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I know this is a joke but wasn't it semi-recently published that "666" is thought to be an invalid translation and the correct number is really "616" and/or "665"?

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=44169
http://www.csad.ox.ac.uk/POxy/beast616.htm

The above are links from some quick googling. ;) I saw they were topical but didn't actually read them.

Ya I know...it spoils the joke. :(

to make it work you have to download the http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/jpc/JPCAppletObfs.jar file. extract it to a folder (I put it in ~/jpc/) then make an html file in your jpc folder with an object (be sure to specify the width and heigth you want) with three param tags. the first one name CODE value "org.jpc.j2se.JPCApplet" the second one name type value "application/x-java-applet;version=1.5" and the third one name scriptable value "false". then just run your html file. At that point you can also play with the .img files. they are just dd dumps.

Based on the table at the bottom of this page, dubious. Only real mode (e.g. DOS) is supported properly, the protected mode that any modern OS uses is in "beta" for interpreted stage, and compiled mode is "currently less mature". The cited 10% performance figure is for compiled real mode, and I'm willing to bet that interpreted protected mode would be somewhat slower.

Also, it doesn't say anything about supporting real graphics (8-bit VGA isn't everything), and something like USB or a CD drive would also be pleasant. What's the performance of the file-based-filesystem it uses?

On the surface your argument sounds solid, but you have not taken into account the devastation the 99% of flawed mutations has taken on the remaining population.

No, you have not taken into account the fact that mutations are a rare event, and that the majority of genetic mutations will have no effect at all. When they do have an effect, this effect is usually small. I'm not sure you realise just how much genetic variation there is out there in the wild. Also, I'm not sure you realise how much machinery there is in your body to prevent mutations from happening.

In other words, the "99% of flawed mutations" are only among those (rare) mutations which do have an effect. Meanwhile, "normal", not-significantly-mutated organisms keep breeding happily, perpetuating the "wild type".

What you are talking about (harmful mutations accumulating beyond control) is called "mutational meltdown", or "error catastrophe", depending on the context. It just doesn't happen in large natural populations today, precisely because 1) mutation rates are so low and 2) those mutations which are harmful are eventually eliminated.

Osteogenesis imperfecta ("brittle bones" disease) most certainly does affect reproduction and survival, especially in pre-modern times ! Again, I'm not sure you realise how even a small (but persistent) disadvantage in reproduction is dramatically amplified by the exponential nature of replication.

Thus how can can one random mutation produce (...) eye sight

I can't believe the example of the eye is still being used by creationists. Not only do we have plausible scenarios for gradual, step-by-step evolution of the eye, but we have actually found each of these "steps" in organisms living around us right now. Please have a look at this picture.

One mutation cannot produce the vertebrate eye (or a squid eye or insect eye for that matter). The patient accumulation of small, beneficial improvements (which are kept in the population, precisely because they are beneficial - as opposed to the thousands of non-beneficial small modifications which are quickly eliminated) can.

Executive summary: you are trying to criticise natural selection while not fully understanding it, please read more Dawkins.

At some point any primate, and eventually all animals, would develop to a point of where it would not only be self aware but intelligent.

You seem to assume that it is always better to be smarter, or that higher complexity is necessarily a decisive evolutionary advantage . Need I remind you that chimpanzees and other great apes are on the verge of extinction, while simpler, stupider baboons and (especially) macaques are thriving? At a larger scale, primates are vastly outnumbered by "split-hoof" mammals (artiodactyls: pigs, cows, etc.). Mammals in general are dwarved by insects, and animals are almost insignificant against plants in terms of total biomass. By the way, did you know that the majority of living (cellular) biomass is actually composed of bacteria, the simplest, least complex form of life around?

Evolution is about success, not about intelligence or complexity. Being more complex is no guarantee of long-term survival and dominance. Humans are very much the exception rather than the rule. Please read S. J. Gould's "Full House", or if you want something shorter just have a look at what R. Dawkins has to say on the subject.

I am also one of a small minority that believe that evolution and creationism can and do coexist.

You are a "small minority" only from a American fundamentalist perspective. In the outside world, most Christians (including Catholics) accept both without any difficulty. Rabid young-Earth creationism is very much an American phenomenon.

