Conversely, I can't help but feel like this article is just designed to put the idea into millions of readers' heads that you can go into a casino with a strategy or method or system and take home millions at the blackjack table. I can assure you that neither the Tropicana nor Borgata nor Caesars will be closing its doors anytime soon despite losing millions to this guy. If they do, it will be just to demolish the building to build an even bigger more expensive casino on top of the site.
Going to Atlantic City is a mistake, putting any real money down on a blackjack table is a bigger one. The casinos I've been to actually promote handing out these little cards that tell you (statistically) what to do given your two cards and what the dealer is showing. They want you playing "perfect cards" because it's just a steady continuous stream into their pockets and you feel like you're doing everything correctly as it happens.
it's actual, real life, scientific research - published in a well read and respected peer reviewed medical journal.
I've got no problem with the original research being legit. I have a problem with the original research showing that for this historical data it statistically linked aspirin to reducing the risk of cancer. It didn't show that these people who took aspirin were also more likely to take supplemental vitamins nor did it attempt to show exactly how the aspirin worked its "miracle." Was there a control group? You have to understand that the reason I'm "wee weeing" (whatever the hell that means) singularity hub is that they took totally legit level headed scientific research and they jumped all the way up to this:
100-Year Old Wonder Drug Now Shown To Prevent Cancer and Heart Attacks
Now let me ask you, where in the research did it "show" in anyway how this prevents cancer? And the article itself was only worse. It's a statistical study on historical data and from your PBS link, they did it right:
How Aspirin May Help Prevent Certain Kinds of Cancer
Do you see the difference here? These singularists or futurists or whatever the hell you want to call them take this, which is like 50% and bump it all the way up to 100% and make it a universal truth. Then they extoll this about how they're living until the end of time and people get caught up in this. It's ridiculous and, yes, I'm going to call this out when I see it. I do call that half-truths and I do call that misinformation. We can be more clear about this and the people PBS interview are.
That part about the 114 year old man? That wasn't misinformation? The lead in that that was all you need? I was out of line to get annoyed by that?
100-Year Old Wonder Drug Now Shown To Prevent Cancer and Heart Attacks
Hmmm, that's odd, this "news" story reads like one of those ads trying to sell me something. Is this ancient Chinese secret or midwest housewife research?
For all the money spent on studies of aspirin, perhaps all the evidence anyone needs of its health benefits is the life of Walter Breuning, who lived to be 114 years old and aspirin was the only medication he ever took.
Oh, you just need a sample size of one? No need for that expensive tens of thousands double blind study, huh? And all he ever took was aspirin? We should refuse vaccines? And what the hell do you mean by "for all that money spent"? I find it odd that all three of the abstracts linked to in the article end with:
Funding
None.
Wait a second... *checks URL*
singularityhub.com
Oh son of a bitch, it's more misinformation and half truths from Ray Kurzweil's disciples. Now I have to guess which is which.
So I'm not a physicist (software guy) but I've taken a few physics classes. At an early age I found a tattered copy of George Gamow's One Two Three . . . Infinity which, although incorrect in some parts (I guess that's why they revised it and that's why 'speculations' was in the title), was perfectly written for my then fifth grade mind. It set me on a path toward science and a few weeks ago I saw the same 1960s Viking Press edition and flipped through it noticing what was slightly off and remembering it. I've since grown to love other obvious books like Hawking, Penrose, Hofstadter, etc.
So, quite simply, what are your favorite books for all minds young and old? Also, can you annotate which are written for the layman's entry into the given field and which are written to encompass the field for the researcher? I find that some books start off with the jargon so strong and the references and footnotes so thick that you start to have to reread every paragraph as they're clearly condensing entire historic papers into lengthy sentences. Any fiction books worthy of influencing your work and desires?
Not to raise any fears -- rather out of genuine curiosity -- what happens when the magnetic fields that hold the 90,000,000 degrees Celsius plasma in place fail or loser power on the Alcator C-Mod? I understand it's probably in prototype mode but what sort of safety advantages or disadvantages do Alcator C-Mod designs offer over conventional large scale designs? Does the plasma come into contact with the toroidal super conducting coil? Then what?
The Senate approved a bill Monday evening that deals with teaching of evolution and other scientific theories...
Well, there's your problem, right there. The overall concept of evolution is no longer a theory. Surely even the staunchest of Creationists must acknowledge the so called "short-term" evolution that gives us the ability to manipulate plants or breed wolves into dogs.
Yes, as with most fields, a long time ago there were sets of theories. Like prior to Watson and Crick, back when you had Darwinian Evolution, Larmarckian Evolution, etc. Not anymore though. You might have theories about very specific things in the field that might be impossible to prove -- like, say, what the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (LECA) looked like -- but Evolution is no longer a theory. The field moves forward while Tennessee makes themselves look like idiots from some forgotten era.
I pay almost zero attention to east coast media; mostly because they don't pay any attention to the west coast (except for Hollywood).
Yeah and us midwest coast people that read The Star Tribune? We should just totally ignore everything that's happening on the West and East coasts because attention isn't focused on us, the reader, one hundred percent of the time? I shouldn't partake in the enjoyment of the New York Times' excellent book reviews or international coverage because none of those happen to be about me where I live? I shouldn't read the LA Times because even though their 1992 riot coverage won them a Pulitzer, they didn't cover the riots that followed my college hockey team's national championship loss?
Seriously, this East coast/West coast bullshit has got to stop. Get over yourselves and appreciate good news with good factchecking and a budget to send your reporters to be first hand sources.
