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From Slashdot Science Story | 50 Years of Domesticating Foxes For Science

Cold War Dog Fight Joke (Score:5, Funny)

by LoverOfJoy (820058) on Saturday December 26, @10:20AM (#30555916)
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Reminds me of the Cold War Dog Fight joke:

The Americans and Russians at the height of the arms race realized that if they continued in the usual manner they were going to blow up the whole world. One day they sat down and decided to settle the whole dispute with one dog fight. They’d have five years to breed the best fighting dog in the world and which ever side’s dog won would be entitled to dominate the world. The losing side would have to lay down its arms. The Russians found the biggest meanest Doberman and Rottweiler dogs in the world and bred them with the biggest meanest Siberian wolves. They selected only the biggest and strongest puppy from each litter, killed his siblings, and gave him all the milk. They used steroids and trainers and after five years came up with the biggest meanest dog the world had ever seen. Its cage needed steel bars that were five inches thick and nobody could get near it. When the day came for the dog fight, the Americans showed up with a strange animal. It was a nine foot long Dachshund. Everyone felt sorry for the Americans because they knew there was no way that this dog could possibly last ten seconds with the Russian dog.

When the cages were opened up, the Dachshund came out of it’s cage and slowly waddled over towards the Russian dog. The Russian dog snarled and leaped out of it’s cage and charged the American dachshund. But, when it got close enough to bite the Dachshund’s neck, the Dachshund opened it’s mouth and consumed the Russian dog in one bite. There was nothing left at all of the Russian dog.

The Russians came up to the Americans shaking their heads in disbelief. ‘We don’t understand how this could have happened. We had our best people working for five years with the meanest Doberman and Rottweiler in the world and the biggest meanest Siberian wolves.” That’s nothing”, an American replied.”We had our best plastic surgeons working for five years to make an alligator look like a Dachshund.”

From Slashdot News Story | The Rise of Machine-Written Journalism

Re:Mod parent up. (Score:4, Insightful)

by lgw (121541) on Wednesday December 30, @04:47PM (#30599966)
Journal

The purpose of stocks is for a company to raise capital by selling shares to the public, in return for some promise of potential future dividends.

The fact that people trade, hold, or speculate on these stocks in the secondary market (all the busy noise that is the “stock market”) is nearly irrelevent. A company should have no reason to care about the price of its stock. Sadly, due to double-taxation of dividends, this has gone completely to shit. People who aren’t speculating buy stock not for dividends, but to trade it to the next guy at a profit, because this is tax-favorable over dividends.

Companies do all sorts of crazy BS because of the expectation of stockholders to be rewarded not with dividends (a system that you simply can’t game for long) but with rising stock prices (a system that is almost entirely gamesmanship).

Individual investors have the absolute right to seek short term gains or long term gains a their preference. The government has no business meddling in that preference. The “problem with the current market” is that it is no longer grounded in the reality of being able to pay dividends, because some previous generation’s ideas about social engineering through taxation punishes dividends as the means of earning a profit on one’s investment.

From Slashdot News Story | Novelist Blames Piracy On Open Source Culture

Re:What do you expect. (Score:4, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 02, @10:06AM (#30622326)

(CNNNN) — When Dan Brown’s blockbuster novel “The Lost Symbol” hit stores in September, it may have offered a peek at the future of bookselling.

On Amazon.com, the book sold more digital copies for the Kindle e-reader in its first few days than hardback editions. This was seen as something of a paradigm shift in the publishing industry, but it also may have come at a cost.

Less than 24 hours after its release, printed paperback copies of the novel were found in library sites such as the New Your public library. Within days, it had been read for free more than 100,000 times.

Library loans, long confined to books, are spreading to music and movies. And as electronic reading devices such as Amazon’s Kindle, the Sony Reader, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, smartphones and Apple’s much-anticipated “tablet” boost demand for books, experts say the problem may only get worse.

“It’s fair to say that loaning of books is exploding,” said Dilbert Drongo, an industry expert and professor of marketing at Fordham University.

