Also, I shouldn't attribute this all to Dyson. He was working on an interdisciplinary team of scientists. I don't think NASA called in just a physicist to tell them about life on Europa. He's pretty good at optics, making him pretty good at finding ways to look for something given its theoretical properties.
It's really beyond my understanding, and without some input from somebody who actually knows more intimately what Dyson was talking about, this might just be me talking out of my ass. Not taking sides or anything, there are just some assumptions I don't think are fair.
However, I do know that the position of the probe has to be VERY specific, as in directly in between the sun and Europa. Otherwise, you see nothing unusual... it doesn't matter how big a collector (unless it's leafy green or waving a big flag, which it won't be). He was very clear on that, and the reflection phenomenon can be readily observed with pretty much any light collector here on Earth.
Second, life on Earth moves pretty quickly for the most part. It doesn't have to. Think about cryogenics. You freeze somebody, and they're still alive, all that happens is all the chemical reactions in their body slow way down (a good rule of thumb is reaction rates halve for about every 10 degrees). So, life there would develop much more slowly... It'd be like watching the Earth in ultra slow motion. A question I don't know the answer to is whether or not the reactions of life processes are spontaneous at those low temperatures, and whether they would need to be, or whether the life existing primarily in warmer, liquid water below the surface could form what we might call non-living solar collectors.
The number I seem to remember is that sunlight on the surface of Europa is about 1/50th that on Earth. That's still a decent amount of light, it just requires very specialized equipment for collecting it. We power solar cars with about that much light given efficiencies of collectors, and lifeforms are much more efficient.
From what I can gather, the problem isn't so much with the possibility that life can exist in such a way. I think it's sound speculation. Still, it's a shot in the dark. Just as drilling way beneath the surface to look at possible vents is a shot in the dark. The difference is that shooting a little probe with a camera is much easier and cheaper than shooting one with a drill that can go several kilometers under the surface to find liquid water, then swim down that and collect some samples in a test tube. One could happen in the next 20 years, the other I doubt will happen in 50-100.
Interesting point. Some considerations that might be important are Europa's size. Being much smaller than Earth, it generates a lot less heat. As far as how that translates into vents on the floor of its oceans given all the other factors, I have no idea, but it's a question to be explored.
Also, and I don't know the answer to this either, but did the life that exists on Earth around those heat sources evolve separately from all life on Earth? Or did it require some building blocks of life to sift down through the ocean over the years?
I also wouldn't be too quick to dismiss them as improbable "fantastic lifeforms." Judging solely from the sheer number of lifeforms that prefer life near light as opposed to deep sea vents on Earth, and from the ivy that somehow found a way to grow straight through my roof in less than a year causing me about $1000 in roof, chimney, and water damage repair, it doesn't seem like it'd be too hard for life to develop in this way over eons on Europa. But I am not a biologist.
It might be easier to look for life on Europa than Mars, actually. I got to have lunch with Freeman Dyson a few months ago, and we talked about some of the work (which I hope I'm not misrepresenting) he's done with the JPL on the life on Europa problem. As I understood him, a big problem is the cost of sending something way out there that can land, drill down, and send back some useful data. His team eventually decided that, 1) Water's way below the surface; that's where the life's going to be, and 2) It's going to have to collect light on the surface, and even there, sunlight's a little scarce. They envisioned these sort of gigantic solar collectors, almost like satellite dishes, protruding up through the surface where they could collect light. A neat feature is that anything that collects light also reflects it when observed properly, a la a rabbit in headlights. His idea was to just send a little probe and have it lined up so that the Sun, the probe, and Europa are all in colinear positions. If, as it comes into position, some glaring is obsreved on the surface, it might mean there's a good chance of life. Anybody know more about this? Am I completely off in what I've said?
A close-up of Mars doesn't seem like it will provide the same insight, unfortunately.
Among other things, I think you've got your racial stereotype wrong.
"Ooooh me no rike ropyrights so I'll ropy this software berause I'm a stealing chink!"
If I'm correct, the stereotype is that the Chinese pronounce "r" as "l," as in the old joke about "Flied Lice." To help you out, I think what you meant to say was:
"Ooooh, me no like copylights so I'll copy this softwale because I'm a stealing chink!"
No, I don't think that would be particularly useful.
Although I guess you've already made some thinly veiled comments. And no, they weren't particularly useful, partly because I don't think I understand them perfectly. Interesting.
Frankly, I'm tired of reading the same recycled comments on this issue, and I've never really interjected my opinion for the simple reason that very few of you will probably agree. Many might think I'm insane. But I'll go ahead and kill my karma right here. Take this as a criticism to Slashdot for discussing this article.
Copyright law is bullshit. First off-- to make those of you that actually care understand that I have some standing on the issue-- I'm an artist, among other things. I write, act, and direct both for free and for money. The pay is little, and I honestly am only concerned with making back the money I put into a performance. I can and do find money elsewhere, doing the meaningless things that our labor-as-commodity economy provides and occasionally finding the job that really provides me with satisfaction. Would it be nice to devote more time to my creative work? Sure, except I find being an automaton provides just as much time to space out and file ideas away in my head as sitting in front of a computer thinking ever could. It certainly provides me with more inspiration.
