The DMCA has no provision in the U.S. Constitution.
What about the Commerce Clause? Since the Commerce Clause has already been used to justify laws covering everything from marijuana (because it might conceivably be sold between states) to racial discrimination (because a discriminating restaurant has a snack bar with goods purchased out-of-state), I'm sure it could be used to justify the DMCA.
For the curious, here's the research abstract from the publication in Nature:
Electrical signals control wound healing through phosphatidylinositol-3-OH kinase-big gamma and PTEN
Wound healing is essential for maintaining the integrity of multicellular organisms. In every species studied, disruption of an epithelial layer instantaneously generates endogenous electric fields, which have been proposed to be important in wound healing. The identity of signalling pathways that guide both cell migration to electric cues and electric-field-induced wound healing have not been elucidated at a genetic level. Here we show that electric fields, of a strength equal to those detected endogenously, direct cell migration during wound healing as a prime directional cue. Manipulation of endogenous wound electric fields affects wound healing in vivo. Electric stimulation triggers activation of Src and inositol-phospholipid signalling, which polarizes in the direction of cell migration. Notably, genetic disruption of phosphatidylinositol-3-OH kinase-gamma (PI(3)Kgamma) decreases electric-field-induced signalling and abolishes directed movements of healing epithelium in response to electric signals. Deletion of the tumour suppressor phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) enhances signalling and electrotactic responses. These data identify genes essential for electrical-signal-induced wound healing and show that PI(3)Kgamma and PTEN control electrotaxis.
If a (flying) bird is a creature of the air, and a swimming fish is a creature of the water, what do you call a fish that can momentarily break the surface of the water?
Once we reach a singularity we'll have the technology to do away with all these problem oriented goals and I for the life of me can't really think of any obvious goals past that point.
From the summary: Other responses to the story show that at least many Slashdot readers are none too happy with research into telepathy being done with tax monies.
I made a comment about this the last time around, pointing out that despite the prevalent Slashdotter belief, this pseudoscientific research is privately funded. Here's a paste of what I said before:
I'm pretty sure there isn't any tax payer money involved. According to this page, the project is sponsored by a Portuguese group called the "Bial Foundation" (google translated link). A bit of googling turned up this
Aims : To encourage the scientific study of Man, from both the physical and spiritual perspectives, by honouring, supporting and promoting the work and efforts of all those who seek out new paths along the route of Research, Science and Knowledge.
General Information : The Bial Foundation was created in 1994. Classified as an institution of public utility by the Portuguese Government, the Bial Foundation includes among its patrons the Portuguese President, the Portuguese Universities Rectors' Council and the Portuguese Medical Association.
(Granted, I'm a little dubious about the last sentence there)
I'm pretty sure there isn't any tax payer money involved. According to this page, the project is sponsored by a Portuguese group called the "Bial Foundation" (google translated link). A bit of googling turned up this
Aims : To encourage the scientific study of Man, from both the physical and spiritual perspectives, by honouring, supporting and promoting the work and efforts of all those who seek out new paths along the route of Research, Science and Knowledge.
General Information : The Bial Foundation was created in 1994. Classified as an institution of public utility by the Portuguese Government, the Bial Foundation includes among its patrons the Portuguese President, the Portuguese Universities Rectors' Council and the Portuguese Medical Association.
(Granted, I'm a little dubious about the last sentence there)
Errr... is it just me, or do these images look rendered? wtf?
A number of the images are renderings from various articles on Bigelow Aerospace. For whatever reason, I guess they wanted to make the screen look flashier (or protect proprietary information) and just put up stock images and splash screens when the photo was taken.
According to this article in Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log, you can actually spot the Genesis-1 spacecraft for yourself in the night sky. From the article:
Bigelow wasn't just being metaphorical about seeing that Genesis spacecraft in the sky. Satellite experts have already worked out a schedule of viewing opportunities - some of which should be bright enough for the naked eye. Go to the Heavens-Above Web site, plug in your coordinates, then go to the satellite database and search for "Genesis-1." You can also go directly to this page to see Genesis' current location, but you won't be able to find out when and where you can see it from the ground.
