>>Meanwhile, reporters run around and act like journalism is some sacred religion, exempt from the law, to be placed above God and country.
It's amazing how many reporters are like that. It is particularly sad because of how lousy reporters generally are. Everybody I know that has been interviewed or questioned by reporters were misquoted. Often the reporter was trying to dress up a statement and ended up twisting what the person was actually saying, but they were too stupid or arrogant to realize it.
Sue. Claim they are endangering lives. (Though you could probably put an array of scientific instruments around your facility to occupy more ground if you needed it.)
The courts would probably have to decide particular issues if two groups are really competitive over occupying/using a certain plot of land, but the group there first will probably have a certain advantage. I think in similar disputes the courts also tend to favor those most equipped and effective at utilizing a disputed area. That is one reason the US has a station at the south pole, runs most of the rescue flights in Antarctica, etc... It makes their case stronger for whenever another country tries to claim too much ownership of Antarctica.
The real problem will be when a Russian company and an American company get competitive over a single plot of land. It would be a good idea to have a framework already in place, signed by America and Russia, that details how to deal with the situation. The Treaty does help some in this regard, but it does need more work.
You stop them by using it first. If something is occupied, nobody can force you to move. The point is you can't "claim" anything. You use it or it's free game.
An analogy would be the open sea outside of territorial waters. You can put a underwater base and operation anywhere you want. A competitor could move in next door, but he can't make you move. If you want to occupy more of the sea bottom, then you just build a bigger base before he gets there.
I think the treaty prevents a nation from staking a claim, but it doesn't prevent anybody from building a non-military base. It does prevent nations from sending up an unmanned lander and then claiming half the moon.
I think this is good in the respect that nations and companies can't be shut out. You can't own land, but you can occupy it and use it. If you don't want someone else using it, then you have to get there first and start using it yourself.
I'm not sure how it would apply to commercial operations by a private company, but you could always claim something like mining precious metals is scientific research like Japanese whale hunters do.
We have technologies that serve the same purpose as personal jetpacks and flying cars, generally safer and more economical. Personal jetpacks and flying cars are really exotic luxury items, so I don't think those are a good comparison.
Fusion energy might be a better example. It is something that would be of real value and something we have thrown a lot of money at. Other energy sources may become cheap and easy enough though where fusion is not as attractive.
I think the time scale required is beyond 50 years for space colonies, and it is hard to guess that far in the future. Could someone 50 years ago guess about computers today? Star Trek was guessing about computers a couple of hundred years in the future, but our current computers are already pretty close to their mark.
I don't know how it works with astrophysics and cosmology type stuff, but in other fields of physics, research is often divided between experimentalists and theorists. It might be the case where the author doesn't feel qualified to say why and thinks it would be better for theorists to jump in. Or he may think it is more important to establish is results and have them verified first before moving on.
Also, if he did try to explain it, then it could really slow down how long it takes to get published because of the peer review process. His explanation would probably be highly questioned, and it would take longer to reach agreement with the peer reviewers. That might be why he said it was beyond the scope of the paper. He wanted to get the less controversial material out there first, then he could concentrate on the more controversial material in a different paper.
The fact that it was a political commercial probably gives Viacom even extra fair use. Political messages are particularly fair game at being copied and analyzed.
>>The average IQ is for many populations is roughly ~100
100 is average IQ by design. Scores are normalized so that 100 is always average.
There is more to education than rote learning and memorization. You learn how to learn, how to problem solve, how to think critically, how to express ideas better, how to write better, etc...
It also does expand your mind. You might not remember all the facts you learned in 7th grade biology, but conceptually you understand it better and will be better able to process information concerning biology better later on. This could come in handy for example when discussing a medical procedure with your doctor. One tends to take this knowledge for granted, but if you never learned it then things like veins, arteries, blood cells, etc... would all just sound like the rest of the jargon the doctor was saying.
