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FYI:

The article you are referring to was actually in Harper's Magazine.

This article from five years ago suggests that, while nanobacteria may not be responsible for the genetic flaw that causes PKD, they may exacerbate the situation and cause the cysts to grow at a much faster rate.

If you think vegetarians are not affected by this, you definitely need to read the article The Oil We Eat by Richard Manning. He delivers an indictment against the modern day agribusiness and its contribution to the depletion of the planet's energy reserves.

That is debatable.

From the sounds of it, Arm found a way to make this go away

It probably is academic though. Any significant competitor to ARM that used their instructions would bring a lawsuit.

Slightly offtopic but coincides with this thread: that was (as we could guess) a hoax. Ix-nay on the +4 formative-innay.
Viral marketing like the "Beta-7.com" campaign is SO FSCKING ANNOYING.
You can picture these balding, gray-suited marketing executives sitting around the Table of the Round going "hey! having an Internet site about our product will make people buy it!". In fact all they manage to do is remind us that nothing you read on the Interweb is trustworthy - which is a fine postmodernist lesson - but I don't appreciate being treated as a commodity.
Like the /. sig says, we're citizens, not consumers, and I'm a little disappointed that people would reward such a company for finely polished attempts at mind control like the ones it satirized by buying into their product.

the RESULTS of those lawsuits

The results seem to resemble a lottery. Most suits lose, but you still have the occasional jackpot. Witness Bernard Goetz. $45,000,000. It seems this is the case everyone has in mind when they say, "If you shoot him, make sure you kill him." Because you don't want a quadrapalegic testifying against you.

The young-ish crowd on /. doesn't remember these things, I suppose. It was one of the top news stories of 1984-5.

ROI (Return on Investment) is significantly higher for a Linux system that is for Windows. Think about it, for about the same TCO, you get the whole slew of free ($) servers and desktop applications. Also, when then next version of Windows comes around, while your costs remain steady or even drop a bit, the Win shop next door is shelling out cash for an upgrade.

If TCO is the only thing you look at, you probably want to ditch that coffee pot as well.

Good luck on manufacturing a uranium neutron reflector

I thought that was a boy scout badge. (I know, I know - still a fun read)

BTW, the shoe incident with old Khroo happened during a different speech, in which he said wonderful things such as "You are a jerk, a stooge, and a lackey of the imperialism" to somebody whose name the history does not remember.

Juicy details of the whole mess were printed in New Statesman a couple of years ago.

On the Atlantis subject, I am surprised that nobody explicitly mentioned the Atlantis - South American civilizations connection yet, with all the speculation that the Mayan calendar cycle started with the sinking of Atlantis. And, while the noteworthy contributions of H.P. Lovecraft to the lore of lost civilizations were mentioned, Robert Howard and his Atlantean exile (Kull) deserve a note as well.

Speaking a bit more seriously, I suspect that the Atlantis myth as narrated by Plato actually confuses several stories about natural disasters, thus there is no "real" Atlantis (or perhaps several ones).

I wouldn't say it was that subtle really, "In the year of our ford" and all that.

Interesting link

As the entry notes, 'irregardless' is non-standard. Nifty article about disagreements about words here.

If we use m-w's definition of what is a word, 'fizzle my shizzle fo nizzle' is a phrase made up of words. This is pure glafinacation (which is a word, cuz i just used :P).

The author of the Wired article, Richard Manning has an excellent new book out Against the Grain : How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization

His recent piece in Harper's The Oil We Eat is highly recommended and can be found online here

-this is a recording.-

The original article starts:

The U.S. Senate is slated to vote this week whether or not to renew a ban that keeps state and local governments from taxing Internet access.

This is a violation of the interstate commerce clause of the US Constitution which grants the Federal government only the power:

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

I will soon complete a modern version of Da Vinci's nuclear breeder reactor as soon as I can find a wood cog that decelerates neutron emissions.

No, to slow down neutrons you need glow-in-the-dark gun and bow sights. Any boy scout knows that!

Fluid when handled gently, but it becomes rigid when subjected to a sharp impact.

I can see a huge market for this in sports gear (protective equipment). How would it react to an Al MacInnis slapshot?

Here's an article.

Here's a link for you:
link

Creepy imagining that. It was published in 1992

What is the answer? There is no answer. Anything can be used as a weapon. That paperweight on your desk: weapon. That water cooler in your office: did you see that commercial where it was a fighting robot?

