Thank you for your letter, dated 14 March, 2006, in which you expressed concern in re:possible DMCA copyright violations in our research activities. On the advise of counsel, we have concluded that your copyrights and/or patent applications on "life" are invalid due to prior art, namely, yourself. In that you stand outside of time, you infinitely predate your subsequent creations (rendering any patent claims moot) and any copyrights on your works predate English Common Law, which form the sole basis for your tort.
Sincerely,
Orobouros Corporation What goes around, comes around
Heck, I worked two blocks east of that plant for years. The plant itself is one full block south of the Sears Tower - across the street from 311 S. Wacker (the "White Castle Building" for those of you in the area). For a while, I had to drive into the area and parked in an underground parking garage in the recently renovated Insurance Exchange Building (an old Beaux Arts building next to the Chicago Board of Trade). During the renovation, they switched to the new cold water system for A/C - you could see the tubes crawling along the ceiling of the garage.
Very neat concept, and seemed to work very well - that building could get downright cold during the summer. The building is donut shaped (square, but with a central light core) with a 4 story glass atrium in the middle that was always very comfortable. Prior to the renovation, that area could get quite warm in the summer.
Modify the header of a "promoted" article that makes it stand out as being promoted. I would either change the color (a brighter green maybe) or modify the shape of the header backdrop from an rounded upper-left to an arrow end. I would also add a line beneath "Posted by xxx on..." that would contain "Promoted on...", e.g.:
Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday January 23, @12:00PM Promoted on Monday January 23, @12:25PM
Modify the code that slides articles off the page (as opposed to orders them on the page) to use the promotion timestamp rather than the posting timestamp. Articles that were posted in full to the main page would default to having the same posting and promotion timestamps (if they are the same, don't display the promotion time). I would continue to order the articles by posting time to prevent articles from "bubbling up".
I tend to scroll down the whole main page anyway (just in case there is an update to a story). As long as there is something visually distinct about the promoted story, I'll pick it up - otherwise I'm just skimming over the old stuff anyway and it doesn't cost me any real time.
I've long been fascinated by the UNH and GreenFuel proposals for algal biodiesel, so everytime it pops up, I take a look. No big changes lately, but the GreenFuel process still seems like the one that could actually have a real impact in our lifetimes.
News.com had a few followup articles as well here (about investing in clean tech) and here (about J. Craig Venter looking at bioengineering more effective microbes for doing this kind of stuff).
Given the facts of the matter, this isn't "a perfect example of the scientific process self-correcting". This was a fraud that was largely investigated outside the scientific process and then unravelled from within.
Self-correction would have entailed either the peer reviewers of Science noticing such "small" things as duplicated picutures (which, when pointed out, the editors of Science claimed was a production error, when in fact it was a purposeful fraud conducted by a junior researcher at the direction of Hwang) or the co-author of the paper (who, being on a separate continent and at a different university, cannot be seriously excused as being intimidated by Hwang) doing more than rubber stamping Hwang's "work". There were no prominent stories of biologists who were questioning the results prior to the exposure of the fraud. As the each piece of the fraud unravelled, the editors of Science engaged in a series of "yes, buts..." that would acknowledge now indisputable problems while categorically stating that the remainder of the article stood. After all, it had been peer-reviewed!
It was largely Korean television and newspapers that "corrected" the science involved here. They uncovered the ethical problems first of paying for eggs, then eggs "willingly" harvested from younger female subordinates of Hwang, then the coercive nature of those "willing" donations, the duplicated photos and the rest of the sordid mess. It wasn't until more junior researchers started to confess to reporters the scale of the fraud that the scientific community really started to get in front of this - and that largely in an ass-covering way by the University.
What fascinates me about all this is the "shock, shock" that Hwang could have done this. I think most people, regardless of where they stand on the ethics or morality of embryonic stem cell research, understand that there are at least some ethical dilemmas posed by the research (if only at the "where are they going to get all those eggs" level). The only people I've seen who are adamant that there are no such ethical issues to consider have been some of the scientists performing these experiments. Why, then, is it such a shock that people who are seemingly unconcerned about the ethical issues involved in their work might be similarly ethically challenged in the work itself? Certainly, the vast majority of such researchers are honest and decent. You are also going to attract some more unsavory characters like Hwang who broke every ethical rule he came into contact with in order to achieve prestige and national glory.
Politicized science (and it is politicized on both sides) requires even more scrutiny than normal. Unfortunately, when the scientific establishment (including journals) are nearly uniformly on one side of the debate, most of the policing of that side is going to come from outside the scientific community. The process of science will not in these cases be self-correcting. Hopefully, in the end, the science itself will be correct.
I mean, I know he eventually turned out to be a physics genius, what with inventing time travel and all, but still... Can you imagine 12 channels of Brady Kids music in coach? *shudder*
If only there was a technology that the editors could use that would show them a list of current Slashdot stories prior to posting... A real-time feed of some sort would be nice.
In terms of their politics, I'm making fun of their insistance that the whole group is supposed to represent a broad cross-section of political views, when their left-most blogger is Glenn Reynolds
While it's true that Pajamas Media/OSM/name of the day has more than its fair share of right-leaning blogs (though I think the more apt description would be hawkish, as a fair number of those blogs are "Democrats that feel like they were mugged on 9/11"), I wouldn't call Glenn their left-most member. David Corn is a member of their editorial board and also a columnist for The Nation, that notorious right-wing rag...
