they didnt really infest humans, they fed off them somewhat like leeches and their exposure to us somehow altered their DNA to evolve them into the deadly hominoid we know in sg atlantis.
parasites infesting humans and evolving in a human eating monster
that sounds more like the zerg infested terran unit, the zerg larvae infest humans and steer/accelerate their evolution into a biolical bomb. true they don't infect on a cellular level [more like the goulde come to think of it] but they do some interesting genetic tricks in the game.
The mitochondria have not been incorporated into the human genome.
funny you mention that, apparently when two species merge into a symbiotic relationship like that not only is there genomic reduction but integration of parts of the endosymbiont's genetic material into the host genome.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcg i?artid=166356
roughly 8% of our own species' genome consists of bacterial and viral genetic material. some of the segments are nearly complete with at least one case of a virus being resurected called Phoenix. it seems to be a fairly common process, viruses can lose critical genes while trying to replicate in cells which can leave them unable to reproduce as usual, the genome becomes integrated into our own. there are also cases [herpes for example]
which can integrate their genome with ours in certyain cells and effectively become dormant, they start the cycle again when and if certain conditions are met.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/science/07virus. html?ei=5088&en=492dd1d370217836&ex=1320555600&adx nnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1163032655-5n RqAOkgWGeKvh/qQcSYCg
back when I used to actually use Windows, there was a critical problem that required a restore but a lot of the recovery files got corrupted, and you can't use any other disk to fix it either, they're tailored to your particular machine- and nto get another disk [a DVD that cost them 2$ at most to make] cost 27$$ and two weeks to ship from wherever the hell they keep their backups. then not only that but there is still trialware on the disks which is bs, you shouldnt get garbageware on a disk you rightfully paid for EVER. which to their credit pissed me off enough to use Linux to begin with and now I couldn't imagine wanting to go back to windows. thanks Circuit city for driving me away from Windows and indirectly helping the FOSS community with every person that isn't putting up with that garbage anymore.
I shudder to think that an already overcrowded planet has to make more room for "fake babies".
notice that problem wasn't caused by the creation of artificial life, it is a sad consequence of ancient cultures not adapting to technology that increases the human life span. many cultures adapted to the unfortunate fact that to keep populations stable one might need to have twice as many kids as there were parents. once technology eliminated alot of childhood diseases the birthrates that sustained humanity before now caused an unsustainable boom in population growth.
the potential for anarchy is more than a slight worry for me, being that even if you could replicate the inner-workings of life, it doesn't mean you can give it a "soul".
I hear that argument a lot, that just because we could understand the entirety of human biology that we somehow wouldn't understand what makes us human, usually the view is that something supernatural governs the soul; although that fails to take into account environmental factors- tumors and brain damage for example can permanently alter personality, there are cases for example like phineas gage where permanent alterations in who he was occured. the man was never the same after that accident, you could say his soul was never the same. damage to the amygdala can cause alterations to emotional states, drugs can permanently alter emotional states as well.
our streets are filled with wandering empty shells with no knowledge of "right" and "wrong". Just because science "can do it" doesn't always mean it "should do it".
interesting you mention that, another view commonly held that our society is "degrading" from the "good old days" when most peopel don't realize how violent and utterly appalling most of human history was. what exactly do you think we are degrading from? we dont burn people at the stake like was a common punishment in the past, we dont stone people to death [in most countries] we dont enslave entire swaths of people on the basis of how much melanin was in their skin or destroy entire civilizations [mayan aztec] with diseases and war; Cortez for example is responsible in part for a civilization of 25 million being wiped out in south america. If anything society is getting less violent and more civilized as technology advances. I think that people should really start thinking for themselves what makes us human and do some research on human history so that we do not reverty back to such violence.
If verizon gets hammered by lawsuits over the illegal wiretapping it doesn't stop there, eventually there will be pressure put on the agencies that did this nonsense in the first place. I suppose that they figure by shielding Verizon it'll discourage any further suits and investigations into what the department was doing.
The Harvard team used skin cells from the animal's own body to introduce a gene for an amyloid-busting enzyme known as neprilysin. The skin cells, also known as fibroblasts, "do not form tumors or move from the implantation site," Hemming notes. "They cause no detectable adverse side effects and can easily be taken from a patient's skin." In addition, other genes can be added to the fibroblast-neprilysin combo, which will eliminate the implants if something starts to go wrong.
