For anyone who is interested, here is what Mark Shuttleworth actually said: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551 . In his post he gives his reasoning and alternatives they looked at. Seems pretty well thought out. Ubuntu always gets slapped about not giving back to the community. Well, here they are announcing they are giving back and they still get slapped. It seems as if they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Wouldn't you want one of the big players to be the one putting time and effort into alternatives to old technologies? Most people I know use X, but none of them would say that it is great or state of the art. Who else but Ubuntu, Redhat or Suse, all comemrcial distros would be in a position to look at moving beyond X? While I don't know anything about Wayland, so I can't comment on whether it is a good or bad decision, it seems that the real work falls into two categories: 1) get Wayland up to speed (if it's not already) and 2) make gnome and kde less dependent on the underlying display driver.
It seems that neither of these are bad things and #2 would actually be good. Besides, Ubuntu could always switch back if it didn't work or there were a surge of development for X.
Apple has had a monopoly on it's App Store because, it was pretty much the only game in town. Now that Apple and the iPhone are starting to get some competition through Android, it will be interesting to see what happens. Apple once had a pretty much monopoly with downloading music through iTunes. Just about everything was DRM'd. Once some competition came in, they dropped their DRM to stay competitive.
While the change to Apple's music model and their App Store aren't 100% analogous, they aren't the only smart phone/platform in town any more. Now that they have some real competition, like their music policy, if they don't stay competitive with what the market demands, they will lose sales of devices. It doesn't matter if there is an app for that or not, if every one else also has an app for it, too.
I choose Amtrak whenever I can. I can work on the train, get up and move around, and even enjoy a nice meal (compared to airline food). The only drawback is that it takes longer to get where you're going. On the other hand, I don't have to arrive two hours early, I don't have to pay extra for my luggage and I don't have to get felt up by a lonely TSA employee.
While not every trip is practical by train, it beats driving, saves fuel, saves money and you can get quite a bit of work done in route.
The people who smuggle explosives up their a**es still won't be detected by the new pat down, so the whole purpose is to either force non-terrorists to be violated by being naked on a scanner or to be violated by a more aggressive pat down (or should that be feel up). Don't get me wrong, I think we need to be on guard against terrorists, but this doesn't seem to do anything towards adding additional protections, only additional harassment.
But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe some TSA agent copping a feel of a man or woman's genitalia will somehow make flying safer.
The article states that it is using the same types of batteries packs that are currently used in electric fork lifts in modern warehouses. As such, they should have a large charge-discharge cycle range and not be terribly expensive as they aren't new technology, but existing technology.
The case is not about you paying sales tax to a foreign government (Carolina). It is about you paying sales or use tax to your own state. This applies to all mail order only companies. If a business has a presence in the state you are buying, you pay sales tax to your local state. If they don't, you pay use tax to your state. However, states have no way of what you are buying from out of state vendors, which is why they are wanting the information. For sales tax, the vendor collects it and remits it on your behalf, so the state doesn't need to know what you are buying, they know what the vendor is selling.
For business that do have a presence in the state, they charge you sales tax, even if you mail order from them. That's why buying books online from Barnes and Noble you have to pay sales tax. Buying from Amazon, you don't. However, in most states, you would be liable for use tax from purchases from Amazon. But, nobody pays it voluntarily. The case is about getting the information so that the state can go back and charge you for your legally owed taxes.
BTW, use taxes apply to more than just out of state purchases shipped into the state (if you paid the sales tax in another state, then use tax doesn't apply). In most states, any purchase, even from a garage sale, is liable for use taxes. Most states, however, have a minimum that is reportable, so most garage sale purchases would be exempt. Also, the purchases of water craft and vehicles fall under different requirements and you have to pay local sales tax, even if purchased out of state.
The question that the courts are wrestling with is should businesses that are on-line only continue to get a competitive advantage against brick and mortar storefronts? The original sales/use tax laws are 100 years old in most states and no longer fit with the current technology.
