class Chinese to circumvent State spying and censorship.
Given that these factors are no longer as strongly in effect, should we encourage China to keep its addiction to Microsoft products because it keep China dependant and Western technology, and brings money into American coffers (which I am not saying is a bad thing). Whether China should go open source to me is rather moot, but one has to wonder what deals are made under the table, and what moneys are transferred directly to the pockets of corrupt politicians to keep China snorting Microsoft products. Of course the same questions could be asked here in America.
As a final note, Amnesty International makes pretty much unfounded claims against Microsoft, Nortel, and Cisco. But given the past human rights abuses of the Chinese government, and given that they tend to be tough trading partners -- one has to wonder if these companies have given any technical aid or assistance for filtering-banning-monitoring in order to keep these contracts. To what degree are Microsoft and other companies required to disclose the terms of their contracts with foreign governments and how do we know the terms of these deals are being honestly adhered to? This last question is not rhetorical, maybe some slashdotter out there knows.
We see here how the astronauts lives depended critically on technology performing flawless during a complex series of steps, and begs us to wonder how many times in our own life we also depend on technology performing a flawless series of steps. This doesn't just have to be your car your job, but perhaps you live close to a nuclear power plant. One could easily imagine a series of assumptions in this environment leading to even more tragic consequences.
I will not go into my job description, and this is little in my everyday performance of it to remind me that at times peoples'
lives might depend on me having done it correctly and not having cut corners. We are all part of very complex web of interactions both personal and technological. Poignant descriptions of events likes these are a wake up call and a reminder we all have responsibilities to those around us to do our best everyday.
So here is a list of the bad people we supported, no argument. Wish we hadn't. So is this case closed, we are bad or evil people? More importantly I don't see the "killing in the name of business" reason you claim. Geopolitics is involved to be sure, and your chosen half-decade was at the height of the Cold War. We were not the only players. Economics may be a contributing factor in considerations, but I'll bet far less than say, oh I don't know, maybe the French? Whose government was found to be directly implicated in the intentional sinking of a Green Peace boat -- an act motivated solely for unadulterated economic reasons.
Forgive me for not doing the research, but would China's or Russia's or Europe's lists be shorter for supporting questionable regimes? We made bad choices, let's make better ones now. But lets talk about recent direct use of force. Was invading Afghanistan a business decision? Seems to me this action would not have happened without the harboring of Bin Laden. You assume Iraq is about oil, because they have oil, but what is the proof? I think Iraq gave ample provocation for its regime's ouster, and we can now try to get a beachhead for democracy in the Arab world. Al Quada is still around, but incredibly they have chosen to fight us in Iraq where their Muslim brothers are paying the price. Should we quail from the fight, and concede Iraq to a fanatical fundamentalist religious sect?
We can squabble about how we came to be in the place we are, but it doesn't negate the fact that we have no choice but to apply force as needed now, but be sure the follow through is the support of regimes that do treat their citizens humanly.
You are not giving me facts here, just assertions and statements, which to you I'm sure seem quite self evident. The US has supported bad regimes in the past and even now. We live in a world of compromises. If all nations were democracies with free press and free speech, I believe there would be far less inequity. I don't believe they all have to have our flavor of capitalism (or even capitalism at all), and in developing countries a period communism may be the superior economic choice.
So please give me some specifics of what we should be doing now. How do we fight terrorism? Don't just rant to me about how evil we are, with the implied we-deserve-it that entails.
I also prefer to live in a country that won't sign a treaty, rather than sign one to gain trade advantage by signing and not honoring. Ooooo the EVIL USA, won't sign this paper, that we ourselves have no intention of honoring. Bah.
The problem of fighting violence with violence is that you become that which you fight against
Just what is it we become? I doubt we will become zealots killing in the name of religion, though this would please some. No, you just want to float some ill defined evil as that which we will morph into. Please explain to me how you fight violence without using violence? Most would agree that self defense is a inalienable right. If my only reasonable way of bringing an attack to an end is to kill my attacker, then I would say it is justified and not evil.
There is a large percentage of Slashdot posters that think the US is irredeemably evil, or the the Bush administration is evil. That somehow a better, gentler, kinder foreign policy would have staved off these woes. Why is this believed? What evidence is there that the other major powers in the world are less evil than the USA, because if they are not less evil, why would react positively to selfless acts on the part of the US? 911 would have happened whether Gore won or not, planning for it was in progress for years before the actual event. We will never know whether a Gore administration would have dealt with the crisis better or not, this isn't my point. My point is that Global Terrorism wasn't brought to us as result of the 2000 year election, it was brewing for a long time and finally arrived.
I for one am a tit-for-tat with a little bit of forgiveness, the only long term winning strategy. And while I may get shouted down for this belief, I think this is just the trend the USA seems to show on the world stage. We have racial divisions and religious divisions and political divisions within the USA, but from all this contention comes a moderation to all view points, which is reflected in our foreign policy.