But this is handwaving to avoid having to think hard about ethical issues. More important questions:

1: How much would you want to be paid to work on a nuclear missile guidance system? (In other words - how much can we buy your ethics for? Or do you just not care?)

2: The population census data tool you're building for the government - is that a weapon? (Here's a clue.)

But most importantly:

3: If you find that something you created for peaceful purposes is being used for something ethically abhorrent, what can and should you do about it?

Once again: The creation of technology always has ethical considerations. Taking those considerations into account is vital. If you just ignore them and say "Not my problem" then you're one of the bad guys.

No Commissioner of the patent office anyway.

A Patently False Patent Myth

phtyomining

Phytomining cleans soil, generates revenue

Gold phytomining [PDF] (very informative)

The last link explains, among others, how the metal is extracted from the plant.

Nor is it, technically, a requirement for the fuel injection system (see the Bosch dual-point FI system in the Bf-109, ca.1938). It's likely all integrated because it makes sense technically and economically to have a centrally-controlled system.

The explosive force of an airbag can break bones if applied where it is not needed... so having the final five seconds of data is useful there. Why it needs to be kept beyond the five seconds after inpact cannot be explained by this function, however.

A lot of automotive computers are responsible for keeping the engine in tune. Often, a momentary snapshot if engine state doesn't provide enough information to keep the system optimized. I suspect that the 5-second buffer is primarily there to provide a larger data sample.

Your use of a physical copy of a copyrighted work is covered under the first sale doctrine. You can use your own copy however you wish. The RCA DVD player does for you what an ordinary VCR or other DVD players already allows you to do - fast forward through the bits you don't like. You can do the same thing with a book by flipping through the naughty, boring or any other parts you dislike. Fast fowarding, skipping parts creates no derivative works. You are simply using your own copy how you want and that's still protected by fair use and the first sale doctrine.

The right not to have your copyrighted work altered without your permission is called moral rights and is primarily an aspect of European copyrights. US copyright law offers limited moral rights. The two aspects of copyright law that you and the parent post claim to make the DVD player illegal, prohibition against derivative works and moral rights, are both part of traditional copyright law. The DMCA is a horrible, over-reaching law but it doesn't reach where you're pointing or where the parent post thinks the DMCA should reach.

If you were to circumvent built in copy protections or moral rights protection (eg some sort of software that make you play the whole movie) in order to make a copy without the parts you don't want, that would fall under the DMCA. So if you made a 'back-up' copy by removing macrovision and the encryption, that would be illegal under the DMCA. And that is reaching too far IMO.

I'm suprised at the support that European style moral rights have received here since it only adds more restrictions to the fair use of copyrighted works. (The French, as usual, have particularly annoying and far reaching moral rights laws. A artist could destroy a paint that you've bought if he doesn't like how you've displayed it.) The only reason artists and producers are upset about these derivative works is that they're not getting a cut of the profits. I've talked to some producers who've heard of about that video store that rents movies edited for content. While they're concerned about how their works are portrayed, they're more concerned about not getting money out of the deal. They want to be the ones that produce any censored versions so as to reap the rewards of maintaining their artistic integrity.

Authentication against what, you twat?

Well, that's certainly an intelligent retort. I hesitate to reply to such, but what the hell.

Even without any foreign databases, this information can be used to establish a record of international travels. You don't necessarily need to authenticate them against their home country's records. There is value in authenticating a person as the same individual who enterred two months ago from Canada, using a different name.

Want to hide those trips to Libya? Well, just use your other passport when entering the U.S.. Want to obfuscate any travel records? Just use a new one each time you come & go. With fingerprint records, they can much more easily catch passport fraud.

And, what makes you think that foreign governments will not share fingerprint databases? Other countries have immigration related fingerprint databases:
France, EU, EU, Australia, considers a system similar to the U.S.,

The U.S. already has immigration controls tighly integrated with Canada, and it would not be surprising at all to see the EU, Australia, Japan, and others cooperating on this.

To every argument Khalili made against killing civilians and one's self, Abu Aisheh answered with questions: Aren't we being shot down like dogs? Do you feel like a human being when the Israelis control your every move? Do you believe we have a future? If I'm going to die at their hands anyway, why shouldn't I take some of them with me?

But can you really justify their actions?
but can you justify the following:

Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered--death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo--but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.