The antiquated laws have forced many local shops to be non-competitive and to close. As such this costs jobs, which lowers the tax base and places higher requirement on social programs and unemployment. At least when Walmart moves into a community, and puts a bunch of local businesses out of business, they are still employing people in the community (although there tends to still be a net decrease).
The question really is whether online vendors should receive a competitive benefit through the tax structure, at the expense of local business. If you think yes, then you would be happy with the Amazon decision. If you think that all businesses should be on an equal footing when it comes to taxes, then you probably disagree with the decision.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Even gnome ships with their standard UI or the new gnome-shell. Gnome is more than the UI, as gnome.org's own work shows. Ubuntu wanting to put their own custom UI in place of the obviously replaceable gnome one doesn't mean they have dropped gnome. For instance, if I install gnome and remove all of the default panels and instead use cairo-dock, doesn't mean I'm not running gnome. If I then replace nautilus with thunar, that doesn't mean I'm not running gnome. Gnome really is about the communication layers underneath the UI instead of the UI itself.
Maybe instead of calling it the gnome UI, we should refer to it as the gnome presentation layer. But, then that would be one of those semantic things.
Nietzsche exclaimed that "God is dead." And yet, billions of people ignored Nietzsche and continued to believe and even convert to a religious believe. Just because he said it doesn't make it so. Likewise, PC World claims that desktop linux is dead, and millions of people ignore them, too.
It seems like even Microsoft is ignoring PC World's proclamation as they are stepping up their anti-linux/fsf campaigns. For something that is supposedly dead, they sure are spending a lot of money against it.
Linux on the desktop isn't dead. It's alive and kicking. Does it have any where near as large an installed base as Microsoft Windows does? Of course not. But then again, in the mid 1980s a small software company in the Pacific Northwest didn't have anywhere near the market share of IBM or even Apple. A lot can change in 25 years.
You should have read further. The article summary pointed to another article that showed that the companies they were interested in were large companies and government agencies with $500 million or more a year in revenue and more than 500 employees. As such, their board did select users, in much the same way any pollster or survey creator selects users by setting the parameters or bounds of the sample. Now, as to whether this is valid, well, yes it is valid. It does not appear to be a statistical sample, though, which means you cannot extrapolate the findings to the population as a whole.
What can be said is that in those companies surveyed, linux deployment is increasing at the expense of windows. The key part being "in those companies surveyed." If it had been a statistical sample, then the title of the slashdot article might have been accurate.
It's been about five years, but I was involved in such a project with a state government. At the time the cost of purchasing a computer with discount was about $1,000 after discount (albeit with lower specs than what that $1,000 would buy today). We assembled and deployed about 500 computers at a cost of $525 (including windows, office and labor). It should be noted, however, that being a state agency, we received really large discounts on the windows and office.
The point is, however, that it's not just the hardware, but the labor involve, too. Since we had an image of the hard-drive, setup was actually very quick. We cloned the drives after they were already installed. It did take about 20 minutes per machine, but other than booting the system, the process was automated. While 20 minutes times 500 machines seems like a lot of time, it actually took less time than cleaning and configuring factory pre-installed machines. Although it would appear that you could only setup 3 machines per hour, since it was automated, a tech could actually setup about 15 machines per hour. Even cutting that to 10/hour and figuring $20/hour in labor costs, it comes out to be $2/pc to install the software. On the assembly side, we had techs assemble and test two machines per hour so that added another $10 per machine.
Of course, your labor costs and pc specs might be different. These were basic office type of machines for clerical work (heaviest graphics work was powerpoint). The real question is whether you have a large enough staff to do it. At 2 machines per hour and 500 machines, it takes 250 man hours to assemble and test. Only one tech and that is over six weeks, plus their own work has to be accomplished. We spread it over 10 techs, so the time was much shorter.
Ultimately, we saved about a quarter of a million dollars by doing it ourself. YMMV
As long as slashdot is now including information from sources outside the posted article to determine the title, maybe the title should be changed to "HP adds defunct tablet line to new printer." Because, according to this quote from CNN http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/09/20/hps-first-and-last-android-tablet-printer-does-apples-airprint: "Focusing on the tablet aspect, the device will likely be one of HP's last that runs Google's (GOOG) Android. " This is HP's last android table and later in the article they emphasize WebOS.
