The Oregon State University Open Source Lab's data center hosts some of the Linux community's heaviest hitting projects including the Linux Master Kernel and the Linux Foundation. It is also the primary location for the Apache Software Foundation and Drupal, open source content management software. The lab, aka OSUOSL, also hosted the core infrastructure for Mozilla's Firefox project, and currently host's six of Google's servers.
Uh- why is one organization the primary/master site for so many high-profile, critical open source projects?
This is bad for a number of political, economic, security, and technical reasons. All it takes is one pissed off Dean or university president and you can be shut down overnight. It's happened to some famous researchers; one morning they came in and found all their equipment locked up in storage, their papers confiscated, and students/researchers/staff axed.
about tablet computers to date. What's going on? Xconomy's analysis makes three points. 1) Previous tablet makers have shown little imagination around UIs and how a touchscreen changes things. 2) With the iPhone, Apple has shown what's possible in this regard
Yeah. As a 2-year+ iPhone owner:
An annoying keyboard (made slightly better by its activation in landscape mode now in more screens.) A larger screen would mitigate this somewhat.
A physical UI, impossible to use with many (but not all) gloves on. Not everyone lives in California, some of us live where it gets cold in the winter (less of an issue with a tablet, more of an issue with a phone.)
A multitouch UI which is great for playtoys, but useless for getting actual work done. Example: A UI with a slow way of positioning the cursor in text and no cut/paste. Ooops, I take that back. A cut+paste that thinks cursor repositioning is an attempt to cut. But hey, if you want to rotate or resize photos, that's a piece of cake.
For all the uneducated jokes about 1-button mice, the touchscreen UI is even worse. I like the trackpad swipe shortcuts on my MBP for home/end and back/forward, but I have yet to use a single one of the multitouch actions (the stretch/rotate ones, for example.)
There's difference between "who decided what a significant contribution is defined as", "what a significant contribution is", and "who decides if you meet that criteria."
It's a perfectly fair question. The membership board needs to have defined standards; if they're just willy-nilly casting votes yes/no, and they're "members", then the membership is almost certainly going to consist of a very small group of people who hold the same opinions (or are friends / business partners.)
They also should be held responsible to someone. Otherwise, they can do whatever the hell they want, including ignore guidelines given to them.
This may come as a shock to some of the younger (in terms of age/maturity) members of slashdot, but corporate governance is complicated, and little things matter. Just like with civil and criminal law. Think of that the next time Slashdot posts a "some judge did X" story and you all pile on the "how stupid" bandwagon.
The logic is the machine is actually our property and the customer is renting its use, just as most apartment complexes will keep master keys to the units.
While I suspect that "hacker" is using someone else's physical hardware (and is clearly not telling the full story), you don't have a right to access a machine just because you own it. Among other things, you're wrong about apartment units, and it's a really shit parallel example.
In many states, the landlord is NOT automatically entitled to keys. It may be in the lease, but it's not an automatic right, because under a lease, the property is very close to being the leaser's property. They can't damage it or modify it, but they have a right to use it however they please, for the most part.
In even more states, the landlord isn't allowed universal access to the property- and the lease can't give it to them. They need to give notice and have a legitimate reason, of which there are very few (showing the appt towards the end of the lease, maintenance/repair, and sometimes periodic inspection.)
If the machine is not shared, they can't harm other customer's data (you should have controls to prevent DoS, so we won't talk about that.)
There is very little the customer can do to cause physical damage, unlike a landlord, whose tenant can. Since you most likely image or wipe the machine after they're done (if you're not, you're incompetent), there's no software damage.
If the customer is causing problems, you tell them not to, or you'll shut the machine off. If there are legal problems (civil or criminal), shut it off. If they stop paying their bills (and the lease allows it), you warn them and then shut the machine off.
There is no reason in a non-managed hosting environment for a hosting company to require, demand, or force access the operating system of machine. It's quite simply none of your goddamn business. You provide a connection, power, security, and environment. They provide you with money. You don't have a right to be nosy.
Futhermore, maintaining root password lists and ssh root keys (which I doubt have a password, or have a commonly known password, or have a password on a list somewhere lots of people have access to) sets you up for a giant clusterfuck (namely, someone executing a script that goes and deletes a whole bunch of shit on ALL your customer's machines, or worse, starts intercepting customer's customer data.)
As to "Hacker" (jesus christ, seriously?): if you actually own the box you're running on, and just renting space- find a new hosting company. Don't bother trying to get police involved- they won't give a damn, or understand. And as to your crashing problems: let me guess, if you own the hardware: you assembled something yourself, right?
If none of their other customers in the same rack are crashing from power fluctuations, uh...maybe it's your hardware or an OS problem?
Buying Chocolate when you wanted Strawberry is a bad decision. Getting behind the wheel while drunk shows a fundamental contempt for human life.
Yeah, because drunk people have coherent thought processes, good morals, logic, and sound judgment.
I never understood (from a technical legal perspective, relax Mr. Moderators) how people could be held responsible for their actions while sufficiently inebriated. They're basically temporarily insane/mentally retarded. They can only really be held for allowing themselves to get drunk, something that's completely legal most places.
Live anywhere near a college or a popular bar, and you'll wish for the days of prohibition. I'm not aware of any society that has demonstrated an ability to handle alcohol responsibly.
Why should newspapers get first crack at the information posted in the leaks? It sounds like all they'd contribute is the research time of their writers (and a little local publicity), and yet the leaks would shorten and ease their research process enormously.
Uh, because it's often good to be able to investigate without tipping your hand? Records tend to disappear off the shelves, people stop returning your phone calls, and media relations people start spinning faster than a top...or simply saying "no comment."
It's especially fun when they don't know you have proof of your claims, and thus spin utter bullshit lies.
By helping reporters to more quickly arrive at the heart of the story, WikiLeaks Local just might turn around the industry!
