I haven't used it, but my friend just got a Thinkpad x200 that gets 10-ish hours of life with Vista. I don't know if he has actually measured it with a stopwatch (maybe windows power management is lying), but I do know he leaves the adapter at home for the day. It's also freakishly light. Incidentally, when I bought my T42 four years ago, I used to get 7 hours of life easy.
Chances are the Mercedes was designed to crumple like paper. It's safer for passengers if the body of the car absorbs as much energy from the crash as possible. Unfortunately, physics will forever handicap the safety of small cars when they meet larger cars. The problem is that the brain is soft and the skull is quite hard, so brains don't deal well with rapid changes in acceleration. Let's assume you are in a Smart Car and hit an SUV head-on. The SUV is going to keep moving forward, while the Smart Car will make a rapid change from moving forward to backward. Even assuming that the Smart Car came through the incident without even a scratch, its passenger will still sustain serious and probably life-threatening injuries. Or, assume you're sitting at a light and an SUV plows into you either from behind or from the side. Again, the SUV will slow down a little, but the Smart car is going to accelerate very quickly. And I unfortunately remember enough from physics to know that F=MA, and that spells trouble for your brain. I'm not trying to put the Smart Car down, and I personally hate SUVs. But more massive cars are going to be safer.
This is only one of many bad ideas. The CP80 Internet Channel Initiative proposes what amounts to a "two-internet" system - a set of ports restricted to kid-friendly content, and another set where anything goes. I can think of problems that would arise if they simply wanted to designate a new set of ports as "safe" ports, but I get the impression they would rather keep the current scheme and relegate anything inappropriate to a new set of ports. There may be some political support building for this right now, although the idea has been around for a while now and hopefully is a non-starter.
What I see in a lot of discussions (even here) is a focus solely on the pornography industry. However, the people who want to make these things law don't care about just the pornography industry. They want to regulate anything sexually explicit. So places like blogs and slashdot where people have discussions of a sexual nature (or post explicit ascii art) would be regulated by these laws.
"The fact is that if you are an American and you haven't taken the opportunity to call and write your Congressmen/Congresswomen and pitch a huge fit, you are shirking *your* responsibility. After that, it may become necessary to protest in street, even if it's not a right that benefits us personally or reflects our party's position."
Ha! I don't have a congresscritter! I have no responsibility to shirk!
....would you write yours for me?
Re:A few interesting things about the bird flu
on
Cod Enzyme Kills Bird Flu
·
· Score: 2, Informative
There are at least a dozen _known_ diseases that will just as gleefully sicken or even kill the human animal.
Why we're so upset about the bird flu and what makes it special, I don't know, except of course that the entire
subject is pushed into our faces and through our ears nonstop through the media. (Just to forestall some
comments: The rabies virus could mutate too and become airborne for all we know. Gnade uns Gott should that ever
happen).
I'm not sure why this is "interesting". The reason there is such an interest in the bird flu is due to the danger it poses. It's quite simple, actually. Due to a couple factors I won't get into here, the flu mutates very quickly. The obvious consequence of this is that it is constantly evading the human immune system. It also means that it can quickly mutate to forms that are far more deadly and far more transmissible than the flu normally is. Currently, the bird flu already has the "far more deadly" aspect. It kills roughly 50% of the people infected with it. As of right now, it still has trouble being transmitted, so it is not killing many people. However, due to the ease with which the flu mutates it is very simple for the bird flu to become highly infectious. So, we're a chance encounter away from a virus that could quickly kill millions of people in a single season. Moreover, there is a precedent for this: the 1918 flu. And that flu had a lower mortality rate than H5N1 currently has. Will H5N1 mutate to quickly spread among humans? We don't know. What we do know is that it most certainly will mutate, and that it has the ability to mutate into a pandemic form.
As for Tamiflu, your point only makes sense if Donald Rumsfeld controls the entire scientific and medical communities, as well as the worldwide press. I suggest that instead of reading conspiracy theory bulletin boards, you check out the Flu Wiki to find out more about the subject.
