FTA: What does this infinite flexibility for digital TPM mean for media distributed online? It means consumers will have more choice.
No. This means that content providers will have more choice about what restrictions they can place on the content that they produce. To the degree that a competitive market exists, this may lead to content providers experimenting with a variety of more restrictive methods of distribution. However, I don't see that this will increase consumer choice. It will increase supplier willingness to continue to make the products available... but that's not the same thing. Will it increase the rate of new creation of material? Encourage new and more talented artists to try their hand? How many currently existing items not currently available in present forms will be put out in these more restricted forms?
Fact: the RIAA and MPAA are competing for my (and other consumers) entertainment dollars. Fact: basic economics dictates that I will spend my money on the goods that provide me the maximum happiness. Competitors for my entertainment time and money include: Music, as CD, iTunes, or various independent music downloads; Movies, theatrical or DVD; video games; DSL available free-for-bandwidth downloadable web entertainment such as Flash animations, calling people names on Slashdot and other forums, and the good old standby of pr0n; the occasional dinner out, or even cooking in with something a little higher quality than Kraft Mac Books, magazines, and all the other fun hiding out at the local Barnes and Noble; overpriced coffee serving as excuse to flirt with the cute barristas from the local coffee shop; Beer, Wine, and other forms of booze; Tobacco, Marajuana, and other less socially acceptable poisons.
The US economy is nigh-stagnant, especially for most individual consumers. Median individual disposable income is getting squeezed. Most big-label music of late sucks; I've bought only four albums (Joshua Tree, The White Album, Billy Joel's Greatest, and the Remains of Tom Lehrer) in the last five years, none with material newer than 1990. I've also got about a hundred CDs I picked up pre-2000, that I've ripped onto my Archos player, hooked up (most) of the time to the living room computer. (Zap2It is faster to scroll through than the TV Guide Channel.)
On the other hand, I've seen Serenity, the LOTR, Harry Potter, Underworld, and the Brothers Grimm in theatres. I've bought DVDs for all of Farscape, about fifteen classic DVDs (Harvey) and as many more from in the cheap bin — matinees are $5.50; modest DVDs are $7-10 each, and I can make better popcorn for cheaper. (Lets leave the one porno video alone, shall we?) While I have HBO as part of my rent, I don't bother taping much, but caught a few of the biggest titles like Spiderman when they went there. I've found three new favorite SF authors via the local library (whoops, filesharing), and B&N is much happier for it. I've also picked up a newer edition of Joy of Cooking than the one I inherited from mom, and my grocery bill has risen nicely.
(Alas, so has my waistline...) The owner of the new Sushi shop that opened two years ago knows me by name, and sent me a Christmas card. I've picked up about twenty video games in the time, perhaps half "new" a year or two after they came out, half old classic releases second hand on Ebay; Two of the new titles are still in box, waiting for the day that I finish MOO3.
There's a LOT of high-quality excelent value competition for my entertainment time and money. If the various content industries want more money, they need to either (a) fix the economy so that more people have higher disposable incomes — which they're not in a position to do, or (b) increase the perceived relative value of what they provide.
While Citibank uses citi.com and citibank.com, they put their credit card login on "accountonline.com"...
Of course, were this actually the case, then what this would mean for educated technical users like thee and me is that any time you used Citibank's on-line website, and encounter the login, you ought to call 1-800-555-1212 to verify that Citibank Credit card customer service is still available from 1-800-950-5114, call that in turn, work your way through the phone menu, and politely ask the customer service representative to confirm that the accountonline.com domain is in fact under Citi's direct control.
However, having just checked, Citi.com is an alias for (as the https: certificate shows) the www.citibank.com server. While connecting to either over https: (or to the accountonline.com http: or https:), you are redirected to the http://www.citibank.com/ server; the top sign-on link is based on https://web.da-us.citibank.com/ for no apparent reason (but at least has the right subdomain), and the prominent "Sign on to your accounts" is merely a drop down of account types (such as credit card), redirecting you to a page on https://www.citibank.com/ — someone over there may have been learning from being a bad example. Where'd ya get the "accountonline.com" URL from?