They also have a goodly number of libertarians and people who don't pigeonhole easily (Tammy Bruce is a self-described "openly gay, pro-choice, gun owning, pro-death penalty, voted-for-President Bush progressive feminist" who was also the LA chapter president of NOW). Still, there's no denying that Mr. Corn is a rather lonely voice right now, and I hope that they can address the balance issue in some way (although how many left-leaning blogs are going to want to join is an open question).
Maybe because a lot of us are stuck behind firewalls and NATs that don't allow us to hit port 8090? Coral has been claiming they'll move to port 80 for a long time now - the 8090 was supposedly just something they used during beta testing. How hard can it be to change the port? If you're going to use a cahce, use Mirrordot - it's plain old port 80.
Firefox users can just install the Coral Cache extension and save the bother of typing ".nyud.net:8090" to the URL and the obligatory "why not use Coral?!?!" reply to every freaking article. They can then stop bitching about the editors not using the Coral cache. (My assumption being here that the people who complain loudest about Coral tend not to be IE users. My apologies to any Opera/Coral fanatics out there.)
Finally, for every website that is crushed by the Slashdot effect, there is another that is loving the boost to its ad revenues from the avalanche. (Again, Firefox users like myself who use Adblock or Mirrordot are just leeches and probably should be banned from the web... >g)
Have you forgotten it was places like Yahoo! that gave you free email in the first place?
Look, I love Google - I use it dozens of times everyday. But it's just a company - they provide a product that they think enough people will like that they can make money off the ad revenue. For years, that product was pretty much just web search, and while they were "resting comfortably on their lazy asses", plenty of other sites became more than just web search.
I realize that here in Slashdotland, there are a few favorite companies and technologies (Linux, Google, Apache, Apple), a few tolerated ones (BSD, Sun, Novell, Yahoo!), a couple that moved from evil to great (IBM, HP while Bruce Perens was employed there) and the vast list of pure evil (SCO, Microsoft, McDonalds).
But anyone with a decent enough memory can remember the days when Yahoo! was the new kid on the block with the best search engine. It had its innovations (the directory superstructure it placed on the web was genius for the day), it made its big bucks in the IPO market and it had the plaudits of the Slashdot crowd.
It's also about the only one of the original search sites (Excite, AltaVista, HotBot, etc.) that actually successfully transformed into a "portal". At Yahoo!, I can get email, keep a calendar, track my stock portfolio, see what's playing on my favorite TV channels and movie theaters, get directions to the theater, get news, read the comics, keep a real-time update window of my local baseball team's game, check the weather and look up the meaning of "plethora" to make sure that describes its breadth of services.
I can remember the days when the running complaint around Slashdot was the uselessness of the "portal" concept and how places like Google, that concentrated on a single service like search, were so much better. And now that Google is slowly transforming itself into a portal, suddenly that's the coolest, best idea ever.
In the portalsphere, it's Google that's the slow moving, Johnny-come-lately, not Yahoo! Like anyone late to the party, Google had to offer something unique to the party. When it came to email, that was primarily lots of storage space and the idea of "labels". Offering the first was easy - the vast majority of people aren't going to use the gig or two offered, and they had plenty of space anyway. The second is nifty, but not mind shattering. Other than that, GMail is a pretty vanilla piece of work.
All the main portals have now countered the "lots of space" offer, and Yahoo! is countering labels with an incredibly slick GUI (something Google is not exactly known for). I like the fact that Google has competition - it gives me choices and fosters actual innovation (even if it's purchased Oddpost innovation).
Google offers a lot of great stuff. But in a lot of ways, their stuff is immature. For instance, Google Local and its link to Google Maps is only so-so as it's search-based. Yahoo! Maps offers a single-click interface to find a restaurant next to my local movie theater, and because it's tied into the Yahoo! Yellow Pages part of the portal, it's more comprehensive and accurate than Google Local.
And as for the "new Yahoo! mail may be great, but only because a few thousand people are hitting it now" - remember the endless GMail beta? People trying to score invites for months, EBay auctions and the like? Some parts of Google are in perpetual beta (Google Groups anyone?) and rightfully so - would it kill Google to put a Bayesian filter in Google Groups so you could actually use newgroups? How about a slick Oddpost-like interface to it?
This isn't supposed to be a "Yahoo! is great, Google sucks" rant. Both have great services and areas where they aren't so good. As long as they keep competing, I can expect good stuff from both and that's a win-win for me.
Considering Slashdot has managed to dupe a five-month old story, I figured I'd dupe my five-month old comment... One update: The Community developed OSS Yahoo! Companion for Mozilla website is currently way out of date. To get a current version of the toolbar, go to the mailing list archives. The latest build should be attached to one of the mid-July emails.
As one of the more minor members of the community-created Yahoo! Companion for Mozilla, I'd like to point out that there is another option if you distrust/dislike the official version.
