The entire Google business model is based on the idea of advertising, and they are complaining about a business model that is based on the idea of advertising, the only difference between the two being the methods they each chose.
Don't pretend that Google is any less invasive--practically every website out there is trying to serve me Google scripts and I didn't sign up for anything. From my perspective, Google is more invasive in that they enable others to more effectively jam advertising in my face.
I understand the cost-cutting aspect, and to be honest, I cannot really blame them for that. But, they could have handled the whole thing in a fashion that avoided any misconceptions (or accusations).
Rather then paste different faces on a CG body with different bikinis, they should have used the exact same model, a real one that embodied the characteristics they sought, and created an interface that allowed a website viewer to swap out bikinis on that same model, paper-doll fashion. Pictures would be taken of the various bikinis on a mannequin that was built to match the model's real body so that the bikinis "hung" properly when overlayed on the model paper-doll.
I think that it would be obvious to the user that.. a) the bikinis and the model were photographed separately, b) some sort of visual manipulation was used to make that possible, and c) no trees were killed because it's a website instead of junk-mail.
The hard part is finding the right model, and the process of doing so is still subject to the issues of body perception in advertising. Perhaps the solution to that would be to provide a range of model paper-dolls, of varied body shapes, that the user could choose from so that they might more accurately match their own figure.
"I've got an IBM Model M that's at least from the mid 80's and works fine..."
Since they plan a ten-year battery life, they probably do not provide means of replacing the battery. In short, once you go to this type of keyboard, you are tied to never-ending replacements on a ten-year cycle. This isn't a feature, it's planned obsolescence.
Great. Now the taxpayers are on the hook for Twitter's backup maintenance costs. Seriously. They don't even need their own storage anymore. I'm sure, since the Library of Congress is a publicly available entity, they'll have full access to the data-sets. They can just pipe everything straight to the LIB servers then access them at will, at any time. And who the fuck is paying for all that bandwidth?
Next we'll see the entire Facebook data-sets, Google cache data...
"TrueCrypt does not make invisible containers. It makes encrypted containers..."
Another question.
I am assuming that encrypting a container--in this case a USB stick--would also disable any malware already written to the drive as that code would be unrecognizable as code by the computer it was plugged in to...until it was decrypted. On the other side of the coin, if that same encrypted stick was plugged into an infected system, I assume the malware could be written (un-encrypted) to the drive intact and function when that stick was later plugged into another system. In essence, the malware can be installed on the stick while the drive is mounted via Truecrypt, as well as when it is plugged in but not mounted via Truecrypt. This would leave the user vulnerable twice.
Is this correct? Am I missing something, or is the encryption and malware two separate issues, because I don't see how encryption helps protect against malware once the drive or folder is decrypted.
"Its called "firing a customer" and it makes perfect sense..."
And it sounds like you'd make a perfect candidate for a telecom CS dweeb.
In pretty much every business I've been involved with it is called "Taking the good with the bad". You treat EVERYONE with respect and EVERYONE respects you. OK, maybe not everyone...there is always going to be someone like you that just doesn't get it.
"However, capping the upload speed to something ridiculously low (10-30 k/sec) seems to fix the problem..."
After monkeying around with BT settings over the last year or so, I've come to the conclusion that Comcast is simply applying a different cap to P2P bandwidth.
I encountered the exact same threshold that you did--30kb/sec Upload. But there is a caveat--I can exceed that cap in the middle of the night.
Here is how it usually plays out. I have my BT upload capped at 30kb by default. At night I can slowly jack it up in increments of 5kb until, eventually, my entire download just stops (pretty sure it is a batch RST packet send)--I do not lose connection with any peers or seeds, it is as if I just started the download and am once again polling nodes...then suddenly the download starts again, right back up to the cap of 1.5mb/sec (I've NEVER had a better BT download rate with Comcast).
Basically, I can adjust my UPLOAD to the point where I am getting the greatest amount of download without triggering that landslide RST on all my BT connections. At around 3am locally, that can be as high as 165kb/sec upload and still get a stable, uninterrupted flow of data.
