So I submitted the summary and it was getting long, I didn't have enough room to add the counter arguments against this proposal (I may have made it look fairly unopposed). While the governator had his monicker on the linked documents, the New York Times has him likening this to water:
I am totally against protectionist policies because it never works. You have to understand that we get our water from outside California. We get it from the Colorado River, for instance. Why can we get the water from the Colorado River but we can't get renewable energy from outside the state? We get most of our cars from outside the state; why can't we get renewable energy?
We all believe in the importance of energy efficiency, but the CEC's proposed
regulation is simply bad policy that will do little to achieve energy
efficiency and a lot to destroy California jobs. The consumer electronics industry has been
trying to work with the CEC since day one on alternatives that would help
achieve energy efficiency without causing undue harm on California's economy.
But time and time again, we have been disappointed with the CEC's approach and
process.
Let's say they have 10 million active subscribers world wide and that each of them pays $12 a month. Wouldn't you expect that sort of protection and insane support on something generating $120 million in revenue for you a month? I would. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a whole lot more to it that we don't know about and never will.
If you're actually doing some commentary on the pieces of the songs that you're using, then yes. And no, an episode of Family Guy is not a small piece - each episode is a standalone work.
Yeah well, I said that to illustrate a point in what is a complete work? Did you know that a single song can be recorded over hundreds of hours spent in a studio? Is each snippet of a track recorded a "complete work"? What about the post recording processing that goes on? You're using that too, you know.
I'm just trying to get you to think about the ways in which this whole fair use thing becomes ambiguous but apparently you can say what you feel like saying without quoting or citing one legal document or precedent... and there you are at +5 informative. Great, keep teaching kids that.
Go ahead and tell us what fair use is, I'm not pretending to be a lawyer but you're doing a fine job.
As for my above post being moderated troll?! So much for discourse and discussion on nailing down the definition of "fair use." I cite Capitol Records chasing after the Grey Album and I'm the troll.
Why do I even waste my time putting together posts? I am so sick and tired of this site.
"You have the right to use small parts of something covered by copyright (like quoting a book for an essay) to comment on it, write a review about it or parody it and you're allowed to make copies for yourself to use."
So you're saying that if I take very small samples of The Beatles' White Album (as I consider the album an entire work) and make new songs out of those small samples, it is completely legal and I can distribute or sell said reconstructions because they are small parts or parodies? Do I need to merely include a comment on my "mashup" to make that legal?
Or if I take a single episode of the Family Guy (the whole series is what seven seasons now?) I can distribute that with my website with commentary on how it's great for society?
Well, there actually is a mention of fair use in the parent guide but all it does is refer you to a better site. The only other mention is -- hilariously enough -- in their own terms of use about using the materials on the site under fair use.
But that's beside your point, let's play a game. Pretend you have the floor in front of primary school students and you want to explain fair use. What do you say?
I'm not saying they shouldn't mention it. Because it's not well defined. Fair use is, in my opinion, an abomination in that it's a "law" that's not defined in anyway. And what's even better is when I try to cite the safe harbor laws or portion limits on Slashdot, I'm ridiculedover and over (not that I've ever practiced law but as a citizen it's the most I can find) despite my analysis being correct! So with my masters degree in computer science, I am clearly unable to pin down what precisely constitutes fair use and what does not. I imagine that were I charged with uploading and editing fair use samples of every song off of David Bowie's Hunky Dory album (which I did) that my innocence would depend entirely on how much money I have for a lawyer... not the law. Because "fair use" is ambiguous and the so called "doctrine" is downright laughable. If you don't agree with me, go ahead and post a response arguing for or against my above Wikipedia edits being "fair use." I'll gladly play the devil's advocate if someone doesn't beat me to it.
So given the above information, would you please outline how you would explain this to children? Or how you plan to "win their hearts and souls" with the fair use doctrine?
What I want for Christmas: someone in my government to man up and bring any amount of clarity to copyright law, fair use and (while we're at it) patents. Something shouldn't be unclear until you've already been sued for doing it. That's how you find yourself in situations like the RIAA suing thousands of people and watching court case after court case resolve to millions in damages awarded from an average citizen to a huge conglomerate of lawyers and labels.
Maybe for some bugs, but for those nasty caca roches, I get a bowl, wipe the top 4 inches around inside with vegtable oil then put whatever inside... coffee grounds, bananas... whatever... There are tons of dead ones in there but that doesn't stop more from coming. Also, cockroaches are cannibals.
Well, to be fair, your observations are from cockroaches that have lived in close quarters with humans and not those in nature. Notice that in the article, it's only Wired who suggests this would protect you from an infestation. The scientists say this may protect crops--which are in a more natural setting. And I think you would see a much higher success rate on cockroaches or wood beetles that live in the wild versus those in your home. Many animals behave very differently in their natural environment.