Border Police Officer Forces Palestinian Resident of 'Attil to Commit Sexual Act with Donkey, in Zeita,Tulkarm District, The West Bank, June 2003

IDF Officer Etches Star of David on the Arm of Qassem 'Awisat, with Glass Shards, at Seida Checkpoint, Tulkarm district, The West Bank, 30 April, 2003

The radioactive boy scout

From The First Link:
Bur oaks bear seed up to an age of 400 years, older than reported for any other American oak. The minimum seed-bearing age is about 35 years, and the optimum is 75 to 150 years

"Bur oak is said to have reached a height of 52 m (170 ft) and a d.b.h. of 213 cm (84 in) in the lower Ohio Valley. On the better sites, mature trees generally grow 24 to 30 in (80 to 100 ft) tall, 91 to 122 cm (36 to 48 in) in d.b.h., and live 200 to 300 years. Characteristically, they have a massive, clear trunk and a broad, open crown of stout branches."


from The Second Link:
In the early 1900's, "mature" ponderosa pines were defined as 200 years old, 300 year old trees were considered "veterans." Today, the Forest Service defines 100 year old trees "old growth."

By 1962, when the Forest Service began region- wide surveys, the forests were already highly degraded, the very largest trees being already logged off. The rule of early forestry was to exclusively and rapidly cut all the largest trees (Drake 1910, Woolsey 1911, Moore 1912). The large trees were eulogized as far back as 1891


The Third Link:

"What is the value of sending human beings into space? There is a serious conflict here. Astronomers and other scientists are generally skeptical of the value of manned space flight, and often resent the way it interferes with scientific research."

What in the hell type of question and statment is this? Lets see, some of the larger medical discoveries have come from space in the past decade. This research can't be conducted by a robot for the same reason new technologies are developed. Most of them are by accident! The reason astronomers don't like that (which is news to me, i've never heard this voiced) is because it could disprove thier research. Actually thinking about space, is completely different from being there.

Articles like this are from people who are lazy and with a small mind. People who are afraid to go against group opinion. They usually amount to nothing. I think his biggest concern was about this administration. Yes, this admin. has a space initiative, but so do most others. Whining and puling like this get you nothing, and nowhere except maybe an average life.

I owned a Royal DaVinci (the original line of DaVinci's that Royal had out) and was very hurt when the lawsuit with palm (Link - Link - Google Search) because Royal stole code from the PalmOS source and used it in that line of products. While the UI was fairly nice and I liked the Royal Davinci, soon after I received it I found that Royal basically stopped supporting it. It had been a great deal, and I had been hoping to get a lot of use out of it, but software and accessories never made it to market that were supposed to, and Royal was not allowed to continue supporting the device during and after the lawsuit.

It left me as a customer fairly hurt, so it is understandable that I'd be just a bit cautious before spending 400.00 on a product made by Royal. I doubt they'd make such a mistake again... especially if they are using an open-source platform, but I'd still be very cautious, I've lost a lot of faith in them as a company.

There are actually only 10 U.S. states in which convicted felons permanently lose their voting rights, and six more in which they lose them but may later petition to have them restored. (More info here and here.)

I agree that it should be unconstitutional, just like poll taxes and similar measures devised to exempt from voting rights such persons as the states saw fit to exempt. (I'm borrowing a little euphamistic language from the U.S. Constitution, here.)

July 2002 TDC is reportedly able to offer 95% of all Danes the option to have an ADSL connection.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Actually, no it isn't against standards, it merely exposes the advetiser to claims of slander. I've seen many the commercial / print ad where the competitor is named, but I have always noticed that the fine print is usually less fine than normal and makes explicit references such as "Data obtained from 2002 annual report to shareholders" or somesuch.

The other reason that the competitor is not generally named is that the competitor does such a great job of marketing that the name is simply overshadowing.

Case in Point: The Pepsi challenge. Coca-cola is named explicitly, but the only negative things mentioned are statistics in which a very comprehensive test results were taken. Humor here, interesting here, and the more fact-like here (scroll down to Essentials of "Comparative Advertising" law. . .

melatonin (extracted from bovine pineal gland commonly, prion diseases anyone?)

Search for "non-bovine melatonin" in google. One large supplement company also makes a melatonin that says its suitable for vegetarians, an indication to me that its derived from non-animal sources.

ephedra (cardiac arrest anyone?)

Ephedra was incidentally discovered by the Chinese, its indicated for colds and flu in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and is obviously meant for short term use. TCM doctors are actually horrified by the idea of using Ephedra (ma huang) for weightloss.