Not to mention the fact that the US Government (in other words the US people) invests BILLIONS every year to help develop these drugs. The Government (mostly through the NIH but other departments as well) funds the majority of basic research that enables companies to develop new drugs. Not to mention almost all PhDs (in biology research, at least) have been fully funded by the government during training. This allows drug companies to hire very highly-trained workers without investing any time or money in this training. So drug companies aren't the only ones shouldering the R&D burden, they're just the ones making billions in the end.
Yeah, if by "not up to gem quality" you mean "not flawed enough". From the Wired article:
When we meet the next morning in the lobby of the High Council, Van Royen looks tired. He admits to staying up almost all night scrutinizing the stones. "I think I can identify it," he says hopefully. "It's too perfect to be natural. Things in nature, they have flaws. The growth structure of this diamond is flawless."
Of course, I don't know that you can actually buy these anywhere, but it's pretty cool nonetheless!
Actually, contacts apparently mix quite well with baseball. Or professional baseball, anyways. Many players wear contact lenses to enhance their vision to "better" than normal (i.e. 20/15). Of course, if the dust bothers you, you can just opt for LASIK. Slate had an excellent article on this a couple weeks back that posed some interesting questions about what, exactly, is "cheating" in sports. Good read. I thought it was much better than the story posted on Slashdot, actually.
Genomes are available at http://www.ensembl.org/ . I know I've said this before, but I feel it can't be overemphasized. Ensembl is so incredibly cool. I imagine Celera is releasing their data because no one wants to pay for it when Ensembl has it for free. Additionally, Ensembl has tools that provide so much more than just genome sequence-scanning. And they use open source projects like BioPerl and use Wiki for documentation! I think this is just a PR stunt for Celera.
What the OP was saying, and I happen to agree with his point, is that P2P software is not being used to time shift.
Of course. But this isn't the argument that will be used in the case. The precedent in the Betamax case was not that "time-shifting" per se kept VCRs legal, but that substantial non-infringing uses kept it legal. This concept applies equally well to "P2P" software. Grokster and other P2P software vendors provide access to non-infringing works as well as copyrighted TV shows. Moreover, software like Bittorrent is used to distribute all kinds data, including your favorite Linux distributions as well as music and video without infringing on copyrights. Personally, I've downloaded over 40 gigs of data through Bittorrent, and I'd be happy to let the copyright gestapo look through it, as it's all completely legal. In terms of "P2P networks", the case pretty much is a slam dunk.
That said, I'm not sure that Grokster individually might not be somehow singled out. I haven't followed specific details that closely, but I seem to remember some pretty damning emails coming out in discovery.
The explanation for this is pretty simple, and is pretty much standard practice whether you are male, female, or other. The order in which the authors are listed (in most scientific journals, at least) is a standard heirarchy. The author listed first contributed "the most" to the paper in terms of the research. To my knowledge, this generally also means this person wrote the paper. Authors listed after the primary author are understood to have contributed less to the paper. The final author listed is special, however. By convention, this author is the "owner" of the lab the research was performed in. In other words, Robert Pruitt is Susan Lolle's boss. So he gets asked all the questions because he's the most important person in the lab. Also (as noted in another comment) he likely doesn't do much research and spends much of his time shmoozing with reporters, writing grants, reviewing papers, and supervising the various different projects which may be running in his lab at any one time.
You can fly without ID, you just have to go through the "extra-careful" security search. About 3 or 4 weeks ago, I was in line for the security checkpoint when I realized I couldn't find my driver's license. Before I could search my luggage for it, the guy at the entrance told me it was OK and made some sort of mark on my ticket and waved me through. At the metal detectors, they checked my ticket, saw the mark, and pulled me aside for the full pat-down and whatnot. I was surprised, because I remember reading about Gilmore's crusade a while ago and figured you couldn't fly without ID. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if nobody at TSA knows for sure what the rules are. I fly quite a bit, and rules vary from airport to airport and from week to week. Sometimes screeners will insist I have to remove my sneakers and pass them through the X-Ray, and other times they don't care.