Peter Buergner, Dave Viner, Brian Kennelly and a host of others have created an excellent alternative for folks who like the functionality of the Yahoo! Toolbar but prefer Firefox/Mozilla. The current version (0.54) is a bit out of date - a new version should be hitting the servers soon. It is much further along than the official version, with full internationalization support (including Chinese), disposable address support for Yahoo! Mail, the ability to remove the Search Box (a function the official version has apparently removed from both the IE and FF versions) and a few others.
I've looked at the official source code and it's nicely written - probably a bit cleaner than ours, truth be told. We've had quite a bit of discussion on the mailing list about adding features not found on any of the official toolbars (including dynamically folding the Yahoo! bookmarks into the Mozilla/FF bookmarks, the ability to redirect menu selections into new tabs, and a bunch of other stuff). Recent "nightly" builds (more like weeklies, but hey...) have included about:config support for some optional functionality.
Most of us on the Companion team are happy to see official support for Firefox by Yahoo!. It shows that FF is really gaining traction, and will help a lot of Yahoo! users to migrate to the FF platform. Hopefully, most the of the newbs will use the official version (saving us some headaches on the mailing list), and when people want to step up to a more feature-rich version, they can upgrade to our version. One thing the team has been very concerned about is making sure that our version works on all Mozilla platforms, and in both Firefox and Mozilla Suite. Early word is that the official version works best on Firefox on WinXP - there seem to be minor problems using it with the Mozilla Suite, alternate themes and non-XP platforms (the code is all generic Javascript, so I expect those issues to be easily fixable). Our 0.54 build has some issues in Linux due to an improper set of permissions added to a directory it creates to store the Yahoo! feed. This has been fixed in the nightlies, or you can fix it by modifying the permissions of the yahootoolbar_saves directory in your Firefox profile (chmod 666 should do it).
Of course, our version could end up dying in the shade of the official version, but that's competition for you!
p.s. I know a lot of/.ers prefer the Google toolbar, but lots of us have already invested a lot of time in the Yahoo! version and don't feel like switching. Besides, Yahoo! as a portal (currently) has a lot of things Google just doesn't provide - I track my portfolio there, have a My Yahoo! portal page with a lot of localized content, like the quick links to my local sports teams, etc. And, at this point, you've at least got to give Yahoo! credit for being the first to officially support the FF platform (though I have a feeling Google is going to come on very strong, given the recent hiring of Ben Goodger.)
So heavily that one quarter of respondents won't go more than two or three days without it. Of course, by those standards, most Americans must be addicted to work, sex, and TV as well.
The amount of tax dollars spent on corporate welfare, an appalling percentage of which goes directly to line the pockets of the very wealthy, dwarfs by an order of magnitude the amount of money being returned to those who've paid into the Social Security system, being paid to those who've paid into the Unemployment Benefits system, being returned to those who've paid into the Medicare and Medicaide system during their working lives, and yes, even those getting free handouts ('welfare') because they're too poor, too uneducated, lack resources, lack opportunity, or (in some cases, but not even close to all) are simply too lazy to work.
Are you nuts? An order of magnitude more? Do you even know what "order of magnitude" means?
According to government figures, the total gross domestic product (GDP) of the US will be 12.9 trillion dollars ($12,900 billion). This is the total economic output of the nation.
Social Security ($540 billion), Medicare ($340 billion) and Medicaid/SCHIP ($199 billion) alone add up to $1.079 trillion (1,079 billion) - and that's leaving out traditional "welfare". That's almost 10% of GDP.
You're claiming an "order of magnitude" more in corporate welfare? $10.79 trillion? What kind of tax breaks are you thinking of here? Apparently, you believe that the government should take 100% of GDP in taxes and simply redistribute it as it sees fit, because that $11+ trillion that doesn't go to SS, Medicaid/Medicare is all "corporate welfare".
Dude, even Ralph Nader only puts corporate welfare at $200 billion - only about a fifth as much as is spent on the big three social programs.
You seem to have been bit by the "numerical nonsense" bug yourself. Maybe you meant an order of magnitude less? You'd at least be in striking distance then...
I suppose, of course, that those are just "fascist facts". I'm sure you can figure out some way to link the approximately 10% of GDP paid out in the above services to fundamentalist Christian tithing of 10% of income to the church to "prove" how Amerikkka is becoming a theocratic dictatorship.
The rest of us learned to put down the bong when we started getting paranoid.
It has both an Ethernet port and two USB ports (not sure if they are 2.0 or 1.1). It also contains a DOCSIS 1.0/1.1 cable modem, but AFAIK, Comcast does not enable it.
FWIW, I believe Comcast/Motorola are looking to implement the home media features via the cable wire, not via Ethernet or USB. They do something similar with the Moxi boxes - the Moxi main box is a "thick" server and you can add "thin" client boxes to various TVs - the signal is routed through the existing cable wiring. The Motorola 6xxx series is slated to get the same sort of system in the near future.
I'm hoping that you can stream from "server" to "server" as well - in that case, I'll keep the two 6412s I've currently got and drop one of the "thin" clients onto my TV in the bedroom. That way, I can have any programs I'm watching follow me from room to room.
I wrote most of that Wikipedia entry ('Features') and I don't agree with your reading of it.