This Real Time Satellite Tracking page can also show you the orbital location of Genesis 1 and lots of other spacecraft, including the space shuttle Discovery, which was launched last week... by that other space program.
There's also supposedly more photos which have recently been released on the Bigelow Aerospace website, but it doesn't seem to be responsive right now.
With ovre 4 million pounds of space junk flying around at speeds up to 17,500... I for one would NOT want to be in an inflatable structure. Wow!
Many people hear "inflatable structure" and think of some sort of balloon ready to pop at the smallest prick. Bigelow's structure are actually quite sturdy though, arguably more durable than the ISS's walls. From a BBC article on the launch:
It is built around a rigid central core and two solid bulkheads. The inflatable walls are composed of a range of materials including Kevlar, often used in bullet-proof vests, and a fibrous textile called Vectran.
The walls are designed to be airtight and tough, to withstand the impact of space debris and small meteorites.
On a full-scale module, each wall would be 40cm (16 inches) thick.
"It's extremely durable and resistant to any puncture or penetration," said Mr Bigelow.
I used to know a guy in Blue Operations, the Bezos funded space venture run by Sci-fi guy Neal Stevenson. They were exploring ideas for cheap space launches, and one of them was a floating high altitude lighter than air lifted launch platform.
Seems like a perfect match to supply the inflatable stations.
A few comments/corrections:
* It's Blue Origin, not Blue Operations
* I'm pretty sure the company isn't run by Neal Stephenson, he's just an employee/consultant
* I hadn't heard of Blue Origin pursuing airship-to-orbit ideas, but this is something that JP Aerospace has been working on
I second the dschmelzer's recommendation of RLV and Space Transport News. A more easy-to-remember URL for them is http://rlvnews.com/. For other good sites to monitor for private spaceflight news, there's a number of links in the right column of the RLV News page. I personally prefer Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log and Transterrestrial Musings.
Since you can often trade real-world money for in-game money in MMORPGs and othe online games, would this make it illegal to have something like a poker or bingo game in Second Life?
Also, MMORPGs are essentially games of chance themselves, where you pay money, play, and have some chance of pay-off. Depending on how its worded, could this law make MMORPGs illegal?
How about the National Association of Manufacturers?Net neutrality isn't on their list of key issues either, but a search reveals a misguided report showing how they don't want network neutrality because it would stifle companies from laying new fiber. I can see manufacturers not liking that, but since network neutrality has nothing to do with laying of fiber, I only assume that someone there is misinformed.
If I understand correctly, the reasoning is that a telecom company might lay down new fiber which would be dedicated to the sort of "premium" services which network neutrality makes illegal. For example, a company might lay down a low-latency segment of fiber dedicated to VoIP service, and charge extra for it. Making such services illegal via network neutrality removes a potential incentive for laying down fiber.
Any corrections to misconceptions I may have would be greatly appreciated.
It's probably be noted that the inventor/developer discussed in the article is Raymond Kurzweil, who's recently gotten a lot of press for his book about the technological singularity. Here's a brief blurb from the Wikipedia article about Kurzweil's inventions:
Kurzweil was the principal developer of the first omni-font optical character recognition system, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first CCD flatbed scanner, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first electronic musical instrument capable of recreating the sound of a grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition system.
I wonder what sort of camera resolution and processing power this requires. It would be great if in the near future something like this could be loaded onto an off-the-shelf cameraphone.
As far as current cameraphones go, (picking semi-randomly...) a Treo 700p has a 312MHz XScale processor, and a PPC-6700 has a 416 MHz XScale. Both have 1.3 megapixel cameras.
Some Wikipedia articles do have extensive lists of software, but Wikipedia is not supposed to be a link list.
Sure, but what about having an article for each piece of software and just adding the proper category tag to it? Wikipedia's Category: Software (and its sub-categories) lists all the articles for software already on Wikipedia, and it's already far more extensive than this new "Software Internet Database."
