In the NPR interview with the guys who ran the study, they said that it seemed that the only limit on the speed that practiced humans could track the scent was the speed they could crawl with their noses that close to the ground. That makes sense - I mean you can't crawl along with your nose literally in the grass at any kind of speed at all. A dog is able to run at full speed with it's nose just inches from the ground - and it's eyes are placed so it can still be looking forward as it does it.
Well, for a strong scent, true. Near the limit of detection ( for humans), a person will repeatedly lose the scent whereas a dog won't. Eventually the person doesn't even pick it whereas the dog has no problem.
Dog's noses are very impressive...it's incredible to see the kinds of tricks they can manage. But I wonder where that statement of "a million times more sensitive than humans" comes from - I bet it's something some journalist guessed at 100 years ago that we are all passing on as if it were the definitive answer. This study suggests to me that some simple practicing could narrow that gap considerably.
Nope, those numbers come from limits of detection studies typically, and dogs kick our asses. Practicing won't get you close. I've seen numbers on LOD with dogs vs humans for detection of various chemicals. They always win.
For what it's worth, our research group worked with these guys a few years back on a multi-university project. Very cool stuff, but definitely not new.
Memo to Apple PR: Work with this guy. Simply ensure that each bug identified is fixed ASAP, and issue a press release about it. This lets you capture and keep the high ground by showing that you care more about security and quality than the competition does. Up for it?
All that is great assuming either 1) you don't work with other people, or 2) you can convince your coworkers and supervisors to switch. Otherwise, like me, you're screwed.
Power usage percentages have long been known, and is a very simple search away. This article adds absolutely nothing of interest to the equati
Obviously it's not groundbreaking research, but it gives concrete numbers in $ for what some devices are costing. It's also interesting to see such an analytical approach to one's consumption and expenditures, which probably wouldn't occur to most people. This is actually a rather big problem. Heck, there was an article in the vaunted Washington Post recently about people living on salaries that are rather high, but barely skating by because they have no idea where their money goes. And it's not like the families in question had huge houses and sports cars. So I think it's good to see stories like this if it helps people get ideas for analyzing their own finances.
I think that's why it was in the WSJ - it's the model for how to improve your own fiscal situation. It's not something complicated, just an example of what people can do.
We have found your singularity, Mr Hawking, and it appears it is made out of meaningless buzzwords. They seem to have zero volume and an infinite density.
Most Russians want Mr. Putin to overturn a constitutional bar on a third term in office. Many will back whomever Mr. Putin endorses to succeed him."
Well, as much as Kasparov is complaining about the democratic process, it seems to me the people are getting what they want. Who are we to tell them they're wrong? It's in America's culture to distrust extended rule and anything that smells like a monarchy. It's in Russia's culture to prefer stability of a strong leader to the uncertainty that can be found in the absence thereof. If they truly want Putin to rule them, let him.
Yes, HP should have to lose those sales precisely because it is a monopolistic practice. HP is contributing to the monopoly by purchasing in that volume from a single vendor (MS) and thus is guilty by association. It is a lesser degree of guilt to be sure, but then loss of potential sales is a lesser punishment than a mandated break up anyway.
That's a punitive solution to a monopoly problem, not a remediation for a consumer. Fight that war elsewhere, HP is as much a victim of MS as the rest of us.
Equal opportunity laws in the workplace meant that more minorities had to be hired than might have been convenient or preferred otherwise. It came to pass because governing bodies thought it made the general society of an employing and working populance more fair.
Yay, using misplaced governmental vigilante justice to ham-handedly "solve" problems by making them worse! I'll take such in neither cited case.
finally this is a PUBLIC site run by as in run by the government! The government shouldn't require one to use a certain browser without a really good reason.
That seems very silly to me. That's like saying parking lots at government buildings should be able to take any kind of vehicle anyone might own, including car, truck, horse and buggy, airplane and spaceship. The government isn't required to support every choice one of its customers might make. This guy chose to be in an extremely small minority, so I say tough shit.
However, if your purpose is to destroy the entire GPL ecosystem, then a rejection of the license on that basis would be quite a coup - you'd render all redistribution of GPL-licensed software illegal.
What would be the case? For example, would I sue to invalidate a license granted to me by the GPL? That doesn't make much sense. Would I claim some strange entrapment argument?
