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Just a little background info, blatantly ripped off of this website: http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/mycobact erium
Sorry for the crappy formatting.

Mycobacterium is the only genus in the family Mycobacteriaceae of bacteria. This genus includes many pathogens known to cause serious diseases in mammals, including tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, also called TB, phthisis, consumption, and nicknamed the white plague, is the most common infectious disease in the world today. It is caused by a bacterium, usually the Mycobacterium tuberculosis but any member of the so called Tuberculosis complex will do. If left untreated, more than 50% will die in a few years time. It causes about 2-3 million deaths per year out of 9-10 million cases and is especially prevalent in undeveloped, tropical countries.

and leprosy

Hansen's disease, also known as leprosy, is an infectious disease caused by infection by Mycobacterium leprae. The modern name of the disease comes from the discoverer of Mycobacterium leprae, G. A. Hansen. Sufferers from Hansen's disease have generally been called lepers, although this term is falling into disuse both from the diminishing number of leprosy patients and from pressure to avoid the demeaning connotations of the term.

Most mycobacteria are classified into two categories, the fast-growing kind and the slow-growing kind, and most mycobacteria share some common characteristics:
* They are widespread organisms, typically living in water (including tap water treated with chlorine) and food sources.
* They can colonize their hosts without the hosts showing any adverse signs. For example, millions of people around the world are infected with M. tuberculosis

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the bacteria that causes most cases of tuberculosis. Its genome has been sequenced.
It is a Gram-positive aerobic mycobacterium that divides every 16-20 hours. This is extremely slow compared to other bacteria which tend to have division times measured in minutes (for example, E. coli can divide roughly every 20 minutes). It is a small rod-like bacillus which can withstand weak disinfectants and can survive in a dry state for weeks but can only grow within a host organism.

but will never know it because they will not develop symptoms.
* Mycobacterial infections are notoriously difficult to treat. The organisms are hardy and can survive long exposure to antibiotics, which naturally leads to antibiotic resistance Antibiotic resistance is the ability of a microorganism to withstand the effects of an antibiotic. Antibiotic resistance develops through mutation or plasmid exchange between bacteria of the same species. If a bacterium carries several resistance genes, it is called multiresistant or, informally, a superbug.

Most mycobacteria are susceptible to the antibiotics clarithromycin and rifamycin, but antibiotic-resistant strains are known to exist.
* Mycobacteria tend to be fastidious (difficult to culture), sometimes taking over two years to develop in culture.
Species * M. tuberculosis, which causes tuberculosis Tuberculosis, also called TB, phthisis, consumption, and nicknamed the white plague, is the most common infectious disease in the world today. It is caused by a bacterium, usually the Mycobacterium tuberculosis but any member of the so called Tuberculosis complex will do. If left untreated, more than 50% will die in a few years time. It causes about 2-3 million deaths per year out of 9-10 million cases and is especially prevalent in undeveloped, tropical countries.
* M. leprae
Mycobacterium leprae, also known as Hansen's bacillus, is the bacterium that causes leprosy (now called Hansen's disease). It is an intracellular, pleomorphic, but usually rod shaped, acid fast, gram positive, aerobic only remotel

There is no chance that they would not develop their own language, because it has happened over and over again. This is just another pidgin, such as is created when speakers of many languages are placed together and must communicate. Once these children have children, and if the second generation is deaf, these children will develop a more sophisticed version, that is a creole. See http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Nicaragu an%20Sign%20Language

>I think its a culture thing though. Pixar is still new and it hasn't developped a thick crust of old timers who don't want to rock the boat,

Surely you must be joking! Pixar has Ed Catmull and John Lasseter who, while towering talents, are not exactly young. Ed is about as crusty as one can get in computer graphics and he is STILL the man (Catmull-ROM spline anyone)!

