Of course, reading the raw machine code and "decompiling" the software can be illegal in some cases, or at least a violation of the EULA. Even though that is precisely what you must do to the compiled binaries when you stick it inside of a computer to play that next cool game, but who says that lawyers must make sense anyway.
I concurr that this whole approach is totally backward from what should be the case. For copyright purposes, you can use automated tools to determine just how "close" one piece of software can be compared to another piece of software, and even put in a hard quantitized number just how similar one piece of software is to another one.
Also, when you prove copyright violations, particularly with source code but it can also be done with compiled binaries as well, you get the watchmaker principle where it seems incredibly unlikely that two pieces of software, even written to the same spec like two programs written for a computer science class as a homework assignment, will be identical in how they are put together. There are so many ways to even accomplish the same task that you can demonstrate uniqueness even if the output is totaly identical. Or if code theft has occured even partically you can demonstrate clearly abuse has happened when even identical variable names are used. Small sections and common variable names (i.e. temp, index, foo, bar, etc.) might still be identical but not large sections of software.
For patent issues, on the other hand, trying to come up with the fact that the idea is novel, unique, and not covered under a previous patent that is still in force can be a huge nightmare. I have seen examples of two seperate patents that seem to cover the very same idea, particularly with software patents. And even if you dilligently search the software patent files as a programmer to make sure you software doesn't infringe on patents (generally a bad thing to do as well...), that one patent that you missed might just be the one that trips you up.
Software patents are a horrible idea, and IMHO they should be eliminated altogether. I've said this before and I'll say this again, I can't think of a single reason why I would ever apply for a software patent. The only real reason I can see is to have a cool plaque on the wall with my name on it and to be able to (hopefully) stop some idiot company from suing me for patent infringement, with my patent hopfully being able to be used to ignite the WWIII software patent meltdown. It is not to "protect" the inventor, but as a mussle tool to offer legal protection against legal idiots. And if the software patents didn't exist, there would be no need for that kind of protection.
I'm not even sure if patents are a good idea for mechanical contraptions, and I've heard plenty of mechanical engineers gripe about the abuses of the patent system, but at least mechanical gizmos are what the "founding fathers" of the USA intended the patent system to be used for. While constitutional (it is explictly mentioned in the U.S. Constitution for patents to exist), I don't think the U.S. economy would be hurt at all if patents were simply outlawed in the USA altogether. Even in the case of a clear-cut garage tinkerer coming up with a cool idea and getting a patent on that idea (like the classic weed-eater to help trim small plants) has to spend an insane amount of money to enforce the patent, with very mixed results in the court system for having the patent validated, much less recovering damages.
Besides, there are very few if any major companies that would really be interested in buying a patented invention, with most "inventor" markets simply being a really ugly scam that I rank right up with the Nigerian 419 scams. Patent attorneys will take far more money from you than you will ever get back from an invention unless you are already in the business of making the kind of product you have invented. Even then, the patent (for a mechanical device) is just part of the protection racket like I mentioned with software patents earlier. Not to be used unless sued by another manufacturer and then hopefully you have a patent that covers something they are doing.
I think you miss which form of government is coming up. It will instead be a Fanatic form of government, where tithes will increase the state coffers and nobody will care about if we are at war against anybody else or not. Of course science output will greatly diminish, but who cases since we've already explored the whole research tree anyway?
I hope the next step at reform for NASA is the elimination of NASA altogether. This is a bold step, and there are a number of things that could be done on a positive basis, like spinning off some of the successful research centers (like Langly and JPL) into independent agencies.
I would personnally prefer the elimination of manned spaceflight from NASA altogether, at least until they can come up with some reasonable goals that make some sense. I don't anticipate that the shuttle will fly too many more times, especially if there is another accident that takes out yet another shuttle. While I would love to fly on that machine, I just don't see any justification to having it continue too much more, much less build any replacement for the Columbia.
NASA's mission as far as manned spaceflight is concerned, should be almost Star Trek-like in nature: Explore strange new worlds and go where nobody has gone before. NASA did that in the 1960's, but they clearly lost their vision since then, and the shuttle program has turned into a dead end.
Well there's solar sails but that isn't fast enough...
I think you underestimate how much power can be obtained from a solar sail. The #1 neat feature of a solar sail is that it has nearly constant acceleration, and no need to bring along fuel tanks except for minor station keeping adjustments as well as for docking operations. Still, I can only see as a practical purpose that solar sails will be used for shipping cargo on interplanetary transits... where radiation issues and time is of more limited concern and instead you just need to get something from say the Earth to Mars in as cheap of a way as you can come up with.
Beside doing an Orion Project-style propusion method, I would have to agree that for interplanetary passenger travel the best current technology would have to use fission reactors as the energy source to power very high ISP rocket motors (i.e. ion drives and similar technologies). If you think nuclear submarine in space, it would be a pretty good analogy. This would allow the development of actual space ships as opposed to mere spacecraft. Getting the reactor cores up to space in the first place would be the real nasty point, with environmental groups staging protests at every stage along the way.
While there might be certain personality traits that would go into being one profession or another, in the case of nuclear engineering or nuclear physics there are plenty of closely related fields at least in terms of the personalities involved that we are not talking about being foolish or extraordinarily dedicated. Indeed the salaries are very similar for the ordinary working folk but the jobs just aren't there.
Indeed, with the exception of big science jobs, there really aren't a whole lot of jobs in nuclear physics besides a research and teaching position at a major university... and often the big science takes place at major universities anyway.
Nuclear engineering is in even worse shape, because there are a bunch of engineers who grew up in the 1940's and 1950's that are either retiring or getting very close to retirement, and not a whole lot of new talent going into the field. Like speculation that we in today's society couldn't build a Saturn V even if we tried, there is a lot of talent dying off that helped build many of the nuclear reactors that even now are providing a significant portion of the energy needs of this planet.
I could mention other professions as well, but it seems as though most of the intellectual effort right now is to build really cool computer games and make epic movies in Hollywood. Bread and Circuses I suppose.
There are two things about North Korea that you have to keep in mind.
1) Korea is the natural logistical route in any war between China, Japan, and Russia. That means the war will go through Korea if those three nations get involved (as it did in WWII and could be argued during the Cold War as well... i.e. Korean War). This similar to the invasion routes between France, England, and Germany going through Holland, Belgium, and Luxlembourg, and why those three countries saw so much warfare during the 20th Century. As was the case during the 20th Century in Europe, the USA can tip the balance between those three Asian superpowers to determine the winner of any conflict between them.
