This does not bode well. With a patent grant to Microsoft, NZLawyer reports: Patent Protection allowed for underlying data structures.

Commenting on the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) decision IT specialist, Matt Adams, talks about IPONZ's flexibility in extending the 1950's definition of "invention" and the protection the 1953 Patent Act offers: "Extending that protection to cover the underlying database design will give software developers recognition for the creativity that goes into structuring their data."

Article is a few months old, but don't remember reading about it back then. Hopefully it won't spread... "Data Structures"? Does that mean I can patent a data structure holding an integer value?

int foo;

Or does it have to use a 'struct' type definition?

I wonder if software developers can be held liable for unknowing violations. Seems like this might be more easily used to block creating compatible programs to read or write "patented data structures" on disk...ug.

Today, I note, with trepidation, a breakthrough in primate cloning was announced. Can presidential candidates be far behind?

It might take longer for more evolved politicians, or, outright, humans, but we could be headed that way. Just thing. If some conservatives stash away DNA of our current Führer or Reagan -- they could be presidents again! Very scary. Could this become (or 'be') a way around term limits: Generate multiple clones spaced 4-8 years apart and bring each up to have the same values as the original (or as the values are seen fit to be modified by a reigning party)? Who knows, they might even raise them in some obscure location, perhaps in Brazil?

Tried to ask-slashdot about this. Will have to see if it makes it through the filtering...
Was watching Monk last night and some kid wrote Avogadro's number (or something that looked like it) on a blackboard. They wrote 6.0221415 * 10^23. Today I was trying to remember the extra digits (only carried around 3 digits of accuracy in brain...not a constant I need alot or alot of precision of, usually.

I remembered my Texas Instruments Solar calculator had it as a programmed in constant. All sources I've seen have the exponent as 23, but the number part varies a bit, source to source. The farthest "off" from the others is the one on my TI-36X calculator. Some values I've found:
(all scaled by 10^23, lowest to highest)

6.022 131 67 Texas Instruments (built-in to calculator):
6.022 141 5 Monk TV show (USA Network)
6.022 141 79 NIST (website)
6.022 141 79 Wikipedia Same as NIST
6.022 142 5 Google
6.022 257 Lapeer County, MI ("http://chem.lapeer.org/Chem1Docs/MolExercise.html")

So why all the different answers? Has the value of Av's Num been fluctuating lately like the price of gold or the stock market? Are the other answers "older, accepted values?"

Google is "close" -- if they had left it at 7 digits (6.033142) I would have thought it a rounding of the NIST value, but throwing in that 7th decimal place shoots that idea out of the water.

Seems like Lapeer County is most off from everyone else (varying by .00035), being on the high side, but a _CALCULATOR_ company?

TI getting their programmed in constants, "WRONG"?!? What faith should I have in any of their other constants or their formulae and calculations? They seem to be low by ".000 010 12", or to put things in obfuscating perspective:
1.012 x 10^18 or about 1 quintillion?

Is it common for calculator manufacturers to have such different values? Haven't checked other constants -- maybe they are better, but it seems "concerning" (if I needed more precise constants, my calculator could be very misleading). It reminded me of the Pentium math bug where it returned the wrong answer on some calculations. We just accept these things as "right" or "correct".
Is quality control dropping? (Calculator made in China). Is it a "foreign-made" quality issue?

Thanks for any insights on why things are so odd....

Can't even rely on my pocket calculator these days...what's the world coming to?

Oh frack. Monolith AT&T 'accidentally' censored 15 seconds of of "controversial, political speech criticizing the Furor, Lord Bush. It wasn't a matter of "swear words"...it was simply "politically controversial". An AT&T spokesdrone said:

Following a rendition of Pearl Jam's song "Daughter" during the show at Chicago's Grant Park, Vedder transitioned into the Pink Floyd classic, singing the Bush lyrics to an enthusiastic crowd that shouted "No more war!" and held up homemade anti-war signs.

The first time Vedder sang "George Bush leave this world alone," the lyrics were transmitted to users on AT&T's Blue Room Web site. The second two anti-Bush verses were cut.