I agree. This is utter drivel. The articles are completely lacking in details. Assumedly, the pictures show p65/RelA shuttling in and out of the nucleus, although it's not completely clear that these are even the same field. The conditions are completely unknown - what amount of TNF-alpha are they using? Is it supposed to be continuous application? It doesn't seem likely that a single hose of TNF-alpha would last 7 hours, though I suppose it's possible. Most importantly, however, what is the biological outcome they are measuring that suggests "morse code" is occurring? Essentially the results (taken at face value) show that p65 is going in and out of the nucleus following some form of TNF-alpha stimulation. So what evidence do they have that suggests the oscillation itself is encoding a biological message? In these articles, none that I can find. Additionally, you'll notice both links are to BBSRC articles. The BBSRC seems to be a biotech industry consortium hype-machine. I'm guessing the original Science article has some better information, but what is provided here is essentially useless.
Better yet, why can't Congress let the states decide how they want to elect federal officeholders?
actually, they can. The Constitution only dictates that electoral college voters cast the votes, and how to calculate how many votes each state gets. It's up to states to decide how they want to split up the vote. Maine, for example, doesn't have a winner-take-all format. Their votes could potentially be split. Additionally, there is a ballot initiative in Colorado right now to accomplish essentially the same thing. Moreover, states can also use IRV (or Condorcet or whatever) to determine EC votes if they so choose. Actually, I wonder about the constitutionality of requiring IRV. I don't know that the federal government has the authority to do that. I could certainly be wrong, though.
Don't piss anyone off! While it may be satisfying to finally tell some one off, it's just not worth it. Look at it this way; it doesn't cost you anything to just quietly and politely leave. Whereas your boss or some one he knows may one day be in a position to make life difficult for you. I've burned bridges in the past, and have almost always regretted it. I have never had occassion to regret the few opportunities I've been smart enough to take the high road. You can certainly express unhappiness as you leave, but I would avoid doing anything rash. Just my two cents.
Remember this next time you're chanting, "Anybody But Bush!"
It's an interesting point....however, when your house is burning down, you don't start fixing the leaky faucet or the peeling paint or the creaky floorboards. You put out the fire.
HA! It's even worse than you think! "author pays" is already the model. As it is, they charge authors to defray "printing costs", I believe. In fact, the last 2 papers I've seen published have had costs in the area of $1500 dollars to the authors. It varies based on how many figures you have, and whether or not they will be in color.
So it works like this:
1)Charge authors to publish 2)Charge people for access 3)Sell ad space 4)???? 5)Profit!
progress has been a little slow lately, but I happen to know new people are always welcome...
Re:So race is nurture, not nature?
on
Genome Surprise
·
· Score: 1
Oh, and don't even get me started on the artificial concept of "nature vs. nurture".....
Re:So race is nurture, not nature?
on
Genome Surprise
·
· Score: 1
Well, the point is this - when you say "race" in reference to skin color, it is a scientific misnomer. Just because in popular culture the term "race" means skin color doesn't make it true. I recommend you check out the American Anthropological Association's Statement on "Race" for an explanation. A better word to use in place of "race" might be "ethnicity". Some people would argue that you are just replacing a word with another that has the same meaning, and there is certainly truth in that. Some people also think it is just a case of being overly politically-correct. However, there is a lot of power in a word, and the history of this word/concept is a very negative one (as the AAA statement shows). Additionally, many people believe there are separate human "races" in the scientific sense. That is, that people of dark brown skin color are akin to a separate "species" when compared with people of a lighter, whitish-pinkish skin color. And as this article points out, there is more variation genetically "intra-racially" than "inter-racially" to use your understanding of the terms.
Are you kidding? Have you seen all those beer commercials on TV? It must be good! Look at how much fun everyone is having! Plus, tell me this: how do you get to be the sponsor of "Guys night out" if you are just a crappy American beer?
