Root word, "awful": focusing on the negative and rejecting the positive in order to make something seem bad which isn't necessarily bad. Done in news publication because of the car wreck phenomenon -- people seem to be more interested in bad things. The antonym is "neatism".
Do you want doctors that can figure out what the drugs they sell actually are and can do? Then OC is just the start.
Do you want doctors that are simply body technicians and sell whatever sticks in their mind due to Big Pharma advertising? Then drop OC.
Why is this in WSJ? Are they capable of evaluating the data? Do they know enough about medical training? Are they aware that by interviewing practicing doctors they're asking those who have found that the way medicine is presently practiced they have no need of OC? Why don't they ask people who have been over-medicated and under-treated by such "professionals"? Does WSJ report that 50%+ of all funding for US medical schools comes directly or indirectly from Big Pharma?
If you read TFA, you discover that it, but not the provided summary on/., says it was news to nobody in the field that something broke. What's not said here, but said in TFA and far more worthy of mention, is that they replaced it and were running again the next day, well before AP even inquired. Falling prey to the cheap journalistic gimmick of awfulism, are we?
I hope this helps someone. And any vets that read this: look up your local VA or vet center. There's no shame in getting help.
-B out.
I go to Mountain Home VAMC in Johnson City TN. Reckon they can help me? I need help trying to figure out where anything you said comprises a correction to what I said (as you changed the subject to indicate). Looks more like you used a piece of a phrase for a jumping off point to express some good but barely relevant pieces of information and some fairly relevant tangents.
So, if say I had a phobia of airplanes, and at the same time say a phobia of snakes, then the most optimal treatment would be Virtual...?
... Valium?
I know where you were headed. I saw Samuel L. Jackson interviewed by Jon Stewart, and they made ample use of the phrase. So did others. It got overused. To use it now would be cheap. So I refuse to say [Virtual] Snakes On A Motherfucking Plane. . . . . . . Oh damn.
Sure, it's funny to the Ivory Soap Parameter (99 and 44/100ths of a percent) of people, but I still keep a copy for my use. What *I* find funny is that the first Macs had an Applesoft emulator available, and it had a subset of the Apple II reference called "Green Book" in its instructions.
"Other programs offered to treat PTSD include Virtual Airplane, Virtual Audiences, Virtual Heights, Virtual Storm, and Virtual Vietnam."
All but the last are for desenstitization of phobias (as are those for snakes and spiders). The same programs would work for PTSD as they're simply VR of exposure to a particular situation, but I can't recall there ever being a case of audience-induced PTSD.
Rizzo has also used his VR work in stroke rehab, a worthy effort. OTOH, he used it to 'erase' the well known and much decried persistent gender effects (males being better at it than females) in the mental rotation task (MRT) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_rotation . Not bad work, but he credited VR, not simply exposure and practice. One of my undergrad labs approached the Virginia Tech VR "tank" folks and asked for help in replicating this. The VR lab suggested using VRML instead for our own convenience. We did so, and we built two full sets of the MRT out of wooden blocks. We tested males and females from psychology as well as from engineering. We found the effect he did, but got the same effect from both virtual and manual manipulation. The effect was from practice, not specifically VR immersion.
To pull this back on topic, the above tends to support the traditional military medicine model for treating "shell shock" and "battle fatigue" (as PTSD was know for the past century) by exposure, ie. "return to the battlefield as soon as possible". Just as with electroshock therapy, much as I dislike the fact the numbers show it to be effective.
Not so quick or easy but less likely to have unintended consequences is having the card inside an operating MRI for a few minutes.
If it were simply a matter of a number, the DHS could use an existing one, such as the DL number itself. Although technically illegal, or at least improper, much of the US government use social security numbers, another option (for non-residents there's green card or visa number). The availability of options supports the assertion that there's more to it, if not now then at least in possibility or planning, than simply reading a number.