2) North Korea is largely a puppet government of China. While it certainly follows its own course in terms of diplomatic relations, there is no way that North Korea would have been able to sustain itself during the Korean War except through incredible support from China, including Chinese soldiers. The #1 reason the USA doesn't invade North Korea even now is simply because doing so would risk open warfare against a nuclear power (China) and depending on the circumstances and who is in political power, Russia might even support North Korea in such a war. Basically it would ignite World War III with the primary battle front being this time in Asia instead of Europe. If China and the USA can unite diplomatically and militarily on telling North Korea where to go, however, North Korea is screwed and has to give in. Essentially it is China that is setting the timetable now for dealing with North Korea.
I know I was oversimplifying the explaination of a thermonuclear device, but I was trying to emphasis that it really isn't a fusion bomb per se, but rather an enhanced fission device that happens to include some nuclear fusion as well at some stage of the explosion.
Improper seeding of the hydrogen, or contaminants, can also reduce the effectiveness of a fission bomb if done incorrectly, which in nuclear military speak is called a "fizzle", because it doesn't do nearly as much damage as if the hydrogen wasn't even present.
Modern nuclear device design is much like demolition of large buildings. If done properly you can use less explosive material to create a much bigger impact. In comparison the Hiroshima bomb was really quite simple. Even the Nagasaki bomb was considerably more advanced (and used Plutonium instead of Uranium).
The 3.3% of the GDP is an almost record low for the USA, which is why I mentioned it. In the past during wars like WWII or even Vietnam the percentage was considerably higher. And percentage of the GDP is really the best measure to compare between two different countries, as comparing money is at best a dodge with huge political interests that influence exchange rates in currencies.
A country that is increasing their military spending is Japan, which now is one of the top five largest military budgets in the world. Of course, they can afford it too as the percentage of GDP is actually below that of the USA.
One country that I'm particularly impressed with is Costa Rica. They actually have a constitutional provision that prohibits them from even having a military, and instead depend on the "goodwill" of its neighbors to maintain its borders. A unique situation, but the closest they have to a military force is the customs agents that you meet at border crossings or at the airport. That is their military, and they proudly brag about how much more their government can accomplish compared to even other Central American countries without having to worry about military expenditures. Not to mention no worries about a coup from military generals if they don't exist. Besides, if they did get invaded, it would seriously piss off the USA, which is not a good enemy to have, especially in a shooting war.
You missed what I was trying to say here. There is a considerable amount of misinformation that is spread around in various places, like the internet as well as print documents, that overcomplicates or flat out misinforms what is necessary to build a fission bomb (aka a classic nuke). And even more confusion over a hydrogen bomb, which is really a fission bomb with some extra tritium thrown in to add some extra energy. I support that to a certain extent, as I don't want my next door neighbor making a nuke in their basement, but it is a systematic campaign that has gone on for over 50 years. Basics in nuclear physics are correct, just the details on how to get the materials together and purify the Uranium are sketchy. The approach used in the Manhattan project for refining Uranium was perhaps the most expensive way to do it, and was incredibly difficult.
On that note, I have read estimates that as high as 50% of the entire U.S. economy (not just federal expenditures) was involved with the Manhattan project in some form in 1944-1945. It really was a crash program where President Roosevelt was "betting the country" that a nuke would be the one weapon that would end WWII. Not surprisingly, he was correct as well. The sheer scale of it boggles the mind and only the Apollo Project even comes remotely close as an overall research and engineering project.
In the case of a fusion reactor being the core of weapons technology, I know that there has been research into plasma weapons and lasers which can do some incredible damage... and have substantial application on a militarization of space. Much of these weapons can be developed in a clandestine environment using the cover of a Tokamak reactor as the excuse for developing these technologies. That they can also be used to generate an actual fusion reaction may be just a side effect to what they are really trying to do: perfect the high energy laser technologies and learning how to confine and control high temperature plasmas. Clearly even if this is bona fide fusion research there are military applications to the technology developed outside of getting a fusion reactor going.
BTW, regarding the expenditures of the U.S. Government to the military. The U.S. military budget is barely #2 on the list of priorities. Using the OMB figures (as appropriated in 2004), the U.S. government spent $2.3 Trillion (yes, the ugly T-word), of which $375 Billion were allocated directly to the U.S. Department of defense. Using my calculator that ammounts to roughly 16% of the overall budget of the U.S. Government. Compared to the overall GNP of the USA, it is only 3.3% of the entire U.S. economy. This is much smaller than many other nations like North Korea or Iran, where they are spending a considerably larger portion of their economic output on military purposes.
And no, of the money allocated to the Department of Defense, most of it is used for salaries of DOD personnel, physical infrastructure (building barracks, roads, base equipment, etc.) and logistics (getting equipment and people from where they are at to where they are needed). R&D does not even come close to 50% of the DOD budget, and buying new weapons is still balanced against all of the other concerns just to keep a military together at all.
While I might agree with oil and methane (i.e. natural gas) reserves, you can't say that about coal. Most coal miners will tell you of things they've seen in the coal mines, including some wonderful fossil specimins that instead they chewed up to fill up another train-car load for a power plant.
I've personnaly seen the coal fossils on some samples, and even the structure of some coal deposits indicate a biological influence. Not to mention following simple geological rules where rock layers beneath the coal deposits also contain fossils. I don't know of any process where a volcano will ooze a hunk of carbon and have it solidify as a coal deposit. I have however seen peat bogs fill in lakes, get over fifty feet thick, and it would only be thinking if you waited a few million years that same former lake could be a newly discovered coal deposit.
It is interesting that you mention this fact. I just heard on a morning television program a discussion regarding Saudi Arabia and how they set their price for Crude Oil. Apparently one of the major factors they use to set the price is the idea that if they set the price too high, they will be sitting on a huge pile of oil that nobody will want to buy. The quote was "they are deliberately setting the price to discourage alternative energy sources including R&D". In other words, this is a deliberate policy of the Saudi government, and is done at least unofficially with the backing of the U.S. government. If another energy source becomes viable, OPEC will rip the "rug" from under it and lower oil costs to compete more effectively.
In other words, if you want to end dependancy on the Middle East oil reserves, drive your gas-guzzeling SUV and buy as much gasoline as possible so the oil stocks in the Middle East are used up. Kinda stupid, but it is reality.
Some countries who produce oil already realize that the end is in sight when oil will no longer be used as a primary energy source, and are selling oil at rate cheap enough to simply grab as much money as they can while the party lasts. If not fusion then solar or perhaps even effective fission reactors, which IMHO can be made safe but the $$$ are not there to make it happen.