Aristolochia fangchi (kidney damage or cancer anyone?)

According to this article AF was put into weightloss pills by mistake, due to the fact that the chinese name is similar to another herb. It is not indicated for anything.

shark cartilage (simply a lighter wallet anyone?)
Shark cartilage has indeed been rejected as a possible treatment for cancer.

these sorts of public proclamations are troublesome... any other unproven (not a troll, I am a scientist folks, so I want proof)

Though not juxtaposed, the lines above are odd next to each other, after all, this was not a random proclamation, this was indeed a scientific study, and I'm sure more will follow. You had some good examples, but they could be fairly easily explained (you missed one or two which are much uglier. :-)

But even then, I think that the modern record on supplements/herbs is very good. The injuries caused by supplements pales in comparison to those caused by derived pharmaceuticals, which are pretty strictly regulated.

Hey, I just checked into the salaries of neurosurgeons and I bet that you didn't have to pay for college. The average going rate for a neurosurgeon in 1998 in L.A. is $483,774. Even a general surgeon makes on average $255,438 according to the federal government. $150k of malpractice insurance is a cost of doing business too, so it's probably a write-off to some degree.

So, in sum, $150,000 is a lot of money to pay per year, but it allows for your dad to continue making a substantial amount of money on top of that. I certainly hope you didn't have to pay for college:)

Probably right. Not so sure about Gates' political orientation, though. Someone in MS' position will keep the bases covered with generous contributions to both parties. This speculated a few years ago on a potential shift in his orientation.

A while back, Novell used to own a significant share of both Corel and SCO. In 1996, Novell decided to sell off both of them. Article Here.

BTW it's unlikely an automatic braking system will be easy to design...

American big-rig truck fleets are much further along. More than 10,000 trucks on highways are outfitted with radar-based collision-warning systems that alert drivers to fast-approaching danger and induce braking. Data collected over millions of miles shows the systems have reduced accident rates by 70 percent or more.

I've seen a card with holes punched in it used at motor carrier fleet refueling stations. The reader is optical and these heavy plastic credit-card sized cards bear a suspicious resemblence to these cards right down to the square holes.

That's the same as lower power 802.11 cards

Bluetooth chips generally eat less than 40mW, some as little
as 20mW. I wouldn't put WUSB in a cell-phone, or my keyboard.

That's the same as lower power 802.11 cards

Bluetooth chips generally eat less than 40mW, some as little as 20mW. I wouldn't put WUSB in a cell-phone.

That's the same as lower power 802.11 cards

Bluetooth chips generally eat less than 40mW, some as little as 20mW, you wouldn't want to put WUSB in a cell-phone.

Most of the targeted devices are already network capable (I.E. Printers, Scanners, Internet connections), actually usually having them on a network for sharing is perferred. Also, 802.11g's 54Mbs is nothing to sneeze at, and this is likely to keep on increasing.

These things are going to eat several times more power than a Bluetooth radio. The article says:
"The power target for WUSB radio will be introduced at less than 300 mW and drive to a target of 100 mW over time."

That's the same as lower power 802.11 cards

Bluetooth chips generally eat less than 40mW, some as little as 20mW, you wouldn't want to put WUSB in a cell-phone.

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m3161/1_48/5917 7080/p1/article.jhtml

What you do not seem to realise that there are several factors at play here, some of which are:

- governments of any stripe just as any private enterprise (ever hear of bankrupcy?) can be incompetent and not being able to manage money or medical equipment

- many healthcare workers and doctors are greedy and quite willing to sabotage the whole system to make a killing when things go private and thus prone to keeping MRIs not running full capacity, overprescribing the test to fill the devices capacity etc etc.

- for the same reasons, the people who wish to make a killing on privatisation also tend to create an illusion of great efficiency by collaborating to make the "for pay" version seem speedy and affordable while the public one unuseable. As soon as this "for pay" version is the only option, while it remains speedy, the "affordable" part disappears in a hurry. Oh, and any two-tier manouvers always lead to all the medical workers wanting to work for the one which has greater pay. Guess what happens to the public one if they all spend 100% of their time trying to get out of it for their slice of the "bonanza".