It should be a relatively simple matter to force the DMV to disclose with availability for verification just what information is sent to DHS in trade for the number. If there's a 1 to 1 correspondence with an existing ID method (DL number, etc.) then there's a good chance the DHS program isn't intended to remain at the simple individual ID number level.
Congress might reverse the decision to require open access, but it can't legislate the publishers to prevent them from individually choosing to participate. Many do so willingly and with less restriction than the present regulations require, as TFA notes. They will likely continue. If others revert to the previous stance, they will be signing their own death warrants, as the open access journals will get wider reference, and so become the journals of choice for publication.
In any case, I think it's an election year stunt by IP business supported legislators. I think they're trying to drum up votes in the manner in which they've been accustom, FUDmongering.
Snopes is good at debunking (urban) myths. They are not, however, good at evaluating science. Debunking is not even an appropriate term or activity to apply to science (as stated by the poster, and as performed by Snopes). Their FAQ lists other forms of common fiction which are not urban myth, but fail to list badly researched statements by or about science among them.
Snopes reports the "debunking" coming from the International Bottled Water Association. Nobody conversant with science would accept a statement from such as biased source as authoritative. Their major hint should have come from the statement that the master's thesis was "not peer reviewed". A thesis is conducted by a student under a committee of professionals, at least one of which (the thesis supervisor) is an expert in that field. Peer review is conducted by the committee. A thesis is intended to be material suitable for rewriting into a publishable paper. It will have the committee members' names on it, in reference if not in the by-line. As professionals they will at least see to it that the result is worthy of carrying their names.
As for the quote in Snopes supposedly from Rolf Halden of Johns Hopkins that there are no dioxins in plastic, do your own research, as Snopes should have done to follow up, and as the Johns Hopkins people should have done before making the statement. Go to: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez and put in the search terms "plastic" and "dioxin".
Snopes should also have done their research on the link they provide to the Johns Hopkins PR release (not a scientific publication of any sort, and certainly not peer reviewed) making the "hoax" claim. It is not from Halden, it is from Kellog Schwab. In addition to misattribution, they fail to note that the statement is made in the context of J.H. distancing themselves from misattribution in the emails titled "John Hopkins Cancer Update" and such, not in the context of research conducted or reviewed. There is a similar J.H. missive listed among the 150 results from PubMed. It is in a J.H. publication (peer review?) and has no authors credited.
Snopes appears to have found a way to become a subject of their own scrutiny, as they have delved into science and come up as debunkable urban science myth. Stick to urban mythology, Sponesites. Science can and does take care of itself, if you dig for it in science rather than press releases. Evaluating science requires taking the specific hypothetical statements and applying scientific expertise, not merely quoting vested interests (!) who happen to disagree for reasons other than replicable evidence.
The only news here is the Ocean Tomo partnership. NASA has had an office specifically to sell its patents for decades. I used to subscribe to their magazine.
As for the comics, isn't this just a spiffy bit of journalistic disinegnuity? After figuring it out, I still hit speed bumps when reading it: "...which NASA wants to leverage in commercializing its technology." Yeah, well, "Verbing weirds language." -- Calvin and Hobbes
First, I applaud your usage of convolve in prose. I've never seen it used outside of signal processing.
Second, I think you're way too eager to throw the researcher in jail. He is performing research and it's entirely possible that it could be useful. The only way you could dismiss it, personally, is to actually review it. Until then, it's a Schrodinger's Cat.
Even then, I think it sets a dangerous precedent to throw researchers into jail for doing research.
He should be thrown in jail for testifying as to the accuracy and reliability of an unproven device in a capital case without having the evidence to support it, not for doing research. If self-generated evidence were sufficient to stand as science we'd have probably sent the rovers to Mars to study the canals.
