many many moons ago, i worked briefly at an oxygen concentrator manufacturing company. which is basically what this unit sounds like, an oxygen concentrator that sort of works in reverse, you keep the exhaust and throw away the product. these devices work by forcing compressed air through a molecular sieve - nitrogen adheres to the sieve and O2 passes straight through. but then you've got to get the nitrogen back out of the sieve, which requires decompressing the filter medium. all that energy you used to filter the air is then lost and you must start again. so through a series of compressions and decompressions, you can extract some pretty high purity O2 (about 95% was typical then), in a convenient home unit, but with the drawback of not being very energy efficient.
i'm not sure why the military would need it. afaik, navy submarines track their position by first syncing their position with a known reference (say at port), then using very high-precision, high-accuracy accelerometers from which the first and second integrals give you velocity and position. if you suspect the system is off, then you could surface and get a GPS reading. and surfacing is less likely to reveal your position than pinging. the only possible application i can see would be civilian.
yeah, you do have a point with the 'getting your name in there' business. i haven't watched CSPAN in a long time, but when i did, you never saw much real debate going on. no, it's mostly just some representative from a district in bumblefuck making a speech to an empty room.
but i don't see anything there that indicates to me that their use of XML constitutes a document control system.
and another thing, as many are alluding to, a document control system won't prevent the compiling of assinine code. but what it will do is give you a forensics system. it makes people accountable in a way which is easily monitored. if bad legislation is enacted, you can always make amendments, and the dcs will make it easy to highlight exactly what was changed so that you may check it with a minimum of labor at the last minute before voting again. both legislators and congressional aides would have little excuse for their improper actions and inactions.
now for the bad news. the system relies on computers, and most of your legislators (senators at least, and probably most representatives) are still computer illiterate. their aides aren't, of course, but most of these people just want you to show them the piece of paper to sign, or the yes/no button to push, so that they can get back to their golfing/schmoozing.
and also, who controls the document control system? it would be necessary to have complete openness so that the googles of the world could record every change as it occured in real time. and for matters of national security, much of the publicly-accessible law would have to be redacted. perhaps something like a checksum for redacted material could be provided to at least ensure that unviewable text hasn't been tampered with.
Perhaps, but if you make astronauts any more repulsive than they presently are, the complications resulting from additional unrequited love would have to be dealt with.
you aren't being banned from anything. you may still access Myspace on your privately owned computer. sure, a library is a public service paid for by public taxes. and it is therefore the job of legislators to decide how to responsibly allocate those funds. if they pass a law that says no Myspace access will be provided in the Library, then in fact it is YOU the people, through YOUR duly elected representatives, that have decided it is not a good use of YOUR equipment.
seriously now, a library is not an internet cafe. libraries are provided for the public interest so that people may access data that is normally not available to them. a better and more legitimate use of library funds would be subscriptions to online research journals so that people can get full access to articles that they may only be able to see an abstract for at home. and those people trying to access scholarly works should not have to wait for a computer because some kid is busy chatting with their friend two seats over or polishing up the layout on their Myspace page.
another good use would be someone trying to apply for a job, but doesn't have a computer at home. that is something in the legitmate public interest. it serves both the public, and the individual. they shouldn't have to wait in line for Myspace users, either.
if you want to play, go do it somewhere else. that's not what a library is for.
sure, you just don't have a right to free telecommunications services. well, at least the Supreme Court hasn't legislated it, yet.
historically, libraries have been "download" only. you could borrow books, listen to tapes, watch videos, etc. but libraries didn't provide you the means to mail letters, make telephone calls, or publish texts. although computers in libraries isn't all that new, the ability to do more than look up information is.
If I invent something, but keep the details of my invention a secret, then that is certainly not free and not Open Source. But if I patent my invention, the use of the idea is still not free, but the knowledge practically is. Are patents Open Source?
The reason I'm asking this is I wasn't sure from the article if the company was actually giving anything away. It is not clear to me if I invent a new drug based off the information they provided, do I now owe them a royalty?
Open Source by patent (or copyright) is a great idea if you think you can make more money off licenses to others than by your own efforts. Secrecy is better if you think that your information is based on special insight and others will not be able to duplicate it independently for several decades. What they gave away (assuming they gave anything away) may not have much intrinsic value if it is easily duplicated by others.
nah, i understood him perfectly. i just chose to be dismissive because he was being dismissive.
anyhoo, the truth is, "climate science" is a pretty foggy term. you can be a "climate" scientist if you are a geologist, chemist, physicist, statistician, mathematician, computer scientist, etc. the problem is big and complex and draws from several disciplines, and i don't care how smart you are, you can't be an expert in all of them. and what do you know?/. is full of people like that, scientifical types. we've got lots of diverse knowledge floating around here and for some dipshit to come in and try to buffalo people into thinking they've got no right to chime in on the debate is just more silly hubris.
