So we're at phase 1, the "Hey, check it out" phase. You can expect this to reach a phase 2, the "actually possible" phase, after IPv6 gets implemented, which will then take years to reach phase 3, the "We should really get on that" phase. Phase 4, the "Okay guys this is actually becoming a problem" phase, comes a couple years later and will no doubt be brought up on slashdot a million times over. Phase 5, is still a theoritcal phase, the "Implementation and execution phase" has not yet been observed but we have reason to believe it might happen one day, if we wish upon enough stars.
Get politicians and pundits in front of the American cameras screaming "ZOMG Chineze Haz Our Intarwebz!" And you'll be simply amazed at how fast the sloth can move. If only they could have made the IPv4 -> IPv6 transition about nationalism or freedom or democracy or Al-Queda working with the Ruskies to undermine our securitization... then that would have happened instantly!
Interviewer: Mr. Lucas, fifteen years ago you made Episode III and a lot of people thought you were done with cinema. Lucas: That's right, I had found that children appreciated my advanced work far more than any adult so I was doing a lot of Cartoon Network programs after that. Interviewer: So what caused you to return to the silver screen? Lucas: Well, I was sitting at my ranch watching some old Akira Kurosawa films -- looking for some plot or scene I had missed that I could possibly turn into a Star Wars movie -- and I got up to retrieve another sandwich from my Carl's Jr. dispenser in my living room. The machine was several treacherous feet away from the couch and as I got up, my snuggie caught on the ottoman made of hate mail and death threats. Well, I fell and a disc slipped in my spine. Interviewer: That's right you were in the hospital for several months. Lucas: Yes, and as I lay there calling for help in serious pain, an apparition of Ed Wood appeared to me. 'Use the cash, Lucas' he said. And I immediately understood that I had primarily ruined careers of living people when today there were whole sloughs of dead actors whose careers I could ruin with advanced computer technology. Interviewer: Ah, yes, so at that point... Lucas: I started buying the film rights to a lot of dead actors and actresses. Interviewer: Which led to Katherine Hepburn playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars Holiday Special II last year. Lucas: That's right, as well as Bela Lugosi having a classic lightsaber fight with Charlie Chaplin. Interviewer: Well, I think it's clear how you maintain such a hated profile. Lucas: Well, you know, I try. I try. And I often remind my adopted children that they're what keeps me going. Even though at times it's hard, I can look into my son's eyes and he'll say with so much emotion, "Stop dad, just please stop, people don't want this. Please, please stop." And that keeps me going.
Reminds me of an article I saw on Techdirt the other day pointing out that Visa and Mastercard were getting all high and mighty about morality in regards to Wikileaks but happily fielding transactions for sites like the KKK.
Would this arsenate have left the DNA during the gel purification? Maybe not - the methods don't say that the DNA was purified away from the agarose gel matrix before being analyzed. This step is certainly standard, but if it was omitted then any contaminating arsenic might have been carried over into the elemental analysis.
Seriously? Her criticisms rely on the assumption that they skipped a 'standard step' and didn't delve into it in their paper? Who's being the presumptuous one now?
I think it's pretty common for field to omit standard procedure in their papers lest they become too long and verbose. Hopefully NASA and the team get a chance to respond to these comments although it's looking like a landslide right now.
You know that there are going to be a ton of researchers that are going to want to reproduce these tests so it's only a matter of time.
I did enjoy that blog post though:
The authors never calculated whether the amount of growth they saw in the arsenate-only medium (2-3 x 10^7 cfu/ml) could be supported by the phosphate in this medium (or maybe they did but they didn't like the result).
At times that blog reads more like politics than science. Yeah, it's an extraordinary claim, I guess we should just get used to this sort of reaction whenever something game changing is claimed.
I managed to find a (probably illegal) copy of this paper at pdfcast and also the supplemental figures. I must emphasize that I have absolutely no experience in professional biology let alone microbiology let alone geobiology. So the bulk of the refutation in the blog posting seems to focus on some procedures that the team took while the paper contains several different correlations supporting the hypothesis that arsenic is a major component in the microbe's DNA. So, for example:
Initially, we measured traces of As by ICP-MS analysis of extracted nucleic acid and protein/metabolite fractions from +As/-P grown cells (11) (table S1). We then used high-resolution secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS) to positively identify As in extracted, gel purified genomic DNA (Fig. 2A). These data showed that DNA from +As/-P cells had elevated As and low P relative to DNA from the -As/+P cells.
So my question is basically what does it matter what they grew or washed the bacteria with when, in one of the many investigations, they found that gel purified genomic DNA had elevated levels of arsenic in them? Unless I'm misunderstanding what 'gel purified genomic DNA' means, I would assume that there's still several pieces of data in these experiments that point toward an organism that uses arsenic in place of phosphorous -- even if only somehow partially. Would this sort of spectrometry reveal any arsenic at all in my gel purified genomic DNA?
I can't get that flash thing in the middle of the report link to load so all I have is the summary and article but I do know that Nintendo claimed to sell 900,000 DS Units on Black Friday. And I think the PSP is doing poorly in the United States but is dominating the DS in Japan -- I'm guessing this report's demographic was USA centric?
Regardless, I own a Motorola DROID and until they release games like "Zelda: Spirit Tracks" for my phone, I'll need my DS.
I would speculate that this is growth of the gaming market and not replacement like the summary seems to imply. I can't argue with the numbers but my gut would say that people who game on their phones do so on both devices. And nobody's going around buying a phone just to play games on so the DS & PSP still fill that market exclusively from cellphones.
a full 27.2% of consumers who indicate that they play games on their phones only (and not on the DS/PSP) actually own a DS or PSP, but do not actively use the device(s).
I'm not saying this quote is wrong but I am awfully suspect of that figure. They claim an online sample size of 9,000 but they don't say how many of those actually own both a gaming phone and PSP/DS. I would be interested in the hard numbers.