After a little poking around, I found what looks like the stuff they put on the nets. It was under their noses all along. And I would venture to think that the they (the Africans) have known about it for a very long time. I'm too lazy to find out how well it controls these guys, something even more neglected in mass media. Nature triumphs the computer again. Okay, now I'm drifting off topic, but it at least I did it seamlessly and gracefully :-)

A degree is good for everyone, no matter whether you are 30, 50, 70, or 90, and no matter whether you can actually use it for a career. The purpose of a degree is to broad your mind and make you think better and become a better human. Degrees are not designed to help you feed your stomach; this is what a job is for. While a degree that can be useful for jobs is of course better, I think you should pay attention to your mind and your education first (especially considering that you have successfully penetrated the job market), and not surrender your education to your employer's needs. Of course, if you can find a degree that is good both for your education and your career, it's better (as all win-win situations).

In choosing a degree you have to take into account:

• Your primary concern must be your personal interest in the degree's subject. You can't learn something if it feels boring.
• Your second concern must be the degree's educational worth and the university's reputation. Is it a real degree from a real university? Does it involve academic theories, abstract concepts, and preferably some research component? Remember that degrees are given by universities, not companies. If you want vocational training take the certification route.
• Your third concern must be the value of the degree in the real world: Can the degree open up new opportunities in the academic or professional job markets? Could you become a professor or an engineer with that degree?
• Your fourth concern must be how easily you can combine the degree with your life. Is it an online programme that lets you work while studying? Is the university near your home? Does the lectures weekly programme suit you? Is it offered in a language you know? (if not you may have to learn the language first), and are you able to pay for it? (if not you might prefer to work and earn money first, then enrol to university).

I recommend Oxford's Software Engineering programme and the Open University (UK). If you decide to take the certification route I would suggest to take university certificates in addition to professional certificates (like Cisco's CCNP). For example I have found this company and O'Reilly Learning offer vocational training programmes with non-academic continuing education certificates issued by real universities.

Have you never heard of the field of philosophy of religion? In it theists outnumber atheists considerably

And in the study of Marxist philosophy, Marxists probably outnumber non-Marxists considerably. So what?

Most non-Marxists and most non-theists simply don't see anything worth significant study or debate in those respective fields.

General theism is extremely defensible by reason

Please, summarize such a reasoned argument for theism.

and Richard Swinburne has of late proposed a number of arguments for specifically Christian concepts that are presenting quite a challenge to his atheist colleagues.

A quick look at the the papers on his home page show nothing but the same warmed-over arguments with no explanatory power. Nonsense like this: "These arguments seem to me to have a common pattern. Some phenomenon E, which we can all observe, is considered. It is claimed that E is puzzling, strange, not to be expected in the ordinary course of things; but that E is to be expected if there is a God; for God has the power to bring about E and he might well choose to do so. Hence the occurrence of E is reason for supposing that there is a God."

In other words, "there's stuff we don't understand, therefore God exists". A common argument, but a weak and disappointing one.

From Bandolier:

"A great deal of thinking will need to be done. There will be, and have been, suggestions that all these drugs, including over the counter analgesics, should be withdrawn. But in both these large studies half the patients were present or former users of NSAIDs or coxibs. Alternatives are few, with problems of their own."

Consider that the "alternatives" are acetaminophen (liver damage with high doses) and Flintstones chewable morphine...

... and a Blink Watchmaker can create life as we know it. The salary for this is left as an exercise for the reader.