I don't care if people tape my shows. I don't care if people show them to all of their friends. I don't care if people make as many copies as they possibly can give them away. I doubt I'd even care if people sold those tapes for $1000 a piece. There's really only one thing I really care about: a little bit of credit. If someone's taking my writing and performing it (whether or not for pay), I'd like to receive just a note of thanks for putting some effort into writing it, exactly as I appreciate it when my girlfriend thanks me for bringing her lunch at work. Common courtesy is all I ask.
I don't create for money. I create because I have to. It makes me happy. At most of my free shows, we break fire code. And when I manage to take all of those people and force them into the exact mix of emotions I'm aiming for--when a nervous, uncomfortable laughter rides over the crowd--that's a better feeling than anything. Like the MasterCard commercials, money can't buy some things.
Some of you will say, "Yes, but you have a right to be paid for what you do." I don't see it. I have a right to do what I want to do, and in a perfect world, I'd be able to work my ass off doing that and not have to worry about paying the bills and whatever. I have no right to be rich, and that's all royalties and pay-for-play is about. I perform for people because I want to connect with them, to make them laugh, to simply make them glad that they took 2 hours out of their day to sit back and enjoy something. Charging only limits my audience, and frankly, the reason I do what I do seems to me to be far more important than getting paid to do it, particularly when I consider how disgusted I am with what the pursuit of money has brought this country.
I have no reservation about "stealing" from record companies, software companies, or whatever. No, I don't want to see artists starve, but really, the revolutionary that's too careful about stepping on toes doesn't do shit. I want to keep hearing Aesop Rock, but I want, more than that, to tear down the barriers that reinforce elitism. I want to see everybody "pirate" music and software. I want to see Microsoft's profits dwindle until they disappear and force it to fold. I want the creative work of the world come to a screeching halt under capitalism so that people realize free is the only way to go-- that creation implies ownership no more than discovery. I want this because the system we have is fucking stupid. It's so fucking stupid that we get article after article posted about the latest lawsuit the RIAA's intellectual-property-rights claiming jerkoffs are waging against somebody that really just wants to share the creative wealth of human achievement.
Noam Chomsky sums it up well: "It is sometimes argued that constructive and creative work will cease unless it leads to material reward, so that all of sociey gains when the talented receive special rewards. For the ma
The free market is much more subtle and intelligent than that (most of the time, the RIAA and MPAA often are exceptions).
Hollywood has money. Newspapers, magazines, television stations, and the like want some of that money. They generally get this by running ads for movies.
Banning criticism is a tool used by totalitarian states. In a free society, the easiest way to get the same effect is to simply make it impossible to hear critism.
If a movie's popularity is going to drop off quickly, and there's no way to stop that, the solution isn't to try and stop it, it's to try and modify the initial condition - the number of movie-goers hitting the theater the first weekend. They want teenagers to stop thinking "I'll wait until next week if I hear it's good," and to start thinking, "I have to see this movie right away."
How do you do that? One way might be to put some heat on those institutions that want your money - the newspapers. Wine and dine movie critics from the big papers and treat them to advanced screenings. Then, for the week before a movie's released, all anybody ever sees are nice, shiny, full-paged ads next to sneak-peak reviews that say they're fantastic. If the reviews turn up bad, put more heat on the paper, hopefully get the critic fired, or at least stop treating him or her to dinner in the Rainbow Room.
Money has more power than the law, particularly in a capitalist society. Always has, always will.
Let's also not forget another big problem with these stores: some of them tend to sell a wide variety of music.
In these days of ClearChannel, the people that make most of the music worth listening to get crap for exposure on the radio. The only way to really find out about what's new is to listen to one of the small, independent stations (if you live within a few miles of a college with a decent station for example), or, to go online and look around for what's new at sites that specialize in your type of music. But of course, once you've decided that's best, you're already at the online checkout counter.
I bet if stores like Tower (if there anything like the ones around here... the one down the street from me plays everything from Edgar Meyer to Aesop Rock over the PA) quit selling such a pleasant variety and stuck to 50-cent and other artists who get a couple hours of airtime per station per week (like they seemingly have been starting to do in the past few years), they'd observe a boost in profits short term from the teenie-boppers... Until eventually everybody realizes that they can just find what they want online - cheaper, faster, and with recommendations for good music the local place doesn't even know about.
Seems to me to be just like the Supreme Court's "if it ain't prior restraint, it's ok" attitude.
My take: any law that requires the content of anything, movies, video games, whatever, is censorship. Whether or not it's the government itself expurgating the objectionable material or not, it doesn't matter. There's a chilling effect, and the goal of the First Amendment is to keep ideas from suffering from such effects.
I value free speech too much to allow some attorney for the video game industry to play emotional semantic games with that term. And that includes the term "censorship" too. It's not censorship, if it can be sold. It's not anti-free speech either.
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
First off, how is this not censorship? They are placing restrictions on the dissemination of something on the basis of content.
Second, what the hell do you mean, it's not censorship if it can be sold? They sell the Diary of Anne Frank. If a legislature outlawed the sale of that book to minors (as it does depict evasion of authority, by minors even), is that not censorship? People will probably think that's an outrageous analogy, but whatever. There's a simple point to the First Amendment, and it's a damn good one: the government has no business whatsoever saying anything about the social value of any speech.
