Even if you only use your widescreen TV to watch Mapouka on youtube, and its not connected to an aerial, you still have to pay for a licence.
Not true. You need a license only if you are watching or recording live broadcasts. If you're not, you don't need one, even if you do have the equipment. Of course, they may suspect that you're lying, but if it isn't connected to an aerial, and it is connected to something else, you should be able to convince them.
Yeah, I know, actually reading the article before posting your critical analysis is pretty hard to avoid.
On/.? More seriously, if I'd taken the time to read it in detail, my comment would have been much later, and nobody would ever have read it. Considering the apparent credulity of/. readers on this issue, I wanted to get an oar in.
It does have some credible scientists on its editorial board. And I don't believe it's a bogus journal. But I do know a bit about how science works (being in it), and we consider the reputation of the journal, not just its editorial board. IJBS hardly has any reputation (acidfast7, posting above and below, agrees with me on this).
To back up my point, a bit of searching shows that this group of scientists has tried the same stunt before, and their methodology was and still is suspect (this is from Food Standards Australia/NZ, not Monsanto): FSANZ response
It doesn't look like the 'impact factor' relates to anything.
Impact factor is a measure commonly used in science for the quality of a journal. Effectively the number of citations per paper from a certain list of journals. Theirs doesn't look nice because: 1. Respectable journals hide it away somewhere on the info section of their website, they don't put it in a big banner for everyone to see, and 2. 'Unofficial' means they've calculated it themselves, i.e. ISI, which normally calculate it, don't think they're important enough to get one.
Like the parent poster, I'm not familiar with the journal, although I am in the same broad field. Which seems a bit suspicious for something putting itself in the top 2.1%. I've looked up SCImago: IJBS has dropped to 3%, but that list includes specialists like "South African Journal of Enology and Viticulture", and excludes the big name general journals (Nature, Science, PNAS). I'm also not clear how they calculate their ranking: they show its h-index and cites/document (common measures of impact) as being lower than New Phytologist (immediately below it, and a journal I'm quite familiar with). As far as I can tell it's a real journal, not an anti-GM front, but it's certainly not the big-hitter it pretends to be, and that likely means the quality bar is lower.
OK, I haven't read the paper in detail, but my initial impression is that, if academic researchers have found evidence that GM food damages your health, why haven't they put it in a really major journal--Nature, Science, PNAS, or something like PlosONE if the whole publication really had to be open access? I've got a degree in biology, and this is the first time I've ever come across the 'International Journal of Biological Sciences'.
Glancing at their results table, it doesn't seem clear cut overall. E.g. there are cases where rats fed 11% GM corn show a response, but rats fed 33% GM corn don't, cases where male rats are apparently affected, but not females, and vice versa. They also don't name the maize they used as a control, so we don't know how accurate it is.
All in all, it looks like they did a rather unconvincing study that prominent journals weren't prepared to accept, so they stuck it out there in this way. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but take it with a pinch of salt.
I'm not trying to claim that running as admin all the time is a good plan. I just don't think it's the panacea it's sometimes held up as. In particular, people suggesting that such 'intrinsic security' in Windows would make AV software and removal toolkits unnecessary.
2: I think we're actually in agreement on this.;-). What I was trying to say was pretty much that it can't be helped. Which means that 'intrinsic security' will never be enough for the mainstream, because people will override it.
The areas where Linux is strong are generally more useful to a hacker
Yes, but also more likely to be controlled by someone competent, who won't open unexpected attachments, download cursors, or fall for the "Your computer has N threats, click here to remove them" scams, and knows about updating software. There are plenty of Windows servers out there too, and I doubt they're infected very often. Malware writers target desktops because there's a decent chance of getting onto them.
The vast majority of said windows malware actually takes advantage of the user combined with the fact that user typically runs all his code as an admin.. Unix/Mac don't give you elevated privileges by default, and provide a well understood mechanism by which you can elevate your privileges which *should* make you think...
As has been pointed out elsewhere in such discussions, admin access is not essential for malware: it can download files, send out spam, set itself to start on login, and mess with your personal files even running as a local user.
Secondly, you've highlighted *should*, which is important. If people are used to clicking "Yes" (or entering their password) to do things, they'll do it for malware without a second thought. "DancingBunnies.exe needs you to become an admin to install. Continue?" Or, if Linux hits the mainstream, "To install DancingBunnies.deb, you need to...".
Secure != convenient. That's why most people in offices think their IT guy's a jerk, and why Windows remains popular.