Sales for library books in the second quarter of 2009 totaled almost $37 million. That’s more than three times the total for the same three months in 2008, according to the Association of American Publishers (AAP).

Statistics are hard to come by, and many publishers are reluctant to discuss the subject for fear of encouraging more libraries. But library loans may pose a big headache in 2010 for the slumping publishing industry, which relies increasingly on electronic reading devices and e-books to stimulate sales.

“Libraries are a serious issue for publishers,” said Carnt Hakkit Book Group in a statement. The company that publishes Stephenie Meyer’s wildly popular “Twilight” teen-vampire series says it “considers copyright protection to be of paramount importance.”

Authors are concerned as well.

“I’d be really worried if I were Stephen King or James Patterson or a really big bestseller that when their books become completely lendable, how easy it’s going to be to loan them,” said novelist and poet Sherman Dyslexie on Stephen Colbert’s show last month.

“With the open-door culture of the Library, the idea of ownership — of artistic ownership — goes away,” Dyslexie added. “It terrifies me.”

And it’s not just bestsellers that are targeted by librarians.

“Textbooks are frequently loaned, but so are many other categories,” said Ed McCoyd, director of dubious policy at AAP. “We see shelving of professional content, such as medical books and technical guides; we see a lot of general fiction and non-fiction. So it really runs the gamut.”

Lending of music, thanks to cassette, CDs and other devices, has been a threat to recording companies for more than a decade. Over the years, the record companies tried different approaches to combat library loaning, from shutting down free publicity to encrypting songs with digital-rights management software to suing individual customers.

Although legal lending of music persists, Apple’s online iTunes store is now the world’s biggest seller of music.

To some industry observers, this may be where the future of the book industry is heading as well. But talk to publishers and authors about what can be done to combat libraries, and you’ll get a wide range of opinions.

Some publishers may try to minimize lending by delaying releases of books for several weeks after digital copies go on sale. Simon & Schuster recently did just that with Snorkel King’s novel, “Under the Aquadome,” although the publisher says the decision was made to prevent cheaper e-versions from cannibalizing hardcover sales.

Some authors have even gone as far as to shrug off physical book technology altogether. J.K. Pot has thus far refused to make any of her Hairy Porter books available physically because of library fears and a desire to see readers experience her books in pixels.

However, some evidence suggests that authors’ and publishers’ claims of damage from libraries may be overstated.

Recent statistics have shown that consumers who purchase a library card buy more books than those who stick with traditional downloads. Barnesy & Knobble reports that library card owners buy, on average, 3.1 times as many books on the site as other customers.

Ana Reva Derchhi, publisher for Markup Media at HawkerColumns, told CNNNN, “we have to be vigilant in our punishment … but much more attractive is to simply organize mass book burnings, legally.”

Library technology offers so many positives for both the author and the consumer that any revenue lost to lending may just be a necessary evil, she said.

“Consumers who invest in one of these dedicated library cards tend to load up and read more,” said Alleggi. “And what’s wrong with that?”

Re:What do you expect. (Score:4, Insightful)

by SETIGuy (33768) on Saturday January 02, @12:33PM (#30623862)
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The disdain of publishers for libraries is well known. It’s been well known that the recording industry and movie studios have been trying to prevent libraries from lending their works. The book and magazine publishers would love to go to a “pay per read” model. A library only buys a book once and lets as many people read it as want to. That’s clearly theft of copyrighted material. The idea that you can go read a 3 year old copy of “People” in your dentists office without paying for it amounts to communism.

This is all old news.

