Hmmm, I thought that Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot was implemented in the default keyboard handlers loaded from the BIOS on startup, even before MS DOS was loaded. So, more likely, it was an IBM invention, assuming that they programmed the first PC BIOS.
Almost everyone here on slashdot blaims short-sighted business-schooled managers. I can understand the antagonism. But the truth is, they are doing their job right in this case.
Fundamental research has no place in a competitive market. Citing the Nobel prizes of Bell Labs is very nice and all, but as a company, Bell/Lucent-Alcatel hasn't made much money from those. Tech companies will still need to do R&D, focusing on technology.
It is sad that less and less money is spent on fundamental research, but I believe this is a task for government. Or, for the anti-government types that hang around Slashdot, a task for society. In any case, you cannot expect businesses in a competitive market to sponsor fundamental research.
Throw-away products, plastic or paper bags, disposable cameras, packaging materials, whatever, are wasteful, in principle. It costs energy to produce them and to dispose of them. If a long lasting alternative is available, it is almost always better. Lasting products can often be fixed if they are broken, and if you don't need them anymore, you can give them away or sell them.
1 - Do you acknowledge the legitimacy of intellectual property to begin with? It was legitimate. It was probably a good idea when we first made copyright laws and later patent laws. I'm sure IP laws have had positive and negative effects on society. Now, I believe that IP laws are having more negative effects than positive ones, or at any rate that's how I weigh different effects.
In an ideal world, there would be no need for IP laws. In this world, I'm not sure. Artists have a tough life, they can certainly be ruined if someone stole their art. Same goes for inventors, creative minds, hard workers, everyone really. There are bad people, people who will not play by the rules, sometimes even if it isn't in their own interest. Some form of protection for artists and creative minds is needed.
The problem with IP laws is that they allow someone to become rich without working for it. And they deny some people their creativity. And it doesn't always protect those it is supposed to protect. The law is not always fair, and can be bent. That how laws are, they're not perfect. There is no perfect law. Do we need IP laws? Yes and no. We need some laws to protect intellectual and creative work from becoming unprofitable, dangerous or impossible to do. But these laws need not be like current IP laws or like properly laws at all.
Calling it property is not the answer. Its just confusing.
2 - If so, how would you go about protecting the rights of intellectual property holders in a way that doesn't require unfair usage limitations or resort to predatory abuse of the tort system? Since the name IP is rather confusing, instead of IP holders I would rather call them creative people (which includes almost everyone). Or companies. The point is, creative work is good and we need to protect people doing it.I believe we need to protect creative people, because creativity is good for humanity. At the same time we must ensure that society can benefit from that creativity. Both creators and consumers must be protected from abuse by one or the other. And that will also require some change in our attitudes towards work, money, property, etc.
So how do we protect them ? Few and simple laws. Laws that stimulate creativity and protect creative people. Laws that are not too much limiting our freedoms. Laws that do not contradict natural laws and human nature (information wants to be free). Laws that cannot be abused too much by the lazy, wicked or crazy.
But this all very idealistic, theoretical, and not very practical talk. I say, lets get rid of some laws first, like the lumbering beast called DMCA. Certainly don't extend patent and copyright durations. No criminal charges, only realistic and fair damages. Get rid of the term IP.
Last note. I'm not scared that less legislation will hurt creative people and innovative companies. I think creativity will find a way to express itself. By definition.
On the other hand, it is generally believed by QM theorists that GR is just a consequence of QM, although proving this seems rather problematic, because QM can describe many different universes.
Almost every system composed of many interacting particles, like our universe, typically has all kinds of invariant properties that can be described by nice formula's. Such a formula may very accurate describe observed effects, because of the large number of particles involved, but only if the system is in an equilibrium state. In reality, especially when looking at parts of a system, non-equilibrium states are found which cannot be described by the formula.
I do not find it surprising that the universe cannot be described just by a couple of simple formulas.
PS: read Philip Ball's book Critical Mass. It has lots of interesting examples of systems in physics, economics, and society, and shows how they are in a way all very similar.
