Not to mention, your nerves are right beneath the skin, so _feeling_ cold just means your skin temperature has dropped, not your internal body temperature. And the point is that even if your hand were colder, the blood flowing through your hand would also be chilled, and as it passes through the rest of your body, it would also chill your entire body to some extent.
Considering that the blood is circulating through the brain multiple times per minute carrying warmer fluid from elsewhere in the body, and that the heat would have to be removed through the skull (not sure what the thermal conductivity of bone tissue is), it makes me wonder how effective this would really be at cooling the interior regions of the brain without cooling the other parts of the body as well. I would suspect it would only be marginally useful at cooling just the outer portions, and even that would be countered by the warmer blood flowing through it. I'm sure it sounds real good in their brochure.
Lets see. I can pull out my dictionary and find a slew of word combinations that aren't hyphenated such as handcart, handlebar, textbook, schoolmate. This would seem to fly in the face of the editor's claim that these should remain hyphenated.
We had this same debate at my company a while back and all of the business types chose e-mail, and all of the geek types chose email. That should tell you something.
Another thing to consider is that an open source developer is usually coding because they are passionate about what they are working on as opposed to a closed source developer who is often told what to work on by their boss. Because of this, open source developers are willing to work long hours throughout the night to fix those bugs. A closed source developer usually just can't wait for the five o'clock whistle so they can go home and work on what they really want to be doing. Since open source developers are also primary users of their own code, they have a vested interest in making it work well and keeping it that way. This may not seem like a big deal, and I know it's a bit of a generalization, but I think it's true more often that not. It's difficult for closed source vendors to compete with people who love their work so much.
I started thinking about writing a letter to my local newspaper, and then I thought that it would be an awful waste of time and effort if someone much better at such things had already done so. Has anyone out there written any kind of letter to the media yet? If so, why not post it here, and we can modify it a bit if necessary, and then ship it off to all our local newspapers. This would also give the appearance that we are an organized community supporting a common viewpoint. Maybe we can submit this letter to 60 minutes or Dateline and convince them to do a segment on it. It would reach more people that way. We can call it the Open Letter project.
Not that I have anything against Linux and business, but the two don't really mix very very (at least in the traditional business model). I mean, business is all about competition, and Linux is all about cooperation. However, if Linux DOES succeed (in the marketplace), then it may very well change the way people think about business in general.
One of the concepts that LinuxOne has apparently not managed to grasp yet is that you can't isolate yourself from the Linux community and still expect to succeed. This does work in the traditional business model where competition is the rule, but not in a community founded on the principles of cooperation and sharing ideas openly.
I have no doubt that many investors will get burnt by LinuxOne and related scams, but that is just because they are ignorant of the 'way Linux works'. These investors probably deserve to lose their money because they did not spend the time researching the company's credentials. When they lose their money, however, they will learn a valuable but harsh lesson.
there is still some soul left in this country. I certainly don't agree with any of the violence, but I think its nice to see that people can unite for a common cause. Look at how the FBI has been recently harrasing people for expressing their views about crypto or for displaying 'inappropriate' web content. It's time to let the stuffed shirts in government know that 'the people' are unhappy about the way things are progressing. Sometimes the only way to do that is to scream it from the rooftops.
I also played with WP8 for Linux and it looks like a great product, except for not being able to use the equation editor in the free version. Since this is mainly what I'd be using it for, I'd like to try it before I pay for it.
Not being able to number equations is one very bad quality of Word. I have heard, however, that the latest version of MathType does equation numbering but I haven't used it myself. That's another reason why I like to use latex, because it does all the equation numbering and cross-referencing automatically.
I write a lot of scientific papers and presentations with tons of equations. Normally, I use LaTeX for all my stuff, and it works great. However, there are some people (like my supervisor) who are hesitant to use something like LaTeX because of the steep learning curve. They prefer to use GUI-based stuff like Word and Powerpoint because they are simpler to use and require less startup time. I am trying to convince them that there are similar tools in Linux but they seem somewhat unconvinced. I have played with KMath a bit, but from what I see, it still has a long way to go. I appreciate the complexity of this problem, but I think one of the things preventing me from recommending KOffice and/or KPresenter is the lack of a full-featured equation editor. If KMath were to move more towards something like MathType, a lot of people from the scientific and academic community would find KOffice a more suitable project. For all I know, this may already be improved in KDE 2.0. I can't wait to find out! Right now, I think StarOffice has the best equation editor for Linux that I've seen even though it is still a bit awkward to use.