In the case of fission research, we know we can get fission reactors to produce energy inexpensively. The problem is that to build a nuclear fission reactor that is also destroying the nuclear waste (in amounts of end products quite comparable to fusion reactors) they are also capable of producing large quantities of enriched nuclear-bomb grade fission materials. This is one aspect of the nuclear genie that has been "kept in the bottle" because of the potential to unleash cheap fission reactors that governments can't keep track of. Imagine if Bin Laden was able to afford a small breeder reactor for less than $100,000 and fill Northern Pakistan with them.
Let's hope that you can't make an effective weapon with fusion reactors. That will kill research into it (or perhaps that is the problem).
Thanks for the link. I read that some time ago here on/. but forgot all about it, and it should have been brought up when people were moaning that "why don't other science diciplines besides aviation and rocketry have prizes?" i.e. the X-Prize and related groups.
Nuclear Physics is no longer the glamour major it was in the 1950's and 1960's, and while there are a few new minds going into the profession, there are many other more cool things to do now and are taking up the energies of young minds. Nuclear Engineering is in even worse shape, and in many ways resembles some of the worst examples of government research gone amuck. Big budgets and not much to show for it. In some ways even worse than NASA over the past five years with manned spaceflight.
There is private research that is occuring, but it tends to be cranks and folks doing stuff on cold fusion or Farnsworth fusors... mostly treated as cranks even if they have a PhD from a respectable university.
I will agree with you about the centralization of power issues as well. If it turns out that something like a powercell can generate a lifetime supply of power for a home without the need of overhead powerlines, it would destroy a balance of political power that has huge amounts of money and no real reason to allow it to occur...even if it meant a substantially better life for ordinary citizens.
The reason for the "backbone" is that you need to have some method of doing a many to many translation.
For example, the United Nations has six official languages: French, English, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish. All of the proceedings of all events, especially treaties and General Assembly meetings, are done in all of these languages... usually simultaneously.
Obviously in this case when somebody is speaking you have a one-to-one correspondance going from the original language to the target for translation, but in the case of treaties, it gets a little more complecated. And there are some substantial difference between all six of these languages that include some cultural issues that make some huge differences. And changes to these documents are coming from speakers of all of these languages simultaneously. Mere coordination would require at least a working "backbone" language to offer coordination between all of these different languages.
In the case of the Portuguese word "soldade", since I don't speak Japanese I don't know even what could possibly be the translation. That is another purpose of a "backbone", where you have a common language between multiple languages where there is not a direct interface between two specific languages. I do know a Japanese-Portuguese dictionary does exist, but what about more obscure languages like Tongan and Navajo? I don't think a Tongan/Navajo dictionary exists, and I would be surprised if there is even a single person in the world that speaks both languages (remotely possible, but unlikely). This is where the backbone comes into play to act as a bridge between the two languages.
While quoting a small portion is fair use (and the extent of that has been questioned in many court cases... like where one musician copied 5 notes from another song and got sued for copyright infringement... and lost) you can't take substantial portions, even if you rework a little bit of the article with a more local angle, with out formal copyright clearance. This is often done at local newspapers with news service articles, even in electronic media (Radio & Television). And when a news agency subscribes to a news service provider, it usually includes the license agreements.
Look, I think Indymedia is terriffic, and the licensing terms for Indymedia are rather well spelled out including what their intention is for republication. If you want to hand out something from Indymedia at a political rally or on a flyer on a college campus, that is clearly something that Indymedia would encourage. Both of these uses would be illegal with a normal newspaper article unless you got formal premission from the newspaper itself. And I can see some very valid reasons for many of the contributors to Indymedia to keep the non-commercial restriction.
The thing I love about the Outer Space Treaty is this clause:
Article XVI Any State Party to the Treaty may give notice of its withdrawal from the Treaty one year after its entry into force by written notification to the Depositary Governments. Such withdrawal shall take effect one year from the date of receipt of this notification.
Basically, if there were a legitimate reason for the USA to ignore the treaty, we can ignore any and all provisions of it, including the national soverignty issues over control of hunks of rock.
I think this provision was even put in to help make it pass the U.S. Senate. What a withdrawl really means to international law, however, is another story.
Really, this is so widely used by native English speakers, including media references and every day useage that it has become a part of the language. If you mean what is the translation to Anglo-Saxon (or Middle English), that would be another issue altogether.
There was an earlier project sponsored by the University of the United Nations that did something similar. However, they acknowledged that English by itself couldn't be the "backbone" of any system, and instead used a concept numbering system that also included the ability to add words that may not have equivalents in English.
For instance, I don't know of any reasonable English translation for the Portuguese word "soldade". I can give it a formal definition (being the longing feeling that you have for somebody or something you love and miss). A reasonable translation would be "homesickness", but there are other cultural conotations in English that make that an imperfect translation, not to mention the subtle cultural context that "soldade" has in Portuguese. The two words really are different memes.
There are, however, words that do translate completly, like "fire hydrant" to "aquador de fogo". It means exactly the same thing in both languages, and even the cultural context for each is so nearly identical that you can easily substitute one for the other. Of course you even have cognates where even the same word is wholly adopted into another language, like "deja vu" mentioned above. However, even here you can have a context difference where the adopting language only has a narrow use of the word, and the original language can have many other contextual meanings to what is implied.
BTW, the best "backbone" language I've heard used is Esperanto, in part because of its roots in acedemia, and in part because it doesn't have a political agenda when used in multi-lingual translation projects (like translating a document between three or more languages).
Incorrect. Most IMCs explicitly state "all content free for non-commercial use." Other IMCs allow contributors to choose the license from a menu of the Creative Commons licenses.
I think you miss the point I was making earlier. WikiNews wants to allow commercial distribution of its content. Like CBS News, CNN, or the New York Times. They just want credit if it is used in a commercial publication and for there to be some way to link back to WikiNews as a reference.
This "all content free for non-commercial use" is quite explicit, and states that if you use it in a commercial enterprise, then you are violating copyright. Quite clear to me, and quite clear where the difference between Indymedia and Wikinews is at.
One of the "target" audiences for WikiNews is for the small market publication (like a weekly newspaper for a town of 5,000 people in rural Montana or Utah). These publications are pretty much a public service anyway, and this provides an avenue for them to obtain breaking news reports for their publications that otherwise they couldn't afford. While non-profit in the sense these newspapers are a hobby, sometimes even according to the IRS, they still are commercial entities and would not be able to publish Indymedia news reports because it would be "commercial use". Creative Commons licenses are pretty good in this respect, but there are some problems even there, which was one of the points of the GFDL.
I guess where the unspoken complaint is where this computer could be a full-functional general purpose, programable computing device, and instead is a marketing tool for Microsoft and a bug-filled internet access box like a car with the hood welded shut and no lug-nuts to replace the wheels on the same car.