But eventually, people will have to make those sacrifices. Pretty soon actually.
The problem is indeed that people are not willing. The energy producers of course are also not willing. The market is not willing. And politics is not willing. Politics are powerless anyway. Any democratic government would simply be voted off if, for example, they set an energy budget for households and industry. Non-democratic regimes have no interest in reducing energy bills, since those are all developing nations. In fact, they are going to drastically increase their energy use in the coming decades.
I don't like to be pessimistic, but it would seem that this problem isn't going to be solved before it hits people in the face. There will be severe effects of global warming, say, 30 years from now. Then people will start demanding a solution. Lets just hope large scale nuclear fusion is economically feasible by that time. (Of course, by that time, it will be too late, we'll have to suffer the effects for at least the next hundred years or so)
Anti-aliasing can be implemented easily and efficienly with ray-tracers, because it can adaptively cast more rays to determine a more accurate color for a pixel. Basically, the ray tracer keeps casting rays until it is sure that the color of each pixel is accurate to within some threshold. In monochrome or slow changing areas, one ray per pixel is typically enough. Around edges, fine textures, etc, more rays per pixel will be cast.
Okay, now ODF is and OOXML will probably be ISO standards. Having two official standards for the same kind of data is no standard at all! That and ISO (as discussed above) has lost its credibility, so having an official standard means nothing.
All over industry there are standards that have no official standard status, but are in practice used by everyone. Word and Excel files are used now by almost everyone (except us) for exchanging documents (that they want others to be able to edit).
Lets make ODF the de-facto standard. Whenever you have to send a document, send them an ODF document. If they complain about being unable to open it, send them a link to OpenOffice.org. If they don't want to use OOO then tell them to complain with MS, whose software doesn't support (one of) the official standards.
I think that making ODF widespread, a de-facto standard, is much more important than having a (meaningless, ambiguous, superfluous etc) official standard.
When I first read about this game years ago, I though it would be some kind of natural selection/evolution simulator with some kind of artificial DNA that would mutate and mix with other DNA, resulting in all kinds of creatures. But from what I've read here, it seems that it's more like a creature editor with various games around it. No underlying model for evolution at all.
A bit disappointing, but then, my expectation were silly: it's a game, not a lab!
Still, I would like to have an evolutionary lab with stunning graphics....
The impact (if it happens) will probably throw a lot of dust in the Martian atmosphere, which may block sunlight from the rover's solar panels. But as the dust settles, they'll come back to life again, no?
of course, there is also no proof that there isn't a person very high up in the government instructing another person in some government office to edit Wikipedia to make US foreign policy seem better. It's possible. There is a motive. Still, not very likely, I think, but we're all hoping for a big political mess of course. Definitely should be investigated.
Hey and even if we don't find anything dirty, we can always claim it was covered up by a consspiracy. Good stuff.
I am appalled that a bunch of engineers actually went and designed and built this thing to its completion. What were they thinking? It will only be used for good?
This device can ONLY be used to cause harm, by whoever uses it, 'good' or 'bad'. And I my book, causing harm on purpose is never good. It has no peaceful application (we already have microwave ovens, and this one doesn't cook dinner) and it will never contribute constructively to the wellbeing of the human race. Oh, but it will help a small group of already powerful people, alright.
Shame on you Raytheon engineers. Ethics down the drain.
Here's an analogy I always like to clarify how the universe expands.
Imagine that the universe is like the rubber surface of a balloon. Note that we only consider the actual space ON surface to be the universe. Now as the balloon balloon expands, the distance between any two points on the surface increases. But there is no center of the universe, i.e. no reference point ON the surface of the balloon that is special in any way. Of course, the surface of the balloon is a 2D space, and our universe is at least 3 dimensional, or perhaps 11 dimensional, according to some theories. And to describe our expanding balloon, we also needed to imagine an extra dimension... uh oh, sorry, now I'm making things complicated again. Anyway, I hope you get the picture.
