I like the novel application of existing technologies. He's using agarose medium, pipetting, and casting into a photolithographic mold.
One thing in the article that is a bit deceptive is that the article says that one can print with details as small as one micrometer . . . the size of a single bacterium. This may technically be true, but I doubt that controlling which individual bacterium are transferred (printed) or not is possible. And the neither the technique of pipetting bacteria nor regrowing bacteria on the agarose media is likely to have a resolution of one micrometer. Though the postulated one micrometer resolution may be possible, it is for all practical purposes impossible.
I agree . . . one could argue that the open source community is exploitng the multinationals by using the multinationals to market and distribute their products. As the product grows in popularity more people become attracted to the open source movement and contribute . . . If anything, the multinationals increase the popularity and success of the OS movement.
How much popular press did Linux receive when IBM started offering Linux based solutions and investing in other open source projects? Same goes fror Sun and Open Office . . . and a number of other solutions form GIMP to Apache.
I can only imagine that this bureaucrat can't stand the fact that a seemingly chaotic melange of developers and volunteers can produce world class software. I'm sure that he would prefer to take it over, straitjacket it with regulations and completely cripple the movement . . . but what can you expect? He's a bureaucrat . ..
On the first link of the topic, Cherry OS's website, there is a GNU image from the FSF . . .
Can Cherry OS put that on their website? Because they've alledgedly packaged up GPL software and sold it as their own closed source software, would the FSF allow them to use one of their trademarks?
I am surprised by this behavior and chalk it up to what appears to me to be blatant disregard for GPL and the law.
Ok, Ok, I buy the points, but lets leave the exageration aside:
The current administration has no respect for laws and the constitution. They've said as much.
When have they said as much? They seem to have tremendous respect for the law . . . they simply interpret it different than many other people. If they didn't respect it, they would even bother use try to interpret it.
We are going to see Americans having as much trouble getting back into the States as foreigners do. (ie. you won't be able to get back in from Canada without a passport.)
I hardly think that they need for a passport in hand is equivalent to what foreigners go through when coming to the US. An a US citizen, you don't need a visa (most foreigners do), and you don't need to fingerprinted and photographed like all non-resident foreign nationals do when entering the USA.
American trade is going to dry up because nobody will want to do business with us.
Again, paranoid delusions . . . the US economy is approximately 1/3 the world economy. I don't think that any country can ignore that. If countries don't want to do business with us, then why are Indonesia, Jordan, Australia, and others pursuing free trade agreements with the US? Why are we running the biggest trade defecit in history? Surely the record trade defecit is indicative that other countries want to do more, not less business with the USA.
Basically, this paranoia and disrespect for the law isn't much different than the death of Roman democracy.
Uhh, Roman generals marched on Rome multiple times. In the later years of the Roman Empire, Roman soldiers swore alliegance to their generals, not to Rome. Eventually, Roman generals were responsible for soldiers' pensions (instead of Rome). I don't see any of this happening. The US military still swears to uphold the constitution, pensions are paid for by the state, and the military still answers to Congressional oversight. In the US, the people are still in control.
That's quite surprising considering that
Roland links to his own blog where he's soliciting ad space. Smells like a terrible conflict of interest to me.
Additionally, Roland's writing style is terrible and his command of the technology that he writes about is lackluster at best. Consider:
He compares connectors (optical fiber) to gates (transistors) and implies that they have the same function. He leaves out key points from the article (like the issue of heat is a complete unknown in the world of plamon based chips ). His summaries are blantant rip offs of the articles where he merely combines two ideas into one sentence or vice versa, giving no editorial content of his own . . . it is all editorial content from the article that he links. I can only assume that he is simply unqualified to give free thought and personal editorial content to the material that he submits.
He is not a journalist . . . he is a poor writer that steals editorial ideas and implies that they might be his own. He peppers these ideas with his own analogies that make little to no sense.
I honestly think that he's trying to launch a career as a blogger/technology writer, but I honestly think that he should consider broadening his knowledge of technology and taking some writing courses first.