From Slashdot Your Rights Online Story | “Accidental” Download Sending 22-Year-Old Man To Prison

Where do they keep finding 12 morons? (Score:5, Interesting)

by 2PAIRofACES (302747) on Saturday December 05, @12:34PM (#30336290)

I have to assume this guy is not guilty, not because of the presumption of innocence, but rather by the lack of accessible cp on his computer. Pedophiles don’t just quit cold turkey, and even if he is a pedophile, quit cold turkey (doesn’t happen), hey great, he’s fixed his problem on his own. Going with that:

Where does the government keep finding 12 morons to vote guilty in the jury box? I know this particular guy’s case isn’t going to a jury, but his lawyer seems to think he’s screwed if he does. With easy to explain facts like this, both the DA (who wouldn’t bring charges that would hurt his win %) and defense thinks there is a high likely hood of conviction? Are you kidding me?

And how many CRAZY guilty verdicts have we read about? Why are juries stacked with idiots too stupid to see that they could just as likely be in the defendant’s seat for a multitude of offenses?

Quick side story: *all numbers, except age are fudged to prevent recrimination* I’m 32 (so far so good on my plan to outlive Jesus) and have been on a Jury 1 time. It was a drug charge, which I kinda figured out during jury selection based on the questions I was asked, so I shaped my answers accordingly. It ended up being a trial of a 19 year old kid found with 5 marijuana plants in a “grow box” (nice setup, bought online for like 2k, could of built his own for 800). The prosecution presented their case, the defense only called the defendant, who swore up and down that they were only for personal use (we’re not in a medical marijuana state), and the defendant pretty much begged for mercy. I swear at this point one of my co-juror’s started to tear up. Final arguments came and went, and then the Judge, the last arbiter of law said (paraphrasing here) that we were only to determine if he possessed the plants, and if so, to find him guilty.

We got back to the jury room and as I’m told we’re not supposed to do, but always gets done regardless, we took a vote. 11-1. IANAL but I believed without knowing that if I gave my real reason for not wanting to convict that I’d be replaced (we had 2 alternates). I’ve never had to choose my wording so carefully, meanwhile the rest of the Jury kept saying things like : “the judge said we had to vote guilty” and “It doesn’t matter if I think he did anything wrong, the judge said he did wrong” (that last one, I SWEAR TO GOD, was uttered word for word, i will never forget a syllable). It took 2 hours of carefully worded analogies to sway 1 other to my side, from there we got to 3 in 10 minutes, at 4, the whole room switched. Let me say that again, at 4 ppl, the remaining 8 switched over, not out of a sense of civic duty, but because they were tired and wanted to go home. WITH A MAN’S LIFE IN THE BALANCE.

When we returned our verdict, the judge didn’t look at what the foreman wrote (he opened it, looked at its general direction and refolded it), when the foreman not guilty, the Judge damn near fell out of his chair, the DA did a real life triple take, and the defense attorney looked like a deer in headlights. The point is that all 3 professionals INCLUDING the defense attorney, were shocked that the jury failed to rubber stamp guilty on this guy.

After we were relieved 4 of the other jurors came to me and admitted thru conversation that they smoked pot and didn’t want to vote guilty at all, but thought they had to because the judge had told them to. As they were talking, all I could think was, “So this is how democracy ends, with sheep”.

Re:Where do they keep finding 12 morons? (Score:5, Informative)

by the eric conspiracy (20178) on Saturday December 05, @01:31PM (#30336890)

Interesting – it sounds like what the judge did was correct – he instructed the jury on what the law was, that is that possession of the drug made the defendant guilty. What came out of the jury room was jury nullification (nullification of the law), that is the jury declared innocence despite the law. Supposedly this is quite a rare event.

There is a long history of jury nullification, some of it quite ugly during periods where racial discrimination was the way things were.

This one of the most controversial areas of law, and an area that all citizens who go to serve on juries should be aware of because it WONT be brought up in the courtroom. However the roots of it go very deep into English Common Law, and because the court cannot punish the jury for its verdicts and we have protection against double jeopardy, jury nullification is in fact a power of any jury.

From Slashdot Games Story | Gran Turismo Gamer Becomes Pro Race Driver

my son did this… (Score:5, Interesting)

by spywhere (824072) on Friday December 04, @01:52PM (#30327042)

…with an M1A1 Abrahms tank.