I suppose the simple genetic change isn't as likely to cause some immune reaction than the gene implanted via a virus- it should be a lot safer to just introduce cells with the gene instead of altering large sections of tissue in the human body. here's the enzyme they are talking about that is doing the good work:
they dont have to use software under GPLv3, they can use GPLv2 if they want or even BSD but one thing they damn well are going to do is follow GPLv3 if they use software under GPLv3.
I can't help but think this kind of tivoization will be horribly broken by the end of the year. there's likely a way that someone somewhere will figure out a way to wipe the whole mess and do away with this nonsense.
So will Apple and AT&T's legal action deter hackers? Hardly. Individual users are already allowed to unlock their own phones under an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that the U.S. Copyright Office issued last November.
just goes to show how stupid copyright law is in its current state. tax payers fund the research, researchers pay to have it submitted/access to journals and then pay again if anyone wants to actually see any of the research that was done. that is utter bs, there isnt a reason for them to charge as much as they do [the university I go to has had to shell out who knows how many thousands for this very reason] hell half the research papers are 20-40 $ unless you get an unlimited account with those crooks.
Controlling a 0.98 tera electron volt (TeV) beam requires quite some precision: Even if just a portion of this beam gets out of control - scientists refer to this event as "beam loss" - a "quench" can happen and damage is done very quickly: While these quenches do not happen very often, a problem for example in the cryogenic system can cause the beam to leave its path. The Tevatron has an automated shutdown function in such a case, but the high energy causes damage even within short time periods: Within 16 ns, one beam burned through about 1.5 m (about 5 feet) of solid steel.
Isn't software behaving like that already considered malware?
yes and no. it depends on what and how you use it. if you use the property of hiding directories as a simple way of keeping data from less experienced people [eg. slashdotters hiding the porn from their parents] then it isn't malware; in this case sony's software doesn't seem to be hding a directory for any good purpose, so yes it is malware.
pandora? flash. finetune? flash. what online music station that you know of doesnt use flash? for that matter, how many websites are there that you can't really use without flash? it would be nice if websites were a bit more open-source friendly but for now either we put up with it or advance our own flash replacement.
no more of that 30 second preview nonsense- listen to the song if you like it you add it- no restrictions on the number of songs/artist like finetune either. hmmm guess the RIAA can't do shit about it now can they?
too bad people keep shopping there and making them boatloads of money. seriously, walmart does just like any other very larger company, they do as much as they can to control the market and make money as is allowed under the law. is that right? perhaps not, is it legal? yes. don't like what they are doing? don't shop there. don't work there and certainly try to get the applicable laws changed. the only way companies will stop taking advantage of their situation is if people strangle the companies that do deplorable things. until the public at large cares more about the subject than saving 50 cents on that new toy, it is going to be the same as always.
I expect they will adjust the molecular clocks to reflect the new knowledge and make a new guess. But the lesson of this whole discovery is that the current models for molecular clocks seem to be a bit lacking.
hold on a second, we need to look into things a bit more first. first thing to do is to check the ancestral lineage for these species, there should be a clear line of species between us, the primates and these species. if these species really are ancestral species at this age we need to find out what exactly caused our molecular clocks to say otherwise. was there an evolutionary bottleneck like a set of genes that took a long time to evolve enough for the split? what genes caused this split and why?
what I'm saying is that operating systems should have soem diversity in how they work much like in healthy ecosystems in biology. when you start restricting diversity in a system it becomes a hell of a lot more vulnerable. two main examples of this: the lack of diversity in crops specifically bannanas; there is one major breed which is now being wiped out by a fungus- had there been any diversity in the species it wouldn't be so much a of a problem. this isn't the first time it happened either. the breed we use today is entirely different from the strain that was destroyed in the past for a similar reason. the other example is penicillin; this antibiotic has worked for MILLIONS of years fighting bacteria just fine for the fungus that makes it. that is until we started using it all across the planet; we made it a common antibiotic and now we have created a real mess with antibiotic resistance within a matter of decades. it is unimaginably better for security to have a diverse set of OSes rather than a small number of unique ways of doing things.
