I don't know of many evolutionary biologists who would consider that a taboo topic to discuss.
I don't know of any evolutionary biologists. I am pleased to learn that they are discussing this and exploring it within their field of interest.
It would be good if this concept of symbiotic relationship between man and dog were brought into other fields as well. It could only help in the work that is being done with therapy dogs and service dogs. There are broader concerns as well: it could be we need to recognize that contact with dogs is necessary for sound psychological development and emotional health.
So basically, how deep does the symbiosis go? Is a human child dependent on some degree of contact with dogs for healthy growth? These are not questions for evolutionary biologists. These are questions that evolutionary biologists should be offering to psychologists as worthy of study.
C'mon guys. A little cross-pollination would help the whole garden bloom.
It's only a matter of time before I start seeing doggy push chairs.
Oh, we've got that already here in Portland. Sometimes it seems like every fifth stroller you see at the mall contains not a child but a lap dog, out shopping with its people. And any bicycle event draws a large number of Totos in bike baskets, panniers, and $500 bike trailers... it is weird.
While Wikipedia's definition of evolution is better than the original, it still fails to provide an adequate model of reality.
Inheritance includes a lot more than genetics. For the human species, inheritance includes the transmission of culture that occurs over the first 10 to 20 years of life; without that transmission, you don't have a functional member of the species. Any useful evolutionary model needs to take this non-genetic critical inheritance into account. It is clearly the only way to reconcile human technological development, the interaction of the human species with different ecosystems, and evolution.
This model suggests that
Human evolution over the last 1,000 years has been proceeding at a very fast rate using non-genetic modes of change;
More attention needs to be given to other species that have a significant juvenile training period, wrt how any cultural analogs might be playing an evolutionary role.
Ideas expressed above are fragmentary, incomplete, and possibly off the wall. But maybe they will stimulate some insights along these lines; we definitely could use some further insights into how culture and evolution fit together.
Which segues into an important question about the effects of domesticating animals on the species that is doing the domestication.
There is no question that the domestication process had a major impact on dogs. There has been a kind of taboo on looking at the other side of this, though: what were the effects on the humanoids, how much did our ancestors change due to the new partnership with dogs? Dogs have changed markedly since their ancestors began associating with humans; does it not seem likely that the human side of this partnership must also have undergone significant changes?
In many ways, our social organizations are more like those of wolves than they are like those apes. Even many of our facial expressions are more wolf-like than ape-like: the social smile comes to mind.
But in eurocentric cultures, any research in this area runs into a taboo about challenging the "god gave man dominion over the animals" of the dominant religious teachings. We might have to wait for the antichristian PETA to free us all from these antiquated beliefs before any scientific progress can be made in this area. <disclaimer>Last sentence may contain "irony" and may even be considered a farce to be reckoned by some.</disclaimer>
Communities where persons have been completely dependent on cars from childhood to old age have existed for much longer than the obesity epidemic. Cars do not seem to be a major stimulus (though they certainly do contribute).
While "correlation is not causation" and all that, there is a strong correlation between the increased use of high fructose corn syrup and the increase in obesity in the USA. If other countries that control HFCS usage also show an increase in obesity, then clearly this would not be significant. But in the American diet, everything from cola to pickles contains serious amounts of HFCS unless one is very careful about reading labels and avoiding it.
Or maybe I'm just letting the way that Monsanto keeps gathering in government subsidies as it ruins economies and ecosystems bias my view.
What is going to suck is the increased difficulty of providing casual (unpaid) phone support to family and friends.
I will stay with the old interface, as will most of us whose livelihood is somewhat dependent on Firefox. I'm not going to break personal best practice habits for the sake of eye candy, or another square centimeter of visible content.
But I'm no longer going to be much help when a friend calls to say that they are stuck, and do I know a quick way to get them going again? Where right now I can take a moment to say "open that menu, choose that option, then click that button", I won't be able to help them navigate at all.
That is going to suck big time. It is going to suck away one of the greatest resources available to new Firefox users: the guys and gals who are willing to take 15 seconds to help a newcomer over a bump in the road.
