Clearly your strobe light isn't strong enough... I suggest you upgrade a bit... Ha! good one! I think that does throw some more light on the issue! That link should be submitted, man!
If you want anybody to pay attention, you have to blow something up. Terrorists are not the only people who understand that concept! On the other hand, an apolitical definition of terrorist would actually include politicians.
Now, this assumes that Linus wants GPLv3, which so far he does not.... But I suspect that Linus would reject any such patches for now, and if one was snuck in, it would probably be removed if found later.
Perhaps there are much deeper things at work here than honest intellectual and simple strategic arguments. Maybe things like DRM and closed box products are actually in the bloodthirsty minds of major companies which support Linux (and Linus, and hundreds of contributors) politically and financially, such as IBM. It's quite possible that they are simply supporting open source in the short to medium term for strategic gain only, and not at all out of any philanthropic or idealistic urge - shock horror!
My gut feeling is the FSF is morally in the right with GPLv3 and have the end user's and programmer's interests placed first. The conflict is arising because the FSF is going against big money. Question is, now that the size of things has increased so much, is the bravery of people such as Linus and others big enough to take on the next confrontation?
- so this is not just a case of a bad writeup of serious research, or a bad summary on Slashdot.
Indeed you're right, but I'm just a bit skeptical about gene therapies for this kind of thing - but anything is possible, right?
Chloride channels, when opened, generally inhibit brain activity. This is the basis of anaesthetic agents, by and large, and the treatment for acute epileptic seizures. The problem is that the brain reuses the same channel types everywhere, and it's frightfully hard to get targeted drug therapies. If, on the other hand, we could get drugs into the body which are otherwise inactive, but become activated when exposed to the light source, then this would allow extremely targeted therapy - not just with treating epilepsy or parkinson's disease, but for isolated tumour masses. But I still don't think that this is what they were thinking of in the write up.
No, actually the article directly implies that human treatment will come out of this:
Practically all animal medical research is directed towards solving human health problems, so I implied that also - just I think it will be less direct. The probable outcome from this research will be both surgical and pharmacological, I'm sure, but I don't think we'll be putting lights into people's heads any time soon, at least not for this purpose.
Did anyone read TFA? It has nothing to do with light entering the eye and hitting the retina. Forget the strobe lights!
This study is great, because it means we can study animals better. It means researchers will get much more useful information from animal studies (instead of operating on 1000's of rabbits or something, they can do heaps of studies on just one rabbit), which will lead to new and better targets for drug research, better drugs, and perhaps a cure - way down the track.
So, if we genetically engineer some people with Parkinson's or epilepsy to have these halorhodopsin neurons, we can give them a normal life as long as we find a way to shine light directly into their brains?
I think the article infers that we genetically engineer animals with Parkinson's and Epilepsy having the gene (that is, set up a disease model), then implant LED's into their heads, play with the lights and see what happens, then get a PhD and maybe even a Nobel Prize.
It's unlikely they would use this method in actual human therapy.
See, this is why Creationism is right...No rethinking required. Ever.
If people only said things because they really knew they were right, then the silence would be, well, golden! I don't 'think' we'd even have to deal with Creationism either!
Patients are a terrible judge of when an infection has actually been cleared or under control by their immune systems so it is also best not to leave anything up to chance.
I know, and I knew my original post was stupid as soon as I pushed the submit button, doh!
The doctors should be able to have the pharmacies call them to check whether they should give the patient the real drug or just a placebo.
Unfortunately that approach is now considered unethical, although it was common practice to give people placebo medication in the distant past. Doctors do need to regain some of the authority they once had, but creeping individualism has put a stop to that idea.
Actually, stopping when you feel better is a pretty good idea. Well, this has to be qualified (sorry!) - in most cases this is a reasonable course of action, but the best thing to do depends on the type and site of infection.
The #1 problem for Doctors is:
1. patient takes meds
2. patient starts to feel better
3. patient stops
Actually, stopping when you feel better is a pretty good idea. The bug is gone, and the body will take care of the rest. The more time you expose organisms to antibiotics, the more time they have to adapt to it.
On the other hand, if patients stopped hounding doctors for prescriptions when they clearly don't need antibiotics, we'd have a different situation. Fact is, you have your family doc sitting in his office seeing 30 or 40 people a day, 5-15 minutes each with a virus. They aren't happy unless they walk out with a piece of paper or a bottle of pills in their hand. If you don't give them what they want, they walk out grumbling and go to the next doctor.
"We now have a powerful new tool that will allow us to stop infection before it starts -- it's a new concept in treating infection,"
This is a very speculative and pretty dodgy article. Firstly, it's not a new concept (being healthy is the best tool for stopping infection before it starts, and, secondary to this, immunization, sanitation and quarantine).