Whatever the case, I'm really excited to see fatty acid extracts used instead of chemical compounds on the food that I eat. Especially for people that have small gardens of tomatoes and vegetables. I'd personally pay a small premium on my produce for crops grown and repelling insects with this technology.
Has there ever been a major OS that simply went away, period?
I think RSX-11, RT-11 and RSTS/E fit that. Some of the PDP operating systems are dead probably because they're still closed source otherwise I'm guessing hobbyists would still be maintaining them.
I may have a different definition of "intrepid" than you but to me there's nothing intrepid about any location you reach by road unless you're talking about hostile countries or might-wake-up-without-your-kidney parts of Mexico. Especially if you're on your laptop having a conference call while your TV dinners cook inside the RV.
Do yourself a favor and get out of the position where your business can't function without you. If you have you have to be a single point of failure I'm sorry you picked that profession in life and it's great that you make twice what I make but I would not trade places. If you want something moderately challenging then leave at home all your electronics and canoe/portage 50 miles into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area for an intrepid vacation. Trust me, to see land so pristine was a near religious experience and I definitely went back.
Go white water rafting or mountain hiking or get dive certified. I'm sorry if your health doesn't permit this but I personally don't find anything intrepid about a recreational vehicle.
I only read the Q&A on the blog linked but I did catch this:
All of our apps are free... and it's a managed solution right now, so we're building these apps or working with third parties to build these apps and provide them to our customers for free.
Followed by:
That being said, we know people want things like this on their devices so we're going to build them ourselves, they're going to be super high-quality, and they're going to be free.
It sounds like you'd have a hard time getting third parties to release applications on the Zune given the above aims. Now, free apps are great but I don't think a store would have much of a purpose if everything there is free. Regardless, I expect this to fail with a 95% chance of that. The biggest influence that "we're going to build them ourselves" means a very very tight bandwidth for incubating games followed by literally mods of older games to take place in a different setting or tweaked to read "Spiderman" instead of "Superman." Gamers don't normally fall for that although your general populace might. And if I want to create a game "with" them what do I do? Get in line behind Project Gotham racing?
I don't think convoluted's a good criticism but it's certainly a poor or doomed strategy in my opinion.
So Green Dam was an influence and not a hindrance?
Perhaps in countries where you can be prosecuted and/or silently punished for criticizing your government the above ambiguity is a must for public statements made to newspapers. I would surmise that the translation was all too accurate. So that those who know what you mean know they are not alone and those who do not agree cannot hold it against you. Just speculation but I would wager these were carefully chosen words.
Really, if you were to tell me that a government was pushing this I could not, in my wildest dreams, have guessed all of those controversies springing up. Hats off to the Chinese government. Sometimes I think nothing can else surprise me and then, well, there it is.
We must all rally toward a single goal: without sacrificing the growth of knowledge or scientific innovation, we must invest in a sweeping project to make science relevant to the whole of America's citizenry. We recognize there are many heroes out there already toiling toward this end and launching promising initiatives, ranging from the Year of Science to the World Science Festival to ScienceDebate. But what we need--and currently lack--is the systematic acceptance of the idea that these actions are integral parts of the job description of scientists themselves. Not just their delegates, or surrogates, in the media or the classrooms.
They briefly touch on this when discussing movies but somehow everyone is forgetting that the problem isn't in science or scientists, it's in what motivates us. Our capitalistic society is simply getting better at convincing us that research and experimentation aren't rewarding. Making money is. A 9 to 5 job coding Jakarta Struts will net me more cash than working on my doctorate regarding AI or NLP ever will. Sure I could hit on something big and then put in 80 hours a week and try to launch a start up but that's like playing the lottery.
We don't need to destroy the whole system, just make it monetarily worth while to devote your life to science and the scientific process. This mission statement seems to just make scientists more popular or more prestigious... that's not the answer. The answer is to increase monetary rewards for scientists. We can rip on intellectual property and intellectual property law but that's one of the few examples where our capitalistic system ties inventions and discoveries monetarily to their originators. And when that's in place we'll ask why it matters that those "scientific" progresses were made since we can't readily access them in a cheap manner?
Right now, you'll make more money as a surgeon doing gastrointestinal bypasses than you will experimenting in surgery and medicine. Because GI bypasses are a surefire bet in America. And one person doing them will help individual people but not really society unless you look at GI bypasses on the whole. The same can be said in so many other fields.