I think it is that Pixar is just more creative and they are far more story/character focused than Dreamworks. That's Lasseter's contribution.

i can't think of a single thing to date the chinese have ever created that has benifited humans

• movable type
• the printing press
• paper (as well as paper money)
• meritocratic civil service
• 'gaussian' elimination
• so-called 'arabic' numerals and the base-10 number system
• gunpowder and rocketry
• the post office
• restaurants
• umbrellas
• porcelain (also called, simply, 'china' or 'china-ware')
• ketsup
• silk
• rice
• and soybean (including tofu and soy-sauce)

What I don't understand is why can't a public utilities company provide a public utility if their rate payers want it?

Your terminology is a bit off. A public utility is a "company that performs a public service; subject to government regulation." It need not be owned by a gov't.

That said, there are examples of systems where distribution is owned by the gov't or by a local cooperative. Many communities, particulary small towns or rural areas in the US, have electrical coops that handle distribution of power to individual homes. I'm not sure why politicians believe internet service should not also be handled like this.

Hmm, I've read about this on Slashdot before, and I'm pretty sure I've read about Modified Newtonian Dynamics before.

The gist is this: MOND is an alternative to the "dark matter" explanation. It makes a modification to newton's laws of motion, whereby gravitational strength.
The equation F = ma is well known, but with MOND the gravitational inverse square law changes to an inverse linear law when the acceleration due to gravity falls below a critical value, which is very small (i.e. you get pretty far away from the source of gravity).

This explains most of the observed behavior that is currently explained by dark matter, including the rotation of galaxies which seem to defy newton's laws. Unfortunately, there's still no derived theoretical basis for MOND; as of now it's a rather arbitrary explanation with equations that just seem to work pretty well, and many physicists do not take MOND seriously. Then again, "dark matter" seems just as silly.

A more in-depth explanation is available here.

Interestingly, the MOND critical value for the acceleration (a0) turns out to be the speed of light divided by the age of the universe.

C/C++ (which the parent article asked about - is really just a language (like C#) and not a runtime). The biggest distinction is that the runtime will address issues like loading code dynamically. Had they simply ported C/C++ there would have been a whole lot more architecture-specific battles to fight (a.out vs elf, etc).

MS offers many features that once you start using them, are hard to move away from.

No doubt the ratings have shot thru the roof, as well as the advertising revenue. Makes me wonder if it was somehow rigged to achieve that end.

I hate to get into a flame war during the grand opening of this politics section of /., but take a look at this:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1195870/p osts

Do you really, truly, in your heart of hearts believe that a group some longtime financial supporters of Bush and longtime friends of Karl Rove just coincidentally came up with several hundred thousand for a group of veterans to contradict their own previous statements and just about every record in the Navy at the most opportune time in the Bush reelection campaign - without so much as a phone call to Karl? All of the players in that slander are in the business of politics, and one of the lawyers on in the group was also an advisor to the Bush campaign, until he resigned after being outed. Let's call a spade a spade, shall we?

As for Bush calling Kerry's service admirable, yes, he did the right thing there, both morally and politically (he's the good cop, the "unaffiliated" agents are bad cop). I guess it's naive to expect campaigns not to engage in outright lying (as opposed to the standard practice beating on a marginally relevant flaw in the opposition), but it's still fair to call scurrilous when it's practiced.

Caveat: I did not read the whole book, just browsed through the online pages. However, this seems like a classic example of the "hasty generalization" fallacy (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/hasty%2 0generalization). The author extrapolates his personal experiences and assumes that they are representative of the whole nation's school system, weaving a conspiracy theory through it to further sensationalize it.

First of all, there is no "national school system" in the United States. Each state is responsible for public education within its own borders. I don't know about New York, but at least in Colorado, the situation is nowhere close to that described in his prologue. If a Colorado administrator had subjected a student to the verbal abuse described there, they would be subject to disciplinary action at the least, and possibly termination.

I know that education in the United States is not perfect. There are many areas that desparately need improvment, especially science and math education, but hysterical diatribes such as these do little to advance the dialogue and only serve to inflame the True Believers.

Bunch of crap. Erdos was a speed-freak that people tolerated, is all.

Lets travel back, way back. There was the Adlib audio. Then Creative Labs introduced the 8bit, 11Khz Sound Blaster, then the Sound Blaster Pro which added stereo. Then there was the Sounds Blaster 16, Pro Audio Spectrum 16, and the Gravis Ultrasound (GUS) back in 1991.