The problem isn't just paying people to research and verify stories. The problem is lso that people who are rich and don't like their dirty laundry being in the papers, tend to use their money to threaten papers with legal action. Small papers have to tremble and retreat. Big papers won't cave.
Case and point would be the community newspaper which investigated condo conversion developers. The story had to be handed off to the Boston Globe, because the Globe could afford to tell the developers to Just Try And Sue Us.
Clearly the story that Chris Lovett was uncovering "had legs," as we in the newspaper business used to say. The buy-rehab-sell-foreclose matrix called for a deep looksee that would by its nature be extensive, expensive, and full of extraordinary challenges for a local newspaper and its intrepid freelance reporter.
Soon enough came a letter to Lovett from a lawyer from the law firm representing Scott warning him that his continuing reporting could result in serious legal consequences for him and the Reporter.
No newspaper worth its ink falls back in the face of such an admonition against the quality of its news report, but reality does intervene in terms of staff size, the money needed to pursue a story with so many tentacles, the time needed to dot all the "I's", and the will and financial resources to deal with a defense of its actions and those of its trusted reporter in the legal arena should things come to that.
So the Reporter's pursuit of the ending to this story was stalled.
Enter an eminent investigative reporter named Walter V. Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize winner with The Boston Globe's Spotlight Team, which he directed in its world-shaking probe into the priest-abuse scandal in the archdiocese of Boston. I happened to be playing a round of golf with him and I mentioned the Lovett two-parter to him, saying that the Reporter and Chris had gone as far as we could with the story, given our resources.
After some discussion, Robinson, retired but holding a continuing affiliation with the Globe, managed to get the story onto the paper's agenda and the result of that almost a year later was this past Sunday's lead-story Page One presentation of the Michael David Scott real estate story that ran across two full pages inside.
With Perian installed (have you been living in a cave?) Quicktime handles every AVI, MPG, FLV, and MKV file I've thrown at it in years. Quicktime Player in Snow Leopard doesn't think it can open MKV files, but that's why you don't remove Quicktime Player 7 (there's an option for this in the upgrade, because QP7 does things the new QP can't.)
vProspective studies using very sensitive early pregnancy tests have found that 25% of pregnancies are miscarried by the sixth week LMP (since the woman's Last Menstrual Period).[29][30] Clinical miscarriages (those occurring after the sixth week LMP) occur in 8% of pregnancies.[30]
25+8 = 33%. Which is one third, which is what I guessed. How the hell did you get modded up for this?
The survival rates for childbirth without medical support are lousy enough to make medical support a generally good idea; but it isn't as though humans are exempt from the general mammalian ability to deliver live young without dying.
We've already got a sky-high miscarriage rate, a fun fact nobody likes to talk about in public. Something like 1/3rd of all pregnancies in the US result in miscarriages. Though I am aware of no science supporting this, I suspect it has to do with 2-3 generations full of people being born that otherwise were not healthy enough for one reason or another. Nature kinda takes care of this on its own.
I know it sounds cruel and insane, but part of me really thinks that we're fucking ourselves over long-term by providing such "excellent" health care. We're almost completely bypassing natural selection...
The drilling boom is raising concern in many parts of the country, and the reaction is creating political obstacles for the gas industry. Hazards like methane contamination of drinking water wells, long known in regions where gas production was common, are spreading to populous areas that have little history of coping with such risks, but happen to sit atop shale beds.
And a more worrisome possibility has come to light. A string of incidents in places like Wyoming and Pennsylvania in recent years has pointed to a possible link between hydraulic fracturing and pollution of groundwater supplies. In the worst case, such pollution could damage crucial supplies of water used for drinking and agriculture
It isn't going to be climate change that kills us. We won't have any clean water to drink. Fun fact: the "safe water drinking act" isn't being enforced by the EPA, and even water that has very unhealthy level of arsenic is "safe". Does a 1-in-600 chance of getting bladder cancer sound "safe" to you?
These villagers were scamming the poor guy. $9 million in damages from a *3.4* quake? Cripes, a bus crossing in front of my house is close to 3.4... either their houses are made from eggshells, or this is the scam of the century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull
Translation/application: if you demonstrate negligence and cause an earthquake, even if everyone's houses are made of chewing gum and paper- you're responsible for the damage, because had you not done what you did, the damage wouldn't have happened.
Seriously.. despite all the controversy it has stirred up.. if you don't have anything to hide.. who cares
Kinda sad that I have to post this for the second time in a week. Disclaimer: from Slashdot, not originally mine.
"Yeah! Hunters don't kill the *innocent* animals - they look for the shifty-eyed ones that are probably the criminal element of their species!"
"If the're not guilty, why are they running?"
I wrote about this a while ago. Here's the text:
"If you haven't done anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"
Ever heard that one? I work in information security, so I have heard it more than my fair share. I've always hated that reasoning, because I am a little bit paranoid by nature, something which serves me very well in my profession. So my standard response to people who have asked that question near me has been "because I'm paranoid." But that doesn't usually help, since most people who would ask that question see paranoia as a bad thing to begin with. So for a long time I've been trying to come up with a valid, reasoned, and intelligent answer which shoots the holes in the flawed logic that need to be there.
And someone unknowingly provided me with just that answer today. In a conversation about hunting, somebody posted this about prey animals and hunters: "Yeah! Hunters don't kill the *innocent* animals - they look for the shifty-eyed ones that are probably the criminal element of their species!" but in a brilliant (and very funny) retort, someone else said: "If the're not guilty, why are they running?"
Suddenly it made sense, that nagging thing in the back of my head. The logical reason why a reasonable dose of paranoia is healthy. Because it's one thing to be afraid of the TRUTH. People who commit murder or otherwise deprive others of their Natural Rights are afraid of the TRUTH, because it is the light of TRUTH that will help bring them to justice.