Much of the "wizbang" Ubuntu releases are from upstream versions of gnome. I guess they could use the most stable packages, but then how would they fulfill your wish to be more up to date? There is a server version -- you install it from the alternate cd. Usually, it is only the desktop environment and applications that get the new features. Things like apache, etc. seem to be pretty stable on ubuntu. For the utmost in control, you could just install the command-line version, then download and compile what ever apps you want so that you can choose what you want. If that is too much work, then you you shouldn't complain about the packaging choices that the ubunutu (or any other distro) have made on your behalf.
Doesn't the Palm Pre already do this? Also isn't there a generic inductive cell phone charger already on the market? Some kind of charging mat? If so, what is all this fuss about, other than it would be one device to charge them all?
Why is this a troll? We've already known that there are a multitude of planets, even earth sized ones. This is really non-news until 1) it is confirmed and 2) they determine whether these are earth sized or earth like.
I just spent the better part of an hour reading the posts actually on Scienceblogs regarding all of this and with the exception of two other bloggers who quit blogging over this, most posters are thinking it was a "knee jerk" reaction and PepsiCo shouldn't have been pulled without first seeing what was actually being posted by them. There seemed to be a real desire by many on the site to here from PepsiCo's R&D scientist on various topics, but they now concede it is unlikely that something like that will every happen.
The most interesting question posed was why people weren't so upset about CoKe blogging on the site. Anyway, from the postings on the site, it seems to be much less scandalous than it does here on/.
Where did anybody say that PepsiCo paid money to "bypass the normal selection criteria and post bad science?" Those would be strong accusations and hopefully you could prove them. From your own wikipedia reference, it mentions that many of the bloggers work in industry. Why is it okay for one industry to be on the site, but not another? The Wikipedia entry says how there isn't supposed to be editorial control, but that seems false, given allowing only certain industries and excluding others seems to be the ultimate in editorial control.
Now, if you have documentation as to PepsiCo bribing anyone at ScienceBlogs then I and many others would like to see it, because even if the so called bribe was refused after it was disclosed, it brings into question anything posted on the site as ScienceBlogs would have zero credibility. So, please, instead of just making unsupported accusations that even those actually involved with ScienceBlogs have not made, show the evidence you have to show how corrupt ScienceBlogs actually is.
And that differs from all of those ads paying ScienceBlogs to be present on the site? If a blog is posted by PepsiCo and identified as such, what different does it make. Plus, reading the different objections on ScienceBlogs was not about who was paying, but rather, PepsiCo, paying or not would use the blog for propaganda. Furthermore, the concern was that anybody who's employment was from PepsiCo or some other corporation should not be allowed because of the same potential for bias and propaganda (ie who would say something against their employer?). However, that argument is hollow as all scientists are employed by somebody, either industry, universities or the government. If we can't trust the blog from those in industry, then how can we trust those at universities, since they depend on swaying opinion to receive grants or the government who needs to control opionon for .
If I am a univeristy researcher researching alternative energy, how unbiased will my blog be towards fossil fuels? More importantly, how the reading public know whether what I am saying is unbiased or not? Or, if I am a university researcher researching food additives, but lo and behold, the research is funded by the food industry, how is that not any more tainted? Could I be trusted to not bite the hand that feeds me? And again, what assurance would the public have reading the blog have?
Would all of this not be solved by PepsiCo's blog stating that the content is paid for by Pepsico, so the reader could then make their own decision as to the reliability? In such a case, would that not be more open than the university researcher relying on grants from entities unknown to the reader? Or even the government itself?
In the end, though, the red flag went up because PepsiCo was doing this, without the deeper analysis of what protects the reader from the exact same biases in the other bloggers.
So the issue remains, if the blog is about dissemination of ideas, then should all sources be on equal footing? Or is it just about disseminating ideas approved by Scienceblogs (and if so, then why is it an issue as to whether they are paid for that dissemination or not?