The only arguments I can see is on the fringe, as to what constitutes a program, and people playing weasel games (as some have been known to) to try an end around the GPL by releasing a GPL-compliant stub program and a larger closed-source program that actually contains the real functionality. But that doesn't really invalidate the GPL so much as potentially require tightening of the language.
Can anyone think of a legit type of case that could cause real problems for the GPL?
No, I think it should be mandated that computers can be purchased OS-free for a price that is less than the price of one with the OS by a difference of the retail price of the OS. I think people should have the choice.
OEM price, maybe. Subtracting retail might be a bit much.
It has been... several times in several countries... most recently is was the fool Wallace who got told where to go by an American court
And to add the usual point...even if the GPL were somehow found invalid, it means you have NO license to distribute the software, and thus have not helped your case any! As you point out, Wallace's assertion that the GPL was somehow synonymous with public domain won't stand scrutiny by even the dumbest judge. ANd that's saying something.
I'd rather have an OS that run's today's software correctly and not that from 10 years ago rather than the reverse. I'd say if one needs to run Mac OS software from 10 years ago, there's an easy solution - buy a Mac from 10 years ago, which at this point will probably set you back $100.
But as far as backward-compatibility goes, I imagine the Linux and Unix take the gold.
In theory, yes. However, given the number of Makefiles that I've seen that require a specific version of a library, in practice it doesn't work out that way. Also many toolkits change the function calls in their APIs, and many projects just disappear.
I run all 3 OS's (MacOS, Linux, Windows when I must) and I find that Linux has the least chance of sucessful software installation if the software and the OS aren't of the same vintage.
Aha smart guy, only some of the 1982 pennies are zinc clad, some were still copper. So unless you think you can tell the difference (I usually can), then grab one that says 1983 or later!
What about the high school science experiment where you dissolve the zinc core?
Well, make sure you have a post-1982 penny. You make a scratch that cuts through the copper exterior. Dump the penny in nitric acid (HNO3). Nitric acid can dissolve Zinc, but not copper. Thus, you're left with a shell of copper.
If they want to bust a classroom of schoolchildren for killing pennies, go right ahead! I throw mine away.
There is a huge advantage when everything is open source, because then anyone can fix anything if found broken. The point of the ban is to motivate people to submit open source drivers. If the system is not open source, you could as well call it Microsoft Windows and hey, that already exists. So if you prefer closed source drivers, then by all means, use Windows. Currently there are only few closed source drivers in Linux, so the system is working pretty well. Hopefully nvidia will also publish open source drivers.
That's a great ideal, but if Linux wants to be taken seriously, and used by people who don't live in their parents' basements, it has to also interact with the closed-source world. Part of that is using modules created by companies who don't give a shit about OSS, but want to support its customers. We want to encourage this. Perhaps later, when they realize that OSS == free drivers, they'll wise up. It's best not to push them away.
Or, alternatively, as a user of Linux I don't feel like being held hostage to politics. Don't tell me "Sorry, your video card won't work because we're trying to strongarm NVidia into doing things our way." That's something that would push me over to FreeBSD rather quickly. I'm sick enough of the damned flamewar between Linus and Schilling that forced me to burn CDs as root for a few minor kernel versions, just because someone decided to try and prove a point.
coal thermoelectric plants are impractical outside areas where you can strip mine coal,
Erm....you can transport coal. You can burn it pretty much anywhere. You can't transport wind. Big difference. And the energy per physical volume of the windmills is relatively low. Looking at the future increase in energy demand worldwide, wind just isn't cutting it.
Ever heard of Niagara Falls hydroelectric plant and Nikola Tesla? Back then, the guy demonstrated that energy can be harvested in remote locations, then conducted to areas of deployment.
I assumed it was obvious that my point was that there are rather few places which offer the appropriate conditions for wind *collection*. Obviously the electricity can be transmitted anywhere. As for hydro in general, most of the dammable rivers have already, well, been dam(m|n)ed. There's a significant diminishing returns thing there.
If you do the math on it, pretty much the only thing that has the potential to supply the exponential demand for energy is solar. By happy coincidence, the places with the most solar radiation happen to be places with low population density (ie, deserts). Or nuclear fusion, if we ever get that harnessed.