But it's another thing entirely to be afraid of hunters. And all too often, the hunters are the ones proclaiming to be looking for TRUTH. But they are more concerned with removing any obstactles to finding the TRUTH, even when that means bulldozing over people's rights (the right to privacy, the right to anonymity) in their quest for it. And sadly, these people often cannot tell the difference between the appearance of TRUTH and TRUTH itself. And these, the ones who are so convinced they have found the TRUTH that they stop looking for it, are some of the worst oppressors of Natural Rights the world has ever known.
They are the hunters, and it is right and good for the prey to be afraid of the hunters, and to run away from them. Do not be fooled when a hunter says "why are you running from me if you have nothing to hide?" Because having something to hide is not the only reason to be hiding something.
But at complex junctions, actually seeing the layout and where I'm supposed to end up is invaluable. A picture really can be worth a thousand words.
Yes, but the columnist's point was that you don't need fancy graphics with photos to tell you that. All you need is a clear diagram.
The factory system in my Volvo is relatively primitive (dates back to 2001 or so), but has an excellent user interface. You get a simple rocker-pad and two buttons, on the BACK of the wheel, that control everything; your hands never leave the ideal steering wheel position. You also get an infrared control with the same buttons, for passengers. The screen rises out of the dashboard, dead center. It does not obscure the road, but it's also close to said road, so your eyes don't wander far.
The display is relatively simple- map, road name you're on at the bottom, next turn name/distance/road name up top. I think there's a total-time-and-distance-left display, too. The time of day isn't there. Nothing is on the screen except what is directly relevant.
When a turn approaches, you get a full-screen diagram of the upcoming intersection with you entering from the bottom, and a marked path...and despite the very complex intersections where I live (rotaries with all sorts of shit happening off them, 5+6 way intersections, etc) it always displays them perfectly.
Did I mention it's fully capable of dead reckoning, with vehicle speed and compass sensors? Your dashboard GPS may have photorealistic intersections, but my GPS works a mile into a tunnel when the tunnel has a 3-way split. About the only thing I wish for is that it were faster at route calculations, displayed more street names and route numbers (it's very bad at this) and was a little better at picking up satellites; once in a blue moon it gets confused as to which street it is on (this is rare since it has dead-reckoning capabilities.)
Isn't this precisely the risk of overreliance on the peer review system? Unpopular opinions get silenced.
That's a common myth. You see, there are many journals. All want to grow their subscribership, increase their impact factor (the scientific journal measurement of notoriety.) They do that by publishing the most interesting research they can.
Doing research that mirrors what's already been done isn't very popular; grad students and postdocs, for example, have to clear what they're doing with their PIs. That's not likely to happen unless they've got some angle. This isn't apparent to the layman- or even someone who has "PhD" in their title, but even a minor difference in premise can be a big deal.
Identical research also doesn't get published. New, fresh, interesting research is what journals want. So while Willis thinks there's a massive groupthink, there's actually little of the kind. It may LOOK like groupthink, because on the surface, yes, there's the gross layer of widely-accepted-fact. The devil is in the details, and that's where research is taking place.
It's a special kind of arrogance to think that you can just stroll in and understand, much less analyze, a field where people dedicate years, if not decades, to their research.
the author also doesn't understand peer review
on
The Limits To Skepticism
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The author raises good points about the dangers of over-reliance on the peer review system. It's a good system but it is not doesn't always work - crap gets through and good articles aren't published.
And neither of you understand the peer review system. It's actually a very complex system, and one full of competition on many levels.
First, there are many scientists trying to get their work published. Second, there are many journals. Third, each journal has a journal impact factor. Fourth, papers mention other papers. Fifth, journals and papers are not the only means for how scientists communicate their work or collaborate. There are conferences, groups invite speakers, etc.
A journal impact factor is a simple calculation. On average, a paper published in Nature gets X number of mentions in other journal's papers. A paper published just about anywhere else gets much less. So people want to get published in Nature, obviously. But people are also realistic, and their PIs help them with finding the right places to get published. And if you don't, you can try again. Sound research is likely to be resubmitted, often times elsewhere.
When a paper is submitted, you don't just get a "we're publishing it!" or a "DENIED!". You get questions from the reviewers, sometimes requests for more data. If it's rejected, often times it's rejected with some helpful, useful suggestions on how the reviewers feel the paper could be improved, and sometimes it's said between the lines that if you resubmit after taking some of those suggestions, you'll get the thumbs up from that reviewer.
Yes, Nature and the like are the holy grail. But many, many people don't look only in Nature. They read the journals dedicated to their little niche, because they know that sometimes good, fresh thinking doesn't make it into Nature just because so many people submit. And guess what? So are all their true colleagues. So while you don't get your name in the newspaper or a mention on the nightly news, your research still sees the light of day, and often times, with more 'useful' eyeballs. And if it's good, you impress people, they collaborate with you, present your paper at their group's internal meetings, or hell, just toss the paper across the lunchtable and say to their colleages, "you should give this a glance." It's extremely common for labs/groups to have two weekly presentations- one presentation is the work of someone inside the group, and often someone in the same group presents research OUTSIDE the group. And often, it's presented regardless of how sound it is; it's meaningful to say "here is what so-and-so found" and then show why they were wrong, or what they did badly.
Now, I'm on the outside of all of this as an IT person, but I've made many scientist-friends and their lives revolve around this stuff. "Willis" clearly doesn't understand it. The peer-reviewed journal system is complex, but also remarkably free of collusion. After all, if someone presents solid research that something widely believed to be true is not, it helps the journal because controversy sells copies, generates debate and discussion, generates mentions in other papers in other journals (hellooooo impact factor!), etc. The primary concern of a journal is not looking stupid by publishing something that isn't sound and well supported, not suppressing controversial research.
Show me a scientist who bitches and moans publicly about his anti-global-warming research not being published, and I'll show you someone whose science wasn't sound enough to cut the mustard. Every day thousands of papers are submitted to journals and rejected partially or fully, and it's not a conspiracy. It's people doing research that isn't supported enough. There is certainly a dark side, namely, reviewers who don't recuse themselves or aren't qualified to evaluate a particular paper, but that's one reason multiple reviewers are involved, and you can always submit your work to another journal.