The GUS was way ahead of the others. It could mix up to 32 channels in hardware. It always played the sound back at 44Khz via interpolation (unless you had too many channels active at once). It had up to 1meg of on board sound memory so it could be totally independent of your CPU. The Demo scene loved it. It had faked 3d sound via QSound..

It never caught on :( Creative's control was too powerful. Even the GUS PnP which was based on the AMD Interwave sound chip failed. Eventually Gravis was bought and the exited the sound business.

Years later Aureal, attempted to bring good audio to the PC and break Creative's control with its Vortex sound card. They ran into money issues. Creative sued them. They won, but the lawsuit drained their money and they went bankrupt. Creative then bought the remains (patents) of the company.

But rumours are nVidia hired many of the out of work engineers, which developed the Sound Storm for the Xbox. Which then nVidia fortunately brought to the nForce. Which unfortunately won't be in future versions because nobody is willing to pay for it. Even if it is "free". Gamers are more interested in a "free" hardware firewall.

Looking back at how Gravis, AMD, Aureal, and others have failed despite having superior products makes me wounder how a company could successfully introduce better audio to gamers. Maybe if it helped you win at FPS games... Seeing nVidia leave the audio market is sad, but I've been sad about this many times before. I'm kind of numb to the pain of seeing a great new technology with high hopes of making things better fail due to lack of interest.

I have a feeling we'll be stuck using Intel's "Azalea" for a long long time. It's certainly not bad, but it has the CPU do the work instead of a coprocessor. What do you expect from Intel when they made a nice new DX9 graphics core, but didn't use hardware T&L? Gotta try to create a market for those faster CPUs somehow... Sure, it can output some Dolby signals if they are precomputed (i.e. DVDs), but it can't encode them if they are dynamic (i.e. games). Unless you have a really powerful CPU. Oh well, at least Intel High Definition Audio as it is officially known now beats AC'97.

So the Nike CEO gets a bit richer but needs some ice cream which maybe he buys off of you or something like that ... using the money he made off selling the shoes to the Indian chap. Nike CEO makes more profit by making those shoes in Indonesia than if he were doing so in Texas or Scotland etc. So maybe, just maybe, he'll buy two tubs of mint choc chunk! Of course, you'll want to take on an extra worker now with all this demand but, hey, they're especially costly in Texas or Scotland so ... maybe outsource this to the Philipines? That way you'll get a bigger share off the trickle down.

Excellent.

...but that's nothing to be embarrassed about, ignorance is curable.

The "McCarthy witch hunts" were NOT witch hunts (read the end). McCarthy's basic argument was "should we have people who are communists (many self admitted) in sensitive positions within our government?"

He was not only right, but underestimated the extent of soviet infiltration, as the release of the Venona Project transcripts now reveal (summary here).

Now go and read a book.

...but that's nothing to be embarrassed about, ignorance is curable.

The "McCarthy witch hunts" were NOT witch hunts (read the end). McCarthy's basic argument was "should we have people who are communists (many self admitted) in sensitive positions within our government?"

He was not only right, but underestimated the extent of soviet infiltration, as the release of the Venona Project transcripts now reveal (summary here).

Now go and read a book.

But yes, the risk vs. reward is an important issue, and there's just the increased amount of work in passing lots of $5 bills - if you want a lot of money, you need at least $20s.

I found this document on RTGs for the Gallileo probe in 1984. A few of the crunchy bits are as follows:

The Galileo orbiter will carry two 285-watt (electrical)* general purpose heat source (GPHS) radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs)

[from a link to a subpage] Two nuclear generators will power the Galileo spacecraft. Each is about 45 inches long, 16 inches in diameter, and weighs 122 pounds.

* The thermal power at the beginning of the mission will be 4,410 W per generator.