Mozilla's best course is to do whatever it takes to assure that the newbies are in the same environment that the old timers will be using. My advice to them is to avoid using pretty ribbons to tie themselves into a knotty problem.
moot, adj.
2: deprived of practical significance : made abstract or purely academic
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/moot[3])
Yet the Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd ed, 1983, (Simon and Schuster) has moot, a. subject to or open for discussion or debate; debatable.
Nothing more, nothing less, despite 6 column-inches of small type devoted to the various noun and verb forms of the word, none of which come close to suggesting "deprived of practical significance...."
Throughout the 20th century, some non-Merriam editions, such as Webster's New Universal, were closer to Webster's work than modern Merriam-Webster editions. Indeed, further revisions by Merriam-Webster came to have little in common with their original source
S: (adj) moot (of no legal significance (as having been previously decided))
S: (adj) arguable, debatable, disputable, moot (open to argument or debate) "that is a moot question"
Conclusions:
"Moot" continues to mean what it has always meant: something that is unresolved until it is debated and settled by a gathering of appropriate authorities;
www.meriam-webster.com has lost value as an authority on English words. Probably students, and definitely lawyers, should avoid it;
this post trumps parent post in totally off-topic pendantry.
And, oh yeah, the 10 lb hard copy dictionary I've been lugging around for 26 years is still occasionally useful.
That's ALL it was about. Specifically talk radio. Far-left-wing talk shows simply couldn't turn a profit on radio (and were thus dumped) so they figured they could legislate themselves onto the radio waves.
There is a helluvalot of rightward spin on those words.
Following a time when unscrupulous politicians were able to lead the country into hell-holes by abusing mass media with "silent majority" fictions, the Fairness Doctrine was a much needed correction. Its adoption made it much harder for ethically corrupt politicians to claim that the apathetic were actually supporting their position. And in a democracy like the USA, a large segment of potential voters are going to be too apathetic on just about any issue to develop informed opinions. That's an inherent part of the USA's diversity of cultures.
Today the need for a Fairness Doctrine is not so obvious since the Internet provides an uncontrollable source of divergent opinions on any subject to anyone who rises just a little bit above the level of apathy. Yet the F.D. has served us well for a few decades and does not impose all that much of a burden on society, so don't whine about it. Mass media is being replaced by newer technologies that have different strengths and weaknesses, and the F.D. will disappear as Fox and the networks disappear. The F.D. is not going to be the cause of their death. These things, like the recording industry, wet photography, and the use of sliderules are simply at the end of their natural life spans.
<pedant>While PP's correction of GP's improper choice of homonym is laudable, the incorrect definition PP provides, and the tacit approval of GP's errant usage that stems from that, are unfortunate. Give PP 1 point, but take away 2 points.
In some common dialects of English, "moot" and "mute" are closer in sound than are "there" and "they're"; they are homonyms in those dialects.
However while "moot" can take several different meanings, "Of no practical importance; irrelevant" is not one of them. The closest that "moot" comes to this meaning is in describing a point that has already been explored and determined in clear precedents so there can be no argument on that point. "Whether 64 bit encryption is not a munition is moot: that was decided years ago."
But more commonly "moot" is used to describe some point in a line of reasoning that cannot be validated without a discussion that is outside the scope of the current proceedings. The line of reasoning is therefore a "what if" situation, and cannot be used at the current time.
</pedant>
Yes, actually, it does. Appropriate technology trumps green technology that is not as appropriate every time.
Only one product of these micro-generators is electricity; the other product is home heating. The carbon footprint of the entire process might well be less than that of centralized nuclear power, even with the use of fossil fuel. There is a lot coal and diesel burned in constructing a nuclear power plant, so even disregarding the waste problem, those things still have a massive carbon footprint.
So you are suggesting that when OP was talking about a pH of 17, it was a shorthand expression for something that is 1,000 times more caustic than the strongest base solution that can be prepared in a lab under standard temperature and pressure?