On the other hand, Amex's secure site first coughs and chokes because the server certificate is actually for the akamai.net hosting server, before letting you through for sign in to an encrypted page... with an uncertain recipient. How many of their clients can say "man in the middle", d'ya think?
Of course, worst of the lot is Chase: in addition to your security lock idiocy, their secure server redirects back to the insecure server. Good for performance, really CRAPPY for security. The lock graphic isn't bad... but that should be the ONLY thing there, linking to a https: page with the login/password form. Possibly even one with minimal graphics. It's almost enough to make me apply for a Chase card, just so I can call them and give this as a reason for cancelling service... "I do a fair bit of internet shopping, and you obviously don't pay enough attention to internet security."
Actually, didn't they just snail mail me a card application...?
From the summary: Protothreads are not real threads, but rather something in between an event-driven state machine and regular threads.
From the above Duff on Duff's Device: I have another revolting way to use switches to implement interrupt driven state machines but it's too horrid to go into.
Perhaps this is the Duff's Device equivalent of a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem? Or is my ignorance of the history of Evil Computing showing?
Hell, I would pay them $5 to get tracker from their website and get the double satisfaction of gettin the show easily AND contributing more money then they make on commercials per person. They could even kill me access to the video after a week or two and I wouldn't be upset.
Alternatively, they could have a premium pay-access version tracker, sans commercials, and a free tracker with the commercials intact. A careful choice of codec and a file truncation to trim off two seconds of the last five second cable logo from the video before making the torrent would also prevent fast forward from working, if they want to be a bit more self centered and less user freindly.
Already done and in common use. See Terrestrial planet and Gas giant.
I am aware. You miss part of my point: what are Titan and Ganymede? Currently, they're each considered just another moon; however, I suspect they might be more accurately considered in what is currently the "terrestrial planets" category, aside from the inconvenient detail of, er... not being planets. Which is why I suspect the nomenclature should be addressed: "Terrestrial Planets" may be a misnomer, if some of the items that are best fit into the category aren't planets. "Gas Giants"... well, metallic hydrogen aside, can't really argue much with that. =)
"Gas Giants" and "Terrestrials" would suit me fine, although you'd want to add asteroids and TNO's as additional categories. Distinguish between Satellites and Primaries as a separate consideration. There is the question of where the cutoff would be between Terrestrial-types and asteroid-types would lie (Which category does Luna fall in? How about Ceres?), but that may be a more useful scientific debate. The distinction between comets, asteroids, and TNOs also gets to be usefully interesting. But I think the term "Planet" might soon be obsolete.
I was counting Ceres as a planet, as the other respondent suggested.
At that point, you pretty much have to consider the Earth-Moon system a double planet, don't you? And that implies a bit more thought as to what exactly the various gas giant moons like Ganymede and Titan are, given you have moons bigger than several planets.
I'm happy with our solar system having 5 rocky planets, 4 gas planets and 2+ remote ice planets.
Umm... I'm not. I think you've another rock to turn over. These folks are talking about the discovery of a candidate for TENTH planet. 5+4+2=11... or are you counting Earth-Luna as a double planet system?
(Of course, that's not a long tie, that's a very short leash indeed. That may be the only one... which could well be an improvement. He's also probably harder to bribe than most....)
at $500k a pop, very few have to actually take action for the desired effect to take place.
Only if the Phisher gets caught, and in a useful jurisdiction. Furthermore, Phishers don't usually start rich. (If you start with some money, Spamming is a more effective way to make a dishonest buck.) However, they do usually work in bulk. So, the victims get to divide up: his original assets, what he stole from everyone, and the proceeds of any (legitimate) winning lottery tickets he's bought... LESS what he's spent before he got caught, what he spends on lawyer's fees for defending the civil suit, and what he spends on lawyer's fees for bankrupcy filings.
So: this effectively makes for a civil penalty of bankrupcy... if you get caught. But that's a big if, especially when there's a lot of small crooks out there. It may make it easier for victims to get back as much as possible from the crook, once he's found... but that may still end up as dimes on the dollar, and may not happen at all.
