I can tap your Internet illicitly, or put an tap on your keyboard, or steal your machine and find evidence that you committed a murder, or a terrorist act, or a copyright infringement - it *isn't* necessarily true that such evidence is admissable in court. In fact, it's more likely to *jeopardise* a case against you, even if I'm a policeman, because it was collected by illegal means which means it is possible that an order is given that it *must* be disregarded and cannot be brought up ever again in any cour
This might be the case in the US, with its tough and fair laws of evidence, but it is not the case afaik in the UK or any Commonwealth countries (Australia, Canada etc).
Unless this has changed (I'm not a lawyer), there was a Privy Council or something decision many years ago that set the precedent that evidence obtained by the police *illegally* is still admissible. The police can steal evidence and break the law in obtaining it (bribes etc), it is still admissible.
It's one area where the US legal system is much fairer.
You mean they've CROSS BRED? What havoc will they inflict!
[ I posted this yesterday in the same thread position. It has vanished, so here it is again. ]
No. Stem cells are pluripotential and can change into any cell type. That is why they are called stem cells. Once stem cells have forked into mature cells, they do not change again by themselves.
"Reprogramming" as you call it would be taking mature cells and injecting genetic material via a virus or some other means, which indeed has risks. This is exactly why some cancers are caused by viruses.
To respond to your issues:
1. Isolate a few, then culture the rest?
2. Tranformation appears here to be quite simple and spontaneous. The rat cells are doing the work.
3. Rhythm can be synchronized with an electric current.
4. Additional maintenance - speculation until we know more.
5. Wondering how a host rejects its own cells - unless an autoimmune disease has been triggered? They all have the same HLA complex, or am I out of date?
6. Time to culture cells - so what? Heart failure is a slow and costly way to die. Drugs have greatly extended life. There is time enough. Industrial processes and technology should be able to streamline the process.
Regulatory and funding issues: you're forgetting how many fat arses sit on funding and ethics committees and are shit scared of dying from heart problems.
In short, I think you are being prematurely negative. Wait until the data is in. Personally I'd be more concerned that, if it works, it'll be *suppressed*. After all, what are we going to do with all the old people that live to 120+ because death from heart failure has been eliminated?
Clearly a humongous discovery. Should these cells be made to repair damaged heart muscle, it will revolutionize medicine. And without all the tedious hoo-hah about embryonic stem cells.
Cardiac cells, like neurons, cannot be replaced by the body when damaged. This in fact is why many people die from heart failure years after surviving heart attacks. Heart attacks cut off the oxygen supply to cardiac cells, which die and can only be replaced by non-functional scar tissue, which is like the body's spakfiller. You lose enough cells, the heart cannot pump properly.
"Someone once asked a while ago how much freedom will we be willing to surrender for a false sense of security."
Benjamin Franklin:
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
- according to WikiQuote, first written shortly before February 17, 1775 as part of Franklin's notes for a proposition at the Pennsylvania Assembly.
What irony that America's Founding Fathers could see the huge risks in the mindless pursuit of security (what Bush, in classic double speak, calls "freedom") while today's media cannot.
"Its not maliciousness or simply incompetence. People in power seek power, simple fact."
And it should be the job of a functioning democratic system to place checks and balances on the exercise of power.
The mechanism for checks and balances needs to be enshrined in law (eg Constitution or Common Law). But that cannot work without a degree of openness, strong and independent institutions like the courts, and a commitment to maintaining freedoms in the first place. Undermine these, and, lo, no checks and balances! Unfettered power.
Right on the mark. But this has always been obvious to me. It was obvious to Thomas Jefferson. It was obvious to Adolf Hitler. It's certainly obvious to power climbing bureaucrats. Why the heck is this not obvious to everybody?
The UK frightens the hell out of me, steadily putting in place the apparatus of totalitarian control. All ready for a dictator to come along.