So, they're counting on 285 W per generator, but at the start they're going to be getting 4,410 W. I'm assuming the 285 is the output estimated for the tail end of the mission. Now, 4.4 kW isn't a lot of output, but it could easily power a house, even a wasteful American one. And, since the power output is continuous, it can be stored in batteries when not being used directly. Then there's the thermal output, which seems like it should be considerable. How many BTUs would something like this put out?

This article is more generally informative, but it seems that the overarching concern for terrestrial use is leakage. There's some note that the material could be used for a "dirty bomb," which is a concern in this age of terrorism, but people who are determined to do something nasty to other people will use whatever is at their disposal (airplanes, boxcutters, armies, lies to the public, whatever), so I don't think a pile of hot rocks is going to make a huge difference.

Am I way off here? Is there some critical issue that I'm missing? I'm open to being called stupid, just back it up with facts, please.

Everyone on here seems to be thinking inside the box. Let's leap outside, and see what we can do. Bluetooth headsets for audio are available now (monaural, at least). I wear glasses anyway, so I'd like a Bluetooth video monitor with eye tracking. With fast eye tracking, a small monitor resolution can provide a large visual space.

Then, add a Bluetooth inertial sensor on a finger or several to replace keyboard and mouse, especially if the sensor system provides tactile feedback.

Now the processing system can remain "comfortably" and safely in a pocket, bag, or briefcase, or even strapped on the arm like the "Predator". Shape and other parameters can be freed from the handheld form factor constraints. (It might even include a flexible heatpipe to an external radiator, for hi-pro versions, though that does seem excessive for most users.)

Gratuitous geekjokes:
"Is that a banana in your pocket, or are you just surfing Slashdot?"
"Geeks are like bikers - they both have hot metal between their legs."

[Old SF story, from the 40's or 50's concerned how the very first portable wire-recorder, called Poo-Bah (Gilbert and Sullivan) start out as the first audio note-taker and gradually expanded in capability and power, providing expert advice and eventually getting wired right into the user's brain - and then, via radio links, sharing data and becoming the "Evil Computer Network That Takes Over The World - BWAHAHAHAHA!!" Interesting, this story included all the major concepts of modern mobile tech, some 50 years ago - before magnetic tape. Talk about prior art!!]

The processor and other components could even scream bloody murder if anything is separated too far from its partner components. The screamer's a good idea, which I should patent - every bluetooth component should include the ability to complain audibly, e.g. a piezoelectric tweeter, to help prevent misplacement or theft. Of course headwear will also have to not be too loud when it's attached to the head... This could also be triggered by a bluetooth signal, so when you do misplace it, you can have it squeal [and/or light up, why not?] so you can find it. If someone else patents this, consider this as prior art. Actual implementation, via vibrator, piezo transducer, trad. speaker, etc. is straightforward. Does Bluetooth include a standard command for this, like "alarm" or "findme"?

See some of the definitions online...

James Doohan

It looks like Scotty will not be with us much longer. What a shame since he inpired so many of us to go into technology ....

You are correct that MS has done a good job Windows; SQL Server today is a huge revenue source for MS, bringing in more than $1B a year.

Sources: http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Sybase%2 0SQL%20Server
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2001/j un01/06-28sql.asp

Declarative is effective in some domains (I would classify regular expressions as declarative programming). But I hesitate to believe that it is the best tool for all problems. Even if you ignore performance issues.

Good thing you posted as an AC, because the coin need only be conductive to exibit the inductive braking effect caused by eddy currents induced in the coin by motion relative to the magnets.

Ferrous metals aren't neccessary to the demonstration of inductive braking. The relative motion of the coin to the magnets induces eddy currents in accordance with Lenz's Law. The eddy currents generate their own magnetic field opposed to that from the magnets, causing the inductive braking effect.

With strong magnets like those found in harddrives, the effect is quite pronounced with a simple coin.

Please refer to this article for more information and links.

For history of mice in general (including optical) go here. Microsoft is not even close to being innovative in this regard.

Should be perfect for Florida and other places with "high winds"[....]

Then it'd probably withstand pretty much any level of wind--until something that wasn't streamlined (e.g., palm tree, SS Minnow, old lady on bicycle) slammed into it . . . .