As for "convolved", thanks. I do signal processing on electrophysiological recordings. I picked it up studying neuroscience under Karl Pribram, who applied Gabor's holography maths to EEG analysis (hence the confusion he likened the brain to holography). Speaking of Schoedinger, he (and Bohm and Hiley) applied Schoedinger's equations to it also, but nobody seriously considers the brain to operate on a quantum level. Well, except for Roger Penrose. And when asked by Karl what his theory had to do with psychology, he replied "I don't know. That's for you psychologists to figure out."
The Chinese proposed a method they want to use for tracing things such as Free Tibet traffic. I don't suppose that what they proposed would include methods for tracing attacks Chinese attacks against US computers, would it? No way they'd forget to include anything for which they had already developed a work around. The up side is, if the proposal gets accepted, it means the US already capable of tracing said traffic, which is almost certainly the case. Chinese hack attacks are characterized by incredible hubris -- they're into doing it far more than in doing it well.
Eyewitness testimony is fallible for the same reason one's own memory for personal events is fallible: everything we 'remember' is constructed from what is stored and seems related, producing the fastest good enough result. The same research supports both. False memory and memory rejection can happen because memory is never entirely accurate. One can even be fooled into "remembering" something someone else supposedly saw but never occurred, convolving both eyewitness report and personal memory. The foremost researchers in this field are often called to testify in court cases where false and lost memory are involved.
As such, if this judge had any sense, he'd throw the supposed researcher in jail and recuse himself after throwing out the verdict. There's no way a "brain scan" can tell how accurate a "memory" is unless it can compare what it's measuring with the perception and cognition during the actual event. And if it could do that, the operator would be there to witness the same event.
The researcher should at very least be investigated for scientific fraud. The same people that would have thrown his work(?) out under peer review would testify against him.
People have been arrested for photographing buildings and such, and their equipment confiscated, being accused of plotting terrorist acts. People suspected of terrorism have had photographs they possessed used as evidence against them. Now people are going to be taking pictures and video of people, places and things in NYC, where they're already sensitized to this kind of thing.
It's only a matter of time before some law enforcement person sees someone taking pictures of something, intended to be sent to 911, and investigates the situation for possible terrorist intent. In most cases the "perp" will be able to show their true intent, but it's only a matter of time before someone can't get themselves cleared on the spot and is arrested for suspected terrorism. Almost everyone so accused and arrested have been cleared and released, but many of them have been held without due process for extreme amounts of time.
Envision a cab driver taking pictures of potholes. Not very damaging you'd think. Now envision that cab driver as wearing a turban, as many do in NYC. Figure their odds.
These are no more "on the way" than the ultrasonic refrigerators publicized a couple years ago. In both cases an effect is being played with. The technology necessary to produce a viable refrigeration unit will, in both cases, have to wait until they're done fooling around with the lab table versions.
"Fire" is available as an audiobook. Handy, but it loses the effect of network traffic as compared to the print version. Reading the headers as headers gives almost a sub-plot.
Vint Cerf may have worked on the development, but the idea was covered by Vernor Vinge in 1992 ("A Fire Upon The Deep"). Yes, it was fiction, but Vinge drew on his knowledge as a computer scientist. He also betrayed himself as having more than a passing familiarity with the pitfalls and pratfalls of usenet message threads. "Hexapodia As The Key Insight" (Thanks, Jack.)
No, it applies to copyrights also. It was central to Harlan Ellison v AOL, RemarQ and various Does. I was a material and expert witness for Ellison. Although officially AOL settled out, we won because we forced AOL to offer it. This was helped in part because AOL funded development of Winamp, which had been used in copyright violations (ie. ripping CDs for sharing). They had dirty hands.
It was also a major point with the SFWA'a ad hoc (ie. the unofficial, preliminary, WTF Is An Internet) committee on internet piracy. Authors were being forced to pursue infringements because they were forced to sell their e-rights to the publishers even when the publishers had no intention of using them. If they didn't pursue, they risked losing their contract and being forced to refund their payments because they failed to protect partial rights which they had essentially leased to the publisher but retained ownership and responsibility. Big name authors could dictate their contract terms, lesser names couldn't and so were spending their time and earnings protecting what was left of their earnings. I was on that committee. We won that too, as evidenced by the number of SF authors now retaining their e-rights and offering free downloads of their otherwise commercial works (and some publishers doing the same).