I could see a judge (rightly or wrongly) ordering you to log phone calls, but I don't think you have any responsibility to do so until then. It actually can help in in some legal proceedings to log phone calls and take notes of conversations. Of course, it is a bad idea to selectively erase a few minutes of tape if you have been recording every conversation (a la Nixon).
I think the thing with RAM is that information is physically stored (even if temporarily) where as a phone conversation is just in your mind. This is probably a legal issue that will be worked out over time, but in this particular case the judge knew that it was easy to log the IP addresses and just thought TorrentSpy was trying to weasel out of it.
I believe the original judge ordered them to log the ip addresses, and TorrentSpy appealed on the basis of RAM not being discoverable. This new ruling was just answering the question of RAM being discoverable; the first judge already ordered them to log ip addresses. I could be wrong though because I really don't feel like looking it up.
I think the judge said this ruling only applied to this particular instance and had no precedence.
As for the high school guy, I think he got a bad deal, but apparently he lost a lot of support by the politicians when they found out there was a sex party going on and was being videotaped. Apparently he did not come across too well on the tape, because some in government that intended to support him being released from prison abandoned him after they were shown the tape. Part of the problem was that his supporters were trying to portray him as a straight-A, all American boy, but then it was revealed that he participated in a sex tape party where he had sex with one girl and got a blow job from a 15 year old, and probably said or did other things on the tape that didn't put him in a too favorable light. Again, I think he got a bad deal, but it is possible that there was something on the tape that really bothered the jury.
>>Then the judge should have said that, and not obfuscated it to the point of making the judge sound incompetent to be making decisions in this field.
The judge was making a legal decision for lawyers, not for the benefit of slashdot. Maybe if one is a lawyer actively engaged in this case then the actual ruling (not the spin that makes it to slashdot) would make a lot more sense.
People trash the judge for his knowledge of technology, but this was more of a legal issue, which is the judge's expertise, not slashdotters.
I think the judge said this decision would not be precedent. Basically he knew in this case it was easy to log IP addresses and didn't buy TorrentSpy's arguments in trying to avoid it.
I think basically the judges knows that it is easy to log IP addresses, and he just didn't buy their argument.
IANAL, but the legal argument I believe is that RAM is a physical representation of information, even if temporary, and therefore it is subject to discovery.
I could be wrong though, because IANAL like most people here. It is funny that a lot of people are calling the judge an idiot for not understanding the technology when this is more of a legal issue (which supposedly the judge is an expert in.)
(I think corrupting the IP addresses like you mention would probably be contempt. The true IP address would be stored in RAM at a point before you corrupted it, and you be responsible for providing these, not something you later obfuscated.)
1. The judge told Torrentspy to provide IP addresses. 2. Torrentspys said we don't log IP addresses - they are only in RAM 3. The judge says RAM is discoverable, so start logging from this point on.
So how is the judge an idiot? I think slashdotters are coming across as bigger idiots looking at all these posts.
I think the basic argument is that Torrentspy is saying they can't provide IP addresses because they don't log them, and the judge is saying if they are in RAM then discovery applies and they are required to log them since RAM is discoverable. Basically the judge is tellling them to log the IP addresses and that the argument that they are only stored in RAM is not a valid legal excuse.
I fail to see how anyone other than MS would have anything to gain from pushing OOXML, unless they are getting kickbacks.
They were MS Gold certified companies. They make their living pushing MS products.
Even companies partnering with MS would benefit greatly if a more open standard, such as ODF, was being used into which they could integrate into more easily and actually do something useful with.
I doubt they see it that way. The more people sticking with MS, the more cache "MS Gold certified partner" has. OOXML will be more easy to integrate if everything is already MS.
If they don't have to show up to meetings or participate in discussions, then why would they if they already knew how they would vote? They were MS Gold certified partners.
Why would they read the document spec or need to understand it? These are corporations who have tied there existance to supporting MS products; the more pervasive MS products then the more potential their corporations have.
I don't know of a good way to balance out everybody's self-interests. MS partners could have just as easily went to meetings if that was required, and they could still stuff the ballot box. I think it is fair to take in account the interests of the IT industry, but I don't know if that should be the deciding factor.
