I first downloaded the redacted version and seeing pages and pages of redacted material only produced feelings of greater and greater antagonism towards the DOJ, as it reinforced my concerns about the dangers of the PATRIOT powers they are seeking to acquire.
The truly ironic part is that when I read the unredacted version I began to gain a greater understanding of the complexities and challenges of the DOJ and tended to be less judgemental and dissmissive of their leadership.
Complex and huge challenges such as improvement of racial diversity and national security absolutely require the good will and support of the general population in order to be achieved. Therefore openness and transparency of government authority is vital to maintaining this good will and support.
It is very clear that the current administration has rejected openness and transparency in favor of secrecy and in so doing they are actually threatening great harm to our national security in the long term. It is a very ignorant and short-sighted view. They think that secrecy helps them to catch the 'bad guys' and reduce the flak of negative publicity. What they completely fail to realize is that public confidence in the honesty and integrity of government institutions is infinitely more important to our security in the long term.
mhack
A thoughtful view of the future, but still....
on
Trusted Computing
·
· Score: 1
Walker has obviously thought very carefully about this issue, and is to be commended for warning of the possible dangers, but I think he's got a very document-centric view of the Internet that might not stand the test of time. He himself admits the gaping hole of dynamic documents, but the hole goes far beyond that. In practically no time at all, as everybody goes broadband and wi-fi, I expect continuous real-time audio and video to be the norm, with continuous streaming 3D virtual reality not long after. Also, consider that with advances in robotics, fuel cells, microprocessors and micromachining, there are going to be cameras, microphones, sensors, motors, transceivers and embedded computers EVERYWHERE and in just about EVERYTHING.
The idea of have digitally-signed certificates for all this dynamic data just aint gonna work. In principle, by restricting us to a very static and primitive state of the Internet and asssociated hardware (mostly like we have now), a big-brother kind of system might be possible. But the rapid develpment of hardware and software is just too much of a moving target - there is no way that the technology is going to stand still long enough for it all to be monitored and validated. And that is most likely both a good and a bad thing.
Well you don't make any attempt to respond with a better explanation. You clearly stated a view that the idea of poverty is relative. And you also clearly state that we do a 'pretty good job already'. But 'pretty good', like poverty, is relative, isn't it?
Yes, and the people who live in shit in Hubei, are they not better off than the starving scarecrows in North Korea, so they shouldn't really complain??
You can always find someone who is worse off, but that simply doesn't justify the obscenely rich to ignore the sufferings of huge numbers of people, both in the United States and the rest of the world.
>>But capitalism is atrocious at distributing the fruits of innovation.
>I was in a store the other day, I saw a 3-megapixel digital camera for GBP 99, a DVD players for GBP 49...
Yeah, who needs a decent job, nice place to live, health care and education for your kids when you can have 3-megapixel digital cameras and DVD players!
mhack
Re:Good, but not the killer app
on
Swiping Out Cancer
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
There are several reasons why I believe that it has potential as a killer application in biotech. Because it is an external hardware device, it bypasses a lot of testing and regulatory issues that are such a problem for drug development. Also, to improve the diagnostic problem, I think devices like this will ultimately be used in the home, and will generate lots of data over long periods of time. This will provide a lot of opportunity for software developers to create applications which can analyze the data, present it to the user in a useful way, and integrate it with other medical data. I believe that statistical analysis of tissue scan data of millions of people over a period of years or decades might enable a much more effective diagnosis.
Getting a personal computer into the home was a critical step in the evolution of computer technology, because it brought millions of people into the development cycle. I think the same thing will be true for the evolution of medical technology.
mhack
Let's beat bogus patents with 'Prior Art Registry'
on
Steal This Idea
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I don't know much about the law, but I have been spending lots of time happily developing molecular modeling software with lots of neat ideas that I hope will never be patented. Can't a lot of these bogus patents be stopped with some kind of 'Prior Art Registry' where people describe useful ideas and have a timestamped record of it which can prevent some bozo from trying to patent it down the line? I did a Google Search and found only the barest references to a 'Gnu Prior Art Registry', but it doesn't seem to exist. Anyone else know more?
Well sure, the standard just applies to the language, which is independent of any libraries. But still, in a practical sense, any book which purports to be about effective C++ should mention the STL.
that a book with the claim of 'Essential C++' has no mention of the STL. Many of the components in this standard library are just incredibly useful and can have a huge benefit for larger, more complicated projects.