He was a hard-core FPS gamer, and he joined the Army at 18. They tested him to see what his skills were, which included a turn in the Army’s tank simulator.
As he tells it, he was in there a long time — much longer than the recruits ahead of him had been. When he came out, the room was full of people, including officers, who were all staring at him.
He asked, “What’s everybody looking at?
Someone replied, “A tanker, son… you just beat the highest score on that thing.”

For his expertise, he was rewarded with an all-expense-paid trip to Baghdad in 2003…

From Slashdot News Story | CIA Manual Thought Lost In 1973 Available On Amazon

Ironic (Score:5, Informative)

by hallux.sinister (1633067) on Thursday November 26, @10:10AM (#30237098)

Every time I see or hear of a reference to “The Prince”, or a leader is referred to as Machiavellian, I smile at the irony. Machiavelli was being SARCASTIC when he wrote that. He was kidding! Machiavelli was ahead of his time in holding the ideals of personal freedom and responsibility, equality, and all that jazz which are diametric opposites of the views espoused in “The Prince”. He worked hard as a politician to build Florence into a shining beacon of how a society should be run, and a family called the de’ Medici came along, seized power, (using techniques from the, at the time, as-yet-unwritten book, “The Prince”) and turned the shining beacon into a cesspool of corruption, with rampant nepotism, greed, etc.

Stripped of his position, and having been barred from holding any political office by the de’ Medici, after a lifetime of public service, embittered, Machiavelli wrote “The Prince” basically saying: “if you want to grab, hold, and expand your political power,” (adding under his breath, “like those de’ Medici bastards,”) he continued, “this is what you do…” (He could not insult them openly, he had already been imprisoned and tortured by them once, and I guess he wasn’t “feeling strong” anymore.)

It was not meant literally! I guess the De Medici had the last laugh though, whether by their actions or not, Machiavelli’s name is associated NOT with his own good and noble life’s work, but with the behaviours and beliefs of those he most loathed and despised. For a better idea of what this great Renaissance figure really thought, try instead his “Discorsi sulla prima deca di Tito Livio”, or “Discourses on the first ten books of Livy”, (Titus Livius, Roman historian)

~ Hallux

From Slashdot News Story | Vatican Debates Possibility of Alien Life

Re:Of course, there is another solution (Score:4, Informative)

by northstarlarry (587987) on Saturday November 14, @12:27PM (#30098806)

There were plenty [wikipedia.org] of [wikipedia.org] people [wikipedia.org] from the time [wikipedia.org] of Jesus’s death through many centuries [wikipedia.org] who denied or argued various aspects [wikipedia.org] of Jesus’s humanity, divinity, status as a prophet [wikipedia.org] or the Messiah [wikipedia.org], and resurrection [wikipedia.org].

The current Bible canon is only a selection of the books that the Catholic Church decided were the right ones in the 16th century [wikipedia.org]. They also had to select one [wikipedia.org] of at least two [wikipedia.org] available manuscripts for what became the Old Testament. Other denominations [wikipedia.org] have other [wikipedia.org] canons [wikipedia.org]. There’s a pile [wikipedia.org] of books [wikipedia.org] that are left out [wikipedia.org], and some which are left in [wikipedia.org] that have disputed [wikipedia.org] authorship. [wikipedia.org]

A lot of what’s in the Bible is historically accurate, some percentage of it is repeated [wikipedia.org] and probably exaggerated, and there’s a lot of stuff that was written in the same span of time (anywhere from 10 to 15 centuries) that isn’t in there. You are glossing over so much history it’s amazing. Just take a look at this one wikipedia page, if nothing else: The Bible and History [wikipedia.org].

Re:Of course, there is another solution (Score:4, Informative)

by SanityInAnarchy (655584) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Saturday November 14, @12:27PM (#30098812)
Journal

Please explain how someone would “prove” anything that happened 2000 years ago without relying on the books that were written at the time.

You’re both wrong — you wouldn’t prove it, in that you can’t prove anything.