I just play WoW responsibly. I will probably wait until middle of January to buy this expansion (got a lot of holiday time coming up). I played the original off and on for about two years and then got sick of it. Now, I just look forward to an expansion and I have a couple level 80 characters that I will play up to level 85. Or if the lower levels have new content, perhaps I'll start a new race. All I want to do is get most of the easy quests out of the way and enjoy the game for one month (the month that comes with the expansion).
I "played" Fable III until about midnight last night. I mean, I was constantly interrupted but it's a great story line. I'll put in my 40-60 hours playing through the storyline and just enjoy it. Same thing with WoW. I don't understand why people treat WoW any differently. Given the monthly fee, I would think it'd make more sense to beat the regular content in that first month and let the end-game go. It's a case of diminishing returns.
Oh, one more note, if I have extra time at the end of the month, I'll sometimes go back to old content and enjoy old end-game material that is now mid-game material that I never got to experience. With the new races, you can sometimes find a pickup group to go with you.
and all of them will by non WoW players commenting how much WoW sucks
WoW doesn't suck but it's not the last game I want to play. I am a WoW player but I'm at work right now. I am the elusive sensible responsible WoW player that you seem to claim doesn't exist. If you actually looked at the numbers though, a lot of us players are in this category. We're just not omnipresent in the game so you won't see my characters in game non-stop and now it's only when the new content comes out.
and has always been about exploiting irrational emotions.
'The risk of a terrorist attack is so infinitesimal and its impact so relatively insignificant that it doesn't make rational sense to accept the suspension of liberty for the sake of avoiding a statistical anomaly.
Your fancy statistics and rational thought got no place in American politics and national policy. Not these days anyway. Right now Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are more popular than Stephen Hawking and James Watson. Good luck preaching about statistics to the populace that is justifying these privacy violations with fear!
And I should have specified color E-ink as it will give comparable periods of use with black and white. It might not be as great with colors like the color Nook's VividView technology but it will last many days. And it will probably be twice as expensive, that's why I'm waiting and watching. For reading, I'm guessing it's going to best Apple's LCD based iPad. We shall see though.
I know that, but what I'm wondering about is at what point does Amazon admit that their format lost and add support for epub to their product. And hopefully drop.mobi as a failed file format.
Well, earlier this year, Amazon was enjoying 90% of the eBook market share. It's projected to plummet over the next five years and I think the iPad gobbled up 22% of the eBook marketshare instantly. Of course, I would bet that 22% was growth, not switch. Like, I think it's safe to say most people who bought iPads didn't sell/disable their Kindles immediately afterward and they probably had no eReader to begin with. I'm guessing that the Kindle still enjoys large numbers and has a comfortable lead still in market share.
At what point does Amazon admit defeat in this? Somewhere way down the road. If (as the article above predicts) they're still at 35% of the marketshare five years from now, then I'd say that it won't be happening until after then.
So aside from all that, you are dependent on Amazon just genuinely caring about the end user experience and giving up some lock-in that they've already established. *snicker*
Personally I'm making due with my android phone and awaiting the color readers (Hanvon, etc) as I'm really interested in what this could do for the graphic novel/comic industry. For too long it's been dominated by large publishers.
Google is advertising the store as compatible with computers, obviously (for those who want to read that way), but also with iPads and iPhones, Android devices, and standalone e-readers including Sony and Nook devices as well as others that run Adobe Digital Editions.
(But not your Kindle, there, buddy.)
... shows that popular Web 2.0 applications such as mashups, aggregators, and sophisticated ad targeting are teeming with various kinds of privacy-violating flows.
So they inspect the top 50,000 sites and 485 have some level of inferring browser history data? I'm not so sure I see the abundance noted in the summary. Less than one percent is teeming? And only one of those sites is ranked in the top 100 by Alexa?
I'm not saying we shouldn't worry about this or we should ignore it but come on.
Just face it, websites often operate on razor thin margins. They live and die by the clicking of advertisements on their pages. Now they've found a way to sell private information that could be mildly useful to the right bidder. And it turns out it mostly adult websites that stream video doing this. You might have cause for being upset but anyone familiar with business models of seedy websites should not be surprised.
I have always used Google Chrome's incognito browser when I go to seedy sites. It's simply not going to be a priority for the masses but for people who are annoyed or angry, it's the best way to deal with this sort of thing. If some major non-adult site were doing this, I think they would be setting themselves up for embarrassment, I'm glad somebody's doing these checks.
For Wikileaks trending. You can see here that Wikileaks was hot on Friday, not Sunday. Google Trends (for Google searches, not Tweets) actually heavily corresponds to this. Further more, if you look at Google Trends, you'll note that the recent trending on Friday wasn't even half of what it peaked at during the Afghan war cable release. It might even be less than that edited journalist shooting video. After checking Google trends for Sunday, "wikileaks" wasn't in the top twenty. I'm checking other Twitter harvesting sites for trends and not seeing anything that would indicate that Sunday should have been a huge day for Wikileaks on Twitter.
By no means conclusive evidence one way or the other though.
ironic that not the free market, but REGULATION is what's fixing that crap.
How is that ironic? The problem with commercials providing revenue to copyrighted material in a "free market" as you call it is completely not "free market." But without getting into pedantry about how television is one of the furthest things from a free market as possible, it makes complete sense since if you want to watch some video, you must watch the commercial. You want to watch The Office on NBC.com? Well, you have to sit through a particular commercial. You can't switch to another better, quieter, more appealing commercial. If commercials were a product then your 'free market' quip might have some meaning but when they're pretty much being shoved down your throat by the idea and design of marketing, your selection choice is instantly removed. Simply put, I can't watch whatever I want and request only commercials that appeal to me. If I did, I'd only be watching Adult Swim commercials if I ever saw any. Government regulation was the only way to combat this. Television commercials have always been approaching Geocities quality with flashing marquee tags, blinking tags, dancing jesus', flying toasters and music that cranks up to eleven and plays once the page loads.
