I think the Hobbit, in a screenplay more true to the original book, will work better on film than LoTR, because it's a far shorter and more self-contained story that will translate to the big screeen more effectively. It's not as deep as LoTR, and will appeal to children. Because it has the potential to be more true to the books, the diehards will be happy, and new fans will also enjoy the simpler storyline.
Remember the animated version? It was really goood! I'd imagine that a live action version, using WETA's technology, could potentially be even better.
a computer is hardly the only tool in any given profession. Surely a biochemist will be more interested in their computer-driven FPLC machine (which runs Windows software, btw) and getting their protein purification working rather than trying to figure out half-assed linux drivers (which as far as I know do not exist for FLPC machines). This is an extreme techincal example of which I am intimately familiar.
Even in a non-technical environment, why should I bother to learn the guts of my computer (although I in fact have)? There are plenty of computer literate people who simply don't want to spend the time futzing with getting half-assed software working. They'd rather be doing something productive and/or entertaining (which I presume most of the lashdot crowd finds futzing with Linux to be:). By analogy, you probably drive a car, or will drive a car sometime in the future. Do you bother to rebuild your own engine and transmission, balance your own tires, etc., or do you just expect it to work when you turn the key? Cars, like computers, are complex but commodity hardware. You can't assume that anyone who isn't a competent mechanic is therefore a shitty driver and should be denied the right to drive a car.
Actually, the reason I use Windows is it is probably the OS that takes the least effort to get working out of the box to a degree sufficient for me to accomplish work on commodity hardware. Sure, just about most everything I do can be done on a Linux box, but it would take me forever of digging through poor documentation, newsgroups, and futzing around to actually get it working reasonably well (I've tried, so don't accuse me of not trying). Even then, usability is generally poor. Sure, linux programs are generally quite powerful and flexible, but the vast majority of us just want to get things done. If that means having to put up with a few idosyncrasies of Windows, so be it. Sure, I've gotten hit with viruses, but with reasonable precautions it's not an everyday occurance, just the occasional annoyance.
The bottom line is, your time is MUCH more valuable than the cost of a windows license.
...particularly in the classroom? I can't really fathom a use for them at the grade school level. You're centainly not going to be teaching programming. You can use them for word processing and web searches at best. My opinion is kids need to learn how to write with paper and pencil first before learning to use a word processor; there is more focus on content than presentation that way IMO. Also, if you want to do web searches, why do you need a latop for every student? Just have a dumb term in each classroom running a webbrowser.
Maybe a paperless enviornment is a goal to work towards? But just imagine paperless homework...kids will learn to cut and paste from each other's work. At least with handwriting you have to copy the answers manually and maybe learn something out of it.
I would think that the money spent on purchasing laptops and related tech support would be better spent on better pay for teachers...
voting technology is really not the issue, voter apathy is. When I lived in Taiwan during the end of KMT martial reign, voter turnout was in the 90 percentile, and the opposition party had volunteers monitoring ballot counting: paper ballots, counted off one by one, and independently verified. Shit, they would even send cars to trail the people who delivered the ballots from the polling stations to where they were tallying the votes, to make sure no ballot box switching was going on. Nowadays, voter turnout in Taiwan in about 70%, and people are complaining that it is too low.
Until Americans as a whole start to care about their political process (last I heard, voter turnout is below 50%), what technology is used for voting is just a technical (no pun intended) detail.
actually, I'm quite enjoying my postdoc right now, I am lucky to have a supportive P.I. I just know a lot of people who have had horrible experiences; not necessarily due to the nature of the work itself, but because of some of the reasons I list above.
postdoc should be #1. There are too many things just plain wrong with the system of postdocctoral training in the U.S. A noncomprehensive list follows:
1. Lack of representation. Let's face it, no matter how much lab chiefs (a.k.a. principal investigators, or P.I.s) try to spin the postdoc experience as "training", in reality postdocs are the _labor_ force that gets the actual bench work done. For other young professionals at equivalent level of training and education, postdocs are woefully compensated for their time and effort (although this has slightly improved recently due to increases in NIH fellowship level guidelines). For instance, M.D. fellows in biology research labs get paid significantly more than their Ph.D. counterparts for doing the same work in the lab.