This was the country that invented parliamentary democracy as we know it. This was the country that gave birth to the Magna Carta and to Common Law freedoms that largely created the concept of human rights. This was the country that enshrined (and recently seriously weakened) the right to silence.
Beloved England, once the light and source of freedom in the world, is becoming Big Brother's playground.
With a bit of fiddling it should be possible to hack this cd to copy the system onto a hard drive and get a boot loader set up. Though I'm not familiar with the initial stages of BSD boot, it can't be that hard to unravel?
But you're right - it should have an install script to do that for you.
Plus a knoppix-based live cd like Damnsmalllinux can run all from ramdisk (fast!), or can do a "frugal" install in addition to a conventional hd install. All automated.
What options does this provide?
Fluffyspider www.fluffyspider.com in Australia have had an E17-derived platform for MIDS, phones, set top boxes and the like for some time ("Fancypants"). But it's a commercial product.
I've been told that good QA and release engineers are very hard to hire.
You might well have better advancement prospects in that line of work than in coding per se.
My guess is a number of key attractiveness traits are very hardwired and work across cultures: symmetry, big eyes (but not too big), certain facial ratios, things signifying good health such as good skin and bright hair - in fact I thought that had all been proven a long time ago.
Some things are indicators of high estrogen levels (blond pigmentation) or "it's ovulation time, I'm fertile!" (flushed cheeks, full lips, redundant display of skin) and somehow are interpreted by many males unconsciously as "hot". Dilated pupils indicate arousal, and so on. These things are mimicked by makeup. And few are conciously aware of these signals, but they work
In men, a large square jaw is associated with a strong testosterone surge during puberty - hence virility. Pity the same doesn't work for baldness, also a sign of high testosterone, but later in life!
Some things can be modulated to a degree by culture - Indian film stars are obese by Hollywood standards, because being thin in India is for poor people.
Age is another culturally variable feature - George Clooney could probably not have been a star in the late 60s-70s because he would have been too old - fashion and economic purchasing power was in the hands of the young then. But 10-15 years before, plenty of men in their 40s and older were stars (think Bill Haley or Cary Grant), just like now - this is because the oldies are running the show again.
Further: I think some of the really interesting US universities are the fast-rising campuses of the "new or public Ivies" ilk, in particular Carnegie Mellon, the University of Illinois, and maybe a few others.
These places seem to be innovative and work to make teaching breakthroughs, particularly in the IT/Comp sci area.
Interesting. To its credit Stanford does have impressive research output, which I believe to be the main indicator of a decent university. Not what percentage of alumni donate money - that makes sense mainly in the US only. What has that got to do with the quality of academic output and teaching? It's an input, not an output.
On elite universities:
Many years ago I started to unexpectedly shine in my final year of undergraduate studies, and was promptly pulled in and canvassed for a postgraduate career by the department Chair. He told me if I worked hard I could get a scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge (doubtful!), but then he said something interesting: he said that support given to pg students at the Oxbridge universities absolutely sucked, and I would be far better off forgetting the snob value and doing it somewhere where they actually believed in teaching. He said those universities rested on their laurels and expected pg students to fend for themselves entirely. He said they had had some brilliant students drop out and come back, depressed and broken.
This may have changed, but I wonder...
What I find most terrifying is this:
If so many Slashdotters believe, like I do, that all this kiddy paranoia has gone way too far and is causing massive injustices, then what the hell is wrong with the everyone else????
Surely the time has past when the dubious "benefits" (ie power) of this approach to legislation outweighs the negatives for special interest groups such as social workers and police - I know some of these people have seen the light, yet they are too scared to speak out. Trapped in the hegemony. And they keep on with these spurious and outlandish prosecutions.
Enough!