Here's a nice "Cosmic Rays and Climate Change for Dummies" article that has pretty pictures and graphs. At least give it a read before dismissing this. I found it compelling.
it could be anything really. uneven temps across a circuit can change the relative values of analog components to change the dynamics of the circuit to be unstable. cracked or "cold" solder joints can cause problems. etc. you'd think somebody would have run the circuits in adverse conditions, and maybe even using cold spray on it to simulate uneven heating, but you know how NASA and company is about testing these days. testing costs money, and if there's not a safety of flight issue, it probably doesn't get much attention. could be anything really, and it's not likely you'll ever know what. some unforseen environmental factor, or maybe it just broke.
Like you said, the problem is the source of the fuel, not the chemical itself. Unfortunately, your post title would lead one to believe the opposite -- you ought to be more careful about that.
Problem is, your criticism is moot if we don't have the climate for growing large quantities of sugar cane. Until we come up with a cheap source of enzymes to digest cellulose (and there's no certainty that we will), corn is the way to go. Currently, we use natural gas to distill the ethanol. Ethanol is a net loser at the moment, and is environmentally unfriendly. And for people that want to push soy-based biodiesel, huge sections of Amazon rainforest are already deforested to meet current demand for soy. But I suppose we could cut the rest of it down if we really needed to.
I can't say that *all* of IBM's patents are high quality. In fact I'd be surprised if a few dogs don't slip through. But IBM really does try ensure that it only patents real, novel, non-obvious inventions. Probably mostly to avoid paying any more employee bonuses than they have to, but the industry would clearly be a better place if more companies held themselves to the same standards.
I seriously doubt your bonus has anything to do with it. I suspect the amount of money that IBM would have to invest in pursuing the patent is much more than any bonus you would earn. And that, by the way, is what I think IBM is going after here. Filing patents is a huge business expense for IBM. And when competitors are filing a ton of patents for silly, obvious things, IBM only has two choices. One is to pre-emptively file silly patents, and this is a good strategy if silly patents are upheld. The other is to aggressively challenge silly patents on the grounds that they are silly. Both options cost a lot of money. If the government was more diligent, and patents were much more difficult to obtain, then IBM would save a ton of money on lawyering and patent-application support staff.
sure, a little. but the whole idea of trying to make the internet a safe place for kids is a silly one. the onus should never be on general content providers or individuals to make sure their website, irc channel, or whatever is kid friendly. first of all, there are various shades of child-friendly, and even the U.S. television rating system acknowledges this.
and speaking of television, that is sort of the kind of model we need. if a website wants to deliver content that is appropriate to children up to age 6, then it should be certified somehow (doesn't need to be government-based) and put on a list. parents could then use software, or a portal of some sort, that restricts where their child can go. of course, we've already got software like net-nanny, and that costs money, but considering the number of large entertainment corporations out there that would like to get a monopoly on those young eyes, it shouldn't be too hard to convince them to pony up the cash to pay for the censoring software, just factor the cost into their fees for being rated.
now some people will certainly balk at that, calling it censorship or whatever, but it won't be mandatory. you can complain all you want that children will be deprived of the wholesome experience of witnessing live birth at your website, but that's just tough. it's not children that have a right to the free exchange of ideas, it is their parents' choice. if their parents want them to witness live birth, they will still be fully capable of turning off the censoring and googling your site. or maybe the parents are muslim and have a completely different set of priorities than your average repressed american family. they should subscribe to their own filter, or filters (shianet vs. sunninet perhaps?).
but anyway, i feel like i'm rambling a bit now. making the internet child-friendly is just the silliest thing i've ever heard of. to me, giving a child free access to the internet is about as reckless as a parent can get. and regardless of what people here may think, there is no one-size-fits-all world view of what is appropriate for children to see. the problem with kids on the internet is that the internet is just way too democratic, everyone has their say. luckily, that same feature also makes it possible to solve the problem. everyone really can have a say in what their children should see. you can make as many filters as there are groups of people.