There's better coverage over at the Journal Sentinel of Milwaukee. Apparently the FBI agent tracking them is based out of there. Neat little story about how he got nabbed coming to Las Vegas for some big car show.
From the article cited in the summary:
The botnet sends out millions of spam messages...
You're a few orders of magnitude off there. Try tens of billions...
Prof Tom Flanagan said Barack Obama should "put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something" to rid the world of Mr Assange.
"Put out a contract?" Yeah, then maybe he should chew on a cigar while hanging out of a suicide door on a car as he fires two tommy guns from either arm? And then maybe he should cut off a horse's head and put it in Manning's jail bed? I'm sure after that contract is transmitted out to Kessel, Boba Fett will freeze Assange and deliver him to Sarah Palin. "Put out a contract?" He's the leader of the United States, not a gangster -- although I'm sure there'll be comments asking for the difference of the two.
Yeah put out a contract for drones. Obama should offer one billion dollars to the first drone to kill Assange. Well, you'd have to offer it to the drone before it detonates itself while targeting Assange... or at least to the drone's family so the widow drone can send their little Predator to a nice drone school.
And this guy's an adviser to the Canadian PM? What kind of advice does he provide? "Well, sir, I think you should grow wings and save the internet or at least threaten to break its kneecaps if it doesn't shape up."
If you were asked to speculate about the form extra-terrestrial life on Mars might take, which geomicrobial phenomenon might you select as a model system, assuming that life on Mars would be 'primitive'? Give your reasons.
At the end of my senior year at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1968, I took Professor Ehrlich’s final for his Geomicrobiology course. The above question beckoned to me like the Sirens to Odysseus, for if I answered, it would take so much time and thought that I would never get around to the exam’s other essay questions and consequently, would be "shipwrecked" by flunking the course. So, I passed it up.With this 41-year perspective in mind, this manuscript is now submitted to Professor Ehrlich for (belated) "extra-credit." R.S. Oremland
I certainly hope that we get more details than this teaser (all other news articles seem to point back to Gizmodo). From the sound of this leak I can't tell if the DNA itself is foreign or if it's made of the same Adenine, Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine with similar hydrogen bonds or if the DNA is similar but different in functionality or if it doesn't create proteins and RNA the same way or if phosphorus component is just switched with arsenic (two very similar elements prebiotic chemically) or if the whole bacteria is made of arsenic. At what point in the chain of DNA to organism does this thing seriously differ? The Gizmodo article is painfully weak on detail.
Actually, the Kennedy's in general and JFK in particular DESERVE to be ripped apart--but not for the vapid reasons that Sarah Palin's ghost writer came up with.
Look, I'm not here to turn this into some JFK and RFK and Ted Kennedy did all this horrible crap and killed a woman and got away with it and were womanizing nepotistic rich bastards... all or or some of these things could be said. But what I was trying to say here was that nobody has ever run on that platform. You can write a book of dirt when you're done with politics but writing such a book before you become president is sort of like asking your future opponent if they'd like to have their way with you right now. I mean JFK, though flawed, was a hero to a lot of Americans. And his martyrdom was just icing on the cake. And to call into question one of his most loved and cherished speeches is more than ballsy, it's downright dangerous.
Sarah Palin is a new kind of political monster, unlike the ones I'm used to watching comfortably from my armchair. She's got a twitter feed that sports so many errors, she might actually be the person running it! From a classic Bush-esque prescriptive versus descriptive linguistics error to making accusations and weird religious remarks. It's a microblogging service! Look at what the rest of the politicians use it for: a paid staff techie is told what to put on it and what goes on it is only tepid words praising safe topics for that candidate to like. And those are usually reviewed seventy times before they go up. She has broken the rules of and committed fouls in politics many times and yet people embrace her.
All I wanted to say in my post was that from what I've seen of Sarah Palin, we should have stuck a fork in her long ago yet she remains. And why is that? Well, she's a dangerously well liked and amicable to a large part of the population that you are not familiar with. If she makes a mistake they seem to forgive her and say "I've made that mistake too." If she uses cracked logic or argument tactics long ago written off by academics, her followers just write off the academics. Trust me, as someone who's tried to reason with a supporter with some fairly simple debate analysis of Glenn Beck's logic, I can tell you that you don't want to approach this as some fancy pants intellectual telling them how dumb they are.
Don't confuse this with praise of Sarah Palin or defense of JFK. This is just me trying to warn people about how I see the situation at present. What happens when she runs for president and her opposition preys on some stupid social gaffe of hers? If it's any less than what she's already done, it's merely going to be ignored by or reinforce her supporter's commitment.
What she and her supporters have not figured out is that they get so much attention because it's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. It's entertainment not politics.
Well, to her credit, she has a lot of followers. Despite many faux pas she's made that would have left anyone else gelded, she somehow keeps drumming up support. I'm not too educated on the numbers now for tea partiers versus non-tea partying Republicans but I think it would be a deathly schism for the Republican party. The two large parties can't afford to break off into chunks and therefore it's going to be the most supported candidate that gets the nod. Right now, who else is there?
There have been countless stupid quotes and moves by Sarah Palin where I've thought "Wow, well, at least she's finally done for." And yet she comes out of it. She starts working for Fox News and injects her own little two cents into everything and I'm thinking, "Look at all this material for a potential opponent to use against her." Yet she grows in popularity! She gets a reality show on some cable TV show called "Sarah Palin's Alaska" (like she owns the state) and I think "Well, finally, she's jumping the shark." Yet people are watching it in respectable TV viewing numbers! She releases a book that rips apart JFK and yet somehow she comes out still being followed. What gives?