(OK, maybe the 8% number is news; I don't know about the numbers...)
Nope. From the Nature paper, the 8% is just the bit that he starts off by describing that we already know. You're right, the *type* of virus is the key thing here. Congratulations, slashdot, for successfully trumpeting the thing that wasn't news.
IE: Could a wave user interact with a wave with someone who is using MS Exchange the same way as they interact with someone who is using Wave also?
I don't think so. But this is as much a conceptual matter as a technical one. Wave is based around the idea of a 'shared conversation', a common document on a server which several people can update. I'm not familiar with Exchange, and I know that it does have some collaboration features as well, but I believe that for communication, it is essentially an e-mail platform. E-mail is based on the concept of messages, sent to a number of people or services, which are fixed once you hit send.
It should be possible to build a bridge between Wave and e-mail, and I hope that someone does. But it won't let you interact with the other participant in the same way as if they were on Wave. E-mail simply has no way to do that.
Of course, it's built to federate, so maybe one day, Microsoft will write Wave support into Exchange. I'm not holding my breath, however.
Dude, compared to your idealistic hippie post (not that it's bad in itself), RMS sounds like the oracle of common sense.
No, he's quite right. Even if you don't want to call it 'trust' (I think the term fits), the whole basis of a money-based society is paying people to worry about things on your behalf. I buy a rail ticket, trusting the train company to take me where I need to go safely. I buy bread, I trust it contains carbohydrates and not strychnine. Most people buy software and trust that it will do what they need. And it generally does.
Yes, software companies have made plenty of mistakes, but for the average user, they're just not as bad as you describe. If FLOSS was so clearly superior, Microsoft, Apple and Google would be out of business by now. Of course they benefit from lock in and familiarity, but that can only go so far. They've maintained (or increased, in Apple's case) their market shares by having products that work for people.
Colleges and universities... also provide physical proximity to classmates of the opposite sex.
Funny, but most likely insightful too. Of course online material is useful, but for the average 18 year old looking at universities, being on a campus with loads of other people their own age (including the opposite sex), plenty to do (including the opposite sex), and usually decent support looks very attractive (just like the...OK, enough). It's certainly better than staying with your parents to save on costs.
And while you've got all these students in one place, why not teach them as a group?
So I very much doubt that bricks and mortar universities are on the way out. Just because we can doesn't mean that we will.
To give a view from the other side of the pond, the BBC's "Have Your Say" message boards aren't much better. Hordes of angry people shout their polarised opinions, and the flat structure means that there are only a few replies, generally nowhere near the post they're replying to, and typically as bigoted as the rest of it.
It's free, and it doesn't serve up any ads beyond what you'd otherwise get (questions about adblock notwithstanding). So it doesn't matter to Google if people actually adopt Chrome. What they're more concerned about is getting similar ideas into Firefox and maybe, eventually, IE. The browser, led by their example, will become a better tool for web software, which is a win for Google.
On a more mundane note: Still no Linux version. I liked it on Windows. From the amount they talk about Windows programming on their blog, I can't help but feel that the Mac and Linux versions are not much more than nice ideas.
I haven't read all the replies, but the ones I have read seem to be largely missing the point. Google News is not a political or social research tool. It is a news service. Google have chosen to aggregate other people's news stories rather than writing their own, but the idea behind it is roughly the same - a reliable, mainstream news service.
I wouldn't call what google is doing censorship. They are not blocking the information, just choosing not to list it on the news service. It's debatable (as shown by other posts) whether or not it is news, but that's beside the point. Google news supplies mainstream news, not extreme viewpoints.
I am sceptical about bias. I believe that the "centre" of the political spectrum is defined only by what the majority of people think. Bias then emerges as a rather subjective notion. Any mainstream source can probably be seen as biased either way depending on who is viewing it. What seems left wing to the BNP (Right-wing British political party, if you don't follow me) probably seems right wing to certain South American politicians. From a British viewpoint, the US is right wing and Europe tends to be slightly right wing. Doubtless the US therefore sees Britain as somewhat left wing.
The only sense in which something could objectively be called biased is its position relative to the average viewpoint.
A - What average? US average? "Western" average? World average? I have little doubt that there are significant differences between these.
B - Like any other news services, it is ruled by market forces. If it gives too many articles one side or other of the mainstream, it will lose users to other services. The profitable ground is the middle ground, and you can rely on market forces to keep it there.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if you only use your widescreen TV to watch Mapouka on youtube, and its not connected to an aerial, you still have to pay for a licence.