Remember, patents expire. There is a huge catalog of freely-available drugs out there. Take them. Use them. Stop complaining that you don't have enough free stuff, because there is a wealth of free drugs and treatments. So you're 15 or 20 years behind the state of the art. So what? Most people in this world would give anything to have 1980's technology. I survived the 80's. It wasn't that bad. Really. Just leave out the hair bands and alligator shirts if you like.
The only reason that Time is acknowleding You now is because large corporations (not You, but Google, et alii) are finally starting to catch on and investing billions to capture the attention of You. Individuals have been outflanking the Media for years now, whether it was the much-despised Matt Drudge, or bloggers debunking forged documents that were done in Word, not on a typewriter.
So, thank you Time, you flatter Me, though perhaps a bit disingenuously. The only reason I see that you acknowledge Me now is that you have finally come to the conclusion that you can no longer ignore Me. Perhaps by buying Me, you may once again control Me.
Back in school, we did mathematical transforms on equations to make them easier to deal with. Z-transforms, S-transforms, imaginary numbers, etc. But the thing about mathematical transforms is that although they may make your engineering calculations (or in this case, physics equations) easier to deal with, that doesn't mean they represent an idea that means much physically, they're just convenient for the task at hand.
Any insight from the physics nerds? Is this just a way of dealing with all the (so far unproven) dimensions of string theory? What's the real deal here?
Exactly - just like if you playing real (as in life) tennis - which you wouldn't do in the lounge, would you? Would a sane person play football there? Or practice Jujitsu in the kitchen?
yeah, but neither would a sane person play tennis or football for 36 hours straight. you're not dealing with sane people here, these are gamers.
So what? Fifteen years or so later, it becomes public domain. That's the way patents work, they reward people in the short-term for coming up with innovations that benefit mankind in the long-term. Take a moment and look around at all the cheap technological innovations you enjoy. When's the last time you had to carve and forge your own tools, and kill your own food? Aren't you the one being selfish here? If you had the power to sabotage greedy capitalism, you'd also be stealing the hope of a cheap cure from future generations.
yeah, i remember a girl that had some clackers, and i think she called them click-clacks. i could have sworn they were originally made of glass, though, and that is why they got taken off the market. anyway, they were cool.
but yeah, not including toys that might cause serious eye damage like clackers is pretty lame. two of the toys on the list, the cap gun and rebel cannon, were obviously chosen for political reasons. and that made me then view the whole list as pretty lame. bicycles (we used to jump ours over ditches and zip through the woods on them), skateboards, rollerskates, paintballs... these toys are infinitely more dangerous than all except maybe the lawn darts. anyone ever have a junior archery set? dart board? i honestly can't remember if my chemistry set had anything dangerous, but that might be worth checking out as well.
hey Radar, if you're reading this, i just wanted to let you know how much you guys suck. have a nice day.:)
well see, now what you're talking about is a digital signal processor. that's what those things are optimized for. and that's about all they do well. would be interesting to have a couple on-board a PC, though.
yeah, i dont' get it, either. i'd like to believe the people above were just trying to make a joke, but some other practical jokers modded them up as insightful/interesting for a laugh. and you've got to admit, it is kind of funny that Colbert's viewers would become the very embodiment of that which he parodies.
Slashdot Mirror
many many moons ago, i worked briefly at an oxygen concentrator manufacturing company. which is basically what this unit sounds like, an oxygen concentrator that sort of works in reverse, you keep the exhaust and throw away the product. these devices work by forcing compressed air through a molecular sieve - nitrogen adheres to the sieve and O2 passes straight through. but then you've got to get the nitrogen back out of the sieve, which requires decompressing the filter medium. all that energy you used to filter the air is then lost and you must start again. so through a series of compressions and decompressions, you can extract some pretty high purity O2 (about 95% was typical then), in a convenient home unit, but with the drawback of not being very energy efficient.
i'm not sure why the military would need it. afaik, navy submarines track their position by first syncing their position with a known reference (say at port), then using very high-precision, high-accuracy accelerometers from which the first and second integrals give you velocity and position. if you suspect the system is off, then you could surface and get a GPS reading. and surfacing is less likely to reveal your position than pinging. the only possible application i can see would be civilian.
yeah, you do have a point with the 'getting your name in there' business. i haven't watched CSPAN in a long time, but when i did, you never saw much real debate going on. no, it's mostly just some representative from a district in bumblefuck making a speech to an empty room.
but i don't see anything there that indicates to me that their use of XML constitutes a document control system.