2. Lack of job prospects and career counseling: postdocs are encouraged to spend time in lab to work, work, work. The "goal" is to find faculty positions at research institutions. People with other career goals (teaching positions at primarily undergrad institutions, industry, sales and management) are looked down upon. But in reality, there are hardly any academic positions available for the number of postdocs on the job market any given year. The mentality of the scientific field needs to change greatly to reflect the realities of the job market.
3. Do we reallly *NEED* all these P.I.s? I believe it is high time to reevaluate the P.I. postdoc grad student hierachy. In reality, most of the labor work in labs could be served much more efficiently if senior Ph.D. level scientists held non-tenure track positions as perrmanent staff instead of temporary postdocs. From talking with friends in the scientific field in various institutions around the U.S., some universities appear to be cautiously moving towards this trend. However, I feel that there needs to be a major momentum shift in this direction. The reality is, we don't NEED that many P.I.s with independent research projects running, and there is an overabundance of postdocs with graduate schools churning out more and more each year (grad students are another source of lab labor and grad school administrators are under constant pressure to recruit and support more and more students for the faculty to explo^H^H^H^H^H train). Research universities should realize that permanent staff scientists will work more efficiently in familiar surroundings and colleagues, and without the pressure of having to look for jobs in 3-4 years in an increasingly tight job market.
4. No clear definition of the mentor-postdoc relationship: basically, your mentor makes or breaks your career. About the only thing you can make complaints on your mentor is sexual harassment. In all other regards of your postdoc training, you are essentially at your P.I.'s mercy. If you have a personality clash with him/her, they can screw you big time. If you have a personality clash with someone else in the lab and they get along better with the P.I., you can get screwed big time. If your experimental results , even if they are indisputably correct, do not jive with their pet theories, they can decide not to publish your work, and you get screwed big time. Heck, they can turn out to be simply assholes, and you are screwed big time. The bottom line is, they answer to no one but their grant reviewers, who are not particularly concerned with postdoc welfare. While most departments have scientific advisory boards and undergo yearly reviews, those reviews are scientitfic in nature and do not really address personnel issues. It is my understanding in most professional fields (law, medicine, etc.) there are standards of behavior that are upheld by professional organizations (state bar, medical review board, etc.). There is no such accountability with regards to personnel, especially postdocs, in science.
wow. mod up parent, couldn't have said it better myself. There is a serious problem in this country where "being smart" is looked down upon, especially at the junior high-high school level.
Having said that, I think that while a large part of the problem lies with the student's attitudes, an equally large part of the problem also lies with the curriculum. US High school textbooks are, in general woefully inadequate when compared to science textbooks from other developed nations. The SAT exam, particularly the portions pertaining to math and logic, are usually at a junior high level in most Asian countries, for instance (from where I hail from). Its hard for students to take their studies seriously when they are not learning anything serious. JMHO.
its a happy medium; it's GUI is not quite as dumbed down as a Mac (pre-OSX) that you'd *need* the mouse to do everything, but for grandma its plenty simple (so long as grandma doesn't have admin privs and messes with c:\windows). Keyboard shortcuts are fairly consistent across the board, default widgets are fairly well thought out (with one exxception, see macOS commments below). Fairly zippy wrt to speed/responsiveness. Reasonably stable. Bboatloads of apps available.
--win xp/2000 cons:
not Free. Not highly configurable GUI (at least, not without 3rd party apps). lots of dumbass developers who don't use default OS widgets and create confusion in the app's UI (see: Windows Media Player 9).
--MacOs pros:
Since my experience has been mostly in a biology lab where we have tons of legacy apps that run only on MacOS classic, this is where most of my Mac experience lies. Not that many pros, really:P I really *really* like the MacOS widget that resizes windows exactly as big as they need to be, no more no less. I wish windows and/or linux had this functionality...highly consistent interface from app to app.