I use Visual C++ in my development, but I urge people to bypass such marketing tricks and pick up something really useful, like "The C++ Programming Language", by the man himself, Bjarne Stroustrup. Reading that book completely transformed my programming experience, and every serious C++ programmer should check it out.
I read the NS article and then the paper. The New Scientist article does misrepresent what the paper says. The paper does NOT make the blanket statement that reproduction of misprints proves failure to read.
The paper raises some valid questions however, including the general point that statistical analysis of misprints can give an insight into the process of scientific writing.
It's rather funny because the misrepresentation of this paper in the New Scientist raises the larger question about the meaning of 'reading a scientific paper'.
For example, you could have one person who just runs their eyes through a entire paper on autopilot, without thinking about it much. Another might very carefully read just a tiny section. To what degree have each of these people legitimately read the paper that they cite?
In these days with the explosion of knowledge and correspondent explosion in pages and pages of references in scientific papers, perhaps there needs to be a revamp in the standards for citations. For example, how about an extra sentence in each citation which explains the relevance of the citation to the author's own paper? I know that would certainly make citations a lot more meaningful to me when I scan through them.
mhack
References:
1. Scientists exposed as sloppy reporters, Hazel Muir,
New Scientist, 9:3014December02. This is the reference to the New Scientist article which was the main subject of the slashdot post
2.Read before you cite!, Simkin and Roychowdhury.This is the paper which did a statistical analysis of scientific misprints
That could avoid the 'freeze up if left on shelf' problem.
Just don't connect the data cable to it. I don't know if the lack of head movement is a problem. I think they would move a little every time the power was cycled on the machine.
The universe is very big and very old, but that does not guarantee that the formation of life is certain or even highly probable. At this time, the probability for the formation of life is absolutely unknown. It may be highly probable, given the current space and time frame, or it may be utterly extraordinarily improbable. At this point, we simply do not have enough information to know one way or the other.
we might someday understand the origin of life. This post responds to a simple question with lots of good background information, details and clear reasoning about the facts. Of course it does not provide the ultimate and final explanation for the mechanisms of evolution. Instead, it provides a framework from which we can ask more questions, which will require more details and reasoning.
Perhaps someone else can further develop our understanding by listing some of the genes which are involved in uric acid storage or uptake via the placenta, if these things are known at this time. If they are not, they soon will be.
No, the problem is that people often do not clearly state what KIND of nanotechnology they are referring to. The powerful (and therefore, dangerous) kind is self-replicating molecular-scale nanotechnology. This means that the actual machines which do the assembly are themselves microscopic in size, and furthermore, they are capable of assembling copies of themselves.
This kind of nanotechnology (which does not currently exist) has the possibility of being very dangerous in principle, as in leading to the 'grey goo' scenario. At this time however, since the details of how such self-replicating assemblers would actually work is unknown, the corresponding probability of the grey-goo scenario is equally unknown.
Conventional macro-scale non-self-replicating nanotechnology such as electron-beam lithography or STM/AFMs are completely irrelevant to the 'grey-goo' danger.
It's true that DNA is not a set of instructions for proteins to execute. However, it is a set of instructions for CELLS to execute. At this level, the idea of a virtual machine might make more sense.
If you're really interested in this sort of thing, you might want to check out something called OOOP , which is a intriguing combination of biology and OOP.
Sorry, but you're flat wrong about billions of dollars being required in this field. This work is in the area of theoretical biology. With large amounts of genetic sequence data and 3D structure data out there in PUBLIC FREE NON-PATENTED databases like Genbank and the Protein Data Bank , cutting-edge research can be done using a PC and molecular biology software. Biology and IT are merging into Bioinformatics. There's a lot of exciting and important work to be done. People can even make MONEY doing it, nothing wrong with that. The problem is GREED, which is an excessive desire for money at the expense of more important things. That's what Pellionisz is guilty of.
Yeah, and I've got a patent for using non-linear equations and bifurcation theory to describe molecular activity. If anybody uses my brilliant patented idea, they have to PAY!
Seriously, this patenting nonsense is completely antagonistic to the spirit of scientific inquiry.
There are so many extremely difficult problems to be solved in molecular biology. How can we predict protein folding? How does morphogenesis produce perfectly formed organs? How do neural networks store and retrieve memories? It's a fascinating challenge and to solve it we need to maintain an open scientific environment with the free flow of ideas.