"without [..] rendering obsolete the broad and rich set of Web-authoring techniques developed over the past decade.'" Maybe not, but it sounds like it will render obsolete most computers developed before the past 5 years. Nothing before Windows 2000 is compatible with the new version of Gecko? It sounds like something is wrong with that.
If you're still using Win 98 in 2 years when this thing is out of beta, may God have mercy on your soul.
Computers haven't been sold with Win Me since early 2001 I believe, and by 2008 when FF3 is out, such a computer would be 7 years old at least. If your computer is that old, I'm OK with ceasing support to prevent the bloat that would require accomodating 2 rendering engines.
Might I point out that not everyone on the sex offenders registry is a pedophile or even what we might consider a "sex offender". Not terribly important, but a note.
This is true, treating them all the same doesn't make much sense. When we talk about predators, I'm talking about someone over the age of 18 messing with someone under the age of 12, by and large. These are diseased people who need to be removed from society. If we let them back in, we do it at our pleasure and with a whole lot of monitoring. And if they screw up again, throw 'em back for life.
sun and wind power are, IMHO, the alternative to oil and coal
Wind won't work outside of a very few areas that have the kinds of sustained winds to make it workable. In general, it just takes up too much physical space for the energy it generates.
Solar is potential workable, but not with single-crystal silicon wafers. Those actually require quite a bit of energy to create, and take (I believe) over a year to "pay back" that energy. Recent research into nanocrystalline materials has more potential there, as they require less energy to create.
hydrogen should be used just as storage/transport of energy
You're right by definition on that one - there's no real hydrogen source here, so in any situation we're adding energy to some other material to create hydrogen.
OK smart guy. Where in the US is it completely necessary for someone to hunt to eat? More to the point, since someone else needs to aim the damn gun anyway, wouldn't *that* person be able to hunt food for the blind person, wherever this mythical place is? C'mon McFly, engage the brain here!
A guy who sets up a rendezvous with a kid for sex and shows up at the kid's house is *not* the same thing as someone typing messages to an underage person that might be construed as shady.
If he's a convicted child molester, it's good enough for me. That's what's brilliant about the new law: if he is choosing to interact with this kid through an unregistered email, essentially demonstrating deception and violating, we have ourselves a case.
Have you never forgotten a password and set up a new account anywhere? By now I have dozens if not hundreds of disparate accounts on various sites. Sometimes I want to comment on a "registered users only" site and find my email is already in use. Yes, by me. I have various email addresses at hotmail, yahoo, etc. that I registered at some point to see if I could get the name, or to sign up on questionable sites (go ahead, spam me at circfile@hotmail.com), etc.. If I were a convicted sex offender, it would be impossible for me to:
1) figure out and register all online identities
2) keep track of those (and keep the authorities up to date) whenever I created a new one
Well, in this hypothetical situation, you should have thought of that before you fucked a kid. I'm not interested in bullshit excuses. If a convicted child molester is interacting with a child and discussing sexually explicit material with the child and doing this with a screen name he's intentionally concealed from the government, then lock the fucker away. If he's interacting with adults talking about non-sexual material, then give him a warning. Clearly there's some degree of discretion to be employed on the part of law enforcement and the judicial system.
Again, think about this in real-life terms if you have spent more than a few months on the internet.
I have, Mr. Condescending! What you haven't taken into account is that I really don't give a shit if a law is inconvenient for pedophiles! And if it gives the government a good excuse to lock up a shady piece of shit who's seeking out kids AFTER having a conviction for molestation, more the better.
How is that any different than the state of Open Source Software?
1. Because OSS was designed to actually function that way, whereas MS has not.
2) Because each individual OSS project doesn't depend on the others for success, whereas MS has intentionally integrated many of its divisions so that they do depend on each other (Windows and Office and IE, for instance).
3) Because MS has a single leadership, and any a leadership without a coherent plan is a bad one. OSS has many leaders for many projects, and they need not each have the same goal.
4) Each individual OSS project may in fact have a strong leader with a clear well thought out plan. The successful ones usually do.