"You have the emergence in human society of this thing that's called the State. What is the State? The State is this organized bureaucracy;;t is the po-lice department. It is the Army, the Navy; it is the prison system, the courts, and what have you. This is the State -- this is a repressive organization. But the state will tell you "Well, you know, you've got to have the police, cause..
if there were no police, look at what you'd be doing to yourselves! You'd be killing yourselves if there were no police!"
But the reality is, the police become necessary in human society only at that junction in human society where it is split between those who have and those who ain't got.
-Chairman Omali Yeshitela
Medical uses
on
Rent a Segway
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I've been surprised at how little (if any, really) I've seen about the possible uses of the HT as a very useful medical device, particularly when considering Kamen's history in medical technology.
For example, I'm working with a patient right now who had a little complication after having some titanium implanted in his back. They had to remove the brace, but the screws they had to leave are now causing incredible pain. Just yesterday, he was so relieved that he could finally actually sit down in a seat and watch TV thanks to some new medication. His day consists entirely of standing and lying down, and switching between the two is almost unbearable. He is able to walk but only with a cane, slowly, and with much pain. Needless to say, a wheelchair is out of the question, if for no other reason than that it would be even more painful. I told him he might look into the Segway as a possible way to get around. At any given time (such as now), I have 2-4 patients (on a 24 patient max unit) that have some problem, be it with their back, knees, feet, or whatever, that makes walking either extremely painful or extremely difficult and hazardous, and my unit has nothing to do with treatment of those types of problems. Taking your dog for a walk, carrying groceries, walking without pain... Simple things most of us take for granted, but which unfortunately many people aren't able to do or enjoy.
Lots of people seem to think these things are useless, or that they're only good for lazy people. It seems to me that such an opinion stems from a reaction to their cost vs. usage value for the average person. Personally, I'd like to see insurance companies catch on to this and start providing these things to patients with cases that warrant it. I could see them greatly reducing costs in a variety of treatment areas while also allowing many disabled people to return to regain some of the lost joy of life, not to mention return to work.
No, they're not talking about heating up tungsten. A good analogy for how light is generated in that manner is that the resistance of the tungsten is similar to friction, and as the electrons pass through it, they heat it up, eventually resulting in light.
This phenomenon involves interactions between positive and negative charges in a nanotube resulting the release of light - a bit different from the analogy of releasing mechanical energy needed to force the electrons through medal as heat.
I never much cared for solid-state physics, but I wonder how much heat this thing does create.
I find it interesting that whenever the constitutionality of copyright laws is questioned in court, very rarely is the actual clause that gives Congress the power to grant copyrights really looked at. It reads:
"The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; "
That is, the only part in the Constitution that mentions any thing about copyrights indicates quite clearly, I think, that they are to promote the progress of art and science.
So one has to wonder, when a student asks for permission to reverse engineer encrypted code to make sure it's scientifically valid from a computer science standpoint in so far as doing what it's claimed to do and when there's no evidence whatsoever that he intends to actually infringe on N2H2's "rights" in any way other than showing that their product might possibly be a piece of shit, when was Congress granted power to prevent him from doing that?
It is common sense that the artists and lavels should make money for the songs.
Bullshit. I'm a recorded artist, and I find that remark to be offensive.
Art is to explore humanity. Government policies towards art and science should always be designed so as to encourage their development in ways that improve the overall human condition. To say that "artists and labels should make money" off of this (at the expense of those that really benefit from hearing new ideas) and to argue that the government should protect these rights is in essence equivalent to saying that the poor people of society would benefit if they gave up even more of their money.
It's a subtle and counter-intuitive argument. Contrary to the capitalist propaganda most people are bathed in every day, though, most artists don't create music in the interest of making money. They agree to charge for it because it's the only way they can live... Artists are slaves, and so are you. Next time you pass by an Ascot or BMI building, throw a molitov.
Thank you, I read the fucking article well before posting, why don't you RTFC and not be a jackass?
I didn't say allowing the government to legislate the direction of popular science. Steer - as in the use of propaganda to influence. This type of phenomenon is easily understandible to the introductory communications student. Learn to think beyond the 2-bit commentary you're used to hearing.
1) "They" means whoever the fuck's bright idea it is to do this. Simple. Whether some government agency said, "Hey, you should consider this," or whether some dipshit at a journal said "Hey, we should do this," "they" represents that person. Nice non-sequitur jumps to ad hominem conspiracy theorist argument, though.
2) There's no such thing as an "unbiased observer," particularly not in the media. Reporters ask questions that people want to hear the answers to, and that's it. Reporters provide very little insight into important questions. Not that this fact is very relevant to the current issue, but your dumbass pretentiousness is lazy and misinformed.
The truth is that I don't care whether or not there's a danger to allowing this research out (note: there isn't as far as I can tell). The point of the matter is that science is falling victim to government pressures - whether those be pressures of law or of some other origin. That's dangerous. To answer your question: No, this is not a "Good Thing."
If you want to be smart, learn something about the fucking scientific method. You have a hypothesis, and that hypothesis makes a prediction. You then must TEST your prediction. In this case, we're unfortunately confined to the typical realm of political discourse - the only important questions seem to be about the effectiveness, and not the rectitude, of action. While I hate to argue within such confines, it's especially annoying here, because there's NO evidence that such self-censoring behavior would make a bit of a difference. Your entire arguments rest on "what if"'s... "What if all this information on anthrax hadn't been around?" Yeah, what if. That's not science. It's pretty disturbing to see this type of logic permeate the credible scientific world, as it's indicative of a huge gap in reasoning abilities, even among our most revered professionals. To a physical science problem, they'll apply the scientific method ("they" being a pronoun referring generally to our leading academics). To a social science problem, they resort to these "what if"'s and do little more than reputation masturbation.
