I'm a biotech student who's very interested in this stuff. For anyone looking for an expanded explanation of the challenges facing cellulosic ethanol this blog post might be interesting. I've also written about the possible affects that large scale biofuel production may have on food security.
Cellulosic ethanol would be a big contribution to solving the impending energy crisis. Domestic waste and agricultural waste could be recylced into fuel to supplement demand to some extent, but in order to meet demand grain originally destined for food would have to be diverted. If not regulated properly this would likely cause an increase in global food prices. In a world with circa. 1 billion people starving, this is obviously less than ideal.
In the NES is a Super Mario Bros II cartridge, however the game being played on the TV is Super Mario Bros I. If this part is faked, I wonder what else in this story is fraudulent.
I reckon about 90% of all Slashdotters made/did way more dangerous things when they were younger. I certainly did and I look forward to doing them with my kids too! It's like a ritual part of childhood in my family!
When it takes a good 10 minutes of trawling TFA and Wikipedia just to find out what ETI and PDI stand for and what a datamart is, you know that the product is hyped up just enough to be worthless.
Every patent issued effectively blocks off a segment of a market to competitors, creating a micro-monopoly. We are rapidly approaching a time where, due to patent trading large corporations are coming close to total ownership of a particular market.
America is the major culprit in all this patent absurdity. Behind the friendly face of enterprise and free capitalism lies a very different reality. Corporations with vast resources and political lobbying power apply for patents shotgun-style to prevent any form of competition, so that they can profit by driving down production costs giving consumers overpriced, low-quality products.
From the abuse of patent law comes state-sanctioned monopolies, which is reminiscient of Soviet communist economic practice.
China, a formerly Communist nation is far more capitalist than America these days.
This was covered less concisely further up by BountyX, here are a few uses:
1. Using the personal data of the compromised accounts to make a person-specific dictionary to guess passwords and/or secret questions of other websites, including internet backing, eBay, Amazon etc. 2. Using the personal data of friends of compromised accounts to accomplish much the same thing as 1. 3. Sending spam to the email address associated with the account that are crafted to look like they're from friends. 4. Social Engineering 'hacks' such as IMing someone pretending to be their friend on a different IM account. 5. Grabbing pictures of beautiful girls from the photo album of the compromised account and friends. Think teenage girls. 4Chan will love this.
Which means, even if your account hasn't been owned and you change your password, you're still not safe from the wider ranging implications of this hack/security leak.
According to the Facebook statistics page the average account has 130 friends. If 1 in 300 accounts are compromised and you have circa 130 friends then the odds are quite high that the personal data you have "only available to friends" is going to become available to some fairly unfriendly people shortly.
Reminds me of the evertrue saying 'play with fire and you'll get burnt'. I have always been mindful of the threat FB poses to my privacy and have completely closed down my account several times, but keep giving in and going back due to peer pressure from family & friends. This time I'm killing it off for sure. No organization, be it governmental or corporate should have control over so much of an individuals personal data.
New species discovered on planet in hitherto insignificant Sol system!
Zarglwellian explorers discovered a species of egotistical bipeds with limited intelligence on a planet orbiting the Sol star yesterday morning. First contact was made in the Earth town of Lamesa, Texas, where intrepid Apheliousian space explorer Taivarg Artxe beamed down to the surface of the planet to be met by a collection of adorable beings armed with what appeared to be unsophisticated projectile weapons.
After initial greetings were exchanged, Taivarg explained to the bipeds using universal heiroglyphics that he was on an interstellar quest to find new and exciting crusine to offer to customers of his francise of fast food resturants. He announced to the collected bipeds that he had intended to eat them, and if they were sufficiently tasty, round up and cull his species before sending their remains to resturants around the universe, but he instead thinks that there's more profit marketing the human species as novelty pets for the children of Aphelion, and they should be thankful that their species will be used to bring happiness to billions of Aphelion's children instead of used for food.
So children, look out for new bipedal hooman pets, coming soon to a pet shop near you!
Patents were not intended to provide protection to investors. The patent system was initially devised to spread scientific knowledge, allowing interested parties access to the technical information behind new innovations. Such a shame that they're main use now is to stifle the very thing they were intended to promote..!
Litigation, even on this scale is unlikely to prevent piracy. As anti-piracy technology and techniques evolve, so will the technology and methods used in filesharing. How long until we have BitTorrent with TOR and encryption built in?