The odd thing about this is that this is all on top of whatever else I am doing on the internet, such as gaming, Netflix streaming or surfing (including browser downloads!). Netflix used to "reset" on television reruns a lot, but that has stopped for the most part after firmware updates to my Samsung DVD player. I still don't know if that was Netflix responding to throttling on the part of Comcast with a firmware fix, or simply an upgrade that fixed something. Either way, I don't have any problem with throttled Netflix and I'm not sure I ever did.
In short, yes, Comcast throttles the shit out of me as far P2P is concerned, but that is only if I upload a lot, and even then it is only the P2P traffic they mess with. It sounds to me like they have done only what they can to combat serial-uploaders--I am constantly getting data from other Comcast customers (based on IP), but always in trickles.
Don't get me wrong--I am fully supportive of open source ideals--but the people behind this whole GVCS thing, as it stands, are incredibly naive.
First and foremost, no single place on the planet can currently supply all the resources for maintaining all of that technology. Shit breaks, it wears down, it grinds itself into dust that is flushed away with precious lubricants, lubricants that also becomes prone to chemical degradation and must be replaced. There is no accommodation in the package for the recovery/renewal of these slowly lost materials and thus they would have to be acquired from outside sources periodically.
So many other aspects of life have been overlooked. No accommodations made for healthcare (let alone pharmaceuticals), automotive tooling (you aren't going to be making cars with a 3D printer), variety of foods (you can't grow everything in one climate/soil) and I don't think anyone on that team has done any serious math as far as energy requirements of something as simple as smelting aluminum. The Intalco Aluminum Smelter near where I live shuts down when they don't have direct, CHEAP access to Bonneville Electric's Hydro-generating projects up in the Cascades--they require insane amounts of electricity to even get the arc smelters heated up to operating temperatures (it also takes a couple weeks to do so). That plant was actually paid to shut down during the California energy crisis so power could be rerouted south.
The idea that plastics would be reused for everything is absurd--in the technologies they are discussing on their website, there are probably 100 different kinds of plastic alone, as well as various metal alloys. Where do they suggest they source all of this? Again, little thought is put into recycling everything--a generic "grinder" is not enough. Do you employee people to hand-disassemble everything into it's tiniest material components? What about all the chemicals used to process such components? Where is the chemical processing equipment? Is there some "box" they pour waste into and out comes the plethora of chemicals produced by all the Dow Chemical plants worldwide?
To be honest, after reading much of the website, I couldn't help but think that simply eschewing all of the technology and "going back to the earth" would be a lot easier. Maybe that is why "Farmville" was such a hit--the simple life on a farm appeals to many.
I once mused on the question of what stuff would be required on a planetary colonization ship to seed a civilization such as our own. I gave up when I came to the conclusion that provided that you had no assurance of all the required base resources being present on the planet to be colonized, you pretty much had to bring a planet Earth with you.
"Sounds like someone is creating a massive botnet for something much bigger or just putting out a warning message. They question is what?"
This quote from the first of the linked articles might provide a possible answer...
"We advise all affected users to update antivirus and all software in the computer (such as Java), also change the DNS configuration to other providers (such as Google DNS)...."
Google using their own name in the Trojan would, in my mind, be a masterful example of misdirection--nobody would possibly believe that they would intentionally point the finger at themselves. Genius. Pretty cheap too if all it took was paying off a 27-year old ISP employee.
I am one of those type of people that assumes that anything that can have a backdoor, does. That being said, the idea of having clothes that can be used to track my actual body functions is just about as intrusive as I could have possibly imagined, short of direct neural interfacing.
What other nifty purposes might these clothes be put to? Built-in lie detector interfaced w/law enforcement BlueTooth technology? Direct-connection Taser application w/specific nerve targeting? Remote passive-aggressive bio-feedback manipulation? Automated, instantaneous Facebook updates of bowel movements and BFF status?
I've come to the conclusion that one in every five slashdot submissions are actually a joke--the hard part is figuring out which one is the joke.
(commence with the "pants with a backdoor" jokes in 3...2...1)
"CRD Handbook on Rad Measurement and Protection..."
Unfortunately, for all of us, that particular text was compiled and put into print on March 26, 1986, long after the US, the Soviet Union and other countries had already set off more then 2,000 nuclear explosions during testing. Is that taken into consideration when measuring radiation in a banana?
Your banana is really more of a "relative reference banana", is it not?