It is hard to say what the case was here, because the info only seems to be coming from bloggers on one side of the issue. This is not to say they are wrong, but there is definate spin going on. They immediately claimed microsoft bought the vote without providing any evidence. All the new companies were MS certified partners, so it was in their best interest to vote the way they did.
If you are going by a majority of companies, then MS will probably win everytime because of all their partners.
Letting any company vote is probably not the best way to go about this, but at a certain level you do have to take into account to some degree what the majority of the IT industry thinks.
I had a professor that was not too optimistic about new projects like this in particle physics. He said something several thousand PhD particle physicists are going to be out of work when Fermilab shuts down, and none of the proposals for new research that would keep them employed in the field were having much luck. I believe he said Americans were already the biggest contingent at CERN as particle physics research fades in the US.
What does something have to do be defined a rootkit? There seems to be different definitions going around, but the people saying it is not a rootkit are not really spelling out why.
It all depends on your definition. What was described in the article satisfies many people's definition of a rootkit, no matter how the authors chose to word it.
Everybody saying it is not a rootkit needs to define rootkit.
The example you used in your earlier post about partitions on memory sticks is completely different than what is happening here (the windows API is being modified to hide a directory on the c: drive)
My original point was that there are not really many jobs "in the field" of science for people with just BS degrees (the free education that was proposed. Burger flipping was an extreme example of work they might have to do. I do know someone with a BS in Geosciences that has had to work as a burger flipper.
The point in my last post was that you cannot really compare people with a BS in science forced to work in another field right out of school with PhD scientists doing actual research in terms of advancing science and creating jobs. If you want to advance science and create jobs, people with a BS working outside of science since they graduated are not going to be particulary effective, and spending taxpayer money on it is not that great of an idea.
But as others have said, this program forces them to be teachers if they can't find a job in the field of science, and that might be beneficial in the long run.
Slashdot Mirror
>>Meanwhile, reporters run around and act like journalism is some sacred religion, exempt from the law, to be placed above God and country.
It's amazing how many reporters are like that. It is particularly sad because of how lousy reporters generally are. Everybody I know that has been interviewed or questioned by reporters were misquoted. Often the reporter was trying to dress up a statement and ended up twisting what the person was actually saying, but they were too stupid or arrogant to realize it.
>>And when they build across your front door?
Sue. Claim they are endangering lives. (Though you could probably put an array of scientific instruments around your facility to occupy more ground if you needed it.)
The courts would probably have to decide particular issues if two groups are really competitive over occupying/using a certain plot of land, but the group there first will probably have a certain advantage. I think in similar disputes the courts also tend to favor those most equipped and effective at utilizing a disputed area. That is one reason the US has a station at the south pole, runs most of the rescue flights in Antarctica, etc... It makes their case stronger for whenever another country tries to claim too much ownership of Antarctica.
The real problem will be when a Russian company and an American company get competitive over a single plot of land. It would be a good idea to have a framework already in place, signed by America and Russia, that details how to deal with the situation. The Treaty does help some in this regard, but it does need more work.
You stop them by using it first. If something is occupied, nobody can force you to move. The point is you can't "claim" anything. You use it or it's free game.
An analogy would be the open sea outside of territorial waters. You can put a underwater base and operation anywhere you want. A competitor could move in next door, but he can't make you move. If you want to occupy more of the sea bottom, then you just build a bigger base before he gets there.
I think the treaty prevents a nation from staking a claim, but it doesn't prevent anybody from building a non-military base. It does prevent nations from sending up an unmanned lander and then claiming half the moon.
I think this is good in the respect that nations and companies can't be shut out. You can't own land, but you can occupy it and use it. If you don't want someone else using it, then you have to get there first and start using it yourself.
I'm not sure how it would apply to commercial operations by a private company, but you could always claim something like mining precious metals is scientific research like Japanese whale hunters do.