• Trust is only dangerous when you have to rely on it.
• Reality is a dangerous concept.
• There is no logical reason why aliens should be hairy.
• I am not stupid, I'm not expendable, and I'm not going.
• No good deed goes unpunished.
• It is frequently easier to be honest when you have nothing to lose.
• Civilization has always depended on courtesy rather than truth.
• On Earth it is considered ill-mannered to kill your friends while committing suicide.
• The art of leadership is delegation.
• All that patience gets you is older.
• Show me someone who believes in something, and I will show you a fool.
• Regret is part of being alive -- but keep it a small part.
• He who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken.
• Infallibility depends on your point of view.
• There are times when even the most cynical must trust in luck.
• Heroics seldom run to schedule.
• Dignity, at all costs, dignity.
• The choice is very simple -- either you can fight, or you can die.
• In the end, winning is the only safety.
• Power usually makes its own rules.
• Some days are better than others, Section Leader.
• It is not necessary to become irrational in order to prove that one cares. Indeed, it is not necessary to prove it at all.
• While there's life, there's threat.
• Luck has nothing to do with it.
• Strategic withdrawal is running away, but with dignity.
• Idealism is a wonderful thing; all you really need is someone rational to put it to proper use.
• Nobody is indispensible.
• Everyone's entitled to one really bad mistake.
• In the end, your word is all there is, really.
• There are other rules, but you'll find out what those are when you break them.

And of course the big one: "One of these days, we're going to fly into a hole in the ground and not come out again."

I thought I'd point out that this isn't the only group in the world doing research like this--a friend of mine here is working on tumour modelling, and has been for several years now. The research group's homepage is http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/cmb/Research/index.htmlh ere. I suspect there are probably many more, too, given there are journals devoted to this stuff.

Like the ancients, it's how we bury our dead which will be most telling to the next crop of intelligent life to evolve on Earth.

Burials are certainly a rich source of information but believe it or not some of the most interesting archeological discoveries have come from ancient rubbish dumps.

IMHO, the work the oxford university/grid .org cancer project is more important than understanding folding. It seems that folding@home is not directly working on producing a cure and they are focusing on understanding "how" something happens.

Check out http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/curecancer.html and decide for yourself. Personally, I don't see direct value/benefit to the folding@home project. I understand that knowing about misfolding is important for certain diseases and maybe even cancers ..but I see the oxford univ. as having the most immediate and long term benefit. And iIt's a shame that project receives no publicity.

Since the "time to a cure" by understanding protein is very long term .. as cpu's get faster .. a delay would have negligible impact to the overall length of time taken. However working on directly on cures for common cancers has a more immediate benefit.

Claiming both atheists and Christians indoctrinate their kids to the same degree is as ludicrous as claiming the same thing about, say, mainstream Christians and the Muslim parents who send their kids to madras schools. One doesn't have to have any particular religious persuasion to see that teaching kids a relatively complex narrative (the old and new testaments) requires more time and effort on the parts of parents than not teaching them the narrative.

Tiny fossils are easy to get back to the lab, unlike, say, a multi-metre-long Tyrannosaurus rex, which takes a big excavation.

The 3D reconstruction of fossils isn't new. That's been done for, oh, probably close to 100 years. In the early 20th century, it was done by grinding down a fossil specimen millimetre by millimetre, sketching or photographing each surface, and then putting together a wax or paper model of each section until the 3D shape is reconstructed. It's been done for everything from fossil plants to fish and other vertebrates. Very laborious work.

More recently, people do the same thing, but take a digital picture of the sections and use software to assemble a 3D volume and select and render parts of it. If the object is relatively large (say, centimetres in size and larger), it can alternatively be subjected to medical CAT and other types of non-destructive 3D imaging techniques. This is routine for specimens such as dinosaur skulls, in order to see the interior without destroying the specimen. If the fossil is small and transparent, 3D imaging can be done with laser scanning confocal microscopy. But opaque, small (say, require the destructive serial sectioning method, meaning you have a nice, scientifically valuable 3D reconstruction at the end of the procedure, but no specimen anymore.

The new part in this technique is therefore the *non-destructive* 3D reconstruction of such tiny fossil specimens. That's where the particle accelerator becomes necessary to get sufficient resolution to be useful. This is much higher resolution than typical 3D medical imaging. The general technique isn't that unusual, because it has existed for years too. It is the application to microfossils that is relatively new (Nature registration required to view that last article).

Oh, and if people are wondering what "penis worms" are (the jokes are piling up by now), the technical term is Priapulida. More details at the linked page.

Yeah, I know. I'm spoiling the fun.

http://www.grid.org/projects/cancer/proj_news_2004 1116.htm http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/cancer/AACR_UPAposter.pdf

http://physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/SO/sodium_ferrocyani de.html
Exerpt:
Toxicology

            No hazardous according to Directive EC 67/548. FAO/WHO acceptable daily intake 0 - 0.025 mg kg-1

Transport information

            Non-hazardous for air, sea and road freight.

