They meant it as kind of a gorilla advertisement and gorilla actions like placing displays without permission or permits has some risk. Perhaps it is a small quibble, but the police were performing the gorilla actions, while the artists were producing guerilla advertisement.
An interesting aside though: I live in Boston, and the next month the local Burlesque troop did a striptease with one girl in dredlocks and the others in police uniforms and dancing with lite-brites. The music? "You dropped the bomb on me", of course!
If you are looking at a little more clarity on why mobile phones, you need to think about radios and signal processing. To digitally sample a signal, you need to sample it at least twice the highest frequency (this is the Nyquist frequency). If you want to create or receive a cell phone signal (around 2 GHz) you need to sample it around 5 GHz, and to digitally process what you receive, you need to be processing at these higher speeds. Without such speeds, receivers and transmitters need to use analog electronics to modulate slower digital signals up to 2GHz, and analog electronics are not flexible. I said 2 GHZ, but some cells are 1.8GHZ, some 1.9GHz, and so on. If you do it all digitally, then changing cellular systems and frequencies becomes a software issue rather than a hardware issue. Now you can use a single phone for CDMA and GSM networks. Carriers can upgrade or switchover their networks without having to get people to trade in their phones. The people really salivating over this are probably the DOD's JTRS software radio people who are trying to make a single radio to handle all military waveforms under 2 GHz (assuming the war didn't swallow their funding).
Clearly there are enough slashdotters here to settle this debate. All those in favor of DC run out and grab the connectors of your car battery, those who say AC is safer please stick your tongue in a socket. Those who can please hurry back and post. I promise to mod you up.
Out of the mouths of sarcastic babes, that's just what we need to do!
From now on, Reuters should only accept photographs from certified DRM-enabled cameras that have been digitally altered on DRM-enabled computers: problem solved.
I'll stop playing lawyer when I get a cool tv show where sexy Engineers take time off each week from their complicated and occasionally wacky love-lives to solve flashy and technically challenging optimization problems. Oh, and I want that boffo CSI-effect where the camera magically focuses deeper and deeper into the body of the computer until it finds the inner file where the bug crawls across the damaged line of code.
With that said, there IS always room for argument, but TFA's lighthouse analogy was based on a misunderstanding of the technical details of GPS, so it wouldn't stand up against competent cross-examination (he says, arching his brow and looking meaningfully at the sexy foreperson of the jury), they are not trying to "copyright basic data about the physical world" but a clock signal they produce and a measurement they make.
I'm no big fan of copyright, but I think Cornell needs a better lawyer. Clearly, no one can copyright a location (although this would make for a great scene: "Where am I?" "I can't tell you; it's copyrighted." I bet Dick Cheney is already drooling, but I digress). What they are protecting is the output signal from their satellites' atomic clocks, and measurements of their exact orbits. A mobile device computes its own position by comparing path delays to themselves from many satellites' known locations. The timing signal and satellite ephemeris are creative content that can be protected just like a map or satellite picture can be copyrighted, while the location depicted isn't. TFA compares decoding the timing signal to looking at a lighthouse and deducing your own position, which is clearly free. That same arguement would support decoding satellite signals of CNN to deduce world events. World events are clearly free, but the video isn't.
A stronger arguement can be made: since they have agreed to make the codes open source they have no right to enforce copyright. You just can't say they aren't creating anything.
How much actual genetic material would descendants share after 20 generations?
There are no more that 35,000 distinct genes, according to the Human genome project http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome /faq/genenumber.shtml. This would break down around the 15th generation, so at 20 generations there would be perhaps a 3% chance of a shared gene, assuming no additional shared ancestors.
Going through so many generations, it seems like a better approach would be to ask how many genes any two people are expected to share in common, which would encompass one or more mutual ancestors, some initial distribution of genes in the original pool and rates of mutation.
I saw a presentation on this work last year. The concept of tiny hairs sticking to surfaces is not difficult. The tricky part is keeping the hairs clean, because they stick to EVERYTHING, quickly develop a coating of dust and stop sticking. Scientists have yet to mimick the self-cleaning properties of Gecko feet as they curl off the surface after each step. Until they do, robo-geckos will not function long except in a well-scrubbed lab.
We should do what all the other planets do: use small moons to gather the debris into managable rings. a few massive objects, cunningly placed between earth and moon would disturb the orbits of smaller objects in question. Some would be pushed into the earth or out of orbit, and the rest would be in the rings. Rings are full of debris, but all are moving in more or less the same direction and in the same plane, so their impacts are less spectacular. Avoiding the debris means staying out of the plane of the ring. Collection also becomes simple. Surely there are some near-earth asteroids we could use?
Don't think of it as sad bunch of nerds, think of it as a Geek Chorus that chanting familiar refrains to tie the current discussion into the larger communal tapestry. That or I am a sad nerd with a BA in English.