There is no reason why people who only make $6,000 per year couldn't get a simple computer to hack on. Indeed, some of the most original software I've ever seen has come from places like where this computer is going to be marketed. While these people may not care about Linux, they should, as it allows people with more brains than money to succeed.
Maybe we are not going to some expensive private university but instead we are attending a local state land grant college with money that we scrape by on waiting tables and flipping burgers.
Having a cheap computer that you can hack on and do "cool" projects with on a budget has more applications than simply offering to somebody in Bolivia or Madagascar the chance to own their own computer.
It is also from cheap boxes like this that other cool "inventions" can also be created, unless AMD is specifically restricting the sale of boxes like this to 1st World nations artificially.
You don't think you could get a hardened version of Linux? There aren't companies selling distros of Linux that won't back them up?
There are plenty of people who would harden a box with Linux, and I disagree that Microsoft could harden a version of its OS any more than they already do for high end servers or customers who spend a whole lot more money than Microsoft would ever get from these very low-end computers.
I would be more apt (if I were still living in a 3rd world area) to buy the computer if I knew I could find a computer savvy neighbor who could rewrite the operating system if I found a bug (i.e. with GPL'd source code included) as opposed to a totally closed Microsoft solution. These are boxes that are going to areas that have people with brains, just not a whole lot of money to break into the computer industry with a $10,000 workstation and $50,000 worth of software development tools (and a $10,000 annual license renewal fee).
If AMD goes for a 14-year-old Finnish kid for the distro, then they are shooting themselves in the foot just as if they used the CPU design from a 14-year-old Finnish kid. This is not to say they couldn't hire a 14-year-old Finnish kid who is highly competitent and able to do all of that with high competency either.
Your prayers have been answered, at least in Europe (and Japan). The U.S., though, is projected to see about a 50% population growth over the next 30 years.
I don't know where you are getting your figures from, but the USA is in a population decline right now, and accelerating. There are some local differences but even in areas where religious & cultural attitudes encourage large families have seen declines in birth rates. The only reason that the USA even sees any kind of population growth at all presently is due to the fact that immigration is taking up the slack (including illegal immigration). One of the reasons suggested why some politicians are quietly encouraging illegal immigration to the USA is precisely because of this birth rate decline, and the problems that it causes including an absense of entry-level workers, declining tax base, and increased health care costs to deal with the elderly.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, even with immigration the U.S. population is anticipated to stabilize by about 2030-2050 (depending on what figures you use) and then show signs of decline.
While I won't call myself a "world travller", I have visited many areas of the USA and have done some business travel, and I've seen first-hand what these figures mean. You simply don't see kids running around in many parts of the USA like there were even 30 years ago, except in very organized settings, because they aren't there anymore. While I admit I have been in settings where children wouldn't be appropriate, there are neutral areas/tourist areas where children, while not encouraged to be present, certainly wouldn't be out of place. They aren't there except in token numbers.
Yes, you can still find kids getting into mischief, but it isn't the same as what it was like in the past. Unfortunately, it is difficult to quantitize such observations.
For me, I don't object to a closed-source propriaty software solution for voting machines... i.e. Diebold or Microsoft.
I do object to having the source code concealed, however. If you put something into a voting machine, the full details of that voting machine should be disclosed and published, from every transistor and capacitor to every line of code for the source code, and the details available to any registered voter that would be using that machine... meaning me if it were in my voting precinct.
Copyright can still be maintained, and indeed a formal registration of the software with the Library of Congress will essentially do the same thing anyway, so why all the fuss. You would have to provide source code if you suggest that there has been copyright infringement (as SCO is finding out the hard way).
There also needs to be a guarentee that the source code disclosed in this manner is in fact the actual source code that is used by the voting machine. And attempts to obfuscate the source code should have penalties as well, particularly if it is obvious that the obfuscation was deliberate as opposed to simply poor programming techniques from a novice programmer.
Potentially, even the compilers/chip programmers need to be available to authenticate that the compiled binaries are identical.
Ideally, what would happen is that each political party involved (as well as other interested parties like the ACLU, black box voting, etc.) would get a CD-ROM with all of the sources and schematics involved, and each party could review the source code for potential fraud as well as independent verification of the binaries on the voting machines. Essentially, each political party will verify for its members that the voting machine is acceptable for use. Even a well-organized 3rd Party can squeek real hard and potentially win some votes if they can demonstrate that the other political parties are colluding with each other to fix the vote totals in this manner.
Where I live, each political party is allowed to have their own voting judge present in each precinct. As part of the set up of the voting booths before the voting occurs, each judge can check the serial numbers from something sent by their respective party (not the state government here... note the check on the system). If they suspect fraud, the party headquarters can be notified and potentially the suspect voting machine could be dealt with. Or even a boycott of the precinct that day if you think the fraud is that bad.
Indiymedia was brought up frequently in the Wikimedia mailing lists prior to the lanuch of this project. There are a number of safeguards they are trying to do to prevent some of the abuses from indymedia, and in short Wikinews will have a different "ecological" niche than Indymedia. The two projects can exist side by side as they do serve slightly different audiences, just like/. is not the only geek news website around.
Much of this is an outgrowth of people wanting to provide something a little more substantive than quick blurbs on the front page of Wikipedia that link to articles of interest related to current events. What will be very interesting is the multi-lingual aspects of Wikinews, with groups in German and French publishing stories that can be linked to the English side as well and vice versa.
The current major bone of contention is trying to decide under what license the content should be distributed. Most of the people involved like the GPL or FDPL, but these licenses don't work too well if you would like to publish something newsworth and allow other news organizations to do significant quotes from a Wikinews article. This issue is so contentious that it almost delayed the launch of the website, although for now all of the content is being released without license into the Public Domain until the license issues can be resolved. Basically, the concensus is to provide a license that would allow a small-town newspaper to even use Wikinews articles outright in their newspaper (be an alternative to Associated Press) but still be forced to acknowledge that they got the article from Wikinews and provide copyright protection for the authors of the piece so the words can't be arbitrarily changed. Indymedia absolutly doesn't do this at all, nor is it a goal.
What I was trying to point out (unfortunately not too clearly) was that in addition to this sort of classification, we have seen some glimpses of stellar transitions to help confirm the theories. And when new scientific tools come around and used in astronomy, the results tend to confirm rather than debunk the stellar evolution theories. You know that you have a solid scientific theory when it gets confirmation from addition kinds of observations, and better yet if you make a prediction of some future result that actually shows up (like how black holes were described mathmatically before they were actually observed.)
This is exactly the problem with Cold Fusion (to give a current scientific theory that is strongly questioned at the moment), because that theory tends to get conflicting results based on how you are measuring the effect, or even who is doing the measurement. It is almost an embaressment to mention Cold Fusion and Stellar Evolution in the same sentance, because the theories of star development have so much of a sound theory behind them that it is more like the yardstick to compare other scientific theories to.