"Syphillis is not viral. It too is bacterial, caused by spirochetes."
I stand corrected.
But, the substance of what I stated is still true--evolutionary changes are result of environmental pressures, regardless of organism, and evolutionary tactics can be shared amongst widely varied organisms. As such, the same mechanics that resulted in syphilis being "re-introduced", and the resulting differences in symptoms could very well be occurring in Yersinia pestis as well. The fact that both organisms share the same host organism, we humans, may very well have something to do with it--syphilis and Yersinia pestis have to deal with almost identical environments. It would make sense that they might share evolutionary tactics.
It isn't what you have, it's what you don't have--resistance.
Perhaps the recovered virus DNA researchers are looking at is similar to the modern Yersinia pestis because it is the same critter--just somewhat removed in ancestry. It doesn't take many changes in our own biological functions to acquire a resistance to Yersinia pestis. That alone can explain the difference in symptoms between the Black Plague victims and victims of the virus today. There is good evidence that such a thing occurs. Syphilis is a good example.
Syphilis existed in the Old World, before contact with the Americas, but only in a relatively mild form--it was more of a skin condition then anything else. It wasn't until European contact with the area now know as The Guianas, in South America, that the Old World was re-exposed to syphilis--only this time it was a long-lost cousin of syphilis that had changed over the course of time, the time it took for humanity to spread around the globe and carry it into the New World. Europeans had not developed a resistance to this long-lost cousin and suffered horribly. The symptoms were very different from the syphilis they were used to back home--bone deformities that crushed organs and brains and swiftly killed the host. Killing the host is not always a good evolutionary tactic for long-term survival of a species. Not long after this cousin virus was "brought home", Europeans began to develop resistances to this cousin eventually leading to what we have today--a sexually-transmitted disease that rarely kills it's host, and based on past symptoms, is relatively benign. Jared Diamond wrote extensively on the subject.
There is the distinct possibility that it was not merely a matter of us developing a resistance, but rather the syphilis evolving is such a way as to not kill it's host and thereby increase the chance for survival. Maybe that is all that has happened with Yersinia pestis--it stopped killing it's meal-ticket. A trillion trillion syphilis virii can't ALL be wrong.
All of that being said, I think the researchers are trying to find the specific changes in genes that changed the symptoms of the virus--if they can determine that, they can then take that knowledge and attempt to force such changes in other modern virii and possibly lessen, or end altogether, the symptoms of said virii. It is a little like taking two images of a piece of the night sky, a month apart, and looking for what changed--the changes are more apparent when scaled differently in terms of time. These guys are literally digging up past "images" of Yersinia pestis.
Now I realize that both of those images are of formations created by living organisms, and I am not suggesting that is the case on Mars, but perhaps there is some other process that is creating similar features on a much grander scale. To be honest, what is being called crevices or channels appears to me to be terraces, descending from left to right in the image, that have both volcanic explosive-event craters as well as impact craters (perhaps the result of "lava-bombs") interspersed among the terraces. Some of these craters appear to have formed "dikes" around them that are higher then the surrounding terrain--the remains of previous ejecta rings that have since accumulated additional materials from water deposits?
In short, my eyes are interpreting the image entirely different for one reason--I have no data on elevation in the image you linked, but I DO have shadow references.
The "creekbed" that is noted in the image you linked could be a later formation, perhaps a final "draining of the pool"?
Actually, I was making a cynical and sarcastic comment about the original thread being hijacked, not by Wandering Idiot, but by everyone else. This entire thread appeared to be off-topic by the time I had read down to Wandering Idiots post (and gave up at that point). Wandering Idiot was nothing more then a "handy" innocent bystander (sorry, dude!).
"Anyway, the point is that robot vs robot is war by proxy."
When I was a little kid, I read a sci-fi story (in an anthology, more then likely--I devoured them so fast I rarely remembered the authors names) that was based on the premise that humans had spread throughout the stars, and in the process discovered a planet that had an indigenous race of diminutive humanoids. This race of humanoids was divided into clans and was in a multi-fronted, never-ending state of war--a total free for all. If I remember correctly, the little-people clans were used as proxies to settle differences back on Earth by manipulating the clans into battles--the sponsor-nation of the clan that won the battle would have a conflict back on Earth decided in their favor. Reading this caused me to look at my box of plastic toy army men in a whole new light.