Secondly, drugs already exist which are used in severe sepsis to boost the immune system. These drugs are very dangerous and expensive and when used inappropriately cause as many deaths as they save lives.
While it is true that antibiotic use is excessive, the situation we have is that the people who are getting the MRSA and VRE and other 'superbug' infections are frequently already immune compromised and, in whole body infection, invariably die without antibiotics - nothing else is proven to work without them.
Also, it's a peptide. You can't take it as a tablet - it's not going to be on the shelves of your supermarket - and if it is, better off eating a hard boiled egg! If anything, it will be a small scale intravenous drug for use in intensive care units, usually when all else fails, just like all these other 'breakthrough' solutions.
The nordic countries all have long, cold winters. Most people spend this time in front of their PC playing games and surfing porn. This creates huge bandwidth demands and drives innovation. There is also much of the competitive spirit in these young lads, and the challenge of having the most porn spurs them ever onwards. Of course, to avoid getting in trouble off their parents, they spend a bit of time here and there inventing new CPU designs, producing innovative mobile phones and other high-brow stuff, but in the end it's just porn.
In fact the simplest DNA based organisms/structures (bacteria, virii) have the shortest "life span". The number of generations per sec. isn't anything to brag about.... Hype aside, interesting development, but I wish those publications wouldn't use misleading statements in pale attempts to impress us.
It isn't exactly misleading, but perhaps just an unfair comparison. Computers (and computer science) have one thing over nature in that the science is perfect:
Computers don't need to reproduce, so the lifespan is irrelevant (the purpose of which is to obtain the energy and materials required to reproduce, which takes time)
Computers don't need to operate in micro-environments using error-prone biochemical events which are slow, using error correcting mechanisms which are even slower (but very clever because they only block 'nonsense' mutations).
The computer's adaptiveness is limited. The adaptive agility of a system is inversely proportional to its stability. Biology has almost unlimited potential for adaptation, whereas this computer system has fewer dimensions within which it can adapt.
Biology, whilst error prone, is also immensely fault tolerant. Errors just result in dead organisms which serve as food for other organisms. How would a computer go about managing massive numbers of dead processes? How does a computer adapt its "adaptive agility", as biology has? It's a very finely tuned system we are trying to emulate here.
Despite these differences, I do think that we are not very far off seeing truly evolving software. The problem of self evolving code is something which is beginning to be understood much better than it was in the past. This can only lead to greater interest and progress in the area.
RIAA Receives Stern Letter, Folds .. then unfolds and reads again, to find said Letter is in fact an invitation to appear on the Howard Stern show. Oh my! I think they are going to get seriously screwed this time.. probably by an automated device no less!
Why not go the whole hog and have microphones attached to cameras or embedded in street lights? I know that in railway stations in some Australian cities the camera feed is linked to an audio feed. They use the public address system wiring as microphones. They can then triangulate exactly who is having a conversation and they can pick up every whisper. Nothing new in elevators either. With sound cancellation and reflecting dishes they can pick up anything you say in heavy traffic too.
Maybe it's calculating how long it would take to let Microsoft know what the file was that you were copying, search for keywords, compress the data and send it back.
I know I'm probably wrong, but they must be doing something with all that CPU time!
Surely the whole point of having a street protest is that it is visible to everyone
This is the problem with a street protest nowadays. If it doesn't cow-tow to the opinions of mass media moguls, then it is not visible to everyone. I remember when we had over 150,000 people marching in the streets of Melbourne against the Iraq war (biggest ever protest), and you'd read in the news and see on TV: "Thousands marched" or "scores" and not "A hundred and fifty thousand stopped the entire city" which is what actually happened - everything had to stop. However, if you didn't live in Melbourne, you wouldn't have thought much more of it. The politicians knew this and therefore didn't give a rat's about it.
Putting the protest on the net simply makes it even more useless. Unless you go there and look, you won't know.
However, what is working is the fact that more and more people are reading news from non-commercial sources and this is getting politicians a little nervous (hence the drive for censorship).
The article notes the trend of the labels signing artists for a single song, maybe two, and a ring tone.
This is precisely why places like Youtube are full of talentless, amateurish rubbish. The recording industry has, over the years, obliterated any incentive for talent by its corrupt methods. Only half-arsed tunesmiths with "connections" and mediocre musicians are getting work in the music industry, by and large - their work is tweaked, retouched, and canned. If you could taste it, it would taste like imitation Spam. People with real musical talent are frequently not in the business at all. Those that have had some nurturing are not using their abilities in public (no money in it). Instead they are holding day jobs and playing musical instruments/having their jam sessions at home in the evenings to relax.
As a result, the recording industry can't find talent (because it killed it off) and is stuck with ring tones and other crap.