Rate of access does not equal importance of data. How important are, say, dental records or DNA? To the majority of people, probably not too important. However, in law enforcement, they could be very important. The US military has DNA records on all of its members. However, unless you are dead and they are trying to identify your body, 99% of it is just stored and never used.
Medical records are stored and unlikely to be used on a regular basis, however, someone coming into the emergency room at the local hospital with chest pains, access to those records in a quick and timely manner may be important.
What the author seems to be proposing, however, is that records be stored on the basis of how often they will be needed (needed frequently - high speed storage, once in a blue moon, slow or offline storage). In reality, data should be stored on the cost associated with it not being available when needed.
Using the medical example, it seems that patient data would have a high cost of not being available when needed (death). Payroll information, however, which is needed somewhat frequently, has a lower cost if not available (employee having to wait for the information). As such, the metric should not be on how often the data is accessed, but instead on how vital quick access is.
It seems that most of the rants on this story are with regard to PepsiCo being paid to post on the blog. Does that mean there would not be any of this uproar if they blogged for free? Of course this assumes the other bloggers aren't paid, either. Because if they are, then who is to protect us from their paid agenda?
However, if one looks at the original question posed: "How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?" then it seems somewhat hypocritical to suggest that the only way professional researches who work for a corporation should only be allowed to publish papers into the scientific community, when they already reach that audience and not the general public. And besides, why should this standard only apply to corporate researchers? Government researchers and those in colleges and universities also have a lot at stake in pushing their own agendas.
I guess what is really at stake here is whether or not this blog site is for the general public or limited to the scientific community. If the latter, aren't scientists and researchers able to discern between what is propaganda or not in their field? And if it is for the scientific community, wouldn't a simple disclosure of the work relationship suffice, like it does in presenting research papers?
On the other hand, if the site is for the general population to obtain information, then why is it alright for/. for instance, to have professionals in their field to submit stories or comment on stories related to their field. Aren't these posters also tied to some corporation, government or university?
Of course is sites like./ or Scieneblogs only allowed non-professionals to post and comment, then they really wouldn't be too useful, would they? Who would use WebMD if the only sources were not from the professional medical community?
It seems that either the issue is about paid renumeration for content or the content itself. If the purpose of the blog (or even/.) is to allow the free (as in beer) discussion of ideas, then the content should be allowed regardless of renumeration or not. If on the other hand, the concern is that content may be tainted by the contributors ties to industry (or government, etc.) then why just single out content from industry and not other tainted sources. Of course, if all of those tainted sources were screened out, then where would the news and information on such sites actually come from?
It's is kind of funny that people at Scienceblog resigned over this, based on tainted content. I guess their readers and posters aren't sophisticated enough to discriminate between real science and fluff./.ers on the other hand seem much more capable of picking apart a scientific article, pointing out insufficiencies and down right falsehoods -- and I'm pretty sure to say that we (/.ers) aren't all professionals.
Maybe, some of the responses to this article are correct. If you work for industry, government or educational institutions, you should only rely on officially publishing research to get your message out. Of course, they would then have to ignore who is funding the research in the first place as that might lend bias to author's paper.
In the end, I am glad that/. allows the free dissemination of information without censoring the source, thus allowing the community to accept or reject the information presented.
According to the actual article, there was no cell involved, only proteins resembling a cell wall. Nor was anything human mentioned.
In short, the article describes how they rapped a protein layer around the nano-transistor and it worked. Then it speculated on what it might be able to do in the future.
While powering a single transistor from the cell is interesting, a single transistor can only be on or off. Since, based on the data supplied in the article, there isn't a mechanism to trigger the on/off state, then it seems to be limited use.
Of more interest is the mention of the research done at the Hebrew University where they accomplished the same thing but by using enzymes that the cell ignored. The reason this is more interesting is that enzymes may be able to be tailored to work with specific cell functions, versus just being powered by the the cell.
Slashdot Mirror
What I want to know is how come the TSA can give me a full body scan at no charge but the hospital wants thousands of dollars to do the same thing?