I may have this story mis-remembered (I think I was about 7 when I read it). Regardless, this essentially describes, in analogy, what we are headed towards in terms of Automated War--proxy wars that serve no purpose but to consume valuable resources, and possibly decide some disagreement that could have been decided in a more civilized fashion. This won't even decrease the level of personnel costs--the machines will still need humans to maintain them--but rather adds to the costs of war by requiring both a human "service" army and a mechanical "task" army.
I was having a discussion with my daughter (an artist) the other day about protecting her work, and much of what we discussed applies to this technology--when you get right down to it, the moment you convert any product into a digital format, and expose it to the internet in any way, you lose a great deal of control of that creation, if not all.
This technology is about to do that to physical objects, by proxy--the dimensions are what are actually being digitized. The end result will be the same though--freely available physical products. The only catch is that the user must provide the physical medium...kind of like someone providing a blank CD in order to utilize an MP3 file. I predict that, one day, the king of "most downloaded" torrents will be a 3D printer file for a bong.
This is the same genie that the recording/electronics industries let out of its bottle about 28 years ago. He appears to be having much adventure and does not wish to return to his bottle. Ever.
"Some of the houses in the UK barely have room for the bed."
I remember reading another article on the same subject (no reference--sorry) and there was a comments section after the article. Someone had posted that one of the development companies building these mini-me housing tracts was also building nearby self-serve storage rental facilities. They sell you a tiny flat...and rent you the space to store your stuff.
"I generally wouldn't want to work for him in the first place, but just in case I really, really need that job, I don't want that to be an issue."
If they are really that discerning, you're not going to get the job anyways.
The town I live in has an "Independent Automotive Shop Association" that essentially pools information to lock down the vast majority of automotive repair shop jobs. They simply share information, kinda like what is happening with social media, but more pervasive (in a local sense) and far more malevolent--if a single person in that association decides they don't like you (say, for example, you were late a lot and got fired from a shop that participates in the Association), you are pretty much precluded from working at ANY of the shops that are in the association. They ALL do drug testing, so that if you fail a UI applying for one shop (accurate test, or no), you have zero chance of employment anywhere in town. Forever. You are added to the database. Worse, they are all right-wing, conservative Christians that will not hire someone that doesn't fit that mold and thus unfairly impose religious/political beliefs on the entire population of mechanics in the area. When people ask me for shop references to have work done on their vehicles (I used to be a mechanic), I tell them one thing--"Look for the IASA logo in the window. If it's there, go somewhere else." Most do, from what I've seen.
I speak from experience--after admitting to my employer I do not go to church, when I finally left that shop I couldn't get so much as an interview in this town. I didn't realize what was going on until a potential employer called me by my first name...when I hadn't even given it to him. Two and two quickly became four. He knew I was coming, and knew who I was before I even introduced myself.
Using social media is simply an INVITATION to have assholes like these ruin your life over a mistake/life choices that differ from theirs.
Slashdot is the closest I get to social media, and I am sure that if someone really wanted to, they could glean a wealth of information from my post history--possibly even figure out who I really am. It isn't really a big deal since I have made choices that rule out working for others anyways--best choice I have ever made. Even still, I don't take chances because I realize there are potential risks nobody has thought of yet.
But, as you point out, it doesn't really matter if you REALLY don't care about working for assholes like that...until everyone is doing it. THAT scares me. The potential for global "cabals" that are essentially what I just described, but, well...global, could marginalize entire sectors of the population. It has occurred to me that World War III could be a war of economies. If so, marginalizing a workforce is a pretty powerful weapon.
Slashdot Mirror
The entire Google business model is based on the idea of advertising, and they are complaining about a business model that is based on the idea of advertising, the only difference between the two being the methods they each chose.
Don't pretend that Google is any less invasive--practically every website out there is trying to serve me Google scripts and I didn't sign up for anything. From my perspective, Google is more invasive in that they enable others to more effectively jam advertising in my face.
Have you met Kettle? No?
Pot this is Kettle. Kettle, meet Pot.
They could have gone about this better.
I understand the cost-cutting aspect, and to be honest, I cannot really blame them for that. But, they could have handled the whole thing in a fashion that avoided any misconceptions (or accusations).