Slashdot Mirror
In the NPR interview with the guys who ran the study, they said that it seemed that the only limit on the speed that practiced humans could track the scent was the speed they could crawl with their noses that close to the ground. That makes sense - I mean you can't crawl along with your nose literally in the grass at any kind of speed at all. A dog is able to run at full speed with it's nose just inches from the ground - and it's eyes are placed so it can still be looking forward as it does it.
Well, for a strong scent, true. Near the limit of detection ( for humans), a person will repeatedly lose the scent whereas a dog won't. Eventually the person doesn't even pick it whereas the dog has no problem.
Dog's noses are very impressive...it's incredible to see the kinds of tricks they can manage. But I wonder where that statement of "a million times more sensitive than humans" comes from - I bet it's something some journalist guessed at 100 years ago that we are all passing on as if it were the definitive answer. This study suggests to me that some simple practicing could narrow that gap considerably.
Nope, those numbers come from limits of detection studies typically, and dogs kick our asses. Practicing won't get you close. I've seen numbers on LOD with dogs vs humans for detection of various chemicals. They always win.
For what it's worth, our research group worked with these guys a few years back on a multi-university project. Very cool stuff, but definitely not new.
It's called "habituation." Also the reason you can't smell plain water - your nasal epitelium is always 100% saturated with humidity.
Memo to Apple PR: Work with this guy. Simply ensure that each bug identified is fixed ASAP, and issue a press release about it. This lets you capture and keep the high ground by showing that you care more about security and quality than the competition does. Up for it?
Memo to toby: We don't negotiate with terrorists.
--Steve
All that is great assuming either 1) you don't work with other people, or 2) you can convince your coworkers and supervisors to switch. Otherwise, like me, you're screwed.
Power usage percentages have long been known, and is a very simple search away. This article adds absolutely nothing of interest to the equati
Obviously it's not groundbreaking research, but it gives concrete numbers in $ for what some devices are costing. It's also interesting to see such an analytical approach to one's consumption and expenditures, which probably wouldn't occur to most people. This is actually a rather big problem. Heck, there was an article in the vaunted Washington Post recently about people living on salaries that are rather high, but barely skating by because they have no idea where their money goes. And it's not like the families in question had huge houses and sports cars. So I think it's good to see stories like this if it helps people get ideas for analyzing their own finances.
I think that's why it was in the WSJ - it's the model for how to improve your own fiscal situation. It's not something complicated, just an example of what people can do.
"bio-info-nano convergence"
We have found your singularity, Mr Hawking, and it appears it is made out of meaningless buzzwords. They seem to have zero volume and an infinite density.
Most Russians want Mr. Putin to overturn a constitutional bar on a third term in office. Many will back whomever Mr. Putin endorses to succeed him."
Well, as much as Kasparov is complaining about the democratic process, it seems to me the people are getting what they want. Who are we to tell them they're wrong? It's in America's culture to distrust extended rule and anything that smells like a monarchy. It's in Russia's culture to prefer stability of a strong leader to the uncertainty that can be found in the absence thereof. If they truly want Putin to rule them, let him.
Yes, HP should have to lose those sales precisely because it is a monopolistic practice. HP is contributing to the monopoly by purchasing in that volume from a single vendor (MS) and thus is guilty by association. It is a lesser degree of guilt to be sure, but then loss of potential sales is a lesser punishment than a mandated break up anyway.
That's a punitive solution to a monopoly problem, not a remediation for a consumer. Fight that war elsewhere, HP is as much a victim of MS as the rest of us.
Equal opportunity laws in the workplace meant that more minorities had to be hired than might have been convenient or preferred otherwise. It came to pass because governing bodies thought it made the general society of an employing and working populance more fair.
Yay, using misplaced governmental vigilante justice to ham-handedly "solve" problems by making them worse! I'll take such in neither cited case.
finally this is a PUBLIC site run by as in run by the government! The government shouldn't require one to use a certain browser without a really good reason.
That seems very silly to me. That's like saying parking lots at government buildings should be able to take any kind of vehicle anyone might own, including car, truck, horse and buggy, airplane and spaceship. The government isn't required to support every choice one of its customers might make. This guy chose to be in an extremely small minority, so I say tough shit.
However, if your purpose is to destroy the entire GPL ecosystem, then a rejection of the license on that basis would be quite a coup - you'd render all redistribution of GPL-licensed software illegal.