So the true question is "Is Pluto still a planet ?".
If it comes to that, the true question may be "Are Earth and Jupiter both planets?"
There is historical precedent for deciding something that was considered a planet not to be one. The asteroid Ceres was considered a Planet for about fifty years, until it became obvious that it was merely the largest member of a numerous class of smaller bodies. So, it might well be that we will end up with the period from 1930 to the present being another such period, and Pluto merely considered one of the largest/nearest of whatever they call the Trans-Neptunian Objects. (I suspect they won't keep that name, if only because Pluto occasisonally nudges a bit closer than Neptune.)
But while we're reconsidering the classification of planets, a more general look at the solar system might be in order... which leaves some uncomfortable other facts. Leaving Pluto to its TNO status, and even leaving the Asteroid category to its prior doom, the remaining planets fall into two groups: the rocks (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) and clouds (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune). And to make matters worse, Jupiter and Saturn each have a moon (Ganymede and Titan) larger than Mercury, and similar in geologic(?) composition to the inner rocks. It may be that some of Jupiter's moons should be put into the same conceptual category as the inner rocks while we're doing one of these renamings.
Perhaps only one of the two groups ought "rightly" be called planets, and the other given a new name. Or perhaps the two planet categories should be given distinct names (rocks and clouds), and a notation made that some rocks orbit clouds. Perhaps some reconsideration should be given as to whether all asteroids should be in the asteroid category, while we're redrawing dividing lines — Ceres is a respectable paperweight. Perhaps the Earth-Moon system will end up recognized as a double rock-planet system, or only end as a rock-planet with a bigass asteroid orbiting it. Or perhaps I should shut up and let the astronomers think about this for another Uranian year. =)
In fact, they didn't expect it to be profitable at all - but now it commands a sizable share of Apple's quarterly revenue.
Of course, that could be inconvenient, when the Beatles Apple Corps v. Apple Computer lawsuit (version 3.0) over Apple Music goes to trial in British court next March. "Um, yeah, we're now in the music business, and we signed a consent agreement saying we wouldn't get into the music business, and we're making money at it, but we thought we'd lose money running the ITMS...."
My original point was that even FOX NEWS occasionally gets it right (they do, whine all you want) and that it is ridiculous not to acknowledge that.
True; but even a stopped clock is right twice per day. =)
Yes, the bashing of Fox News is excessive; Bush and the Republicans get it right sometimes... although perhaps not as often as they don't. I've stopped paying attention to News Hounds because of their excessive stance on Fox. However, Fox's editorial board appears from where I sit to place more emphasis on ratings and/or their political agenda than on journalistic ethics and propriety... or presenting the appearance of either.
Journalistic neutrality is important, and Fox these days doesn't seem to understand that. I believe it was in this segment on NPR where Walter Cronkite mentioned how hard it was for the journalists to maintain that neutral voice during the 1960's civil rights and desegregation coverage. All of them had seen enough of the world to know beyond the shadow of a doubt: "Racism is WRONG". On the other hand, they could not come out and say so. While there may have been questions of ratings and politics in part, mostly, it simply wasn't the proper thing for a journalist to do.
Standards have gone way downhill in the last 30 years....
Isn't that the main point of an open format document? To make it easier for the involved parties to interact!
Not quite. It's to make it easier to insure that they can continue to do so, regardless of any future idiocy by any one vendor. Naming no names, of course....
More responsible like the NY Times? Jayson Blair, anyone? Yeah, they're real responsible...
Ah, someone who can't see the hook for the worm... I thought someone would take a nibble, rather than consider that closely.
Yes, "more responsible like the NY Times". On the one hand, when they finally caught on to Blair's antics, they publicly apologized, decided to fire his ass (although he pulled a Nixon first), and still have a web page listing what he wrote and asking "Readers with information about these or other articles by Mr. Blair that may be false wholly or in part" to email the Times. They fucked up; they responded to their own fuckup after acquiring a clue.
And on the other hand, I didn't say they were really responsible. I just said they were more responsible. This may be like comparing a teenaged slacker to an ADHD five year old on pink pixie stix, but damning with such faint praise is the best the Old Gray Lady deserves after that incident.