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Of course, reading the raw machine code and "decompiling" the software can be illegal in some cases, or at least a violation of the EULA. Even though that is precisely what you must do to the compiled binaries when you stick it inside of a computer to play that next cool game, but who says that lawyers must make sense anyway.
I concurr that this whole approach is totally backward from what should be the case. For copyright purposes, you can use automated tools to determine just how "close" one piece of software can be compared to another piece of software, and even put in a hard quantitized number just how similar one piece of software is to another one.
Also, when you prove copyright violations, particularly with source code but it can also be done with compiled binaries as well, you get the watchmaker principle where it seems incredibly unlikely that two pieces of software, even written to the same spec like two programs written for a computer science class as a homework assignment, will be identical in how they are put together. There are so many ways to even accomplish the same task that you can demonstrate uniqueness even if the output is totaly identical. Or if code theft has occured even partically you can demonstrate clearly abuse has happened when even identical variable names are used. Small sections and common variable names (i.e. temp, index, foo, bar, etc.) might still be identical but not large sections of software.
For patent issues, on the other hand, trying to come up with the fact that the idea is novel, unique, and not covered under a previous patent that is still in force can be a huge nightmare. I have seen examples of two seperate patents that seem to cover the very same idea, particularly with software patents. And even if you dilligently search the software patent files as a programmer to make sure you software doesn't infringe on patents (generally a bad thing to do as well...), that one patent that you missed might just be the one that trips you up.
Software patents are a horrible idea, and IMHO they should be eliminated altogether. I've said this before and I'll say this again, I can't think of a single reason why I would ever apply for a software patent. The only real reason I can see is to have a cool plaque on the wall with my name on it and to be able to (hopefully) stop some idiot company from suing me for patent infringement, with my patent hopfully being able to be used to ignite the WWIII software patent meltdown. It is not to "protect" the inventor, but as a mussle tool to offer legal protection against legal idiots. And if the software patents didn't exist, there would be no need for that kind of protection.
I'm not even sure if patents are a good idea for mechanical contraptions, and I've heard plenty of mechanical engineers gripe about the abuses of the patent system, but at least mechanical gizmos are what the "founding fathers" of the USA intended the patent system to be used for. While constitutional (it is explictly mentioned in the U.S. Constitution for patents to exist), I don't think the U.S. economy would be hurt at all if patents were simply outlawed in the USA altogether. Even in the case of a clear-cut garage tinkerer coming up with a cool idea and getting a patent on that idea (like the classic weed-eater to help trim small plants) has to spend an insane amount of money to enforce the patent, with very mixed results in the court system for having the patent validated, much less recovering damages.
Besides, there are very few if any major companies that would really be interested in buying a patented invention, with most "inventor" markets simply being a really ugly scam that I rank right up with the Nigerian 419 scams. Patent attorneys will take far more money from you than you will ever get back from an invention unless you are already in the business of making the kind of product you have invented. Even then, the patent (for a mechanical device) is just part of the protection racket like I mentioned with software patents earlier. Not to be used unless sued by another manufacturer and then hopefully you have a patent that covers something they are doing.
I think you miss which form of government is coming up. It will instead be a Fanatic form of government, where tithes will increase the state coffers and nobody will care about if we are at war against anybody else or not. Of course science output will greatly diminish, but who cases since we've already explored the whole research tree anyway?
I hope the next step at reform for NASA is the elimination of NASA altogether. This is a bold step, and there are a number of things that could be done on a positive basis, like spinning off some of the successful research centers (like Langly and JPL) into independent agencies.
I would personnally prefer the elimination of manned spaceflight from NASA altogether, at least until they can come up with some reasonable goals that make some sense. I don't anticipate that the shuttle will fly too many more times, especially if there is another accident that takes out yet another shuttle. While I would love to fly on that machine, I just don't see any justification to having it continue too much more, much less build any replacement for the Columbia.
NASA's mission as far as manned spaceflight is concerned, should be almost Star Trek-like in nature: Explore strange new worlds and go where nobody has gone before. NASA did that in the 1960's, but they clearly lost their vision since then, and the shuttle program has turned into a dead end.
I think you underestimate how much power can be obtained from a solar sail. The #1 neat feature of a solar sail is that it has nearly constant acceleration, and no need to bring along fuel tanks except for minor station keeping adjustments as well as for docking operations. Still, I can only see as a practical purpose that solar sails will be used for shipping cargo on interplanetary transits... where radiation issues and time is of more limited concern and instead you just need to get something from say the Earth to Mars in as cheap of a way as you can come up with.
Beside doing an Orion Project-style propusion method, I would have to agree that for interplanetary passenger travel the best current technology would have to use fission reactors as the energy source to power very high ISP rocket motors (i.e. ion drives and similar technologies). If you think nuclear submarine in space, it would be a pretty good analogy. This would allow the development of actual space ships as opposed to mere spacecraft. Getting the reactor cores up to space in the first place would be the real nasty point, with environmental groups staging protests at every stage along the way.
While there might be certain personality traits that would go into being one profession or another, in the case of nuclear engineering or nuclear physics there are plenty of closely related fields at least in terms of the personalities involved that we are not talking about being foolish or extraordinarily dedicated. Indeed the salaries are very similar for the ordinary working folk but the jobs just aren't there.
Indeed, with the exception of big science jobs, there really aren't a whole lot of jobs in nuclear physics besides a research and teaching position at a major university... and often the big science takes place at major universities anyway.
Nuclear engineering is in even worse shape, because there are a bunch of engineers who grew up in the 1940's and 1950's that are either retiring or getting very close to retirement, and not a whole lot of new talent going into the field. Like speculation that we in today's society couldn't build a Saturn V even if we tried, there is a lot of talent dying off that helped build many of the nuclear reactors that even now are providing a significant portion of the energy needs of this planet.
I could mention other professions as well, but it seems as though most of the intellectual effort right now is to build really cool computer games and make epic movies in Hollywood. Bread and Circuses I suppose.
There are two things about North Korea that you have to keep in mind.
1) Korea is the natural logistical route in any war between China, Japan, and Russia. That means the war will go through Korea if those three nations get involved (as it did in WWII and could be argued during the Cold War as well... i.e. Korean War). This similar to the invasion routes between France, England, and Germany going through Holland, Belgium, and Luxlembourg, and why those three countries saw so much warfare during the 20th Century. As was the case during the 20th Century in Europe, the USA can tip the balance between those three Asian superpowers to determine the winner of any conflict between them.