My question is basically:
What work is being done to make KMath a more powerful equation editor (more like MathType from the Windows world)? Is it likely that there might be some integration with LaTex or LyX? I would like to see it possible to embed LaTeX-like code in the document to make prettier equations. Right now, I use latex2html to make.png images of all my equations, and then I embed these images into my KOffice/KPresenter document. This is somewhat of a roundabout way of doing this, and I wonder if there is a better way to get the same results with less work? Will KDE 2.0 make this any easier?
It will be interesting to see how Linux evolves once it becomes 'popular'. I'm always caught between the desire for Linux to hit it big (to redeem myself in the eyes of the unbelievers) and the desire to keep it a nice, obscure product hidden away from the disrespectful fingers of the 'ordinary user'. I migrated to Linux because it was a cheap, powerful operating system, but also because it had that sort of fringe appeal that I like. What will happen to our beloved Linux once Big Business gets involved? I wonder if there is anything fundamentally different about Linux that makes it immune to the pollution of popularity or if it will just end up like all the other money-making products on the market.
Every revolutionary thinks they're going to change the world, but often when they usurp the position of power, they find themselves just doing more of the same. I'd like to think that the GPL is what makes Linux different, but it makes you wonder.
Since Linux was built by open source developers, it will remain the great product that it is today as long as there are open source developers willing to work on it. However, if Linux loses it's appeal to these fringe developers (the cream of the crop), then it will surely go down the drain like everything else, and the fringe developers will start working on something that's more fun (Linux TNG).
I agree. The fastest FFT algorithm that I know of is called the FFTW (Fastest Fourier Transform in the West) and it can be downloaded for free at http://www.fftw.org. I don't know if this is what the SETI team is using or not.
Exactly! So many of the complaints against using open source for this project are based on the notion that there will be too many versions, false data, lack of security, etc. But all of these arguments could be made against any open source project. If this were true, however, then Linux (and other GPL software) would not be as successful and secure as it is today. Just follow the same development model that worked for Linux (patches submitted by anyone but one central repository for maintaing and releasing updated versions) and you will get the same good results. To say that this particular 'scientific' application is somehow different is balderdash.
Yeah, there might be some problems with the integrity of the data, but you will have those problems on any distributed system whether you release the source code or not. By making it open source, the reliability of the data would be improved by designing better algorithms!
Send the same packet of data to two (or more) computers and check to see that their results agree. This way, they don't have to check every packet themselves, it's built into the system automatically. This is why they need to increase the speed, to allow for redundancy.
Couldn't have said it better myself! Remove the motivation for cheating and they won't cheat. This was a dumb move on the part of SETI and definitely contrary to their supposed goals of accuracy over speed. See, with more people thinking about this, we've already suggested improvements to their strategy!
I was paying attention, but my point was that they already made mistakes. Whether it's in the server or client, it doesn't matter. The more programmers you have looking over the code, the less likely such mistakes would happen.
First of all, where exactly do you find this "official" slashdot sentiment. I looked everywhere and I couldn't find it. I'm sorry, but the very fact that you posted this article shows that there is no 'official' slashdot sentiment since you are a slashdot reader and you have a different opinion.
You mention that people have already reverse engineered the code. Well then, this already shows that even if they don't release the code, the security is bad. Open source could actualy strengthen the security as I mention below. You conclude that releasing the code would only decrease the security, but how do you know that? What if for every one hacker that is out to screw up the code, there are ten programmers that can improve the code. I don't see an obvious outcome of this being that the security is lessened.
I suggest that some method of redundancy be introduced so that more than one computer be used to analyze the same packet of data. This way, even if one guy does fsck the data up, there are a number of backup computers to double check it. This is one of the fundamental principles of science, redundancy and reproducibility.
Alright, I can kind of agree with some of the reasons why open source might not be the best idea for this project, but I don't think one should be so hasty as to reject the possibility so quickly. We have all seen the benefits of open source for Linux. Why are so many people so quick to say that even though it worked for linux, it can't work here. The very fact that so many people here at slashdot have an opinion on the matter shows that there are many potential developers out there who are already helping SETI by discussing the problem.
One of the complaints for not releasing the source was that false data packets could be sent. By this, I assume you would mean a 'false positive' since what would be the point of doctoring the code to produce the same negative result that most other people are already getting. So some hacker modifies his code to detect an alien signal. Well, considering that this should be a rare event, all the SETI people have to do is to recheck the data themselves using trusted methods. Since the number of false positives are small, this would not tax their resources much. So then what motivation would a hacker have for doing this if they only know that they will be shown to be a fraud in the end. I think that most people who would spend their time working on the code would actually be more inclined to find a real signal than waste their time with such childish behavior. Yes, there will always be exceptions, but don't tell me that they can't already reverse engineer the code to do the same thing now.