If was obvious from the first "rift" that it wasn't "obscene, yet the censor, having heard the first anti-Bush message, unilaterally decided that they second and 3rd anti-Bush messages were "obscene" and hit the censor button -- deleting about 15 seconds of playtime.

Of course AT&T's damage control unit almost immediately issued a "gosh, we are really sorry." It's not our official policy to censor political speech, but our censor had to make a "snap decision", and thought comments against Bush were inappropriate. [No doubt he has been censored with a raise and paid time off in Maui].

This is a major problem with "common carriers" -- they claim common carrier status because they *don't* have responsibility for content and DON'T "censor". So how can they claim common carrier status *and* censor at the same time?

But that aside -- it's all too easy to silence critics or retaliate against them to prevent the messages reaching the mass audiences, but later be all apologetic (so as to avoid official responsibility). By taking this route of censoring, ISP's achieve their ends of censoring critics and various political views to keep such messages from wide dissemination while absolving themselves of what can(could) be intentional censoring (easier to ask forgiveness of gullible public than ask for pre-approval).

AT&T doesn't seem to get it. Apologies don't cut it -- they serve the purpose of keeping the message reading a mass audience, and later contriteness avoids official blame. Very little way to prove otherwise -- and no matter how many apologies or retractions -- the message will still not reach either the intended nor as wide an audience. The damage can't be undone.

Unfortunately, this isn't the first time AT&T has used this censorship tactic.

The only real cure would be fines against censorship the same way the FCC wants to find obscenities. Accidental or not -- if it is done, it's a fine -- but [sarcasm], that's likely to happen under our pro-corp government...[/sarcasm] NOT!

Boo monopoly power. This may go without saying, but our government needs some major overhauling to restore balance between citizens and "artificial humans (corps). The Corps have disporportionately, MUCH greater power.

I find it ironic that digg was started as a spin-off from slashdot as a protest against slashdot's main-article-only-selected-by-editors to one where anyone could post a topic and readers could rate not only other posters but also the main-article (at least this is my impression from my scant knowledge of the facts...:-)).

With slashdot accused of being anti-MS, pro-linux or pro anything other than MS, one might wonder if slashdot editors reinforced that bias (assuming the accusation held any truth). Perhaps those who found Digg more often "dug" Microsoft... and felt silenced. Whatever,

It appears digg's training is almost complete. They are nearing the end of their journey to the "dark side" as they partner with Bill-Gatis of the M'Borg. That's right -- MS will provide all the context sensitive advertising for Digg. Digg, like got some sum of cash + clickthroughs...

Anyone think Digg will "digg hard" on MS-negative stories?...

I suppose it was inevitable -- hopefully other government entities will take notice.

A vote on medical Marijuana, in Berkeley, in 2004 was defeated by 191 "Diebold votes". This was in Berkeley, California -- a focal point of anti-war and anti-administration demonstrations in the 60's and 70's -- now supposedly hardened to the point of defeating a medical dispensary law.

Like the Diebold results from 2004 presidential race in Ohio, the vote was "suspect". Like with the Ohio, 2004 presidential vote, it became impossible to recount the votes. Unlike the 2004 presidential election, the unlikely election results in Berkeley will be contested. Voting officials destroyed the records of the election (assuming that, like the presidential election, missing results would be "forgiven" and the questionable results would be allowed to stand). Fortunately, unlike in the Ohio vote -- California Judicial officials haven't been sufficiently corrupted. This was despite Berkeley election officials lying to the court about what data they had and feigning ignorance of how the machines worked. California Judge Winifred Smith ruled that inability to verify the vote, the results, and the deliberate destruction of voting records was sufficient to order a new vote.

In addition to "Measure R" being ordered to the ballot in an upcoming election, the county was directed to pay the costs of the recount, attorney fees and investigative costs for a trip to Diebold offices in Texas.

You can read more details here, here, and here.