First, you've got to separate the hardware (Motorola 6412) and the software it's running. In my case, as in most of the country, it runs iGuide by Gemstar. In Seattle, it's running the Microsoft Foundation v1.7 PVR software. A slightly different Motorola box runs the Moxi software.
The box itself is fine. 120G is a little light for HD programming (you can get about 10 hours on it), but the rest of its feature set is great. Dual HDTV tuners, record dual HD programs while watching a third, plus a nice programmable remote. The box itself is fairly sleek (if you like silver), not too terribly noisy (though it could be quieter) and supports component, DVI, S-Video and Firewire output. HD performance is very good, digital is good and analog is not so good - but as Comcast is moving toward digital simulcasting, the latter is rapidly becoming moot. The latest firmware (9.15) seems to have taken care of most of the bigger problems (freeze-ups on analog channels being the most common, though I never personally had that problem).
The iGuide software is OK - it's certainly not as slick as Tivo, but it's really pretty decent. It has series recording (new episodes, new+repeats or all), 30-second skip, live buffer on both tuners (15 minute on HD, 60 on analog, 90 on digital) and you can record from the buffer (turn on the TV, see the middle of an interesting show, hit "record" and the whole show, including the buffered portion, is recorded). You can pad show starts/ends, set series priorities, when to delete programs (when told, when viewed, when disk space is low, after n episodes have been recorded), search for programs (a bit clunky). The Series Recording option is only as good as the guide data, though - when the guide data is bad (as is the case with the Simpsons on my local Fox channel - the syndicated episodes are marked as 'new') it sucks. With that exception, though, the Series Recording works like a dream.
A lot of the stuff it doesn't have (like Recommendations - who needs 'em?) I don't miss at all. For the cost of the Tivo monthly service, I get a two-tuner box plus the Guide and still have a couple of bucks in my pocket.
If your main concern is corporate control, I would agree you're better off with MythTV or Freevo, but compared to Tivo/ReplayTV, it's fine. So far, at least, Comcast hasn't played the evil corporation with this particular product (don't get me started on Comcast in general). The 30-second skip hack would be easy for them to turn off, and they haven't. I haven't watched an unwanted commercial in six months.
As one of the more minor members of the community-created Yahoo! Companion for Mozilla , I'd like to point out that there is another option if you distrust/dislike the official version.
Peter Buergner, Dave Viner, Brian Kennelly and a host of others have created an excellent alternative for folks who like the functionality of the Yahoo! Toolbar but prefer Firefox/Mozilla. The current version (0.54) is a bit out of date - a new version should be hitting the servers soon. It is much further along than the official version, with full internationalization support (including Chinese), disposable address support for Yahoo! Mail, the ability to remove the Search Box (a function the official version has apparently removed from both the IE and FF versions) and a few others.
I've looked at the official source code and it's nicely written - probably a bit cleaner than ours, truth be told. We've had quite a bit of discussion on the mailing list about adding features not found on any of the official toolbars (including dynamically folding the Yahoo! bookmarks into the Mozilla/FF bookmarks, the ability to redirect menu selections into new tabs, and a bunch of other stuff). Recent "nightly" builds (more like weeklies, but hey...) have included about:config support for some optional functionality.
Most of us on the Companion team are happy to see official support for Firefox by Yahoo!. It shows that FF is really gaining traction, and will help a lot of Yahoo! users to migrate to the FF platform. Hopefully, most the of the newbs will use the official version (saving us some headaches on the mailing list), and when people want to step up to a more feature-rich version, they can upgrade to our version. One thing the team has been very concerned about is making sure that our version works on all Mozilla platforms, and in both Firefox and Mozilla Suite. Early word is that the official version works best on Firefox on WinXP - there seem to be minor problems using it with the Mozilla Suite, alternate themes and non-XP platforms (the code is all generic Javascript, so I expect those issues to be easily fixable). Our 0.54 build has some issues in Linux due to an improper set of permissions added to a directory it creates to store the Yahoo! feed. This has been fixed in the nightlies, or you can fix it by modifying the permissions of the yahootoolbar_saves directory in your Firefox profile (chmod 666 should do it).
Of course, our version could end up dying in the shade of the official version, but that's competition for you!
p.s. I know a lot of/.ers prefer the Google toolbar, but lots of us have already invested a lot of time in the Yahoo! version and don't feel like switching. Besides, Yahoo! as a portal (currently) has a lot of things Google just doesn't provide - I track my portfolio there, have a My Yahoo! portal page with a lot of localized content, like the quick links to my local sports teams, etc. And, at this point, you've at least got to give Yahoo! credit for being the first to officially support the FF platform (though I have a feeling Google is going to come on very strong, given the recent hiring of Ben Goodger.)
MBM's Satyricon and 99% are some of the best techno to come out of the 90s. I'm not a huge fan of their later stuff (though, as a completist, I have it all), but the early stuff is grade A.
Of course, I'm also a huge fan of early 808 State, so who knows...
I downloaded the MS/Giant Antispyware application to my machine at work. Cranked up the program, covered my eyes while clicking OK to the EULA and let the thing run.
I nearly choked when it almost immediately popped up a window, the contents of which were on the order of "Holy Sh*T! You've got Windows Messenger on your machine! Everyone knows that piece of crap will cause you no end of grief. Can I delete it for you now?"