--MacOS cons:
ridiculously unstable, no protected memory, no preemptive multitasking. next to impossible keyboard navigation of filesystem, making mouse a necessity. System extensions are IMO worse than dll hell in windows, I support Mac and Windows computers in the lab and windows machines are by far easier to handle. I could go on and on bitching about MacOS classic....dunno about OSX, will try it some day when DNA Strider and OpenLab are ported to OSX and our lab upgrades our mac hardware:P
--GNNU/Linux systems pros (both GNOME and LINUX):
Free as in speech and beer. Highly configurable. boatloads of apps. more or less free community support.
--cons:
support is only free if your time is worthless. many things that you install yourself (i.e. did not come packaged with distro) almost never work out of the box and require mucking around with (also see first point). Inconsistent interface from app to app (emacs vs vi, anyone?) From my perspective, no hardware support for scientific hardware (e.g. high speed CCD cameras, digital frame grabbers, automatic confocal microscopes, high resolution image analysis, etc etc.....in other words, its a great system if you are a hacker but if you want to get REAL work done you'll spend too much time trying to get it to work. People would rather put up with a crappy OS and get things done.
Personally, from an end user's point of view I wouldn't mind if Linux developers developed only for RedHat Linux and RedHat decided to stick with either GNOME or KDe and stuck with it. At least then there would be no confusion and things would be consistent. I also wouldn't mind if they packaged their distro by picking one tool for one type of job and ditch all the redundant apps. While cutting down on choice, at least nonhacker people could get things to actually *work* and not have to muck around too much...
Until recently, RNA was thought to do little more than carry out DNA's instructions for building proteins.
However, the new picture, which Science says came into focus this year, shows small RNAs at the heart of many of the cell's genetic workings.
This is an oversimplification, probably intended for a lay audience. For the past 20 years or so, RNA has been known to have enzymatic functions. At first this catalytic property of RNA had been thought to be limited to primitive organisms. However, recent research has shown that rRNA, which is the RNA component of ribosomes, is in fact the catalytic component of the peptidyltransferase reaction that creates polypeptides, which in turn make up proteins. Moreover, although there is no direct proof yet, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that indicates mRNA splicing in eukaryotes is also catalyzed by RNA (in the form of "small nuclear RNAs" or snRNAs). To state that RNAs are only part of the information chain from DNAs to proteins is a misjustice to the complexity of RNA biology.
The small RNAs that are described in this article are not even catalytic; in fact, to your average RNA biochemist these small RNAs are not all that interesting. They are, however, very interesting to people who study gene regulation, because that appears to be the normal role of these small RNAs. Biotech companies are also interested because they are a way to target specific genes for inactivation.
I don't work in IT, so for me Windows is the easiest to get up and running to do real (for me) work (web access, word processing, some graphics). I'd use a mac but I can't afford one:P it also helps that my institution has a site license for win2k and office. there is too much fiddling to do to get linux to work as a desktop OS. our lab uses linux for a fileserver though.
tiered pricing is a GOOD thing. Not everyone needs a super fat pipe. Allow for free-market competition and let consumers pay for what they want and need. What's wrong with that? Death of the Internet, indeed *snort*.
Recently I watched episode one on cartoon network, wanting to know what the big fuss was about cowboy bebop. I was disappointed. this is not a troll....what is the big fuss about this series? It seems not too unlike most anime...lots of violence and implied sexual imagry. In fact what is the big deal about anime in general? I admit there is some interesting artwork but that is about all I can find interesting about most of it.
come to think of it that's about all you get from most hollywood fare these days, too:P
1. autorip music CDs and store them locally.
2. ethernet connection to share ripped files, as well as upload files from external sources.
3. open-ended decoder that will be able to understand future compression formats using a plug-in style format.
4. function as both an mp3 server to other networked devices, as well as a stand-alone audio CD/mp3 player.
5. also plays DVDs, to reduce component clutter
I've looked very hard for such a device; many come close but don't have all the features I want. If I had the time and experise I would roll my own:P
I have been debating recently whether I should get cable or stick with dialup. Then I read the recent article about AT&T Broadband hiking prices. It sure made my choice easy. Seems that at least in my case, the "invisible hand" appears to be working just fine.
trying to be apolitical here, but...
on
China Plans Moonbase
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
don't the Chinese have the right idea? That is to say, we hear a lot about how the Americans want to send a manned mission to Mars, but its unclear to me that the Americans have sufficient real-world experience in long term manned deep space missions. To first establish a long term base on the moon would go a long way towards gaining that experience. It's only 3 days away, as opposed to several years for Mars. Just a thought. Comments?