Rand McNalley should censor their maps of cities, omitting key terrorist targets.
This is retarded. The real danger, as I see it, is in keeping science secret, and not just due to concerns for public health (a very valid point). Allowing government policy to steer the direction of popular science is one of the greatest threats to our freedom.
Similar "arguments" to this one are made over encryption systems, because they might be used by criminals and terrorists to hide what they're doing. The "logic" bleeds into countless other debates as well, and the end conclusion always involves the government getting more control over what you can say and how you can say it.
Now, they look to seriously hinder all biological research. Who's going to spend years and grant money working on projects when they won't even get published? And for how long will this censorship go on? A couple years? That's probably enough to seriously diminish the number of fresh students entering the field. Let it go on longer, and in another 10 years we might not have any doctors.
Science is interdependent. You can't cut off your star running back's leg and expect him to keep scoring touchdowns for you. It just doesn't work.
First lesson: be wary whenever astrophysicists claim to have "proven" anything. Our confidence in this conclusion can only be as strong as our confidence in the consistency and logic of the theories, which are based on observations we can trust only so much as we trust the instruments used to record them.
In short, this is a question that philosophers and physicists have been working on for some time, and, in my opinion, it's improper to ever say that anything in science (particularly something of this significance and magnitude) can ever be "proven."
Replacing the word "prove" with "indicate" tends to help. What NASA has done is discovered "hot spots," which it believes indicate that the Universe may be accelerating indefinitely.
The implications of such a discovery are mind boggling. One thing I'm curious to know is how they can be sure the acceleration is constant. Although we may not be able to determine a good value for the approximation within our lifetimes, such a measurement would be necessary, I think, to confirm their hypotheses. If indeed the acceleration is not constant (which is something I would definitely consider probable), then the Big Crunch may actually be inevitable.
Maybe some of their algorithmic innovations are valuable, but as for the whole model, I really don't see a necessity for it. Encrypted P2P might be nice, I suppose. But it seems like secure web servers have been providing the same functionality for years.
Chemfinder has a nice model they've been using for sharing of research. Most of the information there, from my understanding, is submitted and reviewed for entry into the database. Complete with subscription options.
On another note...
A couple things I like about Slashdot:
a) Users generally engage in intelligent discussion without calling the content of the entire site "so fucking retarded."
b) The editing is actually quite good. Much better than kuro5hin.org, from what I can tell at least. You can actually find interesting, well written articles, as well as read responses from a wide variety of professional, political, and social cross-sections.
c) Slashdot is a user moderated news site. As it is well recognized that nobody really wants to hear about Pepsi's new flavor when reading about Oracle security problems, comments focusing on Pepsi's new flavor under articles concerning Oracle security problems are modded down. Likewise, articles for the sole purpose of bitching and moaning about unrelated topics are also modded down when they are included under articles concerning Oracle security problems. Following that logic, the parent and this reply should be modded down. So somebody fucking do it.
Sorry, but if you're doing more than 30GB of month at home, you're really lucky your ISP isn't just getting so pissed off that they report your downloads to the police:P How much of that 30GB+ is legal? 1GB? 2GB?
I think that's a really unfair assumption. While I'm sure there are quite a few people that use more than 30GB/mo. for illegal purposes, it seems like an indefensible non-sequitur to imply that such a fact gives any reason to believe that a person is doing something illegal simply because they also happen to use 30GB/mo....
It's that type of propaganda logic that supports the RIAA and allows it to continue functioning.
There's a LOT out there on the net. I could easily find 30GB of legal stuff worth downloading every day. Fortunately for me, though, I have better things to do, but the point remains.
Personally, I really fear that this type of stuff will start happening. It would be my guess that the type of people who do use that much bandwidth are not the type to spend lots of money on other forms of entertainment, because they seem to be able to get plenty right at their computer. Those are perfect targets for the RIAA and MPAA... And I'm sure they'd be more than happy to label anyone who finds entertainment outside the accepted forms a criminal.
Perhaps some pertinent questions:
Supposing the BSA does perform an investigation, I'm wondering what the actual legal procedures are.
Are you required to maintain documentation of every last opened piece of software? I know at the CIT department I worked in for school, we had Windows 95 manuals stacked up in storerooms, even though there was a school wide license. I don't know if this is required though.
Furthermore, what happens if they find you're missing a couple documents, and decide to take you to court. Is any jury going to decide, based on either a "preponderance of the evidence" or "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard that this software was obtained and/or used illegally?
Any legal experts out there?
One thing I'm curious about is why they can only be scaled to 300 horsepower... Seems like if a 20 cm one can put out 30 HP, a big one could put out a lot more. It also might be fun to install a 20 cm one into a ketchup dispenser at McDonald's or something.
And also, will it shoot potatos?
Righto.
My guess is that, if this thing ever comes to be reality, they'll start using it on the military targets and save the bombs for the hospitals, schools, trains, and Fox.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, I shouldn't attribute this all to Dyson. He was working on an interdisciplinary team of scientists. I don't think NASA called in just a physicist to tell them about life on Europa. He's pretty good at optics, making him pretty good at finding ways to look for something given its theoretical properties.