Someone on the "change everything from 'Giant' to 'Microsoft'" team is going to get a stern lecture from Bill and Steve soon...
That said, I was fairly impressed with the software, but considering Giant won a recent antispy test, I'm not surprised. Slick package and has caught a few things Spybot S&D and AdAware missed - although it doesn't appear to find any cookies (considering I use Firefox in a pretty strict constrained way, maybe there just weren't any).
By referring to "iPod/iTunes", I was trying to shorthand the whole idea of buying DRMed music (from Apple or anywhere else). I'd rather buy the CDs and rip them myself - which, as you indicate, can give me nice, non-DRMed AAC/Apple-lossless files. But then, what's the point of paying the "It's Apple" surcharge for the iPod? It's a nice unit, but there are others just as/nearly as nice. iTunes is a fine piece of software, but I like WinAMP about as much.
I've never understood the desire to pay $.99/song or $9.99/album for crapticularly compressed songs that are tied to a single platform. Sure, for a one-off piece of fluff that you want to listen to a couple dozen times it's not bad, but in any other scenario, it's nuts. Buy.com is at least offering 256K downloads (still DRMed), but unless you go to a dodgy site like AllOfMP3 (which is worse, it's quasi-legality or its crappy rips?), or happen to like one of the artists at Magnatune, you're SOL if you want lossless, archivable music.
I'd happily pay for downloadable music if it was cheap ($.25/song) and lossless and had no-DRM or very loose DRM. The business model can work (look at Magnatune), but it's going to require a different kind of music industry. Eventually, I think the music industry will get there, but it's gonna be a painful process, and we'll end up with crap like DCMA and the like on our backs forever. Bah.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for your letter, dated 14 March, 2006, in which you expressed concern in re:possible DMCA copyright violations in our research activities. On the advise of counsel, we have concluded that your copyrights and/or patent applications on "life" are invalid due to prior art, namely, yourself. In that you stand outside of time, you infinitely predate your subsequent creations (rendering any patent claims moot) and any copyrights on your works predate English Common Law, which form the sole basis for your tort.
Sincerely,
Orobouros Corporation
What goes around, comes around
I, personally, have been waiting for interplanetary missionary position sex with a fusion-powered sentient AI, but that's just me...
Very neat concept, and seemed to work very well - that building could get downright cold during the summer. The building is donut shaped (square, but with a central light core) with a 4 story glass atrium in the middle that was always very comfortable. Prior to the renovation, that area could get quite warm in the summer.
- Modify the header of a "promoted" article that makes it stand out as being promoted. I would either change the color (a brighter green maybe) or modify the shape of the header backdrop from an rounded upper-left to an arrow end. I would also add a line beneath "Posted by xxx on..." that would contain "Promoted on...", e.g.:
- Modify the code that slides articles off the page (as opposed to orders them on the page) to use the promotion timestamp rather than the posting timestamp. Articles that were posted in full to the main page would default to having the same posting and promotion timestamps (if they are the same, don't display the promotion time). I would continue to order the articles by posting time to prevent articles from "bubbling up".
I tend to scroll down the whole main page anyway (just in case there is an update to a story). As long as there is something visually distinct about the promoted story, I'll pick it up - otherwise I'm just skimming over the old stuff anyway and it doesn't cost me any real time.Check out the original Slashdot thread on GreenFuel from back in May, 2005. The news.com article link has changed.
News.com had a few followup articles as well here (about investing in clean tech) and here (about J. Craig Venter looking at bioengineering more effective microbes for doing this kind of stuff).
Self-correction would have entailed either the peer reviewers of Science noticing such "small" things as duplicated picutures (which, when pointed out, the editors of Science claimed was a production error, when in fact it was a purposeful fraud conducted by a junior researcher at the direction of Hwang) or the co-author of the paper (who, being on a separate continent and at a different university, cannot be seriously excused as being intimidated by Hwang) doing more than rubber stamping Hwang's "work". There were no prominent stories of biologists who were questioning the results prior to the exposure of the fraud. As the each piece of the fraud unravelled, the editors of Science engaged in a series of "yes, buts..." that would acknowledge now indisputable problems while categorically stating that the remainder of the article stood. After all, it had been peer-reviewed!
It was largely Korean television and newspapers that "corrected" the science involved here. They uncovered the ethical problems first of paying for eggs, then eggs "willingly" harvested from younger female subordinates of Hwang, then the coercive nature of those "willing" donations, the duplicated photos and the rest of the sordid mess. It wasn't until more junior researchers started to confess to reporters the scale of the fraud that the scientific community really started to get in front of this - and that largely in an ass-covering way by the University.
What fascinates me about all this is the "shock, shock" that Hwang could have done this. I think most people, regardless of where they stand on the ethics or morality of embryonic stem cell research, understand that there are at least some ethical dilemmas posed by the research (if only at the "where are they going to get all those eggs" level). The only people I've seen who are adamant that there are no such ethical issues to consider have been some of the scientists performing these experiments. Why, then, is it such a shock that people who are seemingly unconcerned about the ethical issues involved in their work might be similarly ethically challenged in the work itself? Certainly, the vast majority of such researchers are honest and decent. You are also going to attract some more unsavory characters like Hwang who broke every ethical rule he came into contact with in order to achieve prestige and national glory.