I'll just resort to Bittorrent for my books, just as I do now. If the corporations that run the US and my own country's government oppose this, I don't give a shit. I refuse to let them take away my right to read.
What part of being blind excuses you from having to pay for something the rest of us have to pay for? And, way to go supporting the companies that do publish material for you. This isn't the anime industry where fansubs were needed to help 'seed' the market outside Asia. You're stealing, plain and simple. If you don't like the copyright model, fine, don't buy. Read public-domain works like the classics, or free garbage like Cory Doctorow's stuff. I have a right to freely associate and travel, but that doesn't mean I get to ride the bus for free (unlike you) or show up to a show all my friends are at and not pay the cover charge.
Also, you don't have a "right to read", nor does anyone else. Authors, newspapers, publishers, or bookstores publish what, where and when they want to, and the government is not allowed to control that; hence freedom of the PRESS. It doesn't mean you are entitled to braille or electronic versions of whatever you want. It doesn't mean you or anyone else has the right to walk into a library and demand a book, or steal a book - off the shelf or electronically.
Sorry, but I get a little steamed when people start slinging around the words "I have a right to" or "my right to", or develop a sense of entitlement because of their disability. I also have friends who work for independent booksellers. They're not exactly rolling in the dough- they do it in part because they love literature. I also have friends who are authors, and they're not rolling in the dough either. It's years of writing, followed by a year+ of trying to find a publisher and get the thing edited, then months of promoting the book via tours. What do they get for their trouble? Pennies on the dollar per book. You think it's hard finding a book you want in braille? Try PUBLISHING a book.
A relative told me years ago: "The world does not owe you a fucking thing." Guess what? The world doesn't owe YOU anything, either.
Are you so sure that they have video cameras covering the exit area? One weird thing about this is that the incident happened as he was leaving the US, where you normally don't stop at all.
Yes, because you're entering Canada, and they've got all sorts of cameras too. I seriously doubt there is a single square inch of a border crossing that isn't under 24x7, recorded surveillance.
Actually, that's an excellent point, one I didn't think of. At least the last time I hit one of the VT crossings, the into-Canada side, you only talk to a Canadian border agent. You talk only to a US agent on the way in.
I'm now really, really curious as to why he ended up talking to any US customs agents on his way out of the country. If you're leaving, the US doesn't give a rat's ass what you've got in your car or anything- you're literally someone else's problem. I know a number of people with restricted academic visas who didn't have problems leaving the US- they had problems getting back in, because their visa said they were not supposed to leave the US, and the US customs agent wanted to know why they were coming back in...
Given that customs officers are trained to get a vibe off people (by asking questions about your stay etc- they don't give a rat's ass what you say, it's HOW you say it.) Given out righteous some slashdotters get, I can imagine them giving a customs agent a real bad vibe. Just look at any of the threads about laptop confiscations (I agree, those are very evil and I feel they should be illegal.) There's some serious hatred here for customs folks.
I crossed the border several times to go to track driving schools. First border crossing, I was nervous. The Canadian officer was curt, and mostly concerned about the fact that I was unemployed at the time. Probably picked up on my being nervous. I just didn't want the hassle of being searched or giving the "wrong" answer.
Second border crossing, the Canadian officer was friendly and while they are trained to engage you in banter to judge how shady you are (which clearly Mr. Watts failed, want to guess why?), he seemed genuinely amused that I was taking MY car to drive on a racetrack. Have fun, he said, and handed me my paperwork.
Both times back, the US crossing was completely unmemorable. Drove up, handed over my license, answered some quick questions about when I came into Canada, what I'd done, and whether I had anything to declare. 2-3 minutes, tops- long enough to run my plates and license in the computer and see how fidgety I was. Nobody at any of the events I went to (all of them American) had anything bad to say, and some of them had been coming to the track for years.
I lost my license right before a trip to Canada, and called around trying to figure out if a temporary replacement license was sufficient. I eventually got put through to one of the actual border officers, who was audibly in the middle of his lunch break, munching on his sandwich. For a cop on his lunchbreak being pestered by some dumb shmuck, he was not only helpful but...chipper. He wouldn't make any solid promises, but he did ask me when I was coming, my name, and a few other things, and said if he was on shift when I came back into the US, he'd help if he could and take the fact that I called ahead etc under consideration, but he said I definitely needed to make sure I'd be OK getting IN to Canada. So he gave me the number for his Canadian counterparts, and cheerfully wished me a good afternoon and best of luck trying to get a 'real' license or some other government ID out of my state government (didn't.)
HOLY FUCKING SHIT. A very curt, annoyed, angry Canadian customs agent answered the phone, and read me the fucking riot act and demanded to know how I got the number for their office, why was I calling them, who was I, what the hell did I want. When I explained what I wanted (mainly to know if I'd be permitted into Canada with my temporary license, and was there anything I could do to smooth the wheels, like bringing extra documentation of some sort, anything to help), point-black refused to answer or discuss anything with me, and hung up after angrily saying "NEUO!" to several questions.
Uttering the phrase "I won't answer your questions; I want to speak to a lawyer".
Come back when you've researched "threshold inquiry." If police have reasonable suspicion that you're up to something criminal, they can investigate. That includes interviewing you. If you don't cooperate, and they still suspect you of a crime, they can arrest you while they further investigate, for a limited time, until they must charge you.
Given that everything there is legal, if you resist it, yes, you are committing a criminal act. And, whether you are required to present state ID varies state-to-state, but most only require that if you're driving. If you're not driving, you're not required to carry ID.
In MA, you are only required to ANSWER as to your identity- name and address, chiefly, if asked.
It sounds like the facts aren't all in yet, so let's not leap to conclusions.