The funny thing is that the general populace isn't really interested in science, they're interested in how science can provide them cheaper things, better health, easier money, naturally selfish goals. Look at the quest for knowledge, it's only worth pursuing if it has very practical uses that are often tied to money. In short, you're not going to change this because capitalism's been so successful and changes to how it works now are going to make people unhappy. The discussion is worthless unless you're willing to change how the system rewards scientists across the gamut--not just special institutions or foundations but from the single scientist up to the largest corporation.
This comes down to a fundamental question of who owns fossils, or any natural resources for that matter. I just wonder if 50 or 100 years from now, after someone has long paid for these at auction, that society/courts/prior landowners/native peoples/you-name-an-interest-group will sue for the return of these "stolen" artifacts.
We see this happen with art and antiquities all the time. Those things taken from their original home, either in time of war or time of peace are destined to be fought over years later. So how long will it be before society changes and it seems reasonable that one interest group gets enough support and whomever purchases the fossils will be forced to give them back, perhaps even without getting their money back.
In the United States, fossils are owned by the person/entity/organization/government that owns the land they are found on. If you read each of the descriptions they tell you where the fossils were dug up. That makes a lot of paleontologists mad but that's the way it is. Read this article:
In the United States and many other countries, fossil specimens collected on private land become the property of the landowner. Trade in these fossils is entirely legal. While many academics and institutions oppose fossil trade in any form, others take a different stance.
Now, I think I remember reading of cases where fossils were found in places like Yosemite and illegally excavated and sold illegally but that's because the state park owned them.
Your analogy of ill-gotten wartime loot is kind of funny. When the descendants of dinosaurs come looking for their ancestors bones, we will have to cough them up.
Fifty-one million years after the dinosaurs became extinct, Carcharocles megalodon trolled the Earth's seas as an apex predator
Great, as if trolls on Slashdot weren't enough...
Yeah, that's just plain bad editing. I'm pretty sure the word they were looking for is trawled which is a homophone as it is pronounced the same as "troll." Having done a lot of fishing in my youth this is a common mistake and I actually thought that internet 'trolling' was called that because it's like fishing for a response in the open waters of the internet. I know that's not the case but it seems a more appropriate origin than some fantasy description of a grotesque creature.
Oh well, I've never read Wired for their editing. Heck with their layout and ads I don't read them much more at all. I suppose that's just personal preference though.
but I don't think many people expected browser-based, hardware-accelerated graphics this soon
This is great for WebKit and I'm very interested to see where this goes. But you're kidding yourself with that above statement. Firefox is using Gecko and we all know IE will drag their feet on this. So you're proposing a company invest time into a "browser-based hardware-accelerated" graphics game or program by using WebGL... when it's only supported on the two smallest browser shares out there? Unless there's a way to auto-port existing OpenGL code to WebGL (and the press release didn't seem to imply that), I wouldn't hold my breath. Even if tomorrow Firefox is ready to go with WebGL in Gecko, you've got a long adoption and incubation time on these projects and you'd still be targeting the minority of browsers.
Basically I don't see a good business case or success story coming out of using WebGL over OpenGL or even just dumbing down the graphics and making it something that's widely supported already like Flash. Nothing would make me happier than to see this take off and be the de facto route for putting your game on everything with a browser... it just isn't at that point or even guaranteed to happen yet.
Refusal to relay your data to me?! I'll have you know I am the professor emeritus eldavojohn from Peter Wiggin's School for the Demented Brothers. Perhaps you've heard of it? Yes, well, I'm kind of a big deal there.
Your unwillingness to share crucial data to our pain-staking squirrel research not only upsets me but mars the very foundation upon which we have built our esteemed ideals and research. Furthermore your lack of savvy in the sub-field of post experiment egress and planning belie your innocence and naive dabbling in such a rewarding and rich genre of science.
In short, I recommend you put the squirrel slingshot down before you fail to hurt someone and leave the research to those of us properly equipped with chinchilla Gatling guns. Your work may make for a great show on the Discovery Channel but there's no place for you in my school.
...using a 3-man slingshot and dead squirrels.
The dead squirrels did not seem to suffer adverse effects while they were levitating, though it must be said they were in this state only for a few moments and there were adverse effects after they struck their respective targets.
Dear sir or ma'am, I am a colleague of yours in the respected field of Airborne Necromancy and would like to see your records and raw data. Specifically I am interested to see trajectory and ballistics data on said deceased squirrel and would like to know targets, their reaction and splash radius (if any). Also, I require data on the haired appendage attached to the posterior of the squirrel and would like to know if it emitted a satisfactory trailing manifold while said furry body traveled along its arc. Also, if you have raw data on the reactions of homo sapiens of the homogametic sex upon realization of said ballistic squirrel, I would be eternally grateful for it and any footage of shear horror and/or terror. I look forward to peer reviewing your research in next month's issue of Bodies in Flight. Good day!