Actually, some viruses use RNA, and others use DNA to store their genetic material. Also, I think "germ" in this context is a word referring to any sort of pathogenic microorganism. So a virus can be a germ. That's all.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't used it, but my friend just got a Thinkpad x200 that gets 10-ish hours of life with Vista. I don't know if he has actually measured it with a stopwatch (maybe windows power management is lying), but I do know he leaves the adapter at home for the day. It's also freakishly light. Incidentally, when I bought my T42 four years ago, I used to get 7 hours of life easy.
Chances are the Mercedes was designed to crumple like paper. It's safer for passengers if the body of the car absorbs as much energy from the crash as possible. Unfortunately, physics will forever handicap the safety of small cars when they meet larger cars. The problem is that the brain is soft and the skull is quite hard, so brains don't deal well with rapid changes in acceleration. Let's assume you are in a Smart Car and hit an SUV head-on. The SUV is going to keep moving forward, while the Smart Car will make a rapid change from moving forward to backward. Even assuming that the Smart Car came through the incident without even a scratch, its passenger will still sustain serious and probably life-threatening injuries. Or, assume you're sitting at a light and an SUV plows into you either from behind or from the side. Again, the SUV will slow down a little, but the Smart car is going to accelerate very quickly. And I unfortunately remember enough from physics to know that F=MA, and that spells trouble for your brain. I'm not trying to put the Smart Car down, and I personally hate SUVs. But more massive cars are going to be safer.
This is only one of many bad ideas. The CP80 Internet Channel Initiative proposes what amounts to a "two-internet" system - a set of ports restricted to kid-friendly content, and another set where anything goes. I can think of problems that would arise if they simply wanted to designate a new set of ports as "safe" ports, but I get the impression they would rather keep the current scheme and relegate anything inappropriate to a new set of ports. There may be some political support building for this right now, although the idea has been around for a while now and hopefully is a non-starter.
What I see in a lot of discussions (even here) is a focus solely on the pornography industry. However, the people who want to make these things law don't care about just the pornography industry. They want to regulate anything sexually explicit. So places like blogs and slashdot where people have discussions of a sexual nature (or post explicit ascii art) would be regulated by these laws.
How the hell is this "flamebait"? I live in Washington DC, where we are denied Congressional representation. Look it up. Sheesh.
"The fact is that if you are an American and you haven't taken the opportunity to call and write your Congressmen/Congresswomen and pitch a huge fit, you are shirking *your* responsibility. After that, it may become necessary to protest in street, even if it's not a right that benefits us personally or reflects our party's position."
....would you write yours for me?
Ha! I don't have a congresscritter! I have no responsibility to shirk!
There are at least a dozen _known_ diseases that will just as gleefully sicken or even kill the human animal. Why we're so upset about the bird flu and what makes it special, I don't know, except of course that the entire subject is pushed into our faces and through our ears nonstop through the media. (Just to forestall some comments: The rabies virus could mutate too and become airborne for all we know. Gnade uns Gott should that ever happen).
I'm not sure why this is "interesting". The reason there is such an interest in the bird flu is due to the danger it poses. It's quite simple, actually. Due to a couple factors I won't get into here, the flu mutates very quickly. The obvious consequence of this is that it is constantly evading the human immune system. It also means that it can quickly mutate to forms that are far more deadly and far more transmissible than the flu normally is. Currently, the bird flu already has the "far more deadly" aspect. It kills roughly 50% of the people infected with it. As of right now, it still has trouble being transmitted, so it is not killing many people. However, due to the ease with which the flu mutates it is very simple for the bird flu to become highly infectious. So, we're a chance encounter away from a virus that could quickly kill millions of people in a single season. Moreover, there is a precedent for this: the 1918 flu. And that flu had a lower mortality rate than H5N1 currently has. Will H5N1 mutate to quickly spread among humans? We don't know. What we do know is that it most certainly will mutate, and that it has the ability to mutate into a pandemic form.
As for Tamiflu, your point only makes sense if Donald Rumsfeld controls the entire scientific and medical communities, as well as the worldwide press. I suggest that instead of reading conspiracy theory bulletin boards, you check out the Flu Wiki to find out more about the subject.