- private clinics have to get paid by someone and would have to serve the same number of patients as current public ones and turn a profit. Tidy one at that. What do you suppose the overall cost will be? Add at least 50% to our current cost. Are you not aware of efforts within US to reduce their truly gigiantic and costly (much more expensive then ours, nearly double per-capita) system by introducing Canadian style administration? See, turns out we spend a fraction (3%) of the money on administration while they spend 30%. Add 27% to our current cost. Small "use" fees? Thats how they start. Once you get that, its just a matter of "improving service" and "offerring new options" before the fees are on par with the US. You do realize that 1/7 (43 million) of all US citizens do not have any medical insurance or benefits? That dying from uncured illness is a normal thing among those people? But then on the other hand, doctors in the US are over twice as richas ours. I wonder if there is any connection. No... scratch that, actually I believe that this item alone is one of the leading causes of all of our equipment and resource "shortages".

While problems and wait lists and all sorts of other crap happens with our medicare, the solution is most certainly something other then throwing the whole thing over to the opportunistic hyenas lurking in the dark and waiting for easy spoils.

... at least not about the total number killed...

That is not the point. Noone claims that Saddam is a saint. Murderous, imbecillic dictator? Sure. Number of dead? Huge, 150.000 of them alone killed by allies in the first gulf war (remember the Highway of Death?). War to remove him? Impractical, ill-advised, badly planned, rush, worst alternative of all choices. Anyone with a brain knew this beforehand although the general public seems to be waking up only now and spin control is in full force. Iraq is just about gone. International laws fucked. Support for US world-wide abysmal. Osama Bin Laden? Having a field day setting up new network in previously near-unreachable to him Iraq, quite a comeback after actually getting near defeated in Afghanistan.

Bushists did make up so many imbecillic lies and overexaggerations that noone can tell if "gasing the Kurds" was a PR stunt (over an Iranian war crime) designed to enrage people into believing that Saddam is about to nuke New York.

Real agendas of neo-cons are suspected by many to be different and quite contrary to the public chest beating displays.

It's a cracking good read, as are all Simon Winchester's books.

I remember back in 1998 when Microsoft was trying to trademark Internet Explorer...but it was already trademarked by a small company who then tried to sue Microsoft and protect their name before they went bankrupt from legal bills. One of the defenses Microsoft used was that the term Internet Explorer was generic and could therefore not be trademarked.

Otherwise Windows IS trademarkable. Have a look at this nice table of trademark categories.

Whether or not Microsoft has a case against Lindows is another topic altogether.

Is it ethical to break the law?

Some would argue that it can be. She might. They might. He might. Heck, some people might argue that treason against one's country could sometimes be ethical.

Mind you, I'm not defending counterfeiting currency, just answering your question. Your question implies that you would say that breaking the law is unethical. I'm always surprised to hear Americans declare that the law is a measure of morality or ethics given that many of the best parts of our country came from civil disobediance. (I realize you might not be American, if so, my apologies. Still, the statement stands.)

I did some googling for peanut allergy and photosensitive epilepsy. It seems peanut allergy occurs at about 25x more often; however, I was not aware that either of these are as common as the statistics show. This is quite an eye opener for me.

Peanut allergy affects about 1:125 people

The study, which measured the number of people reporting peanut and/or tree nut (almonds, cashews, walnuts and pecans, for example) allergies, found that prevalence rates in 1997 and 2002 were relatively the same for the population at-large. However, reported peanut allergy in children rose dramatically, increasing from 0.4 percent in 1997 to 0.8 percent in 2002. Based on 2000 U.S. Census data, FAAN estimates that nearly 600,000 children are now affected by peanut allergy -- about 1 in every 125 children.

Between 40 million and 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, and between 3 and 5 percent of epileptics are photosensitive.

NOTE: This post is actually meant to be informative; I went with a humorous title to get noticed.

GM would never make transmissions for BMW and Range Rover. Or engines for Honda.

You were saying?

Where did your invented information come from?"

How about her own words?

"Last year, the Florida legislature passed virtually all of my bills as part of its landmark Election Reform Act."

Maybe things happened different in your alternate reality.

I remember in 1999, the famous modeling agency Elite (press release) announced that they would have the first virtual runway model, made by Illusion2K and named Webby Tookay. I saw the demo reels, and I recognized the art style from a well-known 3Dstudio artist Steven Stahlberg (who had Tookay modeling some victorian clothes in a bodice-ripping adventure scenes before).

Nothing ever came of Elite's project, and the only other comparitive software, the "Cosmo Home MakeOver" died out after a year on the shelves. Call me a cranky old man, but I don't see this idea going very far either.