It's really beyond my understanding, and without some input from somebody who actually knows more intimately what Dyson was talking about, this might just be me talking out of my ass. Not taking sides or anything, there are just some assumptions I don't think are fair.
However, I do know that the position of the probe has to be VERY specific, as in directly in between the sun and Europa. Otherwise, you see nothing unusual... it doesn't matter how big a collector (unless it's leafy green or waving a big flag, which it won't be). He was very clear on that, and the reflection phenomenon can be readily observed with pretty much any light collector here on Earth.
Second, life on Earth moves pretty quickly for the most part. It doesn't have to. Think about cryogenics. You freeze somebody, and they're still alive, all that happens is all the chemical reactions in their body slow way down (a good rule of thumb is reaction rates halve for about every 10 degrees). So, life there would develop much more slowly... It'd be like watching the Earth in ultra slow motion. A question I don't know the answer to is whether or not the reactions of life processes are spontaneous at those low temperatures, and whether they would need to be, or whether the life existing primarily in warmer, liquid water below the surface could form what we might call non-living solar collectors.
The number I seem to remember is that sunlight on the surface of Europa is about 1/50th that on Earth. That's still a decent amount of light, it just requires very specialized equipment for collecting it. We power solar cars with about that much light given efficiencies of collectors, and lifeforms are much more efficient.
From what I can gather, the problem isn't so much with the possibility that life can exist in such a way. I think it's sound speculation. Still, it's a shot in the dark. Just as drilling way beneath the surface to look at possible vents is a shot in the dark. The difference is that shooting a little probe with a camera is much easier and cheaper than shooting one with a drill that can go several kilometers under the surface to find liquid water, then swim down that and collect some samples in a test tube. One could happen in the next 20 years, the other I doubt will happen in 50-100.
Interesting point. Some considerations that might be important are Europa's size. Being much smaller than Earth, it generates a lot less heat. As far as how that translates into vents on the floor of its oceans given all the other factors, I have no idea, but it's a question to be explored.
Also, and I don't know the answer to this either, but did the life that exists on Earth around those heat sources evolve separately from all life on Earth? Or did it require some building blocks of life to sift down through the ocean over the years?
I also wouldn't be too quick to dismiss them as improbable "fantastic lifeforms." Judging solely from the sheer number of lifeforms that prefer life near light as opposed to deep sea vents on Earth, and from the ivy that somehow found a way to grow straight through my roof in less than a year causing me about $1000 in roof, chimney, and water damage repair, it doesn't seem like it'd be too hard for life to develop in this way over eons on Europa. But I am not a biologist.
It might be easier to look for life on Europa than Mars, actually. I got to have lunch with Freeman Dyson a few months ago, and we talked about some of the work (which I hope I'm not misrepresenting) he's done with the JPL on the life on Europa problem. As I understood him, a big problem is the cost of sending something way out there that can land, drill down, and send back some useful data. His team eventually decided that, 1) Water's way below the surface; that's where the life's going to be, and 2) It's going to have to collect light on the surface, and even there, sunlight's a little scarce. They envisioned these sort of gigantic solar collectors, almost like satellite dishes, protruding up through the surface where they could collect light. A neat feature is that anything that collects light also reflects it when observed properly, a la a rabbit in headlights. His idea was to just send a little probe and have it lined up so that the Sun, the probe, and Europa are all in colinear positions. If, as it comes into position, some glaring is obsreved on the surface, it might mean there's a good chance of life. Anybody know more about this? Am I completely off in what I've said?
A close-up of Mars doesn't seem like it will provide the same insight, unfortunately.
Among other things, I think you've got your racial stereotype wrong.
:)
"Ooooh me no rike ropyrights so I'll ropy this software berause I'm a stealing chink!"
If I'm correct, the stereotype is that the Chinese pronounce "r" as "l," as in the old joke about "Flied Lice." To help you out, I think what you meant to say was:
"Ooooh, me no like copylights so I'll copy this softwale because I'm a stealing chink!"
But your point was made superbly.
No, I don't think that would be particularly useful.
Although I guess you've already made some thinly veiled comments. And no, they weren't particularly useful, partly because I don't think I understand them perfectly. Interesting.
Frankly, I'm tired of reading the same recycled comments on this issue, and I've never really interjected my opinion for the simple reason that very few of you will probably agree. Many might think I'm insane. But I'll go ahead and kill my karma right here. Take this as a criticism to Slashdot for discussing this article.
Copyright law is bullshit. First off-- to make those of you that actually care understand that I have some standing on the issue-- I'm an artist, among other things. I write, act, and direct both for free and for money. The pay is little, and I honestly am only concerned with making back the money I put into a performance. I can and do find money elsewhere, doing the meaningless things that our labor-as-commodity economy provides and occasionally finding the job that really provides me with satisfaction. Would it be nice to devote more time to my creative work? Sure, except I find being an automaton provides just as much time to space out and file ideas away in my head as sitting in front of a computer thinking ever could. It certainly provides me with more inspiration.
I don't care if people tape my shows. I don't care if people show them to all of their friends. I don't care if people make as many copies as they possibly can give them away. I doubt I'd even care if people sold those tapes for $1000 a piece. There's really only one thing I really care about: a little bit of credit. If someone's taking my writing and performing it (whether or not for pay), I'd like to receive just a note of thanks for putting some effort into writing it, exactly as I appreciate it when my girlfriend thanks me for bringing her lunch at work. Common courtesy is all I ask.