But then, there are patents to worry about. Any piece of GPLv3 software can indeed be reimplemented, because the licence sort of forbids the original author to patent his software and go after you (assuming the software was patent free already) But under all other licences that I know off, there are no such provisions, so you may not legally be able to reimplement and relicense any software.
The Tevatron is really what Fermilab is known for today. From the outside, it is a gigantic ring visible through a circular hill with a length of 4 miles and a radius of one mile. Err.. 1 mile radius and 4 miles circumference? Wow, time/space is seriously deformed by all those high energy impacts!
Yup. I have a flash drive (Imation) that hides a small partition (1MB) from windows too. Or rather, XP stupidly doesnt show it. Under linux, both partitions show up. On a Mac, only the small partition shows up. (oops, Mac users get a bad deal from this brand).
The only file on the small partition is the PDF user manual.
For personal use, yes. But common copyright law makes it illegal to distribute derivatives of a work without permission from the copyright holder. Removing or mangling the watermark probably counts as a derivative work.
Computer-simulated life is very exciting and cool, and can help scientists understand the evolution of living things (such as with the Avida system). But it can't PROVE that a particular kind of life actually exists in the natural world. If we trust the input and the logic of the simulation accurately models the real world, and it shows that a particular kind of life emerges every time (or in many cases), then we must assume it exists somewhere in the universe.
For example, a computer model could tell you that a 12-foot tall flightless bird would thrive in New Zealand, and it would be right... except that they don't exist (having been hunted to extinction a few centuries ago). The Moa example is not very to the point. You describe a computer-simulation of some specific animal in a specific habitat, where some entities are defined as being life and programmed in a specific way (and probably are nothing more than a term in a differential equation set up by a biologist). The prediction made by this kind of simulation depends very much on the input (i.e. how accurately did we model humans?)
The simulation described in TFA is a simulation of the forces at the atomic/molecular level. If complex structures emerge from this system and we wish to call them life, then that life must exist somewhere in the universe, because the input for the simulation is just some random distribution of particles in a plasma (I am assuming here) and we have fairly good models of particles in a plasma.
Actually, in the comments following his blog entry, the author does talk about the spam filtering issue. He claims all spam filters were terned off and he says none of the emails were marked as spam. (presumably, nothing ended up in a spam box). Also, he claims the attachments did not contain anything abnormal or spam related.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm, I thought that Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot was implemented in the default keyboard handlers loaded from the BIOS on startup, even before MS DOS was loaded. So, more likely, it was an IBM invention, assuming that they programmed the first PC BIOS.
Parent is right.
Almost everyone here on slashdot blaims short-sighted business-schooled managers. I can understand the antagonism. But the truth is, they are doing their job right in this case.
Fundamental research has no place in a competitive market. Citing the Nobel prizes of Bell Labs is very nice and all, but as a company, Bell/Lucent-Alcatel hasn't made much money from those. Tech companies will still need to do R&D, focusing on technology.
It is sad that less and less money is spent on fundamental research, but I believe this is a task for government. Or, for the anti-government types that hang around Slashdot, a task for society. In any case, you cannot expect businesses in a competitive market to sponsor fundamental research.
Throw-away products, plastic or paper bags, disposable cameras, packaging materials, whatever, are wasteful, in principle. It costs energy to produce them and to dispose of them. If a long lasting alternative is available, it is almost always better. Lasting products can often be fixed if they are broken, and if you don't need them anymore, you can give them away or sell them.
good for what? good in what way? good for whom?
I'm not just being an asshole here. For good answers you need to ask the right questions.
In an ideal world, there would be no need for IP laws. In this world, I'm not sure. Artists have a tough life, they can certainly be ruined if someone stole their art. Same goes for inventors, creative minds, hard workers, everyone really. There are bad people, people who will not play by the rules, sometimes even if it isn't in their own interest. Some form of protection for artists and creative minds is needed.