Just wondering. I realize that it would only be used in an extreme emergency... and that even if the remote landing system didn't work properly, the surface of the earth is very large and the risk to people on the ground would be small.
Basically the only new addition is that the landing gear can be automatically lowered. The rest of the auto-landing stuff has been there for quite some time (since the beginning of the program?), and so has been pretty well-tested.
That is because a lot of people see games as "wasting your time". So, for them, is fine to break your back working 8-14 hours a day, because you're "doing something productive". Call it social perception. If you spend 5 hours playing, for them is the same as if you spent those same 5 hours laying over your back admiring the ceiling.
It's not social perception. It's more that playing WoW does nothing to further the goals of the Chinese government.
Add to all the technical difficulties you've already covered the fact that most people only have the vaguest notion how to effectively frame a shot, and this gadget only gets more useless.
So does that mean the pictures this device will take will be about on par with those the average person would take?
I had an idea the other day related to this, and wanted to gather some opinions. Basically, what if there was a service where if you called a particular number, it would automatically save the call as an mp3 and post it online? One could imagine having the service on speed-dial, and if you were about to enter a situation where you thought you might be abused by the police or some-such, you could just hit a button in your pocket and record the entire thing as evidence. Of course, there could also be many applications for such a thing besides reporting on police abuses...
Does such a service already exist? What would be the legality of it?
In any case, with increasing technology, and cameras getting ever-smaller and cheaper, it seems that something like David Brin's Transparent Society is inevitable.
Slashdot Mirror
The DMCA has no provision in the U.S. Constitution.
What about the Commerce Clause? Since the Commerce Clause has already been used to justify laws covering everything from marijuana (because it might conceivably be sold between states) to racial discrimination (because a discriminating restaurant has a snack bar with goods purchased out-of-state), I'm sure it could be used to justify the DMCA.
For the curious, here's the research abstract from the publication in Nature:
Electrical signals control wound healing through phosphatidylinositol-3-OH kinase-big gamma and PTEN
Wound healing is essential for maintaining the integrity of multicellular organisms. In every species studied, disruption of an epithelial layer instantaneously generates endogenous electric fields, which have been proposed to be important in wound healing. The identity of signalling pathways that guide both cell migration to electric cues and electric-field-induced wound healing have not been elucidated at a genetic level. Here we show that electric fields, of a strength equal to those detected endogenously, direct cell migration during wound healing as a prime directional cue. Manipulation of endogenous wound electric fields affects wound healing in vivo. Electric stimulation triggers activation of Src and inositol-phospholipid signalling, which polarizes in the direction of cell migration. Notably, genetic disruption of phosphatidylinositol-3-OH kinase-gamma (PI(3)Kgamma) decreases electric-field-induced signalling and abolishes directed movements of healing epithelium in response to electric signals. Deletion of the tumour suppressor phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) enhances signalling and electrotactic responses. These data identify genes essential for electrical-signal-induced wound healing and show that PI(3)Kgamma and PTEN control electrotaxis.
If a (flying) bird is a creature of the air, and a swimming fish is a creature of the water, what do you call a fish that can momentarily break the surface of the water?
Most people call those things flying fish.
Hofstadter also gave a talk at the Singularity Summit at Stanford. Also, here's a summary of the Artificial Life X talk.
The premise of this definition is that models of the future give reliable or accurate answers at present. What are the models they talk about?
Moore's law comes to mind as an example of such a model.
Once we reach a singularity we'll have the technology to do away with all these problem oriented goals and I for the life of me can't really think of any obvious goals past that point.
I bet building a Dyson sphere or trying to climb the Kardashev scale would be pretty fun.
I'm not talking about mobile phone providers- I'm talking about ISPs.
In an ever-increasing number of areas, mobile phone providers offer broadband internet access cards.
From the summary: Other responses to the story show that at least many Slashdot readers are none too happy with research into telepathy being done with tax monies.