Now, I'm only speaking from the experience of seeing the law in practice and from training by the counsels involved. Perhaps the law in theory says otherwise. I doubt it though, because the same law specifies the Library of Congress to serve as clearing house for copyright infringement notice agents for all ISPs, and AOL's supposedly changing their reporting address without notifying LOC (and so taking inordinately long to respond to official infringement notices) was the other major reason they were forced to offer a settlement.
When confronted with two or more conflicting thoughts, beliefs, feelings, etc. we experience the psychological effect known as cognitive dissonance. We are driven (it is the first known "purely psychological" drive) to relive the dissonance by changing one or more of the conflicting data, to bring ourselves back into cognitive consonance. Sometimes that requires making up a false answer in order to prevent psychological stress from disabling our survival capabilities. And sometimes that false answer is fear inducing, to give as something to blame the continued stress on while we search for a better answer, or at least wait for the situation to sort itself out.
Failure to find a solution, even if a false one, can result in psychological crisis. We feel as if we're going crazy because we can't find a way out of the situation. If it weren't for false beliefs such as superstition this would happen far more often, and if enough of us had survived this long, we'd probably still be in caves since they're good places to hide in.
The answer more obviously has to be yes, because very few thoughts, beliefs, feelings etc. are entirely true. Our heuristically operating brain comes up with the fastest good enough answer to everything, rarely completely accurate and appropriate. Superstition is simply a subset of our error prone cognition.
"It takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email."
If you can't control your own behavior to the point that you have to react to an email as soon as it arrives (the only way I can see 'interruption' being relevant) then I imagine the figure is approximately accurate. However, most people manage to choose when to read email and when to stop. Those with that sort of control also tend to read several in a session, so even if it took them a whole ohmygodfreaking minute and four seconds to "recover", that's a minute+ more than the 10 or 15 or 20 minutes they spent sorting through, reading and responding as appropriate.
You've got to pity the poor boneheads who can't operate via their own free will and can only immediately react to email stimuli. You've also got to pity the poor boneheads who think a minute and a few seconds is a significant amount of time. Imagine the terror they must feel when confronted with having to spend several whole minutes taking a shit. They're probably the ones who don't wash their hands after since that'd take up another minute or so.
It takes me at least 64 seconds to recover from reading such a ridiculous article. Stop it.
"The root cause is not the labels â" chances are if you were running a label you would make the same demands, since the law permits it."
The law doesn't permit it, it requires it. If a rights owner doesn't pursue infringements in every case they risk losing them to a later infringer who points out the earlier failure to protect.
Nature is far better at producing far more and more diverse potentially lethal hazards far faster than all the bio-labs on the planet. Plus, nature has been at it for billions of years. If he could do it, nature probably already has, and we're still here.
Besides, if he builds something not related to Earth life, the possibility that it could affect Earth life is virtually nil.
I remember once there was a science related story on/. that didn't devolve into sCaRy mOnStEr sci-fi speculation. Once. It's amazing what mischief the mind can get up to when it's working with very little information, except no, it's not at all amazing.
50% of all alcoholic beverages produced are consumed by 5% of the population. If alcoholism were made curable, breweries would be whining for government subsidies to stay afloat. If "power users" all disappeared ISPs would go back to whining about all the dark fiber (as they did not that long ago) and beg for government subsidies to pay for their oh so valuable investment in modern day infrastructure. Or some such crap.
Don't think for a second that breweries and ISPs aren't already aware of the facts.
Slashdot Mirror
What is awfulism?
Root word, "awful": focusing on the negative and rejecting the positive in order to make something seem bad which isn't necessarily bad. Done in news publication because of the car wreck phenomenon -- people seem to be more interested in bad things. The antonym is "neatism".