and another thing, as many are alluding to, a document control system won't prevent the compiling of assinine code. but what it will do is give you a forensics system. it makes people accountable in a way which is easily monitored. if bad legislation is enacted, you can always make amendments, and the dcs will make it easy to highlight exactly what was changed so that you may check it with a minimum of labor at the last minute before voting again. both legislators and congressional aides would have little excuse for their improper actions and inactions.
now for the bad news. the system relies on computers, and most of your legislators (senators at least, and probably most representatives) are still computer illiterate. their aides aren't, of course, but most of these people just want you to show them the piece of paper to sign, or the yes/no button to push, so that they can get back to their golfing/schmoozing.
and also, who controls the document control system? it would be necessary to have complete openness so that the googles of the world could record every change as it occured in real time. and for matters of national security, much of the publicly-accessible law would have to be redacted. perhaps something like a checksum for redacted material could be provided to at least ensure that unviewable text hasn't been tampered with.
Perhaps, but if you make astronauts any more repulsive than they presently are, the complications resulting from additional unrequited love would have to be dealt with.
you aren't being banned from anything. you may still access Myspace on your privately owned computer. sure, a library is a public service paid for by public taxes. and it is therefore the job of legislators to decide how to responsibly allocate those funds. if they pass a law that says no Myspace access will be provided in the Library, then in fact it is YOU the people, through YOUR duly elected representatives, that have decided it is not a good use of YOUR equipment.
seriously now, a library is not an internet cafe. libraries are provided for the public interest so that people may access data that is normally not available to them. a better and more legitimate use of library funds would be subscriptions to online research journals so that people can get full access to articles that they may only be able to see an abstract for at home. and those people trying to access scholarly works should not have to wait for a computer because some kid is busy chatting with their friend two seats over or polishing up the layout on their Myspace page.
another good use would be someone trying to apply for a job, but doesn't have a computer at home. that is something in the legitmate public interest. it serves both the public, and the individual. they shouldn't have to wait in line for Myspace users, either.
if you want to play, go do it somewhere else. that's not what a library is for.
sure, you just don't have a right to free telecommunications services. well, at least the Supreme Court hasn't legislated it, yet.
historically, libraries have been "download" only. you could borrow books, listen to tapes, watch videos, etc. but libraries didn't provide you the means to mail letters, make telephone calls, or publish texts. although computers in libraries isn't all that new, the ability to do more than look up information is.
If I invent something, but keep the details of my invention a secret, then that is certainly not free and not Open Source. But if I patent my invention, the use of the idea is still not free, but the knowledge practically is. Are patents Open Source?
The reason I'm asking this is I wasn't sure from the article if the company was actually giving anything away. It is not clear to me if I invent a new drug based off the information they provided, do I now owe them a royalty?
Open Source by patent (or copyright) is a great idea if you think you can make more money off licenses to others than by your own efforts. Secrecy is better if you think that your information is based on special insight and others will not be able to duplicate it independently for several decades. What they gave away (assuming they gave anything away) may not have much intrinsic value if it is easily duplicated by others.
nah, i understood him perfectly. i just chose to be dismissive because he was being dismissive.
/. is full of people like that, scientifical types. we've got lots of diverse knowledge floating around here and for some dipshit to come in and try to buffalo people into thinking they've got no right to chime in on the debate is just more silly hubris.
anyhoo, the truth is, "climate science" is a pretty foggy term. you can be a "climate" scientist if you are a geologist, chemist, physicist, statistician, mathematician, computer scientist, etc. the problem is big and complex and draws from several disciplines, and i don't care how smart you are, you can't be an expert in all of them. and what do you know?
you know, the problem i have with you is that you are not a climate scientist, therefore i can't trust anything you just said to be true.
Here's a nice "Cosmic Rays and Climate Change for Dummies" article that has pretty pictures and graphs. At least give it a read before dismissing this. I found it compelling.
http://www.sciencebits.com/ice-ages
more on the climate debate: http://www.sciencebits.com/ClimateDebate/
Shaviv's personal site: http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~shaviv/
it could be anything really. uneven temps across a circuit can change the relative values of analog components to change the dynamics of the circuit to be unstable. cracked or "cold" solder joints can cause problems. etc. you'd think somebody would have run the circuits in adverse conditions, and maybe even using cold spray on it to simulate uneven heating, but you know how NASA and company is about testing these days. testing costs money, and if there's not a safety of flight issue, it probably doesn't get much attention. could be anything really, and it's not likely you'll ever know what. some unforseen environmental factor, or maybe it just broke.