I made a comment about this the last time around, pointing out that despite the prevalent Slashdotter belief, this pseudoscientific research is privately funded. Here's a paste of what I said before:
I'm pretty sure there isn't any tax payer money involved. According to this page, the project is sponsored by a Portuguese group called the "Bial Foundation" (google translated link). A bit of googling turned up this
Here's another description:
Aims : To encourage the scientific study of Man, from both the physical and spiritual perspectives, by honouring, supporting and promoting the work and efforts of all those who seek out new paths along the route of Research, Science and Knowledge.
General Information : The Bial Foundation was created in 1994. Classified as an institution of public utility by the Portuguese Government, the Bial Foundation includes among its patrons the Portuguese President, the Portuguese Universities Rectors' Council and the Portuguese Medical Association.
(Granted, I'm a little dubious about the last sentence there)
I'm pretty sure there isn't any tax payer money involved. According to this page, the project is sponsored by a Portuguese group called the "Bial Foundation" (google translated link). A bit of googling turned up this
Here's another description:
Aims : To encourage the scientific study of Man, from both the physical and spiritual perspectives, by honouring, supporting and promoting the work and efforts of all those who seek out new paths along the route of Research, Science and Knowledge.
General Information : The Bial Foundation was created in 1994. Classified as an institution of public utility by the Portuguese Government, the Bial Foundation includes among its patrons the Portuguese President, the Portuguese Universities Rectors' Council and the Portuguese Medical Association.
(Granted, I'm a little dubious about the last sentence there)
Compare their Mission Control center, http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/out_there/mission_ control.php
Errr... is it just me, or do these images look rendered? wtf?
A number of the images are renderings from various articles on Bigelow Aerospace. For whatever reason, I guess they wanted to make the screen look flashier (or protect proprietary information) and just put up stock images and splash screens when the photo was taken.
According to this article in Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log, you can actually spot the Genesis-1 spacecraft for yourself in the night sky. From the article:
... by that other space program.
Bigelow wasn't just being metaphorical about seeing that Genesis spacecraft in the sky. Satellite experts have already worked out a schedule of viewing opportunities - some of which should be bright enough for the naked eye. Go to the Heavens-Above Web site, plug in your coordinates, then go to the satellite database and search for "Genesis-1." You can also go directly to this page to see Genesis' current location, but you won't be able to find out when and where you can see it from the ground.
This Real Time Satellite Tracking page can also show you the orbital location of Genesis 1 and lots of other spacecraft, including the space shuttle Discovery, which was launched last week
There's also supposedly more photos which have recently been released on the Bigelow Aerospace website, but it doesn't seem to be responsive right now.
This story is so sketchy, and the web site is so cheesey, I'm tempted to think this whole thing is fake.
Um... you can see it for yourself, and the satellite has been tracked by government ground stations since its launch.
The only possible use I can see for this is to lease it to NASA.
Or the various millionaires who might want a roomier destination than the ISS to take a trip on a Soyuz rocket to.
I stand corrected! I thought I was fairly knowledgeable about Blue Origin, but I guess one learns something new every day.
With ovre 4 million pounds of space junk flying around at speeds up to 17,500... I for one would NOT want to be in an inflatable structure. Wow!
Many people hear "inflatable structure" and think of some sort of balloon ready to pop at the smallest prick. Bigelow's structure are actually quite sturdy though, arguably more durable than the ISS's walls. From a BBC article on the launch:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5173388.stm
It is built around a rigid central core and two solid bulkheads. The inflatable walls are composed of a range of materials including Kevlar, often used in bullet-proof vests, and a fibrous textile called Vectran.
The walls are designed to be airtight and tough, to withstand the impact of space debris and small meteorites.
On a full-scale module, each wall would be 40cm (16 inches) thick.
"It's extremely durable and resistant to any puncture or penetration," said Mr Bigelow.
I used to know a guy in Blue Operations, the Bezos funded space venture run by Sci-fi guy Neal Stevenson. They were exploring ideas for cheap space launches, and one of them was a floating high altitude lighter than air lifted launch platform.
Seems like a perfect match to supply the inflatable stations.