In my humble opinion, as someone coming from the rural mid-west and now living in the urban east coast, you are talking about a populace you don't understand. People are watching her, reading her books and identifying with her at an alarming rate. To claim that everyone one of her supporters is driving from Ohio and other states to see her and Glenn Beck on the mall just to 'observe a train wreck' only exacerbates the problem and further removes you from what's really going on. America is just as polarized as they were during the elections and the Republican party -- though strong -- is encountering a weird kind of fragmentation for better or for worse.
Politics is entertainment just like sports are entertainment. But most spectators are cheering for someone.
It's easy for us to dismiss them but that only adds to their persecution complex. I don't know what the answer is but I prefer to listen to them and then try to reason with them instead of writing them off. There's bigger numbers in different parts of the country and I'm not a fan of watching Glenn Beck prey on people who are suffering right now. It downright sickens me.
This is not the first time that an alternative Domain Name System has been proposed. Starting with AlterNIC in 1997, alternative DNS has had a controversial history. Many have ceased to function now because of the lack of adoption from users. However, coming right after the controversial seizure of 80 domains by the US government, P2P-DNS might just get enough support to make it a success.
My personal problem with the seizure of 80 domains really isn't that big of a deal. It sucks and it's probably a sign of the abuse of power from the DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). But in the end, it was widely announced and advertised. It wasn't done under the cover of secrecy and they at least gave reasons as to why they were seized. For me, this isn't a reason to change the DNS root server that I use. Especially facing slower resolve times and security issues like DNS poisoning.
I can tell you I'm not interested in that trade off... yet. If we see the US government doing what China's doing and not announcing who's being seized and why, then you will see me jump on board this.
My close friend used borntrade.net which was a knockoff jersey site from a factory in China. Their crime? Avoiding tariffs and not paying tribute to the NHL/MLB/NFL/NBA gods. He might want to use your DNS but I would assume it would only be to conduct business through borntrade.net and not to actually use it on a daily basis. Disclaimer: I think I've seen borntrade bots spamming the Slashdot forums before but now that it's just a DHS/DoJ logo splash screen, you can rest assured I'm not some guy trying to send you there by way of a fake comment.
I would guess that despite the domains being seized, you're going to see the general public not care that much and again the project will fail from lack of adoption. Clandestine government working against the people? Yeah, a few more people are going to hop on board and put up with the speed and security issues. But could someone outline how the whole public would get on board with this? I mean, assuming it's as simple as a browser plugin you can't even get people to install those when the benefits are obvious.
...a lot of people recently said that Wikileaks has become an anti-US organization. We should probably wait and see what they actually release, but perhaps this news shows otherwise? Or is the fact that they are going to release data on US based corporations just going to be viewed as more evidence of an anti-US sentiment?
You should probably clarify that you meant anti-US government as they might actually be providing the citizens a lot more transparency than previously thought possible. When a US company is targeted, both the government and the people might be happy -- especially if it's tax evasion or violation of laws. Here's a good snippet when they run down which industries they might have dirt on:
Continuing then: The tech industry?
We have some material on spying by a major government on the tech industry. Industrial espionage.
U.S.? China?
The U.S. is one of the victims.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that everyone would like the offenders of industrial espionage to be dragged out in the open. Especially the United States government.
Anti-US, pro-US, who cares? This is going to get interesting and the knife is going to cut everybody.
Or maybe they want to talk about a discovery confirming the suitability of possible targets for life or colonization? I'm guessing it's something along those lines... or perhaps they have a target that they think they can deploy bacteria to that will provide a better atmosphere for possible habitation in the distant future?
Think about it though. Would NASA announce contact or, you know, the president? I'm guessing that the politicians would be all over this claiming credit if it was something that big.
Thanks for the story. Now I won't be able to sleep tonight.
There, there, fellow victim, I have a method to help you with this problem. Lay on your bed, look at your hand, now back to me, now back at your hand, now back to me. Sadly, your hand cannot stop the 'Like This' button, but if you stopped using Facebook and switched to Diaspora, you could avoid the blue terror like me. Look down, back up, where are you? You’re on a cloud with only about five hundred other users. What’s in your hand, back at me. I have it, it’s your mouse connected to your computer where you just need to enter your password one final time to leave Facebook. Look again, the mouse is now diamonds. Anything is possible when you're not promoting Facebook. I’m on a butterfly.
I now feel I have the courage to speak out about what happened one month ago.
I was walking home from a late night shift and noticed a glassy aero blue vehicle drive by me slowly. I couldn't see inside through the blue glass reflection but the vehicle moved at an ominous pace. I quickened my pace and made hast for my house now only five blocks away. I broke into a run at four blocks, I was so close to home and safety. But I heard the squeal of tires on pavement behind me and my pulse spiked. I covered the next two blocks as fast as the wind but the blue vehicle was faster. It pulled up onto my lawn in front of me and the doors opened as I ran by it. I didn't look, I couldn't look at them but I heard pixelated fingers running through the grass as I scrambled to find the key to open my front door.
I opened the door and turned around to slam it shut but there was a blocky thumb that caused it to bounce back. My wife came in to see what the commotion was about and screamed as the first hand with its blue cuff and erect them grabbed my ankle and tripped me. "Get the children to the panic room" I screamed. And in ten seconds my family was safe but I still grappled with the blue shaded hand holding me down mercilessly as three more hands with blue cuffs came in through the open door. Another held down my other ankle as the third raised his cuff to expose his fully erect thumb. The fourth pulled my pants down and I screamed in agony as I was viciously sodomized in my own living room while my family watched from the panic room camera. For hours it went on while the fourth Facebook 'Like' hand sat their smoking a cigar, laughing and rubbing his thumb and forefinger together when I asked why they were doing this to me. Why? Again, they rubbed their thumbs together with their fingers signifying money.