I am not defending the Patriot Act, I have not read all of its particulars, but I am saying we do have to react to foreign aggression (provoked or not). Just moaning about war is bad, violence is evil will not make the world better as its adherents think it will.
Certainly we have overreacted in some areas to terrorism, our freedoms are in peril, but we must also make sane choices to preserve life and limb. Merely succumbing to an endless liberal litany of we-had-it-coming-for-not-being-nicer will solve nothing, and never really asks the question about how effective being nicer actually would be. Where's the proof? I'm not saying we shouldn't be to a degree tolerant, but we can't be appeasers either.
One last world, not all other political systems are just "different". I hesitate to use the world evil, but I do believe a system that respects freedom of speech and freedom of religion are superior. I am an agnostic, but thank GOD I live in a society that doesn't tell me how to worship. I have no problem with our government pursuing strategies that will open up closed societies to this which democracy and secularism which I believe are more enlightened views.
I don't seeing any limp, melting watches.
P.S. Arizona You're now considered "surreal"
That said I wouldn't argue that a build up of the manned space program could be a cover for taking the high ground in space. Control of the skies is what gives the US such a commanding advantage in wars these days. Certainly a reason the US is none too happy to see Europe launching Galileo its own GPS system.
I won't debate whether this makes the US evil or not, but it could be seen as prudent in maintaining a lead militarily. To expect China to remain to peaceful purposes only in space may be a bit naive. At this point I don't support nor condemn US space initiatives. I wait to see if this all turns out to be political rhetoric. We all rejoiced in the science and progress of the Apollo era, but without a cold war to drive it there would have been slower progress in space. Now that the world has become a more dangerous place again, we may see such programs again. A boon for science, but with a cloud inside the silver lining.
I would think "intent" would be the defining attribute in being a troll or not, and I wasn't. I did get a +5 on the post, and am not unhappy about that. This has been an informative thread for me however, in seeing what other people consider trolling so that I can avoid it. Still it's interesting to bump into people ready to jump down my throat for comments they feel uniformed or insincere. I do like getting replies, so I probably do tend to couch my verbiage in a confrontational tone from time to time, more so when replying to a reply, that could be considered trollish I guess, but only when it is the first post in a thread.
Trolling is in the eye of the beholder I guess ;-)
I have strong opinions, I offer them freely and often. I like seeing the occasional +5, but I wouldn't say I troll for them. That TAWNN thinks I had some Machiavellian two prong plan to acquire points I think says more about TAWNN's world view than about me.
I was certainly not trying to be a troll. Let me be a little more clear, I REALLY LIKE LINUX. That doesn't mean I can't pass along my honest experience to support a claim in the article that LINUX may take five to ten years to raealy catch on, on the desktop. What Linus have given us has great potential to transform the way we do computing, but its not quite their yet for the average user, and even Linus seems to think this is true. Does this still make me a troll?
I am not saying that SunOS or IRIX are superior, just that the upgrades come at a more manageable pace, and tend not to break our code base when upgrading compilers. I think the reason Linus thinks five to ten years before really conquering the desktop is based on two things. By then LINUX should have slowed down in its development and will be a beast you can run two to three years before upgrading. Secondly, Windows will probably sink under the weight of it is haphazard code base, which is guided not by what is best for users and cleanest in design, but what makes sense commercially to support and lock-in their other products in as covert way as possible to keep from running afoul of the antitrust laws.
Looking forward to the day though!
I think you might have legal grounds to kick if the school decided to cull through 20 years of essays to produce a book "Best Essays of the Last Twenty Years," without informing you or asking for permission to include your material.
Last time I looked, the college itself is making money off other people's work in general, and your only compensation is a diploma (assuming you finish).
I'm unaware of any prohibition of the schools making a students work public, though they may have to take pains to make sure the author's name is removed. So if they put this work on the web, aren't search engines making a profit off this work? That is a battle that has already been fought and lost.
All of that is an aside. The college takes on the roll of an employer here, and has full rights to whatever works you produce. When I was in college, I constantly heard grumbles (far more justified) about professors assigning graduate students programming tasks that the professors would collect and string into marketable products. At the University of Illinois professors are allowed to profit from side projects, though this is not true for all universities.
As for fear of false positives, that would be a legitimate complaint if the plaggerism detector merely turned back a yeah/nay response. The article says it returns a fitness number of originality. I would assume when the number gets too low, you the teacher can request the most offending example that it was supposedly plagereized from. Now it becomes a human decision again, by comparing the two papers. I would also imagine this side by side check would only be done on students whose papers consistently come back with low fitness numbers. Assuming this is the way it is applied, I don't have much of a problem with it. The alternative is to just realize that good plagerizers will get the same grades on essays as everyone else, now that so much searchable material is available on the web.