That is really stretching the technical jargon. And since tech jargons develop so that persons in the field can communicate with each other more accurately than would be possible in a natural language, they tend to be quite brittle. I think that talking about a pH of 17 pretty much breaks the whole "let's use a term from technical chemistry" thing.
Better, perhaps, to have said that this stuff would destroy material 1,000 times more easily than the strongest caustic you could make in a laboratory.
...in order for this to be useful as a defense against ICBM's, you've got to get your huge plane within a few hundred miles of the enemy's ICBM launch site and keep it there....
That explains the recent interest in aerostats and other lighter than air craft. A few unmanned airsharks with lasers on their heads and air to air missile teeth (against approaching fighters) could stay on station for weeks at a time.
This would be a very dangerous development. Any effective laser defense against ICBMs could be used in surgical strikes against airplanes or even automobiles or buildings. No head of state could be guarded from this assassin's weapon. Which would set up a very nasty "we versus ALL of them" situation... Not good.
Implied in the idea of 'modeling the universe' is a recognition that the model will be smaller and simpler than what it is modeling. Just like a map is by implication smaller and simpler than the territory.
It doesn't matter that there may be no model of the universe that supports the idea of free will. There is no map of the Pacific Northwest that conveys the grandeur of the Columbia Gorge; maps simply don't address that aspect of reality. Similarly, the issue of free will is outside the capabilities of the modeling processes. That doesn't mean free will does not exist, nor does it mean that there is free will. It means the question is outside the realm of physics.
Or, to put in simpler terms, we have gone from classical physics to modern physics: that was Zen, this is Tao.
You cannot do anti-trolling without also censoring. After all the years listening to people bicker over Wikipedia, I would think that would be obvious to everyone.
The solution is to just keep this argument going in such a way that no one on either side ever gets comfortable. That's the way it should be. Anyone who is comfortable with any degree of censoring should not be involved with Wikipedia. Anyone who is comfortable with any degree of abuse of the Wikipedia resource should not be involved, either. That means that the only persons who should be involved should feel like they've got a raging case of intellectual hemmorrhoids all the time. They should feel like no matter what they do, they know the result is going to be unsatisfying.
If you can't take that kind of perpetual abuse, move on to something else. Working with Wikipedia does not have to be enjoyable nor does it have to be rewarded with fame or good reputation. It can be a human roto-rooter of a job and still turn out the largest single source of general knowledge in the known universe. Wikipedia can be completely unsatisfactory no matter how you look at it, and still succeed at being a better-than-lousy first source of questionable information on just about any subject.
I make few original contributions in this post; it mostly summarizes in one place points that others have made in different spots on this thread.
The obvious potential use is for aircraft carrier groups, where the nuclear powered ships can make fuel for the fighters, bombers, UAVs, and perhaps some of the smaller boats. The process would use the surplus capacity of the nuclear reactors already aboard some vessels. An important benefit would be a decreased dependency on refueling tankers and the escorts they need when traveling through hostile waters. A carrier group could stay on station longer with easier logistic support.
Civilian uses don't seem likely. Bio diesel uses more efficient processes to convert CO2 in the atmosphere to useable fuels. The work on GM algae that directly excrete usable fuels is very interesting.
Announcing that the USN is working on this process has some strategic value just in the announcement: it encourages several potential adversaries to put resources into similar development. Countries that are actively pursuing ways of converting sea water into jet fuel have fewer resources available for developing effective ICBMs, nuclear bombs, etc.
The competitive, and somewhat older, hypotheses were that glycine and other amino acids were formed in primordial tidal pools, or in the atmosphere during lighning storms, and so on. So this finding is significant in demonstrating that at least some amino acids can be formed under extraterrestrial conditions. This weakens the "Earth is a very special place" arguments. So this is a fairly important finding.
Also kudos to the analyst teams for finding ways to handle such small specimens. This result is the product of a technology that could not even be imagined 15 years ago.
A question for anyone who has studied the subject: do we have any idea why there is a difference between terrestrial and extraterrestrial carbon isotope ratios? Or for that matter, the higher presence of iridium in space rocks, etc?