We have technologies that serve the same purpose as personal jetpacks and flying cars, generally safer and more economical. Personal jetpacks and flying cars are really exotic luxury items, so I don't think those are a good comparison.
Fusion energy might be a better example. It is something that would be of real value and something we have thrown a lot of money at. Other energy sources may become cheap and easy enough though where fusion is not as attractive.
I think the time scale required is beyond 50 years for space colonies, and it is hard to guess that far in the future. Could someone 50 years ago guess about computers today? Star Trek was guessing about computers a couple of hundred years in the future, but our current computers are already pretty close to their mark.
I don't know how it works with astrophysics and cosmology type stuff, but in other fields of physics, research is often divided between experimentalists and theorists. It might be the case where the author doesn't feel qualified to say why and thinks it would be better for theorists to jump in. Or he may think it is more important to establish is results and have them verified first before moving on.
Also, if he did try to explain it, then it could really slow down how long it takes to get published because of the peer review process. His explanation would probably be highly questioned, and it would take longer to reach agreement with the peer reviewers. That might be why he said it was beyond the scope of the paper. He wanted to get the less controversial material out there first, then he could concentrate on the more controversial material in a different paper.
The fact that it was a political commercial probably gives Viacom even extra fair use. Political messages are particularly fair game at being copied and analyzed.
>>The average IQ is for many populations is roughly ~100
100 is average IQ by design. Scores are normalized so that 100 is always average.
There is more to education than rote learning and memorization. You learn how to learn, how to problem solve, how to think critically, how to express ideas better, how to write better, etc...
It also does expand your mind. You might not remember all the facts you learned in 7th grade biology, but conceptually you understand it better and will be better able to process information concerning biology better later on. This could come in handy for example when discussing a medical procedure with your doctor. One tends to take this knowledge for granted, but if you never learned it then things like veins, arteries, blood cells, etc... would all just sound like the rest of the jargon the doctor was saying.
I could see a judge (rightly or wrongly) ordering you to log phone calls, but I don't think you have any responsibility to do so until then. It actually can help in in some legal proceedings to log phone calls and take notes of conversations. Of course, it is a bad idea to selectively erase a few minutes of tape if you have been recording every conversation (a la Nixon).
I think the thing with RAM is that information is physically stored (even if temporarily) where as a phone conversation is just in your mind. This is probably a legal issue that will be worked out over time, but in this particular case the judge knew that it was easy to log the IP addresses and just thought TorrentSpy was trying to weasel out of it.
I believe the original judge ordered them to log the ip addresses, and TorrentSpy appealed on the basis of RAM not being discoverable. This new ruling was just answering the question of RAM being discoverable; the first judge already ordered them to log ip addresses. I could be wrong though because I really don't feel like looking it up.
I think the judge said this ruling only applied to this particular instance and had no precedence.
As for the high school guy, I think he got a bad deal, but apparently he lost a lot of support by the politicians when they found out there was a sex party going on and was being videotaped. Apparently he did not come across too well on the tape, because some in government that intended to support him being released from prison abandoned him after they were shown the tape. Part of the problem was that his supporters were trying to portray him as a straight-A, all American boy, but then it was revealed that he participated in a sex tape party where he had sex with one girl and got a blow job from a 15 year old, and probably said or did other things on the tape that didn't put him in a too favorable light. Again, I think he got a bad deal, but it is possible that there was something on the tape that really bothered the jury.
>>Then the judge should have said that, and not obfuscated it to the point of making the judge sound incompetent to be making decisions in this field.
The judge was making a legal decision for lawyers, not for the benefit of slashdot. Maybe if one is a lawyer actively engaged in this case then the actual ruling (not the spin that makes it to slashdot) would make a lot more sense.
People trash the judge for his knowledge of technology, but this was more of a legal issue, which is the judge's expertise, not slashdotters.
I think the judge said this decision would not be precedent. Basically he knew in this case it was easy to log IP addresses and didn't buy TorrentSpy's arguments in trying to avoid it.
