If you'll actually RTFA, you'll notice that the webserver hosting the information on where the telescope was pointing had the IP address of the Spanish researchers in its log files. More specifically, the Spanish astronomers jumped straight through to the page with the telescope coordinates listed for the particular object ID number that was also used in the published abstract. They didn't just randomly browse and chance upon it, but directly returned to the page multiple times within a day or so of when they anounced that they had "found" the object.
So Dr. Brown was negligent in that the data was publically (albeit difficultly) accessible, but that doesn't mean that Dr. Ortiz's stealing of the data was at all moral. It's pretty sleazy to take credit for somebody else's hard work without even acknowledgements.
You make a good point about the Consumer's Union and the importance of independant reviews, but I think it's also valuable to get reviews just as or before products go to market, so I know whether I should go rush out and buy one on the first day.
Also note that Mossberg states, "I plan to buy one for myself this weekend." The free iPod nano was just to review for work.
Sometimes Mossberg's reviews are negative. Sometimes they're positive. In this case, he obviously really liked the iPod nano.
He's a well respected journalist and doesn't just write puff pieces promoting any product he gets sent to him (not even if it's from Apple). I have no idea where you're coming from on this "embarrassment" angle. There is legitimate and valuable journalism in credible reviews, and you're nuts to say otherwise.
OpenOffice also supports all of the major features of MS Office (and a few of its own) except for the grammar check. I'm personally fine with not having a grammar checker since it has given me the opportunity to actually learn the English language instead of relying on my word processor to make my sentences coherent.
Erm... and I trust he's also personally fine without having a spell checker for exactly the same reason? And pocket calculators weaken my mind because I should be able to do it in my head or on paper?
What world is this guy living in? I like my computer programs to be smart and do things for me by noticing, say, subtle flaws in the document that my proof reading might not pick up. Word's grammar check can indeed be useful at times, especially with some of the few slightly more obscure grammatical checks it has that we may not pick up from everyday usage but are still good to know.
"They are loading up with PHds and scientists. If these guys had any useful brains, they would be super rich already."
Excuse me? Maybe PhDs and scientists are smart enough to realize that there is more to life than just money, such as perhaps having an interesting and fun job?
There are many different types of intelligence, and the most capable scientists and engineers may likely not have the best business sense. That doesn't meant that Google doesn't have people with good business sense, too, though. Perhaps a little division of labor?!? (Microsoft does that, too.)
Um, if you'll recall, EPR is not transfering any information. It's just quantum entanglement. How exactly is that travelling at the speed of light backwards in time?
Even the mere observation of any event leaves. It is impossible to even look at the past world without absorbing light that will irrevocably change things. A basic rule of quantum mechanics is impossible to observe an indeterminate quantum state without "collapsing" it to a single possibility. Any observation of the past will change the present, unless there is some extraordinary quantum coincidence that takes the different state you leave the past in and transforms it to the present.
So accordingly, while you certainly can't kill your grandfather, you can't even see him! How exactly does this qualify as time travel?
This entire article seems exceedingly hard to verify without the actual science.
This sentiment echos the rallying cry of the NRA that guns don't kill people, people kill people. It is a somewhat legitimate point, but regardless, BitTorrent certainly makes it easier. That is some level of responsibility, but clearly not complete responsibility.
"I really hope that the software isn't required to be running to have access to the internet, because otherwise it would be screwing Linux users over big time."
My school (Swarthmore College) uses the same McAfee Virusscan Enterprize. It works well to keep the network clean, and if you're running Linux it doesn't require you have to have it running.
The system is in fact a bit buggy and there was quite a number of people who had trouble at the beginning of the year with the scan not determining that their computer was clean and protected, but it got sorted out fairly quickly and is far better than the alternative of having viruses take over the network.
The system requires you to have the anti-virus running and be updated with the latest security patches from Microsoft to be let through (SP2 is not required though, for some reason).
My friends and I have also figured out how to do some technical fiddling around with port blocking and the like that lets us not run the relatively clunky anti-virus and use our program, but McAfee works just fine for most people.
"I really hope that the software isn't required to be running to have access to the internet, because otherwise it would be screwing Linux users over big time."
My school (Swarthmore College) uses the same McAfee Virusscan Enterprize. It works well to keep the network clean, and if you're running Linux it doesn't require you have to have it running.
The system is in fact a bit buggy and there was quite a number of people who had trouble at the beginning of the year with the scan not determining that their computer was clean and protected, but it got sorted out fairly quickly and is far better than the alternative of having viruses take over the network.
The system requires you to have the anti-virus running and be updated with the latest security patches from Microsoft to be let through (SP2 is not required though, for some reason).
