Now Pete Seeger on this list is just the height of irony. He was the grandfather of the folk revival movement. His ethos could be best approximated as "music belongs to the people" and as a folk artist has covered, had covered, innumerable songs. His most popular songs were all made popular by other artists. The entire folk ethic of sharing and preformance over recording flies in the face of this type of content restriction.
I actually met the man last year at the Clearwater Folk Festival in Croton, NY. He is very old but I wonder if he knows/what he thinks about this... I doubt he would be very happy with the situation. I also agree that this is the surest way to put Sony in a pinch. Let the artists know that you aren't buying their album because Sony has 'infected it with DRM.' If artists (especially well established ones like Seeger) complain that is certainly more powerful than me telling Sony they have lost a customer.
I also dug up one of Seeger's famous quotes:
"Plagiarism is the basis of all culture." Seeger quoting his father. (not completely applicable in this case but close)
I think it's far more likely that Sony knew what this software did, and chose to distribute it anyway. This could have been a result of incompetent testers, poor communication between QA and management, overbearing management anxious to get a product out on a strict deadline, or any number of other things.
It is most likely that this is actually an elaborate ploy to ruin the lives of Van Zant fans by die hard Lynrd Skynrd fans.
I think the problem here is a matter of degrees. There are people out there who don't have a healthy skepticism of information they recieve. You see this all the time from the lame tradition of chic radicalism on college campuses to religious followers applying half baked theories to all manner of things. As a scientist I would like to think that I have developed a healthy ability to evaluate data and have enough skepticism to not immediately accept any bull**** that get lobbed across my screen. It is not really that difficult.
The Wikipedia is not the type of reference I would cite in a paper. Or make high stakes bets on the validity of individual peices of information. The truth is it is a good "fuzzy" reference for all kinds of things. Again in science I often look up fairly specific article about molecular biology just to see what they say. Some are excellent and some are awful, but I don't use the Wikipedia to design experiments.
If I want hard facts on well studied topics I would probably go elsewhere. The truth is that there is a lot of good information in the Wikipedia that you just can't find in a print encyclopedia. Print encyclopedias generally don't have information that is useful about BSD, Star Wars, The Flying Spahgetti Monster, etc. Yes these are "geek" topics but that is where the Wikipedia cleans up. So as usual dumb people that accept any information as accurate from a source that "anyone can edit" and make life and death decisions based on it are probably beyond the help of even the most stringent editor.
Despite the general dislike of "yeah me too" posts on Slashdot I will say I COULD NOT AGREE MORE.
This railroad is nothing but bad news for people that have been sh** on more than many. [unhappy sarcasm]Now the Chinese can move troops and settlers more easily into an area that could really use them![/unhappy sarcasm]
I am also neither a hippie nor a member of the "free tibet" movement. I am simply a person that values individual rights and freedom. So the less the Chinese government is involved in any area the happier I am.
AMEN... I got turned on to Adium about 10 seconds after bought my first mac. I will say it is an excelent example of an IM client that not only is functional but looks nice right "out of the box" if you will.
I certainly agree that functionality is the ultimate concern and looking nice is secondary. BUT if people ever want linux to become mainstream it will have to look pretty and have pretty applications. That is why I enjoy programs like Adium. They look good, they work well, easily customizable, even my computer illiterate friends can use it. Basically you have to make a program cool enough that people will say "wow for the same amount of work as downloading AIM I can get this and it does everything and more." Then if you can do that with the linux desktop people will say "wow for the same amount of work I can get Linux and it does what windows does only better and its no $200 and my goodness look at these shiny widgets." Its sort of a little whell driving the big wheel when it comes to everyday programs for the linux desktop.
I think it is important to remember that this was a math exercise not a serious study with predictive power. I remember several years ago people thought the human genome project was insane. They thought it would take hundreds of years to catalog our entire genome and cost some ludicrous numbers of trillions of dollars.
Then:
In 1999, the goal of producing a "working draft" seemed very far away, with less than 15 percent of the genome sequenced. If the accelerated goals had not already generated a sense of urgency in the consortium, a decision by the sequencing center leaders at a February meeting in Houston would. At the meeting, the leaders accepted Dr. Collins' challenge to ramp up their efforts to produce a "working draft" by spring of 2000.