I'm drawing a blank here but about the only thing I can think of that would qualify as close to pornography is the part where Ender beats the shit out of that bully and the book talks about how his medical sheet reads "bruised testicle." Which, if two adolescent boys bruising up each other's private parts arouses you in anyway, you are probably the one that needs help.
The other possibility is that the book is too descriptive in some parts (maybe when Ender burrows into the giant's eye in the simulation?). And they're in ye olde Southern Cackalacky where the definition of pornography is just anything that gets too descriptive for their comfort. So, you know, like anything that's written well.
Or perhaps one of the parents caught wind that Orson Scott Card is Mormon and different and therefore evil. And then they looked up the White Horse Prophecy and put... wait, that's already far more reading and research than this individual is capable of.
Well there was that scene where Ender shows up at Petra's dorm wearing a sleeveless jean jacket with a utility belt and says that he heard the cable was broken... or wait, am I confusing Ender's Game with Logjammin'? I mean, clearly, they're basically the same thing.
Yeah, it's probably a lot more biased than it needs to be.
Thanks, sometimes I wonder if anyone ever notices my efforts.
But as for hating patent trolIs, are there many people who actually like them? Obviously some lawyers because it keeps them employed, but other than that?
Well, that's a tough question. I would imagine that they like themselves but not other patent trolls but I can't be sure if they hate themselves. Perhaps we should investigate if the rate of suicide is higher in patent trolls? On a more serious note, there is one odd person that likes patents: nationalists. Whether you be a member of the US government or just a good ole fashion rah rah USA nutjob, there is a growing intellectual war between the United States and China. Sure, other countries like Japan get a lot of patents but patent trolls translate to "innovation" when it comes to number of patents and, let's face it, it's patent trolls that file for the most patents without actually building anything or licensing anything. I guess you could argue that they hurt the economy when small businesses get blindsided by these lawsuits but they always target the deepest coffers which usually seem to be happy to cough up and settle out of court. I can't think of anyone else really that benefits from this -- even the courtrooms in East Texas are clogged with shitty patent cases while trying to take care of real problems among the local people.
And is there anyone who tries to make a case that they are somehow beneficial to society? (serious questions BTW. I've never heard any argument in support of this practice)
Well, your question could be answered by This American Life's Episode 441 but there's a key problem. First, in that podcast, Intellectual Ventures argues that they help inventors protect their IP by suing the shit out of everyone that tries to implement anything remotely like the patents in question. And they also claim that they constantly license patents to people without involving a painful legal battle. However, as the TAL team asks for a happy license customer, IV can only give them one name of someone whose patent they license. And, gosh darn it, wouldn't you know it, as they tried to contact this individual it turned out that Intellectual Ventures was going around suing people and gathering out of court settlements in the name of that patent without the right to. And IV's response to this? Us normal people don't know what the hell we're talking about.
So there you go, sorry for the bias in my submission and this post but, well, when it warrants it I'm not afraid to call horseshit horseshit.
Wasn't the problem here not that what Daisey reported was false, but just that he didn't directly speak to people he claimed to speak with? Of course from a journalistic standpoint that is awful but it is now sweeping these problems under the rug.
Foxconn can now act like there were no problems and ignore them just because the source used was a secondary source reported as a primary source.
So, being an avid TAL fan, here are some things I remember from the two episodes that he lied about (remember Cathy Lee was his translator):
Guards with guns (in fact, Cathy has never seen one)
Factory workers meeting at Starbucks
Visited 10 factories (he only visited 3 according to Cathy)
Meeting N-Hexane victims
meeting underage workers (he actually guessed a bunch of young looking girls' ages)
meeting a hundred factory workers (play says 100, Daisey later says 25-30 now cathy says 2 or 3)
metal press victim who was fired for workin too slowly
a lot of the emotional interractions with Cathy
he presented himself as a "writer/actor" to Cathy but influenced our impression of Apple
didn't go on the exit ramp with Cathy
did go to dorm rooms for workers but lied about cameras in them
Cathy claims she never separated with Mike at the factory
Cathy says he never spoke to workers in English
he lied about Cathy's availability and phone number to occlude This American Life's factchecking
The things that really worry me are he calls this "unpacking the complexities of how the stories get told" or "untying the story" in the second episode. This guy reminds me of the religious leaders from my youth who will tell you complex lies about their own personal experiences and they justify it by the fact that you are duped into believing past a mark that the evidence justifies. It's gross and disgusting that he washes his hands of it and calls his thing a performance while never straightening out TAL on the specifics.
Like you said, some of the things happened but at what scale? Daisey makes it sound like you could fly there and pick a factory and you'd find it all. Good for TAL for devoting a full hour to what they had misrepresented. I'm still a huge TAL fan.
And every time you think twitter and blogging and Slashdot have replaced modern journalism, behold the above danger.
Anyone that has played Scrabble (especially against a computer) know that there's tons of words out there that no one has ever heard of, most of which you can't even find a definition for. What the hell is a Qi? I don't know, but I can get 66 points for it.
Qi is a simple one, it's a two letter word and there are roughly a hundred two letter words accepted by TWL which are hackable. Qi is also something I've seen reading Chinese philosophy so that doesn't really upset me. The ones that really get me when I play against computers or people who cheat are actually the longer ones. Recently I have seen outgnawn, aliquot, mahoes, votive, the list goes on when your friends are using websites to look up permutations.
You can study this stuff and memorize things like I-dumps: ziti, ilia, ixia, inion, etc. But in the end what really got my scores higher was studying the short 2 and 3 letter words and building thick crossword-like packs of words especially over TL tiles.