As a Celera stockholder (and a professional molecular biologist) I must say I am extremely disappotinted that the CTO would allow his own ego to get in the way of creating an unbiased, useful genome map, even taking into account the fact that it's probably irrelavent in the long run (i.e., his genome is probably fairly representative of the human populace in general). What does this say WRT any future projects that Celera might undertake? It seems to me that under Venter's direction such future projects may not utilize what science and ethics dictate.
On another related semi-off topic note, I am sick of listening to people complain about NYT articles and registration. One of the most influential newspapers in the world is giving you free daily access to their articles and all they require is some bogus registration info. Sheesh, stop whining already.
Plus, what person would be so insensitive to vote for the best picture for a film entitled The Two Towers in this post 9-11 age? I hope Peter Jackson shows a little sensitivity and changes the name.
I most certainly hope that he does NOT change the name. What does the title of a book written 60 years ago have anything at all to do with current events? Tragic as events were, political correctness and sensitivity can go too far.
would any vegans care to comment on what your views would be on "hydroponic" meat? That is, meat grown from cloned cells and/or DNA, instead of that harvested from live animals. I think that hydroponic meat will be the wave of the future. "Growing" meat using livestock is simply not environmentally cost effective.
aging in cells, at a molecular level, usuallly means a shortening of telomeres from one generation to the next. This typically has other consequences as well, such as cell cycle arrest.
telomeres are special structures at the end of eukaryotic chromosomes that protect the ends and facilitate DNA replication of linear DNA. cells that have circular genomes (such as bacteria) do not have DNA ends and therefore do not have nor need telomeres. old cells have short telomeres and therefore have a harder time replicating their DNA. This is an overly simplified explanation, of course.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the Hobbit, in a screenplay more true to the original book, will work better on film than LoTR, because it's a far shorter and more self-contained story that will translate to the big screeen more effectively. It's not as deep as LoTR, and will appeal to children. Because it has the potential to be more true to the books, the diehards will be happy, and new fans will also enjoy the simpler storyline.
Remember the animated version? It was really goood! I'd imagine that a live action version, using WETA's technology, could potentially be even better.
a few I can think of offhand, Bilbo (!!), Agent Smith^W^W Elrond, Gollum (Andy Serkis!!!!!!!!)...
dumbass moderators....this is not -1 troll it's +5 funny :)
a computer is hardly the only tool in any given profession. Surely a biochemist will be more interested in their computer-driven FPLC machine (which runs Windows software, btw) and getting their protein purification working rather than trying to figure out half-assed linux drivers (which as far as I know do not exist for FLPC machines). This is an extreme techincal example of which I am intimately familiar.
:). By analogy, you probably drive a car, or will drive a car sometime in the future. Do you bother to rebuild your own engine and transmission, balance your own tires, etc., or do you just expect it to work when you turn the key? Cars, like computers, are complex but commodity hardware. You can't assume that anyone who isn't a competent mechanic is therefore a shitty driver and should be denied the right to drive a car.
Even in a non-technical environment, why should I bother to learn the guts of my computer (although I in fact have)? There are plenty of computer literate people who simply don't want to spend the time futzing with getting half-assed software working. They'd rather be doing something productive and/or entertaining (which I presume most of the lashdot crowd finds futzing with Linux to be
Actually, the reason I use Windows is it is probably the OS that takes the least effort to get working out of the box to a degree sufficient for me to accomplish work on commodity hardware. Sure, just about most everything I do can be done on a Linux box, but it would take me forever of digging through poor documentation, newsgroups, and futzing around to actually get it working reasonably well (I've tried, so don't accuse me of not trying). Even then, usability is generally poor. Sure, linux programs are generally quite powerful and flexible, but the vast majority of us just want to get things done. If that means having to put up with a few idosyncrasies of Windows, so be it. Sure, I've gotten hit with viruses, but with reasonable precautions it's not an everyday occurance, just the occasional annoyance.