2) North Korea is largely a puppet government of China. While it certainly follows its own course in terms of diplomatic relations, there is no way that North Korea would have been able to sustain itself during the Korean War except through incredible support from China, including Chinese soldiers. The #1 reason the USA doesn't invade North Korea even now is simply because doing so would risk open warfare against a nuclear power (China) and depending on the circumstances and who is in political power, Russia might even support North Korea in such a war. Basically it would ignite World War III with the primary battle front being this time in Asia instead of Europe. If China and the USA can unite diplomatically and militarily on telling North Korea where to go, however, North Korea is screwed and has to give in. Essentially it is China that is setting the timetable now for dealing with North Korea.
I know I was oversimplifying the explaination of a thermonuclear device, but I was trying to emphasis that it really isn't a fusion bomb per se, but rather an enhanced fission device that happens to include some nuclear fusion as well at some stage of the explosion.
Improper seeding of the hydrogen, or contaminants, can also reduce the effectiveness of a fission bomb if done incorrectly, which in nuclear military speak is called a "fizzle", because it doesn't do nearly as much damage as if the hydrogen wasn't even present.
Modern nuclear device design is much like demolition of large buildings. If done properly you can use less explosive material to create a much bigger impact. In comparison the Hiroshima bomb was really quite simple. Even the Nagasaki bomb was considerably more advanced (and used Plutonium instead of Uranium).
The 3.3% of the GDP is an almost record low for the USA, which is why I mentioned it. In the past during wars like WWII or even Vietnam the percentage was considerably higher. And percentage of the GDP is really the best measure to compare between two different countries, as comparing money is at best a dodge with huge political interests that influence exchange rates in currencies.
A country that is increasing their military spending is Japan, which now is one of the top five largest military budgets in the world. Of course, they can afford it too as the percentage of GDP is actually below that of the USA.
One country that I'm particularly impressed with is Costa Rica. They actually have a constitutional provision that prohibits them from even having a military, and instead depend on the "goodwill" of its neighbors to maintain its borders. A unique situation, but the closest they have to a military force is the customs agents that you meet at border crossings or at the airport. That is their military, and they proudly brag about how much more their government can accomplish compared to even other Central American countries without having to worry about military expenditures. Not to mention no worries about a coup from military generals if they don't exist. Besides, if they did get invaded, it would seriously piss off the USA, which is not a good enemy to have, especially in a shooting war.
You missed what I was trying to say here. There is a considerable amount of misinformation that is spread around in various places, like the internet as well as print documents, that overcomplicates or flat out misinforms what is necessary to build a fission bomb (aka a classic nuke). And even more confusion over a hydrogen bomb, which is really a fission bomb with some extra tritium thrown in to add some extra energy. I support that to a certain extent, as I don't want my next door neighbor making a nuke in their basement, but it is a systematic campaign that has gone on for over 50 years. Basics in nuclear physics are correct, just the details on how to get the materials together and purify the Uranium are sketchy. The approach used in the Manhattan project for refining Uranium was perhaps the most expensive way to do it, and was incredibly difficult.
On that note, I have read estimates that as high as 50% of the entire U.S. economy (not just federal expenditures) was involved with the Manhattan project in some form in 1944-1945. It really was a crash program where President Roosevelt was "betting the country" that a nuke would be the one weapon that would end WWII. Not surprisingly, he was correct as well. The sheer scale of it boggles the mind and only the Apollo Project even comes remotely close as an overall research and engineering project.
In the case of a fusion reactor being the core of weapons technology, I know that there has been research into plasma weapons and lasers which can do some incredible damage... and have substantial application on a militarization of space. Much of these weapons can be developed in a clandestine environment using the cover of a Tokamak reactor as the excuse for developing these technologies. That they can also be used to generate an actual fusion reaction may be just a side effect to what they are really trying to do: perfect the high energy laser technologies and learning how to confine and control high temperature plasmas. Clearly even if this is bona fide fusion research there are military applications to the technology developed outside of getting a fusion reactor going.
BTW, regarding the expenditures of the U.S. Government to the military. The U.S. military budget is barely #2 on the list of priorities. Using the OMB figures (as appropriated in 2004), the U.S. government spent $2.3 Trillion (yes, the ugly T-word), of which $375 Billion were allocated directly to the U.S. Department of defense. Using my calculator that ammounts to roughly 16% of the overall budget of the U.S. Government. Compared to the overall GNP of the USA, it is only 3.3% of the entire U.S. economy. This is much smaller than many other nations like North Korea or Iran, where they are spending a considerably larger portion of their economic output on military purposes.
And no, of the money allocated to the Department of Defense, most of it is used for salaries of DOD personnel, physical infrastructure (building barracks, roads, base equipment, etc.) and logistics (getting equipment and people from where they are at to where they are needed). R&D does not even come close to 50% of the DOD budget, and buying new weapons is still balanced against all of the other concerns just to keep a military together at all.
While I might agree with oil and methane (i.e. natural gas) reserves, you can't say that about coal. Most coal miners will tell you of things they've seen in the coal mines, including some wonderful fossil specimins that instead they chewed up to fill up another train-car load for a power plant.
I've personnaly seen the coal fossils on some samples, and even the structure of some coal deposits indicate a biological influence. Not to mention following simple geological rules where rock layers beneath the coal deposits also contain fossils. I don't know of any process where a volcano will ooze a hunk of carbon and have it solidify as a coal deposit. I have however seen peat bogs fill in lakes, get over fifty feet thick, and it would only be thinking if you waited a few million years that same former lake could be a newly discovered coal deposit.
It is interesting that you mention this fact. I just heard on a morning television program a discussion regarding Saudi Arabia and how they set their price for Crude Oil. Apparently one of the major factors they use to set the price is the idea that if they set the price too high, they will be sitting on a huge pile of oil that nobody will want to buy. The quote was "they are deliberately setting the price to discourage alternative energy sources including R&D". In other words, this is a deliberate policy of the Saudi government, and is done at least unofficially with the backing of the U.S. government. If another energy source becomes viable, OPEC will rip the "rug" from under it and lower oil costs to compete more effectively.
In other words, if you want to end dependancy on the Middle East oil reserves, drive your gas-guzzeling SUV and buy as much gasoline as possible so the oil stocks in the Middle East are used up. Kinda stupid, but it is reality.
Some countries who produce oil already realize that the end is in sight when oil will no longer be used as a primary energy source, and are selling oil at rate cheap enough to simply grab as much money as they can while the party lasts. If not fusion then solar or perhaps even effective fission reactors, which IMHO can be made safe but the $$$ are not there to make it happen.