The copyright juntas will always be chasing the pirates tails, and unfortunately they're likely to continue throwing money at hopeless schemes like this until they've bankrupted themselves, rather than develop a successful business model for the 21st century.
Obviously it's impossible for the entire human race to relocate to an asteroid, but it would be a great place to establish the first human colony on an extraterrestrial body.
"With just a handful of men, we'll start - we'll start all over again"
If someone mentioned to a Microsoft Sales Exec the phrase "Well we have been considering Linux" or something similar, do you think that Exec's reply will be impartial and FUD-less?
Has Slashdot forgotten the 'Get the Facts' campaign and smear-site?
Microsoft are probably one of the dirtiest players in the software industry. The FSF will die a martyrs death if they don't drop some ethical pegs in order to level the playing field.
In a completely unrelated incident, a report published today claims to observe an 80% rise in productivity of Chinese office workers. Here's Jill with the weather.
Considering the UK Governments perchant for loosing data http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7103566.stm, I wouldn't be very inclined to volenteer any information whatsoever about my (not so distant) future children.
Until we learn how to properly control sensitive and personal data, It would be prudent to stop, or at least limit, how much we collect it.
TFA misses out one very important point. Lag. Lag is the primary concern amongst many EVE Online players. Certain areas of MMOs are more popular than others. Major Cities, battlegrounds, etc are places where large numbers of players congregate. Until we find a way to elminate the lag caused by sheer population density, single server MMOs are going to be strangled in what they can offer in terms of 'multiplayer'.
My heart goes out to the developers and contributors of the project, to loose 13 years of work must be devastating, especially when it's a commercial venture and people are depending on the project for income.
It begs an interesting point, The majority of OS projects are maintained online, does Slashdot think that the open source software model is more resilient to this type of attack?
Let this serve as an example to others: There is no replacement for off site, off line backups.
It isn't surprising that 8.3% of American teens are addicted to video games, especially since some video games such as Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOs) require vast amounts of time to be invested in order to progress and compete. In the majority of MMOs you progress by gaining levels, usually by killing X amount of enemies for X amount of experience creating extremely time consuming and repetitive gameplay.
As MMOs are by definition massively multiplayer the competitive element means that in order to compete you need to have equal or better equipment/level/skills as other players, which means that the people spending 40 hours a week grinding game content set the bar for the other players.
Also there's the social aspect, many tasks in MMOs require players to work in groups, so there's the pressure of playing in order to appease/help out your friends.
Combine that with the fact that the game developers are constantly moving the goalposts with every patch/expansion, thus reducing the relative value of your equipment/achievements/money requiring you need to invest even more time to remain competitive, and it's no surprise that hardcore gamers are neglecting work/school/family duties.
And the problem compounds itself. Say you get a D on an assignment because you stayed up the night before playing games. Disappointed with your grade, you're likely to go and play the computer game because being successful at a game gives you a sense of achievement and results in increased confidence. However, while you're busy spending hours gaining virtual achievements you're not completing your next assignment, so you fall into a loop of confidence highs and lows.
It all comes down to self discipline and good time management.
I speak from experience as someone who spent 3 years between the ages of 16 and 19 putting in 35+ hours a week to World of Warcraft and EVE Online, having to retake my A level exams and still ending doing on a foundation year. I don't use games as an excuse of my failure because it's down to lack of self discipline, but I'm sure that the nature of the games I played compounded the situation.
It's fairly obvious that this ruling will have little to no effect on illegal file sharing. When Universial, Warner Bros et al. realise this, how likely are they to keep pouring cash into the MPAA?
I think not very, considering a) we're in the middle of a recession, and nearly *all* companies are tightening their belts, and b)Soon they'll realise that chasing websites like TPB is like playing Whack-A-Mole : Hit one, and another two will spring up.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a biotech student who's very interested in this stuff. For anyone looking for an expanded explanation of the challenges facing cellulosic ethanol this blog post might be interesting. I've also written about the possible affects that large scale biofuel production may have on food security.
Cellulosic ethanol would be a big contribution to solving the impending energy crisis. Domestic waste and agricultural waste could be recylced into fuel to supplement demand to some extent, but in order to meet demand grain originally destined for food would have to be diverted. If not regulated properly this would likely cause an increase in global food prices. In a world with circa. 1 billion people starving, this is obviously less than ideal.