My friends and I have also figured out how to do some technical fiddling around with port blocking and the like that lets us not run the relatively clunky anti-virus and use our program, but McAfee works just fine for most people.
I would consider the Communist Party as an extension of the government.
To be fair, the liberal democracies aren't exactly one party dictatorships, even if you removed political parties. I still don't think a party less state would work well on the whole, however, and would be at the least inclined towards totalitarianism.
"George Washington knew what he was talking about when he advised against political parties in his farewell address."
And in Communist Russia (or China), political parties really were banned.
I'm sure that's done great things for their economies and political system.
Although there is much to dislike about them, political parties or "factions," are absolutely necessary to participatory democracy. It's simply impractical to assume that people have the time or will to put in the effort to evaluate candidates individually.
Perhaps a parliamentary system with many smaller parties would be more effective, but Washington's and Madison's denouncements of political parties were just wrong.
Basically, clone Netscape 8's one remarkable feature: Allow Firefox to use the Internet Explorer rendering engine already built into windows. Optionally, of course, and only on webpages chosen by the user. But the mere ability to view a few pages with ActiveX and IE rendering is amazingly helpful for those few sites that still don't work in Gecko.
Don't get me wrong - I love Firefox, and especially the standards compliance and power of the Gecko rendering engine. But if Firefox is to true beat IE, it needs to be strictly superior, or pretty damn close. Firefox has already adopted this method in terms of much of the Firefox interface, but it can go even further. Remove the big reason not to switch, that some sites -- important websites like banks or internal company webpages, not to mention windows update -- just don't work in Firefox. Remove every reason to boot up Internet Explorer.
Those reasons still exist, as demonstrated by the popularity of the simple "IE View" extension. But why make it so I need to bother to keep the IE shortcut on my Desktop, too or install the extension? Not everyone is willing to go to that effort. This one feature, in a simple, easy to use interface (I can't imagine it would be THAT hard to program, as it's already been done many times) would be guarenteed to be astronomically popular and more importantly, USEFUL, to almost every one of the millions of Firefox users.
It's the proven method that Netscape and Microsoft fought the original browser wars with, adding additional features, being matched and then one upped by the competition. It's not glorious and new, but whatever the Gecko/standards evangelicals say, it's absolutely the pragmatic way to do things. Nobody else cares about the philosophical and moral implications of including the option for rendering pages with the engine behind "that evil corporation" or the fact that this could only work on Windows. We just want someting works, and works well.
It's easy to say Tachyons don't make any sense, but that doesn't say anything considering that they are only a hypothetical particle.
You only need a theory if there's actually a phenomena to explain.
I think it's not interesting because there's nothing to see other than a bunch of smoke. There are, of course, plenty of other things that are interesting besides blood and guts, but those certainly qualify in making something newsworthy.
I don't see why this is newsworthy enough for slashdot. Sure, it's a volcano and fairly large one.
But it just had a relatively minor eruption and spewed some ash. It's neat to see, to be sure, but hardly anything that would affect anyone. That's what I define as interesting and newsworthy: something that actually affects humanity and is in some way remarkable.
At this point, shooting more ash and steam is hardly remarkable. Even the scientists the news stations were talking to on the phone had little to say. It's just another random, minor, burst of steam and ash. It's hardly a change from the status quo.
And way to go with absurd, unfair and baseless extrapolations from my post.
I'm sure I was looking in the right direction. I live in the west hills southwest of downtown and can see the full mountain from my house.
I could very well be wrong on the dump truck vs. pickup truck thing.
Still doesn't feel that remarkable to me.
I live in Portland, Oregon, so I saw the eruption when it was taking place from my front porch.
It really wasn't very exciting. It was just a bunch of smoke and steam, around the size of several a few months ago.
Despite it being the sole story on the local news, nobody is going to die or even be injured. Nobody is going to care after tomorrow.
The volcano is regrowing a lava dome, and the dome is increasing in size. There's no visible lava, or anything more than the normal pickup truck worth of rock that's been added to the dome every second since October.
I don't get what the big deal is. It's a bit of smoke, that's all.
Slashdot Mirror
If you'll actually RTFA, you'll notice that the webserver hosting the information on where the telescope was pointing had the IP address of the Spanish researchers in its log files. More specifically, the Spanish astronomers jumped straight through to the page with the telescope coordinates listed for the particular object ID number that was also used in the published abstract. They didn't just randomly browse and chance upon it, but directly returned to the page multiple times within a day or so of when they anounced that they had "found" the object.
So Dr. Brown was negligent in that the data was publically (albeit difficultly) accessible, but that doesn't mean that Dr. Ortiz's stealing of the data was at all moral. It's pretty sleazy to take credit for somebody else's hard work without even acknowledgements.