The police said I was powerless, I had given up my right when I had clicked through the Terms of Service to join Facebook. Zuckface could do whatever he wanted to do to me and I was powerless. The policemen told me to go back to my Farmville and watch my crops and just be happy the 'like' hands had left me alive, at least the Zuck had shown some mercy. Then they excused themselves and cautiously walked out to their squad car, hands ready on their sidearms, alert for any remaining 'like' hands.
Slashdot Mirror
So we're at phase 1, the "Hey, check it out" phase. You can expect this to reach a phase 2, the "actually possible" phase, after IPv6 gets implemented, which will then take years to reach phase 3, the "We should really get on that" phase. Phase 4, the "Okay guys this is actually becoming a problem" phase, comes a couple years later and will no doubt be brought up on slashdot a million times over. Phase 5, is still a theoritcal phase, the "Implementation and execution phase" has not yet been observed but we have reason to believe it might happen one day, if we wish upon enough stars.
Get politicians and pundits in front of the American cameras screaming "ZOMG Chineze Haz Our Intarwebz!" And you'll be simply amazed at how fast the sloth can move. If only they could have made the IPv4 -> IPv6 transition about nationalism or freedom or democracy or Al-Queda working with the Ruskies to undermine our securitization ... then that would have happened instantly!
Interviewer: Mr. Lucas, fifteen years ago you made Episode III and a lot of people thought you were done with cinema. ...
Lucas: That's right, I had found that children appreciated my advanced work far more than any adult so I was doing a lot of Cartoon Network programs after that.
Interviewer: So what caused you to return to the silver screen?
Lucas: Well, I was sitting at my ranch watching some old Akira Kurosawa films -- looking for some plot or scene I had missed that I could possibly turn into a Star Wars movie -- and I got up to retrieve another sandwich from my Carl's Jr. dispenser in my living room. The machine was several treacherous feet away from the couch and as I got up, my snuggie caught on the ottoman made of hate mail and death threats. Well, I fell and a disc slipped in my spine.
Interviewer: That's right you were in the hospital for several months.
Lucas: Yes, and as I lay there calling for help in serious pain, an apparition of Ed Wood appeared to me. 'Use the cash, Lucas' he said. And I immediately understood that I had primarily ruined careers of living people when today there were whole sloughs of dead actors whose careers I could ruin with advanced computer technology.
Interviewer: Ah, yes, so at that point
Lucas: I started buying the film rights to a lot of dead actors and actresses.
Interviewer: Which led to Katherine Hepburn playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars Holiday Special II last year.
Lucas: That's right, as well as Bela Lugosi having a classic lightsaber fight with Charlie Chaplin.
Interviewer: Well, I think it's clear how you maintain such a hated profile.
Lucas: Well, you know, I try. I try. And I often remind my adopted children that they're what keeps me going. Even though at times it's hard, I can look into my son's eyes and he'll say with so much emotion, "Stop dad, just please stop, people don't want this. Please, please stop." And that keeps me going.
Reminds me of an article I saw on Techdirt the other day pointing out that Visa and Mastercard were getting all high and mighty about morality in regards to Wikileaks but happily fielding transactions for sites like the KKK.
Would this arsenate have left the DNA during the gel purification? Maybe not - the methods don't say that the DNA was purified away from the agarose gel matrix before being analyzed. This step is certainly standard, but if it was omitted then any contaminating arsenic might have been carried over into the elemental analysis.
Seriously? Her criticisms rely on the assumption that they skipped a 'standard step' and didn't delve into it in their paper? Who's being the presumptuous one now?
I think it's pretty common for field to omit standard procedure in their papers lest they become too long and verbose. Hopefully NASA and the team get a chance to respond to these comments although it's looking like a landslide right now.
You know that there are going to be a ton of researchers that are going to want to reproduce these tests so it's only a matter of time.
I did enjoy that blog post though:
The authors never calculated whether the amount of growth they saw in the arsenate-only medium (2-3 x 10^7 cfu/ml) could be supported by the phosphate in this medium (or maybe they did but they didn't like the result).
At times that blog reads more like politics than science. Yeah, it's an extraordinary claim, I guess we should just get used to this sort of reaction whenever something game changing is claimed.
And stupid people will find a way to be annoying no matter what you do.
Like just holding down the shift key?
Initially, we measured traces of As by ICP-MS analysis of extracted nucleic acid and protein/metabolite fractions from +As/-P grown cells (11) (table S1). We then used high-resolution secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS) to positively identify As in extracted, gel purified genomic DNA (Fig. 2A). These data showed that DNA from +As/-P cells had elevated As and low P relative to DNA from the -As/+P cells.
So my question is basically what does it matter what they grew or washed the bacteria with when, in one of the many investigations, they found that gel purified genomic DNA had elevated levels of arsenic in them? Unless I'm misunderstanding what 'gel purified genomic DNA' means, I would assume that there's still several pieces of data in these experiments that point toward an organism that uses arsenic in place of phosphorous -- even if only somehow partially. Would this sort of spectrometry reveal any arsenic at all in my gel purified genomic DNA?
Regardless, I own a Motorola DROID and until they release games like "Zelda: Spirit Tracks" for my phone, I'll need my DS.
I would speculate that this is growth of the gaming market and not replacement like the summary seems to imply. I can't argue with the numbers but my gut would say that people who game on their phones do so on both devices. And nobody's going around buying a phone just to play games on so the DS & PSP still fill that market exclusively from cellphones.
a full 27.2% of consumers who indicate that they play games on their phones only (and not on the DS/PSP) actually own a DS or PSP, but do not actively use the device(s).
I'm not saying this quote is wrong but I am awfully suspect of that figure. They claim an online sample size of 9,000 but they don't say how many of those actually own both a gaming phone and PSP/DS. I would be interested in the hard numbers.