Maybe advanced materials are what's needed to finally achieve Old Bucky's goals (even though they supposedly could have been built for the price of an automobile instead of the price of a house). I'll buy one.

Have you ever heard of Reed Solomon Error Correcting Codes?
You should check them out.
I'm thinking they allready built them into the design, and the 1TB is accounting for them allready.

The Toba supervolcano eruption was implicated in one such sharp decline in the human population (it's mentioned about 3/4 of the way through the linked transcript)

---PCJ

I think you mean Greedo and not Greebo.

I was curious about Scotland (posting this from Edinburgh...) which is largely dark as well. The central belt (Glasgow - Edinburgh, via Stirling) is well-lit, but the Highlands, particularly on the West Coast are dark. Geography, I'd guess, in Scotland's case - the region is very mountainous.

The Highlands (West coast of Scotland) are populated, but at a density of about 8 people per square kilometre. Compare that to Edinburgh (1725 per square kilometre) and Glasgow(3300 per square kilometre). Source: Scotland's population

It's mainly due to economic growth in the past; Glasgow and Edinburgh both attracted large numbers of rural workers when shipbuilding and manufacturing where at their peak. There were also the Highland clearances where the wealthy landowners sold their land to English landowners who then had the residents deported to either Australia or Canada (around 12 million people around the world claim Scottish ancestry).

The timing of this event was 780,000 years ago. The timing of a period with a small population from which Homo Sapiens comes is estimated to be between 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. Genetic evidence from mitochondria suggest that we all had the same direct female ancestor about 150,000 years ago. There is evidence that she was somewhere in Africa. There is evidence that the direct male ancestor was substantially more recent than that, the reason for the discrepancy is not known.

The above is from this encyclopedia article. A sanity check of the figures shows that the meteor had nothing to do with the evolutionary event that you're talking about.

The idea that humans went through a period of restricted population should not surprise. The theory of Punctuated Equilibrium suggests that most species arise from a period of rapid evolution in a small isolated population. Most such "experiments" end quietly. But sometimes the new breed cannot interbreed with the original, and successfully outcompetes it. In the latter case, the new species spreads.

Therefore we should expect homo sapiens to have gone through such a period.

the book Languages of Pao explores the concept in even more detail. 3 castes are created on the planet Pao: warrior; mercantile and academic. the warrior language for example, would describe simple actions in terms of one force overcoming another. the academic language was very technical in its conjugations and construction.

There was a service for the Atari 2600 called CVC Gameline which allowed you to download games to the Atari via a 1200 baud modem. I don't believe it actually allowed for competitive play against people in other locations however. It was simply a pay to play on demand system.

Can't you see? It's everywhere! Soon, there won't be anything but advertising left!!

Oh, crap, I seem to be doing it too! Close your eyes, it's the only safe way!

Someone mod the parent as funny. It may not know it, but it is.

I bet they use Bogosort :)

And if you would like to know what that is, check this out:

Bogosort

And if you don't get the joke after reading that, well, congratulations to getting paid for writing the code for DirecTV DVR:)

Dork certainly is a fitting description of someone who turns to a computer to help them with words. It's a game of pitting intellect vs intellect, not intellect vs 'Fred'*.

* Fred is a cycling term for wannabe, but with a strongly negative connotation


Given your snobby attitude, I'd say your games are more intellect vs 'Dick'*.

* Dick is used as a colloquialism in the UK to indicate someone "who is ostentatiously and irritatingly knowledgeable."

I dont know if I would say mainframe, but early computers used what was called a Mercury Delay line

My recollection was that Xenix was developed by Microsoft and SCO was mostly a porting house until Microsoft split them off in the late '80s. Both SCO and Microsoft, for their own reasons, have been reluctant to acknowledge the degree of Microsoft's involvement in early commercial UNIX development since then, but they were terribly proud of it at the time.

Here's an online document that seems closer to reality.

"Microsoft purchased a license for UNIX 7th Edition from AT&T in 1979, and announced on August 25, 1980that it would make it available for the 16-bit microcomputer market. Xenix was not sold directly to end users; Microsoft licensed it to computer manufacturers who then ported it to their systems. The first ports of Xenix were to the Zilog Z8001 16-bit processor.