If it will let you sleep at night, just assume that the the rapid vaporizing of the ice in the lightsaber's path cracked the ice around his feet, causing him to fall.
That or just repeat after me as I wave my hand: "You don't have to obey physics. These are not the droids you are looking for. Move along."
I think we have wandered a bit from the original article.
All arguments about the workings of quantum encryption can refer to this paper. One key assumption is that you only send a single photon, not two or none. If none arives you wasted that bit-slot, but a second photon allows eavesdropping. Traditional sources generate photons according to Poisson statistics, which means that you can't accurately meter out one photon at a time. The standard fix for this is to attenuate the signal so that the average N is much less than 1 photons per measurement slot. This effectively means you only get (roughly) a photon every 1/N slots, but you still get 2 arriving together every 1/N^2 slot. The first part is both wastful, the second vulnerable.
The current paper merely how to generate single photons more reliably using diamonds as microcavities. Essentially the diamond is a tiny laser resonator on the scale of a single wavelength (1 micron), and can only support one optical mode, so any single spontaneously generated photon goes into that mode, and your output is single, narrow wavelength photon, but no doubles. In some ways this has ceased to be a "L.A.S.E.R." since the Light is not Amplified, and the Emmision of Radiation is not Stimulated, but spontaneous. Maybe I would call it Light Organized from Spontaneous Emission of Radiation, but I digress...
If you wat to look at such microcavities, see
this paper
Look angle is another trade off with ground-based telescopes. looking near the horizon ground scopes see even more turbulence, so they are limited to what is overhead (and so latitude is critical). To see the whole sky you need observatories at several longitudes, and each constellation is on the night side only certain times of year.
In orbit this is not a problem, but you do have to deal with that pesky planet getting in your way 48 out of every 97 minutes, but that is mostly a scheduling problem.
Also, absorption lines in the atmosphere are particularly important when looking for exoplanets: to find nitrogen/oxygen atmospheres you want to look at the very spectral lines that are blocked by our own. Good thing we made sure the ozone absorption lines will not be a problem much longer....
While he didn't deserve to be arrested, he wasn't exactly innocent: when you do something deliberately provocative, how surprised can you be when you provoke a response? Yes, the cashier way overreacted, but the man was looking for some kind of reaction. He was mad, so he found a way to show-up the cashier for a fool. He just didn't bargain on how big a fool, or on so many fools at once.
I am saying this as someone who has done a lot of stupid, provocative things in my life: I once pretended a cardboard poster tube was a bazooka in front of an armored car driver. He did get a really funny scared expression on his face, then reached for his gun before seeing my trick. I laughed, but he stayed calm and pointed out how my survival had depended on his not being a fool. I took that to heart and thanked god for my limited success that day. I'm not saying I don't still provoke people for the sheer pleasure of it (especially when they piss me off), I am just saying that I don't pretend I am innocent if it backfires on me.
Now it's fun to laugh at the morons out there who don't know the finer points of US currency, or tell the school bully "his epidermis is showing", just be ready to acknowledge your complicity in the ass-whooping you might eventually get.
I agree: think about the Great wall of China, which was not built to keep invaders out but to slow their escape with swag in tow. Most crimes are not deterred because they are impossible, but because you can't get away with the loot. I just hope they publish this arrest widely in the call centers. Next time you talk to "Suzy" from Citibank about your account, be sure to mention these arrests.
Of course, how long until Indian criminals wise up and use offshore banking?
Slashdot Mirror
An interesting aside though: I live in Boston, and the next month the local Burlesque troop did a striptease with one girl in dredlocks and the others in police uniforms and dancing with lite-brites. The music? "You dropped the bomb on me", of course!
--
"There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who think in binary, and those who don't"
I felt a great disturbance in the Force...as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
Well, it does and it doesn't....
Feel free to Mod me down. Nothing is accomplished through modding!
I have one thing to say just in case...
If I am modded up,
they will be terrified.
I myself will be terrified.
Harder than chinese math?
Where the heck did this come from? Next are you going to start singing "throw the Wolf-Vampire-hybrid down the well"?
If you are looking at a little more clarity on why mobile phones, you need to think about radios and signal processing. To digitally sample a signal, you need to sample it at least twice the highest frequency (this is the Nyquist frequency). If you want to create or receive a cell phone signal (around 2 GHz) you need to sample it around 5 GHz, and to digitally process what you receive, you need to be processing at these higher speeds. Without such speeds, receivers and transmitters need to use analog electronics to modulate slower digital signals up to 2GHz, and analog electronics are not flexible. I said 2 GHZ, but some cells are 1.8GHZ, some 1.9GHz, and so on. If you do it all digitally, then changing cellular systems and frequencies becomes a software issue rather than a hardware issue. Now you can use a single phone for CDMA and GSM networks. Carriers can upgrade or switchover their networks without having to get people to trade in their phones. The people really salivating over this are probably the DOD's JTRS software radio people who are trying to make a single radio to handle all military waveforms under 2 GHz (assuming the war didn't swallow their funding).