Rather then paste different faces on a CG body with different bikinis, they should have used the exact same model, a real one that embodied the characteristics they sought, and created an interface that allowed a website viewer to swap out bikinis on that same model, paper-doll fashion. Pictures would be taken of the various bikinis on a mannequin that was built to match the model's real body so that the bikinis "hung" properly when overlayed on the model paper-doll.
I think that it would be obvious to the user that..
a) the bikinis and the model were photographed separately,
b) some sort of visual manipulation was used to make that possible, and
c) no trees were killed because it's a website instead of junk-mail.
The hard part is finding the right model, and the process of doing so is still subject to the issues of body perception in advertising. Perhaps the solution to that would be to provide a range of model paper-dolls, of varied body shapes, that the user could choose from so that they might more accurately match their own figure.
"I've got an IBM Model M that's at least from the mid 80's and works fine..."
Since they plan a ten-year battery life, they probably do not provide means of replacing the battery. In short, once you go to this type of keyboard, you are tied to never-ending replacements on a ten-year cycle. This isn't a feature, it's planned obsolescence.
Hang on to that Model M.
Great. Now the taxpayers are on the hook for Twitter's backup maintenance costs. Seriously. They don't even need their own storage anymore. I'm sure, since the Library of Congress is a publicly available entity, they'll have full access to the data-sets. They can just pipe everything straight to the LIB servers then access them at will, at any time. And who the fuck is paying for all that bandwidth?
Next we'll see the entire Facebook data-sets, Google cache data...
Thanks.
I guess the old adage still applies...
"Careful where you stick that thing, son..."
"TrueCrypt does not make invisible containers. It makes encrypted containers..."
Another question.
I am assuming that encrypting a container--in this case a USB stick--would also disable any malware already written to the drive as that code would be unrecognizable as code by the computer it was plugged in to...until it was decrypted. On the other side of the coin, if that same encrypted stick was plugged into an infected system, I assume the malware could be written (un-encrypted) to the drive intact and function when that stick was later plugged into another system. In essence, the malware can be installed on the stick while the drive is mounted via Truecrypt, as well as when it is plugged in but not mounted via Truecrypt. This would leave the user vulnerable twice.
Is this correct? Am I missing something, or is the encryption and malware two separate issues, because I don't see how encryption helps protect against malware once the drive or folder is decrypted.
"Its called "firing a customer" and it makes perfect sense..."
And it sounds like you'd make a perfect candidate for a telecom CS dweeb.
In pretty much every business I've been involved with it is called "Taking the good with the bad". You treat EVERYONE with respect and EVERYONE respects you. OK, maybe not everyone...there is always going to be someone like you that just doesn't get it.
"the USAF wants to track sub orbital cruise missiles..."
I'd say that the discovery of sub-orbital missiles on Kepler-22b would be a pretty damn good indication of alien life. Intelligent? Not so much.
Obfuscation.
"However, capping the upload speed to something ridiculously low (10-30 k/sec) seems to fix the problem..."
After monkeying around with BT settings over the last year or so, I've come to the conclusion that Comcast is simply applying a different cap to P2P bandwidth.
I encountered the exact same threshold that you did--30kb/sec Upload. But there is a caveat--I can exceed that cap in the middle of the night.
Here is how it usually plays out. I have my BT upload capped at 30kb by default. At night I can slowly jack it up in increments of 5kb until, eventually, my entire download just stops (pretty sure it is a batch RST packet send)--I do not lose connection with any peers or seeds, it is as if I just started the download and am once again polling nodes...then suddenly the download starts again, right back up to the cap of 1.5mb/sec (I've NEVER had a better BT download rate with Comcast).
Basically, I can adjust my UPLOAD to the point where I am getting the greatest amount of download without triggering that landslide RST on all my BT connections. At around 3am locally, that can be as high as 165kb/sec upload and still get a stable, uninterrupted flow of data.
The odd thing about this is that this is all on top of whatever else I am doing on the internet, such as gaming, Netflix streaming or surfing (including browser downloads!). Netflix used to "reset" on television reruns a lot, but that has stopped for the most part after firmware updates to my Samsung DVD player. I still don't know if that was Netflix responding to throttling on the part of Comcast with a firmware fix, or simply an upgrade that fixed something. Either way, I don't have any problem with throttled Netflix and I'm not sure I ever did.
