John Timmer writes about an interesting stunt: MP3 files written as DNA with storage density of 2.2 petabytes per gram, "In general, though, the DNA was very robust. The authors simply dried it out before shipping it to a lab in Germany (with a layover in the UK), where it was decoded. Careful storage in a cold, dry location could keep it viable for much, much longer.
He was not on the right, nor what he did
Oh: you mean you know what he did? I don't. Once you get the lawyers involved the people who really know things all shut up.
On top on innovation ? Not really. Debian has become too big to innovate fast, and Debian is a little bit too often in freeze ( like 20% of time ) due to release pressure.
And really, Debian's big selling point is their "stable" branch. They're famous for being slower to change things than other distros (which increasingly seems like a big advantage to me, in a world where everyone thinks they have a right to broadcast UI changes to you at the designer's whim).
Anyway, while the threat from Oracle taking over MySQL has always been obvious, I don't think the other shoe has ever really dropped, has it? A situation to keep an eye on, but not necessarily any need to act quickly.
Well, I for one look forward to the mess these methods will cause in academia, where it is likely that they can be used to identify the authors of referee reports.
It's not needed. There's already a limited pool of "peers" to use for "anonymous" peer review, and by definition they all know each other, and are familiar with each others patterns of thought. "Oh look, Fred at MIT is hassling us about using linear regression again."
Did you read the actual article?
Answer, no, clearly they didn't read it at all, they were in too big a hurry to show how clever they are.
Quentin Hardy, over at his blog at the New York Times, talks up the might github.org from the angle of experimental management systems with a flattened hierarchy: Dreams of ‘Open’ Everything. An interesting subject, though I fear the fact that this is a blog post suggests he couldn't sell an editor on doing this as a real arti
I just realized I never use Caps Lock anymore.
You just realized this? Son, real hackers are still bitching that there's no control key next to the A.
(Though my capslock is re-programmed as a second ESC key.)
You have some good points here, but you're missing a big one in my opinion: the slashdot system is easily gameable by any well-funded and/or well-organized group. Create a hundred accounts, have them post obvious crap that earns karma, then have them start moderating each other up (but only when posting dull stuff that the metamods won't complain about). Then when the crunch comes-- the political and/or marketing plan you're working on-- you've got the tools you need to put it over. The slashdot moderation scheme works only when no one cares very much, i.e. it's a toy.
And on another subject:
I do review stuff on Amazon. I feel like it's a way I can contribute a bit.
I respect your impulse of volunteerism, but you might want to think about what it is your contributing to.
I think the real fix is pretty obvious: verified ids + full disclosure + penalties
Verified IDs can be done a number of ways, most likely credit card auth, or possibly via something like Google+. (Needless to say, there is no way to do this that won't rub someone the wrong way, because they all involve centralized agencies... you "web of trust" guys, this is your queue, but please explain how you're going to get something that hasn't taken-off for decades to work now).
The "full disclosure" bit is also obvious: you have a TOS that requires you explain (at a minimum) any financial connection that might bias your opinions.
The "penalties" bit is trickier: we need the courts to start recognizing intentionally deceptive behavior on the internet as a form of fraud, and not just "guerrilla marketing" or "the way politics works" or some such.
I've been saying this for years, now, anything that doesn't work this way (and that's nearly everything, including slashdot) is just a part of the THE_TOY_WEB.
The standard counter-argument is that if you impose any user-restrictions at all, your traffic drops off by a factor of a 100 or more, but I fail to see how this is such an insurmountable difficulty. Reducing the number of comments on, say, New York Times columns by a factor of 100 wouldn't greatly disturb me, and myself I'd prefer it if the political operatives were required to label themselves.
I'm sometimes wonder if there might be something clever you can do with privileges that ramp up if you're willing to pay a nominal fee and not incidentally, verify who you are.
I think the real fix is pretty obvious: verified ids + full disclosure + penalities
Verified IDs can be done a number of ways, most likely credit card auth, or possibly via something like Google+. (Needless to say, there is no way to do this that won't rub someone the wrong way, because they all involve centralized agencies... you "web of trust" guys, this is your queue, but please explain how you're going to get something that hasn't taken-off for decades to work now).
The "full disclosure" bit is also obvious: you have a TOS that requires you explain (at a minimum) any finacial connection that might bias your opinions.
The "penalities" bit is trickier: we need the courts to start recognizing intentionally deceptive behavior on the internet as a form of fraud, and not just "guerilla marketing" or "the way politics works" or some such.
I've been saying this for years, now, anything that doesn't work this way (and that's nearly everything, including slashdot) is just a part of the THE_TOY_WEB.
The standard counter-argument is that if you impose any user-restrictions at all, your traffic drops off by a factor of a 100 or more, but I fail to see how this is such an insurmountable difficulty. Reducing the number of comments on, say, New York Times columns by a factor of 100 wouldn't greatly disturb me, and myself I'd prefer it if the political operatives were required to label themselves.
I'm sometimes wonder if there might be something clever you can do with privileges that ramp up if you're willing to pay a nominal fee and not incidentally, verify who you are.
Or could it be that the people complaining about Unity doesn't know how to change to to Xubuntu, Kubuntu and so on? A lot of the comments are "Unity is crap" bla bla. I just don't get it, If you don't like Unity, just use Xubuntu or whatever. Unity has been here for over a year now, it's here too stay, just use Xubuntu or whatever if you don't like it.
Yeah, thanks. Myself I run icewm on whatever linux distro I'm using, but the reason I care about something like Unity-suckage is it indicates something about the attitude of the people setting up the distro, and it seems likely to me that there's going to be other decisions made I won't like (if only, lack of attention to the real problems: like, libreoffice appears to be horked on Ubuntu 10 at least).
The business with desktop search phoning home is even more disturbing however, particularly with the attempt at partnering with the still-evil-in-my-book Amazon.
Apparently this makes me one of those silly nerds who cares about *software licences* and stuff like that. I probably need to find a distro setup along different lines.
It's looking like Debian for me...
And change... always hate change!
I hate change when I feel like it's forced on me.
(And of late it seems like everyone out there feels like it's their right to slip in UI changes on you whenever they feel like it...)
What saddens me is that Canonical's roots are in Africa. A huge place where there is sporadic 3G connection.
And many monster movies have been set there. Monsters! What are they thinking? Do you want monsters on your desktop?
(I don't need saracsm tags on this, do I?)
Internet Access in South Africa Broadband Internet access in South Africa
God help those who do not help themselves. -- Wilson Mizner