Maybe US democracy isn't entirely dead (despite Bush's political strong-arming of the 2000 and 2004 elections). Lord Bush, emissary of Evil has done much to expand police powers. Under the guise of fighting terrorism, the FBI is now using its ill-gotten intelligence, to prosecute US-citizens for "ordinary", "everyday" (not terrorist related), crime. As was anticipated, the new police powers are being primarily directed against US citizens -- not terrorists. It may seem unlikely, but this outcome may have been foreseen and hoped for by Osama bin Laden as a very successful attack on American society and liberty.

With twelve million illegal immigrants in the US by Bush's 2nd term in office, does anyone believe that if Al-Qaeda really wanted to strike on US again, they couldn't? Or does someone want to argue that our borders are secure enough to be keeping out terrorists? :-|

With the dollar continuing record lows against the Euro, down almost 30% since 1 B.B. (Before Bush) (aka 1999 C.E.) and suffering a 26 year low against the UK pound, maybe we should have a new section on the Almighty Euro.

As a nomination for that section, this article, on Paris France being attacked by private Telecoms for her plans to provide city-wide FREE WiFi. France Telecom cites the EU's stance on allowing free airwaves in its decision to block a free wi-fi network in 2005 on competition grounds.

Seems that love for the Euro is beginning to rival the stupidity caused by love for the Dollar...

sigh

It's not clear if allofmp3 has been shut down or if they've just moved to a new site. Apparently allofmp3 and mp3spark claim to pay their royalties to the RMIS (Russian Multimedia and Internet Society). The head of RMIS, Oleg Nezus, says that he has tried to distribute substantial sums of money to the rights holders but has been rebuffed.

What? Rubles aren't good enough for 'em?

Seems that Steve Jobs sees only two browsers in market's future: Safari & IE. Guess it's time for Firefox/Netscape/Opera to just roll over for the true IE competitor: Safari. From what I can see, the only way Safari is competing with IE over the other browsers is in most buggy, least configurable, slowest or least secure.

How long before Apple sites start sporting new, "Safari-only" features with some new/improved Safari DRM -- maybe Safari would be only browser to support some "extra special" iTunes feature (whatever it is), to entice 1000's of iTune drones with something new, special and only available using Safari...

Is Steve Jobs vying for Bill Gates old "world-domination / most-evil CEO" job with Gates planning to step down from directly managing Microsoft in near future (2008?)?

From an article in Live Science, researchers have found that subliminal stimulation can be used to stimulate people to work harder. How long before we see this in the workplace masked (or buried) in the background hum in an office?

Such a deal -- an article in Live Science (April 13, 07), says that the Accuracy of face recognition has skyrocketed! Aren't you comforted by this fact?

The best results were obtained by "Niven Vision" (since acquired by Google). Why would Google be interested in face recognition software? Will they still "do no evil", or is that statement "passé"? Looks like Google now possesses the best tech for increased government snooping. Special...

This was first posted in a string about whether or not computer science was dying.

How many computer science graduates are actually doing computer science.

Working as a programmer in an IT department doesn't usually have much to do with science -- it's about trying to create more standardized cogs from a growing number of previously coded cogs.

How much research is being done today on individual users benefiting from 32-128core machines?

Assuming some magic doesn't happen and GHz start climbing / doubling without frying, it seems like they are just raising GHz/chip by adding more cores at similar clock rates. How can this benefit the average PC user? If it cannot be exploited for "individual persons", it sounds like the Personal Computer may be a thing of the past.

Is that what people want? Right now, the only ways of using multiple cores is usually running separate programs at the same time (if you can use that, however a home system doesn't usually need to serve web pages to 1000's of users); OR divide your machine into "VM's". Nice for test/develop/production/redundancy, but again -- not too helpful for the average joe wanting programs to run faster and smoother, and with more user friendliness.

What will it take to use parallel computing in the Personal Computer industry? doesn't that sorta imply, if not the death, a serious problem in the Personal Computer industry.

Do we have enough cores to start building some practical AI's? Can we develop special compilers and light-weight threads (i.e. - not separate processes) to allow use of multi cores dynamically in an individual program (ex. - "for loops", not needing previous loop results, could all be parallelized if parallelizing cost to create helper threads for a few to several loops could have low enough overhead to make it worth it.

Seems like AI and parallelizing are at least two areas that need computer science, but that doesn't seem to be what most people are doing these days. Might use it in voice and face recognition, but again -- not very general tasks.