You make a good point about the Consumer's Union and the importance of independant reviews, but I think it's also valuable to get reviews just as or before products go to market, so I know whether I should go rush out and buy one on the first day.
Also note that Mossberg states, "I plan to buy one for myself this weekend." The free iPod nano was just to review for work.
It's called a product review, dufus!
Sometimes Mossberg's reviews are negative. Sometimes they're positive. In this case, he obviously really liked the iPod nano.
He's a well respected journalist and doesn't just write puff pieces promoting any product he gets sent to him (not even if it's from Apple). I have no idea where you're coming from on this "embarrassment" angle. There is legitimate and valuable journalism in credible reviews, and you're nuts to say otherwise.
OpenOffice also supports all of the major features of MS Office (and a few of its own) except for the grammar check. I'm personally fine with not having a grammar checker since it has given me the opportunity to actually learn the English language instead of relying on my word processor to make my sentences coherent. Erm... and I trust he's also personally fine without having a spell checker for exactly the same reason? And pocket calculators weaken my mind because I should be able to do it in my head or on paper? What world is this guy living in? I like my computer programs to be smart and do things for me by noticing, say, subtle flaws in the document that my proof reading might not pick up. Word's grammar check can indeed be useful at times, especially with some of the few slightly more obscure grammatical checks it has that we may not pick up from everyday usage but are still good to know.
An article on the same innovation appeared several days ago in the New York Times (free reg required): http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/12/science/12sili.h tml
"They are loading up with PHds and scientists. If these guys had any useful brains, they would be super rich already."
Excuse me? Maybe PhDs and scientists are smart enough to realize that there is more to life than just money, such as perhaps having an interesting and fun job?
There are many different types of intelligence, and the most capable scientists and engineers may likely not have the best business sense. That doesn't meant that Google doesn't have people with good business sense, too, though. Perhaps a little division of labor?!? (Microsoft does that, too.)
Um, if you'll recall, EPR is not transfering any information. It's just quantum entanglement. How exactly is that travelling at the speed of light backwards in time?
Even the mere observation of any event leaves. It is impossible to even look at the past world without absorbing light that will irrevocably change things. A basic rule of quantum mechanics is impossible to observe an indeterminate quantum state without "collapsing" it to a single possibility. Any observation of the past will change the present, unless there is some extraordinary quantum coincidence that takes the different state you leave the past in and transforms it to the present.
So accordingly, while you certainly can't kill your grandfather, you can't even see him! How exactly does this qualify as time travel?
This entire article seems exceedingly hard to verify without the actual science.
This sentiment echos the rallying cry of the NRA that guns don't kill people, people kill people. It is a somewhat legitimate point, but regardless, BitTorrent certainly makes it easier. That is some level of responsibility, but clearly not complete responsibility.
I absolutely agree that this is a great feature.
Firefox zealots need to get off their high horse and present a strict superior product.
At the very least I wish somebody would write an extension for this.
How hard would that be to do? If not too bad, I might start working on it myself...
"I really hope that the software isn't required to be running to have access to the internet, because otherwise it would be screwing Linux users over big time."
My school (Swarthmore College) uses the same McAfee Virusscan Enterprize. It works well to keep the network clean, and if you're running Linux it doesn't require you have to have it running.
The system is in fact a bit buggy and there was quite a number of people who had trouble at the beginning of the year with the scan not determining that their computer was clean and protected, but it got sorted out fairly quickly and is far better than the alternative of having viruses take over the network.
The system requires you to have the anti-virus running and be updated with the latest security patches from Microsoft to be let through (SP2 is not required though, for some reason).
My friends and I have also figured out how to do some technical fiddling around with port blocking and the like that lets us not run the relatively clunky anti-virus and use our program, but McAfee works just fine for most people.
"I really hope that the software isn't required to be running to have access to the internet, because otherwise it would be screwing Linux users over big time." My school (Swarthmore College) uses the same McAfee Virusscan Enterprize. It works well to keep the network clean, and if you're running Linux it doesn't require you have to have it running. The system is in fact a bit buggy and there was quite a number of people who had trouble at the beginning of the year with the scan not determining that their computer was clean and protected, but it got sorted out fairly quickly and is far better than the alternative of having viruses take over the network. The system requires you to have the anti-virus running and be updated with the latest security patches from Microsoft to be let through (SP2 is not required though, for some reason). My friends and I have also figured out how to do some technical fiddling around with port blocking and the like that lets us not run the relatively clunky anti-virus and use our program, but McAfee works just fine for most people.