Even though DNA evidence can be faked, I don't see any easy way to introduce it into a crime scene. If Alice decides to rob Bob's safe and fix the blame on Charles, would she go in with a plant mister loaded with l'eau du faux Charles and spray it all over Bob's office? I don't think that's going to work.
I think that any use of faux DNA evidence is going to have to be associated with cellular material from the person who is being framed, since the presence of DNA fragments independent of skin cells, hair follicles, blood cells, etc is going to look very much out of place to the forensics technicians. And if Alice has acquired enough samples from Charles to make the fake-Charley-water believable, why doesn't she just plant that? What value does the l'eau du faux Charles add?
Existing good police technique makes fake DNA a non-issue.
The Windows apps will need to use an i86 emulator as well as Wine. That won't be a big obstacle for FOSS packages, since recompiling for an i86 emulator isn't that difficult. Somebody will do it, others will find the bugs and develop the workarounds and all will be good in a few months.
But I've become so FOSS oriented that I tend to forget that proprietary Windows packages are not going to convert so easily. The pools of developers and testers are just too damn small and expensive for effective adaptation to a new environment. They won't be able to make the jump.
So probably ARM adopters will switch from MS Office and PhotoShop to native versions of OOo and The GIMP, and Wine and VM won't matter so much.
Not every dinosaur evolved into a bird. Most of them just bit the dust.
Wine will port very nicely to Linux on ARM architecture. Wine already provides Platinum (i.e., runs straight out of the box) support for MS Office and most other business and productivity Windows software. Its support for games is good and continuing to improve.
I suspect that a lot of Linux based VMs will also port easily to ARM architecture.
Next year it may well become accepted that the best way to use Windows on portable devices is to do it under Linux. Or it might take a couple of years to get there.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know of many evolutionary biologists who would consider that a taboo topic to discuss.
I don't know of any evolutionary biologists. I am pleased to learn that they are discussing this and exploring it within their field of interest.
It would be good if this concept of symbiotic relationship between man and dog were brought into other fields as well. It could only help in the work that is being done with therapy dogs and service dogs. There are broader concerns as well: it could be we need to recognize that contact with dogs is necessary for sound psychological development and emotional health.
So basically, how deep does the symbiosis go? Is a human child dependent on some degree of contact with dogs for healthy growth? These are not questions for evolutionary biologists. These are questions that evolutionary biologists should be offering to psychologists as worthy of study.
C'mon guys. A little cross-pollination would help the whole garden bloom.
It's only a matter of time before I start seeing doggy push chairs.
Oh, we've got that already here in Portland. Sometimes it seems like every fifth stroller you see at the mall contains not a child but a lap dog, out shopping with its people. And any bicycle event draws a large number of Totos in bike baskets, panniers, and $500 bike trailers... it is weird.
Just stew on that for a while...
While Wikipedia's definition of evolution is better than the original, it still fails to provide an adequate model of reality.
Inheritance includes a lot more than genetics. For the human species, inheritance includes the transmission of culture that occurs over the first 10 to 20 years of life; without that transmission, you don't have a functional member of the species. Any useful evolutionary model needs to take this non-genetic critical inheritance into account. It is clearly the only way to reconcile human technological development, the interaction of the human species with different ecosystems, and evolution.
This model suggests that
Ideas expressed above are fragmentary, incomplete, and possibly off the wall. But maybe they will stimulate some insights along these lines; we definitely could use some further insights into how culture and evolution fit together.
Which segues into an important question about the effects of domesticating animals on the species that is doing the domestication.
There is no question that the domestication process had a major impact on dogs. There has been a kind of taboo on looking at the other side of this, though: what were the effects on the humanoids, how much did our ancestors change due to the new partnership with dogs? Dogs have changed markedly since their ancestors began associating with humans; does it not seem likely that the human side of this partnership must also have undergone significant changes?
In many ways, our social organizations are more like those of wolves than they are like those apes. Even many of our facial expressions are more wolf-like than ape-like: the social smile comes to mind.