The lower explosive limit (LEL) for hydrogen gas is 18%. (For comparison, the LEL for methane (natural gas) is 5.7%, and the LEL for propane is 2.1%.) I would like to know where you get your data. The two MSDS I found show a LEL of 4% http://physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/HY/hydrogen.html or http://encyclopedia.airliquide.com/encyclopedia.as p?GasID=36#GeneralData and for Wikpedia fans we have http://encyclopedia.airliquide.com/encyclopedia.as p?GasID=36#GeneralData. If your LEL data is off by more than 300%, why should I believe anything you say?

Imagine a highly toxic substance, for instance Sodium Cyanide. NaCN is so toxic that, literally, a sniff can kill you. Yet it's widely used worldwide, one of the most used chemical compounds in metal plating. But very few people die from cyanide poisoning, exactly because it's so toxic that everyone knows it and acts accordingly. It's very easy to characterize NaCN as a toxic substance, mix the slightest amount of it in a rabbit's food and the rabbit will die in seconds.

Imagine a highly toxic substance, for instance Sodium Cyanide. NaCN is so toxic that, literally, a sniff can kill you. Yet it's widely used worldwide, one of the most used chemical compounds in metal plating. But very few people die from cyanide poisoning, exactly because it's so toxic that everyone knows it and acts accordingly. It's very easy to characterize NaCN as a toxic substance, mix the slightest amount of it in a rabbit's food and the rabbit will die in seconds.

Just as the subject is written, do you?

Your concern to genetically-modified (and patented) varieties of crop is a legitimate concern -- intellectual property can travel by wind and "taint" a neighbors substrate, causing a tournament for the forced subjection to a foreign private law. Recently as of February of 2006, CONGRESS was receiving a Bill from that HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES as H.R. 4167, the "National Uniformity for Food Act." Despite the misleading title of the Bill, among the content was that whomever bought any food were not allowed to know of certain ingredients or qualities on its nature.

How this all sets is, as of recently, it is a known fact that "Aspartame" causes cancer; its an artificial sweetener in many beverages, mostly in them branded as diet drinks. Another recent discovery is at microwave-popcorn factories, where everyone working among the "artificial butter flavoring" had all caught severe allergies and atrocious lung cancers. It was such a dangerous cancer that the remedy for one worker was a lung transplant! The chemical that caused the damage is "Diacetyl" and also is used in various brew of beer and who knows what else.

That Bill would allow those corporations to simply use any ingredient, method, or application of artifice to provide an incomplete and misleading report to the Contents of all packages lading the product assembled of them. It's no different than postal fraud, when someone intentionally mis-presents the contents of a parcel, where harm can be incurred by the worker that moves said parcel (even from grocery store to their domicile and house). I don't drink diet beverages, but I know some people that do. Nearby me is a box of microwave-popcorn, where on the Contents is no list for the ingredients of the artificial "light butter"; there is information on oiled popcorn kernels, but nothing on the butte flavoring -- into the trash it will all go.

If there ever was false advertising for a product, the above Bill would only try to seal someone's prior and future effort at fraud; brought from the end of genetically-engineered and patent crap and into the lives of people.

References are...
thomas.log.gov (Four versions of 4167 to this hour)
MSDS for butanedione
DRAYMANS.COM on Diacetyl
Ambulance-chasing lawyers
RENSE.COM on the Bill(a conspiracy theorist/fact never hurt anyone to prove)

oh no! I found this PrionPlanet.com article, therefore there shouldn't be anything to worry about this Bill or aritificial butter flavouring. Keep grazing the grocery aisles, and take your monthly shots (money-pill/vaccine shots)

umm lets see the big No nos are Lead : http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/l2347.htm Cadmium : http://physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/CA/cadmium and the other stuff in the batteries isn't exactly good either lithium goes boom if it gets wet oh and mercury, in the US mercury batteries are BANNED due to the health hazards

Snorting it (don't ingest it, it causes stomach cramping and is generally unpleasant) won't be fatal on its own, you can't generally take enough to cause anything other than blacking out. It's used as an anaesthetic on adults as well due to it being about the safest anaesthetic in terms of possible allergic reactions - it's often used when the patient's medical records aren't available. Indeed as an anaesthetic is has unique properties that make it valuable.