The NASA video constantly reiterates that it's a 'common event' while trying to make it still sound cool even telling you about coronal cavities and filaments. The Register, with complete disregard for knowledge, skips this part and goes straight to alien's fueling up on the sun, Death Star references, etc. Slashdot blows all of that away, changes it from spherical to triangle (not sure where that came from) and clings to doomsday theories.
Everyone profits but NASA. Just like the History Channel, sacrifice your integrity for aliens and conspiracies to maximize profit.
Did you know that farmers don't grow just wheat? They actually grow chaff! I'm not kidding, they grow chaff literally around the wheat! Billions of dollars are wasted every year as stupid farmers grow chaff and then waste time separating it from the wheat to discard it. And they don't even burn it for fuel, they often return it back to the soil or feed it to their cattle for roughage and silage! What a waste! Sitting from my high and mighty armchair computer throne, it would save them billions of dollars to listen to me.
It's the "information superhighway" and, just like a physical superhighway, everything is impersonal. Somebody cuts you off and drives slow in front of you and you mutter an oath under your breath. Because you don't see a mother and her newborn, you see a big hunk of metal. There is no community on the pavement of the interstates, it's basically every person for themselves. On the highway, discourse is one-way and usually pretty foul. If they had budged in front of you in the supermarket, you might say "pardon me but I'm in line" or just let it go and imagine her life to be a lot more hectic with a newborn. I surmise that bumper stickers are an actual attempt to let someone know you belong to their community -- although with my luck it's always some conservative with a Ken Cuccinelli bumper sticker reminding me of how much I absolutely loathe living in The South (but I digress).
Similarly, sites without a community are going to have absolute crap for comments. These aren't people trying to establish a reputation in a community. They don't want to help people or take time to share their views and vision. They have something to say -- could be negative or positive -- and they will say it with little disregard for others. It will be curt, it will be one sided and it will most likely be harsh. Communities are as rare on the "information superhighway" as they are on the real highways of America. Very few parts of the country have people willing to let you in and rarely you might feel an affinity with another person driving your preferred make or model of car or displaying your bumper sticker for your preferred asshole... er... politician. Discourse doesn't happen without community. Community is protected by moderation (usually which affects visibility). And communities seem to thrive or have a feedback effect when discourse is strong, respectful and healthy. Gawker, Jezebel, Gizmodo, io9 and Lifehacker have none of the above -- and if they have moderation it is heavy handed deletionary censorship. So all they get is drive-by shootings or white panel vans with painted over windows offering free candy.
Side note: if you've read this far, you've already exhibited a mild disposition towards a community as I don't think this post (in its entirety) would be read by anyone on the aforementioned sites. If those sites don't establish anything they are doomed to have specious comments.
This is possibly the most deliberately confusing way to try to explain our chances of war to anyone. Twenty minutes to midnight means a 0% chance? Why are we restricting a scale designed to have 720 minutes to just 20? This is just designed to scare people (for whatever reason) into thinking war is more probable than it really is. I have no problem with the panel, just the manner in which they displayed their results.
I thought the same thing. Why not simply say "48% chance of war by December 2012"? Another thing I found quite humorous was that this is titled "The Iran War Clock" which made me think 'damn those war mongering religious fundamentalists' but then when I get to the end of the summary I see they reference a "U.S./Israeli strike" which makes me think 'perhaps this should be called The U.S./Isreali War Clock'? I mean, is this clock about Iran nuking a neighbor or Israel? Or is this clock about the US and Israel tag-teaming on Iran? Or is it a split and, if so, what's that split on the 48%?
And yet another peculiar thing was that I searched around for the panel's positions and stances of each member in order to understand why this war clock is now at ten minutes and how this is any different than, say, the past twenty years of Iran. It's a coin flip that war will break out by the end of the year? Hasn't this always been sort of the sentiment with Iran? What makes this so different now, specifically?
While sympathetic to the fact that Sabu's children may have influenced his decision, he didn't understand how Sabu could have put his family at risk in the first place. "Why would you get involved with something like this if you had kids that relied on you?" he asked. "If I had kids I would get a 'responsible' job/hobby."
It appears that his children and their future were used against him to coerce him into snitching on LulzSec.
It appears that Sabu's children were an exploited liability. Would you risk your loved ones for your ideals? Or is your answer still simply and obviously "fuck snitches"?
And since you're quoting imaginary Disney characters, I'll remind you <Scarface spoiler alert> of the scene in Scarface where they're going to blow up a car of a politician's family in order to stop legislation but at the last moment Scarface realizes there are children in the vehicle and instead shoots the bomber in the face? Yeah, Scarface is a traitor at that point but... you know... he's a conflicted man with an internal conflict between morals and money. Sabu could have very much so been in a similar position.
Yeah I would have mentioned the annotation features in Word, Excel and Adobe Reader.
Hmmm, I wasn't aware that these products allowed you to connect to a centralized server for storing/receiving annotations as far back as 2005. Are you sure you're not confusing the functionality to store them on the documents themselves? The first line of the patent summary reads:
Methods and systems for receiving and distributing annotations of a digital work include receiving an annotation of the digital work, storing the annotation, and providing the annotation to a user.
Emphasis mine. I remember being able to save notes and annotations on documents in Word but if those are changed or updated or added to, they wouldn't get these changes until they got my new version of the document.
I think I smell at least one example of prior art.