In the NES is a Super Mario Bros II cartridge, however the game being played on the TV is Super Mario Bros I. If this part is faked, I wonder what else in this story is fraudulent.
I find it amusing that a state rock even exists, let alone the fact that it's causing such a ruckus! You Americans!
*ruffles hair*
Sorry, but if you Merikans want to go ahead and play Terrorist Top Trumps, we've got about 150 years of history with the Provisional IRA to play with.
http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/List_of_terrorist_attacks/
I reckon about 90% of all Slashdotters made/did way more dangerous things when they were younger. I certainly did and I look forward to doing them with my kids too! It's like a ritual part of childhood in my family!
When it takes a good 10 minutes of trawling TFA and Wikipedia just to find out what ETI and PDI stand for and what a datamart is, you know that the product is hyped up just enough to be worthless.
Every patent issued effectively blocks off a segment of a market to competitors, creating a micro-monopoly. We are rapidly approaching a time where, due to patent trading large corporations are coming close to total ownership of a particular market.
America is the major culprit in all this patent absurdity. Behind the friendly face of enterprise and free capitalism lies a very different reality. Corporations with vast resources and political lobbying power apply for patents shotgun-style to prevent any form of competition, so that they can profit by driving down production costs giving consumers overpriced, low-quality products.
From the abuse of patent law comes state-sanctioned monopolies, which is reminiscient of Soviet communist economic practice.
China, a formerly Communist nation is far more capitalist than America these days.
Posting from the UK.
This was covered less concisely further up by BountyX, here are a few uses:
1. Using the personal data of the compromised accounts to make a person-specific dictionary to guess passwords and/or secret questions of other websites, including internet backing, eBay, Amazon etc.
2. Using the personal data of friends of compromised accounts to accomplish much the same thing as 1.
3. Sending spam to the email address associated with the account that are crafted to look like they're from friends.
4. Social Engineering 'hacks' such as IMing someone pretending to be their friend on a different IM account.
5. Grabbing pictures of beautiful girls from the photo album of the compromised account and friends. Think teenage girls. 4Chan will love this.
Which means, even if your account hasn't been owned and you change your password, you're still not safe from the wider ranging implications of this hack/security leak.
According to the Facebook statistics page the average account has 130 friends. If 1 in 300 accounts are compromised and you have circa 130 friends then the odds are quite high that the personal data you have "only available to friends" is going to become available to some fairly unfriendly people shortly.
Reminds me of the evertrue saying 'play with fire and you'll get burnt'. I have always been mindful of the threat FB poses to my privacy and have completely closed down my account several times, but keep giving in and going back due to peer pressure from family & friends. This time I'm killing it off for sure. No organization, be it governmental or corporate should have control over so much of an individuals personal data.
New species discovered on planet in hitherto insignificant Sol system!
Zarglwellian explorers discovered a species of egotistical bipeds with limited intelligence on a planet orbiting the Sol star yesterday morning. First contact was made in the Earth town of Lamesa, Texas, where intrepid Apheliousian space explorer Taivarg Artxe beamed down to the surface of the planet to be met by a collection of adorable beings armed with what appeared to be unsophisticated projectile weapons.
After initial greetings were exchanged, Taivarg explained to the bipeds using universal heiroglyphics that he was on an interstellar quest to find new and exciting crusine to offer to customers of his francise of fast food resturants. He announced to the collected bipeds that he had intended to eat them, and if they were sufficiently tasty, round up and cull his species before sending their remains to resturants around the universe, but he instead thinks that there's more profit marketing the human species as novelty pets for the children of Aphelion, and they should be thankful that their species will be used to bring happiness to billions of Aphelion's children instead of used for food.
So children, look out for new bipedal hooman pets, coming soon to a pet shop near you!
An Act to promote the progress of useful Arts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Act_of_1790
Patents were not intended to provide protection to investors. The patent system was initially devised to spread scientific knowledge, allowing interested parties access to the technical information behind new innovations. Such a shame that they're main use now is to stifle the very thing they were intended to promote..!