Recreationally it's also the fastest growing drug (well, other than cocaine) in the UK as well.

Is it conceivable that the climate there went haywire within human history? Given the current pressure, temperature, and chemical composition of the atmosphere on Venus, is there any chance that any indications at all could have survived of a possible former ecosystem there?

There is no evidence that Venus climate has changed recently. But the planet may undergo extreme resurfacing periodically due to the apparent lack of plate tectonics and high heat flow. The surface may liquify every few 100 Myr. This widespread uniform melting obliterates any geologic signature that precedes it. It also contributes to enormous outgasing of the mantle.

Statistical models (used by climatologists) are bound to increase in accuracy as they deal with average temperature of the entire globe over larger time scales.

This is not about determining whether it will snow or rain in Peoria on Dec. 11, 2006.

Some links that may interest you:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1 517946,00.html
http://www.begbroke.ox.ac.uk/climatebasics/?style= plain
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=270

Most people pronounce the name "postgres" (with a silent QL). A brief history of the name is here.

Even more briefly: Starting in 1986, there was a database named POSTGRES developed at Berkeley by a team led by Professor Michael Stonebraker. In 1994, Andrew Yu and Jolly Chen strapped a SQL front-end on the database and called the result "Postgres95". Since that name wouldn't last very long, it was renamed "PostgreSQL" in 1996 and it's stuck since then.

If you say "postgres" in most dev shops, they'll know what you mean (yes, even if they're using something else).

Regards,
Ross

Now, styrene isn't especially toxic- the quoted toxicity data applies almost word for word for many organic liquids- gasoline (petrol), for instance. This process of breaking down polystyrene foam isn't exactly something you can safely do at home. Then again, you probably don't recycle polyethylene or aluminum at your residence either. There are safety and economies of scale issues with recycling those as well. However, it may find application on an industrial waste management scale. Done under controlled conditions, this process should certainly be no more hazardous than any other industrial process- and less hazardous than something like petroleum refining.

Yes there is.
http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/downlo ad.php

Oh yeah, while I'm idly wondering, what are the odds of this making it into mainstream desktops ( stock gnome/kde )?

Well, to some extent it's already there: KWin uses COMPOSITE to do translucency and shadows, for example.

There are plans to extend use of these features in KDE 4. Zack Rusin from KDE, has been working on this sort of thing (you can see an interview with him from the Summer). There's also the Plasma project, which has beauty and usability as its key aims built in from the start.

And best of all, you can get involved and help make KDE 4 the best ever!

Actually, after discussions with Skype, Oxford University has now allowed the use of Skype with specific conditions for its use and configuration.

The problem with Skype is when it becomes a supernode. There are two reasons, bandwidth and the content of calls being relayed.

On the bandwidth side, because the University is on a high bandwidth connection, the host would become a prefered relay and get huge amounts of data directed through it.

On the content side, the JANET (Joint Academic NETwork) regulations state that no commercial use can be made of the WAN connection. It the host becomes a supernode there is no guarantee that the calls passing through it are all non-commercial.

So, as you can see, it's a thorny problem for such organisations.

Normalizing doesn't "fuel" consumption of porn, it would simply break down a cultural taboo in the consumer's mind. That doesn't provide impetitus, it just loosens a restriction.

Is that cultural taboo/restriction on child pornography really something that you want loosened at all then?

The original issue was that viewing and masturbating to (child) pornography leads to further viewing of pornography, and/or (child) sexual abuse. I do not know whether "only looking" provides an initial impetus, but it certainly perpetuates desires and results in an increase in both "looking" and "contact" behaviors.

Google Cache of an article "But I Was Only Looking..." by McCarthy and Gaunt. The orginal .pdf can be found here.

Agreed; it's a bean-counting exercise. And the Oxford CS dept has a pretty good reputation, so I was surprised they'd be involved. Turns out they are not. It's actually the Oxford Internet Institute, which is devoted to the study of the societal implications of the Internet.