Since the collapse of the state vector is an illusion caused by the entanglement of the experimenter with the experiment, whereupon the experimenter (now in a superposition of states) can only measure one outcome, this recless creation of macromolecular superpositions will deplete the multiverse's supply of world-lines and immanentize the eschaton. We'll have doppelgangers racing madly through the streets, and it will all end in tears.
Close but what's really going to happen is that we are going to put this virus in a superposition where it will enter a world that is parallel to ours. That world will be a virtual utopia... until our virus hits it. At which point they'll realize that we have just declared germ warfare on them and they will unify to work against the degenerative subpositioned attackers who they have done no harm. After millennia of trying to coexist peacefully with us, we will feel their true wrath and power... as horrors blink into existence on a subposition to begin the onslaught on us.
Uwe Boll will direct with a nod toward Steven Seagal to play the initial superpositioned virus sent over.
I'm not certain that this technique will scale to cats.
Don't worry, the next step up from viruses are lawyers. Since they have to put them in a vacuum and hit them with a laser, line 'em up and put it on Youtube... in the name of science!
Hopefully that gives you an idea, most of those old images are Hubble but I threw in some ground based observatory ones so that you can get an idea of what Hubble's been doing for us for 15 years.
thanks guys, posting this and now the hubble site is slashdotted!!! so now nobody gets to see the images until some other story (Britney Spears enrolls into MIT?) vectors the crowd away so us commoners can see hubble pictures.
I'm seeing the official NASA images just fine but MAST (Multimission Archive at STScI) put up an early mirror here if you need the full size images. These are only the press release images, I'm going to keep watching MAST for the full set but you have ftp info for these now here:
ftp archive.stsci.edu logon as anonymous cd/pub/sm4earlydata
Archive.org runs a really neat NASA images site that allows you to pick your favorites and make presentations or new montages with them. I'm not seeing the new images up on that yet but they will probably have them up soon.
I bet we've got a really smart person out there that knows the answer for this, for sure. I asked my professor and they really danced around and didn't give a straight answer (it was a community college).
What about these brilliant colors we always see in the photographs? Are they touched up (I've read and NASA insists, "no, they're not")? Are they extrapolations based on the inferred composition of the gases in a nebula, for example? Or is it honest to goodness, if we were parked in a space ship a few million miles away, exactly what our eyes would register?
Your answer is on the FAQ in one of the linked sites here:
There are no "natural color" cameras aboard the Hubble and never
have been. The optical cameras on board have all been digital CCD cameras,
which take images as grayscale pixels.
Sometimes the color is as natural as possible. However, the color given
to the images is not just "artistic embellishment." The images are,
indeed, downloaded as black and white, and color is added for a number of
different reasons -- for example, to show the dispersion detail of chemical
elements and highlight features so subdued that the human eye cannot see them.
For more information, read The
Meaning of Color on HubbleSite, which explains in detail how color is
added to images.
Just what the world economy needs. A single-country "cartel" that will cause prices to greatly rise. This should be interesting to watch.
I guess rare-earth metals are the new "oil".
Some key points you may have missed from the article:
Mr Stephens said China had put global competitors out of business in the early 1990s by flooding the market, leading to the closure of the biggest US rare earth mine at Mountain Pass in California - now being revived by Molycorp Minerals.
So, if this goes through, we merely open the mine in California. I'll feel better about paying a higher price for something if it is created under tighter environmental regulations than what they have in China. Cheap labor and lack of an EPA and potential corrupted officials? Of course they can undercut California!
Secondly a rare metals dealer in Australia said
This isn't about the China holding the world to ransom. They are saying we need these resources to develop our own economy and achieve energy efficiency, so go find your own supplies.
So your analogy is lacking in many ways. We can refine the metals here and China needs them for their own growing demand.
Slashdot Mirror
I am totally against protectionist policies because it never works. You have to understand that we get our water from outside California. We get it from the Colorado River, for instance. Why can we get the water from the Colorado River but we can't get renewable energy from outside the state? We get most of our cars from outside the state; why can't we get renewable energy?
With Reuters outlining some challenges. Aside from that, you have some groups like the CEA speaking out against it and a surprisingly negative response from the California citizens for smart clean energy claiming that it cuts jobs for citizens. A rep from them said:
We all believe in the importance of energy efficiency, but the CEC's proposed regulation is simply bad policy that will do little to achieve energy efficiency and a lot to destroy California jobs. The consumer electronics industry has been trying to work with the CEC since day one on alternatives that would help achieve energy efficiency without causing undue harm on California's economy. But time and time again, we have been disappointed with the CEC's approach and process.