Litigation, even on this scale is unlikely to prevent piracy. As anti-piracy technology and techniques evolve, so will the technology and methods used in filesharing. How long until we have BitTorrent with TOR and encryption built in? The copyright juntas will always be chasing the pirates tails, and unfortunately they're likely to continue throwing money at hopeless schemes like this until they've bankrupted themselves, rather than develop a successful business model for the 21st century.
Obviously it's impossible for the entire human race to relocate to an asteroid, but it would be a great place to establish the first human colony on an extraterrestrial body.
"With just a handful of men, we'll start - we'll start all over again"
Open source? Check.
Looks stylish? Check.
Hardware built by reputable supplier? Check.
Did I mention it was open source?
I know what my next phone will be!
If someone mentioned to a Microsoft Sales Exec the phrase "Well we have been considering Linux" or something similar, do you think that Exec's reply will be impartial and FUD-less? Has Slashdot forgotten the 'Get the Facts' campaign and smear-site? Microsoft are probably one of the dirtiest players in the software industry. The FSF will die a martyrs death if they don't drop some ethical pegs in order to level the playing field.
That's the good thing about open source! All of the dirty hacks the devs use eventually get weeded out of the code as time goes on! Honest!
In a completely unrelated incident, a report published today claims to observe an 80% rise in productivity of Chinese office workers. Here's Jill with the weather.
Considering the UK Governments perchant for loosing data http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7103566.stm, I wouldn't be very inclined to volenteer any information whatsoever about my (not so distant) future children.
Until we learn how to properly control sensitive and personal data, It would be prudent to stop, or at least limit, how much we collect it.
TFA misses out one very important point.
Lag.
Lag is the primary concern amongst many EVE Online players. Certain areas of MMOs are more popular than others. Major Cities, battlegrounds, etc are places where large numbers of players congregate. Until we find a way to elminate the lag caused by sheer population density, single server MMOs are going to be strangled in what they can offer in terms of 'multiplayer'.
These guys are idiots for having their servers hackable
Would you mind telling me where I can obtain this unhackable server of which you speak?
I'll pay you a gazillion million dollars.
My heart goes out to the developers and contributors of the project, to loose 13 years of work must be devastating, especially when it's a commercial venture and people are depending on the project for income.
It begs an interesting point, The majority of OS projects are maintained online, does Slashdot think that the open source software model is more resilient to this type of attack?
Let this serve as an example to others: There is no replacement for off site, off line backups.
(Author of the parent) Apologies for the wall of text, There were breaks but apparently they disappeared! that'll teach me to use the preview button!
It isn't surprising that 8.3% of American teens are addicted to video games, especially since some video games such as Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOs) require vast amounts of time to be invested in order to progress and compete. In the majority of MMOs you progress by gaining levels, usually by killing X amount of enemies for X amount of experience creating extremely time consuming and repetitive gameplay. As MMOs are by definition massively multiplayer the competitive element means that in order to compete you need to have equal or better equipment/level/skills as other players, which means that the people spending 40 hours a week grinding game content set the bar for the other players. Also there's the social aspect, many tasks in MMOs require players to work in groups, so there's the pressure of playing in order to appease/help out your friends. Combine that with the fact that the game developers are constantly moving the goalposts with every patch/expansion, thus reducing the relative value of your equipment/achievements/money requiring you need to invest even more time to remain competitive, and it's no surprise that hardcore gamers are neglecting work/school/family duties. And the problem compounds itself. Say you get a D on an assignment because you stayed up the night before playing games. Disappointed with your grade, you're likely to go and play the computer game because being successful at a game gives you a sense of achievement and results in increased confidence. However, while you're busy spending hours gaining virtual achievements you're not completing your next assignment, so you fall into a loop of confidence highs and lows. It all comes down to self discipline and good time management. I speak from experience as someone who spent 3 years between the ages of 16 and 19 putting in 35+ hours a week to World of Warcraft and EVE Online, having to retake my A level exams and still ending doing on a foundation year. I don't use games as an excuse of my failure because it's down to lack of self discipline, but I'm sure that the nature of the games I played compounded the situation.
It's fairly obvious that this ruling will have little to no effect on illegal file sharing. When Universial, Warner Bros et al. realise this, how likely are they to keep pouring cash into the MPAA? I think not very, considering a) we're in the middle of a recession, and nearly *all* companies are tightening their belts, and b)Soon they'll realise that chasing websites like TPB is like playing Whack-A-Mole : Hit one, and another two will spring up.