The arXiv system (www.arxiv.org) already hosts just about every preprint that comes out in high energy physics, astrophysics, and several related disciplines. Access is completely free, and they currently host 400,000 papers. Needless to say, people post there for a reason: it works really effectively to get research results out to the public quickly and efficiently, and as mentioned before, it's totally free for everyone involved. Open access isn't a theoretical question taking place in a vacuum, it's already underway, and it works just fine, and can even coexist with the refereed journal system, as the physics world has learned over the past decade.
First they lie about owning opensourcemedia.net, which is owned by Christopher Lydon's radio outlet. Then they lie about owning opensourcemedia.com, which is owned by Zope. They create some BS explanation for how the acronym is "easier to type", and we are supposed to grant them any credibility. They my be famous bloggers, but their notions about running a new website show them to be hacks when it comes to IT issues.
Isn't a really, REALLY easy solution to add in a different checkdigit scheme? If the checkdigit matches the old pattern, use the old system. If it's one more than the old pattern, use a new system. That way, we can make better use of the trillion or so available numbers. That wasn't so hard now, was it?
The intelligence of computer users has nothing to do with the merits of the suit. Let's face it, legal rules cannot assume that people will be smart, since everyone is often dumb, and many people are always dumb.
That said, advertisers have never been allowed to make patently false claims. Just because these adds were on the internet, and not on TV, or radio, or in a magazine has no bearing on anything. Given the amount of latitude they have to stretch, bend, and massage the truth, it should be enough. Suing for outright lies seems pretty reasonable, and the couple cents per person they get in damages will make a nice symbolic warning.
People are using Linux for the same reason that others are still using Windows 2000 or Office 97," Cherry said. "It's good enough to do they job they're deploying it for."
Actually, in my physics department, we use Linux, not because it is GOOD ENOUGH (?!?), but because it is the ONLY acceptable solution for what we need to do. For scientific computing, (or security, etc., etc.) it is the best option, not "good enough", and certainly no comparison with outdated programs from MS.
From what I can tell, the internet book list didn't have much on Amazon (or powells, or just a simple google search), but I think there is a need they could fill if they tried. Ask amazon to recommend books to you, and they will generally give you a bunch of titles by the same author(s). Thanks, but I know I like this author already. I've seen movie sites which make some pretty good left-field recommendations based on my ratings, but haven't found a good one for books. Is there already one out there, or is this an untapped area?
I really think the people complaining about not personally having a use for grid computing are completely missing the point. As long as enough people have a use for it, it will be useful. Having done a good number of calculations on a few different supercomputers, I can think of nothing that the grid currently offers to me...but I'm sure the people who run many-hundred processor jobs on a regular basis have a different perspective. For a while, the grid might be the plaything of big scientific and industrial computational projects, but has any technological advancement like this ever not caught on. Eventually, someone will figure out a new idea, only possible on a grid, which involves porn, gaming, or the ability to transfer media files in a manner of questionable legality, and soon kids will be asking what life was like without it back in the dark ages. A little patience, people, give the geniuses and madmen (not necessarily mutually exclusive) a little time to work...
I agree, some of these problems with internet voting can be vey severe. I remember reading somewhere after the 2000 election that there are true nightmare scenarios for internet voting that really don't come up for old-fashioned paper balloting. Most have to do with the issue of recounts, or what you can do if there is reason to suspect that the count you have is inaccurate...how do you have a computer recount? If there is a reason to doubt the number the computer gave you in the first place, you have no source to check against. Doing so would conceivably require something like identifying who voted which way, but I have to suspect that civil libertarians everywhere would be deeply, deeply troubled by giving up the anonymity of the voting process. Put another way, in the best case scenario, internet voting might be much better than paper balloting, but in the worst-case scenario, it can be MUCH worse. Let's see, how often do politics and politicians force us to face a worst-case scenario? Frightening, isn't it.
A good article, but there is a very good reason why most physicists tend to be extremely skeptical about claims like this. The voltages used by lifters may be large, but don't push the limits of modern technology in any way, shape or form. If strange anti-gravity phenomena happened for 10's of kV, we'd have seen the phenomena in a number of different places. Physical laws, as best we can tell, are universal, and they have many, MANY situations where they apply. It is extremely unlikely that these contraptions encounter high voltage antigrav phenomena, and no other high voltage machine we know of does.