Oh wait, I just Googled James Prendergast, author of the story. Hey!, Guess what!, he's Executive Director of ATL, a virulently anti-OSS organization and web site.
Why did you bother Googling for him? If you look at the end of the article, it expressly states that he works for ATL. Now, howling about googling them and finding what flavor bastard is implied might be worthwhile, but don't make it seem like they were hiding something that they came right out and said themselves.
WTF Fox?!? Fair and balanced news indeed!
It's over in Fox's "Views" Department (note exact URL before clicking), making it an editorial-- or more exactly an "opinion" piece. (Editorials are written by on-staff editors. Opinions are written by anyone who wants to vent... much like Slashdot, actually.) Traditionally, Editorials and Opinion columnists are allowed much more latitude from the ideal of the neutral journalistic voice. Of course, traditionally editorial and opinion pieces are labeled much more clearly than Fox News does with theirs, so better to distinguish them from the more factual and less subjective elements of the news.
In the meantime, Fox News publishes an opinion piece in the guise of a news story
While I despise Fox News for any number of reasons, this is a misportrayal. The piece is posted in their editorial department at http://www.foxnews.com/views — as of 10:45 EST it's the lead over there. While I would certainly agree that a more responsible news organization would label such pieces more clearly and prominently on the actual article page, rather than letting the attentive figure out that the "MORE VIEWS HEADLINES" implies that this piece is yet another "Views" piece, it's not a particular breach of journalistic propriety. That is to say, it's as well (or poorly) labeled as any of the other pieces of crud from their editorial department. Fox's editors should be flogged, but not for this any more than the rest of their execrable web site.
"Fox News... we report, you decide" (that Fox is full of... something, anyway).
Basic materials research into high strength cable is one thing, but the Indian Rope Trick notion isn't going to "fly". For example, it's not just the wind and rain from tropical storms you have to worry about, but the lightning.
Only if you go all the way to ground level. A LOT of different designs have been thrown around over the years; I recall a recent Analog SF story using a high altitude dirgible platform. While it was done in the story to avoid a legal jurisdictional SNAFU, it could be done at a high enough altitude (above 50000' ?) to put the cable entirely above the weather.
There's another detail... the economics of space transport dictate that whoever is first to build a working space elevator will effectively own space. Natural monopolies occur when there is a high entry cost, and reduced costs thereafter. In almost every design, the main cost element (aside from R&D) is not the exotic materials, but lifting them to orbit-- $100 to $1000 per kilo multiplied by beanstalk cable weight per meter multiplied by a whole lot of meters. A space elevator (capital amortization aside) cuts the costs of space access on a per-pound lifted basis by at least two and perhaps three orders of magnitude. This means once you have one beanstalk, your capital cost for putting up another is vastly reduced.
2) First generation platform at one of the Lagrange points.
3) Lunar observatory on the dark side.
Possibly combine these; L2 is off Lunar Farside. Not being down a (2kps?) gravity well, it should be easier to get back and forth from. True, since it's an unstable position (especially under n-body perturbation), you'd need some minor active orbital stabilization, but "that's not a bug, it's a feature" — that would also make it an ideal stepping off point for exploring the rest of the solar system. Just be careful that the station doesn't do that unplanned.
none of the ads mentioned above contain any information whatsoever about what the consoles are, what capabilites they claim to have, what kind of games they run,
Well, the tree ad with the druggie rabbits appeared to be trying to wave around some sort of quiz about what the 360's capabilities were, "can you separate truth from rumor" or some such. Which, yes, has informational content, even if conveyed by Socratic method.
but what if the courts as a whole have a liberal/conservative/plaintiff/defendant bias?
Then there is no advantage to having information on the differences in bias because there are none.
You're assuming there is no distribution around that average; if there is a distribution (as the bell curve universally dictates), such a situation would tend to make the information about which judges to seek/avoid more valuable, not less. Second, that wasn't the point I was addressing. I was refering to efforts to "correct" bias implied by such studies. If you are trying to correct bias based for a computed average, what does the existance of an overall average bias in the entire population of judges do to your efforts?