What companies are doing Computer Science these days? Seems like most employers just need development of applications to run current "paradigms. No "computer science" needed.

Most high level developers at companies -- even in Open Source (or at least the Linux Kernel) are awfully conservative when it comes to doing computer science. They want the tried and true, step-wise development vs. large scale "disruptive technologies" that could enable whole new ways of doing things. People at the top of most large projects (commercial and O.S.) are too conservative to be doing real computer science.

Maybe research grants? Seems like the Bush idea of research grants are things that are guaranteed to provide benefits in the immediate future (soon enough to be used in next year's theater of battle, for example). That's not the most flexible environment to develop new technologies that may not be directly applicable to the next new stealth whatchamacallit.

Is there any place for computer science research outside of getting your doctoral?

Even if it were a significant amount of energy, this energy is entirely absorbed by the atmosphere at altitudes above 60km. You would need to come up with a plausible mechanism for transporting this radiation down into the lower atmosphere without increasing the temperature of the stratosphere.

Um...to be clear, radiation includes "light", IR and UV components as well.

There has been some large concern over an increasing ozone-size and the fact that it may be decades before pollutants (CFC's and such), released decades ago, decline enough to reverse the lowering ozone density.

That lowered ozone and growing lack of ozone (ozone holes, mainly over south, but with some effects noticed over north pole (!side question, why are most pollution heavy cultures (western) in northern hemisphere and ozone hole is largest in southern hemisphere?!)) is allowing significantly larger amounts of high energy radiation (UV light is higher energy/photon than visible or Infrared spectrum) through to the surface. It isn't being filtered out in the upper atmosphere. There is some concern, beside growing skin cancer cases (especially in southern hemisphere areas of Australia and New Zealand), of it causing damage to animal and plant life, planet-wide.

Second, related to the magnetic field decline, the earth would gradually lose its current level of shielding from the solar wind. This, in turn would appear to cause an increase of nitrogen oxide in the upper atmosphere, especially during proton-heavy coronal mass ejections. This leads to the same effect as is theorized for CRC's -- ozone depletion.

Problem example: Outside on sunny day, clouds move over your location -- it is virtually guaranteed, that the temperature will go down. On the other hand -- on a fully overcast day, we are warned that UV radiation is nearly as intense as on a sunny day. Supposedly UV radiation is much better at penetrating cloud cover.

Seems like decrease of magnetic field --> leads to decrease ozone layer protection --> leads to increase of higher energy photons (that tends to stunt plant growth and thereby slow down the CO2->O2 cycle) hitting the earth's surface.

I don't know the full effects of increased higher-energy photon radiation hitting earth's surface would be, but it seems like most would be converted to lower-energy IR upon hitting the ground. I.e. -- it should, cause some rise in temperature. Whether or not it is significant, I can't say, but I don't believe it to be inconsequential.

I'm sure that CO2 has some effect on global warming, but there are other factors in play here that may be as much as or of greater effect than man's CO2 output. I sometimes wonder -- with just all the *heat* output produced by "mankind" (even in summer we are running our heat pumps, to make our inside spaces cooler). Might that not have some added effect?

Good to see Apple jumping on the Tuesday bug fix bandwagon! They just released 8 bugfixes affecting both their Windows and Mac OS X platforms in their Quicktime product.

An 7.1.5 version update is available for Windows (18.6MB) and Mac OS X (41.4MB). Also released is version 7.1 of iTunes as a 36.1MB Windows download and 28MB Mac download (Infoseek).

No news on fixes for their product bugs on Vista yet.

Just as "GW" is getting heavy, along comes the "bright" news from Science News. "The big chill, a modern day threat of nuclear winter". Urban density meets limited nuclear exchange. The down is about the threat of 100 15kton weapons going off in a high-density building area and the possible resulting "ash" causing ground level drops that would start out more extreme than temperatures in the centuries-long "Little Ice Age" that ended in the 1800's.

Gives one thought on how just 1.5 megatons of nukes could affect climate vs. dire predictions of 40C drops for an all-out war between super powers in the 80's.