But your evidence is entirely within the pages of a single flawed book. Compare this to the evidence for other historical figures, like Julius Caesar, for example.

And IrquiM is right in that it is up to you to provide evidence, if you want your claims to be taken seriously. Otherwise, the correct default position is nonbelief — not disbelief, simply nonbelief.

the bible is a compilation of the best preserved writings from that time,

Mostly because they are the writings religion wanted to preserve. Just look at the writings which were rejected by the Council of Nicaea.

That, and the fact that someone felt the need to forge an entry by Josephus doesn’t exactly help your case.

generally accepted from a HISTORICAL pov as accurate.

Citation, please. From a historical perspective, the Bible is a work of fiction which borrows heavily from other traditions. The Jesus story in particular is borrowed from all kinds of stories repeated through the ages, and is almost a complete ripoff of the story of Horus. Here’s a quick summary of Horus, stolen from the movie Religulous:

Written in 1280 BC, the Egyptian Book of the Dead describes a god, Horus, the son of the god Osiris, born to a virgin mother. He was baptized in a river by Anup the Baptizer, who was later beheaded. Like Jesus, Horus was tempted while alone in the desert, healed the sick, the blind, cast out demons, and walked on water. He raised Asar from the dead — “Asar” translates to “Lazarus”. Oh yeah, he also had 12 disciples. Yes, Horus was crucified first, and after 3 days, two women announced that Horus, the savior of humanity, had been resurrected.

Ignoring that, it’s certainly one of the more self-contradictory accounts, and you have yet to answer Hume’s challenge — in order for testimony of a miracle to be believed, you must show that it would be more miraculous for the testimony to be wrong than for the event to have actually occurred.

Now, which seems more miraculous: That a man rose from the dead, or that the testimony was mistaken? Which seems more likely?

Phillip Greenspun writes on Women in Science

From Slashdot News Story | Journalists Looking For Government Money

There Is No News Crisis (Score:5, Insightful)

by logicnazi (169418) <logicnazi@@@gmail…com> on Saturday October 31, @10:54AM (#29934607)
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There is a crisis for journalists as a result of the sudden crash in their industry but that crash isn’t the result of some horrible failure of the market for journalism. Just the opposite. The newspaper industry has hit bottom because the internet has made the buisness of reporting so much more efficient. I mean just thinking about the huge number of daily papers across the states carrying the same national and international news on print is enough to make one sick at the waste. Not only does it cost a great deal to publish a print daily but each of these dailies employs editors and layout people to format the same news availible anywhere in their particular style. Many of them even insist on hiring their own reporters even when it’s obviously duplicated effort (say reviewing national movies/TV shows).

Once competition drives most local papers to focus on local intersts and everyone to publish online it will free up a quite substantial amount of money for real reporting. Though actually a lot of what journalists call real reporting is duplicated effort for the sake of status. I mean does it really help the public understand what’s going on better to have 40+ journalists at the white house press briefings and who knows how much AV equitment? If they just sent over a single camera crew and agreed on a way to pick questions there would be no harm to the quality of reporting. Much of this is just done because historically that behavior signaled prestige and seriousness in the news industry.

I don’t think the newspapers are doing anything wrong. But when technology lets you accomplish the same job with disruptively less total effort (delivering news to the nation) many people are going to lose their jobs and most of the companies in that industry will go out of buisness. I feel sorry for the people with careers in the industry but I think there is every reason to believe that after things settle down there will be just as much investigative reporting and important journalism. There will just be less redundancy and a more efficient use of reporting resources.

Re:There Is No News Crisis (Score:4, Interesting)

by hairyfeet (841228) <bassbeast1968&gmail,com> on Saturday October 31, @11:36AM (#29934873)

I think the problem is just the opposite, in that they are doing EVERYTHING wrong, because they are still trying to print the same paper they did in 1965, when if you missed the 6 ‘o clock news you were SOL. The reason I gave up on the local and state papers were the ONLY actual local and state stories were bake sales, who died, which little league team won the local game. That’s it. No hard hitting questions, no looking into local or state grafts and corruption, just local “fluffy kitten” stories and the same old AP crap spewed with a hard spin on top to try to make it look like it wasn’t a straight copypasta.