Border stations have more security cameras than you can shake a stick at. I guarantee the whole thing was caught on at least one security camera. And the border officers damn well know that both their supervisors, and the courts, will see that video.
Also, Doctorow WAS NOT A WITNESS. He's repeating what the guy told him, which means his information is from the accused, and was initially second-hand, since he then "updates" the story with words directly from the accused.
I heard about it early Wednesday morning in London
Also, accounts (which all appear to have come from the accused) seem to range wildly and aren't consistent on basic facts, despite them coming from the same source- the accused. Some mention him "getting shitkicked" and others simply say he was pepper-sprayed, put on the ground, and arrested. None of the accounts are a specific retelling. He doesn't mention EXACTLY what happened, what was said, etc. Since he's talking at all, that means he hasn't talked to his lawyer (or his lawyer is grossly incompetent, which is what you get for hiring a bunch of EFF lawyers instead of a criminal defense attorney. The first thing you do in something like this is SHUT UP ABOUT IT, unless you want to be hearing it read back in court.)
$5000 says he was told his car was being searched, he started throwing a temper-tantrum, got out of the car, was told to get back in the car, pushed an officer away from him, and that earned him being pepper-sprayed and arrested.
Much as I am not a fan of the border patrol's search powers, nor cops in general- police are usually trained to DE-escalate confrontations, and arrests and the like mean paperwork. Think about how much fun change control request forms and HR paperwork are...cops don't like it any more than you do.
It essentially has a fixed histogram. I wonder what you'd get back from them if you sent them an image specifically designed to be hard to fit into that histogram...
A squad comprised of a Ninja, a gradeschool girl with magical superpowers, a vampire, and a giant robot. On your doorstep. With a note that politely says, "Do not taunt happy fun puzzle."
Slashdot Mirror
The Oregon State University Open Source Lab's data center hosts some of the Linux community's heaviest hitting projects including the Linux Master Kernel and the Linux Foundation. It is also the primary location for the Apache Software Foundation and Drupal, open source content management software. The lab, aka OSUOSL, also hosted the core infrastructure for Mozilla's Firefox project, and currently host's six of Google's servers.
Uh- why is one organization the primary/master site for so many high-profile, critical open source projects?
This is bad for a number of political, economic, security, and technical reasons. All it takes is one pissed off Dean or university president and you can be shut down overnight. It's happened to some famous researchers; one morning they came in and found all their equipment locked up in storage, their papers confiscated, and students/researchers/staff axed.
about tablet computers to date. What's going on? Xconomy's analysis makes three points. 1) Previous tablet makers have shown little imagination around UIs and how a touchscreen changes things. 2) With the iPhone, Apple has shown what's possible in this regard
Yeah. As a 2-year+ iPhone owner:
For all the uneducated jokes about 1-button mice, the touchscreen UI is even worse. I like the trackpad swipe shortcuts on my MBP for home/end and back/forward, but I have yet to use a single one of the multitouch actions (the stretch/rotate ones, for example.)
It's a perfectly fair question. The membership board needs to have defined standards; if they're just willy-nilly casting votes yes/no, and they're "members", then the membership is almost certainly going to consist of a very small group of people who hold the same opinions (or are friends / business partners.)
They also should be held responsible to someone. Otherwise, they can do whatever the hell they want, including ignore guidelines given to them.
This may come as a shock to some of the younger (in terms of age/maturity) members of slashdot, but corporate governance is complicated, and little things matter. Just like with civil and criminal law. Think of that the next time Slashdot posts a "some judge did X" story and you all pile on the "how stupid" bandwagon.
like immunity from certain tax requirements and from having its property or records subject to search and seizure
You Americans are crazy.
Yeah, imagine that, wanting to be able to have the freedom to investigate a foreign organization for corruption or illegal activities.
The logic is the machine is actually our property and the customer is renting its use, just as most apartment complexes will keep master keys to the units.
While I suspect that "hacker" is using someone else's physical hardware (and is clearly not telling the full story), you don't have a right to access a machine just because you own it. Among other things, you're wrong about apartment units, and it's a really shit parallel example.
There is no reason in a non-managed hosting environment for a hosting company to require, demand, or force access the operating system of machine. It's quite simply none of your goddamn business. You provide a connection, power, security, and environment. They provide you with money. You don't have a right to be nosy.
Futhermore, maintaining root password lists and ssh root keys (which I doubt have a password, or have a commonly known password, or have a password on a list somewhere lots of people have access to) sets you up for a giant clusterfuck (namely, someone executing a script that goes and deletes a whole bunch of shit on ALL your customer's machines, or worse, starts intercepting customer's customer data.)
As to "Hacker" (jesus christ, seriously?): if you actually own the box you're running on, and just renting space- find a new hosting company. Don't bother trying to get police involved- they won't give a damn, or understand. And as to your crashing problems: let me guess, if you own the hardware: you assembled something yourself, right?
If none of their other customers in the same rack are crashing from power fluctuations, uh...maybe it's your hardware or an OS problem?
Buying Chocolate when you wanted Strawberry is a bad decision. Getting behind the wheel while drunk shows a fundamental contempt for human life.
Yeah, because drunk people have coherent thought processes, good morals, logic, and sound judgment.
I never understood (from a technical legal perspective, relax Mr. Moderators) how people could be held responsible for their actions while sufficiently inebriated. They're basically temporarily insane/mentally retarded. They can only really be held for allowing themselves to get drunk, something that's completely legal most places.
Live anywhere near a college or a popular bar, and you'll wish for the days of prohibition. I'm not aware of any society that has demonstrated an ability to handle alcohol responsibly.
Why should newspapers get first crack at the information posted in the leaks? It sounds like all they'd contribute is the research time of their writers (and a little local publicity), and yet the leaks would shorten and ease their research process enormously.
Uh, because it's often good to be able to investigate without tipping your hand? Records tend to disappear off the shelves, people stop returning your phone calls, and media relations people start spinning faster than a top...or simply saying "no comment."
