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Rob Knop's Blog -- ramblings and rants about astronomy, cosmology, science education, general nerdism, and anything else.
Rob Knop earned a PhD in Physics from Caltech in 1997, and did a 5-year post-doc with the Supernova Cosmology Project, and contributed to the discovery of the accelerating Universe. He was an assistant professor of Physics & Astronomy at Vanderbilt for 6 years before scattering out of academia. He now works for Linden Lab, the producers of Second LIfe. (Note: this is not an official site of Linden Lab! Although I work for Linden Lab, all content in this blog is posted without the review or approval of Linden Lab. All statements and opinions expressed here are my own.)
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The contents of each Galactic Interactions post are under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.
Category: Intellectual Property
DRM stands for "digital restrictions management". (Those who are in the business of peddling it as something positive will tell you it's "digital rights management," but the former is really a better descriptive name.) It is software that prevents you...
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:45 PM • 25 Comments •
Category: Rant
I've only sampled a few outlets, so I can't say this definitively. However, the few electrical outlets I've sampled at the Nashville airport are not working. I've read before at BoingBoing about Pay-per use electrical outlets at DFW. I'm guessing...
Posted by Rob Knop at 11:54 AM • 17 Comments •
Category: Rant
A lot of people have commented on the fact that if you get an Apple iPhone, you have no choice but to get your phone service through AT&T. For a lot of people, this is a deal-killer. Why would Apple...
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:42 PM • 9 Comments •
Category: Academia
A while back at this blog's former site, I wrote a post entitled A Career and a Life. Now that my career is on the precipice of undergoing a tremendous change, I thought it might be interesting to revisit that post.
Posted by Rob Knop at 5:05 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: Intellectual Property
You may have heard about the amendment proposed to a Higher Education act by Harry Reid that would make colleges responsible for enforcing RIAA and MPAA policy. The text of the amendment is absolutely every bit as scary as the...
Posted by Rob Knop at 8:37 AM • 9 Comments •
Category: Rant
Because, unlike what happens with copyright violation, students at Kansas University would at least be given due process and the right to a trial in which they could defend themselves if accused of murder. Oh, and P.S., just like Josh's...
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:02 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Science & Religion
So that people don't feel the need to threadcrap in other threads, I open this thread here for people to make their flames, comments, insults, dismissals, expressions of support, and so forth. I have said before that I'm a Christian....
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:35 PM • 46 Comments •
Category: Academia
Loved the teaching. Loved the science. Couldn't take the politics. Couldn't take the tenure stress. That about sums it up. I am sending off today a signed offer letter for employment with Linden Lab, the folks who create and run...
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:35 PM • 67 Comments •
Category: Rant
It wasn't doing anybody any good, and it was only causing uproar and unhappiness. I did have one or two positive comments (amidst 150, mind you), and one or two private e-mails appreciating that somebody else has the same reaction...
Posted by Rob Knop at 7:55 AM • 42 Comments •
Category: The Business of Astronomy
Before I say this, let me preface my remarks with the statement that I understand the reasoning of the Time Allocation Committtee (TAC), and it's not an insane decision. It's as I predicted; they're worried that the observations are too...
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:32 PM • 7 Comments •