By January 2000, the centers were collectively producing 1,000 base pairs a second, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 2 billion of the human genome's 3 billion base pairs were sequenced by March. At a White House ceremony hosted by President Bill Clinton in June 2000, Dr. Collins and J. Craig Venter of Celera Genomics, which had carried out its own sequencing strategy, announced that the majority of the human genome had been sequenced. [from here
I tried to find the graph of speed over time because I have seen itseveral times. It shows the exponential increase in the speed of the project. Apparently there are many scientists that believe with techniques as they are now we could repeat the project in 2 years if we started over. The indexing of information could have a very similar timeline. Very slowly at first and then as technology and specific methodology develop off you go. So the truth is... this is a guess. I wouldn't put too much faith in it.
Yeah I guess there would have to be a little black humor just to keep people sane. As far as unproven launch vehicles go... you guess is a so good as mine.
I have a friend that works at NASA (the JPL specifically) and while I am waiting for her response to my email I thought I would pose the question to any slashdot/NASA folks...
I am kind of wondering how they react to these kind of events at work. Do they have some professional empathy? Are there polite jokes at the ESA's expense? Or, is it more along the lines of a bunch of engineers sitting around on Saturday with chips and beer watching the video and then when the rocket explodes they jump up cheering and doing "booty dances" while giving each other high fives. All of this is of course with huge panorama's of Mars on their walls.
The only problem is that the "Fair Use" exception to copyright law DOES allow us to have a copy. It is exactly the same as going to the library renting a book with a picture of Mount Fuji and then copying it and putting it on the tack board near your desk. If you were really stringent about fair use you would provide a complete reference to the work. Also it must be completely for personal use... no sharing or selling. It is the same as recording TV with VHS or TiVO. No one is gearing up to sue Comcast because they provide cable service that makes it possible to record digital copies of TV shows.
In a rather startling statement the EU with several other members of the UN (China, Iran, North Korea, and Colombia) have sat down at talks with the US and demanded that they relenquish control of the New York Stock Exchange to an international body headed by Malaysia (chosen at random from a hat by the head of the UN Comittee on the World Economy). The EU has stated that if the US does not hand over control of the NYSE the UN will force the transition. They cited that the NYSE has become an important global network. The coialition also flatly denied claims that "France would be bad at running anything involving finance" and "It might be a bad idea to let China and Iran have any kind of control over things that should be free from repressive strictures."
EXACTLY. I am not sure the EU has really thought what it means to open up control like this. I know that it is in their best interest to have at least some control over DNS servers in their countries, but what is really happening is that they will be setting a dangerous precedent for control by authorities far less free than the US or any European Union member.
Despite the fact that a lot of Europeans love to vilify the US, we are still one of the most freely expressive countries in the world. As far as I know ICANN has been extremely free from government intervention considering the amount of autority that organization can weild. I am not sure why we need to rest control from ICANN? And where is the EU's plan. From what I read in the article it seems like typical UN blowhard shows of force that amount to little more than talk.
Once again as someone that work in the field of virology/microbiology I am a little suprised by the sensationalism that gets attached to these things, especially considering the rather skeptical crowd here. I am not overly worried about the chance of this one getting out and killing a billion people. First, they have simply made the gene, there is a lot more that is required before you have infectious virus. Second, labs that work with potentially dangerous/infectious do have safety precautions (despite the general cynicism of/.'ers) and the incidence of scientists getting infected with what they work with is very low. Third, there have been MASSIVE leaps in medical treatment and sanitation since 1918. This is not to say that we should not worry about big pandemics because we should, but so far we have been able to survive.
The final bit that doesn't make me worry about these scientists reverse engineering the gene is the simple fact that this doesn't change anything as far as pandemic risk goes. We are just as likely to get a horrendous pandemic from a "wild" source as we are from this flu strain infecting a scientist who suddenly goes on a globe trotting spree of some kind. At this point in our global development as a species it is really only a matter of time before we get a big pandemic a la 1918. I mean AIDS is already a pandemic and if we get something that is more acute the death toll will simply be more noticable. It is far more important to study how to defend against viruses that could cause pandemics. It is not often that scientists can get a virus that they know for certain has caused one. The research that can be done now is much more beneficial than the potential risks.