What would be the case? For example, would I sue to invalidate a license granted to me by the GPL? That doesn't make much sense. Would I claim some strange entrapment argument?
The only arguments I can see is on the fringe, as to what constitutes a program, and people playing weasel games (as some have been known to) to try an end around the GPL by releasing a GPL-compliant stub program and a larger closed-source program that actually contains the real functionality. But that doesn't really invalidate the GPL so much as potentially require tightening of the language.
Can anyone think of a legit type of case that could cause real problems for the GPL?
No, I think it should be mandated that computers can be purchased OS-free for a price that is less than the price of one with the OS by a difference of the retail price of the OS. I think people should have the choice.
OEM price, maybe. Subtracting retail might be a bit much.
It has been... several times in several countries... most recently is was the fool Wallace who got told where to go by an American court
And to add the usual point...even if the GPL were somehow found invalid, it means you have NO license to distribute the software, and thus have not helped your case any! As you point out, Wallace's assertion that the GPL was somehow synonymous with public domain won't stand scrutiny by even the dumbest judge. ANd that's saying something.
But as far as backward-compatibility goes, I imagine the Linux and Unix take the gold.
In theory, yes. However, given the number of Makefiles that I've seen that require a specific version of a library, in practice it doesn't work out that way. Also many toolkits change the function calls in their APIs, and many projects just disappear.
I run all 3 OS's (MacOS, Linux, Windows when I must) and I find that Linux has the least chance of sucessful software installation if the software and the OS aren't of the same vintage.
Aha smart guy, only some of the 1982 pennies are zinc clad, some were still copper. So unless you think you can tell the difference (I usually can), then grab one that says 1983 or later!
It doesn't matter how strong their password is if they are still giving it to whoever asks for it
Just think of all the fantastic passwords that might belong to the people who *didn't* fall for the phish! Alas, we'll never know.
What about the high school science experiment where you dissolve the zinc core?
Well, make sure you have a post-1982 penny. You make a scratch that cuts through the copper exterior. Dump the penny in nitric acid (HNO3). Nitric acid can dissolve Zinc, but not copper. Thus, you're left with a shell of copper.
If they want to bust a classroom of schoolchildren for killing pennies, go right ahead! I throw mine away.
There is a huge advantage when everything is open source, because then anyone can fix anything if found broken. The point of the ban is to motivate people to submit open source drivers. If the system is not open source, you could as well call it Microsoft Windows and hey, that already exists. So if you prefer closed source drivers, then by all means, use Windows. Currently there are only few closed source drivers in Linux, so the system is working pretty well. Hopefully nvidia will also publish open source drivers.
That's a great ideal, but if Linux wants to be taken seriously, and used by people who don't live in their parents' basements, it has to also interact with the closed-source world. Part of that is using modules created by companies who don't give a shit about OSS, but want to support its customers. We want to encourage this. Perhaps later, when they realize that OSS == free drivers, they'll wise up. It's best not to push them away.
Or, alternatively, as a user of Linux I don't feel like being held hostage to politics. Don't tell me "Sorry, your video card won't work because we're trying to strongarm NVidia into doing things our way." That's something that would push me over to FreeBSD rather quickly. I'm sick enough of the damned flamewar between Linus and Schilling that forced me to burn CDs as root for a few minor kernel versions, just because someone decided to try and prove a point.
coal thermoelectric plants are impractical outside areas where you can strip mine coal,
Erm....you can transport coal. You can burn it pretty much anywhere. You can't transport wind. Big difference. And the energy per physical volume of the windmills is relatively low. Looking at the future increase in energy demand worldwide, wind just isn't cutting it.
Ever heard of Niagara Falls hydroelectric plant and Nikola Tesla? Back then, the guy demonstrated that energy can be harvested in remote locations, then conducted to areas of deployment.
I assumed it was obvious that my point was that there are rather few places which offer the appropriate conditions for wind *collection*. Obviously the electricity can be transmitted anywhere. As for hydro in general, most of the dammable rivers have already, well, been dam(m|n)ed. There's a significant diminishing returns thing there.
If you do the math on it, pretty much the only thing that has the potential to supply the exponential demand for energy is solar. By happy coincidence, the places with the most solar radiation happen to be places with low population density (ie, deserts). Or nuclear fusion, if we ever get that harnessed.