But in eurocentric cultures, any research in this area runs into a taboo about challenging the "god gave man dominion over the animals" of the dominant religious teachings. We might have to wait for the antichristian PETA to free us all from these antiquated beliefs before any scientific progress can be made in this area. <disclaimer>Last sentence may contain "irony" and may even be considered a farce to be reckoned by some.</disclaimer>
Communities where persons have been completely dependent on cars from childhood to old age have existed for much longer than the obesity epidemic. Cars do not seem to be a major stimulus (though they certainly do contribute).
While "correlation is not causation" and all that, there is a strong correlation between the increased use of high fructose corn syrup and the increase in obesity in the USA. If other countries that control HFCS usage also show an increase in obesity, then clearly this would not be significant. But in the American diet, everything from cola to pickles contains serious amounts of HFCS unless one is very careful about reading labels and avoiding it.
Or maybe I'm just letting the way that Monsanto keeps gathering in government subsidies as it ruins economies and ecosystems bias my view.
What is going to suck is the increased difficulty of providing casual (unpaid) phone support to family and friends.
I will stay with the old interface, as will most of us whose livelihood is somewhat dependent on Firefox. I'm not going to break personal best practice habits for the sake of eye candy, or another square centimeter of visible content.
But I'm no longer going to be much help when a friend calls to say that they are stuck, and do I know a quick way to get them going again? Where right now I can take a moment to say "open that menu, choose that option, then click that button", I won't be able to help them navigate at all.
That is going to suck big time. It is going to suck away one of the greatest resources available to new Firefox users: the guys and gals who are willing to take 15 seconds to help a newcomer over a bump in the road.
Mozilla's best course is to do whatever it takes to assure that the newbies are in the same environment that the old timers will be using. My advice to them is to avoid using pretty ribbons to tie themselves into a knotty problem.
While it would be easy to counter your last arguments, I am in full agreement with your second conclusion.
Regards,
moot, adj.
2: deprived of practical significance : made abstract or purely academic
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/moot[3])
Yet the Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd ed, 1983, (Simon and Schuster) has
moot, a. subject to or open for discussion or debate; debatable.
Nothing more, nothing less, despite 6 column-inches of small type devoted to the various noun and verb forms of the word, none of which come close to suggesting "deprived of practical significance...."
Wikipedia has an interesting article on the history of Webster dictionaries that points out
Throughout the 20th century, some non-Merriam editions, such as Webster's New Universal, were closer to Webster's work than modern Merriam-Webster editions. Indeed, further revisions by Merriam-Webster came to have little in common with their original source
Looking elsewhere, Google's "define:moot" brings up Princeton University's large and authoritative dictionary (http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=moot:
S: (adj) moot (of no legal significance (as having been previously decided))
S: (adj) arguable, debatable, disputable, moot (open to argument or debate) "that is a moot question"
Conclusions:
never about silencing opposition.
That's ALL it was about. Specifically talk radio. Far-left-wing talk shows simply couldn't turn a profit on radio (and were thus dumped) so they figured they could legislate themselves onto the radio waves.
There is a helluvalot of rightward spin on those words.
Following a time when unscrupulous politicians were able to lead the country into hell-holes by abusing mass media with "silent majority" fictions, the Fairness Doctrine was a much needed correction. Its adoption made it much harder for ethically corrupt politicians to claim that the apathetic were actually supporting their position. And in a democracy like the USA, a large segment of potential voters are going to be too apathetic on just about any issue to develop informed opinions. That's an inherent part of the USA's diversity of cultures.
Today the need for a Fairness Doctrine is not so obvious since the Internet provides an uncontrollable source of divergent opinions on any subject to anyone who rises just a little bit above the level of apathy. Yet the F.D. has served us well for a few decades and does not impose all that much of a burden on society, so don't whine about it. Mass media is being replaced by newer technologies that have different strengths and weaknesses, and the F.D. will disappear as Fox and the networks disappear. The F.D. is not going to be the cause of their death. These things, like the recording industry, wet photography, and the use of sliderules are simply at the end of their natural life spans.