If we kill off their business model (fingers crossed), then maybe people will once again appreciate the value of live performances and music will become an event, an experience, not merely the auditory equivalent of fast food.
IBM looked to find the best way to get the gooey stuff where it needs to be and in the right amount, and to make it significantly more efficient in the process.
This is highly suggestive that the engineers at IBM watch far too much porn.
I know Conserviative-bashing has been "the cool thing to do" in Canada for a while
It's the cool thing to do pretty much everywhere, but so is Liberal-bashing (it's really just Politician-bashing) and I for one think it's a very healthy sport.
But in my experience, the only difference between Liberals and Conservatives is that you know what you're getting with Conservatives (they tell you), but the thing about Liberals is you get exactly the same thing, except you think you're getting something nice instead.
they are not sworn-in to the Constitution like the armed forces are
Neither are security guards, or security teams guarding private property. And for all intents and purposes, neither are private eyes and other snoopy spooks, all of whom act within the law, yet are feared and unpredictable.
One has to wonder, then, what the real difference between City Police and Private Security is, apart from the "owners".
And even the armed forces, who are sworn-in to the Constitution are performing all manner of abuses for the rich and powerful.
But of course, since Vista costs 'virtually nothing' to make, and it is 'virtually useless' as a gauge against XP (it's no better, so it's useless), the production cost is about equal to the value of the product. Why pay for it?
Officer: Oh no, someone's jammed the radar!
Dark Vapor: What? Impossible!
Officer: Look, there it is, it's jammed!
Dark Vapor: What flavour is it? *tastes* Strawberry! Only one person in the Galaxy users Strawberry! *waves fist*
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps there are much deeper things at work here than honest intellectual and simple strategic arguments. Maybe things like DRM and closed box products are actually in the bloodthirsty minds of major companies which support Linux (and Linus, and hundreds of contributors) politically and financially, such as IBM. It's quite possible that they are simply supporting open source in the short to medium term for strategic gain only, and not at all out of any philanthropic or idealistic urge - shock horror!
My gut feeling is the FSF is morally in the right with GPLv3 and have the end user's and programmer's interests placed first. The conflict is arising because the FSF is going against big money. Question is, now that the size of things has increased so much, is the bravery of people such as Linus and others big enough to take on the next confrontation?
Indeed you're right, but I'm just a bit skeptical about gene therapies for this kind of thing - but anything is possible, right?
Chloride channels, when opened, generally inhibit brain activity. This is the basis of anaesthetic agents, by and large, and the treatment for acute epileptic seizures. The problem is that the brain reuses the same channel types everywhere, and it's frightfully hard to get targeted drug therapies. If, on the other hand, we could get drugs into the body which are otherwise inactive, but become activated when exposed to the light source, then this would allow extremely targeted therapy - not just with treating epilepsy or parkinson's disease, but for isolated tumour masses. But I still don't think that this is what they were thinking of in the write up.
No, actually the article directly implies that human treatment will come out of this:Practically all animal medical research is directed towards solving human health problems, so I implied that also - just I think it will be less direct. The probable outcome from this research will be both surgical and pharmacological, I'm sure, but I don't think we'll be putting lights into people's heads any time soon, at least not for this purpose.
Did anyone read TFA? It has nothing to do with light entering the eye and hitting the retina. Forget the strobe lights!
This study is great, because it means we can study animals better. It means researchers will get much more useful information from animal studies (instead of operating on 1000's of rabbits or something, they can do heaps of studies on just one rabbit), which will lead to new and better targets for drug research, better drugs, and perhaps a cure - way down the track.
I think the article infers that we genetically engineer animals with Parkinson's and Epilepsy having the gene (that is, set up a disease model), then implant LED's into their heads, play with the lights and see what happens, then get a PhD and maybe even a Nobel Prize.
It's unlikely they would use this method in actual human therapy.
If people only said things because they really knew they were right, then the silence would be, well, golden! I don't 'think' we'd even have to deal with Creationism either!
I know, and I knew my original post was stupid as soon as I pushed the submit button, doh!
The doctors should be able to have the pharmacies call them to check whether they should give the patient the real drug or just a placebo.Unfortunately that approach is now considered unethical, although it was common practice to give people placebo medication in the distant past. Doctors do need to regain some of the authority they once had, but creeping individualism has put a stop to that idea.
Actually, stopping when you feel better is a pretty good idea. The bug is gone, and the body will take care of the rest. The more time you expose organisms to antibiotics, the more time they have to adapt to it.
On the other hand, if patients stopped hounding doctors for prescriptions when they clearly don't need antibiotics, we'd have a different situation. Fact is, you have your family doc sitting in his office seeing 30 or 40 people a day, 5-15 minutes each with a virus. They aren't happy unless they walk out with a piece of paper or a bottle of pills in their hand. If you don't give them what they want, they walk out grumbling and go to the next doctor.
