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Comment Re:That is impractical. I mean, impossible. (Score 1) 737

by Raindance (#26022603) Attached to: What the Papers Don't Say About Vaccines

Well, yes. The law might have to step in, particularly given that, though it's good for society to vaccinate everyone, sometimes it makes sense for specific individuals *not* to get vaccines.

It's game theory- the more people who get vaccinated, the less important it is for you to get vaccinated. If not getting vaccinated means you have a 20% chance of getting measles, then of course it's rational for you.

But if the vast majority of people in your society are vaccinated, and so not getting vaccinated means you have a .002% chance of getting measles, and getting vaccinated may carry with it a .03% chance of serious autoimmune complications... then it's entirely rational to not get vaccinated.

I'm paid up on vaccines. I would vaccinate my kids if I had any. But the part of the blogosphere that makes a big deal about vaccine myths needs to face up to the fact that sometimes it's *rational* for parents to not vaccinate their kids.
Censorship

MADD Targets GTA IV Over Drunk Driving Scene 703

Posted by timothy from the inability-to-distinguish-real-life-from-pretend dept.
eldavojohn writes "The watch-dog group Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) has set its sights on the rating of GTA IV, primarily because a player can drive drunk in the game. MADD released a statement saying that 'Drunk driving is not a game, and it is not a joke. Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable.' MADD also is asking Rockstar Games to consider removing GTA IV from distribution 'out of respect for the millions of victims/survivors of drunk driving.' Rockstar replied to MADD by saying 'we have a great deal of respect for MADD's mission, but we believe the mature audience for "Grand Theft Auto IV" is more than sophisticated enough to understand the game's content.' As expected, Jack Thompson is making his usual attention-whoring remarks by comparing GTA IV to the polio virus."
News

Geologists Claim Earth May Be Softer Around The Middle Than Previously Thought 98

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the creamy-nougat-center dept.
A new geological study is suggesting that what we know about the lower mantle of the Earth may have to be reevaluated. Since we are unable to actually sample the Earth at those depths, scientists rely on the use of seismic waves to study the lower reaches of the Earth. This new study suggests that material in the lower mantle has unusual characteristics that make sound move more slowly, suggesting a softer makeup than previously thought. "What's most important for seismology is the acoustic properties--the propagation of sound. We determined the elasticity of ferropericlase through the pressure-induced high-spin to low-spin transition. We did this by measuring the velocity of acoustic waves propagating in different directions in a single crystal of the material and found that over an extended pressure range (from about 395,000 to 590,000 atmospheres) the material became 'softer'--that is, the waves slowed down more than expected from previous work. Thus, at high temperature corresponding distributions will become very broad, which will result in a wide range of depth having subtly anomalous properties that perhaps extend through most of the lower mantle."
Mozilla

Firefox 3 Reviewed - A Disappointment

Posted by Zonk from the less-fire-more-ember dept.
oopensource writes "According to OSWeekly.com's latest review of Firefox 3, it's not quite up to standards. Author Matt Hartley opines: 'What pains me the most is that Firefox has not even achieved the full market share that a version 1 mindset might have allowed for. Back then, it was fast, and there was a genuine feeling like the users were being heard with the functionality that future releases would offer. Today, this seems to be a thing of the past.'"
The Internet

Submission + - Both Wikipedia and Citizendium under CC-by-sa? (citizendium.org)

Submitted by
Raindance
Raindance writes: "Citizendium, after more than a year of license ambiguity, has announced its content will be freely available under CC-by-sa. This comes a few weeks after Wikipedia announced the fairly likely possibility of relicensing all homegrown GFDL content under CC-by-sa (as made possible by the new Creative Commons compatibility framework). Good things are happening in the realm of free content."
The Courts

Submission + - Overly broad copyright makes us all infringers (turnergreen.com) 1

Submitted by
Raindance
Raindance writes: "Legal expert John Tehranian has a new piece, Infringement Nation (PDF warning- also covered by Ars), that tallies the copyright liability from a 'hypothetical' law professor's daily routine to explore how pervasive and unavoidable copyright infringement has become to daily life — even without p2p. FTA:
By the end of the day, John has infringed the copyrights of twenty emails, three legal articles, an architectural rendering, a poem, five photographs, an animated character, a musical composition, a painting, and fifty notes and drawings. All told, he has committed at least eighty-three acts of infringement and faces liability in the amount of $12.45 million (to say nothing of potential criminal charges). There is nothing particularly extraordinary about John's activities. Yet if copyright holders were inclined to enforce their rights to the maximum extent allowed by law, he would be indisputably liable for a mind-boggling $4.544 billion in potential damages each year. And, surprisingly, he has not even committed a single act of infringement through P2P file sharing. Such an outcome flies in the face of our basic sense of justice. Indeed, one must either irrationally conclude that John is a criminal infringer — a veritable grand larcenist — or blithely surmise that copyright law must not mean what it appears to say. Something is clearly amiss. Moreover, the troublesome gap between copyright law and norms has grown only wider in recent years."
Input Devices