As others have noted , the Open Source software movement has drawn upon the paradigm of scientific research for its extraordinary growth and success.
What Pellionisz is doing is just the opposite. He's promoting the 'Proprietary Corporate Control' paradigm for scientific research.
Newton stood upon the shoulders of giants to make his great discoveries. These days people like Pellionisz use the boots of greed to trample science into the mud.
I've been both a Salon and Slashdot reader for a while now and I just subscribed to Salon because I very much want them to survive. I also encourage all Slashdot readers to support Salon because some very disturbing changes are taking place in our political system. For the first time, there is no judicial oversight of the government for secret search and surveillance of the U.S. public. Even if you believe that our freedoms must be compromised for the sake of security, the danger comes when these new investigative powers are abused and used against people for reasons other than the war on terrorism.
The only way for us to become aware of such abuses is to have a strong alternative to the mainstream media. So I would urge all slashdotters, even those who are usually apathetic to political issues, to invest some time and energy in political awareness and support for independent journalism. Otherwise, someday you may find yourself at the wrong end of a law enforcement process gone out of control.
I've been both a Salon and Slashdot reader for a while now and I just subscribed to Salon because I very much want them to survive. I also encourage all Slashdot readers to support Salon because some very disturbing changes are taking place in our political system.
For the first time, there is no judicial oversight of the government for secret search and surveillance of the U.S. public. Even if you believe that our freedoms must be compromised for the sake of security, the danger comes when these new investigative powers are abused and used against people for reasons other than the war on terrorism.
The only way for us to become aware of such abuses is to have a strong alternative to the mainstream media. So I would urge all slashdotters, even those who are usually apathetic to political issues, to invest some time and energy in political awareness and support for independent journalism. Otherwise, someday you may find yourself at the wrong end of a law enforcement process gone out of control.
It's fine to try to improve on things, but Thomas makes a fundamental error in dismissing things like 'Save' and 'Quit' commands as outdated. Even though hardware speeds have increased, so have document sizes and many people work with huge files where continuous saving would bring their work to a screeching halt.
I notice quite often that people who try to analyze the shortcomings of current UI's often make this kind of error because they are not aware of the diversity of needs that must be served.
For people who like to develop new, improved and consistent UI models, I would suggest that they also spend some time in describing the particular context and subset of computer users for which this model would apply.
Yeah, I second that. I added lua as a scripting language to my 3D molecular modeling program and it totally rocks. Small, fast, easy to use and works as advertised.
For me, one of the greatest benefits is that it allows for lots of design exploration and customization without having to muck up the core C++ code.
Slashdot Mirror
The truly ironic part is that when I read the unredacted version I began to gain a greater understanding of the complexities and challenges of the DOJ and tended to be less judgemental and dissmissive of their leadership.
Complex and huge challenges such as improvement of racial diversity and national security absolutely require the good will and support of the general population in order to be achieved. Therefore openness and transparency of government authority is vital to maintaining this good will and support.
It is very clear that the current administration has rejected openness and transparency in favor of secrecy and in so doing they are actually threatening great harm to our national security in the long term. It is a very ignorant and short-sighted view. They think that secrecy helps them to catch the 'bad guys' and reduce the flak of negative publicity. What they completely fail to realize is that public confidence in the honesty and integrity of government institutions is infinitely more important to our security in the long term.
mhack
The idea of have digitally-signed certificates for all this dynamic data just aint gonna work. In principle, by restricting us to a very static and primitive state of the Internet and asssociated hardware (mostly like we have now), a big-brother kind of system might be possible. But the rapid develpment of hardware and software is just too much of a moving target - there is no way that the technology is going to stand still long enough for it all to be monitored and validated. And that is most likely both a good and a bad thing.
mhack
mhack
You can always find someone who is worse off, but that simply doesn't justify the obscenely rich to ignore the sufferings of huge numbers of people, both in the United States and the rest of the world.
mhack
>I was in a store the other day, I saw a 3-megapixel digital camera for GBP 99, a DVD players for GBP 49...
Yeah, who needs a decent job, nice place to live, health care and education for your kids when you can have 3-megapixel digital cameras and DVD players!
mhack
Getting a personal computer into the home was a critical step in the evolution of computer technology, because it brought millions of people into the development cycle. I think the same thing will be true for the evolution of medical technology.
mhack
mhack
mhack
Well sure, the standard just applies to the language, which is independent of any libraries. But still, in a practical sense, any book which purports to be about effective C++ should mention the STL.