I "played" Fable III until about midnight last night. I mean, I was constantly interrupted but it's a great story line. I'll put in my 40-60 hours playing through the storyline and just enjoy it. Same thing with WoW. I don't understand why people treat WoW any differently. Given the monthly fee, I would think it'd make more sense to beat the regular content in that first month and let the end-game go. It's a case of diminishing returns.
Oh, one more note, if I have extra time at the end of the month, I'll sometimes go back to old content and enjoy old end-game material that is now mid-game material that I never got to experience. With the new races, you can sometimes find a pickup group to go with you.
and all of them will by non WoW players commenting how much WoW sucks
WoW doesn't suck but it's not the last game I want to play. I am a WoW player but I'm at work right now. I am the elusive sensible responsible WoW player that you seem to claim doesn't exist. If you actually looked at the numbers though, a lot of us players are in this category. We're just not omnipresent in the game so you won't see my characters in game non-stop and now it's only when the new content comes out.
'The risk of a terrorist attack is so infinitesimal and its impact so relatively insignificant that it doesn't make rational sense to accept the suspension of liberty for the sake of avoiding a statistical anomaly.
Your fancy statistics and rational thought got no place in American politics and national policy. Not these days anyway. Right now Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are more popular than Stephen Hawking and James Watson. Good luck preaching about statistics to the populace that is justifying these privacy violations with fear!
This kind of makes me wish I hadn't bought the wifi nook already, it is much better for the cost.
Take heart, your regular Nook gets 10 days sans Wifi while the color gets 8 hours . So I wouldn't go kicking yourself if you have ever gone extended periods without recharging.
And I should have specified color E-ink as it will give comparable periods of use with black and white. It might not be as great with colors like the color Nook's VividView technology but it will last many days. And it will probably be twice as expensive, that's why I'm waiting and watching. For reading, I'm guessing it's going to best Apple's LCD based iPad. We shall see though.
I know that, but what I'm wondering about is at what point does Amazon admit that their format lost and add support for epub to their product. And hopefully drop .mobi as a failed file format.
Well, earlier this year, Amazon was enjoying 90% of the eBook market share. It's projected to plummet over the next five years and I think the iPad gobbled up 22% of the eBook marketshare instantly. Of course, I would bet that 22% was growth, not switch. Like, I think it's safe to say most people who bought iPads didn't sell/disable their Kindles immediately afterward and they probably had no eReader to begin with. I'm guessing that the Kindle still enjoys large numbers and has a comfortable lead still in market share.
At what point does Amazon admit defeat in this? Somewhere way down the road. If (as the article above predicts) they're still at 35% of the marketshare five years from now, then I'd say that it won't be happening until after then.
So aside from all that, you are dependent on Amazon just genuinely caring about the end user experience and giving up some lock-in that they've already established. *snicker*
Personally I'm making due with my android phone and awaiting the color readers (Hanvon, etc) as I'm really interested in what this could do for the graphic novel/comic industry. For too long it's been dominated by large publishers.
Google is advertising the store as compatible with computers, obviously (for those who want to read that way), but also with iPads and iPhones, Android devices, and standalone e-readers including Sony and Nook devices as well as others that run Adobe Digital Editions. (But not your Kindle, there, buddy.)
So they inspect the top 50,000 sites and 485 have some level of inferring browser history data? I'm not so sure I see the abundance noted in the summary. Less than one percent is teeming? And only one of those sites is ranked in the top 100 by Alexa?
I'm not saying we shouldn't worry about this or we should ignore it but come on.
Just face it, websites often operate on razor thin margins. They live and die by the clicking of advertisements on their pages. Now they've found a way to sell private information that could be mildly useful to the right bidder. And it turns out it mostly adult websites that stream video doing this. You might have cause for being upset but anyone familiar with business models of seedy websites should not be surprised.
I have always used Google Chrome's incognito browser when I go to seedy sites. It's simply not going to be a priority for the masses but for people who are annoyed or angry, it's the best way to deal with this sort of thing. If some major non-adult site were doing this, I think they would be setting themselves up for embarrassment, I'm glad somebody's doing these checks.
For Wikileaks trending. You can see here that Wikileaks was hot on Friday, not Sunday. Google Trends (for Google searches, not Tweets) actually heavily corresponds to this. Further more, if you look at Google Trends, you'll note that the recent trending on Friday wasn't even half of what it peaked at during the Afghan war cable release. It might even be less than that edited journalist shooting video. After checking Google trends for Sunday, "wikileaks" wasn't in the top twenty. I'm checking other Twitter harvesting sites for trends and not seeing anything that would indicate that Sunday should have been a huge day for Wikileaks on Twitter.
By no means conclusive evidence one way or the other though.
ironic that not the free market, but REGULATION is what's fixing that crap.
How is that ironic? The problem with commercials providing revenue to copyrighted material in a "free market" as you call it is completely not "free market." But without getting into pedantry about how television is one of the furthest things from a free market as possible, it makes complete sense since if you want to watch some video, you must watch the commercial. You want to watch The Office on NBC.com? Well, you have to sit through a particular commercial. You can't switch to another better, quieter, more appealing commercial. If commercials were a product then your 'free market' quip might have some meaning but when they're pretty much being shoved down your throat by the idea and design of marketing, your selection choice is instantly removed. Simply put, I can't watch whatever I want and request only commercials that appeal to me. If I did, I'd only be watching Adult Swim commercials if I ever saw any. Government regulation was the only way to combat this. Television commercials have always been approaching Geocities quality with flashing marquee tags, blinking tags, dancing jesus', flying toasters and music that cranks up to eleven and plays once the page loads.
From the article cited in the summary:
The botnet sends out millions of spam messages ...
You're a few orders of magnitude off there. Try tens of billions ...
Prof Tom Flanagan said Barack Obama should "put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something" to rid the world of Mr Assange.