Ughhhh, Unknown Lamer, you're making defend an Amazon patent. The earliest timestamp I can find for Okular is August 27th, 2006 while the patent in question was filed a year and a half earlier on January 19th, 2005. I'm not saying that there is no prior art, I'm just saying I couldn't find any hard evidence of Okular being conceived prior to Amazon's patent. Now I have to go take a shower...
I didn't see Handbrake on that page of search results from Freecode so I thought I'd offer this up as well. Fairly simple interface, runs flawlessly on Windows 7 and Ubuntu for me. Open source and easy way to get DVDs into m4v format. Plus there are preset resolutions for things like iPhones, iPods and I found the resolution for a PSP. So basically I spend my flights with circumaural Sennheisers and Futurama or MST3K playing on my PSP -- the worse part about that setup being that Sony's memory card cost me a ton. So far it's ripped the blu-rays I've put in just fine as well.
Rip them to m4v and host them with PS3 Media Server and then they're good to play over your network to your PS3 or XBox 360 (and probably any other UPnP compliant device).
Do I feel guilty that I have shelled out $35+ for each of the 22 sets of MST3K and each season of Futurama and then violated copyright to move said shows onto any device capable of playing video? Not one fucking bit. Go ahead and do your little song and dance, I've got my shit figured out (thank you open source!).
It has been brought to our attention that you have an insightful idea that you wish to openly publish. At our firm "Dickweed, Asshole and Soulless" we value honesty and the truth but not as much as we value a large legal battle regarding your slanderous and libelous post. I don't feel the need to elucidate on what exactly we could charge you with but I would like to remind you that our clients are very powerful companies. Furthermore my colleague Chet Percy Soulless, Esquire takes a very personal pleasure in heading up cases against individuals such as yourself. On his desk is a ledger full of haikus devoted to this very topic mixed with poems of a rabbits dying breath as his white knuckled hands deny any more oxygen to its lungs -- this tome's title being "Satiated Bloodlust" golden embossed on what appears to be human skin. But I digress.
Letters similar to this one have been sent to Slashdot and various other users who have already agreed not to post such dangerous and unfounded ideas such as yours. So remember that, before you hit submit on the above post, you will be hearing from our firm if you do.
Cyber-war and cyber-security and cyber-whatever you want to call it is not like nuclear war. Cyber-warfare is happening now and governments responsible for it (and I'm sorry for sounding so biased but this is largely the Chinese) are denying they're attacking anyone. And they can do this because a large number of attacks don't cause immediate harm to the victims. Nobody was launching nuclear missiles (or allowing another nation to launch nuclear missiles on their soil) during the cold war and then saying "Wow, *cough* *cough* I have no idea who launched those missiles!" But time and time again we see "attacks" from Chinese IP addresses and the Chinese government saying "Help us catch these criminals, *snicker*, they are too wily for we, the stupid Chinese who manage to control our populace with a giant firewall but can neither detect nor trace these attacks from within our borders."
Old fashioned diplomatic horse trading will also be a critical tool for avoiding conflict and stemming the kinds of economic and military espionage that have become common in recent years.
As I stated above, I feel that the "economic and military espionage" is largely coming from one or two perpetrators. China will simply agree to everything, take the bargaining chip (whatever it is) from the US and then continue to play dumb.
In fact, the country's leaders are anxious to hear the opinions of U.S. policy experts on what an effective cyber war doctrine and policy should look like.
Right, right, "Excuse me, what are the rules so I know how to toe the line but still remain in good standing with the UN... er, screw them, the WTO?"
This gem was really humorous:
"We as a nation know what steps we need to take to reduce our risk in cyber space," said Lewis of CSIS. "We may not want to, politically, but we know what those steps are."
A hot topic of conversation now within policy circles, cyber war is likely to end up as just another weapon in the arsenal of the U.S., China and other advanced nations, said Lewis. "People will figure out how to use it."
People will figure out how to use it? Now get off your lawn? Buddy if you can't take the time to pick up the paper or turn on CNN and watch 15-year olds downloading point'n'click bots to be a part of Anonymous, you don't deserve the title of "Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies." Let me assure you, people do know how to use it. Ragtag groups of teenagers roving the globe can band together and effectively use it. I'm sure governments aren't as ignorantly bumbling to catch up like they want us to believe.
A single shuttle launch costs that much, in today's dollars.
Seriously, guys?
I interpreted that as "the concept" referring to the Mars mission. So, yeah, I could see how $700 million would be a bit much to go into orbit, do some science lab experiments and land... but when you're planning for Mars (especially manned which is what I thought they were talking about) I can understand a vast increase to your budget.
I think I'll hate the patents themselves. Another ridiculous patent suit wasting the time and money of the courts.
Here, let me help you hate.
Take, just for a quick example, Patent 5133075 (filed in 1988 granted on July 21, 1992) that is cited from the Amazon patent mentioned at the end of the summary (filed in 2011 granted on February 28, 2012). As a lowly software developer, Patent 5133075 reads like a now commonly used pub/sub paradigm. It's basically the opposite of polling. Where, for the longest time, the bulk of software projects would continually ask a central authority (like a database) for updates. So every five seconds you say "Do you have anything new for me yet? No? Okay, I'm asking again in five seconds" ad infinitum. Now, with one client, this is probably not a big problem. But as your number of clients increases this becomes impossible (usually on the network end of things, you DDOS yourself). So the idea becomes for that central authority to allow clients to register somewhere these updates should be shipped and whenever anything changes or something new comes in, you simply send it to everyone who's subscribed to that. It's a publish and subscribe method and we call it pub/sub. Undergrad (probably high school now) concept.