For anyone who is interested, here is what Mark Shuttleworth actually said: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551 . In his post he gives his reasoning and alternatives they looked at. Seems pretty well thought out. Ubuntu always gets slapped about not giving back to the community. Well, here they are announcing they are giving back and they still get slapped. It seems as if they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Wouldn't you want one of the big players to be the one putting time and effort into alternatives to old technologies? Most people I know use X, but none of them would say that it is great or state of the art. Who else but Ubuntu, Redhat or Suse, all comemrcial distros would be in a position to look at moving beyond X? While I don't know anything about Wayland, so I can't comment on whether it is a good or bad decision, it seems that the real work falls into two categories: 1) get Wayland up to speed (if it's not already) and 2) make gnome and kde less dependent on the underlying display driver.
It seems that neither of these are bad things and #2 would actually be good. Besides, Ubuntu could always switch back if it didn't work or there were a surge of development for X.
While true, the RIM and Nokia had smartphones prior to the iPhone, Apple took it to a whole new level and it entered the public's consciousness.
Apple has had a monopoly on it's App Store because, it was pretty much the only game in town. Now that Apple and the iPhone are starting to get some competition through Android, it will be interesting to see what happens. Apple once had a pretty much monopoly with downloading music through iTunes. Just about everything was DRM'd. Once some competition came in, they dropped their DRM to stay competitive.
While the change to Apple's music model and their App Store aren't 100% analogous, they aren't the only smart phone/platform in town any more. Now that they have some real competition, like their music policy, if they don't stay competitive with what the market demands, they will lose sales of devices. It doesn't matter if there is an app for that or not, if every one else also has an app for it, too.
I choose Amtrak whenever I can. I can work on the train, get up and move around, and even enjoy a nice meal (compared to airline food). The only drawback is that it takes longer to get where you're going. On the other hand, I don't have to arrive two hours early, I don't have to pay extra for my luggage and I don't have to get felt up by a lonely TSA employee.
While not every trip is practical by train, it beats driving, saves fuel, saves money and you can get quite a bit of work done in route.
The people who smuggle explosives up their a**es still won't be detected by the new pat down, so the whole purpose is to either force non-terrorists to be violated by being naked on a scanner or to be violated by a more aggressive pat down (or should that be feel up). Don't get me wrong, I think we need to be on guard against terrorists, but this doesn't seem to do anything towards adding additional protections, only additional harassment.
But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe some TSA agent copping a feel of a man or woman's genitalia will somehow make flying safer.
The article states that it is using the same types of batteries packs that are currently used in electric fork lifts in modern warehouses. As such, they should have a large charge-discharge cycle range and not be terribly expensive as they aren't new technology, but existing technology.
The case is not about you paying sales tax to a foreign government (Carolina). It is about you paying sales or use tax to your own state. This applies to all mail order only companies. If a business has a presence in the state you are buying, you pay sales tax to your local state. If they don't, you pay use tax to your state. However, states have no way of what you are buying from out of state vendors, which is why they are wanting the information. For sales tax, the vendor collects it and remits it on your behalf, so the state doesn't need to know what you are buying, they know what the vendor is selling.
For business that do have a presence in the state, they charge you sales tax, even if you mail order from them. That's why buying books online from Barnes and Noble you have to pay sales tax. Buying from Amazon, you don't. However, in most states, you would be liable for use tax from purchases from Amazon. But, nobody pays it voluntarily. The case is about getting the information so that the state can go back and charge you for your legally owed taxes.
BTW, use taxes apply to more than just out of state purchases shipped into the state (if you paid the sales tax in another state, then use tax doesn't apply). In most states, any purchase, even from a garage sale, is liable for use taxes. Most states, however, have a minimum that is reportable, so most garage sale purchases would be exempt. Also, the purchases of water craft and vehicles fall under different requirements and you have to pay local sales tax, even if purchased out of state.
The question that the courts are wrestling with is should businesses that are on-line only continue to get a competitive advantage against brick and mortar storefronts? The original sales/use tax laws are 100 years old in most states and no longer fit with the current technology.