Apparently, medical companies are in a rush to find protein structures that may lead to medical developments and patent them wildly.
The Welcome Trust funds several projects around the world that try and find as many structures before they are patented, and release them to public domain.
The way they do it is by massive trial and error. They test many environments for crystallization in parallel using robots and some neat tech.

mentioned in the article, you can download the reference manual from here

Just to add to mix, the specification "z notation" mentioned in the article can be found here

That video is not XGL. It is quite impressive and it can give you an idea of what XGL could look like, it is not XGL but is Luminocity and it is taken from http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/xshots. Read "How Luminocity Relates to Other Stuff" to get more info on Luminocity. Read the interview with KDE's Zack Rusin: "Beauty and Magic for KDE, with Zack Rusin". Download the demo video of Zack's XGL hacks: http://vizzzion.org/stuff/xgl_wanking.avi 16MB. If you want to read more about XGL then read aseigo's blog entry or Zack's blog.

Well things in the style of the OSX dashboard widgets can be useful too. In this interview, Zack Rusin (the guy mentioned in the summary for this article) talks briefly about OSX-style eye-candy in KDE4, and he says that they want their interface to be useful as well as good-looking. If you still don't want the useful magic eye-candy thingies because you think they're too heavy on resources or annoying or whatever, then you'd probably be better off not using KDE anyway. You could just use XFCE or Fluxbox or something like that instead. You'd still be able to run apps from KDE or GNOME or whatever, but the DE would be more minimal.

Oral toxicity (The Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances, 1986):

        Human; TDLo: 12,357 mg/kg/23 D-C
from http://www.saltinstitute.org/15.html see also http://ptcl.chem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/SO/sodium_chloride. html
True to achieve this for a 75 kg man wold need almost a kg of salt (2.6 lbs) but if someone were to injest this much it would kill most people, although the second source puts the TDlo at 1000mg/kg that would put it at just about a lb and a half or three mcdonalds large fries. I imagine it would take less if it were directly injected, or if loaded into a shotgun...

I think you only have a vauge clue what you are talking about, let alone understand what I have been saying.

You appear to be arguing that humans and chimps are significantly more violent and cruel than other animals, and hold up the concept of war as evidence of your claim.

Bzzzzt, I'm sorry, I am arguing that humans and chimps evolved a survival strategy that we call war. This strategy is significantly different to other animals and is what I called "violence". Perhaps I confused you when I defined war as "violence" to distigush the behaviour from the background gnash of tooth and claw? What really pisses me off is you have managed to take your confusion, mix it with some personal baggage and project a whole heap of words and thoughts on to me that are simply not there. Did I say anything about cruelty? Did I bring up lions and cartoon characters? Where did I make any type of moral judgement or quantitative comaprison on any species (including humans)?

War has always been a part of us and I belive it is an evelotionary trait unique to great apes. War is not just lion behaviour with more technology. I also happen to agree with the other poster who said something like we also have an "equally great capacity for peace". This does not deny the "selfish gene" theory, what it says is that for most species, when it comes to killing their own kind, it is a "selfish and lazy gene" at work.

Personally I think the selfish gene theory is often used by arseholes to justify being an arsehole, it's a peversion of a great theory, like eugenics is a peversion of genetics. They (unlike Dawkins) say nothing about co-operation. eg: The mitochondrial symbiosis at the heart of all multi-cellular life. The mitochondria genes are being selfish, co-operative and are certainly succesfull?

Compared to humans, the their [octopi] intellect is a flickering candleflame compared to the nuclear brightness of humanity. Even the most moronic human far outstrips the capabilities of an octopus.

When working on human problems I would have to agree (except for independently discovering how to open a screw top jar). But when applied to survival problems humans look more like a flash in the pan. Ant colonies with millions of individuals can rebuild an "ant city" in under a week. Does this mean our species is smarter or dumber or does it simply mean humans define intelligence so that our species is at the pinicale of evolution. When you think about how other organisims, (particularly something as alien as an octopus), might percive the world you might realise that it does not make much sense to compare human and octopi IQ results.