So with that in mind, Amazon's patent in the summary reads with this final sentence: "The system may also automatically notify users of personal information updates made by their respective contacts." Oh, okay, so you took a now commonly used paradigm and applied it to social networking. Congratulations. Surely Twitter and Facebook were doing this before 2011 but what idiot allows a company to include any language like this in a patent? That's not an invention, it's not even really a derivative of an old invention. It's taking an old solution and applying it the same way we've been using it for almost twenty years. And now this new piece of shit is dated February 2012 and we have to deal with this unadulterated human feces for another twenty years? *head explode*
Slashdot Mirror
That's how it's done ...
Conversely, I can't help but feel like this article is just designed to put the idea into millions of readers' heads that you can go into a casino with a strategy or method or system and take home millions at the blackjack table. I can assure you that neither the Tropicana nor Borgata nor Caesars will be closing its doors anytime soon despite losing millions to this guy. If they do, it will be just to demolish the building to build an even bigger more expensive casino on top of the site.
Going to Atlantic City is a mistake, putting any real money down on a blackjack table is a bigger one. The casinos I've been to actually promote handing out these little cards that tell you (statistically) what to do given your two cards and what the dealer is showing. They want you playing "perfect cards" because it's just a steady continuous stream into their pockets and you feel like you're doing everything correctly as it happens.
it's actual, real life, scientific research - published in a well read and respected peer reviewed medical journal.
I've got no problem with the original research being legit. I have a problem with the original research showing that for this historical data it statistically linked aspirin to reducing the risk of cancer. It didn't show that these people who took aspirin were also more likely to take supplemental vitamins nor did it attempt to show exactly how the aspirin worked its "miracle." Was there a control group? You have to understand that the reason I'm "wee weeing" (whatever the hell that means) singularity hub is that they took totally legit level headed scientific research and they jumped all the way up to this:
100-Year Old Wonder Drug Now Shown To Prevent Cancer and Heart Attacks
Now let me ask you, where in the research did it "show" in anyway how this prevents cancer? And the article itself was only worse. It's a statistical study on historical data and from your PBS link, they did it right:
How Aspirin May Help Prevent Certain Kinds of Cancer
Do you see the difference here? These singularists or futurists or whatever the hell you want to call them take this, which is like 50% and bump it all the way up to 100% and make it a universal truth. Then they extoll this about how they're living until the end of time and people get caught up in this. It's ridiculous and, yes, I'm going to call this out when I see it. I do call that half-truths and I do call that misinformation. We can be more clear about this and the people PBS interview are.
That part about the 114 year old man? That wasn't misinformation? The lead in that that was all you need? I was out of line to get annoyed by that?
100-Year Old Wonder Drug Now Shown To Prevent Cancer and Heart Attacks
Hmmm, that's odd, this "news" story reads like one of those ads trying to sell me something. Is this ancient Chinese secret or midwest housewife research?
For all the money spent on studies of aspirin, perhaps all the evidence anyone needs of its health benefits is the life of Walter Breuning, who lived to be 114 years old and aspirin was the only medication he ever took.
Oh, you just need a sample size of one? No need for that expensive tens of thousands double blind study, huh? And all he ever took was aspirin? We should refuse vaccines? And what the hell do you mean by "for all that money spent"? I find it odd that all three of the abstracts linked to in the article end with:
Funding
None.
Wait a second ... *checks URL*
singularityhub.com
Oh son of a bitch, it's more misinformation and half truths from Ray Kurzweil's disciples. Now I have to guess which is which.
So I'm not a physicist (software guy) but I've taken a few physics classes. At an early age I found a tattered copy of George Gamow's One Two Three . . . Infinity which, although incorrect in some parts (I guess that's why they revised it and that's why 'speculations' was in the title), was perfectly written for my then fifth grade mind. It set me on a path toward science and a few weeks ago I saw the same 1960s Viking Press edition and flipped through it noticing what was slightly off and remembering it. I've since grown to love other obvious books like Hawking, Penrose, Hofstadter, etc.
So, quite simply, what are your favorite books for all minds young and old? Also, can you annotate which are written for the layman's entry into the given field and which are written to encompass the field for the researcher? I find that some books start off with the jargon so strong and the references and footnotes so thick that you start to have to reread every paragraph as they're clearly condensing entire historic papers into lengthy sentences. Any fiction books worthy of influencing your work and desires?
Not to raise any fears -- rather out of genuine curiosity -- what happens when the magnetic fields that hold the 90,000,000 degrees Celsius plasma in place fail or loser power on the Alcator C-Mod? I understand it's probably in prototype mode but what sort of safety advantages or disadvantages do Alcator C-Mod designs offer over conventional large scale designs? Does the plasma come into contact with the toroidal super conducting coil? Then what?
The Senate approved a bill Monday evening that deals with teaching of evolution and other scientific theories ...
Well, there's your problem, right there. The overall concept of evolution is no longer a theory. Surely even the staunchest of Creationists must acknowledge the so called "short-term" evolution that gives us the ability to manipulate plants or breed wolves into dogs.
Yes, as with most fields, a long time ago there were sets of theories. Like prior to Watson and Crick, back when you had Darwinian Evolution, Larmarckian Evolution, etc. Not anymore though. You might have theories about very specific things in the field that might be impossible to prove -- like, say, what the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (LECA) looked like -- but Evolution is no longer a theory. The field moves forward while Tennessee makes themselves look like idiots from some forgotten era.
I pay almost zero attention to east coast media; mostly because they don't pay any attention to the west coast (except for Hollywood).