Let's say they have 10 million active subscribers world wide and that each of them pays $12 a month. Wouldn't you expect that sort of protection and insane support on something generating $120 million in revenue for you a month? I would. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a whole lot more to it that we don't know about and never will.
If you're actually doing some commentary on the pieces of the songs that you're using, then yes. And no, an episode of Family Guy is not a small piece - each episode is a standalone work.
Yeah well, I said that to illustrate a point in what is a complete work? Did you know that a single song can be recorded over hundreds of hours spent in a studio? Is each snippet of a track recorded a "complete work"? What about the post recording processing that goes on? You're using that too, you know.
... and there you are at +5 informative. Great, keep teaching kids that.
I'm just trying to get you to think about the ways in which this whole fair use thing becomes ambiguous but apparently you can say what you feel like saying without quoting or citing one legal document or precedent
Go ahead and tell us what fair use is, I'm not pretending to be a lawyer but you're doing a fine job.
As for my above post being moderated troll?! So much for discourse and discussion on nailing down the definition of "fair use." I cite Capitol Records chasing after the Grey Album and I'm the troll.
Why do I even waste my time putting together posts? I am so sick and tired of this site.
"You have the right to use small parts of something covered by copyright (like quoting a book for an essay) to comment on it, write a review about it or parody it and you're allowed to make copies for yourself to use."
So you're saying that if I take very small samples of The Beatles' White Album (as I consider the album an entire work) and make new songs out of those small samples, it is completely legal and I can distribute or sell said reconstructions because they are small parts or parodies? Do I need to merely include a comment on my "mashup" to make that legal?
Or if I take a single episode of the Family Guy (the whole series is what seven seasons now?) I can distribute that with my website with commentary on how it's great for society?
There is no mention whatsoever of fair use.
Well, there actually is a mention of fair use in the parent guide but all it does is refer you to a better site. The only other mention is -- hilariously enough -- in their own terms of use about using the materials on the site under fair use.
... not the law. Because "fair use" is ambiguous and the so called "doctrine" is downright laughable. If you don't agree with me, go ahead and post a response arguing for or against my above Wikipedia edits being "fair use." I'll gladly play the devil's advocate if someone doesn't beat me to it.
But that's beside your point, let's play a game. Pretend you have the floor in front of primary school students and you want to explain fair use. What do you say?
I'm not saying they shouldn't mention it. Because it's not well defined. Fair use is, in my opinion, an abomination in that it's a "law" that's not defined in anyway. And what's even better is when I try to cite the safe harbor laws or portion limits on Slashdot, I'm ridiculed over and over (not that I've ever practiced law but as a citizen it's the most I can find) despite my analysis being correct! So with my masters degree in computer science, I am clearly unable to pin down what precisely constitutes fair use and what does not. I imagine that were I charged with uploading and editing fair use samples of every song off of David Bowie's Hunky Dory album (which I did) that my innocence would depend entirely on how much money I have for a lawyer
So given the above information, would you please outline how you would explain this to children? Or how you plan to "win their hearts and souls" with the fair use doctrine?
What I want for Christmas: someone in my government to man up and bring any amount of clarity to copyright law, fair use and (while we're at it) patents. Something shouldn't be unclear until you've already been sued for doing it. That's how you find yourself in situations like the RIAA suing thousands of people and watching court case after court case resolve to millions in damages awarded from an average citizen to a huge conglomerate of lawyers and labels.
Maybe for some bugs, but for those nasty caca roches, I get a bowl, wipe the top 4 inches around inside with vegtable oil then put whatever inside... coffee grounds, bananas... whatever... There are tons of dead ones in there but that doesn't stop more from coming. Also, cockroaches are cannibals.
Well, to be fair, your observations are from cockroaches that have lived in close quarters with humans and not those in nature. Notice that in the article, it's only Wired who suggests this would protect you from an infestation. The scientists say this may protect crops--which are in a more natural setting. And I think you would see a much higher success rate on cockroaches or wood beetles that live in the wild versus those in your home. Many animals behave very differently in their natural environment.
Whatever the case, I'm really excited to see fatty acid extracts used instead of chemical compounds on the food that I eat. Especially for people that have small gardens of tomatoes and vegetables. I'd personally pay a small premium on my produce for crops grown and repelling insects with this technology.
Has there ever been a major OS that simply went away, period?
I think RSX-11, RT-11 and RSTS/E fit that. Some of the PDP operating systems are dead probably because they're still closed source otherwise I'm guessing hobbyists would still be maintaining them.
intrepid RV'er
I may have a different definition of "intrepid" than you but to me there's nothing intrepid about any location you reach by road unless you're talking about hostile countries or might-wake-up-without-your-kidney parts of Mexico. Especially if you're on your laptop having a conference call while your TV dinners cook inside the RV.