This is a very speculative and pretty dodgy article. Firstly, it's not a new concept (being healthy is the best tool for stopping infection before it starts, and, secondary to this, immunization, sanitation and quarantine).
Secondly, drugs already exist which are used in severe sepsis to boost the immune system. These drugs are very dangerous and expensive and when used inappropriately cause as many deaths as they save lives.
While it is true that antibiotic use is excessive, the situation we have is that the people who are getting the MRSA and VRE and other 'superbug' infections are frequently already immune compromised and, in whole body infection, invariably die without antibiotics - nothing else is proven to work without them.
Also, it's a peptide. You can't take it as a tablet - it's not going to be on the shelves of your supermarket - and if it is, better off eating a hard boiled egg! If anything, it will be a small scale intravenous drug for use in intensive care units, usually when all else fails, just like all these other 'breakthrough' solutions.
The nordic countries all have long, cold winters. Most people spend this time in front of their PC playing games and surfing porn. This creates huge bandwidth demands and drives innovation. There is also much of the competitive spirit in these young lads, and the challenge of having the most porn spurs them ever onwards. Of course, to avoid getting in trouble off their parents, they spend a bit of time here and there inventing new CPU designs, producing innovative mobile phones and other high-brow stuff, but in the end it's just porn.
It isn't exactly misleading, but perhaps just an unfair comparison. Computers (and computer science) have one thing over nature in that the science is perfect:
Despite these differences, I do think that we are not very far off seeing truly evolving software. The problem of self evolving code is something which is beginning to be understood much better than it was in the past. This can only lead to greater interest and progress in the area.
Maybe it's calculating how long it would take to let Microsoft know what the file was that you were copying, search for keywords, compress the data and send it back.
I know I'm probably wrong, but they must be doing something with all that CPU time!
This is the problem with a street protest nowadays. If it doesn't cow-tow to the opinions of mass media moguls, then it is not visible to everyone. I remember when we had over 150,000 people marching in the streets of Melbourne against the Iraq war (biggest ever protest), and you'd read in the news and see on TV: "Thousands marched" or "scores" and not "A hundred and fifty thousand stopped the entire city" which is what actually happened - everything had to stop. However, if you didn't live in Melbourne, you wouldn't have thought much more of it. The politicians knew this and therefore didn't give a rat's about it.
Putting the protest on the net simply makes it even more useless. Unless you go there and look, you won't know.
However, what is working is the fact that more and more people are reading news from non-commercial sources and this is getting politicians a little nervous (hence the drive for censorship).
This is precisely why places like Youtube are full of talentless, amateurish rubbish. The recording industry has, over the years, obliterated any incentive for talent by its corrupt methods. Only half-arsed tunesmiths with "connections" and mediocre musicians are getting work in the music industry, by and large - their work is tweaked, retouched, and canned. If you could taste it, it would taste like imitation Spam. People with real musical talent are frequently not in the business at all. Those that have had some nurturing are not using their abilities in public (no money in it). Instead they are holding day jobs and playing musical instruments/having their jam sessions at home in the evenings to relax.
As a result, the recording industry can't find talent (because it killed it off) and is stuck with ring tones and other crap.
If we kill off their business model (fingers crossed), then maybe people will once again appreciate the value of live performances and music will become an event, an experience, not merely the auditory equivalent of fast food.
This is highly suggestive that the engineers at IBM watch far too much porn.
It's the cool thing to do pretty much everywhere, but so is Liberal-bashing (it's really just Politician-bashing) and I for one think it's a very healthy sport.
But in my experience, the only difference between Liberals and Conservatives is that you know what you're getting with Conservatives (they tell you), but the thing about Liberals is you get exactly the same thing, except you think you're getting something nice instead.
Neither are security guards, or security teams guarding private property. And for all intents and purposes, neither are private eyes and other snoopy spooks, all of whom act within the law, yet are feared and unpredictable.
One has to wonder, then, what the real difference between City Police and Private Security is, apart from the "owners".
And even the armed forces, who are sworn-in to the Constitution are performing all manner of abuses for the rich and powerful.
But of course, since Vista costs 'virtually nothing' to make, and it is 'virtually useless' as a gauge against XP (it's no better, so it's useless), the production cost is about equal to the value of the product. Why pay for it?
Officer: Oh no, someone's jammed the radar!
Dark Vapor: What? Impossible!
Officer: Look, there it is, it's jammed!
Dark Vapor: What flavour is it? *tastes* Strawberry! Only one person in the Galaxy users Strawberry! *waves fist*
Or even better, Procreate
Or maybe it has something to do with illiteracy being about the same proportion, so what use would the internet be to them?