The bottom line is, your time is MUCH more valuable than the cost of a windows license.
...particularly in the classroom? I can't really fathom a use for them at the grade school level. You're centainly not going to be teaching programming. You can use them for word processing and web searches at best. My opinion is kids need to learn how to write with paper and pencil first before learning to use a word processor; there is more focus on content than presentation that way IMO. Also, if you want to do web searches, why do you need a latop for every student? Just have a dumb term in each classroom running a webbrowser.
Maybe a paperless enviornment is a goal to work towards? But just imagine paperless homework...kids will learn to cut and paste from each other's work. At least with handwriting you have to copy the answers manually and maybe learn something out of it.
I would think that the money spent on purchasing laptops and related tech support would be better spent on better pay for teachers...
voting technology is really not the issue, voter apathy is. When I lived in Taiwan during the end of KMT martial reign, voter turnout was in the 90 percentile, and the opposition party had volunteers monitoring ballot counting: paper ballots, counted off one by one, and independently verified. Shit, they would even send cars to trail the people who delivered the ballots from the polling stations to where they were tallying the votes, to make sure no ballot box switching was going on. Nowadays, voter turnout in Taiwan in about 70%, and people are complaining that it is too low.
Until Americans as a whole start to care about their political process (last I heard, voter turnout is below 50%), what technology is used for voting is just a technical (no pun intended) detail.
actually, I'm quite enjoying my postdoc right now, I am lucky to have a supportive P.I. I just know a lot of people who have had horrible experiences; not necessarily due to the nature of the work itself, but because of some of the reasons I list above.
postdoc should be #1. There are too many things just plain wrong with the system of postdocctoral training in the U.S. A noncomprehensive list follows:
1. Lack of representation. Let's face it, no matter how much lab chiefs (a.k.a. principal investigators, or P.I.s) try to spin the postdoc experience as "training", in reality postdocs are the _labor_ force that gets the actual bench work done. For other young professionals at equivalent level of training and education, postdocs are woefully compensated for their time and effort (although this has slightly improved recently due to increases in NIH fellowship level guidelines). For instance, M.D. fellows in biology research labs get paid significantly more than their Ph.D. counterparts for doing the same work in the lab.
2. Lack of job prospects and career counseling: postdocs are encouraged to spend time in lab to work, work, work. The "goal" is to find faculty positions at research institutions. People with other career goals (teaching positions at primarily undergrad institutions, industry, sales and management) are looked down upon. But in reality, there are hardly any academic positions available for the number of postdocs on the job market any given year. The mentality of the scientific field needs to change greatly to reflect the realities of the job market.
3. Do we reallly *NEED* all these P.I.s? I believe it is high time to reevaluate the P.I. postdoc grad student hierachy. In reality, most of the labor work in labs could be served much more efficiently if senior Ph.D. level scientists held non-tenure track positions as perrmanent staff instead of temporary postdocs. From talking with friends in the scientific field in various institutions around the U.S., some universities appear to be cautiously moving towards this trend. However, I feel that there needs to be a major momentum shift in this direction. The reality is, we don't NEED that many P.I.s with independent research projects running, and there is an overabundance of postdocs with graduate schools churning out more and more each year (grad students are another source of lab labor and grad school administrators are under constant pressure to recruit and support more and more students for the faculty to explo^H^H^H^H^H train). Research universities should realize that permanent staff scientists will work more efficiently in familiar surroundings and colleagues, and without the pressure of having to look for jobs in 3-4 years in an increasingly tight job market.