Yeah and us midwest coast people that read The Star Tribune? We should just totally ignore everything that's happening on the West and East coasts because attention isn't focused on us, the reader, one hundred percent of the time? I shouldn't partake in the enjoyment of the New York Times' excellent book reviews or international coverage because none of those happen to be about me where I live? I shouldn't read the LA Times because even though their 1992 riot coverage won them a Pulitzer, they didn't cover the riots that followed my college hockey team's national championship loss?
Seriously, this East coast/West coast bullshit has got to stop. Get over yourselves and appreciate good news with good factchecking and a budget to send your reporters to be first hand sources.
I'm drawing a blank here but about the only thing I can think of that would qualify as close to pornography is the part where Ender beats the shit out of that bully and the book talks about how his medical sheet reads "bruised testicle." Which, if two adolescent boys bruising up each other's private parts arouses you in anyway, you are probably the one that needs help.
... wait, that's already far more reading and research than this individual is capable of.
The other possibility is that the book is too descriptive in some parts (maybe when Ender burrows into the giant's eye in the simulation?). And they're in ye olde Southern Cackalacky where the definition of pornography is just anything that gets too descriptive for their comfort. So, you know, like anything that's written well.
Or perhaps one of the parents caught wind that Orson Scott Card is Mormon and different and therefore evil. And then they looked up the White Horse Prophecy and put
Well there was that scene where Ender shows up at Petra's dorm wearing a sleeveless jean jacket with a utility belt and says that he heard the cable was broken ... or wait, am I confusing Ender's Game with Logjammin'? I mean, clearly, they're basically the same thing.
Yeah, it's probably a lot more biased than it needs to be.
Thanks, sometimes I wonder if anyone ever notices my efforts.
But as for hating patent trolIs, are there many people who actually like them? Obviously some lawyers because it keeps them employed, but other than that?
Well, that's a tough question. I would imagine that they like themselves but not other patent trolls but I can't be sure if they hate themselves. Perhaps we should investigate if the rate of suicide is higher in patent trolls? On a more serious note, there is one odd person that likes patents: nationalists. Whether you be a member of the US government or just a good ole fashion rah rah USA nutjob, there is a growing intellectual war between the United States and China. Sure, other countries like Japan get a lot of patents but patent trolls translate to "innovation" when it comes to number of patents and, let's face it, it's patent trolls that file for the most patents without actually building anything or licensing anything. I guess you could argue that they hurt the economy when small businesses get blindsided by these lawsuits but they always target the deepest coffers which usually seem to be happy to cough up and settle out of court. I can't think of anyone else really that benefits from this -- even the courtrooms in East Texas are clogged with shitty patent cases while trying to take care of real problems among the local people.
And is there anyone who tries to make a case that they are somehow beneficial to society? (serious questions BTW. I've never heard any argument in support of this practice)
Well, your question could be answered by This American Life's Episode 441 but there's a key problem. First, in that podcast, Intellectual Ventures argues that they help inventors protect their IP by suing the shit out of everyone that tries to implement anything remotely like the patents in question. And they also claim that they constantly license patents to people without involving a painful legal battle. However, as the TAL team asks for a happy license customer, IV can only give them one name of someone whose patent they license. And, gosh darn it, wouldn't you know it, as they tried to contact this individual it turned out that Intellectual Ventures was going around suing people and gathering out of court settlements in the name of that patent without the right to. And IV's response to this? Us normal people don't know what the hell we're talking about.
So there you go, sorry for the bias in my submission and this post but, well, when it warrants it I'm not afraid to call horseshit horseshit.
Wasn't the problem here not that what Daisey reported was false, but just that he didn't directly speak to people he claimed to speak with? Of course from a journalistic standpoint that is awful but it is now sweeping these problems under the rug.
Foxconn can now act like there were no problems and ignore them just because the source used was a secondary source reported as a primary source.
So, being an avid TAL fan, here are some things I remember from the two episodes that he lied about (remember Cathy Lee was his translator):
The things that really worry me are he calls this "unpacking the complexities of how the stories get told" or "untying the story" in the second episode. This guy reminds me of the religious leaders from my youth who will tell you complex lies about their own personal experiences and they justify it by the fact that you are duped into believing past a mark that the evidence justifies. It's gross and disgusting that he washes his hands of it and calls his thing a performance while never straightening out TAL on the specifics.
Like you said, some of the things happened but at what scale? Daisey makes it sound like you could fly there and pick a factory and you'd find it all. Good for TAL for devoting a full hour to what they had misrepresented. I'm still a huge TAL fan.
And every time you think twitter and blogging and Slashdot have replaced modern journalism, behold the above danger.
Anyone that has played Scrabble (especially against a computer) know that there's tons of words out there that no one has ever heard of, most of which you can't even find a definition for. What the hell is a Qi? I don't know, but I can get 66 points for it.
Qi is a simple one, it's a two letter word and there are roughly a hundred two letter words accepted by TWL which are hackable. Qi is also something I've seen reading Chinese philosophy so that doesn't really upset me. The ones that really get me when I play against computers or people who cheat are actually the longer ones. Recently I have seen outgnawn, aliquot, mahoes, votive, the list goes on when your friends are using websites to look up permutations.
You can study this stuff and memorize things like I-dumps: ziti, ilia, ixia, inion, etc. But in the end what really got my scores higher was studying the short 2 and 3 letter words and building thick crossword-like packs of words especially over TL tiles.