Roland's blog is also terrible . . . It is the shameless last link in his topic.
Plasmons are generated when, under the right conditions, light strikes a metal. The electric field of the light jiggles the electrons in the metal to the light's frequency, setting off density waves of electrons. The process is analogous to how the vibrations of the larynx jiggle molecules in the air into density waves experienced as sound.
This analogy makes no sense because this is not analogous to how the larnyx jiggles air. The larnyx squeezes together and air is pushed through causing the larnyx to vibrate. In the case of the larnyx, the squeezing of the larnyx as air is exhaled causes flaps of tissue to vibrate . . . . How is this analogous to photons striking metal?
A much better analogy would be how throwing a stone into a pond causes the water to vibrate. Or throwing a stone at a piece of metal causes sonic vibrations.
Roland really should do his homework before coming up with his half baked analogies. For homework on the larnyx and how it works, he could start here.
Today, we're using basically (Basically is my cop-out word so that anyone that actually knows this technology can't call me out for any errors) two ways to move data in our computers: transistors carry small amounts of data and are extremely small, while fiber optic cables can carry huge amounts of data, but are much bigger in size(Actually I used the word basically because I used a terrible analogy. Transistors are used for gates and switches. Optical fiber carries information. Perhaps I should have said electrical conductors versus optical fibers, but that wouldn't sound as impressive even though its a much better analogy. But I think that most/. readers are really stupid and won't see through my gobbldey-gook. I am actually French, so you can blame it on the fact that English is not my first language.). Now, imagine a single technology combining the advantages of photonics and electronics. This Stanford University report says a new technology can do it: plasmonics.(This technology is not really new. In fact its not a technology at all. Its actually a natural phonomena, but/. readers are too stupid to know the difference. Also, its not really new either. Its been known for at least a decade . . . at least thats what this link form 1996 implies) (For more about plasmons, read this Wikipedia article.) Theoretically, it is possible to design plasmonic components with the same materials used today by chipmakers, but with frequencies 100,000 times greater than the ones of current microprocessors. There is still a challenge to solve before getting plasmonic chips. Today, plasmons can only travel a few millimeters before dying, while today's chips are typically about a centimeter across. Actually the articles that are linked to in the topic say that heat, connectors and other issue have to be worked out first, but/. readers can't handle more than one concept at a time, so I'm going to dumb this down for them) Read this overview for more details and references about plasmonics, and to discover why it's one possible future for chips' circuitry. (shameless plug for my blog where I'm soliciting for "premium blogads" in the upper right side of the blog. But/. readers won't notice that I have a conflict of interest and I'm trying to launch a career as a blogger/ tehcnology writer)
Come on Roland, give us a break . . . you obviously don't understand what your writing about. Your analogies make no sense, your summarize is full of gross holes and you're trying to "sex-up" plasmons by calling a natural phonomena a technology and saying that it's something "new" when it is not. And seems you're doing this to attract hits to your blog so that you can sell ad space.
I know this post is harsh, but I have to say that it appears that you are attempting to exploit the/. community for your own personal financial gain. We/. readers aren't as gullible or stupid as you seem to think . . .
Microsoft is also using the Windows Server 2003 SP1 code base as the starting point for the next desktop version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, which is slated to arrive next year.
Wasn't Longhorn supposed to originally be released this year? If they're going to use this service pack as a code base, they must be a long, long, long way off from a longhorn release . . .
Researchers have been tagging cancer cells with antibodies since the at least the late 80's. The holy grail of antibody therapy is to attach chemotherapeutic agents or radioactive isotopes to antibodies. The antibodies would insure that the majority of the therapeutic agent is deposited on the surface of tumor cells. This would be especially effective for small metasticized tumors that can't be detected by conventional means.
No, mitochondria use sugar to manufacture ATP from ADP, and other parts of the cell use the ATP to power their processes and thereby convert it back to ADP.