It's especially fun when they don't know you have proof of your claims, and thus spin utter bullshit lies.
By helping reporters to more quickly arrive at the heart of the story, WikiLeaks Local just might turn around the industry!
The problem isn't just paying people to research and verify stories. The problem is lso that people who are rich and don't like their dirty laundry being in the papers, tend to use their money to threaten papers with legal action. Small papers have to tremble and retreat. Big papers won't cave.
Case and point would be the community newspaper which investigated condo conversion developers. The story had to be handed off to the Boston Globe, because the Globe could afford to tell the developers to Just Try And Sue Us.
Clearly the story that Chris Lovett was uncovering "had legs," as we in the newspaper business used to say. The buy-rehab-sell-foreclose matrix called for a deep looksee that would by its nature be extensive, expensive, and full of extraordinary challenges for a local newspaper and its intrepid freelance reporter.
Soon enough came a letter to Lovett from a lawyer from the law firm representing Scott warning him that his continuing reporting could result in serious legal consequences for him and the Reporter.
No newspaper worth its ink falls back in the face of such an admonition against the quality of its news report, but reality does intervene in terms of staff size, the money needed to pursue a story with so many tentacles, the time needed to dot all the "I's", and the will and financial resources to deal with a defense of its actions and those of its trusted reporter in the legal arena should things come to that.
So the Reporter's pursuit of the ending to this story was stalled.
Enter an eminent investigative reporter named Walter V. Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize winner with The Boston Globe's Spotlight Team, which he directed in its world-shaking probe into the priest-abuse scandal in the archdiocese of Boston. I happened to be playing a round of golf with him and I mentioned the Lovett two-parter to him, saying that the Reporter and Chris had gone as far as we could with the story, given our resources.
After some discussion, Robinson, retired but holding a continuing affiliation with the Globe, managed to get the story onto the paper's agenda and the result of that almost a year later was this past Sunday's lead-story Page One presentation of the Michael David Scott real estate story that ran across two full pages inside.
With Perian installed (have you been living in a cave?) Quicktime handles every AVI, MPG, FLV, and MKV file I've thrown at it in years. Quicktime Player in Snow Leopard doesn't think it can open MKV files, but that's why you don't remove Quicktime Player 7 (there's an option for this in the upgrade, because QP7 does things the new QP can't.)
vProspective studies using very sensitive early pregnancy tests have found that 25% of pregnancies are miscarried by the sixth week LMP (since the woman's Last Menstrual Period).[29][30] Clinical miscarriages (those occurring after the sixth week LMP) occur in 8% of pregnancies.[30]
25+8 = 33%. Which is one third, which is what I guessed. How the hell did you get modded up for this?
The survival rates for childbirth without medical support are lousy enough to make medical support a generally good idea; but it isn't as though humans are exempt from the general mammalian ability to deliver live young without dying.
We've already got a sky-high miscarriage rate, a fun fact nobody likes to talk about in public. Something like 1/3rd of all pregnancies in the US result in miscarriages. Though I am aware of no science supporting this, I suspect it has to do with 2-3 generations full of people being born that otherwise were not healthy enough for one reason or another. Nature kinda takes care of this on its own.
I know it sounds cruel and insane, but part of me really thinks that we're fucking ourselves over long-term by providing such "excellent" health care. We're almost completely bypassing natural selection...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/business/energy-environment/08fracking.html
The drilling boom is raising concern in many parts of the country, and the reaction is creating political obstacles for the gas industry. Hazards like methane contamination of drinking water wells, long known in regions where gas production was common, are spreading to populous areas that have little history of coping with such risks, but happen to sit atop shale beds.
And a more worrisome possibility has come to light. A string of incidents in places like Wyoming and Pennsylvania in recent years has pointed to a possible link between hydraulic fracturing and pollution of groundwater supplies. In the worst case, such pollution could damage crucial supplies of water used for drinking and agriculture
It isn't going to be climate change that kills us. We won't have any clean water to drink. Fun fact: the "safe water drinking act" isn't being enforced by the EPA, and even water that has very unhealthy level of arsenic is "safe". Does a 1-in-600 chance of getting bladder cancer sound "safe" to you?
These villagers were scamming the poor guy. $9 million in damages from a *3.4* quake? Cripes, a bus crossing in front of my house is close to 3.4... either their houses are made from eggshells, or this is the scam of the century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull
Translation/application: if you demonstrate negligence and cause an earthquake, even if everyone's houses are made of chewing gum and paper- you're responsible for the damage, because had you not done what you did, the damage wouldn't have happened.
Murder gets you extremely heavy time. Attempted murder doesn't get you as much.
Unless you're driving your car and hit a cyclist. That generally gets you nothing at all.
Seriously.. despite all the controversy it has stirred up.. if you don't have anything to hide.. who cares
Kinda sad that I have to post this for the second time in a week. Disclaimer: from Slashdot, not originally mine.
But at complex junctions, actually seeing the layout and where I'm supposed to end up is invaluable. A picture really can be worth a thousand words.
Yes, but the columnist's point was that you don't need fancy graphics with photos to tell you that. All you need is a clear diagram.
The factory system in my Volvo is relatively primitive (dates back to 2001 or so), but has an excellent user interface. You get a simple rocker-pad and two buttons, on the BACK of the wheel, that control everything; your hands never leave the ideal steering wheel position. You also get an infrared control with the same buttons, for passengers. The screen rises out of the dashboard, dead center. It does not obscure the road, but it's also close to said road, so your eyes don't wander far.
The display is relatively simple- map, road name you're on at the bottom, next turn name/distance/road name up top. I think there's a total-time-and-distance-left display, too. The time of day isn't there. Nothing is on the screen except what is directly relevant.
When a turn approaches, you get a full-screen diagram of the upcoming intersection with you entering from the bottom, and a marked path...and despite the very complex intersections where I live (rotaries with all sorts of shit happening off them, 5+6 way intersections, etc) it always displays them perfectly.