In short, yes, Comcast throttles the shit out of me as far P2P is concerned, but that is only if I upload a lot, and even then it is only the P2P traffic they mess with. It sounds to me like they have done only what they can to combat serial-uploaders--I am constantly getting data from other Comcast customers (based on IP), but always in trickles.
Forgetting a few things?
Don't get me wrong--I am fully supportive of open source ideals--but the people behind this whole GVCS thing, as it stands, are incredibly naive.
First and foremost, no single place on the planet can currently supply all the resources for maintaining all of that technology. Shit breaks, it wears down, it grinds itself into dust that is flushed away with precious lubricants, lubricants that also becomes prone to chemical degradation and must be replaced. There is no accommodation in the package for the recovery/renewal of these slowly lost materials and thus they would have to be acquired from outside sources periodically.
So many other aspects of life have been overlooked. No accommodations made for healthcare (let alone pharmaceuticals), automotive tooling (you aren't going to be making cars with a 3D printer), variety of foods (you can't grow everything in one climate/soil) and I don't think anyone on that team has done any serious math as far as energy requirements of something as simple as smelting aluminum. The Intalco Aluminum Smelter near where I live shuts down when they don't have direct, CHEAP access to Bonneville Electric's Hydro-generating projects up in the Cascades--they require insane amounts of electricity to even get the arc smelters heated up to operating temperatures (it also takes a couple weeks to do so). That plant was actually paid to shut down during the California energy crisis so power could be rerouted south.
The idea that plastics would be reused for everything is absurd--in the technologies they are discussing on their website, there are probably 100 different kinds of plastic alone, as well as various metal alloys. Where do they suggest they source all of this? Again, little thought is put into recycling everything--a generic "grinder" is not enough. Do you employee people to hand-disassemble everything into it's tiniest material components? What about all the chemicals used to process such components? Where is the chemical processing equipment? Is there some "box" they pour waste into and out comes the plethora of chemicals produced by all the Dow Chemical plants worldwide?
To be honest, after reading much of the website, I couldn't help but think that simply eschewing all of the technology and "going back to the earth" would be a lot easier. Maybe that is why "Farmville" was such a hit--the simple life on a farm appeals to many.
I once mused on the question of what stuff would be required on a planetary colonization ship to seed a civilization such as our own. I gave up when I came to the conclusion that provided that you had no assurance of all the required base resources being present on the planet to be colonized, you pretty much had to bring a planet Earth with you.
"Sounds like someone is creating a massive botnet for something much bigger or just putting out a warning message. They question is what?"
This quote from the first of the linked articles might provide a possible answer...
"We advise all affected users to update antivirus and all software in the computer (such as Java), also change the DNS configuration to other providers (such as Google DNS)...."
Google using their own name in the Trojan would, in my mind, be a masterful example of misdirection--nobody would possibly believe that they would intentionally point the finger at themselves. Genius. Pretty cheap too if all it took was paying off a 27-year old ISP employee.
I am one of those type of people that assumes that anything that can have a backdoor, does. That being said, the idea of having clothes that can be used to track my actual body functions is just about as intrusive as I could have possibly imagined, short of direct neural interfacing.
What other nifty purposes might these clothes be put to? Built-in lie detector interfaced w/law enforcement BlueTooth technology? Direct-connection Taser application w/specific nerve targeting? Remote passive-aggressive bio-feedback manipulation? Automated, instantaneous Facebook updates of bowel movements and BFF status?
I've come to the conclusion that one in every five slashdot submissions are actually a joke--the hard part is figuring out which one is the joke.
(commence with the "pants with a backdoor" jokes in 3...2...1)
"CRD Handbook on Rad Measurement and Protection..."
Unfortunately, for all of us, that particular text was compiled and put into print on March 26, 1986, long after the US, the Soviet Union and other countries had already set off more then 2,000 nuclear explosions during testing. Is that taken into consideration when measuring radiation in a banana?
Your banana is really more of a "relative reference banana", is it not?
"US Bishop Charged For Not Reporting Priest's Child Porn To Police"
I wonder how much they charged him.
