The cache trick has always been a favourite of the illegal porn rings.
Even 10 years ago, they were hiding kiddie porn in plain sight by setting their image tags HEIGHT=1 WIDTH=1. No-one ever noticed a 1-pixel image on a website, but people who knew they were there could get them from the cache. Because no-one would discover what the sites really were during casual browsing, they could go a long time without being put on blacklists by the universities etc and they wouldn't have to keep moving.
They don't drink but they do ingest water as a constituent of the solid foods they eat. Dessication works as a form of preservation or mummification precisely because practically nothing in nature will eat anything devoid of water.
Going back to the point, water-based life can only evolve in the presence of water. Water-based life faced with an scarcity of water may evolve the ability to synthesise its own water. It could then slowly adapt to survive in a complete absence of water. (Compare with trees, which produce oxygen from carbon-dioxide, but would die in an environment that was initially oxygen.)
If a lifeform evolved to exist on hydrocarbons alone, in the absence of water, then it would have developed an efficient way to do so at a primitive level. It is extremely unlike that a two-step process of creating water would be more efficient. In the long-term, yes, as it would allow Earth-like evolution, but the immediate-term disadvantage would lead to any such strains extinguishing themselves and not getting the chance to go beyond the single cell.
Unlike hot-vent extremophiles, it's hard to argue that these bacteria could be the source of life as they live in hydrocarbons, which are the result of a not-yet-fully-understood process involving dead organic matter.
"Right guys, at 7:43AM precisely, start shaking your laptop. Stop after five minutes. Then switch on the radio and wait for the news to tell us not to go to school."
This wasn't a pen test -- this was a PR stunt. They engineered the situation to say "look, we weren't hacked" rather than providing a genuine opportunity for proper stress testing.
Note the continuing use of the term "a team of professional hackers" -- no, it was an open invitation to individual members of the public, and it held an incentive for untrained, incompetent "hackers": they got a free USB penknife whether or not they hacked it.
This is, as the previous poster says, a "scam contest" -- it is a publicity stunt.
Very few book publishers deal in scarcity. Publishers print as many books as they think they can sell. If they sell out and they still have orders outstanding, they print more. Costs of medium- to long-term storage for unsold books often outstrips the physical cost of the book, so overstock is discouraged by the market.
All in all, print publishing is a mature market and is ruled by a very refined balance of supply and demand. It is not some evil profit muncher.
"Capitalism" as we know it was an industrial philosophy. It was devised in a time where value came from physical objects, because physical production was expensive. This was a time where a physical object had one purpose and one purpose only, and its value came from how well it fulfilled that purpose.
But look at the computer sitting in front of you. Chances are, you've spent more money on software than on the PC itself. The true value of a computing device comes from its configuration, because physically it is a general purpose device with the potential to do anything but the ability to do nothing. Software adds value to it.
No, this doesn't make sense in an industrialist-capitalist context. Something non-physical with value?
But consider AutoCAD, which costs three or four times the price of the PC it runs on. It took millions of man hours to create, and save millions of man hours every year for its users. If it sold at it's physical "value" it would be free. If it was free, Autodesk would go out of business and wouldn't write any more software. No materials or environments updates means no more AutoCAD. Which means people go back to pen and paper. Value is lost for everyone.
But going back to eBooks, there is still competition. Amazon UK has 451 books on "Ruby on Rails", for example. Copyright protection keeps prices high enough that a new entrant can afford to launch a book, while the reality of competition means that people are undercutting each other as much as they can afford to in order to get the needed market share. The market has reached equilibrium, and these books add genuine value by costing the same as about 3 man-hours of programming time, but being the product of thousands of man-hours for authors, proofreaders, typesetters etc and saving the buyer lots of time. Value is created, and the creators of that value must be rewarded.
Jobs fits in because he is now selling eBooks to iPad users at a price agreed with the publishers. While this may smack of "cartel", Amazon's no better -- selling books at a knock-down price to encourage people to buy the expensive Kindle, with the single-minded goal of gaining a monopoly on the market. Looking at the case of MacMillan, Amazon were selling at 66% of the RRP for the eBook. As I understand it, if this became standard pricing, the publishers and authors would end up with less money than for a paper book sale. Technological improvements should reward creators with increased profit and reward consumers with reduced prices.