Did I mention it's fully capable of dead reckoning, with vehicle speed and compass sensors? Your dashboard GPS may have photorealistic intersections, but my GPS works a mile into a tunnel when the tunnel has a 3-way split. About the only thing I wish for is that it were faster at route calculations, displayed more street names and route numbers (it's very bad at this) and was a little better at picking up satellites; once in a blue moon it gets confused as to which street it is on (this is rare since it has dead-reckoning capabilities.)
Isn't this precisely the risk of overreliance on the peer review system? Unpopular opinions get silenced.
That's a common myth. You see, there are many journals. All want to grow their subscribership, increase their impact factor (the scientific journal measurement of notoriety.) They do that by publishing the most interesting research they can.
Doing research that mirrors what's already been done isn't very popular; grad students and postdocs, for example, have to clear what they're doing with their PIs. That's not likely to happen unless they've got some angle. This isn't apparent to the layman- or even someone who has "PhD" in their title, but even a minor difference in premise can be a big deal.
Identical research also doesn't get published. New, fresh, interesting research is what journals want. So while Willis thinks there's a massive groupthink, there's actually little of the kind. It may LOOK like groupthink, because on the surface, yes, there's the gross layer of widely-accepted-fact. The devil is in the details, and that's where research is taking place.
It's a special kind of arrogance to think that you can just stroll in and understand, much less analyze, a field where people dedicate years, if not decades, to their research.
The author raises good points about the dangers of over-reliance on the peer review system. It's a good system but it is not doesn't always work - crap gets through and good articles aren't published.
And neither of you understand the peer review system. It's actually a very complex system, and one full of competition on many levels.
First, there are many scientists trying to get their work published. Second, there are many journals. Third, each journal has a journal impact factor. Fourth, papers mention other papers. Fifth, journals and papers are not the only means for how scientists communicate their work or collaborate. There are conferences, groups invite speakers, etc.
A journal impact factor is a simple calculation. On average, a paper published in Nature gets X number of mentions in other journal's papers. A paper published just about anywhere else gets much less. So people want to get published in Nature, obviously. But people are also realistic, and their PIs help them with finding the right places to get published. And if you don't, you can try again. Sound research is likely to be resubmitted, often times elsewhere.
When a paper is submitted, you don't just get a "we're publishing it!" or a "DENIED!". You get questions from the reviewers, sometimes requests for more data. If it's rejected, often times it's rejected with some helpful, useful suggestions on how the reviewers feel the paper could be improved, and sometimes it's said between the lines that if you resubmit after taking some of those suggestions, you'll get the thumbs up from that reviewer.
Yes, Nature and the like are the holy grail. But many, many people don't look only in Nature. They read the journals dedicated to their little niche, because they know that sometimes good, fresh thinking doesn't make it into Nature just because so many people submit. And guess what? So are all their true colleagues. So while you don't get your name in the newspaper or a mention on the nightly news, your research still sees the light of day, and often times, with more 'useful' eyeballs. And if it's good, you impress people, they collaborate with you, present your paper at their group's internal meetings, or hell, just toss the paper across the lunchtable and say to their colleages, "you should give this a glance." It's extremely common for labs/groups to have two weekly presentations- one presentation is the work of someone inside the group, and often someone in the same group presents research OUTSIDE the group. And often, it's presented regardless of how sound it is; it's meaningful to say "here is what so-and-so found" and then show why they were wrong, or what they did badly.
Now, I'm on the outside of all of this as an IT person, but I've made many scientist-friends and their lives revolve around this stuff. "Willis" clearly doesn't understand it. The peer-reviewed journal system is complex, but also remarkably free of collusion. After all, if someone presents solid research that something widely believed to be true is not, it helps the journal because controversy sells copies, generates debate and discussion, generates mentions in other papers in other journals (hellooooo impact factor!), etc. The primary concern of a journal is not looking stupid by publishing something that isn't sound and well supported, not suppressing controversial research.
Show me a scientist who bitches and moans publicly about his anti-global-warming research not being published, and I'll show you someone whose science wasn't sound enough to cut the mustard. Every day thousands of papers are submitted to journals and rejected partially or fully, and it's not a conspiracy. It's people doing research that isn't supported enough. There is certainly a dark side, namely, reviewers who don't recuse themselves or aren't qualified to evaluate a particular paper, but that's one reason multiple reviewers are involved, and you can always submit your work to another journal.
I'll just resort to Bittorrent for my books, just as I do now. If the corporations that run the US and my own country's government oppose this, I don't give a shit. I refuse to let them take away my right to read.
What part of being blind excuses you from having to pay for something the rest of us have to pay for? And, way to go supporting the companies that do publish material for you. This isn't the anime industry where fansubs were needed to help 'seed' the market outside Asia. You're stealing, plain and simple. If you don't like the copyright model, fine, don't buy. Read public-domain works like the classics, or free garbage like Cory Doctorow's stuff. I have a right to freely associate and travel, but that doesn't mean I get to ride the bus for free (unlike you) or show up to a show all my friends are at and not pay the cover charge.
Also, you don't have a "right to read", nor does anyone else. Authors, newspapers, publishers, or bookstores publish what, where and when they want to, and the government is not allowed to control that; hence freedom of the PRESS. It doesn't mean you are entitled to braille or electronic versions of whatever you want. It doesn't mean you or anyone else has the right to walk into a library and demand a book, or steal a book - off the shelf or electronically.
Sorry, but I get a little steamed when people start slinging around the words "I have a right to" or "my right to", or develop a sense of entitlement because of their disability. I also have friends who work for independent booksellers. They're not exactly rolling in the dough- they do it in part because they love literature. I also have friends who are authors, and they're not rolling in the dough either. It's years of writing, followed by a year+ of trying to find a publisher and get the thing edited, then months of promoting the book via tours. What do they get for their trouble? Pennies on the dollar per book. You think it's hard finding a book you want in braille? Try PUBLISHING a book.