Second, why not introduce some redundancy into their method. If it is true that their speed is limited by some other factor such as the rate at which they are receiving data from their telescope, then why not send out identical packets to more that one computer. That way, even if one person does decide to mess with the data, the chance that both computers (or three or four) would screw up the data in exactly the same way would be very unlikely.
Some people have objected to open sourcing the code because that "is not how science works", but I disagree completely, and being a NASA scientist myself I think I have room to talk. Science, in fact, works by redundancy. The fact that more than one group of people can analyze the same set of data and come up with the same results is one of the cornerstones of the scientific principle. Has anyone ever heard of cold fusion? reproducible?
So my point is that already in this discussion, several people have come up with some good ideas for improving their existing code. Open source is already working and we haven't even got a hold of the source yet!
What are you talking about? The SETI programmers already screwed up. Don't you remember that soon after their initial release to the public, they announced that there was a bug in the program that was causing every computer to process the SAME packet of data. Therefore, your conclusion that open source programs are somehow inferior products is flawed. If there were hundreds of open source programmers looking at the code, this bug would probably been fixed before it was released. That IS reality.
But if they open source it, then we'll all find out that it's actually been a clever surveillance device used by the government to give them access to critical files on our computer and monitor our every move on the internet;)
Yeah, I live near Cleveland and they made a big broohaha about hundreds of people spottin that 'meteor' last night and how the phone lines at the News station were flooded. I wish I had seen it myself. I always miss out on things like that! Bah Humbug! One little 5 year old girl that drew a crayon representation of the event said that the 'head' was blue and the tail was like a dotted red line. I was surprised, but someone did manage to get a video of it with their camcorder. I was hoping maybe it was an alien spacecraft (being an avid xfiles fan) but when I saw the video I could tell it was nothing more than some space crap disintegrating in the atmosphere (maybe the hubble?). Oh well, I'm still hoping. I'll be out looking tonight. Think about it. If an alien spacecraft did want to spy on us without our knowing it, tonight would be the perfect night because they could use the meteor shower as cover.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention, your nerves are right beneath the skin, so _feeling_ cold just means your skin temperature has dropped, not your internal body temperature. And the point is that even if your hand were colder, the blood flowing through your hand would also be chilled, and as it passes through the rest of your body, it would also chill your entire body to some extent.
Considering that the blood is circulating through the brain multiple times per minute carrying warmer fluid from elsewhere in the body, and that the heat
would have to be removed through the skull (not sure what the thermal conductivity of bone tissue is), it makes me wonder how effective this would really be at cooling the interior regions of the brain without cooling the other parts of the body as well. I would suspect it would only be marginally useful at cooling just the outer portions, and even that would be countered by the warmer blood flowing through it. I'm sure it sounds real good in their brochure.
Why nameless? Others with similar sensitivities might be interested in knowing what it is in order to avoid playing it themselves.
What I want to know is what happened to these rings? Why are there no remanants of them left today?
I was under the impression that Linux was an OS, not a programming language ;-)
Lets see. I can pull out my dictionary and find a slew of word combinations that aren't hyphenated such as handcart, handlebar, textbook, schoolmate. This would seem to fly in the face of the editor's claim that these should remain hyphenated.
We had this same debate at my company a while back and all of the business types chose e-mail, and all of the geek types chose email. That should tell you something.
Another thing to consider is that an open source developer is usually coding because they are passionate about what they are working on as opposed to a closed source developer who is often told what to work on by their boss. Because of this, open source developers are willing to work long hours throughout the night to fix those bugs. A closed source developer usually just can't wait for the five o'clock whistle so they can go home and work on what they really want to be doing. Since open source developers are also primary users of their own code, they have a vested interest in making it work well and keeping it that way. This may not seem like a big deal, and I know it's a bit of a generalization, but I think it's true more often that not. It's difficult for closed source vendors to compete with people who love their work so much.
I started thinking about writing a letter to my local newspaper, and then I thought that it would be an awful waste of time and effort if someone much better at such things had already done so. Has anyone out there written any kind of letter to the media yet? If so, why not post it here, and we can modify it a bit if necessary, and then ship it off to all our local newspapers. This would also give the appearance that we are an organized community supporting a common viewpoint. Maybe we can submit this letter to 60 minutes or Dateline and convince them to do a segment on it. It would reach more people that way. We can call it the Open Letter project.
Not that I have anything against Linux and business, but the two don't really mix very very (at least in the traditional business model). I mean, business is all about competition, and Linux is all about cooperation. However, if Linux DOES succeed (in the marketplace), then it may very well change the way people think about business in general.