Even now, this sets you above the crowd in the OSS market. Too many programs, not enough instructions. This is one of the reasons most successful open-source software is a clone of a commercial product -- at least the user can use the training materials for the commercial product!
What I meant is that it meets the standards set forth by whatever body determines what may and may not be labeled as organic as being organic. Using Bt to kill tomato hornworms will not make a farmer lose is "organic" credentials. Using something like Sevin will.
"whatever body" -- why should you trust someone if you don't even know who they are?
There was some concern a few years ago about the organic movement here in the UK. One of their most controversial policies was the selective approval of human-toxic chemicals, and simultaneous rejection of non-human-toxic chemicals.
The reason for this was driven by a green agenda, not a human-health one: a chemical that is toxic to humans will be heavily regulated and used in lower volumes than one that is not toxic to humans, and will therefore create less environmental pollution.
This is the danger in a system based on extremes: on one side we have multinational companies who value profit over human health, and on the other we have the greenies who value nature over human health. Any apparent "balance" ignores the fact that no-one involved is genuinely interested in human health.
(Bt, by the way, is considered organic and completely harmless to humans, pets and beneficial insects. The problem is either in the quantity of Bt toxin fed to the rats or something else in the corn.)
Go ahead and muddy the waters, Taco. There is a significant logical leap between the two sentences I quote above.
First, you seem to accept that there's no absolutes -- considered organic, not is organic -- then you say with absolute certainty that it's not the chemical that's the problem.
The problem here is that there are three possibilities that needed investigating (earlier assessment of Bt was incorrect; apparent toxicity was due to unrealistically high dose in trials; toxicity was from some element other than Bt), and no evidence that this investigation was actually carried out.
However, the problem is that groups will use this as an example as to why it's better to let your people starve than to take a chance on any GM foods.
Is the problem that people cry "Frankstein" on seeing a genuine Frankenstein food, or is the problem that the Frankenstein exists.
It's not only the anti-GM guys who overreact, but also the pro-GM guys. You don't seem to intend to do it, but you too are shouting down people with the usual "won't somebody think of the African children" line.
The system needs balances, yes, and while there is a balance of sorts, it's extremists on both sides. A dual party system ruled by Stalin and Mussolini would be balanced, but it would be hardly a good state of affairs. The current system is a joke, because while GM is sold to the public as a way to stop starvation, in reality the majority of GM crops are designed first and foremost as a means to sell a proprietary weedkiller or pesticide. The alternative, to make plants that are more resistant to pest attack, or sprout a bit quicker so that the weeds can't crowd them out, is not down for reasons of pure profitability. This is vendor lock-in, pure and simple, and just as with Microsoft, economic pressures make it a bad deal for people in the worst-off countries. Monsanto aren't daft: they know that it only takes a 1 or 2% reduction in the cost of production for someone to migrate to a new technology, so regardless of the efficiency of their technology, they'll set the price only a couple of percent below the alternative and retain the rest as profit.
In the end, does this increase the economic strength of the developing nations? No, because a larger amount of their income goes back out to richer nations, and economic strength will always be relative.
But stuff economics -- it's more important people get fed, right? Well, as I understand it, the biggest threat to the third world is not low crop yield, but excessive export to serve the developed countries' overconsumption: coffee, cocoa, sugar and banana plantations -- heck, even flower farms -- on land that would otherwise feed the local population. If third world countries worsen their economic standing globally, this keeps the price of their produce down and encourages the continuation of the cash crop culture.
Regulation of the GM market is required. At the very least, no company should be allowed to produce GM crops that are tied into their own agricultural chemicals. I'd personally prefer it if GM was restricted to academic labs and non-commercial foundations, but I doubt that this will ever happen.
What you're ignoring is the trend - the majority of US patents being for foreign companies is a new thing. It indicates US economic dominance is in decline.