and speaking of television, that is sort of the kind of model we need. if a website wants to deliver content that is appropriate to children up to age 6, then it should be certified somehow (doesn't need to be government-based) and put on a list. parents could then use software, or a portal of some sort, that restricts where their child can go. of course, we've already got software like net-nanny, and that costs money, but considering the number of large entertainment corporations out there that would like to get a monopoly on those young eyes, it shouldn't be too hard to convince them to pony up the cash to pay for the censoring software, just factor the cost into their fees for being rated.
now some people will certainly balk at that, calling it censorship or whatever, but it won't be mandatory. you can complain all you want that children will be deprived of the wholesome experience of witnessing live birth at your website, but that's just tough. it's not children that have a right to the free exchange of ideas, it is their parents' choice. if their parents want them to witness live birth, they will still be fully capable of turning off the censoring and googling your site. or maybe the parents are muslim and have a completely different set of priorities than your average repressed american family. they should subscribe to their own filter, or filters (shianet vs. sunninet perhaps?).
but anyway, i feel like i'm rambling a bit now. making the internet child-friendly is just the silliest thing i've ever heard of. to me, giving a child free access to the internet is about as reckless as a parent can get. and regardless of what people here may think, there is no one-size-fits-all world view of what is appropriate for children to see. the problem with kids on the internet is that the internet is just way too democratic, everyone has their say. luckily, that same feature also makes it possible to solve the problem. everyone really can have a say in what their children should see. you can make as many filters as there are groups of people.
Remember, patents expire. There is a huge catalog of freely-available drugs out there. Take them. Use them. Stop complaining that you don't have enough free stuff, because there is a wealth of free drugs and treatments. So you're 15 or 20 years behind the state of the art. So what? Most people in this world would give anything to have 1980's technology. I survived the 80's. It wasn't that bad. Really. Just leave out the hair bands and alligator shirts if you like.
The only reason that Time is acknowleding You now is because large corporations (not You, but Google, et alii) are finally starting to catch on and investing billions to capture the attention of You. Individuals have been outflanking the Media for years now, whether it was the much-despised Matt Drudge, or bloggers debunking forged documents that were done in Word, not on a typewriter.
So, thank you Time, you flatter Me, though perhaps a bit disingenuously. The only reason I see that you acknowledge Me now is that you have finally come to the conclusion that you can no longer ignore Me. Perhaps by buying Me, you may once again control Me.
I agree, it deserves investigation. It could also be that the universe simply has a regular structure. Or once did, at least.
Back in school, we did mathematical transforms on equations to make them easier to deal with. Z-transforms, S-transforms, imaginary numbers, etc. But the thing about mathematical transforms is that although they may make your engineering calculations (or in this case, physics equations) easier to deal with, that doesn't mean they represent an idea that means much physically, they're just convenient for the task at hand.
Any insight from the physics nerds? Is this just a way of dealing with all the (so far unproven) dimensions of string theory? What's the real deal here?
So what? Fifteen years or so later, it becomes public domain. That's the way patents work, they reward people in the short-term for coming up with innovations that benefit mankind in the long-term. Take a moment and look around at all the cheap technological innovations you enjoy. When's the last time you had to carve and forge your own tools, and kill your own food? Aren't you the one being selfish here? If you had the power to sabotage greedy capitalism, you'd also be stealing the hope of a cheap cure from future generations.
thank you!
yeah, i remember a girl that had some clackers, and i think she called them click-clacks. i could have sworn they were originally made of glass, though, and that is why they got taken off the market. anyway, they were cool.
:)
but yeah, not including toys that might cause serious eye damage like clackers is pretty lame. two of the toys on the list, the cap gun and rebel cannon, were obviously chosen for political reasons. and that made me then view the whole list as pretty lame. bicycles (we used to jump ours over ditches and zip through the woods on them), skateboards, rollerskates, paintballs... these toys are infinitely more dangerous than all except maybe the lawn darts. anyone ever have a junior archery set? dart board? i honestly can't remember if my chemistry set had anything dangerous, but that might be worth checking out as well.
hey Radar, if you're reading this, i just wanted to let you know how much you guys suck. have a nice day.
well see, now what you're talking about is a digital signal processor. that's what those things are optimized for. and that's about all they do well. would be interesting to have a couple on-board a PC, though.
yeah, i dont' get it, either. i'd like to believe the people above were just trying to make a joke, but some other practical jokers modded them up as insightful/interesting for a laugh. and you've got to admit, it is kind of funny that Colbert's viewers would become the very embodiment of that which he parodies.