Uhhh . . . in a word, no. Sounds like the complexity and accuracy a high school biology lecture . ..
Mitochodria oxidize Pyruvic acid in a series of steps to convert NAD+ to NADH. This produces CO2 and Acetyl CoA. Acetyl CoA is further oxidized in the Citric Acid Cycle producing more NADH and CO2. What you may be thinking about is glycolysis . . . which is the breakdown of sugar (typically glucose) into pyruvic acid. This happens in the cytosol OUTSIDE the mitochodria. It is important to note that almost any carbon based molecule in the body can be converted into pyruvate and oxidized in the mitochodria (fatty acids, sugars, amino acids, some nucleic acids, etc.)
NADH is then converted into NAD+ through a mitochodria membrane to convert Adenosine Diphosphate (ADP) to Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) along an inner membrane of the mitochodria.
A more accurate restatement of your post might be:
Mitochodria oxidize pyruvate derived from sugar, fatty acids, amino acids, and other sources to produce NADH. Mitochodria also use NADH to convert ADP to ATP.
Sony should have known better than to cut corners on their first release of a new product for the following reasons:
This is a new product, the bad PR is at least temporarily going to cost them in cash flow
They need a minimum number of early adopters to get the critical mass of users necessary to attract the eye of the game publishers. I would guessd that this doesn't help those gaming houses that have taken a "wait and see" attitude with respect to the PSP.
The early adopters would be the first to buy the unit and are likely to evangelize the masses about the potential upside or downside of the unit. These are also some of the most saavy consumers. Unfortunately, this is probably Sony's biggest error . . . they cut corners on the units that are being sold to the early adopters. They should have approached the problem like many other companys and release a better quality product for the first three to six months so that the early adopters have a top quality product, then cut the price later for the masses . . . and possibly cut a few corners (you get what you pay for) . . . or they could have released a "platinum edition" of the unit for the hardcore consumer and an entry level model for the average joe. At least with a tiered product, people could choose to pay extra to have a higher quality unit.
This just bad marketing by a company that has made a number of missteps in the past few years (giving away the plasma/LCD market to Samsung by not investing in new factories and trying to milk their CRT cash cow, not making their early digital audio players compatible with anything but the proprietary ATRAC format, coming up with a proprietary flash ram (memory stick) . . .
your right, MS's name is more obvious, but in a negative way.
I think that MS proposed this name because "Windows XP Piece of S*it Edition" would not have been acceptable by the EU commission; however, it would have the desired outcome for MS. My guess is that if MS puts the word "reduced" in the name, there will be public outcry about how the EU commission is screwing us over by forcing us to accept a "reduced" edition of windows. Expecially, because as far as I know, the non-WMP version of Windows will sell for the same price as the "non-reduced version of Windows." (I assume this is true, because I haven't seen anything to the contrary yet . . . )
From the Washington Post article linked in the topic:
Software rivals are now complaining, however, that the new MP-less version is not fully compatible with their programs, further complicating the implementation of the EU's antitrust ruling.
Does this open the door to MS crippling the OS later?
Remember the arguments that MS made during IE litigation? They said that removal of IE would cripple the OS . . . I wonder if they will eventually be putting hooks into the bundled WMP that aren't available in the separate d/l version? And then they will use the excuse that these features are "impossible" to include in the OS without bundling them in from the beginning (a completely bogus argument, but one that they made in the past with IE).
Of course I expect them to play ball with the EU commission for the time being, but I fully expect a future version that will leave EU customers behind because WMP isn't bundled. And EU customers will be pissed. Then MS will say to the EU Commission, "Don't you see how your customers demand that we bundle WMP with the OS? They are demanding the product that you have taken away from them!"
And if MS's plan goes to fruition, the EU commission will have egg on its face . . .
I think that the naming convention defined by the EU was to insure that there would be no confusion between the versions of windows with or without WMP. Otherwise the EU commission could get blamed for consumer confusion if the naming convention was not considered clear and concise (just the kind of FUD that MS might do to make the commission look bad).