Does it? It may instead indicate that cross-border economic activity is on the increase. While this may (arguably) show a relative decrease in US dominance of the domestic trade, it doesn't preclude the possibility of an increase in the US dominance of global trade.
Local law applies -- no country I know of provides greater protection to foreign works than to their own works. Some countries supplement this with the principle of "least coverage" or "lesser term" -- ie that if the copyright expires in the country of origin, it expires in their territory too, even if it would still be covered has it been written there.
two parties the ultimate natural evolution of all democracies, and this is a good thing, despite you and your fringe beliefs, whether far right or far left.
Moderate is a matter of perspective. While conscious of Godwin's Law, I'd just like to point out that most supporters of the European right wing in the mid 20th century (the Nazis in Germany, the Fascists in Italy and and the Falangists in Spain) considered themselves moderate, and anyone speaking against them was considered an extremist lefty. Meanwhile, the extreme left (Stalinist Soviets, Spanish Anarchists, Tito's League of Communists of Yugoslavia) similarly considered themselves moderate and their opponents rightwing extremists. "Moderatism" in democracy doesn't exist -- at best you are supporting the status quo, hence your use of the term "stability".
Now, as to the main thrust of your argument, the UK is perfect counterevidence.
The UK spent 18 consecutive years under the Conservatives. They're extreme capitalists in that they wanted to sell everything. They're right wing, just not violent right wingers. The main opposition, a nominally socialist party, was getting nowhere... until they moved right. They had to move pretty far to the right to get the Conservative voters to change their spots. The creeping bipartitism in the UK led to something quite bipolar: while selling rightwing policies to rightwing voters, they were still presenting themselves as being the "left" option, despite having leapfrogged the "centre ground" liberal democrats, and as the only way to stop the "rightwing" Conservatives getting in.
Now there's been a global economic crisis, and somehow the UK's economic state is the fault of the current prime minister, even though every other country is a badly off as we are. Apparently the way "moderates" should punish him is by voting for an even righter wing party, the Conservatives. The bogey man alternative pushed by the press is the British National Party, a bunch of two-bit half-wit racists who managed to get a couple of seats in the European Parliament as a result of extreme voter apathy.
Policies by Labour and the Conservatives are increasingly led by business interests -- more and more we're seeing the same list of donors giving vast amounts of money to both parties. The more the press supports the bipartite illusion, the less the two parties need to differentiate themselves from each other in order to get votes. The less they have to differentiate themselves, the less choice is available to the voter. In the end, the country is run by the corporations and the work of government becomes a work of theatre.
You think I'm exaggerating? Look back at the USA. The two parties have practically identical donor lists. The public started twigging to this and became disenfranchised, until along came a charismatic man offering real change that the people wanted: healthcare, justice, equality.
Then he gets in and his policies slide away one-by-one as his party's money men start to pull on the reins.
What the US needs is for Obama to stand for his second term as an independent. That'd mix things up a bit....
Afforestation? That'd be making new forests then. How about repackage that as "reforestation" -- putting back some of the sh*tload of trees we cut down worldwide for shipbuilding in the Imperial Era and for early industrial firewood?
I.E. Why don't we think in terms of "righting our wrongs" rather than trying to battle against an invisible (and uncertain) enemy?
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but you see: Dutch hackers Do No Evil.
That's the difference.
HAL.
The cache trick has always been a favourite of the illegal porn rings.
Even 10 years ago, they were hiding kiddie porn in plain sight by setting their image tags HEIGHT=1 WIDTH=1. No-one ever noticed a 1-pixel image on a website, but people who knew they were there could get them from the cache. Because no-one would discover what the sites really were during casual browsing, they could go a long time without being put on blacklists by the universities etc and they wouldn't have to keep moving.
The cache certainly doesn't show volition....
They don't drink but they do ingest water as a constituent of the solid foods they eat. Dessication works as a form of preservation or mummification precisely because practically nothing in nature will eat anything devoid of water.
Going back to the point, water-based life can only evolve in the presence of water. Water-based life faced with an scarcity of water may evolve the ability to synthesise its own water. It could then slowly adapt to survive in a complete absence of water. (Compare with trees, which produce oxygen from carbon-dioxide, but would die in an environment that was initially oxygen.)