Do yourself a favor and get out of the position where your business can't function without you. If you have you have to be a single point of failure I'm sorry you picked that profession in life and it's great that you make twice what I make but I would not trade places. If you want something moderately challenging then leave at home all your electronics and canoe/portage 50 miles into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area for an intrepid vacation. Trust me, to see land so pristine was a near religious experience and I definitely went back.
Go white water rafting or mountain hiking or get dive certified. I'm sorry if your health doesn't permit this but I personally don't find anything intrepid about a recreational vehicle.
No App Store For Microsoft's Zune HD
I only read the Q&A on the blog linked but I did catch this:
All of our apps are free ... and it's a managed solution right now, so we're building these apps or working with third parties to build these apps and provide them to our customers for free.
Followed by:
That being said, we know people want things like this on their devices so we're going to build them ourselves, they're going to be super high-quality, and they're going to be free.
It sounds like you'd have a hard time getting third parties to release applications on the Zune given the above aims. Now, free apps are great but I don't think a store would have much of a purpose if everything there is free. Regardless, I expect this to fail with a 95% chance of that. The biggest influence that "we're going to build them ourselves" means a very very tight bandwidth for incubating games followed by literally mods of older games to take place in a different setting or tweaked to read "Spiderman" instead of "Superman." Gamers don't normally fall for that although your general populace might. And if I want to create a game "with" them what do I do? Get in line behind Project Gotham racing?
I don't think convoluted's a good criticism but it's certainly a poor or doomed strategy in my opinion.
So Green Dam was an influence and not a hindrance?
Perhaps in countries where you can be prosecuted and/or silently punished for criticizing your government the above ambiguity is a must for public statements made to newspapers. I would surmise that the translation was all too accurate. So that those who know what you mean know they are not alone and those who do not agree cannot hold it against you. Just speculation but I would wager these were carefully chosen words.
Ok, I'm curious now. Exactly what was the controversy about it? Whether it sucks or it blows? :P
You only list two but I was fairly impressed with the number of dimensions of controversy this effort managed to accrue. You have (and this is by no means a complete list) accusations of copyright infringement and stealing code, unencrypted transmission from every machine to the server and accusations that said vulnerabilities make way for a possible government botnet tool. And that's aside from obvious controversy of the citizen privacy violations and the Chinese government manipulating PC manufacturers.
Really, if you were to tell me that a government was pushing this I could not, in my wildest dreams, have guessed all of those controversies springing up. Hats off to the Chinese government. Sometimes I think nothing can else surprise me and then, well, there it is.
The quoted text seems to be coming from this register story entitled "Google File System II stalked by open-source elephant", not the one linked in the summary. Also, I can't follow the Firehose link below the story to see if this was changed from the original submission.
We must all rally toward a single goal: without sacrificing the growth of knowledge or scientific innovation, we must invest in a sweeping project to make science relevant to the whole of America's citizenry. We recognize there are many heroes out there already toiling toward this end and launching promising initiatives, ranging from the Year of Science to the World Science Festival to ScienceDebate. But what we need--and currently lack--is the systematic acceptance of the idea that these actions are integral parts of the job description of scientists themselves. Not just their delegates, or surrogates, in the media or the classrooms.
They briefly touch on this when discussing movies but somehow everyone is forgetting that the problem isn't in science or scientists, it's in what motivates us. Our capitalistic society is simply getting better at convincing us that research and experimentation aren't rewarding. Making money is. A 9 to 5 job coding Jakarta Struts will net me more cash than working on my doctorate regarding AI or NLP ever will. Sure I could hit on something big and then put in 80 hours a week and try to launch a start up but that's like playing the lottery.
... that's not the answer. The answer is to increase monetary rewards for scientists. We can rip on intellectual property and intellectual property law but that's one of the few examples where our capitalistic system ties inventions and discoveries monetarily to their originators. And when that's in place we'll ask why it matters that those "scientific" progresses were made since we can't readily access them in a cheap manner?
We don't need to destroy the whole system, just make it monetarily worth while to devote your life to science and the scientific process. This mission statement seems to just make scientists more popular or more prestigious
Right now, you'll make more money as a surgeon doing gastrointestinal bypasses than you will experimenting in surgery and medicine. Because GI bypasses are a surefire bet in America. And one person doing them will help individual people but not really society unless you look at GI bypasses on the whole. The same can be said in so many other fields.