what I am saying is that we need to have diversity in regard to operating systems, it is a bad idea to reduce diversity in a system like this... if we can get away with a certain level of diversity while making things simple so be it. I just can't help but hold biology as an example what not to do- when species become less diverse they are prone to disease just like OSes tend yto be when you take for example Windows- very low diversity and a clear disregard for the customization we are used to in Linux. As for the gap between customization and ease of use, I am not saying it is impossible to have the two together but I am saying that the way software development has evolved tends to reinforce the viewpoint that a customizable system is going to have more complexity at some level GUI or not that a less customizable system will tend to have. Linux does well because you can really screw with things at a basic level and still have a nice GUI too and it should continue to have the best of both worlds.
I never understood why every distro can't just use the same install method.
what you want is windows not linux. windows does everything in a cookie cutter sort of way and look where it got them... the current state of security/flaws that we see in windows is a consequence of that sterile environment. we need a diverse system that can survive in a way windows can not. things are done differently not "incorrectly." Now if the different flavors of Linux made each installation method simpler to carry out while maintaining a layer of security and diversity then all is well. Personally I would rather have a secure, efficinet OS that has 5-10 seperate methods of installing things than a windows clone that only hs one way and all the inherant flaws associated with it. But really what you have in mind should be the focus of a small part of the community that has its own niche like the others. some of us want total ease of installation while others want customization and power, so we can still retain the choice to move to the new system if we want or continue down another route.
It's the "I don't need to know---I'll google it!" generation.
there are some things you shouldn't waste your brain cells remembering yet once in a while need to use; you don't commit to memorization every slashdot post ever created, you search for it when it suits you. although you do have a point about the general erosion of basic skills, people use technology as a crutch. most people my age don't do well without their calculators or their computers in regard to well... anything beyond multiplying 2 one digit numbers together and some can't even manage that "feat."
probable cause? if two programs execute in virtually identical ways there is a reason to investigate. it doesnt catch them all but it is better than nothing.
in all srriousness what could be done is trying taste aversion [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste_aversion] basically this was used on wild animals to prevent the killing of sheep. what they did was add a lithium salt to a set of dead sheep, the animals would eat the meat, lithium and all and it caused nausea and reduced their activity. these affects were associated with the sheep meat and after a while the animals stopped attacking sheep as a food source. now all of these behaviors with these particular primates stem from their attempt to acquire food so putting a stop to that motivation stops the problem entirely. the last reason this could be an option is that the predators survive the encounter, taste aversion shouldn't cause long term harm like a few other options [hunting for one]
you're lucky, most of the christians I know around here would take issue with there being billions of light years of anything. but yes I agree with you, it is mind boggling that people actually think we are the only ones in the universe [especially when Mars and Europa could have or had life.
Slashdot Mirror
roughly 8% of our own species' genome consists of bacterial and viral genetic material. some of the segments are nearly complete with at least one case of a virus being resurected called Phoenix. it seems to be a fairly common process, viruses can lose critical genes while trying to replicate in cells which can leave them unable to reproduce as usual, the genome becomes integrated into our own. there are also cases [herpes for example] which can integrate their genome with ours in certyain cells and effectively become dormant, they start the cycle again when and if certain conditions are met. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/science/07virus. html?ei=5088&en=492dd1d370217836&ex=1320555600&adx nnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1163032655-5n RqAOkgWGeKvh/qQcSYCg
back when I used to actually use Windows, there was a critical problem that required a restore but a lot of the recovery files got corrupted, and you can't use any other disk to fix it either, they're tailored to your particular machine- and nto get another disk [a DVD that cost them 2$ at most to make] cost 27$$ and two weeks to ship from wherever the hell they keep their backups. then not only that but there is still trialware on the disks which is bs, you shouldnt get garbageware on a disk you rightfully paid for EVER. which to their credit pissed me off enough to use Linux to begin with and now I couldn't imagine wanting to go back to windows. thanks Circuit city for driving me away from Windows and indirectly helping the FOSS community with every person that isn't putting up with that garbage anymore.
thats true, but they figure postponing their demise is better than committing political suicide
If verizon gets hammered by lawsuits over the illegal wiretapping it doesn't stop there, eventually there will be pressure put on the agencies that did this nonsense in the first place. I suppose that they figure by shielding Verizon it'll discourage any further suits and investigations into what the department was doing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neprilysin
they dont have to use software under GPLv3, they can use GPLv2 if they want or even BSD but one thing they damn well are going to do is follow GPLv3 if they use software under GPLv3.