A relative told me years ago: "The world does not owe you a fucking thing." Guess what? The world doesn't owe YOU anything, either.
Are you so sure that they have video cameras covering the exit area? One weird thing about this is that the incident happened as he was leaving the US, where you normally don't stop at all.
Yes, because you're entering Canada, and they've got all sorts of cameras too. I seriously doubt there is a single square inch of a border crossing that isn't under 24x7, recorded surveillance.
Actually, that's an excellent point, one I didn't think of. At least the last time I hit one of the VT crossings, the into-Canada side, you only talk to a Canadian border agent. You talk only to a US agent on the way in.
I'm now really, really curious as to why he ended up talking to any US customs agents on his way out of the country. If you're leaving, the US doesn't give a rat's ass what you've got in your car or anything- you're literally someone else's problem. I know a number of people with restricted academic visas who didn't have problems leaving the US- they had problems getting back in, because their visa said they were not supposed to leave the US, and the US customs agent wanted to know why they were coming back in...
I crossed the border several times to go to track driving schools. First border crossing, I was nervous. The Canadian officer was curt, and mostly concerned about the fact that I was unemployed at the time. Probably picked up on my being nervous. I just didn't want the hassle of being searched or giving the "wrong" answer.
Second border crossing, the Canadian officer was friendly and while they are trained to engage you in banter to judge how shady you are (which clearly Mr. Watts failed, want to guess why?), he seemed genuinely amused that I was taking MY car to drive on a racetrack. Have fun, he said, and handed me my paperwork.
Both times back, the US crossing was completely unmemorable. Drove up, handed over my license, answered some quick questions about when I came into Canada, what I'd done, and whether I had anything to declare. 2-3 minutes, tops- long enough to run my plates and license in the computer and see how fidgety I was. Nobody at any of the events I went to (all of them American) had anything bad to say, and some of them had been coming to the track for years.
I lost my license right before a trip to Canada, and called around trying to figure out if a temporary replacement license was sufficient. I eventually got put through to one of the actual border officers, who was audibly in the middle of his lunch break, munching on his sandwich. For a cop on his lunchbreak being pestered by some dumb shmuck, he was not only helpful but...chipper. He wouldn't make any solid promises, but he did ask me when I was coming, my name, and a few other things, and said if he was on shift when I came back into the US, he'd help if he could and take the fact that I called ahead etc under consideration, but he said I definitely needed to make sure I'd be OK getting IN to Canada. So he gave me the number for his Canadian counterparts, and cheerfully wished me a good afternoon and best of luck trying to get a 'real' license or some other government ID out of my state government (didn't.)
HOLY FUCKING SHIT. A very curt, annoyed, angry Canadian customs agent answered the phone, and read me the fucking riot act and demanded to know how I got the number for their office, why was I calling them, who was I, what the hell did I want. When I explained what I wanted (mainly to know if I'd be permitted into Canada with my temporary license, and was there anything I could do to smooth the wheels, like bringing extra documentation of some sort, anything to help), point-black refused to answer or discuss anything with me, and hung up after angrily saying "NEUO!" to several questions.
Uttering the phrase "I won't answer your questions; I want to speak to a lawyer".
Come back when you've researched "threshold inquiry." If police have reasonable suspicion that you're up to something criminal, they can investigate. That includes interviewing you. If you don't cooperate, and they still suspect you of a crime, they can arrest you while they further investigate, for a limited time, until they must charge you.
Given that everything there is legal, if you resist it, yes, you are committing a criminal act. And, whether you are required to present state ID varies state-to-state, but most only require that if you're driving. If you're not driving, you're not required to carry ID.
In MA, you are only required to ANSWER as to your identity- name and address, chiefly, if asked.
It sounds like the facts aren't all in yet, so let's not leap to conclusions.
Border stations have more security cameras than you can shake a stick at. I guarantee the whole thing was caught on at least one security camera. And the border officers damn well know that both their supervisors, and the courts, will see that video.
Also, Doctorow WAS NOT A WITNESS. He's repeating what the guy told him, which means his information is from the accused, and was initially second-hand, since he then "updates" the story with words directly from the accused.
I heard about it early Wednesday morning in London
Also, accounts (which all appear to have come from the accused) seem to range wildly and aren't consistent on basic facts, despite them coming from the same source- the accused. Some mention him "getting shitkicked" and others simply say he was pepper-sprayed, put on the ground, and arrested. None of the accounts are a specific retelling. He doesn't mention EXACTLY what happened, what was said, etc. Since he's talking at all, that means he hasn't talked to his lawyer (or his lawyer is grossly incompetent, which is what you get for hiring a bunch of EFF lawyers instead of a criminal defense attorney. The first thing you do in something like this is SHUT UP ABOUT IT, unless you want to be hearing it read back in court.)
$5000 says he was told his car was being searched, he started throwing a temper-tantrum, got out of the car, was told to get back in the car, pushed an officer away from him, and that earned him being pepper-sprayed and arrested.
Much as I am not a fan of the border patrol's search powers, nor cops in general- police are usually trained to DE-escalate confrontations, and arrests and the like mean paperwork. Think about how much fun change control request forms and HR paperwork are...cops don't like it any more than you do.
It essentially has a fixed histogram. I wonder what you'd get back from them if you sent them an image specifically designed to be hard to fit into that histogram...
A squad comprised of a Ninja, a gradeschool girl with magical superpowers, a vampire, and a giant robot. On your doorstep. With a note that politely says, "Do not taunt happy fun puzzle."
...because the UI for Thunderbird is THE. WORST.
For example, want to copy the people who have been cc'd on a message so you can paste it into a new one? BZZZZT. Can't do it.
Only in the open source world would it be normal to have to do about 3-4 steps to add "cc" or "bcc" to an email, instead of one tab or click.