So now it will be easier for me to make impulse buys which I certainly can do without (I don't have a nano yet and that is mostly due to the fact that the Apple store is a few miles uptown)
AND
Now getting mugged on the way home from work will involve permanent dismemberment... great. Maybe they could make something like those anti-mugging belt wallets for when you visit countries with high crime. It would basically keep your hands in your pants all the time to make them unavailable to theives. I am patenting that.
So no one seems to have mentioned that this robot is made by a company that was just featured in a movie title about killer robots taking over civilization. In fact I am pretty sure that the military should lock up Will Smith in Guantanamo before the enemies get a hold of him... he is the only one that can stop this sniper robot.
I feel full disclosure is the way to go once your dead. It will make your biography that much more spicy... "Oh Johnathan our baby is dead but look at all these amazing short stories that were never published... so beautiful... my god... and what is a 100GB folder labeled 'pr0n'? What does that mean? Well Susan I don't know maybe its beat poetry or something. Lets look."
I have done a fair amount of canoeing/rafting and have some wilderness medical training so the need to keep important things dry and protected is something that I have had some experience with. I have been most happy with this hard case it is completely waterproof and you can see what's in it (this is actually useful). It is also fairly small which is nice. I recently went to Africa so I wanted to be able to communicate. I was able to pick upa quad band mobile phone (as well as a satellite phone), which worked well in cities and surprisingly far out into the bush.
The phone and charger fit well inside the case along with a small knife/multitool, and laminated (and shruken) copies of all of my important documents (visa, passport, list of important contacts). It would not be hard at all to fit all of that and a small USB drive in that space. The hardcase is also a better bet than something soft for really important stuff. In a wilderness/emrgency situation you really want to make sure than any gear you do take with you is protected. Also the hard copies of the documents is a hugely good idea in an emergecy where computer availability could be scarce/swamped.
There are a lot of waterproof bags and cases, and they all tend to be well reviewd by people that beat the hell out of them (outdoor enthuisits). I higly reccomend a small hard case over a soft case for electronics. If you do your homework its pretty much a no brainer. Also if you are really serious make sure to test the gear. Put some toilet paper in it and dunk it in water, beat the hell out of it, leave it outside when its cold and hot. That way you can see how much it takes to pop open a case underwater or what conditions cause condensation etc. Then you will really know if your protection works.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually met the man last year at the Clearwater Folk Festival in Croton, NY. He is very old but I wonder if he knows/what he thinks about this... I doubt he would be very happy with the situation. I also agree that this is the surest way to put Sony in a pinch. Let the artists know that you aren't buying their album because Sony has 'infected it with DRM.' If artists (especially well established ones like Seeger) complain that is certainly more powerful than me telling Sony they have lost a customer.
I also dug up one of Seeger's famous quotes:
"Plagiarism is the basis of all culture." Seeger quoting his father. (not completely applicable in this case but close)
It is most likely that this is actually an elaborate ploy to ruin the lives of Van Zant fans by die hard Lynrd Skynrd fans.
master Badr?
I thought that it was Europe that wanted all our DNS severs are long to them?
And better yet to do both my anonymous friend
I think the problem here is a matter of degrees. There are people out there who don't have a healthy skepticism of information they recieve. You see this all the time from the lame tradition of chic radicalism on college campuses to religious followers applying half baked theories to all manner of things. As a scientist I would like to think that I have developed a healthy ability to evaluate data and have enough skepticism to not immediately accept any bull**** that get lobbed across my screen. It is not really that difficult. The Wikipedia is not the type of reference I would cite in a paper. Or make high stakes bets on the validity of individual peices of information. The truth is it is a good "fuzzy" reference for all kinds of things. Again in science I often look up fairly specific article about molecular biology just to see what they say. Some are excellent and some are awful, but I don't use the Wikipedia to design experiments. If I want hard facts on well studied topics I would probably go elsewhere. The truth is that there is a lot of good information in the Wikipedia that you just can't find in a print encyclopedia. Print encyclopedias generally don't have information that is useful about BSD, Star Wars, The Flying Spahgetti Monster, etc. Yes these are "geek" topics but that is where the Wikipedia cleans up. So as usual dumb people that accept any information as accurate from a source that "anyone can edit" and make life and death decisions based on it are probably beyond the help of even the most stringent editor.