Consider a case where you have 10 judges, biased +6, +9, +4, +3, +1, +8, -2, 0, -4, +7. The "average" you try to correct to is about +3... but this means that (for example) the one "unbiased" judge is considered too negative... as is one judge with a positive bias that is less pronounced.
In short: the result is the institutionalization of bias, not the complete removal... even presuming you can find a method to deal with the biases. I'm not arguing the information has limited value in taking advantage of bias, but in correcting bias.
"(30) 400 KG PLUTONIUM BAR" — that's pretty funny. Spherical critical mass for Pu-239 is about 16 kg. I wonder what ratio of length to cross-sectional area you'd have to use to prevent a bar from instantly going critical or prompt critical; you'd also want to include a safety factor for accidental immersion in a moderator. Hmm, let me check my notes....
Slashdot Mirror
No. This means that content providers will have more choice about what restrictions they can place on the content that they produce. To the degree that a competitive market exists, this may lead to content providers experimenting with a variety of more restrictive methods of distribution. However, I don't see that this will increase consumer choice. It will increase supplier willingness to continue to make the products available... but that's not the same thing. Will it increase the rate of new creation of material? Encourage new and more talented artists to try their hand? How many currently existing items not currently available in present forms will be put out in these more restricted forms?
Fact: the RIAA and MPAA are competing for my (and other consumers) entertainment dollars. Fact: basic economics dictates that I will spend my money on the goods that provide me the maximum happiness. Competitors for my entertainment time and money include: Music, as CD, iTunes, or various independent music downloads; Movies, theatrical or DVD; video games; DSL available free-for-bandwidth downloadable web entertainment such as Flash animations, calling people names on Slashdot and other forums, and the good old standby of pr0n; the occasional dinner out, or even cooking in with something a little higher quality than Kraft Mac Books, magazines, and all the other fun hiding out at the local Barnes and Noble; overpriced coffee serving as excuse to flirt with the cute barristas from the local coffee shop; Beer, Wine, and other forms of booze; Tobacco, Marajuana, and other less socially acceptable poisons.
The US economy is nigh-stagnant, especially for most individual consumers. Median individual disposable income is getting squeezed. Most big-label music of late sucks; I've bought only four albums (Joshua Tree, The White Album, Billy Joel's Greatest, and the Remains of Tom Lehrer) in the last five years, none with material newer than 1990. I've also got about a hundred CDs I picked up pre-2000, that I've ripped onto my Archos player, hooked up (most) of the time to the living room computer. (Zap2It is faster to scroll through than the TV Guide Channel.)
On the other hand, I've seen Serenity, the LOTR, Harry Potter, Underworld, and the Brothers Grimm in theatres. I've bought DVDs for all of Farscape, about fifteen classic DVDs (Harvey) and as many more from in the cheap bin — matinees are $5.50; modest DVDs are $7-10 each, and I can make better popcorn for cheaper. (Lets leave the one porno video alone, shall we?) While I have HBO as part of my rent, I don't bother taping much, but caught a few of the biggest titles like Spiderman when they went there. I've found three new favorite SF authors via the local library (whoops, filesharing), and B&N is much happier for it. I've also picked up a newer edition of Joy of Cooking than the one I inherited from mom, and my grocery bill has risen nicely. (Alas, so has my waistline...) The owner of the new Sushi shop that opened two years ago knows me by name, and sent me a Christmas card. I've picked up about twenty video games in the time, perhaps half "new" a year or two after they came out, half old classic releases second hand on Ebay; Two of the new titles are still in box, waiting for the day that I finish MOO3.
There's a LOT of high-quality excelent value competition for my entertainment time and money. If the various content industries want more money, they need to either (a) fix the economy so that more people have higher disposable incomes — which they're not in a position to do, or (b) increase the perceived relative value of what they provide.
DRM does neither.
Quibble: you haven't ever detected a virus or spyware. There's a lamentably large difference.