The antiquated laws have forced many local shops to be non-competitive and to close. As such this costs jobs, which lowers the tax base and places higher requirement on social programs and unemployment. At least when Walmart moves into a community, and puts a bunch of local businesses out of business, they are still employing people in the community (although there tends to still be a net decrease).
The question really is whether online vendors should receive a competitive benefit through the tax structure, at the expense of local business. If you think yes, then you would be happy with the Amazon decision. If you think that all businesses should be on an equal footing when it comes to taxes, then you probably disagree with the decision.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Even gnome ships with their standard UI or the new gnome-shell. Gnome is more than the UI, as gnome.org's own work shows. Ubuntu wanting to put their own custom UI in place of the obviously replaceable gnome one doesn't mean they have dropped gnome. For instance, if I install gnome and remove all of the default panels and instead use cairo-dock, doesn't mean I'm not running gnome. If I then replace nautilus with thunar, that doesn't mean I'm not running gnome. Gnome really is about the communication layers underneath the UI instead of the UI itself.
Maybe instead of calling it the gnome UI, we should refer to it as the gnome presentation layer. But, then that would be one of those semantic things.
Nietzsche exclaimed that "God is dead." And yet, billions of people ignored Nietzsche and continued to believe and even convert to a religious believe. Just because he said it doesn't make it so. Likewise, PC World claims that desktop linux is dead, and millions of people ignore them, too.
It seems like even Microsoft is ignoring PC World's proclamation as they are stepping up their anti-linux/fsf campaigns. For something that is supposedly dead, they sure are spending a lot of money against it.
Linux on the desktop isn't dead. It's alive and kicking. Does it have any where near as large an installed base as Microsoft Windows does? Of course not. But then again, in the mid 1980s a small software company in the Pacific Northwest didn't have anywhere near the market share of IBM or even Apple. A lot can change in 25 years.
You should have read further. The article summary pointed to another article that showed that the companies they were interested in were large companies and government agencies with $500 million or more a year in revenue and more than 500 employees. As such, their board did select users, in much the same way any pollster or survey creator selects users by setting the parameters or bounds of the sample. Now, as to whether this is valid, well, yes it is valid. It does not appear to be a statistical sample, though, which means you cannot extrapolate the findings to the population as a whole.
What can be said is that in those companies surveyed, linux deployment is increasing at the expense of windows. The key part being "in those companies surveyed." If it had been a statistical sample, then the title of the slashdot article might have been accurate.
It's been about five years, but I was involved in such a project with a state government. At the time the cost of purchasing a computer with discount was about $1,000 after discount (albeit with lower specs than what that $1,000 would buy today). We assembled and deployed about 500 computers at a cost of $525 (including windows, office and labor). It should be noted, however, that being a state agency, we received really large discounts on the windows and office.
The point is, however, that it's not just the hardware, but the labor involve, too. Since we had an image of the hard-drive, setup was actually very quick. We cloned the drives after they were already installed. It did take about 20 minutes per machine, but other than booting the system, the process was automated. While 20 minutes times 500 machines seems like a lot of time, it actually took less time than cleaning and configuring factory pre-installed machines. Although it would appear that you could only setup 3 machines per hour, since it was automated, a tech could actually setup about 15 machines per hour. Even cutting that to 10/hour and figuring $20/hour in labor costs, it comes out to be $2/pc to install the software. On the assembly side, we had techs assemble and test two machines per hour so that added another $10 per machine.
Of course, your labor costs and pc specs might be different. These were basic office type of machines for clerical work (heaviest graphics work was powerpoint). The real question is whether you have a large enough staff to do it. At 2 machines per hour and 500 machines, it takes 250 man hours to assemble and test. Only one tech and that is over six weeks, plus their own work has to be accomplished. We spread it over 10 techs, so the time was much shorter.
Ultimately, we saved about a quarter of a million dollars by doing it ourself. YMMV
As long as slashdot is now including information from sources outside the posted article to determine the title, maybe the title should be changed to "HP adds defunct tablet line to new printer." Because, according to this quote from CNN http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/09/20/hps-first-and-last-android-tablet-printer-does-apples-airprint: "Focusing on the tablet aspect, the device will likely be one of HP's last that runs Google's (GOOG) Android. " This is HP's last android table and later in the article they emphasize WebOS.