Signed,
Obviously Oblivious
"Syphillis is not viral. It too is bacterial, caused by spirochetes."
I stand corrected.
But, the substance of what I stated is still true--evolutionary changes are result of environmental pressures, regardless of organism, and evolutionary tactics can be shared amongst widely varied organisms. As such, the same mechanics that resulted in syphilis being "re-introduced", and the resulting differences in symptoms could very well be occurring in Yersinia pestis as well. The fact that both organisms share the same host organism, we humans, may very well have something to do with it--syphilis and Yersinia pestis have to deal with almost identical environments. It would make sense that they might share evolutionary tactics.
It isn't what you have, it's what you don't have--resistance.
Perhaps the recovered virus DNA researchers are looking at is similar to the modern Yersinia pestis because it is the same critter--just somewhat removed in ancestry. It doesn't take many changes in our own biological functions to acquire a resistance to Yersinia pestis. That alone can explain the difference in symptoms between the Black Plague victims and victims of the virus today. There is good evidence that such a thing occurs. Syphilis is a good example.
Syphilis existed in the Old World, before contact with the Americas, but only in a relatively mild form--it was more of a skin condition then anything else. It wasn't until European contact with the area now know as The Guianas, in South America, that the Old World was re-exposed to syphilis--only this time it was a long-lost cousin of syphilis that had changed over the course of time, the time it took for humanity to spread around the globe and carry it into the New World. Europeans had not developed a resistance to this long-lost cousin and suffered horribly. The symptoms were very different from the syphilis they were used to back home--bone deformities that crushed organs and brains and swiftly killed the host. Killing the host is not always a good evolutionary tactic for long-term survival of a species. Not long after this cousin virus was "brought home", Europeans began to develop resistances to this cousin eventually leading to what we have today--a sexually-transmitted disease that rarely kills it's host, and based on past symptoms, is relatively benign. Jared Diamond wrote extensively on the subject.
There is the distinct possibility that it was not merely a matter of us developing a resistance, but rather the syphilis evolving is such a way as to not kill it's host and thereby increase the chance for survival. Maybe that is all that has happened with Yersinia pestis--it stopped killing it's meal-ticket. A trillion trillion syphilis virii can't ALL be wrong.
All of that being said, I think the researchers are trying to find the specific changes in genes that changed the symptoms of the virus--if they can determine that, they can then take that knowledge and attempt to force such changes in other modern virii and possibly lessen, or end altogether, the symptoms of said virii. It is a little like taking two images of a piece of the night sky, a month apart, and looking for what changed--the changes are more apparent when scaled differently in terms of time. These guys are literally digging up past "images" of Yersinia pestis.
The image you linked looks surprising like what I imagine this one would look like viewed from above...
http://www.earth-tours.com/wp-content/uploads/fountain-reflection1.jpg
Another view of a different area...
http://photos.igougo.com/images/p90151-Yellowstone_National_Park-Mammoth_Hot_Springs.jpg
Now I realize that both of those images are of formations created by living organisms, and I am not suggesting that is the case on Mars, but perhaps there is some other process that is creating similar features on a much grander scale. To be honest, what is being called crevices or channels appears to me to be terraces, descending from left to right in the image, that have both volcanic explosive-event craters as well as impact craters (perhaps the result of "lava-bombs") interspersed among the terraces. Some of these craters appear to have formed "dikes" around them that are higher then the surrounding terrain--the remains of previous ejecta rings that have since accumulated additional materials from water deposits?
In short, my eyes are interpreting the image entirely different for one reason--I have no data on elevation in the image you linked, but I DO have shadow references.
The "creekbed" that is noted in the image you linked could be a later formation, perhaps a final "draining of the pool"?
Actually, I was making a cynical and sarcastic comment about the original thread being hijacked, not by Wandering Idiot, but by everyone else. This entire thread appeared to be off-topic by the time I had read down to Wandering Idiots post (and gave up at that point). Wandering Idiot was nothing more then a "handy" innocent bystander (sorry, dude!).
Whoosh?
"Anyway, the point is that robot vs robot is war by proxy."