I would consider the Communist Party as an extension of the government. To be fair, the liberal democracies aren't exactly one party dictatorships, even if you removed political parties. I still don't think a party less state would work well on the whole, however, and would be at the least inclined towards totalitarianism.
"George Washington knew what he was talking about when he advised against political parties in his farewell address."
And in Communist Russia (or China), political parties really were banned.
I'm sure that's done great things for their economies and political system.
Although there is much to dislike about them, political parties or "factions," are absolutely necessary to participatory democracy. It's simply impractical to assume that people have the time or will to put in the effort to evaluate candidates individually.
Perhaps a parliamentary system with many smaller parties would be more effective, but Washington's and Madison's denouncements of political parties were just wrong.
I don't think the short article adds much new information, but it certainly lends a further extent of legitimacy to the issue.
Basically, clone Netscape 8's one remarkable feature: Allow Firefox to use the Internet Explorer rendering engine already built into windows. Optionally, of course, and only on webpages chosen by the user. But the mere ability to view a few pages with ActiveX and IE rendering is amazingly helpful for those few sites that still don't work in Gecko.
Don't get me wrong - I love Firefox, and especially the standards compliance and power of the Gecko rendering engine. But if Firefox is to true beat IE, it needs to be strictly superior, or pretty damn close. Firefox has already adopted this method in terms of much of the Firefox interface, but it can go even further. Remove the big reason not to switch, that some sites -- important websites like banks or internal company webpages, not to mention windows update -- just don't work in Firefox. Remove every reason to boot up Internet Explorer.
Those reasons still exist, as demonstrated by the popularity of the simple "IE View" extension. But why make it so I need to bother to keep the IE shortcut on my Desktop, too or install the extension? Not everyone is willing to go to that effort. This one feature, in a simple, easy to use interface (I can't imagine it would be THAT hard to program, as it's already been done many times) would be guarenteed to be astronomically popular and more importantly, USEFUL, to almost every one of the millions of Firefox users.
It's the proven method that Netscape and Microsoft fought the original browser wars with, adding additional features, being matched and then one upped by the competition. It's not glorious and new, but whatever the Gecko/standards evangelicals say, it's absolutely the pragmatic way to do things. Nobody else cares about the philosophical and moral implications of including the option for rendering pages with the engine behind "that evil corporation" or the fact that this could only work on Windows. We just want someting works, and works well.
Not very funny.
April fools day jokes start to get old after you've seen the tenth one.
Actually, scratch that - they're old to start off with.
Does anyone have links to the screenshots that Microsoft requested Windows SuperSite to remove? (see the note on the side of the homepage)
"but at least (in my experience) the crashes are fairly rare (say, once a month) instead of upwards of one a day..."
Windows XP doesn't crash one a day, either. I've only gotten a BSOD twice in my years of using it.
Windows has gotten a lot more stable over the years.
I can imagine a similar program just allowing users to keep downloads of music obtained via the ability to sample music in iTunes.
That would be quite nefarious, in contrast to simple DRM removal. At least they're still paying for it.
It's easy to say Tachyons don't make any sense, but that doesn't say anything considering that they are only a hypothetical particle. You only need a theory if there's actually a phenomena to explain.
Very funny. I saw it from my front porch.
Excuse me?!?
I think it's not interesting because there's nothing to see other than a bunch of smoke. There are, of course, plenty of other things that are interesting besides blood and guts, but those certainly qualify in making something newsworthy.
I don't see why this is newsworthy enough for slashdot. Sure, it's a volcano and fairly large one.
But it just had a relatively minor eruption and spewed some ash. It's neat to see, to be sure, but hardly anything that would affect anyone. That's what I define as interesting and newsworthy: something that actually affects humanity and is in some way remarkable.
At this point, shooting more ash and steam is hardly remarkable. Even the scientists the news stations were talking to on the phone had little to say. It's just another random, minor, burst of steam and ash. It's hardly a change from the status quo.
And way to go with absurd, unfair and baseless extrapolations from my post.
I'm sure I was looking in the right direction. I live in the west hills southwest of downtown and can see the full mountain from my house. I could very well be wrong on the dump truck vs. pickup truck thing. Still doesn't feel that remarkable to me.
I live in Portland, Oregon, so I saw the eruption when it was taking place from my front porch.
It really wasn't very exciting. It was just a bunch of smoke and steam, around the size of several a few months ago.
Despite it being the sole story on the local news, nobody is going to die or even be injured. Nobody is going to care after tomorrow.
The volcano is regrowing a lava dome, and the dome is increasing in size. There's no visible lava, or anything more than the normal pickup truck worth of rock that's been added to the dome every second since October.
I don't get what the big deal is. It's a bit of smoke, that's all.