Much of the "wizbang" Ubuntu releases are from upstream versions of gnome. I guess they could use the most stable packages, but then how would they fulfill your wish to be more up to date? There is a server version -- you install it from the alternate cd. Usually, it is only the desktop environment and applications that get the new features. Things like apache, etc. seem to be pretty stable on ubuntu. For the utmost in control, you could just install the command-line version, then download and compile what ever apps you want so that you can choose what you want. If that is too much work, then you you shouldn't complain about the packaging choices that the ubunutu (or any other distro) have made on your behalf.
Doesn't the Palm Pre already do this? Also isn't there a generic inductive cell phone charger already on the market? Some kind of charging mat? If so, what is all this fuss about, other than it would be one device to charge them all?
Why is this a troll? We've already known that there are a multitude of planets, even earth sized ones. This is really non-news until 1) it is confirmed and 2) they determine whether these are earth sized or earth like.
In other news, scientists discover that the universe is full of matter.
I just spent the better part of an hour reading the posts actually on Scienceblogs regarding all of this and with the exception of two other bloggers who quit blogging over this, most posters are thinking it was a "knee jerk" reaction and PepsiCo shouldn't have been pulled without first seeing what was actually being posted by them. There seemed to be a real desire by many on the site to here from PepsiCo's R&D scientist on various topics, but they now concede it is unlikely that something like that will every happen.
The most interesting question posed was why people weren't so upset about CoKe blogging on the site. Anyway, from the postings on the site, it seems to be much less scandalous than it does here on /.
Where did anybody say that PepsiCo paid money to "bypass the normal selection criteria and post bad science?" Those would be strong accusations and hopefully you could prove them. From your own wikipedia reference, it mentions that many of the bloggers work in industry. Why is it okay for one industry to be on the site, but not another? The Wikipedia entry says how there isn't supposed to be editorial control, but that seems false, given allowing only certain industries and excluding others seems to be the ultimate in editorial control.
Now, if you have documentation as to PepsiCo bribing anyone at ScienceBlogs then I and many others would like to see it, because even if the so called bribe was refused after it was disclosed, it brings into question anything posted on the site as ScienceBlogs would have zero credibility. So, please, instead of just making unsupported accusations that even those actually involved with ScienceBlogs have not made, show the evidence you have to show how corrupt ScienceBlogs actually is.
And that differs from all of those ads paying ScienceBlogs to be present on the site? If a blog is posted by PepsiCo and identified as such, what different does it make. Plus, reading the different objections on ScienceBlogs was not about who was paying, but rather, PepsiCo, paying or not would use the blog for propaganda. Furthermore, the concern was that anybody who's employment was from PepsiCo or some other corporation should not be allowed because of the same potential for bias and propaganda (ie who would say something against their employer?). However, that argument is hollow as all scientists are employed by somebody, either industry, universities or the government. If we can't trust the blog from those in industry, then how can we trust those at universities, since they depend on swaying opinion to receive grants or the government who needs to control opionon for .
If I am a univeristy researcher researching alternative energy, how unbiased will my blog be towards fossil fuels? More importantly, how the reading public know whether what I am saying is unbiased or not? Or, if I am a university researcher researching food additives, but lo and behold, the research is funded by the food industry, how is that not any more tainted? Could I be trusted to not bite the hand that feeds me? And again, what assurance would the public have reading the blog have?
Would all of this not be solved by PepsiCo's blog stating that the content is paid for by Pepsico, so the reader could then make their own decision as to the reliability? In such a case, would that not be more open than the university researcher relying on grants from entities unknown to the reader? Or even the government itself?
In the end, though, the red flag went up because PepsiCo was doing this, without the deeper analysis of what protects the reader from the exact same biases in the other bloggers.