Do you want doctors that can figure out what the drugs they sell actually are and can do? Then OC is just the start.
Do you want doctors that are simply body technicians and sell whatever sticks in their mind due to Big Pharma advertising? Then drop OC.
Why is this in WSJ? Are they capable of evaluating the data? Do they know enough about medical training? Are they aware that by interviewing practicing doctors they're asking those who have found that the way medicine is presently practiced they have no need of OC? Why don't they ask people who have been over-medicated and under-treated by such "professionals"? Does WSJ report that 50%+ of all funding for US medical schools comes directly or indirectly from Big Pharma?
If you read TFA, you discover that it, but not the provided summary on /., says it was news to nobody in the field that something broke. What's not said here, but said in TFA and far more worthy of mention, is that they replaced it and were running again the next day, well before AP even inquired. Falling prey to the cheap journalistic gimmick of awfulism, are we?
404, my friend.
d00d! It wasn't this afternoon when I looked it up to post that. I swear. Like I said, I keep a copy. I had to look up a link.
I hope this helps someone. And any vets that read this: look up your local VA or vet center. There's no shame in getting help.
-B out.
I go to Mountain Home VAMC in Johnson City TN. Reckon they can help me? I need help trying to figure out where anything you said comprises a correction to what I said (as you changed the subject to indicate). Looks more like you used a piece of a phrase for a jumping off point to express some good but barely relevant pieces of information and some fairly relevant tangents.
So, if say I had a phobia of airplanes, and at the same time say a phobia of snakes, then the most optimal treatment would be Virtual...?
... Valium?
I know where you were headed. I saw Samuel L. Jackson interviewed by Jon Stewart, and they made ample use of the phrase. So did others. It got overused. To use it now would be cheap. So I refuse to say [Virtual] Snakes On A Motherfucking Plane.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Oh damn.
is found among the usenet FAQa: http://www.visi.com/~nathan/a2/faq/asoft.html
Sure, it's funny to the Ivory Soap Parameter (99 and 44/100ths of a percent) of people, but I still keep a copy for my use. What *I* find funny is that the first Macs had an Applesoft emulator available, and it had a subset of the Apple II reference called "Green Book" in its instructions.
"Other programs offered to treat PTSD include Virtual Airplane, Virtual Audiences, Virtual Heights, Virtual Storm, and Virtual Vietnam."
All but the last are for desenstitization of phobias (as are those for snakes and spiders). The same programs would work for PTSD as they're simply VR of exposure to a particular situation, but I can't recall there ever being a case of audience-induced PTSD.
Rizzo has also used his VR work in stroke rehab, a worthy effort. OTOH, he used it to 'erase' the well known and much decried persistent gender effects (males being better at it than females) in the mental rotation task (MRT) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_rotation . Not bad work, but he credited VR, not simply exposure and practice. One of my undergrad labs approached the Virginia Tech VR "tank" folks and asked for help in replicating this. The VR lab suggested using VRML instead for our own convenience. We did so, and we built two full sets of the MRT out of wooden blocks. We tested males and females from psychology as well as from engineering. We found the effect he did, but got the same effect from both virtual and manual manipulation. The effect was from practice, not specifically VR immersion.
To pull this back on topic, the above tends to support the traditional military medicine model for treating "shell shock" and "battle fatigue" (as PTSD was know for the past century) by exposure, ie. "return to the battlefield as soon as possible". Just as with electroshock therapy, much as I dislike the fact the numbers show it to be effective.
Microwave on high for 30 seconds.
Not so quick or easy but less likely to have unintended consequences is having the card inside an operating MRI for a few minutes.
If it were simply a matter of a number, the DHS could use an existing one, such as the DL number itself. Although technically illegal, or at least improper, much of the US government use social security numbers, another option (for non-residents there's green card or visa number). The availability of options supports the assertion that there's more to it, if not now then at least in possibility or planning, than simply reading a number.