The problem with IP laws is that they allow someone to become rich without working for it. And they deny some people their creativity. And it doesn't always protect those it is supposed to protect. The law is not always fair, and can be bent. That how laws are, they're not perfect. There is no perfect law. Do we need IP laws? Yes and no. We need some laws to protect intellectual and creative work from becoming unprofitable, dangerous or impossible to do. But these laws need not be like current IP laws or like properly laws at all.
Calling it property is not the answer. Its just confusing. 2 - If so, how would you go about protecting the rights of intellectual property holders in a way that doesn't require unfair usage limitations or resort to predatory abuse of the tort system? Since the name IP is rather confusing, instead of IP holders I would rather call them creative people (which includes almost everyone). Or companies. The point is, creative work is good and we need to protect people doing it.I believe we need to protect creative people, because creativity is good for humanity.
At the same time we must ensure that society can benefit from that creativity. Both creators and consumers must be protected from abuse by one or
the other. And that will also require some change in our attitudes towards work, money, property, etc.
So how do we protect them ? Few and simple laws. Laws that stimulate creativity and protect creative people. Laws that are not too much limiting our freedoms. Laws that do not contradict natural laws and human nature (information wants to be free). Laws that cannot be abused too much by the lazy, wicked or crazy.
But this all very idealistic, theoretical, and not very practical talk. I say, lets get rid of some laws first, like the lumbering beast called DMCA. Certainly don't extend patent and copyright durations. No criminal charges, only realistic and fair damages. Get rid of the term IP.
Last note. I'm not scared that less legislation will hurt creative people and innovative companies. I think creativity will find a way to express itself. By definition.
On the other hand, it is generally believed by QM theorists that GR is just a consequence of QM, although proving this seems rather problematic, because QM can describe many different universes.
Almost every system composed of many interacting particles, like our universe, typically has all kinds of invariant properties that can be described by nice formula's. Such a formula may very accurate describe observed effects, because of the large number of particles involved, but only if the system is in an equilibrium state. In reality, especially when looking at parts of a system, non-equilibrium states are found which cannot be described by the formula.
I do not find it surprising that the universe cannot be described just by a couple of simple formulas.
PS: read Philip Ball's book Critical Mass. It has lots of interesting examples of systems in physics, economics, and society, and shows how they are in a way all very similar.
But eventually, people will have to make those sacrifices. Pretty soon actually.
The problem is indeed that people are not willing. The energy producers of course are also not willing. The market is not willing. And politics is not willing. Politics are powerless anyway. Any democratic government would simply be voted off if, for example, they set an energy budget for households and industry. Non-democratic regimes have no interest in reducing energy bills, since those are all developing nations. In fact, they are going to drastically increase their energy use in the coming decades.
I don't like to be pessimistic, but it would seem that this problem isn't going to be solved before it hits people in the face. There will be severe effects of global warming, say, 30 years from now. Then people will start demanding a solution. Lets just hope large scale nuclear fusion is economically feasible by that time. (Of course, by that time, it will be too late, we'll have to suffer the effects for at least the next hundred years or so)
So, was it bought by a pizza maker, or by someone who is going to sell it the a pizza maker for ever more?
Actually, ray-tracing will help out here.
Anti-aliasing can be implemented easily and efficienly with ray-tracers, because it can adaptively cast more rays to determine a more accurate color for a pixel. Basically, the ray tracer keeps casting rays until it is sure that the color of each pixel is accurate to within some threshold. In monochrome or slow changing areas, one ray per pixel is typically enough. Around edges, fine textures, etc, more rays per pixel will be cast.
Okay, now ODF is and OOXML will probably be ISO standards. Having two official standards for the same kind of data is no standard at all! That and ISO (as discussed above) has lost its credibility, so having an official standard means nothing.
All over industry there are standards that have no official standard status, but are in practice used by everyone. Word and Excel files are used now by almost everyone (except us) for exchanging documents (that they want others to be able to edit).
Lets make ODF the de-facto standard. Whenever you have to send a document, send them an ODF document. If they complain about being unable to open it, send them a link to OpenOffice.org. If they don't want to use OOO then tell them to complain with MS, whose software doesn't support (one of) the official standards.