In practical terms, Howard says the greater color depth afforded by the Dual Link format gives filmmakers more freedom during "chroma-keying" -- the stage at which solid-color filmstudio backdrops are replaced with imagery. "With Sin City, the entire movie was shot on greenscreen. Robert Rodriguez did some work initially in single-link HD, and he had a heck of a time keying that footage."
With all due respect to the writer of the article, in practical terms, I'm not sure what this means to the viewer of the film . . . Does this mean that the colors/details look better, or that there are less losses in color/detail during the application of digital effects, or is this fairly immaterial to the end viewer and will the end product look pretty much the same as 4:2:2 work?
And to extend the question beyond the big screen, will this make a difference in the DVD transfer of this film, or will any benefit be negated by losses during DVD transfer?
Thompson said he and Ford developed the methodology on their own and submitted a proposal to Microsoft last year. He declined to say how much Microsoft paid to fund the research, but he said the company didn't have a say in the methodology.
I'm surprised that this kind of research would get so much attention . . . reading between the lines, the research proposal was written to attract money from Microsoft. This implies an immediate conflict of interest . . . the research proposal and methodology were very possibly skewed in favor of Microsoft from the very beginning to garner Microsoft's favor and money.
This is like writing a research proposal on the effects of smoking to get money from Phillip Morris. Of course such a proposal won't be written is such a way as to build a link between smoking and cancer . . . it would likely be written to imply that the research may refute the link between smoking and cancer. Skew the proposal in favor of the benefactor and one is more likely to get money . . .
The whole process needs to be more transparent . . and all of the facts need to be issued before presenting . . . otherwise this is just irresponsible research.
Also, as far as the original topic goes . . . there is no time domain given . . . which may imply that 10% of people have bought something from spam sometime during the last 15 years or so since spam has been around. Considering the time domain, I don't think that 10% is very high. That would be less than 1% per year.
I would hope that this 1% represents a portion of each year's internet newbies . . .
However, like most statistics quoted in the press, there isn't really enough information to draw a very definite conclusion . . .
As long as we're comparing India and Pakistan, we should also note that India is no bed of reoses either. The recent success of India benefits a very small privledged minority . . . India is a country that:
1. Has a government that burns surplus food bought by government subsidies rather than distribute it to the poor because subsidy laws make it illegal for the government to redistribute food below minimum set controlled prices.
2. Legally forces people to work to pay off the debts accrued by previous generations. The wages are so low that this amounts to legalized slavery that at current rates of interest and income will last in perpetuity.
With all due respect, why was this "Indian math guy's" name left out of the original post?
I'd be willing to bet that if it was a European name, it would have been included in the post . . . because it would have been easier for Timothy to remember and write.
I can only assume that this is another example of Timothy's lazy, lax, and lame journalism . . .
I was looking on the net for a reference to extrasolar planet detection through occlusion of light and I didn't find one. I didn't know that they could do that . . . I would think that the occlusion would be undetectable with current methods. Could you reference the method? I'd be curious to read about an instance of this and the methods used.
A century ago, a self-taught math genius from India noticed some patterns in how numbers can be created by adding other numbers.
That's got to be the worst write up I've ever seen on/.
This statement implies that the genius is famous because he noticed that there is/are pattern(s) in how you can add up numbers to get other numbers . . . that statement is so vague that the discovery could be incredible or intuitively obvious.
Quoted from one of the links is a much better explanation below:
One remarkable result of the Hardy-Ramanujan collaboration was a formula for the number p(n) of partitions of a number n. A partition of a positive integer n is just an expression for n as a sum of positive integers, regardless of order. Thus p(4) = 5 because 4 can be written as 1+1+1+1, 1+1+2, 2+2, 1+3, or 4. The problem of finding p(n) was studied by Euler, who found a formula for the generating function of p(n) (that is, for the infinite series whose nth term is p(n)xn). While this allows one to calculate p(n) recursively, it doesn't lead to an explicit formula. Hardy and Ramanujan came up with such a formula (though they only proved it works asymptotically; Rademacher proved it gives the exact value of p(n)).