"Internet routers, like ants, are unintelligent and follow a set of mindless rules."

"The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes." - Chapt 1, The selfish gene.

Argue with that book and then we can talk about cognition as an emergent behaviour of simple physical rules. In the meantime stop putting words in my mouth, I did not say ants are intelligent ( to start with, they physically do not have a brain). Human brains are an intricately woven blob of neurons that individually follow a set of mindless rules. Both the ant and the neuron have evolved to co-operate, co-operation on the "mindless" level emerges as intelligent behavior on the "mindfull" level. Given that you have a hard time understanding me, what hope has a human got of seeing the world through the eye of an octupus.

But just because these rules are effective, doesn't mean intelligence is at play.

Yes, you have demonstrated that.

I think you only have a vauge clue what you are talking about, let alone understand what I have been saying.

You appear to be arguing that humans and chimps are significantly more violent and cruel than other animals, and hold up the concept of war as evidence of your claim.

Bzzzzt, I'm sorry, I am arguing that humans and chimps evolved a survival strategy that we call war. This strategy is significantly different to other animals and is what I called "violence". Perhaps I confused you when I defined war as "violence" to distigush the behaviour from the background gnash of tooth and claw? What really pisses me off is you have managed to take your confusion, mix it with some personal baggage and project a whole heap of words and thoughts on to me that are simply not there. Did I say anything about cruelty? Did I bring up lions and cartoon characters? Where did I make any type of moral judgement or quantitative comaprison on any species (including humans)?

War has always been a part of us and I belive it is an evelotionary trait unique to great apes. War is not just lion behaviour with more technology. I also happen to agree with the other poster who said something like we also have an "equally great capacity for peace". This does not deny the "selfish gene" theory, what it says is that for most species, when it comes to killing their own kind, it is a "selfish and lazy gene" at work.

Personally I think the selfish gene theory is often used by arseholes to justify being an arsehole, it's a peversion of a great theory, like eugenics is a peversion of genetics. They (unlike Dawkins) say nothing about co-operation. eg: The mitochondrial symbiosis at the heart of all multi-cellular life. The mitochondria genes are being selfish, co-operative and are certainly succesfull?

Compared to humans, the their [octopi] intellect is a flickering candleflame compared to the nuclear brightness of humanity. Even the most moronic human far outstrips the capabilities of an octopus.

When working on human problems I would have to agree (except for independently discovering how to open a screw top jar). But when applied to survival problems humans look more like a flash in the pan. Ant colonies with millions of individuals can rebuild an "ant city" in under a week. Does this mean our species is smarter or dumber or does it simply mean humans define intelligence so that our species is at the pinicale of evolution. When you think about how other organisims, (particularly something as alien as an octopus), might percive the world you might realise that it does not make much sense to compare human and octopi IQ results.

"Internet routers, like ants, are unintelligent and follow a set of mindless rules."

"The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes." - Chapt 1, The selfish gene.

Argue with that book and then we can talk about cognition as an emergent behaviour of simple physical rules. In the meantime stop putting words in my mouth, I did not say ants are intelligent ( to start with, they physically do not have a brain). Human brains are an intricately woven blob of neurons that individually follow a set of mindless rules. Both the ant and the neuron have evolved to co-operate, co-operation on the "mindless" level emerges as intelligent behavior on the "mindfull" level. Given that you have a hard time understanding me, what hope has a human got of seeing the world through the eye of an octupus.

But just because these rules are effective, doesn't mean intelligence is at play.

Yes, you have demonstrated that.

Interesting that they have got someone who used to be involved in print media to review IP. The FT have been subscription only for quite a while now...

As for whether it is legimitate to enforce copyright 70 years after an author's death, it seems clear that any reasonable economic analysis would conclude that the marginal incentive provided to authors by this absurd protection doesn't influence their output of creative work, and is only likely to cause detriment to those who cannot afford to pay full price for a novel or other creative work. This would include citizens of LDCs, and poor people, two groups in particular need of reasonably priced access to important literary or academic works.

It could be argued that publishers are more likely to support struggling writers if they can collect money for 70 years after the death of the author, but where is the evidence that 10, 20, 30...years after the author's death wouldn't provide exactly the same incentives to publishers to hunt for the next JK Rowling?