Along comes some domesticated fish alternative that could really take the pressure off of endangered species, and we're knocking it down because the public is ignorant about how evolution works and the over exaggerated risks of Gene Manipulation. I suspect a large undercurrent here is not the danger, but the Christian backlash at altering God's creatures. How unnatural.
I do three types of exercise:
Free Weights
Machine (Nautilus)
Aerobic
Now I'm not saying isometric is bad for you, just that I've never seen anyone build muscle with or or get good cardio vascular from it. It can provide toning when used in conjunction with other exercise types.
I personally think people will be bored with isometric exercise, because you don't feel any movement (granted here you have game feedback). But motion is what really gets you the next immersion level. I used to do computerized rowing machine, and I really enjoyed chasing my computer opponent in the other boat.
Isometric won't condition you for real athletic performance in the real world. The same reason I use a mix of machine and free weights. The free weights train your body for how to lift against real mass in the real world, and though you may not realize it, you will be be adapted to say helping your significant other move the couch around the room a dozen times until its "Fung Shui"
I suppose its possible to get the heart rate up for cardio with isometric, but it seems unlikely for most. Again, motion is the key to health. Get moving until you work up a moderate sweat and maintain for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour to really get cardio benefits.
I like the idea of linking computer games and workouts, I have a friend that is hooked on Dance-Dance-Revolution and it works well for him. I just don't think this cheap-o scheme of isometric will catch on, or more importantly really give the advertised benefits.
With Linux emerging as the platform of choice for scientific applications, I would imagine NASA has had to have changed this policy, so I would like to hear from some NASA people what the current policies are.
One thing is clear, open source is being demonized by people with vested interests, and are trying to pass actual laws along the lines of "This is Godless and Communistic." I personally think open source is a really good fit for OS and language design. These are foundations on which everything else rests. Without open source you don't know if what you are building lies over a fault line or an artisian well.
I'm sure Microsoft is cutting deals behind closed doors with various governments about putting in code to "track the bad guys". It's not just a matter of having stuff in there you don't know about, but having it steal your processor cycles, and having unintended interactions. And since it's black box and probably DRM, it will probably become illegal to deactivate it. And since you can't rip it out, or should even know it's in there, someone comes along with a real killer virus exploit that turns on your own DRM against you.
Simple: ass-etate
Clear accetate sheets are what traditional animation is drawn on, for those that don't get it. Plus I get an informative mod, rather than offtopic
Don't kill my karma, he brought it up.
Since we are looking for mathematically defined patterns, the vast majority of imagery data can be rejected without a so much as a howdy-do back to Earth. We can develop and test this system on earth with random sterile samples, and samples that have had biologic activity, possibly fossilized. What is important is to develop the algorithms now, because future missions will have the CPU horse power to do our scans, regardless that they may lag cutting edge consumer technology due to testing, final design lock in, radiation hardening, and power rating. Moores law still applies, though somewhat delayed.
In fact this could be opened as a contest for the best computer algorithm to identify biological patterns vs non biological patterns, and could even have spin-off applications. I might even taka a crack at this.
Bandwidth is quite a bit better this time around, but I would still agree a dumb remote microscope would be a poor investment. But the computer advances that make the rovers autonomous could make the microscope autonomous. Platelet and white blood cell counts are now automated in hospitals, as are some cancer cell type scans. We may not know exactly what we are looking for, but we can probably program what we think are likely features marking possible biological origin. It would be adaptive also, sending back only one example each of what it considers images of interest if it sees a lot of recurring patterns. Of course it wouldn't be completely autonomous, if we see a picture with a particularly intriguing feature type, we would give a "look for more of these" command. It's hard to say how many images could be scanned and evaluated without feedback from Earth, but I'll bet with current PC grade hardware it could scan over 10 gigabytes of image data an hour, and with specialized support hardware 100 gigabytes to a terabyte an hour. It wouldn't have to save all that data (nor could it), but it only need save 2 types of images. Priority for transmission (but compressed and cropped), and full detail for requested transmission. If something looks real intriguing you give a "Send Full Detail" command.
Now I'm sure just such schemes are on the blackboards at NASA, but I suspect that NASA culture is more populated by Planetary Geologists than Planetary Biologists. This because the former always gives returns and success (plus they help you get your probe landed safely). If you poll members of Congress you will find many think Earth is God's only abode of life in the universe (or a least a sizeable portion of their constituency do). As a result many frown on too many big money expenditures on directly looking for evidence life outside of Earth (SETI fund axing as an example). Either because they know by faith these efforts are doomed to fail, or because they fear an upset-the-applecart result. As a Rocket Scientist you would be in a better possition to judge whether any of what I just speculated is true.
I totally agree about a return sample mission, but with a smart microscope it might be cheaper to return a few grams of really high priority samples, than several pounds of randomly chosen rocks -- OK not totally random chosen ;-)
BTW I am a Computer Scientist and work in the Field of Image Processing.