Politicized science (and it is politicized on both sides) requires even more scrutiny than normal. Unfortunately, when the scientific establishment (including journals) are nearly uniformly on one side of the debate, most of the policing of that side is going to come from outside the scientific community. The process of science will not in these cases be self-correcting. Hopefully, in the end, the science itself will be correct.
I mean, I know he eventually turned out to be a physics genius, what with inventing time travel and all, but still... Can you imagine 12 channels of Brady Kids music in coach? *shudder*
If only there was a technology that the editors could use that would show them a list of current Slashdot stories prior to posting... A real-time feed of some sort would be nice.
They also have a goodly number of libertarians and people who don't pigeonhole easily (Tammy Bruce is a self-described "openly gay, pro-choice, gun owning, pro-death penalty, voted-for-President Bush progressive feminist" who was also the LA chapter president of NOW). Still, there's no denying that Mr. Corn is a rather lonely voice right now, and I hope that they can address the balance issue in some way (although how many left-leaning blogs are going to want to join is an open question).
Firefox users can just install the Coral Cache extension and save the bother of typing ".nyud.net:8090" to the URL and the obligatory "why not use Coral?!?!" reply to every freaking article. They can then stop bitching about the editors not using the Coral cache. (My assumption being here that the people who complain loudest about Coral tend not to be IE users. My apologies to any Opera/Coral fanatics out there.)
Finally, for every website that is crushed by the Slashdot effect, there is another that is loving the boost to its ad revenues from the avalanche. (Again, Firefox users like myself who use Adblock or Mirrordot are just leeches and probably should be banned from the web... >g)
Look, I love Google - I use it dozens of times everyday. But it's just a company - they provide a product that they think enough people will like that they can make money off the ad revenue. For years, that product was pretty much just web search, and while they were "resting comfortably on their lazy asses", plenty of other sites became more than just web search.
I realize that here in Slashdotland, there are a few favorite companies and technologies (Linux, Google, Apache, Apple), a few tolerated ones (BSD, Sun, Novell, Yahoo!), a couple that moved from evil to great (IBM, HP while Bruce Perens was employed there) and the vast list of pure evil (SCO, Microsoft, McDonalds).
But anyone with a decent enough memory can remember the days when Yahoo! was the new kid on the block with the best search engine. It had its innovations (the directory superstructure it placed on the web was genius for the day), it made its big bucks in the IPO market and it had the plaudits of the Slashdot crowd.
It's also about the only one of the original search sites (Excite, AltaVista, HotBot, etc.) that actually successfully transformed into a "portal". At Yahoo!, I can get email, keep a calendar, track my stock portfolio, see what's playing on my favorite TV channels and movie theaters, get directions to the theater, get news, read the comics, keep a real-time update window of my local baseball team's game, check the weather and look up the meaning of "plethora" to make sure that describes its breadth of services.
I can remember the days when the running complaint around Slashdot was the uselessness of the "portal" concept and how places like Google, that concentrated on a single service like search, were so much better. And now that Google is slowly transforming itself into a portal, suddenly that's the coolest, best idea ever.
In the portalsphere, it's Google that's the slow moving, Johnny-come-lately, not Yahoo! Like anyone late to the party, Google had to offer something unique to the party. When it came to email, that was primarily lots of storage space and the idea of "labels". Offering the first was easy - the vast majority of people aren't going to use the gig or two offered, and they had plenty of space anyway. The second is nifty, but not mind shattering. Other than that, GMail is a pretty vanilla piece of work.
All the main portals have now countered the "lots of space" offer, and Yahoo! is countering labels with an incredibly slick GUI (something Google is not exactly known for). I like the fact that Google has competition - it gives me choices and fosters actual innovation (even if it's purchased Oddpost innovation).
Google offers a lot of great stuff. But in a lot of ways, their stuff is immature. For instance, Google Local and its link to Google Maps is only so-so as it's search-based. Yahoo! Maps offers a single-click interface to find a restaurant next to my local movie theater, and because it's tied into the Yahoo! Yellow Pages part of the portal, it's more comprehensive and accurate than Google Local.
And as for the "new Yahoo! mail may be great, but only because a few thousand people are hitting it now" - remember the endless GMail beta? People trying to score invites for months, EBay auctions and the like? Some parts of Google are in perpetual beta (Google Groups anyone?) and rightfully so - would it kill Google to put a Bayesian filter in Google Groups so you could actually use newgroups? How about a slick Oddpost-like interface to it?
This isn't supposed to be a "Yahoo! is great, Google sucks" rant. Both have great services and areas where they aren't so good. As long as they keep competing, I can expect good stuff from both and that's a win-win for me.
According to this article, the new interface is optional. You can actually switch between the two interfaces.
As one of the more minor members of the community-created Yahoo! Companion for Mozilla, I'd like to point out that there is another option if you distrust/dislike the official version.
Peter Buergner, Dave Viner, Brian Kennelly and a host of others have created an excellent alternative for folks who like the functionality of the Yahoo! Toolbar but prefer Firefox/Mozilla. The current version (0.54) is a bit out of date - a new version should be hitting the servers soon. It is much further along than the official version, with full internationalization support (including Chinese), disposable address support for Yahoo! Mail, the ability to remove the Search Box (a function the official version has apparently removed from both the IE and FF versions) and a few others.