Not to mention the fact that the US Government (in other words the US people) invests BILLIONS every year to help develop these drugs. The Government (mostly through the NIH but other departments as well) funds the majority of basic research that enables companies to develop new drugs. Not to mention almost all PhDs (in biology research, at least) have been fully funded by the government during training. This allows drug companies to hire very highly-trained workers without investing any time or money in this training. So drug companies aren't the only ones shouldering the R&D burden, they're just the ones making billions in the end.
You mean the "progressive" John Locke who supported stealing land from Native Americans?
Now that's the kind of "freely chosen, non-coercive relationship" I can get behind!
Yeah, if by "not up to gem quality" you mean "not flawed enough". From the Wired article:
When we meet the next morning in the lobby of the High Council, Van Royen looks tired. He admits to staying up almost all night scrutinizing the stones. "I think I can identify it," he says hopefully. "It's too perfect to be natural. Things in nature, they have flaws. The growth structure of this diamond is flawless."
Of course, I don't know that you can actually buy these anywhere, but it's pretty cool nonetheless!
Actually, contacts apparently mix quite well with baseball. Or professional baseball, anyways. Many players wear contact lenses to enhance their vision to "better" than normal (i.e. 20/15). Of course, if the dust bothers you, you can just opt for LASIK. Slate had an excellent article on this a couple weeks back that posed some interesting questions about what, exactly, is "cheating" in sports. Good read. I thought it was much better than the story posted on Slashdot, actually.
Genomes are available at http://www.ensembl.org/ . I know I've said this before, but I feel it can't be overemphasized. Ensembl is so incredibly cool. I imagine Celera is releasing their data because no one wants to pay for it when Ensembl has it for free. Additionally, Ensembl has tools that provide so much more than just genome sequence-scanning. And they use open source projects like BioPerl and use Wiki for documentation! I think this is just a PR stunt for Celera.
Of course. But this isn't the argument that will be used in the case. The precedent in the Betamax case was not that "time-shifting" per se kept VCRs legal, but that substantial non-infringing uses kept it legal. This concept applies equally well to "P2P" software. Grokster and other P2P software vendors provide access to non-infringing works as well as copyrighted TV shows. Moreover, software like Bittorrent is used to distribute all kinds data, including your favorite Linux distributions as well as music and video without infringing on copyrights. Personally, I've downloaded over 40 gigs of data through Bittorrent, and I'd be happy to let the copyright gestapo look through it, as it's all completely legal. In terms of "P2P networks", the case pretty much is a slam dunk.
That said, I'm not sure that Grokster individually might not be somehow singled out. I haven't followed specific details that closely, but I seem to remember some pretty damning emails coming out in discovery.
The explanation for this is pretty simple, and is pretty much standard practice whether you are male, female, or other. The order in which the authors are listed (in most scientific journals, at least) is a standard heirarchy. The author listed first contributed "the most" to the paper in terms of the research. To my knowledge, this generally also means this person wrote the paper. Authors listed after the primary author are understood to have contributed less to the paper. The final author listed is special, however. By convention, this author is the "owner" of the lab the research was performed in. In other words, Robert Pruitt is Susan Lolle's boss. So he gets asked all the questions because he's the most important person in the lab. Also (as noted in another comment) he likely doesn't do much research and spends much of his time shmoozing with reporters, writing grants, reviewing papers, and supervising the various different projects which may be running in his lab at any one time.
You can fly without ID, you just have to go through the "extra-careful" security search. About 3 or 4 weeks ago, I was in line for the security checkpoint when I realized I couldn't find my driver's license. Before I could search my luggage for it, the guy at the entrance told me it was OK and made some sort of mark on my ticket and waved me through. At the metal detectors, they checked my ticket, saw the mark, and pulled me aside for the full pat-down and whatnot. I was surprised, because I remember reading about Gilmore's crusade a while ago and figured you couldn't fly without ID. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if nobody at TSA knows for sure what the rules are. I fly quite a bit, and rules vary from airport to airport and from week to week. Sometimes screeners will insist I have to remove my sneakers and pass them through the X-Ray, and other times they don't care.