I don't think that extrasolar planets are detected by occlusion of starlight. I think they are detected by the planet's gravity wobbling the star as the planet orbitx the star and exerts its gravitational pull. There are many sites online about this . . . here's
one.
From the site:
There are two basic methods of detecting a planet's gravitational influence on its star:
* Astrometric Detection
* Radial Velocity Detection
The first method - Astrometry - was hinted at in the previous paragraph. We observe a star and measure its position relative to distant background stars (hence the word "metric" in the name). As an orbiting body tugs at its companion star, we observe a change in position of the star. Measurements of a periodic change in position, back and forth, can indicate that something is possibly orbiting the star. Careful analysis of these measurements can tell us about the orbiting object.
The second method - Radial Velocity - is a completely different kind of measurement, but relies upon the same principle. That is, gravity. As an orbiting body tugs on its companion star, the light from the star will experience a Doppler shift. If the planet pulls the star slightly away from us on Earth, the starlight will be shifted towards longer wavelengths and appear more red; pulled slightly towards Earth, the starlight is shifted towards shorter wavelengths to appear more blue. To accurately measure this Doppler shift, we chose a known spectral line and observe its shift from red to blue and back.
If you're looking for dry science videos, try the avgeeks . . . a collection of over 14000 dry videos like those cheesy ones made for high school students in the 60's
Uhh . . . Global warming is a theory, just like evolution is a theory, and relativity is a theory.
Theories are a part of science . . . theories with significant evidence are accepted as likely to be true. Others with less evidence are perhaps somewhat debatable. This is all part of the Scientific Method
If you would rather have children watch science shows that eshew theory, there would be precious little science in the show. . . it would be a show about facts. And facts aren't science . . . Science is analysis, postulating theories, experimentation, drawing conclusions, verifying results, and other skills that require higher level thinking skills.
I commend Bill Nye for showing children theory and higher level thinking skills . . . but perhaps you would rather that he simply go over multiplication tables and other "facts" on his show . . .
Slashdot Mirror
One thing in the article that is a bit deceptive is that the article says that one can print with details as small as one micrometer . . . the size of a single bacterium. This may technically be true, but I doubt that controlling which individual bacterium are transferred (printed) or not is possible. And the neither the technique of pipetting bacteria nor regrowing bacteria on the agarose media is likely to have a resolution of one micrometer. Though the postulated one micrometer resolution may be possible, it is for all practical purposes impossible.
How much popular press did Linux receive when IBM started offering Linux based solutions and investing in other open source projects? Same goes fror Sun and Open Office . . . and a number of other solutions form GIMP to Apache.
I can only imagine that this bureaucrat can't stand the fact that a seemingly chaotic melange of developers and volunteers can produce world class software. I'm sure that he would prefer to take it over, straitjacket it with regulations and completely cripple the movement . . . but what can you expect? He's a bureaucrat . . .
Can Cherry OS put that on their website? Because they've alledgedly packaged up GPL software and sold it as their own closed source software, would the FSF allow them to use one of their trademarks?
I am surprised by this behavior and chalk it up to what appears to me to be blatant disregard for GPL and the law.
The current administration has no respect for laws and the constitution. They've said as much.
When have they said as much? They seem to have tremendous respect for the law . . . they simply interpret it different than many other people. If they didn't respect it, they would even bother use try to interpret it.
We are going to see Americans having as much trouble getting back into the States as foreigners do. (ie. you won't be able to get back in from Canada without a passport.)
I hardly think that they need for a passport in hand is equivalent to what foreigners go through when coming to the US. An a US citizen, you don't need a visa (most foreigners do), and you don't need to fingerprinted and photographed like all non-resident foreign nationals do when entering the USA.
American trade is going to dry up because nobody will want to do business with us.