It should be a relatively simple matter to force the DMV to disclose with availability for verification just what information is sent to DHS in trade for the number. If there's a 1 to 1 correspondence with an existing ID method (DL number, etc.) then there's a good chance the DHS program isn't intended to remain at the simple individual ID number level.
Congress might reverse the decision to require open access, but it can't legislate the publishers to prevent them from individually choosing to participate. Many do so willingly and with less restriction than the present regulations require, as TFA notes. They will likely continue. If others revert to the previous stance, they will be signing their own death warrants, as the open access journals will get wider reference, and so become the journals of choice for publication.
In any case, I think it's an election year stunt by IP business supported legislators. I think they're trying to drum up votes in the manner in which they've been accustom, FUDmongering.
"some of which have been debunked"
Snopes is good at debunking (urban) myths. They are not, however, good at evaluating science. Debunking is not even an appropriate term or activity to apply to science (as stated by the poster, and as performed by Snopes). Their FAQ lists other forms of common fiction which are not urban myth, but fail to list badly researched statements by or about science among them.
Snopes reports the "debunking" coming from the International Bottled Water Association. Nobody conversant with science would accept a statement from such as biased source as authoritative. Their major hint should have come from the statement that the master's thesis was "not peer reviewed". A thesis is conducted by a student under a committee of professionals, at least one of which (the thesis supervisor) is an expert in that field. Peer review is conducted by the committee. A thesis is intended to be material suitable for rewriting into a publishable paper. It will have the committee members' names on it, in reference if not in the by-line. As professionals they will at least see to it that the result is worthy of carrying their names.
As for the quote in Snopes supposedly from Rolf Halden of Johns Hopkins that there are no dioxins in plastic, do your own research, as Snopes should have done to follow up, and as the Johns Hopkins people should have done before making the statement. Go to: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez and put in the search terms "plastic" and "dioxin".
Snopes should also have done their research on the link they provide to the Johns Hopkins PR release (not a scientific publication of any sort, and certainly not peer reviewed) making the "hoax" claim. It is not from Halden, it is from Kellog Schwab. In addition to misattribution, they fail to note that the statement is made in the context of J.H. distancing themselves from misattribution in the emails titled "John Hopkins Cancer Update" and such, not in the context of research conducted or reviewed. There is a similar J.H. missive listed among the 150 results from PubMed. It is in a J.H. publication (peer review?) and has no authors credited.
Snopes appears to have found a way to become a subject of their own scrutiny, as they have delved into science and come up as debunkable urban science myth. Stick to urban mythology, Sponesites. Science can and does take care of itself, if you dig for it in science rather than press releases. Evaluating science requires taking the specific hypothetical statements and applying scientific expertise, not merely quoting vested interests (!) who happen to disagree for reasons other than replicable evidence.
The only news here is the Ocean Tomo partnership. NASA has had an office specifically to sell its patents for decades. I used to subscribe to their magazine.
As for the comics, isn't this just a spiffy bit of journalistic disinegnuity? After figuring it out, I still hit speed bumps when reading it: "...which NASA wants to leverage in commercializing its technology." Yeah, well, "Verbing weirds language." -- Calvin and Hobbes
First, I applaud your usage of convolve in prose. I've never seen it used outside of signal processing.
Second, I think you're way too eager to throw the researcher in jail. He is performing research and it's entirely possible that it could be useful. The only way you could dismiss it, personally, is to actually review it. Until then, it's a Schrodinger's Cat.
Even then, I think it sets a dangerous precedent to throw researchers into jail for doing research.
He should be thrown in jail for testifying as to the accuracy and reliability of an unproven device in a capital case without having the evidence to support it, not for doing research. If self-generated evidence were sufficient to stand as science we'd have probably sent the rovers to Mars to study the canals.