Despite the general dislike of "yeah me too" posts on Slashdot I will say I COULD NOT AGREE MORE.
This railroad is nothing but bad news for people that have been sh** on more than many. [unhappy sarcasm]Now the Chinese can move troops and settlers more easily into an area that could really use them![/unhappy sarcasm]
I am also neither a hippie nor a member of the "free tibet" movement. I am simply a person that values individual rights and freedom. So the less the Chinese government is involved in any area the happier I am.
AMEN... I got turned on to Adium about 10 seconds after bought my first mac. I will say it is an excelent example of an IM client that not only is functional but looks nice right "out of the box" if you will.
I certainly agree that functionality is the ultimate concern and looking nice is secondary. BUT if people ever want linux to become mainstream it will have to look pretty and have pretty applications. That is why I enjoy programs like Adium. They look good, they work well, easily customizable, even my computer illiterate friends can use it. Basically you have to make a program cool enough that people will say "wow for the same amount of work as downloading AIM I can get this and it does everything and more." Then if you can do that with the linux desktop people will say "wow for the same amount of work I can get Linux and it does what windows does only better and its no $200 and my goodness look at these shiny widgets." Its sort of a little whell driving the big wheel when it comes to everyday programs for the linux desktop.
..you can't expect to weild supreme executive authority just because some watery tart threw some sword at you.
DNS be damned 66.35.250.150 forever!
Now see I really think that the person defrauding customers might share just a little bit of the blame. I mean they are the criminal right?
Then:
I tried to find the graph of speed over time because I have seen itseveral times. It shows the exponential increase in the speed of the project. Apparently there are many scientists that believe with techniques as they are now we could repeat the project in 2 years if we started over. The indexing of information could have a very similar timeline. Very slowly at first and then as technology and specific methodology develop off you go. So the truth is... this is a guess. I wouldn't put too much faith in it.
Yeah I guess there would have to be a little black humor just to keep people sane. As far as unproven launch vehicles go... you guess is a so good as mine.
I have a friend that works at NASA (the JPL specifically) and while I am waiting for her response to my email I thought I would pose the question to any slashdot/NASA folks...
I am kind of wondering how they react to these kind of events at work. Do they have some professional empathy? Are there polite jokes at the ESA's expense? Or, is it more along the lines of a bunch of engineers sitting around on Saturday with chips and beer watching the video and then when the rocket explodes they jump up cheering and doing "booty dances" while giving each other high fives. All of this is of course with huge panorama's of Mars on their walls.
Any NASA foks out there?
The only problem is that the "Fair Use" exception to copyright law DOES allow us to have a copy. It is exactly the same as going to the library renting a book with a picture of Mount Fuji and then copying it and putting it on the tack board near your desk. If you were really stringent about fair use you would provide a complete reference to the work. Also it must be completely for personal use... no sharing or selling. It is the same as recording TV with VHS or TiVO. No one is gearing up to sue Comcast because they provide cable service that makes it possible to record digital copies of TV shows.
No, see the difference is that here in the US we sit on our high horse then do it ourselves.
I did and it turns out the DNS servers are everywhere.
In a rather startling statement the EU with several other members of the UN (China, Iran, North Korea, and Colombia) have sat down at talks with the US and demanded that they relenquish control of the New York Stock Exchange to an international body headed by Malaysia (chosen at random from a hat by the head of the UN Comittee on the World Economy). The EU has stated that if the US does not hand over control of the NYSE the UN will force the transition. They cited that the NYSE has become an important global network. The coialition also flatly denied claims that "France would be bad at running anything involving finance" and "It might be a bad idea to let China and Iran have any kind of control over things that should be free from repressive strictures."