Again, paranoid delusions . . . the US economy is approximately 1/3 the world economy. I don't think that any country can ignore that. If countries don't want to do business with us, then why are Indonesia, Jordan, Australia, and others pursuing free trade agreements with the US? Why are we running the biggest trade defecit in history? Surely the record trade defecit is indicative that other countries want to do more, not less business with the USA.
Basically, this paranoia and disrespect for the law isn't much different than the death of Roman democracy.
Uhh, Roman generals marched on Rome multiple times. In the later years of the Roman Empire, Roman soldiers swore alliegance to their generals, not to Rome. Eventually, Roman generals were responsible for soldiers' pensions (instead of Rome). I don't see any of this happening. The US military still swears to uphold the constitution, pensions are paid for by the state, and the military still answers to Congressional oversight. In the US, the people are still in control.Additionally, Roland's writing style is terrible and his command of the technology that he writes about is lackluster at best. Consider:
He compares connectors (optical fiber) to gates (transistors) and implies that they have the same function. He leaves out key points from the article (like the issue of heat is a complete unknown in the world of plamon based chips ). His summaries are blantant rip offs of the articles where he merely combines two ideas into one sentence or vice versa, giving no editorial content of his own . . . it is all editorial content from the article that he links. I can only assume that he is simply unqualified to give free thought and personal editorial content to the material that he submits.
He is not a journalist . . . he is a poor writer that steals editorial ideas and implies that they might be his own. He peppers these ideas with his own analogies that make little to no sense.
I honestly think that he's trying to launch a career as a blogger/technology writer, but I honestly think that he should consider broadening his knowledge of technology and taking some writing courses first.
Plasmons are generated when, under the right conditions, light strikes a metal. The electric field of the light jiggles the electrons in the metal to the light's frequency, setting off density waves of electrons. The process is analogous to how the vibrations of the larynx jiggle molecules in the air into density waves experienced as sound.
This analogy makes no sense because this is not analogous to how the larnyx jiggles air. The larnyx squeezes together and air is pushed through causing the larnyx to vibrate. In the case of the larnyx, the squeezing of the larnyx as air is exhaled causes flaps of tissue to vibrate . . . . How is this analogous to photons striking metal?
A much better analogy would be how throwing a stone into a pond causes the water to vibrate. Or throwing a stone at a piece of metal causes sonic vibrations.
Roland really should do his homework before coming up with his half baked analogies. For homework on the larnyx and how it works, he could start here.
Come on Roland, give us a break . . . you obviously don't understand what your writing about. Your analogies make no sense, your summarize is full of gross holes and you're trying to "sex-up" plasmons by calling a natural phonomena a technology and saying that it's something "new" when it is not. And seems you're doing this to attract hits to your blog so that you can sell ad space.
I know this post is harsh, but I have to say that it appears that you are attempting to exploit the /. community for your own personal financial gain. We /. readers aren't as gullible or stupid as you seem to think . . .
Microsoft is also using the Windows Server 2003 SP1 code base as the starting point for the next desktop version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, which is slated to arrive next year.
Wasn't Longhorn supposed to originally be released this year? If they're going to use this service pack as a code base, they must be a long, long, long way off from a longhorn release . . .
Researchers have been tagging cancer cells with antibodies since the at least the late 80's. The holy grail of antibody therapy is to attach chemotherapeutic agents or radioactive isotopes to antibodies. The antibodies would insure that the majority of the therapeutic agent is deposited on the surface of tumor cells. This would be especially effective for small metasticized tumors that can't be detected by conventional means.
Uhhh . . . in a word, no. Sounds like the complexity and accuracy a high school biology lecture . .
Mitochodria oxidize Pyruvic acid in a series of steps to convert NAD+ to NADH. This produces CO2 and Acetyl CoA. Acetyl CoA is further oxidized in the Citric Acid Cycle producing more NADH and CO2.
What you may be thinking about is glycolysis . . . which is the breakdown of sugar (typically glucose) into pyruvic acid. This happens in the cytosol OUTSIDE the mitochodria. It is important to note that almost any carbon based molecule in the body can be converted into pyruvate and oxidized in the mitochodria (fatty acids, sugars, amino acids, some nucleic acids, etc.)