4. No clear definition of the mentor-postdoc relationship: basically, your mentor makes or breaks your career. About the only thing you can make complaints on your mentor is sexual harassment. In all other regards of your postdoc training, you are essentially at your P.I.'s mercy. If you have a personality clash with him/her, they can screw you big time. If you have a personality clash with someone else in the lab and they get along better with the P.I., you can get screwed big time. If your experimental results , even if they are indisputably correct, do not jive with their pet theories, they can decide not to publish your work, and you get screwed big time. Heck, they can turn out to be simply assholes, and you are screwed big time. The bottom line is, they answer to no one but their grant reviewers, who are not particularly concerned with postdoc welfare. While most departments have scientific advisory boards and undergo yearly reviews, those reviews are scientitfic in nature and do not really address personnel issues. It is my understanding in most professional fields (law, medicine, etc.) there are standards of behavior that are upheld by professional organizations (state bar, medical review board, etc.). There is no such accountability with regards to personnel, especially postdocs, in science.
blah, too tired to rant now.
wow. mod up parent, couldn't have said it better myself. There is a serious problem in this country where "being smart" is looked down upon, especially at the junior high-high school level.
Having said that, I think that while a large part of the problem lies with the student's attitudes, an equally large part of the problem also lies with the curriculum. US High school textbooks are, in general woefully inadequate when compared to science textbooks from other developed nations. The SAT exam, particularly the portions pertaining to math and logic, are usually at a junior high level in most Asian countries, for instance (from where I hail from). Its hard for students to take their studies seriously when they are not learning anything serious. JMHO.
--windows xp/2000 pros:
:P I really *really* like the MacOS widget that resizes windows exactly as big as they need to be, no more no less. I wish windows and/or linux had this functionality...highly consistent interface from app to app.
:P
its a happy medium; it's GUI is not quite as dumbed down as a Mac (pre-OSX) that you'd *need* the mouse to do everything, but for grandma its plenty simple (so long as grandma doesn't have admin privs and messes with c:\windows). Keyboard shortcuts are fairly consistent across the board, default widgets are fairly well thought out (with one exxception, see macOS commments below). Fairly zippy wrt to speed/responsiveness. Reasonably stable. Bboatloads of apps available.
--win xp/2000 cons:
not Free. Not highly configurable GUI (at least, not without 3rd party apps). lots of dumbass developers who don't use default OS widgets and create confusion in the app's UI (see: Windows Media Player 9).
--MacOs pros:
Since my experience has been mostly in a biology lab where we have tons of legacy apps that run only on MacOS classic, this is where most of my Mac experience lies. Not that many pros, really
--MacOS cons:
ridiculously unstable, no protected memory, no preemptive multitasking. next to impossible keyboard navigation of filesystem, making mouse a necessity. System extensions are IMO worse than dll hell in windows, I support Mac and Windows computers in the lab and windows machines are by far easier to handle. I could go on and on bitching about MacOS classic....dunno about OSX, will try it some day when DNA Strider and OpenLab are ported to OSX and our lab upgrades our mac hardware
--GNNU/Linux systems pros (both GNOME and LINUX):
Free as in speech and beer. Highly configurable. boatloads of apps. more or less free community support.
--cons:
support is only free if your time is worthless. many things that you install yourself (i.e. did not come packaged with distro) almost never work out of the box and require mucking around with (also see first point). Inconsistent interface from app to app (emacs vs vi, anyone?) From my perspective, no hardware support for scientific hardware (e.g. high speed CCD cameras, digital frame grabbers, automatic confocal microscopes, high resolution image analysis, etc etc.....in other words, its a great system if you are a hacker but if you want to get REAL work done you'll spend too much time trying to get it to work. People would rather put up with a crappy OS and get things done.
Personally, from an end user's point of view I wouldn't mind if Linux developers developed only for RedHat Linux and RedHat decided to stick with either GNOME or KDe and stuck with it. At least then there would be no confusion and things would be consistent. I also wouldn't mind if they packaged their distro by picking one tool for one type of job and ditch all the redundant apps. While cutting down on choice, at least nonhacker people could get things to actually *work* and not have to muck around too much...
Until recently, RNA was thought to do little more than carry out DNA's instructions for building proteins.
However, the new picture, which Science says came into focus this year, shows small RNAs at the heart of many of the cell's genetic workings.
This is an oversimplification, probably intended for a lay audience. For the past 20 years or so, RNA has been known to have enzymatic functions. At first this catalytic property of RNA had been thought to be limited to primitive organisms. However, recent research has shown that rRNA, which is the RNA component of ribosomes, is in fact the catalytic component of the peptidyltransferase reaction that creates polypeptides, which in turn make up proteins. Moreover, although there is no direct proof yet, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that indicates mRNA splicing in eukaryotes is also catalyzed by RNA (in the form of "small nuclear RNAs" or snRNAs). To state that RNAs are only part of the information chain from DNAs to proteins is a misjustice to the complexity of RNA biology.