In the case of fission research, we know we can get fission reactors to produce energy inexpensively. The problem is that to build a nuclear fission reactor that is also destroying the nuclear waste (in amounts of end products quite comparable to fusion reactors) they are also capable of producing large quantities of enriched nuclear-bomb grade fission materials. This is one aspect of the nuclear genie that has been "kept in the bottle" because of the potential to unleash cheap fission reactors that governments can't keep track of. Imagine if Bin Laden was able to afford a small breeder reactor for less than $100,000 and fill Northern Pakistan with them.
Let's hope that you can't make an effective weapon with fusion reactors. That will kill research into it (or perhaps that is the problem).
Thanks for the link. I read that some time ago here on /. but forgot all about it, and it should have been brought up when people were moaning that "why don't other science diciplines besides aviation and rocketry have prizes?" i.e. the X-Prize and related groups.
Nuclear Physics is no longer the glamour major it was in the 1950's and 1960's, and while there are a few new minds going into the profession, there are many other more cool things to do now and are taking up the energies of young minds. Nuclear Engineering is in even worse shape, and in many ways resembles some of the worst examples of government research gone amuck. Big budgets and not much to show for it. In some ways even worse than NASA over the past five years with manned spaceflight.
There is private research that is occuring, but it tends to be cranks and folks doing stuff on cold fusion or Farnsworth fusors... mostly treated as cranks even if they have a PhD from a respectable university.
I will agree with you about the centralization of power issues as well. If it turns out that something like a powercell can generate a lifetime supply of power for a home without the need of overhead powerlines, it would destroy a balance of political power that has huge amounts of money and no real reason to allow it to occur...even if it meant a substantially better life for ordinary citizens.
The reason for the "backbone" is that you need to have some method of doing a many to many translation.
For example, the United Nations has six official languages: French, English, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish. All of the proceedings of all events, especially treaties and General Assembly meetings, are done in all of these languages... usually simultaneously.
Obviously in this case when somebody is speaking you have a one-to-one correspondance going from the original language to the target for translation, but in the case of treaties, it gets a little more complecated. And there are some substantial difference between all six of these languages that include some cultural issues that make some huge differences. And changes to these documents are coming from speakers of all of these languages simultaneously. Mere coordination would require at least a working "backbone" language to offer coordination between all of these different languages.
In the case of the Portuguese word "soldade", since I don't speak Japanese I don't know even what could possibly be the translation. That is another purpose of a "backbone", where you have a common language between multiple languages where there is not a direct interface between two specific languages. I do know a Japanese-Portuguese dictionary does exist, but what about more obscure languages like Tongan and Navajo? I don't think a Tongan/Navajo dictionary exists, and I would be surprised if there is even a single person in the world that speaks both languages (remotely possible, but unlikely). This is where the backbone comes into play to act as a bridge between the two languages.
While quoting a small portion is fair use (and the extent of that has been questioned in many court cases... like where one musician copied 5 notes from another song and got sued for copyright infringement... and lost) you can't take substantial portions, even if you rework a little bit of the article with a more local angle, with out formal copyright clearance. This is often done at local newspapers with news service articles, even in electronic media (Radio & Television). And when a news agency subscribes to a news service provider, it usually includes the license agreements.
Look, I think Indymedia is terriffic, and the licensing terms for Indymedia are rather well spelled out including what their intention is for republication. If you want to hand out something from Indymedia at a political rally or on a flyer on a college campus, that is clearly something that Indymedia would encourage. Both of these uses would be illegal with a normal newspaper article unless you got formal premission from the newspaper itself. And I can see some very valid reasons for many of the contributors to Indymedia to keep the non-commercial restriction.
The thing I love about the Outer Space Treaty is this clause:
Article XVI
Any State Party to the Treaty may give notice of its withdrawal from the Treaty one year after its entry into force by written notification to the Depositary Governments. Such withdrawal shall take effect one year from the date of receipt of this notification.
Basically, if there were a legitimate reason for the USA to ignore the treaty, we can ignore any and all provisions of it, including the national soverignty issues over control of hunks of rock.
I think this provision was even put in to help make it pass the U.S. Senate. What a withdrawl really means to international law, however, is another story.
Answer: deja va
Really, this is so widely used by native English speakers, including media references and every day useage that it has become a part of the language. If you mean what is the translation to Anglo-Saxon (or Middle English), that would be another issue altogether.
There was an earlier project sponsored by the University of the United Nations that did something similar. However, they acknowledged that English by itself couldn't be the "backbone" of any system, and instead used a concept numbering system that also included the ability to add words that may not have equivalents in English.
For instance, I don't know of any reasonable English translation for the Portuguese word "soldade". I can give it a formal definition (being the longing feeling that you have for somebody or something you love and miss). A reasonable translation would be "homesickness", but there are other cultural conotations in English that make that an imperfect translation, not to mention the subtle cultural context that "soldade" has in Portuguese. The two words really are different memes.
There are, however, words that do translate completly, like "fire hydrant" to "aquador de fogo". It means exactly the same thing in both languages, and even the cultural context for each is so nearly identical that you can easily substitute one for the other. Of course you even have cognates where even the same word is wholly adopted into another language, like "deja vu" mentioned above. However, even here you can have a context difference where the adopting language only has a narrow use of the word, and the original language can have many other contextual meanings to what is implied.
BTW, the best "backbone" language I've heard used is Esperanto, in part because of its roots in acedemia, and in part because it doesn't have a political agenda when used in multi-lingual translation projects (like translating a document between three or more languages).
I think you miss the point I was making earlier. WikiNews wants to allow commercial distribution of its content. Like CBS News, CNN, or the New York Times. They just want credit if it is used in a commercial publication and for there to be some way to link back to WikiNews as a reference.
This "all content free for non-commercial use" is quite explicit, and states that if you use it in a commercial enterprise, then you are violating copyright. Quite clear to me, and quite clear where the difference between Indymedia and Wikinews is at.
One of the "target" audiences for WikiNews is for the small market publication (like a weekly newspaper for a town of 5,000 people in rural Montana or Utah). These publications are pretty much a public service anyway, and this provides an avenue for them to obtain breaking news reports for their publications that otherwise they couldn't afford. While non-profit in the sense these newspapers are a hobby, sometimes even according to the IRS, they still are commercial entities and would not be able to publish Indymedia news reports because it would be "commercial use". Creative Commons licenses are pretty good in this respect, but there are some problems even there, which was one of the points of the GFDL.
I guess where the unspoken complaint is where this computer could be a full-functional general purpose, programable computing device, and instead is a marketing tool for Microsoft and a bug-filled internet access box like a car with the hood welded shut and no lug-nuts to replace the wheels on the same car.
There is no reason why people who only make $6,000 per year couldn't get a simple computer to hack on. Indeed, some of the most original software I've ever seen has come from places like where this computer is going to be marketed. While these people may not care about Linux, they should, as it allows people with more brains than money to succeed.