<pedant>While PP's correction of GP's improper choice of homonym is laudable, the incorrect definition PP provides, and the tacit approval of GP's errant usage that stems from that, are unfortunate. Give PP 1 point, but take away 2 points.
In some common dialects of English, "moot" and "mute" are closer in sound than are "there" and "they're"; they are homonyms in those dialects.
However while "moot" can take several different meanings, "Of no practical importance; irrelevant" is not one of them. The closest that "moot" comes to this meaning is in describing a point that has already been explored and determined in clear precedents so there can be no argument on that point. "Whether 64 bit encryption is not a munition is moot: that was decided years ago."
But more commonly "moot" is used to describe some point in a line of reasoning that cannot be validated without a discussion that is outside the scope of the current proceedings. The line of reasoning is therefore a "what if" situation, and cannot be used at the current time. </pedant>
Yes, actually, it does. Appropriate technology trumps green technology that is not as appropriate every time.
Only one product of these micro-generators is electricity; the other product is home heating. The carbon footprint of the entire process might well be less than that of centralized nuclear power, even with the use of fossil fuel. There is a lot coal and diesel burned in constructing a nuclear power plant, so even disregarding the waste problem, those things still have a massive carbon footprint.
So you are suggesting that when OP was talking about a pH of 17, it was a shorthand expression for something that is 1,000 times more caustic than the strongest base solution that can be prepared in a lab under standard temperature and pressure?
That is really stretching the technical jargon. And since tech jargons develop so that persons in the field can communicate with each other more accurately than would be possible in a natural language, they tend to be quite brittle. I think that talking about a pH of 17 pretty much breaks the whole "let's use a term from technical chemistry" thing.
Better, perhaps, to have said that this stuff would destroy material 1,000 times more easily than the strongest caustic you could make in a laboratory.
Unfortunately one of the chemicals has a ph of 17
Wow. Back in the day, we never, ever got more basic than 14, even in theory.
A pH of 17 is pretty much corrodes the post's credibility.
...in order for this to be useful as a defense against ICBM's, you've got to get your huge plane within a few hundred miles of the enemy's ICBM launch site and keep it there....
That explains the recent interest in aerostats and other lighter than air craft. A few unmanned airsharks with lasers on their heads and air to air missile teeth (against approaching fighters) could stay on station for weeks at a time.
This would be a very dangerous development. Any effective laser defense against ICBMs could be used in surgical strikes against airplanes or even automobiles or buildings. No head of state could be guarded from this assassin's weapon. Which would set up a very nasty "we versus ALL of them" situation... Not good.
Implied in the idea of 'modeling the universe' is a recognition that the model will be smaller and simpler than what it is modeling. Just like a map is by implication smaller and simpler than the territory.
It doesn't matter that there may be no model of the universe that supports the idea of free will. There is no map of the Pacific Northwest that conveys the grandeur of the Columbia Gorge; maps simply don't address that aspect of reality. Similarly, the issue of free will is outside the capabilities of the modeling processes. That doesn't mean free will does not exist, nor does it mean that there is free will. It means the question is outside the realm of physics.
Or, to put in simpler terms, we have gone from classical physics to modern physics: that was Zen, this is Tao.
Meh.
Fake cams are almost as good as real ones.
In terms of cost/benefit analysis, the fake cams are definitely better.
You cannot do anti-trolling without also censoring. After all the years listening to people bicker over Wikipedia, I would think that would be obvious to everyone.
The solution is to just keep this argument going in such a way that no one on either side ever gets comfortable. That's the way it should be. Anyone who is comfortable with any degree of censoring should not be involved with Wikipedia. Anyone who is comfortable with any degree of abuse of the Wikipedia resource should not be involved, either. That means that the only persons who should be involved should feel like they've got a raging case of intellectual hemmorrhoids all the time. They should feel like no matter what they do, they know the result is going to be unsatisfying.