The small RNAs that are described in this article are not even catalytic; in fact, to your average RNA biochemist these small RNAs are not all that interesting. They are, however, very interesting to people who study gene regulation, because that appears to be the normal role of these small RNAs. Biotech companies are also interested because they are a way to target specific genes for inactivation.
funniest shit I heard in ages.
I don't work in IT, so for me Windows is the easiest to get up and running to do real (for me) work (web access, word processing, some graphics). I'd use a mac but I can't afford one :P it also helps that my institution has a site license for win2k and office. there is too much fiddling to do to get linux to work as a desktop OS. our lab uses linux for a fileserver though.
tiered pricing is a GOOD thing. Not everyone needs a super fat pipe. Allow for free-market competition and let consumers pay for what they want and need. What's wrong with that? Death of the Internet, indeed *snort*.
step 1. Admit that current MS OS is insecure.
step 2. ???
step 3. profit!
nuff said.
Recently I watched episode one on cartoon network, wanting to know what the big fuss was about cowboy bebop. I was disappointed. this is not a troll....what is the big fuss about this series? It seems not too unlike most anime...lots of violence and implied sexual imagry. In fact what is the big deal about anime in general? I admit there is some interesting artwork but that is about all I can find interesting about most of it. :P
come to think of it that's about all you get from most hollywood fare these days, too
2. ethernet connection to share ripped files, as well as upload files from external sources.
3. open-ended decoder that will be able to understand future compression formats using a plug-in style format.
4. function as both an mp3 server to other networked devices, as well as a stand-alone audio CD/mp3 player.
5. also plays DVDs, to reduce component clutter
I've looked very hard for such a device; many come close but don't have all the features I want. If I had the time and experise I would roll my own :P
I have been debating recently whether I should get cable or stick with dialup. Then I read the recent article about AT&T Broadband hiking prices. It sure made my choice easy. Seems that at least in my case, the "invisible hand" appears to be working just fine.
don't the Chinese have the right idea? That is to say, we hear a lot about how the Americans want to send a manned mission to Mars, but its unclear to me that the Americans have sufficient real-world experience in long term manned deep space missions. To first establish a long term base on the moon would go a long way towards gaining that experience. It's only 3 days away, as opposed to several years for Mars. Just a thought. Comments?
As a Celera stockholder (and a professional molecular biologist) I must say I am extremely disappotinted that the CTO would allow his own ego to get in the way of creating an unbiased, useful genome map, even taking into account the fact that it's probably irrelavent in the long run (i.e., his genome is probably fairly representative of the human populace in general). What does this say WRT any future projects that Celera might undertake? It seems to me that under Venter's direction such future projects may not utilize what science and ethics dictate.
On another related semi-off topic note, I am sick of listening to people complain about NYT articles and registration. One of the most influential newspapers in the world is giving you free daily access to their articles and all they require is some bogus registration info. Sheesh, stop whining already.
Plus, what person would be so insensitive to vote for the best picture for a film entitled The Two Towers in this post 9-11 age? I hope Peter Jackson shows a little sensitivity and changes the name.
I most certainly hope that he does NOT change the name. What does the title of a book written 60 years ago have anything at all to do with current events? Tragic as events were, political correctness and sensitivity can go too far.
would any vegans care to comment on what your views would be on "hydroponic" meat? That is, meat grown from cloned cells and/or DNA, instead of that harvested from live animals. I think that hydroponic meat will be the wave of the future. "Growing" meat using livestock is simply not environmentally cost effective.
telomeres are special structures at the end of eukaryotic chromosomes that protect the ends and facilitate DNA replication of linear DNA. cells that have circular genomes (such as bacteria) do not have DNA ends and therefore do not have nor need telomeres. old cells have short telomeres and therefore have a harder time replicating their DNA. This is an overly simplified explanation, of course.