NADH is then converted into NAD+ through a mitochodria membrane to convert Adenosine Diphosphate (ADP) to Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) along an inner membrane of the mitochodria.
A more accurate restatement of your post might be:
Mitochodria oxidize pyruvate derived from sugar, fatty acids, amino acids, and other sources to produce NADH. Mitochodria also use NADH to convert ADP to ATP.
This is a new product, the bad PR is at least temporarily going to cost them in cash flow
They need a minimum number of early adopters to get the critical mass of users necessary to attract the eye of the game publishers. I would guessd that this doesn't help those gaming houses that have taken a "wait and see" attitude with respect to the PSP.
The early adopters would be the first to buy the unit and are likely to evangelize the masses about the potential upside or downside of the unit. These are also some of the most saavy consumers. Unfortunately, this is probably Sony's biggest error . . . they cut corners on the units that are being sold to the early adopters. They should have approached the problem like many other companys and release a better quality product for the first three to six months so that the early adopters have a top quality product, then cut the price later for the masses . . . and possibly cut a few corners (you get what you pay for) . . . or they could have released a "platinum edition" of the unit for the hardcore consumer and an entry level model for the average joe. At least with a tiered product, people could choose to pay extra to have a higher quality unit.
This just bad marketing by a company that has made a number of missteps in the past few years (giving away the plasma/LCD market to Samsung by not investing in new factories and trying to milk their CRT cash cow, not making their early digital audio players compatible with anything but the proprietary ATRAC format, coming up with a proprietary flash ram (memory stick) . . .
I think that MS proposed this name because "Windows XP Piece of S*it Edition" would not have been acceptable by the EU commission; however, it would have the desired outcome for MS. My guess is that if MS puts the word "reduced" in the name, there will be public outcry about how the EU commission is screwing us over by forcing us to accept a "reduced" edition of windows. Expecially, because as far as I know, the non-WMP version of Windows will sell for the same price as the "non-reduced version of Windows." (I assume this is true, because I haven't seen anything to the contrary yet . . . )
Software rivals are now complaining, however, that the new MP-less version is not fully compatible with their programs, further complicating the implementation of the EU's antitrust ruling.
Is anyone really surprised at this behavior . . .
Remember the arguments that MS made during IE litigation? They said that removal of IE would cripple the OS . . . I wonder if they will eventually be putting hooks into the bundled WMP that aren't available in the separate d/l version? And then they will use the excuse that these features are "impossible" to include in the OS without bundling them in from the beginning (a completely bogus argument, but one that they made in the past with IE).
Of course I expect them to play ball with the EU commission for the time being, but I fully expect a future version that will leave EU customers behind because WMP isn't bundled. And EU customers will be pissed. Then MS will say to the EU Commission, "Don't you see how your customers demand that we bundle WMP with the OS? They are demanding the product that you have taken away from them!"
And if MS's plan goes to fruition, the EU commission will have egg on its face . . .
I think that the naming convention defined by the EU was to insure that there would be no confusion between the versions of windows with or without WMP. Otherwise the EU commission could get blamed for consumer confusion if the naming convention was not considered clear and concise (just the kind of FUD that MS might do to make the commission look bad).
With all due respect to the writer of the article, in practical terms, I'm not sure what this means to the viewer of the film . . . Does this mean that the colors/details look better, or that there are less losses in color/detail during the application of digital effects, or is this fairly immaterial to the end viewer and will the end product look pretty much the same as 4:2:2 work?
And to extend the question beyond the big screen, will this make a difference in the DVD transfer of this film, or will any benefit be negated by losses during DVD transfer?
Thompson said he and Ford developed the methodology on their own and submitted a proposal to Microsoft last year. He declined to say how much Microsoft paid to fund the research, but he said the company didn't have a say in the methodology.