One of the concepts that LinuxOne has apparently not managed to grasp yet is that you can't isolate yourself from the Linux community and still expect to succeed. This does work in the traditional business model where competition is the rule, but not in a community founded on the principles of cooperation and sharing ideas openly.
I have no doubt that many investors will get burnt by LinuxOne and related scams, but that is just because they are ignorant of the 'way Linux works'. These investors probably deserve to lose their money because they did not spend the time researching the company's credentials. When they lose their money, however, they will learn a valuable but harsh lesson.
I guess M$ has finally raised their certification standards. It's nice to see that being toilet trained is now a requirement.
there is still some soul left in this country. I certainly don't agree with any of the violence, but I think its nice to see that people can unite for a common cause. Look at how the FBI has been recently harrasing people for expressing their views about crypto or for displaying 'inappropriate' web content. It's time to let the stuffed shirts in government know that 'the people' are unhappy about the way things are progressing. Sometimes the only way to do that is to scream it from the rooftops.
I also played with WP8 for Linux and it looks like a great product, except for not being able to use the equation editor in the free version. Since this is mainly what I'd be using it for, I'd like to try it before I pay for it.
Not being able to number equations is one very bad quality of Word. I have heard, however, that the latest version of MathType does equation numbering but I haven't used it myself. That's another reason why I like to use latex, because it does all the equation numbering and cross-referencing automatically.
I write a lot of scientific papers and presentations with tons of equations. Normally, I use LaTeX for all my stuff, and it works great. However, there are some people (like my supervisor) who are hesitant to use something like LaTeX because of the steep learning curve. They prefer to use GUI-based stuff like Word and Powerpoint because they are simpler to use and require less startup time. I am trying to convince them that there are similar tools in Linux but they seem somewhat unconvinced. I have played with KMath a bit, but from what I see, it still has a long way to go. I appreciate the complexity of this problem, but I think one of the things preventing me from recommending KOffice and/or KPresenter is the lack of a full-featured equation editor. If KMath were to move more towards something like MathType, a lot of people from the scientific and academic community would find KOffice a more suitable project. For all I know, this may already be improved in KDE 2.0. I can't wait to find out! Right now, I think StarOffice has the best equation editor for Linux that I've seen even though it is still a bit awkward to use.
.png images of all my equations, and then I embed these images into my KOffice/KPresenter document. This is somewhat of a roundabout way of doing this, and I wonder if there is a better way to get the same results with less work? Will KDE 2.0 make this any easier?
My question is basically:
What work is being done to make KMath a more powerful equation editor (more like MathType from the Windows world)? Is it likely that there might be some integration with LaTex or LyX? I would like to see it possible to embed LaTeX-like code in the document to make prettier equations. Right now, I use latex2html to make
It will be interesting to see how Linux evolves once it becomes 'popular'. I'm always caught between the desire for Linux to hit it big (to redeem myself in the eyes of the unbelievers) and the desire to keep it a nice, obscure product hidden away from the disrespectful fingers of the 'ordinary user'. I migrated to Linux because it was a cheap, powerful operating system, but also because it had that sort of fringe appeal that I like. What will happen to our beloved Linux once Big Business gets involved? I wonder if there is anything fundamentally different about Linux that makes it immune to the pollution of popularity or if it will just end up like all the other money-making products on the market.
Every revolutionary thinks they're going to change the world, but often when they usurp the position of power, they find themselves just doing more of the same. I'd like to think that the GPL is what makes Linux different, but it makes you wonder.
Since Linux was built by open source developers, it will remain the great product that it is today as long as there are open source developers willing to work on it. However, if Linux loses it's appeal to these fringe developers (the cream of the crop), then it will surely go down the drain like everything else, and the fringe developers will start working on something that's more fun (Linux TNG).
I agree. The fastest FFT algorithm that I know of is called the FFTW (Fastest Fourier Transform in the West) and it can be downloaded for free at http://www.fftw.org. I don't know if this is what the SETI team is using or not.
Exactly! So many of the complaints against using open source for this project are based on the notion that there will be too many versions, false data, lack of security, etc. But all of these arguments could be made against any open source project. If this were true, however, then Linux (and other GPL software) would not be as successful and secure as it is today. Just follow the same development model that worked for Linux (patches submitted by anyone but one central repository for maintaing and releasing updated versions) and you will get the same good results. To say that this particular 'scientific' application is somehow different is balderdash.
Yeah, there might be some problems with the integrity of the data, but you will have those problems on any distributed system whether you release the source code or not. By making it open source, the reliability of the data would be improved by designing better algorithms!
or just send the same packet to two or more computers and check that the returned results agree with each other.