The NASA video constantly reiterates that it's a 'common event' while trying to make it still sound cool even telling you about coronal cavities and filaments. The Register, with complete disregard for knowledge, skips this part and goes straight to alien's fueling up on the sun, Death Star references, etc. Slashdot blows all of that away, changes it from spherical to triangle (not sure where that came from) and clings to doomsday theories.
Everyone profits but NASA. Just like the History Channel, sacrifice your integrity for aliens and conspiracies to maximize profit.
Did you know that farmers don't grow just wheat? They actually grow chaff! I'm not kidding, they grow chaff literally around the wheat! Billions of dollars are wasted every year as stupid farmers grow chaff and then waste time separating it from the wheat to discard it. And they don't even burn it for fuel, they often return it back to the soil or feed it to their cattle for roughage and silage! What a waste! Sitting from my high and mighty armchair computer throne, it would save them billions of dollars to listen to me.
It's the "information superhighway" and, just like a physical superhighway, everything is impersonal. Somebody cuts you off and drives slow in front of you and you mutter an oath under your breath. Because you don't see a mother and her newborn, you see a big hunk of metal. There is no community on the pavement of the interstates, it's basically every person for themselves. On the highway, discourse is one-way and usually pretty foul. If they had budged in front of you in the supermarket, you might say "pardon me but I'm in line" or just let it go and imagine her life to be a lot more hectic with a newborn. I surmise that bumper stickers are an actual attempt to let someone know you belong to their community -- although with my luck it's always some conservative with a Ken Cuccinelli bumper sticker reminding me of how much I absolutely loathe living in The South (but I digress).
... er ... politician. Discourse doesn't happen without community. Community is protected by moderation (usually which affects visibility). And communities seem to thrive or have a feedback effect when discourse is strong, respectful and healthy. Gawker, Jezebel, Gizmodo, io9 and Lifehacker have none of the above -- and if they have moderation it is heavy handed deletionary censorship. So all they get is drive-by shootings or white panel vans with painted over windows offering free candy.
Similarly, sites without a community are going to have absolute crap for comments. These aren't people trying to establish a reputation in a community. They don't want to help people or take time to share their views and vision. They have something to say -- could be negative or positive -- and they will say it with little disregard for others. It will be curt, it will be one sided and it will most likely be harsh. Communities are as rare on the "information superhighway" as they are on the real highways of America. Very few parts of the country have people willing to let you in and rarely you might feel an affinity with another person driving your preferred make or model of car or displaying your bumper sticker for your preferred asshole
Side note: if you've read this far, you've already exhibited a mild disposition towards a community as I don't think this post (in its entirety) would be read by anyone on the aforementioned sites. If those sites don't establish anything they are doomed to have specious comments.
This is possibly the most deliberately confusing way to try to explain our chances of war to anyone. Twenty minutes to midnight means a 0% chance? Why are we restricting a scale designed to have 720 minutes to just 20? This is just designed to scare people (for whatever reason) into thinking war is more probable than it really is. I have no problem with the panel, just the manner in which they displayed their results.
I thought the same thing. Why not simply say "48% chance of war by December 2012"? Another thing I found quite humorous was that this is titled "The Iran War Clock" which made me think 'damn those war mongering religious fundamentalists' but then when I get to the end of the summary I see they reference a "U.S./Israeli strike" which makes me think 'perhaps this should be called The U.S./Isreali War Clock'? I mean, is this clock about Iran nuking a neighbor or Israel? Or is this clock about the US and Israel tag-teaming on Iran? Or is it a split and, if so, what's that split on the 48%?
And yet another peculiar thing was that I searched around for the panel's positions and stances of each member in order to understand why this war clock is now at ten minutes and how this is any different than, say, the past twenty years of Iran. It's a coin flip that war will break out by the end of the year? Hasn't this always been sort of the sentiment with Iran? What makes this so different now, specifically?
While sympathetic to the fact that Sabu's children may have influenced his decision, he didn't understand how Sabu could have put his family at risk in the first place. "Why would you get involved with something like this if you had kids that relied on you?" he asked. "If I had kids I would get a 'responsible' job/hobby."
It appears that his children and their future were used against him to coerce him into snitching on LulzSec.
... you know ... he's a conflicted man with an internal conflict between morals and money. Sabu could have very much so been in a similar position.
... well ... that doesn't mean the situation is completely black and white.
It appears that Sabu's children were an exploited liability. Would you risk your loved ones for your ideals? Or is your answer still simply and obviously "fuck snitches"?
And since you're quoting imaginary Disney characters, I'll remind you <Scarface spoiler alert> of the scene in Scarface where they're going to blow up a car of a politician's family in order to stop legislation but at the last moment Scarface realizes there are children in the vehicle and instead shoots the bomber in the face? Yeah, Scarface is a traitor at that point but
Please note, this Sabu character appears to be an unsavory character with delusions of grandeur who maybe should have his children taken away from him anyway but
Yeah I would have mentioned the annotation features in Word, Excel and Adobe Reader.
Hmmm, I wasn't aware that these products allowed you to connect to a centralized server for storing/receiving annotations as far back as 2005. Are you sure you're not confusing the functionality to store them on the documents themselves? The first line of the patent summary reads:
Methods and systems for receiving and distributing annotations of a digital work include receiving an annotation of the digital work, storing the annotation, and providing the annotation to a user.
Emphasis mine. I remember being able to save notes and annotations on documents in Word but if those are changed or updated or added to, they wouldn't get these changes until they got my new version of the document.
I think I smell at least one example of prior art.