I think that making ODF widespread, a de-facto standard, is much more important than having a (meaningless, ambiguous, superfluous etc) official standard.
When I first read about this game years ago, I though it would be some kind of natural selection/evolution simulator
with some kind of artificial DNA that would mutate and mix with other DNA, resulting in all kinds of
creatures. But from what I've read here, it seems that it's more like a creature editor with various games around it.
No underlying model for evolution at all.
A bit disappointing, but then, my expectation were silly: it's a game, not a lab!
Still, I would like to have an evolutionary lab with stunning graphics....
How is this going to kill off the rovers?
The impact (if it happens) will probably throw a lot of dust in the Martian atmosphere, which may block sunlight from the rover's solar panels. But as the dust settles, they'll come back to life again, no?
of course, there is also no proof that there isn't a person very high up in the government instructing another person in some government office to edit Wikipedia to make US foreign policy seem better. It's possible. There is a motive. Still, not very likely, I think, but we're all hoping for a big political mess of course. Definitely should be investigated.
Hey and even if we don't find anything dirty, we can always claim it was covered up by a consspiracy. Good stuff.
Did anyone test 85*771? These numbers can be represented exactly using integers or floating point, so perhaps the bug will not occur then?
On the other hand, 8500*77.1 on my machine gives 65534.999999999993, because 77.1 cannot be exactly represented using floating point.
or tried to, anyway. It seems to be related to the
paper the article talks about.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/0104033
It's more of an information theory paper, it seems to me, and
not so easy to relate to any verifable theory of the
universe/multiverse.
I am appalled that a bunch of engineers actually
went and designed and built this thing to its completion.
What were they thinking? It will only be used for good?
This device can ONLY be used to cause harm, by
whoever uses it, 'good' or 'bad'. And I my book, causing harm on
purpose is never good. It has no peaceful application
(we already have microwave ovens, and this one doesn't
cook dinner) and it will never contribute constructively
to the wellbeing of the human race. Oh, but it will help
a small group of already powerful people, alright.
Shame on you Raytheon engineers. Ethics down the drain.
Here's an analogy I always like to clarify how the universe expands.
Imagine that the universe is like the rubber surface of a balloon. Note that we only consider the actual space ON surface to be the universe. Now as the balloon balloon expands, the distance between any two points on the surface increases. But there is no center of the universe, i.e. no reference point ON the surface of the balloon that is special in any way. Of course, the surface of the balloon is a 2D space, and our universe is at least 3 dimensional, or perhaps 11 dimensional, according to some theories. And to describe our expanding balloon, we also needed to imagine an extra dimension... uh oh, sorry, now I'm making things complicated again. Anyway, I hope you get the picture.
But then, there are patents to worry about. Any piece of GPLv3 software can indeed be reimplemented, because the licence sort of forbids the original author to patent his software and go after you (assuming the software was patent free already) But under all other licences that I know off, there are no such provisions, so you may not legally be able to reimplement and relicense any software.
Or: how I wish I was a class action lawyer.
Yup. I have a flash drive (Imation) that hides a small partition (1MB) from windows too. Or rather, XP stupidly doesnt show it. Under linux, both partitions show up. On a Mac, only the small partition shows up. (oops, Mac users get a bad deal from this brand).
The only file on the small partition is the PDF user manual.
For personal use, yes. But common copyright law makes it illegal to distribute derivatives of a work without permission from the copyright holder. Removing or mangling the watermark probably counts as a derivative work.
The simulation described in TFA is a simulation of the forces at the atomic/molecular level. If complex structures emerge from this system and we wish to call them life, then that life must exist somewhere in the universe, because the input for the simulation is just some random distribution of particles in a plasma (I am assuming here) and we have fairly good models of particles in a plasma.
greed
Actually, in the comments following his blog entry, the author does talk about the spam filtering issue.
He claims all spam filters were terned off and he says none of the emails were marked as spam. (presumably, nothing ended up in a spam box). Also, he claims the attachments did not contain anything abnormal or spam related.