Send the same packet of data to two (or more) computers and check to see that their results agree. This way, they don't have to check every packet themselves, it's built into the system automatically. This is why they need to increase the speed, to allow for redundancy.
Couldn't have said it better myself! Remove the motivation for cheating and they won't cheat. This was a dumb move on the part of SETI and definitely contrary to their supposed goals of accuracy over speed. See, with more people thinking about this, we've already suggested improvements to their strategy!
I was paying attention, but my point was that they already made mistakes. Whether it's in the server or client, it doesn't matter. The more programmers you have looking over the code, the less likely such mistakes would happen.
First of all, where exactly do you find this "official" slashdot sentiment. I looked everywhere and I couldn't find it. I'm sorry, but the very fact that you posted this article shows that there is no 'official' slashdot sentiment since you are a slashdot reader and you have a different opinion.
You mention that people have already reverse engineered the code. Well then, this already shows that even if they don't release the code, the security is bad. Open source could actualy strengthen the security as I mention below. You conclude that releasing the code would only decrease the security, but how do you know that? What if for every one hacker that is out to screw up the code, there are ten programmers that can improve the code. I don't see an obvious outcome of this being that the security is lessened.
I suggest that some method of redundancy be introduced so that more than one computer be used to analyze the same packet of data. This way, even if one guy does fsck the data up, there are a number of backup computers to double check it. This is one of the fundamental principles of science, redundancy and reproducibility.
Alright, I can kind of agree with some of the reasons why open source might not be the best idea for this project, but I don't think one should be so hasty as to reject the possibility so quickly. We have all seen the benefits of open source for Linux. Why are so many people so quick to say that even though it worked for linux, it can't work here. The very fact that so many people here at slashdot have an opinion on the matter shows that there are many potential developers out there who are already helping SETI by discussing the problem.
One of the complaints for not releasing the source was that false data packets could be sent. By this, I assume you would mean a 'false positive' since what would be the point of doctoring the code to produce the same negative result that most other people are already getting. So some hacker modifies his code to detect an alien signal. Well, considering that this should be a rare event, all the SETI people have to do is to recheck the data themselves using trusted methods. Since the number of false positives are small, this would not tax their resources much. So then what motivation would a hacker have for doing this if they only know that they will be shown to be a fraud in the end. I think that most people who would spend their time working on the code would actually be more inclined to find a real signal than waste their time with such childish behavior. Yes, there will always be exceptions, but don't tell me that they can't already reverse engineer the code to do the same thing now.
Second, why not introduce some redundancy into their method. If it is true that their speed is limited by some other factor such as the rate at which they are receiving data from their telescope, then why not send out identical packets to more that one computer. That way, even if one person does decide to mess with the data, the chance that both computers (or three or four) would screw up the data in exactly the same way would be very unlikely.
Some people have objected to open sourcing the code because that "is not how science works", but I disagree completely, and being a NASA scientist myself I think I have room to talk. Science, in fact, works by redundancy. The fact that more than one group of people can analyze the same set of data and come up with the same results is one of the cornerstones of the scientific principle. Has anyone ever heard of cold fusion? reproducible?
So my point is that already in this discussion, several people have come up with some good ideas for improving their existing code. Open source is already working and we haven't even got a hold of the source yet!
What are you talking about? The SETI programmers already screwed up. Don't you remember that soon after their initial release to the public, they announced that there was a bug in the program that was causing every computer to process the SAME packet of data. Therefore, your conclusion that open source programs are somehow inferior products is flawed. If there were hundreds of open source programmers looking at the code, this bug would probably been fixed before it was released. That IS reality.
But if they open source it, then we'll all find out that it's actually been a clever surveillance device used by the government to give them access to critical files on our computer and monitor our every move on the internet ;)
Yeah, I live near Cleveland and they made a big broohaha about hundreds of people spottin that 'meteor' last night and how the phone lines at the News station were flooded. I wish I had seen it myself. I always miss out on things like that! Bah Humbug! One little 5 year old girl that drew a crayon representation of the event said that the 'head' was blue and the tail was like a dotted red line. I was surprised, but someone did manage to get a video of it with their camcorder. I was hoping maybe it was an alien spacecraft (being an avid xfiles fan) but when I saw the video I could tell it was nothing more than some space crap disintegrating in the atmosphere (maybe the hubble?). Oh well, I'm still hoping. I'll be out looking tonight. Think about it. If an alien spacecraft did want to spy on us without our knowing it, tonight would be the perfect night because they could use the meteor shower as cover.