I don't create for money. I create because I have to. It makes me happy. At most of my free shows, we break fire code. And when I manage to take all of those people and force them into the exact mix of emotions I'm aiming for--when a nervous, uncomfortable laughter rides over the crowd--that's a better feeling than anything. Like the MasterCard commercials, money can't buy some things.
Some of you will say, "Yes, but you have a right to be paid for what you do." I don't see it. I have a right to do what I want to do, and in a perfect world, I'd be able to work my ass off doing that and not have to worry about paying the bills and whatever. I have no right to be rich, and that's all royalties and pay-for-play is about. I perform for people because I want to connect with them, to make them laugh, to simply make them glad that they took 2 hours out of their day to sit back and enjoy something. Charging only limits my audience, and frankly, the reason I do what I do seems to me to be far more important than getting paid to do it, particularly when I consider how disgusted I am with what the pursuit of money has brought this country.
I have no reservation about "stealing" from record companies, software companies, or whatever. No, I don't want to see artists starve, but really, the revolutionary that's too careful about stepping on toes doesn't do shit. I want to keep hearing Aesop Rock, but I want, more than that, to tear down the barriers that reinforce elitism. I want to see everybody "pirate" music and software. I want to see Microsoft's profits dwindle until they disappear and force it to fold. I want the creative work of the world come to a screeching halt under capitalism so that people realize free is the only way to go-- that creation implies ownership no more than discovery. I want this because the system we have is fucking stupid. It's so fucking stupid that we get article after article posted about the latest lawsuit the RIAA's intellectual-property-rights claiming jerkoffs are waging against somebody that really just wants to share the creative wealth of human achievement.
Noam Chomsky sums it up well: "It is sometimes argued that constructive and creative work will cease unless it leads to material reward, so that all of sociey gains when the talented receive special rewards. For the ma
The free market is much more subtle and intelligent than that (most of the time, the RIAA and MPAA often are exceptions).
Hollywood has money. Newspapers, magazines, television stations, and the like want some of that money. They generally get this by running ads for movies.
Banning criticism is a tool used by totalitarian states. In a free society, the easiest way to get the same effect is to simply make it impossible to hear critism.
If a movie's popularity is going to drop off quickly, and there's no way to stop that, the solution isn't to try and stop it, it's to try and modify the initial condition - the number of movie-goers hitting the theater the first weekend. They want teenagers to stop thinking "I'll wait until next week if I hear it's good," and to start thinking, "I have to see this movie right away."
How do you do that? One way might be to put some heat on those institutions that want your money - the newspapers. Wine and dine movie critics from the big papers and treat them to advanced screenings. Then, for the week before a movie's released, all anybody ever sees are nice, shiny, full-paged ads next to sneak-peak reviews that say they're fantastic. If the reviews turn up bad, put more heat on the paper, hopefully get the critic fired, or at least stop treating him or her to dinner in the Rainbow Room.
Money has more power than the law, particularly in a capitalist society. Always has, always will.
Let's also not forget another big problem with these stores: some of them tend to sell a wide variety of music.
In these days of ClearChannel, the people that make most of the music worth listening to get crap for exposure on the radio. The only way to really find out about what's new is to listen to one of the small, independent stations (if you live within a few miles of a college with a decent station for example), or, to go online and look around for what's new at sites that specialize in your type of music. But of course, once you've decided that's best, you're already at the online checkout counter.
I bet if stores like Tower (if there anything like the ones around here... the one down the street from me plays everything from Edgar Meyer to Aesop Rock over the PA) quit selling such a pleasant variety and stuck to 50-cent and other artists who get a couple hours of airtime per station per week (like they seemingly have been starting to do in the past few years), they'd observe a boost in profits short term from the teenie-boppers... Until eventually everybody realizes that they can just find what they want online - cheaper, faster, and with recommendations for good music the local place doesn't even know about.
Seems to me to be just like the Supreme Court's "if it ain't prior restraint, it's ok" attitude. My take: any law that requires the content of anything, movies, video games, whatever, is censorship. Whether or not it's the government itself expurgating the objectionable material or not, it doesn't matter. There's a chilling effect, and the goal of the First Amendment is to keep ideas from suffering from such effects.
I value free speech too much to allow some attorney for the video game industry to play emotional semantic games with that term. And that includes the term "censorship" too. It's not censorship, if it can be sold. It's not anti-free speech either.
;t is the po-lice department. It is the Army, the Navy; it is the prison system, the courts, and what have you. This is the State -- this is a repressive organization. But the state will tell you "Well, you know, you've got to have the police, cause..
if there were no police, look at what you'd be doing to yourselves! You'd be killing yourselves if there were no police!"
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
First off, how is this not censorship? They are placing restrictions on the dissemination of something on the basis of content.
Second, what the hell do you mean, it's not censorship if it can be sold? They sell the Diary of Anne Frank. If a legislature outlawed the sale of that book to minors (as it does depict evasion of authority, by minors even), is that not censorship? People will probably think that's an outrageous analogy, but whatever. There's a simple point to the First Amendment, and it's a damn good one: the government has no business whatsoever saying anything about the social value of any speech.