Headband Gives Wearer "Sixth-Sense" 234

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the use-the-force dept.
An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist reports on a headband developed at the University of Tokyo that allows the wearer to feel their surroundings at a distance — as if they had cats whiskers. Infrared sensors positioned around the headband vibrate to signal when and where an object is close. There are also a few great videos of people using it to dodge stuff while blindfolded."
Apple

Underground Mac Community Foils a Coup 253

Posted by kdawson from the fortunately-bloodless dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In an attempted palace coup that would not have been out of place in a Shakespearian tragedy, a moderator faction at Mac Serial Junkie, one of the largest underground Mac communities, was shut out this weekend after it was discovered that many staff members were plotting a coup. The plans included a surreptitious takeover of the domain name macserialjunkie.com. In an Open Letter to the Community, the founders of MSJ explain how a number of people at the highest levels of the underground planned their takeover activities for almost two years, only to be foiled at the last minute."
Announcements

Submission + - Mahalo, a search engine with hand-crafted results

Submitted by
Raindance
Raindance writes: "Jason Calacanis just launched Mahalo, a search engine where users get hand-crafted portal-like results. It's based on the theory that many people are searching for the same things, that search engine spam is making Google less useful for common queries, and that humans are still wiser than algorithms at sifting through results and finding the really good stuff. Essentially, the site plans to have employees (along with a dash of user-submitted content) build a portal of links to the best information for each popular search term. But the key to Mahalo's viability is that it can give people intelligent context about links. And context is king."
The Media

HBO Exec Proposes DRM Name Change 544

Posted by Zonk from the that's-all-that's-in-the-way dept.
surfingmarmot writes "An HBO executive has figured out the problem with DRM acceptance — it's the name. HBO's chief technology officer Bob Zitter now wants to refer to the technology as Digital Consumer Enablement. Because, you see, DRM actually helps consumers by getting more content into their hands. The company already has HD movies on demand ready to go, but is delaying them because of ownership concerns. Says Zitter, 'Digital Consumer Enablement would more accurately describe technology that allows consumers "to use content in ways they haven't before," such as enjoying TV shows and movies on portable video players like iPods. "I don't want to use the term DRM any longer," said Zitter, who added that content-protection technology could enable various new applications for cable operators.'"
Announcements

Submission + - Citizendium enables self-registration

Submitted by
Raindance
Raindance writes: "We at Citizendium have officially announced our non-profit status and have enabled self-registration on the wiki! People can now sign up under their real name, post a short bio, and edit. This is a major step, though it's still short of the formal launch we're planning once we know we can handle the traffic. If you want to help out, we're looking for donations for servers and bandwidth, and of course more contributors. Our very first "editor approved" article can be found here."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Citizendium

Journal by Raindance

I've posted a new blog entry on Citizendium, the Wikipedia competitor that Larry Sanger (co-founder of Wikipedia) is starting. It's probably the most effort I've put into a blog post yet, and there's a good discussion forming (Sanger is among the participants).

If you're interested in Wikipedia and alternative collaborative models, I encourage you to come on over and join in.

Are NDA 'Prior Inventions' Clauses Safe to Sign? 300

Posted by Cliff from the contractual-time-bombs dept.
BenderMan asks: "I own a small consulting company. Today I was asked by yet another corporate customer to sign an NDA with the increasingly popular 'Prior Inventions' clause. The gist of it is they want you to provide a list of all your past and current inventions and/or ideas so they can define and protect the intellectual property that they have hired you to build. Like many of us that lay awake at night, whilst the hamster wheel spins new ideas, I've got a number of un-patented works in various stages of development. Given that mutual NDAs only provide one year of protection, I don't feel obligated, nor do I have sufficient time and energy, to fully and properly document my inventions for an NDA. While these clauses are written with good intentions, the reality is that these valuable ideas would be placed in the hands of people that could potentially profit with impunity (Have you priced patents lately?). Unfortunately many companies are not willing to strike this clause from their contracts. Does Slashdot agree that this is a concern, and how have you dealt with these situations?"

Is Simplified Spelling Worth Reform? 1183

Posted by timothy from the a-pruh-po-or-rediculous dept.
digitalhermit writes "I guess many folks are of very little brain, and big words bother them... There's a push for simpler spelling. Instead of 'weigh' it would be 'way.' 'Dictionary' would be 'dikshunery' and so forth. Dunno if it's a joke, but it seems in earnest. Mark Twain must be spinning around somewhere." Twain is often credited with the satirical call for spelling reform called "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling," though according to Wikipedia, Twain was "actually a supporter of reform," and the piece may have been written by M.J. Shields. Benjamin Franklin was another champion of spelling reform, and even came up with a phonetic alphabet to implement such reform.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Blog Update 6

Journal by Raindance

At long last I've gotten my science webpage/blog up and running- the address is http://moderndragons.blogspot.com. It's currently a smorgasbord of topics, so if you're interested in science there's probably something for you there.

I plan to update it decently often, but my emphasis will be on quality science writing and thinking rather than regular posting.

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