Maybe we are not going to some expensive private university but instead we are attending a local state land grant college with money that we scrape by on waiting tables and flipping burgers.
Having a cheap computer that you can hack on and do "cool" projects with on a budget has more applications than simply offering to somebody in Bolivia or Madagascar the chance to own their own computer.
It is also from cheap boxes like this that other cool "inventions" can also be created, unless AMD is specifically restricting the sale of boxes like this to 1st World nations artificially.
You don't think you could get a hardened version of Linux? There aren't companies selling distros of Linux that won't back them up?
There are plenty of people who would harden a box with Linux, and I disagree that Microsoft could harden a version of its OS any more than they already do for high end servers or customers who spend a whole lot more money than Microsoft would ever get from these very low-end computers.
I would be more apt (if I were still living in a 3rd world area) to buy the computer if I knew I could find a computer savvy neighbor who could rewrite the operating system if I found a bug (i.e. with GPL'd source code included) as opposed to a totally closed Microsoft solution. These are boxes that are going to areas that have people with brains, just not a whole lot of money to break into the computer industry with a $10,000 workstation and $50,000 worth of software development tools (and a $10,000 annual license renewal fee).
If AMD goes for a 14-year-old Finnish kid for the distro, then they are shooting themselves in the foot just as if they used the CPU design from a 14-year-old Finnish kid. This is not to say they couldn't hire a 14-year-old Finnish kid who is highly competitent and able to do all of that with high competency either.
I don't know where you are getting your figures from, but the USA is in a population decline right now, and accelerating. There are some local differences but even in areas where religious & cultural attitudes encourage large families have seen declines in birth rates. The only reason that the USA even sees any kind of population growth at all presently is due to the fact that immigration is taking up the slack (including illegal immigration). One of the reasons suggested why some politicians are quietly encouraging illegal immigration to the USA is precisely because of this birth rate decline, and the problems that it causes including an absense of entry-level workers, declining tax base, and increased health care costs to deal with the elderly.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, even with immigration the U.S. population is anticipated to stabilize by about 2030-2050 (depending on what figures you use) and then show signs of decline.
While I won't call myself a "world travller", I have visited many areas of the USA and have done some business travel, and I've seen first-hand what these figures mean. You simply don't see kids running around in many parts of the USA like there were even 30 years ago, except in very organized settings, because they aren't there anymore. While I admit I have been in settings where children wouldn't be appropriate, there are neutral areas/tourist areas where children, while not encouraged to be present, certainly wouldn't be out of place. They aren't there except in token numbers.
Yes, you can still find kids getting into mischief, but it isn't the same as what it was like in the past. Unfortunately, it is difficult to quantitize such observations.
For me, I don't object to a closed-source propriaty software solution for voting machines... i.e. Diebold or Microsoft.
I do object to having the source code concealed, however. If you put something into a voting machine, the full details of that voting machine should be disclosed and published, from every transistor and capacitor to every line of code for the source code, and the details available to any registered voter that would be using that machine... meaning me if it were in my voting precinct.
Copyright can still be maintained, and indeed a formal registration of the software with the Library of Congress will essentially do the same thing anyway, so why all the fuss. You would have to provide source code if you suggest that there has been copyright infringement (as SCO is finding out the hard way).
There also needs to be a guarentee that the source code disclosed in this manner is in fact the actual source code that is used by the voting machine. And attempts to obfuscate the source code should have penalties as well, particularly if it is obvious that the obfuscation was deliberate as opposed to simply poor programming techniques from a novice programmer.
Potentially, even the compilers/chip programmers need to be available to authenticate that the compiled binaries are identical.
Ideally, what would happen is that each political party involved (as well as other interested parties like the ACLU, black box voting, etc.) would get a CD-ROM with all of the sources and schematics involved, and each party could review the source code for potential fraud as well as independent verification of the binaries on the voting machines. Essentially, each political party will verify for its members that the voting machine is acceptable for use. Even a well-organized 3rd Party can squeek real hard and potentially win some votes if they can demonstrate that the other political parties are colluding with each other to fix the vote totals in this manner.
Where I live, each political party is allowed to have their own voting judge present in each precinct. As part of the set up of the voting booths before the voting occurs, each judge can check the serial numbers from something sent by their respective party (not the state government here... note the check on the system). If they suspect fraud, the party headquarters can be notified and potentially the suspect voting machine could be dealt with. Or even a boycott of the precinct that day if you think the fraud is that bad.
Indiymedia was brought up frequently in the Wikimedia mailing lists prior to the lanuch of this project. There are a number of safeguards they are trying to do to prevent some of the abuses from indymedia, and in short Wikinews will have a different "ecological" niche than Indymedia. The two projects can exist side by side as they do serve slightly different audiences, just like /. is not the only geek news website around.
Much of this is an outgrowth of people wanting to provide something a little more substantive than quick blurbs on the front page of Wikipedia that link to articles of interest related to current events. What will be very interesting is the multi-lingual aspects of Wikinews, with groups in German and French publishing stories that can be linked to the English side as well and vice versa.
The current major bone of contention is trying to decide under what license the content should be distributed. Most of the people involved like the GPL or FDPL, but these licenses don't work too well if you would like to publish something newsworth and allow other news organizations to do significant quotes from a Wikinews article. This issue is so contentious that it almost delayed the launch of the website, although for now all of the content is being released without license into the Public Domain until the license issues can be resolved. Basically, the concensus is to provide a license that would allow a small-town newspaper to even use Wikinews articles outright in their newspaper (be an alternative to Associated Press) but still be forced to acknowledge that they got the article from Wikinews and provide copyright protection for the authors of the piece so the words can't be arbitrarily changed. Indymedia absolutly doesn't do this at all, nor is it a goal.
Not bad from an AC. This should be modded up.
What I was trying to point out (unfortunately not too clearly) was that in addition to this sort of classification, we have seen some glimpses of stellar transitions to help confirm the theories. And when new scientific tools come around and used in astronomy, the results tend to confirm rather than debunk the stellar evolution theories. You know that you have a solid scientific theory when it gets confirmation from addition kinds of observations, and better yet if you make a prediction of some future result that actually shows up (like how black holes were described mathmatically before they were actually observed.)
This is exactly the problem with Cold Fusion (to give a current scientific theory that is strongly questioned at the moment), because that theory tends to get conflicting results based on how you are measuring the effect, or even who is doing the measurement. It is almost an embaressment to mention Cold Fusion and Stellar Evolution in the same sentance, because the theories of star development have so much of a sound theory behind them that it is more like the yardstick to compare other scientific theories to.