So the issue remains, if the blog is about dissemination of ideas, then should all sources be on equal footing? Or is it just about disseminating ideas approved by Scienceblogs (and if so, then why is it an issue as to whether they are paid for that dissemination or not?
Rate of access does not equal importance of data. How important are, say, dental records or DNA? To the majority of people, probably not too important. However, in law enforcement, they could be very important. The US military has DNA records on all of its members. However, unless you are dead and they are trying to identify your body, 99% of it is just stored and never used.
Medical records are stored and unlikely to be used on a regular basis, however, someone coming into the emergency room at the local hospital with chest pains, access to those records in a quick and timely manner may be important.
What the author seems to be proposing, however, is that records be stored on the basis of how often they will be needed (needed frequently - high speed storage, once in a blue moon, slow or offline storage). In reality, data should be stored on the cost associated with it not being available when needed.
Using the medical example, it seems that patient data would have a high cost of not being available when needed (death). Payroll information, however, which is needed somewhat frequently, has a lower cost if not available (employee having to wait for the information). As such, the metric should not be on how often the data is accessed, but instead on how vital quick access is.
It seems that most of the rants on this story are with regard to PepsiCo being paid to post on the blog. Does that mean there would not be any of this uproar if they blogged for free? Of course this assumes the other bloggers aren't paid, either. Because if they are, then who is to protect us from their paid agenda?
However, if one looks at the original question posed: "How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?" then it seems somewhat hypocritical to suggest that the only way professional researches who work for a corporation should only be allowed to publish papers into the scientific community, when they already reach that audience and not the general public. And besides, why should this standard only apply to corporate researchers? Government researchers and those in colleges and universities also have a lot at stake in pushing their own agendas.
I guess what is really at stake here is whether or not this blog site is for the general public or limited to the scientific community. If the latter, aren't scientists and researchers able to discern between what is propaganda or not in their field? And if it is for the scientific community, wouldn't a simple disclosure of the work relationship suffice, like it does in presenting research papers?
On the other hand, if the site is for the general population to obtain information, then why is it alright for /. for instance, to have professionals in their field to submit stories or comment on stories related to their field. Aren't these posters also tied to some corporation, government or university?
Of course is sites like ./ or Scieneblogs only allowed non-professionals to post and comment, then they really wouldn't be too useful, would they? Who would use WebMD if the only sources were not from the professional medical community?
It seems that either the issue is about paid renumeration for content or the content itself. If the purpose of the blog (or even /.) is to allow the free (as in beer) discussion of ideas, then the content should be allowed regardless of renumeration or not. If on the other hand, the concern is that content may be tainted by the contributors ties to industry (or government, etc.) then why just single out content from industry and not other tainted sources. Of course, if all of those tainted sources were screened out, then where would the news and information on such sites actually come from?
It's is kind of funny that people at Scienceblog resigned over this, based on tainted content. I guess their readers and posters aren't sophisticated enough to discriminate between real science and fluff. /.ers on the other hand seem much more capable of picking apart a scientific article, pointing out insufficiencies and down right falsehoods -- and I'm pretty sure to say that we (/.ers) aren't all professionals.
Maybe, some of the responses to this article are correct. If you work for industry, government or educational institutions, you should only rely on officially publishing research to get your message out. Of course, they would then have to ignore who is funding the research in the first place as that might lend bias to author's paper.
In the end, I am glad that /. allows the free dissemination of information without censoring the source, thus allowing the community to accept or reject the information presented.
Touché
According to the actual article, there was no cell involved, only proteins resembling a cell wall. Nor was anything human mentioned.
In short, the article describes how they rapped a protein layer around the nano-transistor and it worked. Then it speculated on what it might be able to do in the future.
While powering a single transistor from the cell is interesting, a single transistor can only be on or off. Since, based on the data supplied in the article, there isn't a mechanism to trigger the on/off state, then it seems to be limited use.
Of more interest is the mention of the research done at the Hebrew University where they accomplished the same thing but by using enzymes that the cell ignored. The reason this is more interesting is that enzymes may be able to be tailored to work with specific cell functions, versus just being powered by the the cell.