Not true. You need a license only if you are watching or recording live broadcasts. If you're not, you don't need one, even if you do have the equipment. Of course, they may suspect that you're lying, but if it isn't connected to an aerial, and it is connected to something else, you should be able to convince them.
Yeah, I know, actually reading the article before posting your critical analysis is pretty hard to avoid.
On /.? More seriously, if I'd taken the time to read it in detail, my comment would have been much later, and nobody would ever have read it. Considering the apparent credulity of /. readers on this issue, I wanted to get an oar in.
It does have some credible scientists on its editorial board. And I don't believe it's a bogus journal. But I do know a bit about how science works (being in it), and we consider the reputation of the journal, not just its editorial board. IJBS hardly has any reputation (acidfast7, posting above and below, agrees with me on this).
To back up my point, a bit of searching shows that this group of scientists has tried the same stunt before, and their methodology was and still is suspect (this is from Food Standards Australia/NZ, not Monsanto): FSANZ response
It doesn't look like the 'impact factor' relates to anything.
Impact factor is a measure commonly used in science for the quality of a journal. Effectively the number of citations per paper from a certain list of journals. Theirs doesn't look nice because: 1. Respectable journals hide it away somewhere on the info section of their website, they don't put it in a big banner for everyone to see, and 2. 'Unofficial' means they've calculated it themselves, i.e. ISI, which normally calculate it, don't think they're important enough to get one.
Like the parent poster, I'm not familiar with the journal, although I am in the same broad field. Which seems a bit suspicious for something putting itself in the top 2.1%. I've looked up SCImago: IJBS has dropped to 3%, but that list includes specialists like "South African Journal of Enology and Viticulture", and excludes the big name general journals (Nature, Science, PNAS). I'm also not clear how they calculate their ranking: they show its h-index and cites/document (common measures of impact) as being lower than New Phytologist (immediately below it, and a journal I'm quite familiar with). As far as I can tell it's a real journal, not an anti-GM front, but it's certainly not the big-hitter it pretends to be, and that likely means the quality bar is lower.
OK, I haven't read the paper in detail, but my initial impression is that, if academic researchers have found evidence that GM food damages your health, why haven't they put it in a really major journal--Nature, Science, PNAS, or something like PlosONE if the whole publication really had to be open access? I've got a degree in biology, and this is the first time I've ever come across the 'International Journal of Biological Sciences'.
Glancing at their results table, it doesn't seem clear cut overall. E.g. there are cases where rats fed 11% GM corn show a response, but rats fed 33% GM corn don't, cases where male rats are apparently affected, but not females, and vice versa. They also don't name the maize they used as a control, so we don't know how accurate it is.
All in all, it looks like they did a rather unconvincing study that prominent journals weren't prepared to accept, so they stuck it out there in this way. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but take it with a pinch of salt.
I'm not trying to claim that running as admin all the time is a good plan. I just don't think it's the panacea it's sometimes held up as. In particular, people suggesting that such 'intrinsic security' in Windows would make AV software and removal toolkits unnecessary.
2: I think we're actually in agreement on this. ;-). What I was trying to say was pretty much that it can't be helped. Which means that 'intrinsic security' will never be enough for the mainstream, because people will override it.
The areas where Linux is strong are generally more useful to a hacker
Yes, but also more likely to be controlled by someone competent, who won't open unexpected attachments, download cursors, or fall for the "Your computer has N threats, click here to remove them" scams, and knows about updating software. There are plenty of Windows servers out there too, and I doubt they're infected very often. Malware writers target desktops because there's a decent chance of getting onto them.
The vast majority of said windows malware actually takes advantage of the user combined with the fact that user typically runs all his code as an admin.. Unix/Mac don't give you elevated privileges by default, and provide a well understood mechanism by which you can elevate your privileges which *should* make you think...
As has been pointed out elsewhere in such discussions, admin access is not essential for malware: it can download files, send out spam, set itself to start on login, and mess with your personal files even running as a local user.
Secondly, you've highlighted *should*, which is important. If people are used to clicking "Yes" (or entering their password) to do things, they'll do it for malware without a second thought. "DancingBunnies.exe needs you to become an admin to install. Continue?" Or, if Linux hits the mainstream, "To install DancingBunnies.deb, you need to...".
Secure != convenient. That's why most people in offices think their IT guy's a jerk, and why Windows remains popular.