EXACTLY. I am not sure the EU has really thought what it means to open up control like this. I know that it is in their best interest to have at least some control over DNS servers in their countries, but what is really happening is that they will be setting a dangerous precedent for control by authorities far less free than the US or any European Union member. Despite the fact that a lot of Europeans love to vilify the US, we are still one of the most freely expressive countries in the world. As far as I know ICANN has been extremely free from government intervention considering the amount of autority that organization can weild. I am not sure why we need to rest control from ICANN? And where is the EU's plan. From what I read in the article it seems like typical UN blowhard shows of force that amount to little more than talk.
Once again as someone that work in the field of virology/microbiology I am a little suprised by the sensationalism that gets attached to these things, especially considering the rather skeptical crowd here. I am not overly worried about the chance of this one getting out and killing a billion people. First, they have simply made the gene, there is a lot more that is required before you have infectious virus. Second, labs that work with potentially dangerous/infectious do have safety precautions (despite the general cynicism of /.'ers) and the incidence of scientists getting infected with what they work with is very low. Third, there have been MASSIVE leaps in medical treatment and sanitation since 1918. This is not to say that we should not worry about big pandemics because we should, but so far we have been able to survive.
The final bit that doesn't make me worry about these scientists reverse engineering the gene is the simple fact that this doesn't change anything as far as pandemic risk goes. We are just as likely to get a horrendous pandemic from a "wild" source as we are from this flu strain infecting a scientist who suddenly goes on a globe trotting spree of some kind. At this point in our global development as a species it is really only a matter of time before we get a big pandemic a la 1918. I mean AIDS is already a pandemic and if we get something that is more acute the death toll will simply be more noticable. It is far more important to study how to defend against viruses that could cause pandemics. It is not often that scientists can get a virus that they know for certain has caused one. The research that can be done now is much more beneficial than the potential risks.
So now it will be easier for me to make impulse buys which I certainly can do without (I don't have a nano yet and that is mostly due to the fact that the Apple store is a few miles uptown)
AND
Now getting mugged on the way home from work will involve permanent dismemberment... great. Maybe they could make something like those anti-mugging belt wallets for when you visit countries with high crime. It would basically keep your hands in your pants all the time to make them unavailable to theives. I am patenting that.
So no one seems to have mentioned that this robot is made by a company that was just featured in a movie title about killer robots taking over civilization. In fact I am pretty sure that the military should lock up Will Smith in Guantanamo before the enemies get a hold of him... he is the only one that can stop this sniper robot.
I feel full disclosure is the way to go once your dead. It will make your biography that much more spicy... "Oh Johnathan our baby is dead but look at all these amazing short stories that were never published... so beautiful... my god... and what is a 100GB folder labeled 'pr0n'? What does that mean? Well Susan I don't know maybe its beat poetry or something. Lets look."
I am not sure what the exact method is. I do know that vdov.net has a member that is recentl minted into the Cook lab.
I have done a fair amount of canoeing/rafting and have some wilderness medical training so the need to keep important things dry and protected is something that I have had some experience with. I have been most happy with this hard case it is completely waterproof and you can see what's in it (this is actually useful). It is also fairly small which is nice. I recently went to Africa so I wanted to be able to communicate. I was able to pick upa quad band mobile phone (as well as a satellite phone), which worked well in cities and surprisingly far out into the bush.
The phone and charger fit well inside the case along with a small knife/multitool, and laminated (and shruken) copies of all of my important documents (visa, passport, list of important contacts). It would not be hard at all to fit all of that and a small USB drive in that space. The hardcase is also a better bet than something soft for really important stuff. In a wilderness/emrgency situation you really want to make sure than any gear you do take with you is protected. Also the hard copies of the documents is a hugely good idea in an emergecy where computer availability could be scarce/swamped.
There are a lot of waterproof bags and cases, and they all tend to be well reviewd by people that beat the hell out of them (outdoor enthuisits). I higly reccomend a small hard case over a soft case for electronics. If you do your homework its pretty much a no brainer. Also if you are really serious make sure to test the gear. Put some toilet paper in it and dunk it in water, beat the hell out of it, leave it outside when its cold and hot. That way you can see how much it takes to pop open a case underwater or what conditions cause condensation etc. Then you will really know if your protection works.