Of course, were this actually the case, then what this would mean for educated technical users like thee and me is that any time you used Citibank's on-line website, and encounter the login, you ought to call 1-800-555-1212 to verify that Citibank Credit card customer service is still available from 1-800-950-5114, call that in turn, work your way through the phone menu, and politely ask the customer service representative to confirm that the accountonline.com domain is in fact under Citi's direct control.
However, having just checked, Citi.com is an alias for (as the https: certificate shows) the www.citibank.com server. While connecting to either over https: (or to the accountonline.com http: or https:), you are redirected to the http://www.citibank.com/ server; the top sign-on link is based on https://web.da-us.citibank.com/ for no apparent reason (but at least has the right subdomain), and the prominent "Sign on to your accounts" is merely a drop down of account types (such as credit card), redirecting you to a page on https://www.citibank.com/ — someone over there may have been learning from being a bad example. Where'd ya get the "accountonline.com" URL from?
On the other hand, Amex's secure site first coughs and chokes because the server certificate is actually for the akamai.net hosting server, before letting you through for sign in to an encrypted page... with an uncertain recipient. How many of their clients can say "man in the middle", d'ya think?
Of course, worst of the lot is Chase: in addition to your security lock idiocy, their secure server redirects back to the insecure server. Good for performance, really CRAPPY for security. The lock graphic isn't bad... but that should be the ONLY thing there, linking to a https: page with the login/password form. Possibly even one with minimal graphics. It's almost enough to make me apply for a Chase card, just so I can call them and give this as a reason for cancelling service... "I do a fair bit of internet shopping, and you obviously don't pay enough attention to internet security."
Actually, didn't they just snail mail me a card application...?
From the above Duff on Duff's Device: I have another revolting way to use switches to implement interrupt driven state machines but it's too horrid to go into.
Perhaps this is the Duff's Device equivalent of a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem? Or is my ignorance of the history of Evil Computing showing?
Center of mass is at 4678km, earth radius is about 6378-- ergo, COR is within Earth.
Alternatively, they could have a premium pay-access version tracker, sans commercials, and a free tracker with the commercials intact. A careful choice of codec and a file truncation to trim off two seconds of the last five second cable logo from the video before making the torrent would also prevent fast forward from working, if they want to be a bit more self centered and less user freindly.
I am aware. You miss part of my point: what are Titan and Ganymede? Currently, they're each considered just another moon; however, I suspect they might be more accurately considered in what is currently the "terrestrial planets" category, aside from the inconvenient detail of, er... not being planets. Which is why I suspect the nomenclature should be addressed: "Terrestrial Planets" may be a misnomer, if some of the items that are best fit into the category aren't planets. "Gas Giants"... well, metallic hydrogen aside, can't really argue much with that. =)
"Gas Giants" and "Terrestrials" would suit me fine, although you'd want to add asteroids and TNO's as additional categories. Distinguish between Satellites and Primaries as a separate consideration. There is the question of where the cutoff would be between Terrestrial-types and asteroid-types would lie (Which category does Luna fall in? How about Ceres?), but that may be a more useful scientific debate. The distinction between comets, asteroids, and TNOs also gets to be usefully interesting. But I think the term "Planet" might soon be obsolete.
At that point, you pretty much have to consider the Earth-Moon system a double planet, don't you? And that implies a bit more thought as to what exactly the various gas giant moons like Ganymede and Titan are, given you have moons bigger than several planets.
Umm... I'm not. I think you've another rock to turn over. These folks are talking about the discovery of a candidate for TENTH planet. 5+4+2=11... or are you counting Earth-Luna as a double planet system?
MPAA?
(Of course, that's not a long tie, that's a very short leash indeed. That may be the only one... which could well be an improvement. He's also probably harder to bribe than most....)
Only if the Phisher gets caught, and in a useful jurisdiction. Furthermore, Phishers don't usually start rich. (If you start with some money, Spamming is a more effective way to make a dishonest buck.) However, they do usually work in bulk. So, the victims get to divide up: his original assets, what he stole from everyone, and the proceeds of any (legitimate) winning lottery tickets he's bought... LESS what he's spent before he got caught, what he spends on lawyer's fees for defending the civil suit, and what he spends on lawyer's fees for bankrupcy filings.