(OK, maybe the 8% number is news; I don't know about the numbers...)
Nope. From the Nature paper, the 8% is just the bit that he starts off by describing that we already know. You're right, the *type* of virus is the key thing here. Congratulations, slashdot, for successfully trumpeting the thing that wasn't news.
IE: Could a wave user interact with a wave with someone who is using MS Exchange the same way as they interact with someone who is using Wave also?
I don't think so. But this is as much a conceptual matter as a technical one. Wave is based around the idea of a 'shared conversation', a common document on a server which several people can update. I'm not familiar with Exchange, and I know that it does have some collaboration features as well, but I believe that for communication, it is essentially an e-mail platform. E-mail is based on the concept of messages, sent to a number of people or services, which are fixed once you hit send.
It should be possible to build a bridge between Wave and e-mail, and I hope that someone does. But it won't let you interact with the other participant in the same way as if they were on Wave. E-mail simply has no way to do that.
Of course, it's built to federate, so maybe one day, Microsoft will write Wave support into Exchange. I'm not holding my breath, however.
Dude, compared to your idealistic hippie post (not that it's bad in itself), RMS sounds like the oracle of common sense.
No, he's quite right. Even if you don't want to call it 'trust' (I think the term fits), the whole basis of a money-based society is paying people to worry about things on your behalf. I buy a rail ticket, trusting the train company to take me where I need to go safely. I buy bread, I trust it contains carbohydrates and not strychnine. Most people buy software and trust that it will do what they need. And it generally does.
Yes, software companies have made plenty of mistakes, but for the average user, they're just not as bad as you describe. If FLOSS was so clearly superior, Microsoft, Apple and Google would be out of business by now. Of course they benefit from lock in and familiarity, but that can only go so far. They've maintained (or increased, in Apple's case) their market shares by having products that work for people.
Colleges and universities... also provide physical proximity to classmates of the opposite sex.
Funny, but most likely insightful too. Of course online material is useful, but for the average 18 year old looking at universities, being on a campus with loads of other people their own age (including the opposite sex), plenty to do (including the opposite sex), and usually decent support looks very attractive (just like the...OK, enough). It's certainly better than staying with your parents to save on costs.
And while you've got all these students in one place, why not teach them as a group?
So I very much doubt that bricks and mortar universities are on the way out. Just because we can doesn't mean that we will.
To give a view from the other side of the pond, the BBC's "Have Your Say" message boards aren't much better. Hordes of angry people shout their polarised opinions, and the flat structure means that there are only a few replies, generally nowhere near the post they're replying to, and typically as bigoted as the rest of it.
Someone even went so far as to set up a website showcasing the stupidest contributions: http://ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com/
It's free, and it doesn't serve up any ads beyond what you'd otherwise get (questions about adblock notwithstanding). So it doesn't matter to Google if people actually adopt Chrome. What they're more concerned about is getting similar ideas into Firefox and maybe, eventually, IE. The browser, led by their example, will become a better tool for web software, which is a win for Google.
On a more mundane note: Still no Linux version. I liked it on Windows. From the amount they talk about Windows programming on their blog, I can't help but feel that the Mac and Linux versions are not much more than nice ideas.
I haven't read all the replies, but the ones I have read seem to be largely missing the point. Google News is not a political or social research tool. It is a news service. Google have chosen to aggregate other people's news stories rather than writing their own, but the idea behind it is roughly the same - a reliable, mainstream news service.
I wouldn't call what google is doing censorship. They are not blocking the information, just choosing not to list it on the news service. It's debatable (as shown by other posts) whether or not it is news, but that's beside the point. Google news supplies mainstream news, not extreme viewpoints.
I am sceptical about bias. I believe that the "centre" of the political spectrum is defined only by what the majority of people think. Bias then emerges as a rather subjective notion. Any mainstream source can probably be seen as biased either way depending on who is viewing it. What seems left wing to the BNP (Right-wing British political party, if you don't follow me) probably seems right wing to certain South American politicians. From a British viewpoint, the US is right wing and Europe tends to be slightly right wing. Doubtless the US therefore sees Britain as somewhat left wing. The only sense in which something could objectively be called biased is its position relative to the average viewpoint. A - What average? US average? "Western" average? World average? I have little doubt that there are significant differences between these. B - Like any other news services, it is ruled by market forces. If it gives too many articles one side or other of the mainstream, it will lose users to other services. The profitable ground is the middle ground, and you can rely on market forces to keep it there.