If a lifeform evolved to exist on hydrocarbons alone, in the absence of water, then it would have developed an efficient way to do so at a primitive level. It is extremely unlike that a two-step process of creating water would be more efficient. In the long-term, yes, as it would allow Earth-like evolution, but the immediate-term disadvantage would lead to any such strains extinguishing themselves and not getting the chance to go beyond the single cell.
Unlike hot-vent extremophiles, it's hard to argue that these bacteria could be the source of life as they live in hydrocarbons, which are the result of a not-yet-fully-understood process involving dead organic matter.
HAL.
I can just see it now.
"Right guys, at 7:43AM precisely, start shaking your laptop. Stop after five minutes. Then switch on the radio and wait for the news to tell us not to go to school."
That's what I'd've done at that age, anyway....
HAL
This wasn't a pen test -- this was a PR stunt. They engineered the situation to say "look, we weren't hacked" rather than providing a genuine opportunity for proper stress testing.
Note the continuing use of the term "a team of professional hackers" -- no, it was an open invitation to individual members of the public, and it held an incentive for untrained, incompetent "hackers": they got a free USB penknife whether or not they hacked it.
This is, as the previous poster says, a "scam contest" -- it is a publicity stunt.
HAL.
Type without rhythm and it won't attract the worm. Or the fuzz.
Since 1950 nuclear testing has really screwed with the amount of C14 in the atmosphere
This is exactly the point. The wild variation in C14:C12 gives each year's harvest a "fingerprint". Allegedly. This is not archaeology.
Unless they have a precise idea of exactly how much radioactive carbon ended up where after each test, the whole thing is a load of crap.
Yes. It ended up in the atmosphere, and plants get their carbon from the atmosphere. The atmosphere is a big thing that encircles the planet.
HAL.
Very few book publishers deal in scarcity. Publishers print as many books as they think they can sell. If they sell out and they still have orders outstanding, they print more. Costs of medium- to long-term storage for unsold books often outstrips the physical cost of the book, so overstock is discouraged by the market.
All in all, print publishing is a mature market and is ruled by a very refined balance of supply and demand. It is not some evil profit muncher.
HAL.
I'm waiting until I can just say "PAGE!". Buttons are sooooooo last century.
HAL.
"Capitalism" as we know it was an industrial philosophy. It was devised in a time where value came from physical objects, because physical production was expensive. This was a time where a physical object had one purpose and one purpose only, and its value came from how well it fulfilled that purpose.
But look at the computer sitting in front of you. Chances are, you've spent more money on software than on the PC itself. The true value of a computing device comes from its configuration, because physically it is a general purpose device with the potential to do anything but the ability to do nothing. Software adds value to it.
No, this doesn't make sense in an industrialist-capitalist context. Something non-physical with value?
But consider AutoCAD, which costs three or four times the price of the PC it runs on. It took millions of man hours to create, and save millions of man hours every year for its users. If it sold at it's physical "value" it would be free. If it was free, Autodesk would go out of business and wouldn't write any more software. No materials or environments updates means no more AutoCAD. Which means people go back to pen and paper. Value is lost for everyone.
But going back to eBooks, there is still competition. Amazon UK has 451 books on "Ruby on Rails", for example. Copyright protection keeps prices high enough that a new entrant can afford to launch a book, while the reality of competition means that people are undercutting each other as much as they can afford to in order to get the needed market share. The market has reached equilibrium, and these books add genuine value by costing the same as about 3 man-hours of programming time, but being the product of thousands of man-hours for authors, proofreaders, typesetters etc and saving the buyer lots of time. Value is created, and the creators of that value must be rewarded.
HAL.
Jobs fits in because he is now selling eBooks to iPad users at a price agreed with the publishers. While this may smack of "cartel", Amazon's no better -- selling books at a knock-down price to encourage people to buy the expensive Kindle, with the single-minded goal of gaining a monopoly on the market. Looking at the case of MacMillan, Amazon were selling at 66% of the RRP for the eBook. As I understand it, if this became standard pricing, the publishers and authors would end up with less money than for a paper book sale. Technological improvements should reward creators with increased profit and reward consumers with reduced prices.