I can't help but think this kind of tivoization will be horribly broken by the end of the year. there's likely a way that someone somewhere will figure out a way to wipe the whole mess and do away with this nonsense.
just goes to show how stupid copyright law is in its current state. tax payers fund the research, researchers pay to have it submitted/access to journals and then pay again if anyone wants to actually see any of the research that was done. that is utter bs, there isnt a reason for them to charge as much as they do [the university I go to has had to shell out who knows how many thousands for this very reason] hell half the research papers are 20-40 $ unless you get an unlimited account with those crooks.
pandora? flash. finetune? flash. what online music station that you know of doesnt use flash? for that matter, how many websites are there that you can't really use without flash? it would be nice if websites were a bit more open-source friendly but for now either we put up with it or advance our own flash replacement.
no more of that 30 second preview nonsense- listen to the song if you like it you add it- no restrictions on the number of songs/artist like finetune either. hmmm guess the RIAA can't do shit about it now can they?
too bad people keep shopping there and making them boatloads of money. seriously, walmart does just like any other very larger company, they do as much as they can to control the market and make money as is allowed under the law. is that right? perhaps not, is it legal? yes. don't like what they are doing? don't shop there. don't work there and certainly try to get the applicable laws changed. the only way companies will stop taking advantage of their situation is if people strangle the companies that do deplorable things. until the public at large cares more about the subject than saving 50 cents on that new toy, it is going to be the same as always.
what I'm saying is that operating systems should have soem diversity in how they work much like in healthy ecosystems in biology. when you start restricting diversity in a system it becomes a hell of a lot more vulnerable. two main examples of this: the lack of diversity in crops specifically bannanas; there is one major breed which is now being wiped out by a fungus- had there been any diversity in the species it wouldn't be so much a of a problem. this isn't the first time it happened either. the breed we use today is entirely different from the strain that was destroyed in the past for a similar reason. the other example is penicillin; this antibiotic has worked for MILLIONS of years fighting bacteria just fine for the fungus that makes it. that is until we started using it all across the planet; we made it a common antibiotic and now we have created a real mess with antibiotic resistance within a matter of decades. it is unimaginably better for security to have a diverse set of OSes rather than a small number of unique ways of doing things.
what I am saying is that we need to have diversity in regard to operating systems, it is a bad idea to reduce diversity in a system like this... if we can get away with a certain level of diversity while making things simple so be it. I just can't help but hold biology as an example what not to do- when species become less diverse they are prone to disease just like OSes tend yto be when you take for example Windows- very low diversity and a clear disregard for the customization we are used to in Linux. As for the gap between customization and ease of use, I am not saying it is impossible to have the two together but I am saying that the way software development has evolved tends to reinforce the viewpoint that a customizable system is going to have more complexity at some level GUI or not that a less customizable system will tend to have. Linux does well because you can really screw with things at a basic level and still have a nice GUI too and it should continue to have the best of both worlds.
probable cause? if two programs execute in virtually identical ways there is a reason to investigate. it doesnt catch them all but it is better than nothing.
in all srriousness what could be done is trying taste aversion [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste_aversion] basically this was used on wild animals to prevent the killing of sheep. what they did was add a lithium salt to a set of dead sheep, the animals would eat the meat, lithium and all and it caused nausea and reduced their activity. these affects were associated with the sheep meat and after a while the animals stopped attacking sheep as a food source. now all of these behaviors with these particular primates stem from their attempt to acquire food so putting a stop to that motivation stops the problem entirely. the last reason this could be an option is that the predators survive the encounter, taste aversion shouldn't cause long term harm like a few other options [hunting for one]
you're lucky, most of the christians I know around here would take issue with there being billions of light years of anything. but yes I agree with you, it is mind boggling that people actually think we are the only ones in the universe [especially when Mars and Europa could have or had life.