A few comments/corrections:
* It's Blue Origin, not Blue Operations
* I'm pretty sure the company isn't run by Neal Stephenson, he's just an employee/consultant
* I hadn't heard of Blue Origin pursuing airship-to-orbit ideas, but this is something that JP Aerospace has been working on
I second the dschmelzer's recommendation of RLV and Space Transport News. A more easy-to-remember URL for them is http://rlvnews.com/. For other good sites to monitor for private spaceflight news, there's a number of links in the right column of the RLV News page. I personally prefer Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log and Transterrestrial Musings.
Since you can often trade real-world money for in-game money in MMORPGs and othe online games, would this make it illegal to have something like a poker or bingo game in Second Life?
Also, MMORPGs are essentially games of chance themselves, where you pay money, play, and have some chance of pay-off. Depending on how its worded, could this law make MMORPGs illegal?
How about the National Association of Manufacturers?Net neutrality isn't on their list of key issues either, but a search reveals a misguided report showing how they don't want network neutrality because it would stifle companies from laying new fiber. I can see manufacturers not liking that, but since network neutrality has nothing to do with laying of fiber, I only assume that someone there is misinformed.
If I understand correctly, the reasoning is that a telecom company might lay down new fiber which would be dedicated to the sort of "premium" services which network neutrality makes illegal. For example, a company might lay down a low-latency segment of fiber dedicated to VoIP service, and charge extra for it. Making such services illegal via network neutrality removes a potential incentive for laying down fiber.
Any corrections to misconceptions I may have would be greatly appreciated.
It's probably be noted that the inventor/developer discussed in the article is Raymond Kurzweil, who's recently gotten a lot of press for his book about the technological singularity. Here's a brief blurb from the Wikipedia article about Kurzweil's inventions:
Kurzweil was the principal developer of the first omni-font optical character recognition system, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first CCD flatbed scanner, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first electronic musical instrument capable of recreating the sound of a grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition system.
I wonder what sort of camera resolution and processing power this requires. It would be great if in the near future something like this could be loaded onto an off-the-shelf cameraphone.
As far as current cameraphones go, (picking semi-randomly...) a Treo 700p has a 312MHz XScale processor, and a PPC-6700 has a 416 MHz XScale. Both have 1.3 megapixel cameras.
Some Wikipedia articles do have extensive lists of software, but Wikipedia is not supposed to be a link list.
Sure, but what about having an article for each piece of software and just adding the proper category tag to it? Wikipedia's Category: Software (and its sub-categories) lists all the articles for software already on Wikipedia, and it's already far more extensive than this new "Software Internet Database."
Just wondering. I realize that it would only be used in an extreme emergency... and that even if the remote landing system didn't work properly, the surface of the earth is very large and the risk to people on the ground would be small.
Basically the only new addition is that the landing gear can be automatically lowered. The rest of the auto-landing stuff has been there for quite some time (since the beginning of the program?), and so has been pretty well-tested.
That is because a lot of people see games as "wasting your time". So, for them, is fine to break your back working 8-14 hours a day, because you're "doing something productive". Call it social perception. If you spend 5 hours playing, for them is the same as if you spent those same 5 hours laying over your back admiring the ceiling.
It's not social perception. It's more that playing WoW does nothing to further the goals of the Chinese government.
Add to all the technical difficulties you've already covered the fact that most people only have the vaguest notion how to effectively frame a shot, and this gadget only gets more useless.
So does that mean the pictures this device will take will be about on par with those the average person would take?
I had an idea the other day related to this, and wanted to gather some opinions. Basically, what if there was a service where if you called a particular number, it would automatically save the call as an mp3 and post it online? One could imagine having the service on speed-dial, and if you were about to enter a situation where you thought you might be abused by the police or some-such, you could just hit a button in your pocket and record the entire thing as evidence. Of course, there could also be many applications for such a thing besides reporting on police abuses...
Does such a service already exist? What would be the legality of it?
In any case, with increasing technology, and cameras getting ever-smaller and cheaper, it seems that something like David Brin's Transparent Society is inevitable.