"Put out a contract?" Yeah, then maybe he should chew on a cigar while hanging out of a suicide door on a car as he fires two tommy guns from either arm? And then maybe he should cut off a horse's head and put it in Manning's jail bed? I'm sure after that contract is transmitted out to Kessel, Boba Fett will freeze Assange and deliver him to Sarah Palin. "Put out a contract?" He's the leader of the United States, not a gangster -- although I'm sure there'll be comments asking for the difference of the two.
... or at least to the drone's family so the widow drone can send their little Predator to a nice drone school.
Yeah put out a contract for drones. Obama should offer one billion dollars to the first drone to kill Assange. Well, you'd have to offer it to the drone before it detonates itself while targeting Assange
And this guy's an adviser to the Canadian PM? What kind of advice does he provide? "Well, sir, I think you should grow wings and save the internet or at least threaten to break its kneecaps if it doesn't shape up."
If you were asked to speculate about the form extra-terrestrial life on Mars might take, which geomicrobial phenomenon might you select as a model system, assuming that life on Mars would be 'primitive'? Give your reasons.
At the end of my senior year at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1968, I took Professor Ehrlich’s final for his Geomicrobiology course. The above question beckoned to me like the Sirens to Odysseus, for if I answered, it would take so much time and thought that I would never get around to the exam’s other essay questions and consequently, would be "shipwrecked" by flunking the course. So, I passed it up.With this 41-year perspective in mind, this manuscript is now submitted to Professor Ehrlich for (belated) "extra-credit." R.S. Oremland
This has been an interesting topic in sci-fi, I recall an X-Files that revolved around silicon based life.
I certainly hope that we get more details than this teaser (all other news articles seem to point back to Gizmodo). From the sound of this leak I can't tell if the DNA itself is foreign or if it's made of the same Adenine, Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine with similar hydrogen bonds or if the DNA is similar but different in functionality or if it doesn't create proteins and RNA the same way or if phosphorus component is just switched with arsenic (two very similar elements prebiotic chemically) or if the whole bacteria is made of arsenic. At what point in the chain of DNA to organism does this thing seriously differ? The Gizmodo article is painfully weak on detail.
Actually, the Kennedy's in general and JFK in particular DESERVE to be ripped apart--but not for the vapid reasons that Sarah Palin's ghost writer came up with.
Look, I'm not here to turn this into some JFK and RFK and Ted Kennedy did all this horrible crap and killed a woman and got away with it and were womanizing nepotistic rich bastards ... all or or some of these things could be said. But what I was trying to say here was that nobody has ever run on that platform. You can write a book of dirt when you're done with politics but writing such a book before you become president is sort of like asking your future opponent if they'd like to have their way with you right now. I mean JFK, though flawed, was a hero to a lot of Americans. And his martyrdom was just icing on the cake. And to call into question one of his most loved and cherished speeches is more than ballsy, it's downright dangerous.
Sarah Palin is a new kind of political monster, unlike the ones I'm used to watching comfortably from my armchair. She's got a twitter feed that sports so many errors, she might actually be the person running it! From a classic Bush-esque prescriptive versus descriptive linguistics error to making accusations and weird religious remarks. It's a microblogging service! Look at what the rest of the politicians use it for: a paid staff techie is told what to put on it and what goes on it is only tepid words praising safe topics for that candidate to like. And those are usually reviewed seventy times before they go up. She has broken the rules of and committed fouls in politics many times and yet people embrace her.
All I wanted to say in my post was that from what I've seen of Sarah Palin, we should have stuck a fork in her long ago yet she remains. And why is that? Well, she's a dangerously well liked and amicable to a large part of the population that you are not familiar with. If she makes a mistake they seem to forgive her and say "I've made that mistake too." If she uses cracked logic or argument tactics long ago written off by academics, her followers just write off the academics. Trust me, as someone who's tried to reason with a supporter with some fairly simple debate analysis of Glenn Beck's logic, I can tell you that you don't want to approach this as some fancy pants intellectual telling them how dumb they are.
Don't confuse this with praise of Sarah Palin or defense of JFK. This is just me trying to warn people about how I see the situation at present. What happens when she runs for president and her opposition preys on some stupid social gaffe of hers? If it's any less than what she's already done, it's merely going to be ignored by or reinforce her supporter's commitment.
What she and her supporters have not figured out is that they get so much attention because it's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. It's entertainment not politics.
Well, to her credit, she has a lot of followers. Despite many faux pas she's made that would have left anyone else gelded, she somehow keeps drumming up support. I'm not too educated on the numbers now for tea partiers versus non-tea partying Republicans but I think it would be a deathly schism for the Republican party. The two large parties can't afford to break off into chunks and therefore it's going to be the most supported candidate that gets the nod. Right now, who else is there?
There have been countless stupid quotes and moves by Sarah Palin where I've thought "Wow, well, at least she's finally done for." And yet she comes out of it. She starts working for Fox News and injects her own little two cents into everything and I'm thinking, "Look at all this material for a potential opponent to use against her." Yet she grows in popularity! She gets a reality show on some cable TV show called "Sarah Palin's Alaska" (like she owns the state) and I think "Well, finally, she's jumping the shark." Yet people are watching it in respectable TV viewing numbers! She releases a book that rips apart JFK and yet somehow she comes out still being followed. What gives?
In my humble opinion, as someone coming from the rural mid-west and now living in the urban east coast, you are talking about a populace you don't understand. People are watching her, reading her books and identifying with her at an alarming rate. To claim that everyone one of her supporters is driving from Ohio and other states to see her and Glenn Beck on the mall just to 'observe a train wreck' only exacerbates the problem and further removes you from what's really going on. America is just as polarized as they were during the elections and the Republican party -- though strong -- is encountering a weird kind of fragmentation for better or for worse.
Politics is entertainment just like sports are entertainment. But most spectators are cheering for someone.