BTW, I know Rai Weiss, and he is certainly kinetic, but hyperkinetic might be a bit of a stretch. Definitely a world-class physicist, too, one whose calculations you should generally take seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
The arXiv system (www.arxiv.org) already hosts just about every preprint that comes out in high energy physics, astrophysics, and several related disciplines. Access is completely free, and they currently host 400,000 papers. Needless to say, people post there for a reason: it works really effectively to get research results out to the public quickly and efficiently, and as mentioned before, it's totally free for everyone involved. Open access isn't a theoretical question taking place in a vacuum, it's already underway, and it works just fine, and can even coexist with the refereed journal system, as the physics world has learned over the past decade.
First they lie about owning opensourcemedia.net, which is owned by Christopher Lydon's radio outlet. Then they lie about owning opensourcemedia.com, which is owned by Zope. They create some BS explanation for how the acronym is "easier to type", and we are supposed to grant them any credibility. They my be famous bloggers, but their notions about running a new website show them to be hacks when it comes to IT issues.
Isn't a really, REALLY easy solution to add in a different checkdigit scheme? If the checkdigit matches the old pattern, use the old system. If it's one more than the old pattern, use a new system. That way, we can make better use of the trillion or so available numbers. That wasn't so hard now, was it?
That said, advertisers have never been allowed to make patently false claims. Just because these adds were on the internet, and not on TV, or radio, or in a magazine has no bearing on anything. Given the amount of latitude they have to stretch, bend, and massage the truth, it should be enough. Suing for outright lies seems pretty reasonable, and the couple cents per person they get in damages will make a nice symbolic warning.
Actually, in my physics department, we use Linux, not because it is GOOD ENOUGH (?!?), but because it is the ONLY acceptable solution for what we need to do. For scientific computing, (or security, etc., etc.) it is the best option, not "good enough", and certainly no comparison with outdated programs from MS.
From what I can tell, the internet book list didn't have much on Amazon (or powells, or just a simple google search), but I think there is a need they could fill if they tried. Ask amazon to recommend books to you, and they will generally give you a bunch of titles by the same author(s). Thanks, but I know I like this author already. I've seen movie sites which make some pretty good left-field recommendations based on my ratings, but haven't found a good one for books. Is there already one out there, or is this an untapped area?
I really think the people complaining about not personally having a use for grid computing are completely missing the point. As long as enough people have a use for it, it will be useful. Having done a good number of calculations on a few different supercomputers, I can think of nothing that the grid currently offers to me...but I'm sure the people who run many-hundred processor jobs on a regular basis have a different perspective. For a while, the grid might be the plaything of big scientific and industrial computational projects, but has any technological advancement like this ever not caught on. Eventually, someone will figure out a new idea, only possible on a grid, which involves porn, gaming, or the ability to transfer media files in a manner of questionable legality, and soon kids will be asking what life was like without it back in the dark ages. A little patience, people, give the geniuses and madmen (not necessarily mutually exclusive) a little time to work...
I agree, some of these problems with internet voting can be vey severe. I remember reading somewhere after the 2000 election that there are true nightmare scenarios for internet voting that really don't come up for old-fashioned paper balloting. Most have to do with the issue of recounts, or what you can do if there is reason to suspect that the count you have is inaccurate...how do you have a computer recount? If there is a reason to doubt the number the computer gave you in the first place, you have no source to check against. Doing so would conceivably require something like identifying who voted which way, but I have to suspect that civil libertarians everywhere would be deeply, deeply troubled by giving up the anonymity of the voting process. Put another way, in the best case scenario, internet voting might be much better than paper balloting, but in the worst-case scenario, it can be MUCH worse. Let's see, how often do politics and politicians force us to face a worst-case scenario? Frightening, isn't it.
A good article, but there is a very good reason why most physicists tend to be extremely skeptical about claims like this. The voltages used by lifters may be large, but don't push the limits of modern technology in any way, shape or form. If strange anti-gravity phenomena happened for 10's of kV, we'd have seen the phenomena in a number of different places. Physical laws, as best we can tell, are universal, and they have many, MANY situations where they apply. It is extremely unlikely that these contraptions encounter high voltage antigrav phenomena, and no other high voltage machine we know of does. BTW, I know Rai Weiss, and he is certainly kinetic, but hyperkinetic might be a bit of a stretch. Definitely a world-class physicist, too, one whose calculations you should generally take seriously.