"Altos shipped a version for their computers early in 1982, Tandy Corporation shipped one for their 68000-based systems in January 1983, and Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) released their port to the Intel 8086processor in September 1983

"Xenix varied from its 7th Edition origins by incoporating elements from BSD Berkeley Software Distribution, and soon possessed the most widely installed base of any Unix flavor due to the popularity of the inexpensive x86 processor, even though the port created for Tandy computers proved to be more robust.

"When Microsoft entered into an agreement with IBMto develop OS/2, it lost interest in promoting Xenix. Microsoft transferred ownership of Xenix to SCO in an agreement that left Microsoft owning 25% of SCO. However, Microsoft continued to use Xenix internally, submitting a patch to support functionality in UNIX to AT&T in 1987 , which trickled down to the code base of both Xenix and SCO UNIX"

-- Xenix at The Free Dictionary

Unfortunately, you are correct. But that is because we mistakenly call corporate fascism "capitalism".

Capitalism need not involve greedy corporations. Some of the most lassie-fair of people, the founders of the United States, did not believe in corporations being able to run a-muck the way they have today. Corporations were a privilege, and that privilege could be revoked if a corporation did not behave. The representatives of the country were to see to that, but the people fell asleep along time ago and corporate shills run the US Congress. So now we have Mussolini style fascism running around in G W Bush's US pretending to be capitalism, Corpratism is not so very different from communism in practice.

Corporatism: Historically, corporatism or corporativism (Italian corporativismo) is a political system in which legislative representation is given to industries or professional and economic groups. Ostensibly, the entire society is to be run by decisions collectively made by these groups. It is a form of class collaboration put forward as an alternative to class conflict and was first proposed by Pope Leo XIII. In Italy, employers were organized into syndicates known as "corporations" according to their industries, and these groups were given representation in a legislative body known as the Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni. According to various theorists corporatism was an attempt to create a "modern" version of feudalism by merging the "corporate" interests with those of the state

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/corporat ism/

tco or tc0? :D

According to the earlier /. article, the patent in question is on run-length coding, and was issued in 1987. Unless it was submarined for a really long time, there's got to be prior art all over the place. If nothing else, the Amiga's IFF ILBM image format uses RLC, and it's been around since 1985, at least.

Doesn't seem like a fair comparison to me for 2 reasons:

1) The "Unix Wars" of the late 80's / early 90's were primarily due to various vendors trying to lock people in. See this article as one example. In fact it was this very action that many analysts say opened the door for Microsoft to succeed in moving into the market with Windows NT.

2) [hinted at above] Microsoft was not competing in the same market as Unix or mainframes with Windows 3.0 ... Windows 3.x was almost purely a desktop with some small chunk of the workgroup server space. This didn't change until Windows NT (yes, NT shared the 3.1 version but was extremely different). And Windows NT didn't start eating into the SMB server market significantly until NT 4.0, which was LONG after the Unix Wars has ended.

This article gives soem citations on the growth of the US prison.population

Now, aside from this, we as a society need to ask ourselves, why is the prison population in the US growing so very rapidly(we are looking at over 50% growth the first few years of the Bush administration)?

DYnamic LANguage
It was hugely object-oriented (at a time that popular languages were procedural) and insanely dynamic (everything was typed at runtime only). I remember a lot of articles in the early 90s in MacTech saying it was the language we'd all be writing in soon. I never used it.

That's a very interesting cite.

So, in many ways, the question boils down to just what sufficient consideration is.

Well, according to this reference, consideration means "compensation paid, or inconvenience suffered by, the party for whom it proceeds, or the reason for which one enters into a contract."

I suppose, then, that it means that the agreement must have provided this sufficient compensation so as to be worth his agreeing to it. But we'd have to look to specific case law to determine whether or not he has received sufficient consideration in this case.

Of course, IANAL, so help is always appreciated. -- Paul

I know it's the percocet talking, but I think you mean PAE not PXE...

Apart from that - absolutely correct.