I agree. This is utter drivel. The articles are completely lacking in details. Assumedly, the pictures show p65/RelA shuttling in and out of the nucleus, although it's not completely clear that these are even the same field. The conditions are completely unknown - what amount of TNF-alpha are they using? Is it supposed to be continuous application? It doesn't seem likely that a single hose of TNF-alpha would last 7 hours, though I suppose it's possible. Most importantly, however, what is the biological outcome they are measuring that suggests "morse code" is occurring? Essentially the results (taken at face value) show that p65 is going in and out of the nucleus following some form of TNF-alpha stimulation. So what evidence do they have that suggests the oscillation itself is encoding a biological message? In these articles, none that I can find. Additionally, you'll notice both links are to BBSRC articles. The BBSRC seems to be a biotech industry consortium hype-machine. I'm guessing the original Science article has some better information, but what is provided here is essentially useless.
actually, they can. The Constitution only dictates that electoral college voters cast the votes, and how to calculate how many votes each state gets. It's up to states to decide how they want to split up the vote. Maine, for example, doesn't have a winner-take-all format. Their votes could potentially be split. Additionally, there is a ballot initiative in Colorado right now to accomplish essentially the same thing. Moreover, states can also use IRV (or Condorcet or whatever) to determine EC votes if they so choose. Actually, I wonder about the constitutionality of requiring IRV. I don't know that the federal government has the authority to do that. I could certainly be wrong, though.
Don't piss anyone off! While it may be satisfying to finally tell some one off, it's just not worth it. Look at it this way; it doesn't cost you anything to just quietly and politely leave. Whereas your boss or some one he knows may one day be in a position to make life difficult for you. I've burned bridges in the past, and have almost always regretted it. I have never had occassion to regret the few opportunities I've been smart enough to take the high road. You can certainly express unhappiness as you leave, but I would avoid doing anything rash. Just my two cents.
It's an interesting point....however, when your house is burning down, you don't start fixing the leaky faucet or the peeling paint or the creaky floorboards. You put out the fire.
That's pretty simple, Inspector Javert. When the statutes passed by Congress violate the Constitution which is the higher law of the land.
Try Section 8, Clause 8. I also recommend you read the Bill of Rights, specifically the First Amdendment.
HA! It's even worse than you think! "author pays" is already the model. As it is, they charge authors to defray "printing costs", I believe. In fact, the last 2 papers I've seen published have had costs in the area of $1500 dollars to the authors. It varies based on how many figures you have, and whether or not they will be in color.
So it works like this:
1)Charge authors to publish
2)Charge people for access
3)Sell ad space
4)????
5)Profit!
progress has been a little slow lately, but I happen to know new people are always welcome...
Oh, and don't even get me started on the artificial concept of "nature vs. nurture".....
Well, the point is this - when you say "race" in reference to skin color, it is a scientific misnomer. Just because in popular culture the term "race" means skin color doesn't make it true. I recommend you check out the American Anthropological Association's Statement on "Race" for an explanation. A better word to use in place of "race" might be "ethnicity". Some people would argue that you are just replacing a word with another that has the same meaning, and there is certainly truth in that. Some people also think it is just a case of being overly politically-correct. However, there is a lot of power in a word, and the history of this word/concept is a very negative one (as the AAA statement shows). Additionally, many people believe there are separate human "races" in the scientific sense. That is, that people of dark brown skin color are akin to a separate "species" when compared with people of a lighter, whitish-pinkish skin color. And as this article points out, there is more variation genetically "intra-racially" than "inter-racially" to use your understanding of the terms.
-Ryan
Are you kidding? Have you seen all those beer commercials on TV? It must be good! Look at how much fun everyone is having! Plus, tell me this: how do you get to be the sponsor of "Guys night out" if you are just a crappy American beer?
Exaaaaaactly.
-Ryan
Actually, some viruses use RNA, and others use DNA to store their genetic material. Also, I think "germ" in this context is a word referring to any sort of pathogenic microorganism. So a virus can be a germ. That's all.
-Ryan