I'm surprised that this kind of research would get so much attention . . . reading between the lines, the research proposal was written to attract money from Microsoft. This implies an immediate conflict of interest . . . the research proposal and methodology were very possibly skewed in favor of Microsoft from the very beginning to garner Microsoft's favor and money.
This is like writing a research proposal on the effects of smoking to get money from Phillip Morris. Of course such a proposal won't be written is such a way as to build a link between smoking and cancer . . . it would likely be written to imply that the research may refute the link between smoking and cancer. Skew the proposal in favor of the benefactor and one is more likely to get money . . .
The whole process needs to be more transparent . . and all of the facts need to be issued before presenting . . . otherwise this is just irresponsible research.
I would hope that this 1% represents a portion of each year's internet newbies . . .
However, like most statistics quoted in the press, there isn't really enough information to draw a very definite conclusion . . .
1. Has a government that burns surplus food bought by government subsidies rather than distribute it to the poor because subsidy laws make it illegal for the government to redistribute food below minimum set controlled prices. 2. Legally forces people to work to pay off the debts accrued by previous generations. The wages are so low that this amounts to legalized slavery that at current rates of interest and income will last in perpetuity.
I'd be willing to bet that if it was a European name, it would have been included in the post . . . because it would have been easier for Timothy to remember and write.
I can only assume that this is another example of Timothy's lazy, lax, and lame journalism . . .
That's got to be the worst write up I've ever seen on /.
This statement implies that the genius is famous because he noticed that there is/are pattern(s) in how you can add up numbers to get other numbers . . . that statement is so vague that the discovery could be incredible or intuitively obvious.
Quoted from one of the links is a much better explanation below:
One remarkable result of the Hardy-Ramanujan collaboration was a formula for the number p(n) of partitions of a number n. A partition of a positive integer n is just an expression for n as a sum of positive integers, regardless of order. Thus p(4) = 5 because 4 can be written as 1+1+1+1, 1+1+2, 2+2, 1+3, or 4. The problem of finding p(n) was studied by Euler, who found a formula for the generating function of p(n) (that is, for the infinite series whose nth term is p(n)xn). While this allows one to calculate p(n) recursively, it doesn't lead to an explicit formula. Hardy and Ramanujan came up with such a formula (though they only proved it works asymptotically; Rademacher proved it gives the exact value of p(n)).
From the site: There are two basic methods of detecting a planet's gravitational influence on its star:
* Astrometric Detection
* Radial Velocity Detection
The first method - Astrometry - was hinted at in the previous paragraph. We observe a star and measure its position relative to distant background stars (hence the word "metric" in the name). As an orbiting body tugs at its companion star, we observe a change in position of the star. Measurements of a periodic change in position, back and forth, can indicate that something is possibly orbiting the star. Careful analysis of these measurements can tell us about the orbiting object.
The second method - Radial Velocity - is a completely different kind of measurement, but relies upon the same principle. That is, gravity. As an orbiting body tugs on its companion star, the light from the star will experience a Doppler shift. If the planet pulls the star slightly away from us on Earth, the starlight will be shifted towards longer wavelengths and appear more red; pulled slightly towards Earth, the starlight is shifted towards shorter wavelengths to appear more blue. To accurately measure this Doppler shift, we chose a known spectral line and observe its shift from red to blue and back.
If you're looking for dry science videos, try the avgeeks . . . a collection of over 14000 dry videos like those cheesy ones made for high school students in the 60's
Theories are a part of science . . . theories with significant evidence are accepted as likely to be true. Others with less evidence are perhaps somewhat debatable. This is all part of the Scientific Method
If you would rather have children watch science shows that eshew theory, there would be precious little science in the show. . . it would be a show about facts. And facts aren't science . . . Science is analysis, postulating theories, experimentation, drawing conclusions, verifying results, and other skills that require higher level thinking skills.
I commend Bill Nye for showing children theory and higher level thinking skills . . . but perhaps you would rather that he simply go over multiplication tables and other "facts" on his show . . .