So: this effectively makes for a civil penalty of bankrupcy... if you get caught. But that's a big if, especially when there's a lot of small crooks out there. It may make it easier for victims to get back as much as possible from the crook, once he's found... but that may still end up as dimes on the dollar, and may not happen at all.
If it comes to that, the true question may be "Are Earth and Jupiter both planets?"
There is historical precedent for deciding something that was considered a planet not to be one. The asteroid Ceres was considered a Planet for about fifty years, until it became obvious that it was merely the largest member of a numerous class of smaller bodies. So, it might well be that we will end up with the period from 1930 to the present being another such period, and Pluto merely considered one of the largest/nearest of whatever they call the Trans-Neptunian Objects. (I suspect they won't keep that name, if only because Pluto occasisonally nudges a bit closer than Neptune.)
But while we're reconsidering the classification of planets, a more general look at the solar system might be in order... which leaves some uncomfortable other facts. Leaving Pluto to its TNO status, and even leaving the Asteroid category to its prior doom, the remaining planets fall into two groups: the rocks (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) and clouds (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune). And to make matters worse, Jupiter and Saturn each have a moon (Ganymede and Titan) larger than Mercury, and similar in geologic(?) composition to the inner rocks. It may be that some of Jupiter's moons should be put into the same conceptual category as the inner rocks while we're doing one of these renamings.
Perhaps only one of the two groups ought "rightly" be called planets, and the other given a new name. Or perhaps the two planet categories should be given distinct names (rocks and clouds), and a notation made that some rocks orbit clouds. Perhaps some reconsideration should be given as to whether all asteroids should be in the asteroid category, while we're redrawing dividing lines — Ceres is a respectable paperweight. Perhaps the Earth-Moon system will end up recognized as a double rock-planet system, or only end as a rock-planet with a bigass asteroid orbiting it. Or perhaps I should shut up and let the astronomers think about this for another Uranian year. =)
Of course, that could be inconvenient, when the Beatles Apple Corps v. Apple Computer lawsuit (version 3.0) over Apple Music goes to trial in British court next March. "Um, yeah, we're now in the music business, and we signed a consent agreement saying we wouldn't get into the music business, and we're making money at it, but we thought we'd lose money running the ITMS...."
Karma Whoring. =)
True; but even a stopped clock is right twice per day. =)
Yes, the bashing of Fox News is excessive; Bush and the Republicans get it right sometimes... although perhaps not as often as they don't. I've stopped paying attention to News Hounds because of their excessive stance on Fox. However, Fox's editorial board appears from where I sit to place more emphasis on ratings and/or their political agenda than on journalistic ethics and propriety... or presenting the appearance of either.
Journalistic neutrality is important, and Fox these days doesn't seem to understand that. I believe it was in this segment on NPR where Walter Cronkite mentioned how hard it was for the journalists to maintain that neutral voice during the 1960's civil rights and desegregation coverage. All of them had seen enough of the world to know beyond the shadow of a doubt: "Racism is WRONG". On the other hand, they could not come out and say so. While there may have been questions of ratings and politics in part, mostly, it simply wasn't the proper thing for a journalist to do.
Standards have gone way downhill in the last 30 years....
Not quite. It's to make it easier to insure that they can continue to do so, regardless of any future idiocy by any one vendor. Naming no names, of course....
Ah, someone who can't see the hook for the worm... I thought someone would take a nibble, rather than consider that closely.
Yes, "more responsible like the NY Times". On the one hand, when they finally caught on to Blair's antics, they publicly apologized, decided to fire his ass (although he pulled a Nixon first), and still have a web page listing what he wrote and asking "Readers with information about these or other articles by Mr. Blair that may be false wholly or in part" to email the Times. They fucked up; they responded to their own fuckup after acquiring a clue.
And on the other hand, I didn't say they were really responsible. I just said they were more responsible. This may be like comparing a teenaged slacker to an ADHD five year old on pink pixie stix, but damning with such faint praise is the best the Old Gray Lady deserves after that incident.
Why did you bother Googling for him? If you look at the end of the article, it expressly states that he works for ATL. Now, howling about googling them and finding what flavor bastard is implied might be worthwhile, but don't make it seem like they were hiding something that they came right out and said themselves.