I've looked at the official source code and it's nicely written - probably a bit cleaner than ours, truth be told. We've had quite a bit of discussion on the mailing list about adding features not found on any of the official toolbars (including dynamically folding the Yahoo! bookmarks into the Mozilla/FF bookmarks, the ability to redirect menu selections into new tabs, and a bunch of other stuff). Recent "nightly" builds (more like weeklies, but hey...) have included about:config support for some optional functionality.
Most of us on the Companion team are happy to see official support for Firefox by Yahoo!. It shows that FF is really gaining traction, and will help a lot of Yahoo! users to migrate to the FF platform. Hopefully, most the of the newbs will use the official version (saving us some headaches on the mailing list), and when people want to step up to a more feature-rich version, they can upgrade to our version. One thing the team has been very concerned about is making sure that our version works on all Mozilla platforms, and in both Firefox and Mozilla Suite. Early word is that the official version works best on Firefox on WinXP - there seem to be minor problems using it with the Mozilla Suite, alternate themes and non-XP platforms (the code is all generic Javascript, so I expect those issues to be easily fixable). Our 0.54 build has some issues in Linux due to an improper set of permissions added to a directory it creates to store the Yahoo! feed. This has been fixed in the nightlies, or you can fix it by modifying the permissions of the yahootoolbar_saves directory in your Firefox profile (chmod 666 should do it).
Of course, our version could end up dying in the shade of the official version, but that's competition for you!
p.s. I know a lot of /.ers prefer the Google toolbar, but lots of us have already invested a lot of time in the Yahoo! version and don't feel like switching. Besides, Yahoo! as a portal (currently) has a lot of things Google just doesn't provide - I track my portfolio there, have a My Yahoo! portal page with a lot of localized content, like the quick links to my local sports teams, etc. And, at this point, you've at least got to give Yahoo! credit for being the first to officially support the FF platform (though I have a feeling Google is going to come on very strong, given the recent hiring of Ben Goodger.)
Are you nuts? An order of magnitude more? Do you even know what "order of magnitude" means?
According to government figures, the total gross domestic product (GDP) of the US will be 12.9 trillion dollars ($12,900 billion). This is the total economic output of the nation.
Social Security ($540 billion), Medicare ($340 billion) and Medicaid/SCHIP ($199 billion) alone add up to $1.079 trillion (1,079 billion) - and that's leaving out traditional "welfare". That's almost 10% of GDP.
You're claiming an "order of magnitude" more in corporate welfare? $10.79 trillion? What kind of tax breaks are you thinking of here? Apparently, you believe that the government should take 100% of GDP in taxes and simply redistribute it as it sees fit, because that $11+ trillion that doesn't go to SS, Medicaid/Medicare is all "corporate welfare".
Dude, even Ralph Nader only puts corporate welfare at $200 billion - only about a fifth as much as is spent on the big three social programs.
You seem to have been bit by the "numerical nonsense" bug yourself. Maybe you meant an order of magnitude less? You'd at least be in striking distance then...
I suppose, of course, that those are just "fascist facts". I'm sure you can figure out some way to link the approximately 10% of GDP paid out in the above services to fundamentalist Christian tithing of 10% of income to the church to "prove" how Amerikkka is becoming a theocratic dictatorship.
The rest of us learned to put down the bong when we started getting paranoid.
FWIW, I believe Comcast/Motorola are looking to implement the home media features via the cable wire, not via Ethernet or USB. They do something similar with the Moxi boxes - the Moxi main box is a "thick" server and you can add "thin" client boxes to various TVs - the signal is routed through the existing cable wiring. The Motorola 6xxx series is slated to get the same sort of system in the near future.
I'm hoping that you can stream from "server" to "server" as well - in that case, I'll keep the two 6412s I've currently got and drop one of the "thin" clients onto my TV in the bedroom. That way, I can have any programs I'm watching follow me from room to room.
First, you've got to separate the hardware (Motorola 6412) and the software it's running. In my case, as in most of the country, it runs iGuide by Gemstar. In Seattle, it's running the Microsoft Foundation v1.7 PVR software. A slightly different Motorola box runs the Moxi software.
The box itself is fine. 120G is a little light for HD programming (you can get about 10 hours on it), but the rest of its feature set is great. Dual HDTV tuners, record dual HD programs while watching a third, plus a nice programmable remote. The box itself is fairly sleek (if you like silver), not too terribly noisy (though it could be quieter) and supports component, DVI, S-Video and Firewire output. HD performance is very good, digital is good and analog is not so good - but as Comcast is moving toward digital simulcasting, the latter is rapidly becoming moot. The latest firmware (9.15) seems to have taken care of most of the bigger problems (freeze-ups on analog channels being the most common, though I never personally had that problem).