As for "convolved", thanks. I do signal processing on electrophysiological recordings. I picked it up studying neuroscience under Karl Pribram, who applied Gabor's holography maths to EEG analysis (hence the confusion he likened the brain to holography). Speaking of Schoedinger, he (and Bohm and Hiley) applied Schoedinger's equations to it also, but nobody seriously considers the brain to operate on a quantum level. Well, except for Roger Penrose. And when asked by Karl what his theory had to do with psychology, he replied "I don't know. That's for you psychologists to figure out."
The Chinese proposed a method they want to use for tracing things such as Free Tibet traffic. I don't suppose that what they proposed would include methods for tracing attacks Chinese attacks against US computers, would it? No way they'd forget to include anything for which they had already developed a work around. The up side is, if the proposal gets accepted, it means the US already capable of tracing said traffic, which is almost certainly the case. Chinese hack attacks are characterized by incredible hubris -- they're into doing it far more than in doing it well.
Eyewitness testimony is fallible for the same reason one's own memory for personal events is fallible: everything we 'remember' is constructed from what is stored and seems related, producing the fastest good enough result. The same research supports both. False memory and memory rejection can happen because memory is never entirely accurate. One can even be fooled into "remembering" something someone else supposedly saw but never occurred, convolving both eyewitness report and personal memory. The foremost researchers in this field are often called to testify in court cases where false and lost memory are involved.
As such, if this judge had any sense, he'd throw the supposed researcher in jail and recuse himself after throwing out the verdict. There's no way a "brain scan" can tell how accurate a "memory" is unless it can compare what it's measuring with the perception and cognition during the actual event. And if it could do that, the operator would be there to witness the same event.
The researcher should at very least be investigated for scientific fraud. The same people that would have thrown his work(?) out under peer review would testify against him.
People have been arrested for photographing buildings and such, and their equipment confiscated, being accused of plotting terrorist acts. People suspected of terrorism have had photographs they possessed used as evidence against them. Now people are going to be taking pictures and video of people, places and things in NYC, where they're already sensitized to this kind of thing.
It's only a matter of time before some law enforcement person sees someone taking pictures of something, intended to be sent to 911, and investigates the situation for possible terrorist intent. In most cases the "perp" will be able to show their true intent, but it's only a matter of time before someone can't get themselves cleared on the spot and is arrested for suspected terrorism. Almost everyone so accused and arrested have been cleared and released, but many of them have been held without due process for extreme amounts of time.
Envision a cab driver taking pictures of potholes. Not very damaging you'd think. Now envision that cab driver as wearing a turban, as many do in NYC. Figure their odds.
These are no more "on the way" than the ultrasonic refrigerators publicized a couple years ago. In both cases an effect is being played with. The technology necessary to produce a viable refrigeration unit will, in both cases, have to wait until they're done fooling around with the lab table versions.
I see I'm not the only fan.
"Fire" is available as an audiobook. Handy, but it loses the effect of network traffic as compared to the print version. Reading the headers as headers gives almost a sub-plot.
Vint Cerf may have worked on the development, but the idea was covered by Vernor Vinge in 1992 ("A Fire Upon The Deep"). Yes, it was fiction, but Vinge drew on his knowledge as a computer scientist. He also betrayed himself as having more than a passing familiarity with the pitfalls and pratfalls of usenet message threads. "Hexapodia As The Key Insight" (Thanks, Jack.)
No, it applies to copyrights also. It was central to Harlan Ellison v AOL, RemarQ and various Does. I was a material and expert witness for Ellison. Although officially AOL settled out, we won because we forced AOL to offer it. This was helped in part because AOL funded development of Winamp, which had been used in copyright violations (ie. ripping CDs for sharing). They had dirty hands.