It's easy for us to dismiss them but that only adds to their persecution complex. I don't know what the answer is but I prefer to listen to them and then try to reason with them instead of writing them off. There's bigger numbers in different parts of the country and I'm not a fan of watching Glenn Beck prey on people who are suffering right now. It downright sickens me.
This is not the first time that an alternative Domain Name System has been proposed. Starting with AlterNIC in 1997, alternative DNS has had a controversial history. Many have ceased to function now because of the lack of adoption from users. However, coming right after the controversial seizure of 80 domains by the US government, P2P-DNS might just get enough support to make it a success.
My personal problem with the seizure of 80 domains really isn't that big of a deal. It sucks and it's probably a sign of the abuse of power from the DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). But in the end, it was widely announced and advertised. It wasn't done under the cover of secrecy and they at least gave reasons as to why they were seized. For me, this isn't a reason to change the DNS root server that I use. Especially facing slower resolve times and security issues like DNS poisoning.
... yet. If we see the US government doing what China's doing and not announcing who's being seized and why, then you will see me jump on board this.
I can tell you I'm not interested in that trade off
My close friend used borntrade.net which was a knockoff jersey site from a factory in China. Their crime? Avoiding tariffs and not paying tribute to the NHL/MLB/NFL/NBA gods. He might want to use your DNS but I would assume it would only be to conduct business through borntrade.net and not to actually use it on a daily basis. Disclaimer: I think I've seen borntrade bots spamming the Slashdot forums before but now that it's just a DHS/DoJ logo splash screen, you can rest assured I'm not some guy trying to send you there by way of a fake comment.
I would guess that despite the domains being seized, you're going to see the general public not care that much and again the project will fail from lack of adoption. Clandestine government working against the people? Yeah, a few more people are going to hop on board and put up with the speed and security issues. But could someone outline how the whole public would get on board with this? I mean, assuming it's as simple as a browser plugin you can't even get people to install those when the benefits are obvious.
...a lot of people recently said that Wikileaks has become an anti-US organization. We should probably wait and see what they actually release, but perhaps this news shows otherwise? Or is the fact that they are going to release data on US based corporations just going to be viewed as more evidence of an anti-US sentiment?
You should probably clarify that you meant anti-US government as they might actually be providing the citizens a lot more transparency than previously thought possible. When a US company is targeted, both the government and the people might be happy -- especially if it's tax evasion or violation of laws. Here's a good snippet when they run down which industries they might have dirt on:
Continuing then: The tech industry?
We have some material on spying by a major government on the tech industry. Industrial espionage.
U.S.? China?
The U.S. is one of the victims.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that everyone would like the offenders of industrial espionage to be dragged out in the open. Especially the United States government.
Anti-US, pro-US, who cares? This is going to get interesting and the knife is going to cut everybody.
I'm really going to break down laughing if Wikileaks hosts dirt on Amazon, their knew hosting provider with EC2!
Or maybe they want to talk about a discovery confirming the suitability of possible targets for life or colonization? I'm guessing it's something along those lines ... or perhaps they have a target that they think they can deploy bacteria to that will provide a better atmosphere for possible habitation in the distant future?
Think about it though. Would NASA announce contact or, you know, the president? I'm guessing that the politicians would be all over this claiming credit if it was something that big.
Thanks for the story. Now I won't be able to sleep tonight.
There, there, fellow victim, I have a method to help you with this problem. Lay on your bed, look at your hand, now back to me, now back at your hand, now back to me. Sadly, your hand cannot stop the 'Like This' button, but if you stopped using Facebook and switched to Diaspora, you could avoid the blue terror like me. Look down, back up, where are you? You’re on a cloud with only about five hundred other users. What’s in your hand, back at me. I have it, it’s your mouse connected to your computer where you just need to enter your password one final time to leave Facebook. Look again, the mouse is now diamonds. Anything is possible when you're not promoting Facebook. I’m on a butterfly.
Facebook's 'Like This' Button Is Tracking You
I now feel I have the courage to speak out about what happened one month ago.
I was walking home from a late night shift and noticed a glassy aero blue vehicle drive by me slowly. I couldn't see inside through the blue glass reflection but the vehicle moved at an ominous pace. I quickened my pace and made hast for my house now only five blocks away. I broke into a run at four blocks, I was so close to home and safety. But I heard the squeal of tires on pavement behind me and my pulse spiked. I covered the next two blocks as fast as the wind but the blue vehicle was faster. It pulled up onto my lawn in front of me and the doors opened as I ran by it. I didn't look, I couldn't look at them but I heard pixelated fingers running through the grass as I scrambled to find the key to open my front door.
I opened the door and turned around to slam it shut but there was a blocky thumb that caused it to bounce back. My wife came in to see what the commotion was about and screamed as the first hand with its blue cuff and erect them grabbed my ankle and tripped me. "Get the children to the panic room" I screamed. And in ten seconds my family was safe but I still grappled with the blue shaded hand holding me down mercilessly as three more hands with blue cuffs came in through the open door. Another held down my other ankle as the third raised his cuff to expose his fully erect thumb. The fourth pulled my pants down and I screamed in agony as I was viciously sodomized in my own living room while my family watched from the panic room camera. For hours it went on while the fourth Facebook 'Like' hand sat their smoking a cigar, laughing and rubbing his thumb and forefinger together when I asked why they were doing this to me. Why? Again, they rubbed their thumbs together with their fingers signifying money.
The police said I was powerless, I had given up my right when I had clicked through the Terms of Service to join Facebook. Zuckface could do whatever he wanted to do to me and I was powerless. The policemen told me to go back to my Farmville and watch my crops and just be happy the 'like' hands had left me alive, at least the Zuck had shown some mercy. Then they excused themselves and cautiously walked out to their squad car, hands ready on their sidearms, alert for any remaining 'like' hands.
It happened to me and it could happen to you.