When I was a little kid, I read a sci-fi story (in an anthology, more then likely--I devoured them so fast I rarely remembered the authors names) that was based on the premise that humans had spread throughout the stars, and in the process discovered a planet that had an indigenous race of diminutive humanoids. This race of humanoids was divided into clans and was in a multi-fronted, never-ending state of war--a total free for all. If I remember correctly, the little-people clans were used as proxies to settle differences back on Earth by manipulating the clans into battles--the sponsor-nation of the clan that won the battle would have a conflict back on Earth decided in their favor. Reading this caused me to look at my box of plastic toy army men in a whole new light.
I may have this story mis-remembered (I think I was about 7 when I read it). Regardless, this essentially describes, in analogy, what we are headed towards in terms of Automated War--proxy wars that serve no purpose but to consume valuable resources, and possibly decide some disagreement that could have been decided in a more civilized fashion. This won't even decrease the level of personnel costs--the machines will still need humans to maintain them--but rather adds to the costs of war by requiring both a human "service" army and a mechanical "task" army.
I
I was having a discussion with my daughter (an artist) the other day about protecting her work, and much of what we discussed applies to this technology--when you get right down to it, the moment you convert any product into a digital format, and expose it to the internet in any way, you lose a great deal of control of that creation, if not all.
This technology is about to do that to physical objects, by proxy--the dimensions are what are actually being digitized. The end result will be the same though--freely available physical products. The only catch is that the user must provide the physical medium...kind of like someone providing a blank CD in order to utilize an MP3 file. I predict that, one day, the king of "most downloaded" torrents will be a 3D printer file for a bong.
This is the same genie that the recording/electronics industries let out of its bottle about 28 years ago. He appears to be having much adventure and does not wish to return to his bottle. Ever.
Excuse me, Wandering Idiot...
You seem to know your way around here. I appear to be lost, and was wondering if you could help.
I was looking for the thread discussing Full-Tilt Poker and can't seem to find it anywhere. Perhaps you could direct me?
"Some of the houses in the UK barely have room for the bed."
I remember reading another article on the same subject (no reference--sorry) and there was a comments section after the article. Someone had posted that one of the development companies building these mini-me housing tracts was also building nearby self-serve storage rental facilities. They sell you a tiny flat...and rent you the space to store your stuff.
A mortgage AND rent, from one sale--amazing.
"I generally wouldn't want to work for him in the first place, but just in case I really, really need that job, I don't want that to be an issue."
If they are really that discerning, you're not going to get the job anyways.
The town I live in has an "Independent Automotive Shop Association" that essentially pools information to lock down the vast majority of automotive repair shop jobs. They simply share information, kinda like what is happening with social media, but more pervasive (in a local sense) and far more malevolent--if a single person in that association decides they don't like you (say, for example, you were late a lot and got fired from a shop that participates in the Association), you are pretty much precluded from working at ANY of the shops that are in the association. They ALL do drug testing, so that if you fail a UI applying for one shop (accurate test, or no), you have zero chance of employment anywhere in town. Forever. You are added to the database. Worse, they are all right-wing, conservative Christians that will not hire someone that doesn't fit that mold and thus unfairly impose religious/political beliefs on the entire population of mechanics in the area. When people ask me for shop references to have work done on their vehicles (I used to be a mechanic), I tell them one thing--"Look for the IASA logo in the window. If it's there, go somewhere else." Most do, from what I've seen.
I speak from experience--after admitting to my employer I do not go to church, when I finally left that shop I couldn't get so much as an interview in this town. I didn't realize what was going on until a potential employer called me by my first name...when I hadn't even given it to him. Two and two quickly became four. He knew I was coming, and knew who I was before I even introduced myself.
Using social media is simply an INVITATION to have assholes like these ruin your life over a mistake/life choices that differ from theirs.
Slashdot is the closest I get to social media, and I am sure that if someone really wanted to, they could glean a wealth of information from my post history--possibly even figure out who I really am. It isn't really a big deal since I have made choices that rule out working for others anyways--best choice I have ever made. Even still, I don't take chances because I realize there are potential risks nobody has thought of yet.
But, as you point out, it doesn't really matter if you REALLY don't care about working for assholes like that...until everyone is doing it. THAT scares me. The potential for global "cabals" that are essentially what I just described, but, well...global, could marginalize entire sectors of the population. It has occurred to me that World War III could be a war of economies. If so, marginalizing a workforce is a pretty powerful weapon.