Slashdot Mirror
I can tap your Internet illicitly, or put an tap on your keyboard, or steal your machine and find evidence that you committed a murder, or a terrorist act, or a copyright infringement - it *isn't* necessarily true that such evidence is admissable in court. In fact, it's more likely to *jeopardise* a case against you, even if I'm a policeman, because it was collected by illegal means which means it is possible that an order is given that it *must* be disregarded and cannot be brought up ever again in any cour
This might be the case in the US, with its tough and fair laws of evidence, but it is not the case afaik in the UK or any Commonwealth countries (Australia, Canada etc). Unless this has changed (I'm not a lawyer), there was a Privy Council or something decision many years ago that set the precedent that evidence obtained by the police *illegally* is still admissible. The police can steal evidence and break the law in obtaining it (bribes etc), it is still admissible. It's one area where the US legal system is much fairer.
those nasty paedopiraterrorists
You mean they've CROSS BRED? What havoc will they inflict! [ I posted this yesterday in the same thread position. It has vanished, so here it is again. ]
nasty paedopiraterrorists
OMFG - you mean they've CROSS-BRED?!!! What havoc will these new hybrids bring!?
No. Stem cells are pluripotential and can change into any cell type. That is why they are called stem cells. Once stem cells have forked into mature cells, they do not change again by themselves. "Reprogramming" as you call it would be taking mature cells and injecting genetic material via a virus or some other means, which indeed has risks. This is exactly why some cancers are caused by viruses.
To respond to your issues: 1. Isolate a few, then culture the rest? 2. Tranformation appears here to be quite simple and spontaneous. The rat cells are doing the work. 3. Rhythm can be synchronized with an electric current. 4. Additional maintenance - speculation until we know more. 5. Wondering how a host rejects its own cells - unless an autoimmune disease has been triggered? They all have the same HLA complex, or am I out of date? 6. Time to culture cells - so what? Heart failure is a slow and costly way to die. Drugs have greatly extended life. There is time enough. Industrial processes and technology should be able to streamline the process. Regulatory and funding issues: you're forgetting how many fat arses sit on funding and ethics committees and are shit scared of dying from heart problems. In short, I think you are being prematurely negative. Wait until the data is in. Personally I'd be more concerned that, if it works, it'll be *suppressed*. After all, what are we going to do with all the old people that live to 120+ because death from heart failure has been eliminated?
The first rule about fat club is you don't talk about fat club.
Clearly a humongous discovery. Should these cells be made to repair damaged heart muscle, it will revolutionize medicine. And without all the tedious hoo-hah about embryonic stem cells. Cardiac cells, like neurons, cannot be replaced by the body when damaged. This in fact is why many people die from heart failure years after surviving heart attacks. Heart attacks cut off the oxygen supply to cardiac cells, which die and can only be replaced by non-functional scar tissue, which is like the body's spakfiller. You lose enough cells, the heart cannot pump properly.
Benjamin Franklin:
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
- according to WikiQuote, first written shortly before February 17, 1775 as part of Franklin's notes for a proposition at the Pennsylvania Assembly.
What irony that America's Founding Fathers could see the huge risks in the mindless pursuit of security (what Bush, in classic double speak, calls "freedom") while today's media cannot.
"Is there an English speaking country left on this bloody planet which has a sane government?" No. Possibly Canada. Certainly not Australia.
"Its not maliciousness or simply incompetence. People in power seek power, simple fact." And it should be the job of a functioning democratic system to place checks and balances on the exercise of power. The mechanism for checks and balances needs to be enshrined in law (eg Constitution or Common Law). But that cannot work without a degree of openness, strong and independent institutions like the courts, and a commitment to maintaining freedoms in the first place. Undermine these, and, lo, no checks and balances! Unfettered power.
Right on the mark. But this has always been obvious to me. It was obvious to Thomas Jefferson. It was obvious to Adolf Hitler. It's certainly obvious to power climbing bureaucrats. Why the heck is this not obvious to everybody? The UK frightens the hell out of me, steadily putting in place the apparatus of totalitarian control. All ready for a dictator to come along. This was the country that invented parliamentary democracy as we know it. This was the country that gave birth to the Magna Carta and to Common Law freedoms that largely created the concept of human rights. This was the country that enshrined (and recently seriously weakened) the right to silence. Beloved England, once the light and source of freedom in the world, is becoming Big Brother's playground.