HAL.
Have good documentations
Even now, this sets you above the crowd in the OSS market. Too many programs, not enough instructions. This is one of the reasons most successful open-source software is a clone of a commercial product -- at least the user can use the training materials for the commercial product!
HAL.
...will I get to go to Pandora when I pass on?
What I meant is that it meets the standards set forth by whatever body determines what may and may not be labeled as organic as being organic. Using Bt to kill tomato hornworms will not make a farmer lose is "organic" credentials. Using something like Sevin will.
"whatever body" -- why should you trust someone if you don't even know who they are?
There was some concern a few years ago about the organic movement here in the UK. One of their most controversial policies was the selective approval of human-toxic chemicals, and simultaneous rejection of non-human-toxic chemicals.
The reason for this was driven by a green agenda, not a human-health one: a chemical that is toxic to humans will be heavily regulated and used in lower volumes than one that is not toxic to humans, and will therefore create less environmental pollution.
This is the danger in a system based on extremes: on one side we have multinational companies who value profit over human health, and on the other we have the greenies who value nature over human health. Any apparent "balance" ignores the fact that no-one involved is genuinely interested in human health.
HAL.
(Bt, by the way, is considered organic and completely harmless to humans, pets and beneficial insects. The problem is either in the quantity of Bt toxin fed to the rats or something else in the corn.)
Go ahead and muddy the waters, Taco. There is a significant logical leap between the two sentences I quote above.
First, you seem to accept that there's no absolutes -- considered organic, not is organic -- then you say with absolute certainty that it's not the chemical that's the problem.
The problem here is that there are three possibilities that needed investigating (earlier assessment of Bt was incorrect; apparent toxicity was due to unrealistically high dose in trials; toxicity was from some element other than Bt), and no evidence that this investigation was actually carried out.
However, the problem is that groups will use this as an example as to why it's better to let your people starve than to take a chance on any GM foods.
Is the problem that people cry "Frankstein" on seeing a genuine Frankenstein food, or is the problem that the Frankenstein exists.
It's not only the anti-GM guys who overreact, but also the pro-GM guys. You don't seem to intend to do it, but you too are shouting down people with the usual "won't somebody think of the African children" line.
The system needs balances, yes, and while there is a balance of sorts, it's extremists on both sides. A dual party system ruled by Stalin and Mussolini would be balanced, but it would be hardly a good state of affairs. The current system is a joke, because while GM is sold to the public as a way to stop starvation, in reality the majority of GM crops are designed first and foremost as a means to sell a proprietary weedkiller or pesticide. The alternative, to make plants that are more resistant to pest attack, or sprout a bit quicker so that the weeds can't crowd them out, is not down for reasons of pure profitability. This is vendor lock-in, pure and simple, and just as with Microsoft, economic pressures make it a bad deal for people in the worst-off countries. Monsanto aren't daft: they know that it only takes a 1 or 2% reduction in the cost of production for someone to migrate to a new technology, so regardless of the efficiency of their technology, they'll set the price only a couple of percent below the alternative and retain the rest as profit.
In the end, does this increase the economic strength of the developing nations? No, because a larger amount of their income goes back out to richer nations, and economic strength will always be relative.
But stuff economics -- it's more important people get fed, right? Well, as I understand it, the biggest threat to the third world is not low crop yield, but excessive export to serve the developed countries' overconsumption: coffee, cocoa, sugar and banana plantations -- heck, even flower farms -- on land that would otherwise feed the local population. If third world countries worsen their economic standing globally, this keeps the price of their produce down and encourages the continuation of the cash crop culture.
Regulation of the GM market is required. At the very least, no company should be allowed to produce GM crops that are tied into their own agricultural chemicals. I'd personally prefer it if GM was restricted to academic labs and non-commercial foundations, but I doubt that this will ever happen.
HAL.
Maybe so, but isn't it the promise of the ending that motivates the journey and gives it meaning?