"You have the emergence in human society of this thing that's called the State. What is the State? The State is this organized bureaucracy;
But the reality is, the police become necessary in human society only at that junction in human society where it is split between those who have and those who ain't got.
-Chairman Omali Yeshitela
I've been surprised at how little (if any, really) I've seen about the possible uses of the HT as a very useful medical device, particularly when considering Kamen's history in medical technology.
For example, I'm working with a patient right now who had a little complication after having some titanium implanted in his back. They had to remove the brace, but the screws they had to leave are now causing incredible pain. Just yesterday, he was so relieved that he could finally actually sit down in a seat and watch TV thanks to some new medication. His day consists entirely of standing and lying down, and switching between the two is almost unbearable. He is able to walk but only with a cane, slowly, and with much pain. Needless to say, a wheelchair is out of the question, if for no other reason than that it would be even more painful. I told him he might look into the Segway as a possible way to get around. At any given time (such as now), I have 2-4 patients (on a 24 patient max unit) that have some problem, be it with their back, knees, feet, or whatever, that makes walking either extremely painful or extremely difficult and hazardous, and my unit has nothing to do with treatment of those types of problems. Taking your dog for a walk, carrying groceries, walking without pain... Simple things most of us take for granted, but which unfortunately many people aren't able to do or enjoy.
Lots of people seem to think these things are useless, or that they're only good for lazy people. It seems to me that such an opinion stems from a reaction to their cost vs. usage value for the average person. Personally, I'd like to see insurance companies catch on to this and start providing these things to patients with cases that warrant it. I could see them greatly reducing costs in a variety of treatment areas while also allowing many disabled people to return to regain some of the lost joy of life, not to mention return to work.
No, they're not talking about heating up tungsten. A good analogy for how light is generated in that manner is that the resistance of the tungsten is similar to friction, and as the electrons pass through it, they heat it up, eventually resulting in light. This phenomenon involves interactions between positive and negative charges in a nanotube resulting the release of light - a bit different from the analogy of releasing mechanical energy needed to force the electrons through medal as heat. I never much cared for solid-state physics, but I wonder how much heat this thing does create.
I find it interesting that whenever the constitutionality of copyright laws is questioned in court, very rarely is the actual clause that gives Congress the power to grant copyrights really looked at. It reads:
"The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; "
That is, the only part in the Constitution that mentions any thing about copyrights indicates quite clearly, I think, that they are to promote the progress of art and science.
So one has to wonder, when a student asks for permission to reverse engineer encrypted code to make sure it's scientifically valid from a computer science standpoint in so far as doing what it's claimed to do and when there's no evidence whatsoever that he intends to actually infringe on N2H2's "rights" in any way other than showing that their product might possibly be a piece of shit, when was Congress granted power to prevent him from doing that?
It is common sense that the artists and lavels should make money for the songs. Bullshit. I'm a recorded artist, and I find that remark to be offensive. Art is to explore humanity. Government policies towards art and science should always be designed so as to encourage their development in ways that improve the overall human condition. To say that "artists and labels should make money" off of this (at the expense of those that really benefit from hearing new ideas) and to argue that the government should protect these rights is in essence equivalent to saying that the poor people of society would benefit if they gave up even more of their money. It's a subtle and counter-intuitive argument. Contrary to the capitalist propaganda most people are bathed in every day, though, most artists don't create music in the interest of making money. They agree to charge for it because it's the only way they can live... Artists are slaves, and so are you. Next time you pass by an Ascot or BMI building, throw a molitov.
Thank you, I read the fucking article well before posting, why don't you RTFC and not be a jackass?
I didn't say allowing the government to legislate the direction of popular science. Steer - as in the use of propaganda to influence. This type of phenomenon is easily understandible to the introductory communications student. Learn to think beyond the 2-bit commentary you're used to hearing.
1) "They" means whoever the fuck's bright idea it is to do this. Simple. Whether some government agency said, "Hey, you should consider this," or whether some dipshit at a journal said "Hey, we should do this," "they" represents that person. Nice non-sequitur jumps to ad hominem conspiracy theorist argument, though.
2) There's no such thing as an "unbiased observer," particularly not in the media. Reporters ask questions that people want to hear the answers to, and that's it. Reporters provide very little insight into important questions. Not that this fact is very relevant to the current issue, but your dumbass pretentiousness is lazy and misinformed.
The truth is that I don't care whether or not there's a danger to allowing this research out (note: there isn't as far as I can tell). The point of the matter is that science is falling victim to government pressures - whether those be pressures of law or of some other origin. That's dangerous. To answer your question: No, this is not a "Good Thing."
If you want to be smart, learn something about the fucking scientific method. You have a hypothesis, and that hypothesis makes a prediction. You then must TEST your prediction. In this case, we're unfortunately confined to the typical realm of political discourse - the only important questions seem to be about the effectiveness, and not the rectitude, of action. While I hate to argue within such confines, it's especially annoying here, because there's NO evidence that such self-censoring behavior would make a bit of a difference. Your entire arguments rest on "what if"'s... "What if all this information on anthrax hadn't been around?" Yeah, what if. That's not science. It's pretty disturbing to see this type of logic permeate the credible scientific world, as it's indicative of a huge gap in reasoning abilities, even among our most revered professionals. To a physical science problem, they'll apply the scientific method ("they" being a pronoun referring generally to our leading academics). To a social science problem, they resort to these "what if"'s and do little more than reputation masturbation.