With a bit of fiddling it should be possible to hack this cd to copy the system onto a hard drive and get a boot loader set up. Though I'm not familiar with the initial stages of BSD boot, it can't be that hard to unravel? But you're right - it should have an install script to do that for you. Plus a knoppix-based live cd like Damnsmalllinux can run all from ramdisk (fast!), or can do a "frugal" install in addition to a conventional hd install. All automated. What options does this provide?
Fluffyspider www.fluffyspider.com in Australia have had an E17-derived platform for MIDS, phones, set top boxes and the like for some time ("Fancypants"). But it's a commercial product.
I've been told that good QA and release engineers are very hard to hire. You might well have better advancement prospects in that line of work than in coding per se.
My guess is a number of key attractiveness traits are very hardwired and work across cultures: symmetry, big eyes (but not too big), certain facial ratios, things signifying good health such as good skin and bright hair - in fact I thought that had all been proven a long time ago. Some things are indicators of high estrogen levels (blond pigmentation) or "it's ovulation time, I'm fertile!" (flushed cheeks, full lips, redundant display of skin) and somehow are interpreted by many males unconsciously as "hot". Dilated pupils indicate arousal, and so on. These things are mimicked by makeup. And few are conciously aware of these signals, but they work In men, a large square jaw is associated with a strong testosterone surge during puberty - hence virility. Pity the same doesn't work for baldness, also a sign of high testosterone, but later in life! Some things can be modulated to a degree by culture - Indian film stars are obese by Hollywood standards, because being thin in India is for poor people. Age is another culturally variable feature - George Clooney could probably not have been a star in the late 60s-70s because he would have been too old - fashion and economic purchasing power was in the hands of the young then. But 10-15 years before, plenty of men in their 40s and older were stars (think Bill Haley or Cary Grant), just like now - this is because the oldies are running the show again.
Further: I think some of the really interesting US universities are the fast-rising campuses of the "new or public Ivies" ilk, in particular Carnegie Mellon, the University of Illinois, and maybe a few others. These places seem to be innovative and work to make teaching breakthroughs, particularly in the IT/Comp sci area.
Interesting. To its credit Stanford does have impressive research output, which I believe to be the main indicator of a decent university. Not what percentage of alumni donate money - that makes sense mainly in the US only. What has that got to do with the quality of academic output and teaching? It's an input, not an output. On elite universities: Many years ago I started to unexpectedly shine in my final year of undergraduate studies, and was promptly pulled in and canvassed for a postgraduate career by the department Chair. He told me if I worked hard I could get a scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge (doubtful!), but then he said something interesting: he said that support given to pg students at the Oxbridge universities absolutely sucked, and I would be far better off forgetting the snob value and doing it somewhere where they actually believed in teaching. He said those universities rested on their laurels and expected pg students to fend for themselves entirely. He said they had had some brilliant students drop out and come back, depressed and broken. This may have changed, but I wonder ...
It's not an anonymously-authored meme: "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." -- Thomas Jefferson
A concussed monkey wing has just been opened at Guantanamo Bay to house all suspected terrorist concussed monkeys.
Who is the author of these cartoons? http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ I like 'em.
Though this policy is 100% stupid *all* the time.
What I find most terrifying is this: If so many Slashdotters believe, like I do, that all this kiddy paranoia has gone way too far and is causing massive injustices, then what the hell is wrong with the everyone else???? Surely the time has past when the dubious "benefits" (ie power) of this approach to legislation outweighs the negatives for special interest groups such as social workers and police - I know some of these people have seen the light, yet they are too scared to speak out. Trapped in the hegemony. And they keep on with these spurious and outlandish prosecutions. Enough!