Socra^H^H^H^H^HHAL.
What you're ignoring is the trend - the majority of US patents being for foreign companies is a new thing. It indicates US economic dominance is in decline.
Does it? It may instead indicate that cross-border economic activity is on the increase. While this may (arguably) show a relative decrease in US dominance of the domestic trade, it doesn't preclude the possibility of an increase in the US dominance of global trade.
HAL.
Local law applies -- no country I know of provides greater protection to foreign works than to their own works. Some countries supplement this with the principle of "least coverage" or "lesser term" -- ie that if the copyright expires in the country of origin, it expires in their territory too, even if it would still be covered has it been written there.
I loved "Yes, Minister". You don't get documentries like that anymore.
You've obviously never seen "In The Thick Of It" then....
/HAL.
two parties the ultimate natural evolution of all democracies, and this is a good thing, despite you and your fringe beliefs, whether far right or far left.
Moderate is a matter of perspective. While conscious of Godwin's Law, I'd just like to point out that most supporters of the European right wing in the mid 20th century (the Nazis in Germany, the Fascists in Italy and and the Falangists in Spain) considered themselves moderate, and anyone speaking against them was considered an extremist lefty. Meanwhile, the extreme left (Stalinist Soviets, Spanish Anarchists, Tito's League of Communists of Yugoslavia) similarly considered themselves moderate and their opponents rightwing extremists. "Moderatism" in democracy doesn't exist -- at best you are supporting the status quo, hence your use of the term "stability".
Now, as to the main thrust of your argument, the UK is perfect counterevidence.
The UK spent 18 consecutive years under the Conservatives. They're extreme capitalists in that they wanted to sell everything. They're right wing, just not violent right wingers. The main opposition, a nominally socialist party, was getting nowhere... until they moved right. They had to move pretty far to the right to get the Conservative voters to change their spots. The creeping bipartitism in the UK led to something quite bipolar: while selling rightwing policies to rightwing voters, they were still presenting themselves as being the "left" option, despite having leapfrogged the "centre ground" liberal democrats, and as the only way to stop the "rightwing" Conservatives getting in.
Now there's been a global economic crisis, and somehow the UK's economic state is the fault of the current prime minister, even though every other country is a badly off as we are. Apparently the way "moderates" should punish him is by voting for an even righter wing party, the Conservatives. The bogey man alternative pushed by the press is the British National Party, a bunch of two-bit half-wit racists who managed to get a couple of seats in the European Parliament as a result of extreme voter apathy.
Policies by Labour and the Conservatives are increasingly led by business interests -- more and more we're seeing the same list of donors giving vast amounts of money to both parties. The more the press supports the bipartite illusion, the less the two parties need to differentiate themselves from each other in order to get votes. The less they have to differentiate themselves, the less choice is available to the voter. In the end, the country is run by the corporations and the work of government becomes a work of theatre.
You think I'm exaggerating? Look back at the USA. The two parties have practically identical donor lists. The public started twigging to this and became disenfranchised, until along came a charismatic man offering real change that the people wanted: healthcare, justice, equality.
Then he gets in and his policies slide away one-by-one as his party's money men start to pull on the reins.
What the US needs is for Obama to stand for his second term as an independent. That'd mix things up a bit....
/HAL.
Afforestation? That'd be making new forests then. How about repackage that as "reforestation" -- putting back some of the sh*tload of trees we cut down worldwide for shipbuilding in the Imperial Era and for early industrial firewood?
I.E. Why don't we think in terms of "righting our wrongs" rather than trying to battle against an invisible (and uncertain) enemy?
HAL.
Can my condoms tweet when I come?
And that would generate how many more tweets a lifetime? 1? 2
HAL.
Oops. Type/token, of course.
In fact, I'm surprised that they even considered lexical density because that varies greatly within a single author's writing.
Did they? Yes, the article mentions lexical density, but it then* goes on to describe token/type ratio, which is a different beast entirely.
The problem with FAs is that they're anything but a primary source....
HAL.
* Am I hiding my writing style here or adhering to it...?