Here is a (pdf) link to some of the main economic issues involved here http://www.oiprc.ox.ac.uk/EJWP0502.pdf

For the sake of free communication, I hope this stays like that in the UK then.

On a sidenote, there were some interesting papers published at this years Cyber Safety conference. Especially interesting in our context: Prepaid Mobile Phones: the Anonymity Question by Gordon Gow.

For the sake of free communication, I hope this stays like that in the UK then.

On a sidenote, there were some interesting papers published at this years Cyber Safety conference. Especially interesting in our context: Prepaid Mobile Phones: the Anonymity Question by Gordon Gow.

Apologies for A/C. This is probably a little less than a full 3D model construction. Having seen a real-time demo of a "morphable model" the almost certainly use priors on face shape.

"First, the applications capture a user's face with a camera and detect the position of key features of the face, including the eyes, nose and mouth, using image recognition technology."

this can be done real time quite effectively right now:

http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/rd/95418640%2C476373%2 C1%2C0.25%2CDownload/http%3AqSqqSqwww.merl.comqSqp eopleqSqviolaqSqresearchqSqpublicationsqSqICCV01-V iola-Jones.pdf

"By matching the 2D positions of these key features to a computer graphic image using a 3D face model, the applications estimate what direction the user is facing and the 3D positions of the face's 500 features."

Having seen a real-time morphable model demo from Toshba at ICCV2003 this is probably a similar approach to this:

http://gravis.cs.unibas.ch/Sigg99.html

(my PhD thesis includes this area - not on my site yet, but I have a paper on MM fitting at )
http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~jamie/paterson03.html

Cheers.

If you're really interested in what people who know what they're talking about on this issue have to say do the research. One place already mentioned by other posters is http://www.realclimate.org/ and another is http://www.begbroke.ox.ac.uk/begbroke/Display/page /Climate.Basics.html which is the Oxford University site Climate Basics. RealClimate includes information on pretty much every objection that some of the people here have posted. They also explain a lot of the misinformation that's out there and also take suggestions on subjects to post about. It's definitely interesting to see here how many technically knowledgable people aren't really scientifically literate.

Having seen this talk I can happily say that BOINK is emminently open to attack. Presented were at least two very serious vulnerabilities - one of which was an SQL injection attack, the other a logical error on the part of the program's verification of digital signatures...

> You'd also think a high-level executive would be aware of what OS's are shipping and which are not.

Maybe SAP management don't know the difference between beta and release, it would explain a lot about SAP ;)

I'm intrigued how an "innovative" desktop would be copying another, this must be some corporate definition of "innovative".

Of the more widely used desktops I've used, I think KDE has the most innovative things going on, MacOSX is still driving ease of use (good on em'), and GNOME seems to be heading in a similar direction. But I'm sure there are less well known desktops out there doing even more radical things.

Innovation doesn't usually happen at the center. People want Microsoft to do more of the same for their business desktop, I mean a radically simplified, network integrated, and more secure desktop for Windows Vista would go down like a brick if it didn't run 90%+ of existing Windows applications, even if it did fantastically novel things. Cue the HAL9000 upgrade sketch. http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/computing/hal-upgrade. html

http://ptcl.chem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/ME/methyl_alcohol.h tml

Toxic by inhalation, ingestion or skin absorption. May be a reproductive hazard. Ingestion may be fatal. Risk of very serious, irreversible damage if swallowed. Exposure may cause eye, kidney, heart and liver damage. Chronic or substantial acute exposure may cause serious eye damage, including blindness. (emphasis theirs)

seems to me like you're pretty much screwed either way.
And Methanol is much much more flammable.

http://ptcl.chem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/FO/formic_acid.html gives a good guide to formic acid safety. Highlights include "Corrosive, causes severe burns. Harmful by inhalation, ingestion and through skin absorption. Readily absorbed through skin. Very destructive of mucous membranes and upper respiratory tract, eyes and skin. Severe eye irritant. Inhalation may be fatal." (emphasis theirs).

I'm thinking I'll go with the flammable myself..