"without [..] rendering obsolete the broad and rich set of Web-authoring techniques developed over the past decade.'" Maybe not, but it sounds like it will render obsolete most computers developed before the past 5 years. Nothing before Windows 2000 is compatible with the new version of Gecko? It sounds like something is wrong with that.
If you're still using Win 98 in 2 years when this thing is out of beta, may God have mercy on your soul.
Computers haven't been sold with Win Me since early 2001 I believe, and by 2008 when FF3 is out, such a computer would be 7 years old at least. If your computer is that old, I'm OK with ceasing support to prevent the bloat that would require accomodating 2 rendering engines.
If you can't participate in society without shooting shit, you have a serious problem.
Might I point out that not everyone on the sex offenders registry is a pedophile or even what we might consider a "sex offender". Not terribly important, but a note.
This is true, treating them all the same doesn't make much sense. When we talk about predators, I'm talking about someone over the age of 18 messing with someone under the age of 12, by and large. These are diseased people who need to be removed from society. If we let them back in, we do it at our pleasure and with a whole lot of monitoring. And if they screw up again, throw 'em back for life.
sun and wind power are, IMHO, the alternative to oil and coal
Wind won't work outside of a very few areas that have the kinds of sustained winds to make it workable. In general, it just takes up too much physical space for the energy it generates.
Solar is potential workable, but not with single-crystal silicon wafers. Those actually require quite a bit of energy to create, and take (I believe) over a year to "pay back" that energy. Recent research into nanocrystalline materials has more potential there, as they require less energy to create.
hydrogen should be used just as storage/transport of energy
You're right by definition on that one - there's no real hydrogen source here, so in any situation we're adding energy to some other material to create hydrogen.
maybe where you live. not in all places
OK smart guy. Where in the US is it completely necessary for someone to hunt to eat? More to the point, since someone else needs to aim the damn gun anyway, wouldn't *that* person be able to hunt food for the blind person, wherever this mythical place is? C'mon McFly, engage the brain here!
A guy who sets up a rendezvous with a kid for sex and shows up at the kid's house is *not* the same thing as someone typing messages to an underage person that might be construed as shady.
If he's a convicted child molester, it's good enough for me. That's what's brilliant about the new law: if he is choosing to interact with this kid through an unregistered email, essentially demonstrating deception and violating, we have ourselves a case.
Have you never forgotten a password and set up a new account anywhere? By now I have dozens if not hundreds of disparate accounts on various sites. Sometimes I want to comment on a "registered users only" site and find my email is already in use. Yes, by me. I have various email addresses at hotmail, yahoo, etc. that I registered at some point to see if I could get the name, or to sign up on questionable sites (go ahead, spam me at circfile@hotmail.com), etc.. If I were a convicted sex offender, it would be impossible for me to: 1) figure out and register all online identities 2) keep track of those (and keep the authorities up to date) whenever I created a new one
Well, in this hypothetical situation, you should have thought of that before you fucked a kid. I'm not interested in bullshit excuses. If a convicted child molester is interacting with a child and discussing sexually explicit material with the child and doing this with a screen name he's intentionally concealed from the government, then lock the fucker away. If he's interacting with adults talking about non-sexual material, then give him a warning. Clearly there's some degree of discretion to be employed on the part of law enforcement and the judicial system.
Again, think about this in real-life terms if you have spent more than a few months on the internet.
I have, Mr. Condescending! What you haven't taken into account is that I really don't give a shit if a law is inconvenient for pedophiles! And if it gives the government a good excuse to lock up a shady piece of shit who's seeking out kids AFTER having a conviction for molestation, more the better.
How is that any different than the state of Open Source Software?
1. Because OSS was designed to actually function that way, whereas MS has not.
2) Because each individual OSS project doesn't depend on the others for success, whereas MS has intentionally integrated many of its divisions so that they do depend on each other (Windows and Office and IE, for instance).
3) Because MS has a single leadership, and any a leadership without a coherent plan is a bad one. OSS has many leaders for many projects, and they need not each have the same goal.
4) Each individual OSS project may in fact have a strong leader with a clear well thought out plan. The successful ones usually do.