Ughhhh, Unknown Lamer, you're making defend an Amazon patent. The earliest timestamp I can find for Okular is August 27th, 2006 while the patent in question was filed a year and a half earlier on January 19th, 2005. I'm not saying that there is no prior art, I'm just saying I couldn't find any hard evidence of Okular being conceived prior to Amazon's patent. Now I have to go take a shower ...
I didn't see Handbrake on that page of search results from Freecode so I thought I'd offer this up as well. Fairly simple interface, runs flawlessly on Windows 7 and Ubuntu for me. Open source and easy way to get DVDs into m4v format. Plus there are preset resolutions for things like iPhones, iPods and I found the resolution for a PSP. So basically I spend my flights with circumaural Sennheisers and Futurama or MST3K playing on my PSP -- the worse part about that setup being that Sony's memory card cost me a ton. So far it's ripped the blu-rays I've put in just fine as well.
Rip them to m4v and host them with PS3 Media Server and then they're good to play over your network to your PS3 or XBox 360 (and probably any other UPnP compliant device).
Do I feel guilty that I have shelled out $35+ for each of the 22 sets of MST3K and each season of Futurama and then violated copyright to move said shows onto any device capable of playing video? Not one fucking bit. Go ahead and do your little song and dance, I've got my shit figured out (thank you open source!).
Dear Sir or Madam,
It has been brought to our attention that you have an insightful idea that you wish to openly publish. At our firm "Dickweed, Asshole and Soulless" we value honesty and the truth but not as much as we value a large legal battle regarding your slanderous and libelous post. I don't feel the need to elucidate on what exactly we could charge you with but I would like to remind you that our clients are very powerful companies. Furthermore my colleague Chet Percy Soulless, Esquire takes a very personal pleasure in heading up cases against individuals such as yourself. On his desk is a ledger full of haikus devoted to this very topic mixed with poems of a rabbits dying breath as his white knuckled hands deny any more oxygen to its lungs -- this tome's title being "Satiated Bloodlust" golden embossed on what appears to be human skin. But I digress.
Letters similar to this one have been sent to Slashdot and various other users who have already agreed not to post such dangerous and unfounded ideas such as yours. So remember that, before you hit submit on the above post, you will be hearing from our firm if you do.
Ambiguously threateningly yours,
Alfred A. Asshole, Barred Attorney
... Can it knock out out my PC and if so how can I protect it?
It's sort of a slippery slope toward insanity ...
Old fashioned diplomatic horse trading will also be a critical tool for avoiding conflict and stemming the kinds of economic and military espionage that have become common in recent years.
As I stated above, I feel that the "economic and military espionage" is largely coming from one or two perpetrators. China will simply agree to everything, take the bargaining chip (whatever it is) from the US and then continue to play dumb.
In fact, the country's leaders are anxious to hear the opinions of U.S. policy experts on what an effective cyber war doctrine and policy should look like.
Right, right, "Excuse me, what are the rules so I know how to toe the line but still remain in good standing with the UN ... er, screw them, the WTO?"
This gem was really humorous:
"We as a nation know what steps we need to take to reduce our risk in cyber space," said Lewis of CSIS. "We may not want to, politically, but we know what those steps are."
A hot topic of conversation now within policy circles, cyber war is likely to end up as just another weapon in the arsenal of the U.S., China and other advanced nations, said Lewis. "People will figure out how to use it."
People will figure out how to use it? Now get off your lawn? Buddy if you can't take the time to pick up the paper or turn on CNN and watch 15-year olds downloading point'n'click bots to be a part of Anonymous, you don't deserve the title of "Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies." Let me assure you, people do know how to use it. Ragtag groups of teenagers roving the globe can band together and effectively use it. I'm sure governments aren't as ignorantly bumbling to catch up like they want us to believe.
A single shuttle launch costs that much, in today's dollars.
Seriously, guys?
I interpreted that as "the concept" referring to the Mars mission. So, yeah, I could see how $700 million would be a bit much to go into orbit, do some science lab experiments and land ... but when you're planning for Mars (especially manned which is what I thought they were talking about) I can understand a vast increase to your budget.
I think I'll hate the patents themselves. Another ridiculous patent suit wasting the time and money of the courts.
Here, let me help you hate.
Take, just for a quick example, Patent 5133075 (filed in 1988 granted on July 21, 1992) that is cited from the Amazon patent mentioned at the end of the summary (filed in 2011 granted on February 28, 2012). As a lowly software developer, Patent 5133075 reads like a now commonly used pub/sub paradigm. It's basically the opposite of polling. Where, for the longest time, the bulk of software projects would continually ask a central authority (like a database) for updates. So every five seconds you say "Do you have anything new for me yet? No? Okay, I'm asking again in five seconds" ad infinitum. Now, with one client, this is probably not a big problem. But as your number of clients increases this becomes impossible (usually on the network end of things, you DDOS yourself). So the idea becomes for that central authority to allow clients to register somewhere these updates should be shipped and whenever anything changes or something new comes in, you simply send it to everyone who's subscribed to that. It's a publish and subscribe method and we call it pub/sub. Undergrad (probably high school now) concept.
So with that in mind, Amazon's patent in the summary reads with this final sentence: "The system may also automatically notify users of personal information updates made by their respective contacts." Oh, okay, so you took a now commonly used paradigm and applied it to social networking. Congratulations. Surely Twitter and Facebook were doing this before 2011 but what idiot allows a company to include any language like this in a patent? That's not an invention, it's not even really a derivative of an old invention. It's taking an old solution and applying it the same way we've been using it for almost twenty years. And now this new piece of shit is dated February 2012 and we have to deal with this unadulterated human feces for another twenty years? *head explode*