Clearly there are enough slashdotters here to settle this debate. All those in favor of DC run out and grab the connectors of your car battery, those who say AC is safer please stick your tongue in a socket. Those who can please hurry back and post. I promise to mod you up.
Out of the mouths of sarcastic babes, that's just what we need to do! From now on, Reuters should only accept photographs from certified DRM-enabled cameras that have been digitally altered on DRM-enabled computers: problem solved.
With that said, there IS always room for argument, but TFA's lighthouse analogy was based on a misunderstanding of the technical details of GPS, so it wouldn't stand up against competent cross-examination (he says, arching his brow and looking meaningfully at the sexy foreperson of the jury), they are not trying to "copyright basic data about the physical world" but a clock signal they produce and a measurement they make.
A stronger arguement can be made: since they have agreed to make the codes open source they have no right to enforce copyright. You just can't say they aren't creating anything.
Oh great, now there is an image stuck in my brain of two superchickens flocking....
Going through so many generations, it seems like a better approach would be to ask how many genes any two people are expected to share in common, which would encompass one or more mutual ancestors, some initial distribution of genes in the original pool and rates of mutation.
She could, but perhaps she would spit the earth out.
welcomes it's new oxygen-breathing overlords.
I saw a presentation on this work last year. The concept of tiny hairs sticking to surfaces is not difficult. The tricky part is keeping the hairs clean, because they stick to EVERYTHING, quickly develop a coating of dust and stop sticking. Scientists have yet to mimick the self-cleaning properties of Gecko feet as they curl off the surface after each step. Until they do, robo-geckos will not function long except in a well-scrubbed lab.
We should do what all the other planets do: use small moons to gather the debris into managable rings. a few massive objects, cunningly placed between earth and moon would disturb the orbits of smaller objects in question. Some would be pushed into the earth or out of orbit, and the rest would be in the rings. Rings are full of debris, but all are moving in more or less the same direction and in the same plane, so their impacts are less spectacular. Avoiding the debris means staying out of the plane of the ring. Collection also becomes simple. Surely there are some near-earth asteroids we could use?
But Momma, that's where the fun is!
Don't think of it as sad bunch of nerds, think of it as a Geek Chorus that chanting familiar refrains to tie the current discussion into the larger communal tapestry. That or I am a sad nerd with a BA in English.
If it will let you sleep at night, just assume that the the rapid vaporizing of the ice in the lightsaber's path cracked the ice around his feet, causing him to fall. That or just repeat after me as I wave my hand: "You don't have to obey physics. These are not the droids you are looking for. Move along."
All arguments about the workings of quantum encryption can refer to this paper. One key assumption is that you only send a single photon, not two or none. If none arives you wasted that bit-slot, but a second photon allows eavesdropping. Traditional sources generate photons according to Poisson statistics, which means that you can't accurately meter out one photon at a time. The standard fix for this is to attenuate the signal so that the average N is much less than 1 photons per measurement slot. This effectively means you only get (roughly) a photon every 1/N slots, but you still get 2 arriving together every 1/N^2 slot. The first part is both wastful, the second vulnerable.
The current paper merely how to generate single photons more reliably using diamonds as microcavities. Essentially the diamond is a tiny laser resonator on the scale of a single wavelength (1 micron), and can only support one optical mode, so any single spontaneously generated photon goes into that mode, and your output is single, narrow wavelength photon, but no doubles. In some ways this has ceased to be a "L.A.S.E.R." since the Light is not Amplified, and the Emmision of Radiation is not Stimulated, but spontaneous. Maybe I would call it Light Organized from Spontaneous Emission of Radiation, but I digress...
If you wat to look at such microcavities, see this paper
Also, absorption lines in the atmosphere are particularly important when looking for exoplanets: to find nitrogen/oxygen atmospheres you want to look at the very spectral lines that are blocked by our own. Good thing we made sure the ozone absorption lines will not be a problem much longer....
I am saying this as someone who has done a lot of stupid, provocative things in my life: I once pretended a cardboard poster tube was a bazooka in front of an armored car driver. He did get a really funny scared expression on his face, then reached for his gun before seeing my trick. I laughed, but he stayed calm and pointed out how my survival had depended on his not being a fool. I took that to heart and thanked god for my limited success that day. I'm not saying I don't still provoke people for the sheer pleasure of it (especially when they piss me off), I am just saying that I don't pretend I am innocent if it backfires on me.
Now it's fun to laugh at the morons out there who don't know the finer points of US currency, or tell the school bully "his epidermis is showing", just be ready to acknowledge your complicity in the ass-whooping you might eventually get.
Of course, how long until Indian criminals wise up and use offshore banking?