The funny thing is that the general populace isn't really interested in science, they're interested in how science can provide them cheaper things, better health, easier money, naturally selfish goals. Look at the quest for knowledge, it's only worth pursuing if it has very practical uses that are often tied to money. In short, you're not going to change this because capitalism's been so successful and changes to how it works now are going to make people unhappy. The discussion is worthless unless you're willing to change how the system rewards scientists across the gamut--not just special institutions or foundations but from the single scientist up to the largest corporation.
This comes down to a fundamental question of who owns fossils, or any natural resources for that matter. I just wonder if 50 or 100 years from now, after someone has long paid for these at auction, that society/courts/prior landowners/native peoples/you-name-an-interest-group will sue for the return of these "stolen" artifacts.
We see this happen with art and antiquities all the time. Those things taken from their original home, either in time of war or time of peace are destined to be fought over years later. So how long will it be before society changes and it seems reasonable that one interest group gets enough support and whomever purchases the fossils will be forced to give them back, perhaps even without getting their money back.
In the United States, fossils are owned by the person/entity/organization/government that owns the land they are found on. If you read each of the descriptions they tell you where the fossils were dug up. That makes a lot of paleontologists mad but that's the way it is. Read this article:
In the United States and many other countries, fossil specimens collected on private land become the property of the landowner. Trade in these fossils is entirely legal. While many academics and institutions oppose fossil trade in any form, others take a different stance.
Now, I think I remember reading of cases where fossils were found in places like Yosemite and illegally excavated and sold illegally but that's because the state park owned them.
Your analogy of ill-gotten wartime loot is kind of funny. When the descendants of dinosaurs come looking for their ancestors bones, we will have to cough them up.
From TFA:
Fifty-one million years after the dinosaurs became extinct, Carcharocles megalodon trolled the Earth's seas as an apex predator
Great, as if trolls on Slashdot weren't enough...
Yeah, that's just plain bad editing. I'm pretty sure the word they were looking for is trawled which is a homophone as it is pronounced the same as "troll." Having done a lot of fishing in my youth this is a common mistake and I actually thought that internet 'trolling' was called that because it's like fishing for a response in the open waters of the internet. I know that's not the case but it seems a more appropriate origin than some fantasy description of a grotesque creature.
Oh well, I've never read Wired for their editing. Heck with their layout and ads I don't read them much more at all. I suppose that's just personal preference though.
but I don't think many people expected browser-based, hardware-accelerated graphics this soon
This is great for WebKit and I'm very interested to see where this goes. But you're kidding yourself with that above statement. Firefox is using Gecko and we all know IE will drag their feet on this. So you're proposing a company invest time into a "browser-based hardware-accelerated" graphics game or program by using WebGL ... when it's only supported on the two smallest browser shares out there? Unless there's a way to auto-port existing OpenGL code to WebGL (and the press release didn't seem to imply that), I wouldn't hold my breath. Even if tomorrow Firefox is ready to go with WebGL in Gecko, you've got a long adoption and incubation time on these projects and you'd still be targeting the minority of browsers.
... it just isn't at that point or even guaranteed to happen yet.
Basically I don't see a good business case or success story coming out of using WebGL over OpenGL or even just dumbing down the graphics and making it something that's widely supported already like Flash. Nothing would make me happier than to see this take off and be the de facto route for putting your game on everything with a browser
Refusal to relay your data to me?! I'll have you know I am the professor emeritus eldavojohn from Peter Wiggin's School for the Demented Brothers. Perhaps you've heard of it? Yes, well, I'm kind of a big deal there.
Your unwillingness to share crucial data to our pain-staking squirrel research not only upsets me but mars the very foundation upon which we have built our esteemed ideals and research. Furthermore your lack of savvy in the sub-field of post experiment egress and planning belie your innocence and naive dabbling in such a rewarding and rich genre of science.
In short, I recommend you put the squirrel slingshot down before you fail to hurt someone and leave the research to those of us properly equipped with chinchilla Gatling guns. Your work may make for a great show on the Discovery Channel but there's no place for you in my school.
...using a 3-man slingshot and dead squirrels. The dead squirrels did not seem to suffer adverse effects while they were levitating, though it must be said they were in this state only for a few moments and there were adverse effects after they struck their respective targets.
Dear sir or ma'am, I am a colleague of yours in the respected field of Airborne Necromancy and would like to see your records and raw data. Specifically I am interested to see trajectory and ballistics data on said deceased squirrel and would like to know targets, their reaction and splash radius (if any). Also, I require data on the haired appendage attached to the posterior of the squirrel and would like to know if it emitted a satisfactory trailing manifold while said furry body traveled along its arc. Also, if you have raw data on the reactions of homo sapiens of the homogametic sex upon realization of said ballistic squirrel, I would be eternally grateful for it and any footage of shear horror and/or terror. I look forward to peer reviewing your research in next month's issue of Bodies in Flight. Good day!