It was also a major point with the SFWA'a ad hoc (ie. the unofficial, preliminary, WTF Is An Internet) committee on internet piracy. Authors were being forced to pursue infringements because they were forced to sell their e-rights to the publishers even when the publishers had no intention of using them. If they didn't pursue, they risked losing their contract and being forced to refund their payments because they failed to protect partial rights which they had essentially leased to the publisher but retained ownership and responsibility. Big name authors could dictate their contract terms, lesser names couldn't and so were spending their time and earnings protecting what was left of their earnings. I was on that committee. We won that too, as evidenced by the number of SF authors now retaining their e-rights and offering free downloads of their otherwise commercial works (and some publishers doing the same).
Now, I'm only speaking from the experience of seeing the law in practice and from training by the counsels involved. Perhaps the law in theory says otherwise. I doubt it though, because the same law specifies the Library of Congress to serve as clearing house for copyright infringement notice agents for all ISPs, and AOL's supposedly changing their reporting address without notifying LOC (and so taking inordinately long to respond to official infringement notices) was the other major reason they were forced to offer a settlement.
It did evolved to help us survive.
When confronted with two or more conflicting thoughts, beliefs, feelings, etc. we experience the psychological effect known as cognitive dissonance. We are driven (it is the first known "purely psychological" drive) to relive the dissonance by changing one or more of the conflicting data, to bring ourselves back into cognitive consonance. Sometimes that requires making up a false answer in order to prevent psychological stress from disabling our survival capabilities. And sometimes that false answer is fear inducing, to give as something to blame the continued stress on while we search for a better answer, or at least wait for the situation to sort itself out.
Failure to find a solution, even if a false one, can result in psychological crisis. We feel as if we're going crazy because we can't find a way out of the situation. If it weren't for false beliefs such as superstition this would happen far more often, and if enough of us had survived this long, we'd probably still be in caves since they're good places to hide in.
The answer more obviously has to be yes, because very few thoughts, beliefs, feelings etc. are entirely true. Our heuristically operating brain comes up with the fastest good enough answer to everything, rarely completely accurate and appropriate. Superstition is simply a subset of our error prone cognition.
"It takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email."
If you can't control your own behavior to the point that you have to react to an email as soon as it arrives (the only way I can see 'interruption' being relevant) then I imagine the figure is approximately accurate. However, most people manage to choose when to read email and when to stop. Those with that sort of control also tend to read several in a session, so even if it took them a whole ohmygodfreaking minute and four seconds to "recover", that's a minute+ more than the 10 or 15 or 20 minutes they spent sorting through, reading and responding as appropriate.
You've got to pity the poor boneheads who can't operate via their own free will and can only immediately react to email stimuli. You've also got to pity the poor boneheads who think a minute and a few seconds is a significant amount of time. Imagine the terror they must feel when confronted with having to spend several whole minutes taking a shit. They're probably the ones who don't wash their hands after since that'd take up another minute or so.
It takes me at least 64 seconds to recover from reading such a ridiculous article. Stop it.
"The root cause is not the labels â" chances are if you were running a label you would make the same demands, since the law permits it."
The law doesn't permit it, it requires it. If a rights owner doesn't pursue infringements in every case they risk losing them to a later infringer who points out the earlier failure to protect.
"some scary bio-research-gone-wild scenarios."
Nature is far better at producing far more and more diverse potentially lethal hazards far faster than all the bio-labs on the planet. Plus, nature has been at it for billions of years. If he could do it, nature probably already has, and we're still here.
Besides, if he builds something not related to Earth life, the possibility that it could affect Earth life is virtually nil.
I remember once there was a science related story on /. that didn't devolve into sCaRy mOnStEr sci-fi speculation. Once. It's amazing what mischief the mind can get up to when it's working with very little information, except no, it's not at all amazing.
50% of all alcoholic beverages produced are consumed by 5% of the population. If alcoholism were made curable, breweries would be whining for government subsidies to stay afloat. If "power users" all disappeared ISPs would go back to whining about all the dark fiber (as they did not that long ago) and beg for government subsidies to pay for their oh so valuable investment in modern day infrastructure. Or some such crap.
Don't think for a second that breweries and ISPs aren't already aware of the facts.