I just don’t know if they CAN recover, or if they have been so infected with the “too big to fail” mentality, where they think they can just keep churning out the same tired old crap, “maximizing profit potential” by only keeping a few ‘reporters” around to add spin and retype press releases, and generally acting the same as when LBJ was president. I bet if you took any of the failing papers and switched them for any of the other failing papers, frankly the readers wouldn’t notice.

So I don’t know whether the Internet bloggers can take up where they left off, but frankly the “reporting” done by the state and local papers I have read is simply worthless, and is therefor failing because its readers recognize it to be lousy. They simply don’t report from what I have seen, at least around here, they just regurgitate and spin. With all the talk about how much we “need” a free press, if this is the sort of free press they are talking about frankly they can keep it.

From Slashdot Science Story | Study Says US Needs Fewer Science Students

Re:More articles like this please (Score:5, Informative)

by kryptKnight (698857) on Thursday October 29, @12:35AM (#29906647)

It’s time to bring some facts to this thread. Monetary policy is complicated, most people don’t understand it, and impassioned hyperbolizing isn’t helpful.

..the Fed (by printing money and giving it to them at zero percent even if it destroys the dollar)

The Federal Reserve does not print money. Maybe you were speaking metaphorically, but you’re still wrong. The Federal Reserve can influence interest rates, and it can change the size of the the money supply [wikipedia.org] by issuing and recalling treasury bills and by adjusting the reserve requirement.. Those functions allow the Fed to alter the price of money, but that’s not equivalent to printing more money.

I was reading earlier this week the U.S. now has the greatest income inequality in the world except for Singapore and Hong Kong which are tiny city states

Well you read wrong. Equality of income distribution is quantified by the Gini coefficient [wikipedia.org]. Wealth is less evenly distributed in the US than many places (ie Europe), but there’s more than 40 countries ahead of us. China and Mexico for instance. See this map [wikimedia.org] for more detail.

For anyone whose interested, the Planet Money blog and podcast [npr.org] is a great place to start. Their reporting and research is done by actual economists rather than ideologues and talking heads, and they explain why things are the way they are and how they got there. Like I said, our current financial situation is kinda FUBAR, but approaching it with a level head and trying to understand what’s really going on is better than getting angry and playing the blame game.

Re:More articles like this please (Score:5, Insightful)

by demachina (71715) on Thursday October 29, @01:28AM (#29906913)

“The Federal Reserve does not print money.”

Read up on quantitative easing. It is what the Fed’s been doing massively since the crisis. It is printing money though its done electronically. From Wikipedia:

“Quantitative easing is another way to influence monetary policy, only recently begun to be used in the United States. Other countries, such as Japan, have provided a template for some Fed actions. Essentially, quantitative easing provides a method for the central bank to provide funds at lower than zero interest rates, in order to increase the monetary supply and combat deflationary forces. This is accomplished by the Fed purchasing U.S. government debt with newly printed U.S. currency. In essence, the Fed is monetizing the debt. In the current (late 2007 to today) macro-economic environment, the slowing velocity of money has induced U.S. central bankers to pursue a variety of new, and to some radical, policies to produce economic stimulus.”

They also allowed Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to acquire bank charters so they have access to this free money to fuel their commodity, stocks and bond gambling. It is helping to fuel the current bubble in stocks, bonds and commodities.

It is inappropriate for investment banks to have access to the discount window. Paul Volcker has been lobbying hard to get the Obama to stop it, but Geitner and Summers being stooges of Wall Street are ignoring him. Discount window access should only be allowed to conservative commercial banks who don’t gamble on the stock market. Ever since the repeal of Glass Steagel and they let Citigroup access it, and certainly since they let Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and what’s left of Merrill access it they’ve created massive potential for abuse and for bubble creation.