If you can't take that kind of perpetual abuse, move on to something else. Working with Wikipedia does not have to be enjoyable nor does it have to be rewarded with fame or good reputation. It can be a human roto-rooter of a job and still turn out the largest single source of general knowledge in the known universe. Wikipedia can be completely unsatisfactory no matter how you look at it, and still succeed at being a better-than-lousy first source of questionable information on just about any subject.
Gentlemen, fight on!
I make few original contributions in this post; it mostly summarizes in one place points that others have made in different spots on this thread.
The obvious potential use is for aircraft carrier groups, where the nuclear powered ships can make fuel for the fighters, bombers, UAVs, and perhaps some of the smaller boats. The process would use the surplus capacity of the nuclear reactors already aboard some vessels. An important benefit would be a decreased dependency on refueling tankers and the escorts they need when traveling through hostile waters. A carrier group could stay on station longer with easier logistic support.
Civilian uses don't seem likely. Bio diesel uses more efficient processes to convert CO2 in the atmosphere to useable fuels. The work on GM algae that directly excrete usable fuels is very interesting.
Announcing that the USN is working on this process has some strategic value just in the announcement: it encourages several potential adversaries to put resources into similar development. Countries that are actively pursuing ways of converting sea water into jet fuel have fewer resources available for developing effective ICBMs, nuclear bombs, etc.
Have RTFA.
What you propose might make a good CSI episode. Or not.
The competitive, and somewhat older, hypotheses were that glycine and other amino acids were formed in primordial tidal pools, or in the atmosphere during lighning storms, and so on. So this finding is significant in demonstrating that at least some amino acids can be formed under extraterrestrial conditions. This weakens the "Earth is a very special place" arguments. So this is a fairly important finding.
Also kudos to the analyst teams for finding ways to handle such small specimens. This result is the product of a technology that could not even be imagined 15 years ago.
A question for anyone who has studied the subject: do we have any idea why there is a difference between terrestrial and extraterrestrial carbon isotope ratios? Or for that matter, the higher presence of iridium in space rocks, etc?
Even though DNA evidence can be faked, I don't see any easy way to introduce it into a crime scene. If Alice decides to rob Bob's safe and fix the blame on Charles, would she go in with a plant mister loaded with l'eau du faux Charles and spray it all over Bob's office? I don't think that's going to work.
I think that any use of faux DNA evidence is going to have to be associated with cellular material from the person who is being framed, since the presence of DNA fragments independent of skin cells, hair follicles, blood cells, etc is going to look very much out of place to the forensics technicians. And if Alice has acquired enough samples from Charles to make the fake-Charley-water believable, why doesn't she just plant that? What value does the l'eau du faux Charles add?
Existing good police technique makes fake DNA a non-issue.
Um, yeah, you are right of course.
The Windows apps will need to use an i86 emulator as well as Wine. That won't be a big obstacle for FOSS packages, since recompiling for an i86 emulator isn't that difficult. Somebody will do it, others will find the bugs and develop the workarounds and all will be good in a few months.
But I've become so FOSS oriented that I tend to forget that proprietary Windows packages are not going to convert so easily. The pools of developers and testers are just too damn small and expensive for effective adaptation to a new environment. They won't be able to make the jump.
So probably ARM adopters will switch from MS Office and PhotoShop to native versions of OOo and The GIMP, and Wine and VM won't matter so much.
Not every dinosaur evolved into a bird. Most of them just bit the dust.
Many people aspire to being fat, dumb, and happy.
Yeah. It's sort of a Nirvana thing. One of those states of grace that surpasses all understanding.
...Windows?
Yes. Probably. Almost certainly.
Wine will port very nicely to Linux on ARM architecture. Wine already provides Platinum (i.e., runs straight out of the box) support for MS Office and most other business and productivity Windows software. Its support for games is good and continuing to improve.
I suspect that a lot of Linux based VMs will also port easily to ARM architecture.
Next year it may well become accepted that the best way to use Windows on portable devices is to do it under Linux. Or it might take a couple of years to get there.