Since the collapse of the state vector is an illusion caused by the entanglement of the experimenter with the experiment, whereupon the experimenter (now in a superposition of states) can only measure one outcome, this recless creation of macromolecular superpositions will deplete the multiverse's supply of world-lines and immanentize the eschaton. We'll have doppelgangers racing madly through the streets, and it will all end in tears.
Close but what's really going to happen is that we are going to put this virus in a superposition where it will enter a world that is parallel to ours. That world will be a virtual utopia ... until our virus hits it. At which point they'll realize that we have just declared germ warfare on them and they will unify to work against the degenerative subpositioned attackers who they have done no harm. After millennia of trying to coexist peacefully with us, we will feel their true wrath and power ... as horrors blink into existence on a subposition to begin the onslaught on us.
Uwe Boll will direct with a nod toward Steven Seagal to play the initial superpositioned virus sent over.
I'm not certain that this technique will scale to cats.
Don't worry, the next step up from viruses are lawyers. Since they have to put them in a vacuum and hit them with a laser, line 'em up and put it on Youtube ... in the name of science!
If anyone finds a link to side-by-side images from the old and new cameras, please post it!
I'll give it a shot. (note: on some of these I'm using MAST's archive since the main NASA site seems to be down and I am not linking you to full resolution photos as well as seeming to be at different ranges)
Old (2007) Image of NGC 6302 compare with new image of NGC 6302
Old (2004 not HST, ground observatory can't find HST image) Image of NGC 6217 compare with new image of NGC 6217
Old (2007) Image of Carina Nebula compare with new image of Carina Nebula
Old (1998 land observatory) Images (2000 HST) of Stephen's Quintet compare with new image of Stephen's Quintet
Old (2008) Omega Centauri compare with new Omega Centauri
Old (2005) Supernova Remnant LMC N132D compare with new Supernova Remnant LMC N132D
Hopefully that gives you an idea, most of those old images are Hubble but I threw in some ground based observatory ones so that you can get an idea of what Hubble's been doing for us for 15 years.
thanks guys, posting this and now the hubble site is slashdotted!!! so now nobody gets to see the images until some other story (Britney Spears enrolls into MIT?) vectors the crowd away so us commoners can see hubble pictures.
I'm seeing the official NASA images just fine but MAST (Multimission Archive at STScI) put up an early mirror here if you need the full size images. These are only the press release images, I'm going to keep watching MAST for the full set but you have ftp info for these now here:
Archive.org runs a really neat NASA images site that allows you to pick your favorites and make presentations or new montages with them. I'm not seeing the new images up on that yet but they will probably have them up soon.
I bet we've got a really smart person out there that knows the answer for this, for sure. I asked my professor and they really danced around and didn't give a straight answer (it was a community college). What about these brilliant colors we always see in the photographs? Are they touched up (I've read and NASA insists, "no, they're not")? Are they extrapolations based on the inferred composition of the gases in a nebula, for example? Or is it honest to goodness, if we were parked in a space ship a few million miles away, exactly what our eyes would register?
Your answer is on the FAQ in one of the linked sites here:
There are no "natural color" cameras aboard the Hubble and never have been. The optical cameras on board have all been digital CCD cameras, which take images as grayscale pixels.
Sometimes the color is as natural as possible. However, the color given to the images is not just "artistic embellishment." The images are, indeed, downloaded as black and white, and color is added for a number of different reasons -- for example, to show the dispersion detail of chemical elements and highlight features so subdued that the human eye cannot see them.
For more information, read The Meaning of Color on HubbleSite, which explains in detail how color is added to images.
Who was the Tychoid Mary?
Just what the world economy needs. A single-country "cartel" that will cause prices to greatly rise. This should be interesting to watch.
I guess rare-earth metals are the new "oil".
Some key points you may have missed from the article:
Mr Stephens said China had put global competitors out of business in the early 1990s by flooding the market, leading to the closure of the biggest US rare earth mine at Mountain Pass in California - now being revived by Molycorp Minerals.
So, if this goes through, we merely open the mine in California. I'll feel better about paying a higher price for something if it is created under tighter environmental regulations than what they have in China. Cheap labor and lack of an EPA and potential corrupted officials? Of course they can undercut California!
Secondly a rare metals dealer in Australia said
This isn't about the China holding the world to ransom. They are saying we need these resources to develop our own economy and achieve energy efficiency, so go find your own supplies.
So your analogy is lacking in many ways. We can refine the metals here and China needs them for their own growing demand.