Rand McNalley should censor their maps of cities, omitting key terrorist targets.
This is retarded. The real danger, as I see it, is in keeping science secret, and not just due to concerns for public health (a very valid point). Allowing government policy to steer the direction of popular science is one of the greatest threats to our freedom.
Similar "arguments" to this one are made over encryption systems, because they might be used by criminals and terrorists to hide what they're doing. The "logic" bleeds into countless other debates as well, and the end conclusion always involves the government getting more control over what you can say and how you can say it.
Now, they look to seriously hinder all biological research. Who's going to spend years and grant money working on projects when they won't even get published? And for how long will this censorship go on? A couple years? That's probably enough to seriously diminish the number of fresh students entering the field. Let it go on longer, and in another 10 years we might not have any doctors.
Science is interdependent. You can't cut off your star running back's leg and expect him to keep scoring touchdowns for you. It just doesn't work.
First lesson: be wary whenever astrophysicists claim to have "proven" anything. Our confidence in this conclusion can only be as strong as our confidence in the consistency and logic of the theories, which are based on observations we can trust only so much as we trust the instruments used to record them.
In short, this is a question that philosophers and physicists have been working on for some time, and, in my opinion, it's improper to ever say that anything in science (particularly something of this significance and magnitude) can ever be "proven."
Replacing the word "prove" with "indicate" tends to help. What NASA has done is discovered "hot spots," which it believes indicate that the Universe may be accelerating indefinitely.
The implications of such a discovery are mind boggling. One thing I'm curious to know is how they can be sure the acceleration is constant. Although we may not be able to determine a good value for the approximation within our lifetimes, such a measurement would be necessary, I think, to confirm their hypotheses. If indeed the acceleration is not constant (which is something I would definitely consider probable), then the Big Crunch may actually be inevitable.
Mod parent down.
My take on Locutus:
Maybe some of their algorithmic innovations are valuable, but as for the whole model, I really don't see a necessity for it. Encrypted P2P might be nice, I suppose. But it seems like secure web servers have been providing the same functionality for years.
Chemfinder has a nice model they've been using for sharing of research. Most of the information there, from my understanding, is submitted and reviewed for entry into the database. Complete with subscription options.
On another note...
A couple things I like about Slashdot: a) Users generally engage in intelligent discussion without calling the content of the entire site "so fucking retarded."
b) The editing is actually quite good. Much better than kuro5hin.org, from what I can tell at least. You can actually find interesting, well written articles, as well as read responses from a wide variety of professional, political, and social cross-sections.
c) Slashdot is a user moderated news site. As it is well recognized that nobody really wants to hear about Pepsi's new flavor when reading about Oracle security problems, comments focusing on Pepsi's new flavor under articles concerning Oracle security problems are modded down. Likewise, articles for the sole purpose of bitching and moaning about unrelated topics are also modded down when they are included under articles concerning Oracle security problems. Following that logic, the parent and this reply should be modded down. So somebody fucking do it.
Sorry, but if you're doing more than 30GB of month at home, you're really lucky your ISP isn't just getting so pissed off that they report your downloads to the police :P How much of that 30GB+ is legal? 1GB? 2GB?
I think that's a really unfair assumption. While I'm sure there are quite a few people that use more than 30GB/mo. for illegal purposes, it seems like an indefensible non-sequitur to imply that such a fact gives any reason to believe that a person is doing something illegal simply because they also happen to use 30GB/mo....
It's that type of propaganda logic that supports the RIAA and allows it to continue functioning.
There's a LOT out there on the net. I could easily find 30GB of legal stuff worth downloading every day. Fortunately for me, though, I have better things to do, but the point remains.
Personally, I really fear that this type of stuff will start happening. It would be my guess that the type of people who do use that much bandwidth are not the type to spend lots of money on other forms of entertainment, because they seem to be able to get plenty right at their computer. Those are perfect targets for the RIAA and MPAA... And I'm sure they'd be more than happy to label anyone who finds entertainment outside the accepted forms a criminal.
You know, it actually sometimes surprises me that the government would even think they could or should do this.
But then, I remember the simple fact that the government will do whatever is in its power to retain its power.
Give them an inch, they'll take hundreds of thousands of square miles.
Perhaps some pertinent questions:
Supposing the BSA does perform an investigation, I'm wondering what the actual legal procedures are.
Are you required to maintain documentation of every last opened piece of software? I know at the CIT department I worked in for school, we had Windows 95 manuals stacked up in storerooms, even though there was a school wide license. I don't know if this is required though.
Furthermore, what happens if they find you're missing a couple documents, and decide to take you to court. Is any jury going to decide, based on either a "preponderance of the evidence" or "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard that this software was obtained and/or used illegally?
Any legal experts out there?
One thing I'm curious about is why they can only be scaled to 300 horsepower... Seems like if a 20 cm one can put out 30 HP, a big one could put out a lot more. It also might be fun to install a 20 cm one into a ketchup dispenser at McDonald's or something. And also, will it shoot potatos?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that was a joke.
Lighten up.
I read CNN.com sometimes, but I still think it's unnecessary.
Righto. My guess is that, if this thing ever comes to be reality, they'll start using it on the military targets and save the bombs for the hospitals, schools, trains, and Fox.