WTF Fox?!? Fair and balanced news indeed!
It's over in Fox's "Views" Department (note exact URL before clicking), making it an editorial-- or more exactly an "opinion" piece. (Editorials are written by on-staff editors. Opinions are written by anyone who wants to vent... much like Slashdot, actually.) Traditionally, Editorials and Opinion columnists are allowed much more latitude from the ideal of the neutral journalistic voice. Of course, traditionally editorial and opinion pieces are labeled much more clearly than Fox News does with theirs, so better to distinguish them from the more factual and less subjective elements of the news.
While I despise Fox News for any number of reasons, this is a misportrayal. The piece is posted in their editorial department at http://www.foxnews.com/views — as of 10:45 EST it's the lead over there. While I would certainly agree that a more responsible news organization would label such pieces more clearly and prominently on the actual article page, rather than letting the attentive figure out that the "MORE VIEWS HEADLINES" implies that this piece is yet another "Views" piece, it's not a particular breach of journalistic propriety. That is to say, it's as well (or poorly) labeled as any of the other pieces of crud from their editorial department. Fox's editors should be flogged, but not for this any more than the rest of their execrable web site.
"Fox News... we report, you decide" (that Fox is full of... something, anyway).
Only if you go all the way to ground level. A LOT of different designs have been thrown around over the years; I recall a recent Analog SF story using a high altitude dirgible platform. While it was done in the story to avoid a legal jurisdictional SNAFU, it could be done at a high enough altitude (above 50000' ?) to put the cable entirely above the weather.
There's another detail... the economics of space transport dictate that whoever is first to build a working space elevator will effectively own space. Natural monopolies occur when there is a high entry cost, and reduced costs thereafter. In almost every design, the main cost element (aside from R&D) is not the exotic materials, but lifting them to orbit-- $100 to $1000 per kilo multiplied by beanstalk cable weight per meter multiplied by a whole lot of meters. A space elevator (capital amortization aside) cuts the costs of space access on a per-pound lifted basis by at least two and perhaps three orders of magnitude. This means once you have one beanstalk, your capital cost for putting up another is vastly reduced.
3) Lunar observatory on the dark side.
Possibly combine these; L2 is off Lunar Farside. Not being down a (2kps?) gravity well, it should be easier to get back and forth from. True, since it's an unstable position (especially under n-body perturbation), you'd need some minor active orbital stabilization, but "that's not a bug, it's a feature" — that would also make it an ideal stepping off point for exploring the rest of the solar system. Just be careful that the station doesn't do that unplanned.
I'm afraid that's not glue....
Well, the tree ad with the druggie rabbits appeared to be trying to wave around some sort of quiz about what the 360's capabilities were, "can you separate truth from rumor" or some such. Which, yes, has informational content, even if conveyed by Socratic method.
John Wanamaker's ghost is still laughing.
You're assuming there is no distribution around that average; if there is a distribution (as the bell curve universally dictates), such a situation would tend to make the information about which judges to seek/avoid more valuable, not less. Second, that wasn't the point I was addressing. I was refering to efforts to "correct" bias implied by such studies. If you are trying to correct bias based for a computed average, what does the existance of an overall average bias in the entire population of judges do to your efforts?
Consider a case where you have 10 judges, biased +6, +9, +4, +3, +1, +8, -2, 0, -4, +7. The "average" you try to correct to is about +3... but this means that (for example) the one "unbiased" judge is considered too negative... as is one judge with a positive bias that is less pronounced.
In short: the result is the institutionalization of bias, not the complete removal... even presuming you can find a method to deal with the biases. I'm not arguing the information has limited value in taking advantage of bias, but in correcting bias.
"(30) 400 KG PLUTONIUM BAR" — that's pretty funny. Spherical critical mass for Pu-239 is about 16 kg. I wonder what ratio of length to cross-sectional area you'd have to use to prevent a bar from instantly going critical or prompt critical; you'd also want to include a safety factor for accidental immersion in a moderator. Hmm, let me check my notes....