I think basically the judges knows that it is easy to log IP addresses, and he just didn't buy their argument.
IANAL, but the legal argument I believe is that RAM is a physical representation of information, even if temporary, and therefore it is subject to discovery.
I could be wrong though, because IANAL like most people here. It is funny that a lot of people are calling the judge an idiot for not understanding the technology when this is more of a legal issue (which supposedly the judge is an expert in.)
(I think corrupting the IP addresses like you mention would probably be contempt. The true IP address would be stored in RAM at a point before you corrupted it, and you be responsible for providing these, not something you later obfuscated.)
1. The judge told Torrentspy to provide IP addresses.
2. Torrentspys said we don't log IP addresses - they are only in RAM
3. The judge says RAM is discoverable, so start logging from this point on.
So how is the judge an idiot? I think slashdotters are coming across as bigger idiots looking at all these posts.
I think the basic argument is that Torrentspy is saying they can't provide IP addresses because they don't log them, and the judge is saying if they are in RAM then discovery applies and they are required to log them since RAM is discoverable. Basically the judge is tellling them to log the IP addresses and that the argument that they are only stored in RAM is not a valid legal excuse.
They were MS Gold certified companies. They make their living pushing MS products.
I doubt they see it that way. The more people sticking with MS, the more cache "MS Gold certified partner" has. OOXML will be more easy to integrate if everything is already MS.
If they don't have to show up to meetings or participate in discussions, then why would they if they already knew how they would vote? They were MS Gold certified partners.
Why would they read the document spec or need to understand it? These are corporations who have tied there existance to supporting MS products; the more pervasive MS products then the more potential their corporations have.
I don't know of a good way to balance out everybody's self-interests. MS partners could have just as easily went to meetings if that was required, and they could still stuff the ballot box. I think it is fair to take in account the interests of the IT industry, but I don't know if that should be the deciding factor.
>>Why wasn't this the case here?
It is hard to say what the case was here, because the info only seems to be coming from bloggers on one side of the issue. This is not to say they are wrong, but there is definate spin going on. They immediately claimed microsoft bought the vote without providing any evidence. All the new companies were MS certified partners, so it was in their best interest to vote the way they did.
If you are going by a majority of companies, then MS will probably win everytime because of all their partners.
Letting any company vote is probably not the best way to go about this, but at a certain level you do have to take into account to some degree what the majority of the IT industry thinks.
I had a professor that was not too optimistic about new projects like this in particle physics. He said something several thousand PhD particle physicists are going to be out of work when Fermilab shuts down, and none of the proposals for new research that would keep them employed in the field were having much luck. I believe he said Americans were already the biggest contingent at CERN as particle physics research fades in the US.
What does something have to do be defined a rootkit? There seems to be different definitions going around, but the people saying it is not a rootkit are not really spelling out why.
It all depends on your definition. What was described in the article satisfies many people's definition of a rootkit, no matter how the authors chose to word it.
Everybody saying it is not a rootkit needs to define rootkit.
The example you used in your earlier post about partitions on memory sticks is completely different than what is happening here (the windows API is being modified to hide a directory on the c: drive)
First sentence from wikipedia article:
"A rootkit is a set of software tools intended to conceal running processes, files or system data from the operating system"
So, it sounds like a rootkit as described by wikipedia.
The title is "Invasion of the jivin' nano-shrooms" just to give you a taste of the twee.
My original point was that there are not really many jobs "in the field" of science for people with just BS degrees (the free education that was proposed. Burger flipping was an extreme example of work they might have to do. I do know someone with a BS in Geosciences that has had to work as a burger flipper.
The point in my last post was that you cannot really compare people with a BS in science forced to work in another field right out of school with PhD scientists doing actual research in terms of advancing science and creating jobs. If you want to advance science and create jobs, people with a BS working outside of science since they graduated are not going to be particulary effective, and spending taxpayer money on it is not that great of an idea.
But as others have said, this program forces them to be teachers if they can't find a job in the field of science, and that might be beneficial in the long run.