I use Visual C++ in my development, but I urge people to bypass such marketing tricks and pick up something really useful, like "The C++ Programming Language", by the man himself, Bjarne Stroustrup. Reading that book completely transformed my programming experience, and every serious C++ programmer should check it out.
mhack
The paper raises some valid questions however, including the general point that statistical analysis of misprints can give an insight into the process of scientific writing.
It's rather funny because the misrepresentation of this paper in the New Scientist raises the larger question about the meaning of 'reading a scientific paper'.
For example, you could have one person who just runs their eyes through a entire paper on autopilot, without thinking about it much. Another might very carefully read just a tiny section. To what degree have each of these people legitimately read the paper that they cite?
In these days with the explosion of knowledge and correspondent explosion in pages and pages of references in scientific papers, perhaps there needs to be a revamp in the standards for citations. For example, how about an extra sentence in each citation which explains the relevance of the citation to the author's own paper? I know that would certainly make citations a lot more meaningful to me when I scan through them.
mhack
References:
1. Scientists exposed as sloppy reporters , Hazel Muir, New Scientist, 9:3014December02. This is the reference to the New Scientist article which was the main subject of the slashdot post
2. Read before you cite! , Simkin and Roychowdhury.This is the paper which did a statistical analysis of scientific misprints
Just don't connect the data cable to it. I don't know if the lack of head movement is a problem. I think they would move a little every time the power was cycled on the machine.
mhack
mhack
Perhaps someone else can further develop our understanding by listing some of the genes which are involved in uric acid storage or uptake via the placenta, if these things are known at this time. If they are not, they soon will be.
mhackarbie
This kind of nanotechnology (which does not currently exist) has the possibility of being very dangerous in principle, as in leading to the 'grey goo' scenario. At this time however, since the details of how such self-replicating assemblers would actually work is unknown, the corresponding probability of the grey-goo scenario is equally unknown.
Conventional macro-scale non-self-replicating nanotechnology such as electron-beam lithography or STM/AFMs are completely irrelevant to the 'grey-goo' danger.
mhack
If you're really interested in this sort of thing, you might want to check out something called OOOP , which is a intriguing combination of biology and OOP.
mhack
mhack
Seriously, this patenting nonsense is completely antagonistic to the spirit of scientific inquiry. There are so many extremely difficult problems to be solved in molecular biology. How can we predict protein folding? How does morphogenesis produce perfectly formed organs? How do neural networks store and retrieve memories? It's a fascinating challenge and to solve it we need to maintain an open scientific environment with the free flow of ideas.
As others have noted , the Open Source software movement has drawn upon the paradigm of scientific research for its extraordinary growth and success.
What Pellionisz is doing is just the opposite. He's promoting the 'Proprietary Corporate Control' paradigm for scientific research.
Newton stood upon the shoulders of giants to make his great discoveries. These days people like Pellionisz use the boots of greed to trample science into the mud.
mhack
I am!
Well said!
You say my argument isn't true, and yet you don't say why. It seems like yours is the thought process which is lacking something.
The only way for us to become aware of such abuses is to have a strong alternative to the mainstream media. So I would urge all slashdotters, even those who are usually apathetic to political issues, to invest some time and energy in political awareness and support for independent journalism. Otherwise, someday you may find yourself at the wrong end of a law enforcement process gone out of control.
mhack
The only way for us to become aware of such abuses is to have a strong alternative to the mainstream media. So I would urge all slashdotters, even those who are usually apathetic to political issues, to invest some time and energy in political awareness and support for independent journalism. Otherwise, someday you may find yourself at the wrong end of a law enforcement process gone out of control.
mhack
It's fine to try to improve on things, but Thomas makes a fundamental error in dismissing things like 'Save' and 'Quit' commands as outdated. Even though hardware speeds have increased, so have document sizes and many people work with huge files where continuous saving would bring their work to a screeching halt.
I notice quite often that people who try to analyze the shortcomings of current UI's often make this kind of error because they are not aware of the diversity of needs that must be served.
For people who like to develop new, improved and consistent UI models, I would suggest that they also spend some time in describing the particular context and subset of computer users for which this model would apply.
Yeah, I second that. I added lua as a scripting language to my 3D molecular modeling program and it totally rocks. Small, fast, easy to use and works as advertised.
For me, one of the greatest benefits is that it allows for lots of design exploration and customization without having to muck up the core C++ code.
mhack