The iGuide software is OK - it's certainly not as slick as Tivo, but it's really pretty decent. It has series recording (new episodes, new+repeats or all), 30-second skip, live buffer on both tuners (15 minute on HD, 60 on analog, 90 on digital) and you can record from the buffer (turn on the TV, see the middle of an interesting show, hit "record" and the whole show, including the buffered portion, is recorded). You can pad show starts/ends, set series priorities, when to delete programs (when told, when viewed, when disk space is low, after n episodes have been recorded), search for programs (a bit clunky). The Series Recording option is only as good as the guide data, though - when the guide data is bad (as is the case with the Simpsons on my local Fox channel - the syndicated episodes are marked as 'new') it sucks. With that exception, though, the Series Recording works like a dream.
A lot of the stuff it doesn't have (like Recommendations - who needs 'em?) I don't miss at all. For the cost of the Tivo monthly service, I get a two-tuner box plus the Guide and still have a couple of bucks in my pocket.
If your main concern is corporate control, I would agree you're better off with MythTV or Freevo, but compared to Tivo/ReplayTV, it's fine. So far, at least, Comcast hasn't played the evil corporation with this particular product (don't get me started on Comcast in general). The 30-second skip hack would be easy for them to turn off, and they haven't. I haven't watched an unwanted commercial in six months.
Peter Buergner, Dave Viner, Brian Kennelly and a host of others have created an excellent alternative for folks who like the functionality of the Yahoo! Toolbar but prefer Firefox/Mozilla. The current version (0.54) is a bit out of date - a new version should be hitting the servers soon. It is much further along than the official version, with full internationalization support (including Chinese), disposable address support for Yahoo! Mail, the ability to remove the Search Box (a function the official version has apparently removed from both the IE and FF versions) and a few others.
I've looked at the official source code and it's nicely written - probably a bit cleaner than ours, truth be told. We've had quite a bit of discussion on the mailing list about adding features not found on any of the official toolbars (including dynamically folding the Yahoo! bookmarks into the Mozilla/FF bookmarks, the ability to redirect menu selections into new tabs, and a bunch of other stuff). Recent "nightly" builds (more like weeklies, but hey...) have included about:config support for some optional functionality.
Most of us on the Companion team are happy to see official support for Firefox by Yahoo!. It shows that FF is really gaining traction, and will help a lot of Yahoo! users to migrate to the FF platform. Hopefully, most the of the newbs will use the official version (saving us some headaches on the mailing list), and when people want to step up to a more feature-rich version, they can upgrade to our version. One thing the team has been very concerned about is making sure that our version works on all Mozilla platforms, and in both Firefox and Mozilla Suite. Early word is that the official version works best on Firefox on WinXP - there seem to be minor problems using it with the Mozilla Suite, alternate themes and non-XP platforms (the code is all generic Javascript, so I expect those issues to be easily fixable). Our 0.54 build has some issues in Linux due to an improper set of permissions added to a directory it creates to store the Yahoo! feed. This has been fixed in the nightlies, or you can fix it by modifying the permissions of the yahootoolbar_saves directory in your Firefox profile (chmod 666 should do it).
Of course, our version could end up dying in the shade of the official version, but that's competition for you!
p.s. I know a lot of /.ers prefer the Google toolbar, but lots of us have already invested a lot of time in the Yahoo! version and don't feel like switching. Besides, Yahoo! as a portal (currently) has a lot of things Google just doesn't provide - I track my portfolio there, have a My Yahoo! portal page with a lot of localized content, like the quick links to my local sports teams, etc. And, at this point, you've at least got to give Yahoo! credit for being the first to officially support the FF platform (though I have a feeling Google is going to come on very strong, given the recent hiring of Ben Goodger.)
Of course, I'm also a huge fan of early 808 State, so who knows...
I nearly choked when it almost immediately popped up a window, the contents of which were on the order of "Holy Sh*T! You've got Windows Messenger on your machine! Everyone knows that piece of crap will cause you no end of grief. Can I delete it for you now?" Someone on the "change everything from 'Giant' to 'Microsoft'" team is going to get a stern lecture from Bill and Steve soon...
That said, I was fairly impressed with the software, but considering Giant won a recent antispy test, I'm not surprised. Slick package and has caught a few things Spybot S&D and AdAware missed - although it doesn't appear to find any cookies (considering I use Firefox in a pretty strict constrained way, maybe there just weren't any).
It's nobody's business but the Turks...
Suggested use of the exact same syntax is here. There are numerous other examples of Jonathan Allen suggesting and requesting this exact same feature.
Maybe he should sue for not being mentioned in the patent application! Or maybe he just didn't read the EULA for Microsoft newsgroups...
It was the golden shower scene that got clipped.
I've never understood the desire to pay $.99/song or $9.99/album for crapticularly compressed songs that are tied to a single platform. Sure, for a one-off piece of fluff that you want to listen to a couple dozen times it's not bad, but in any other scenario, it's nuts. Buy.com is at least offering 256K downloads (still DRMed), but unless you go to a dodgy site like AllOfMP3 (which is worse, it's quasi-legality or its crappy rips?), or happen to like one of the artists at Magnatune, you're SOL if you want lossless, archivable music.
I'd happily pay for downloadable music if it was cheap ($.25/song) and lossless and had no-DRM or very loose DRM. The business model can work (look at Magnatune), but it's going to require a different kind of music industry. Eventually, I think the music industry will get there, but it's gonna be a painful process, and we'll end up with crap like DCMA and the like on our backs forever. Bah.