Yeah... they're starting to warm up to it... kinda... except it's still too heavy and it doesn't work right... and a bunch of stuff has been taken out of the original concept... but yeah, it's great!
IOW, it's still a POS, just not quite as much a POS as before. And, oh yeah, it costs money the Army doesn't have.
Jesus. I was a grunt back in the dark ages (late 80's) and I can't tell you how glad I am that we didn't have to lug that crap around with us. The amount we did have to carry was already a killing load; the senior NCO's, who got their start in Vietnam, always told us exactly what we should throw away, and were unanimous in their opinion we were still carrying too much stuff. (And they had heard the same thing from their Korea-veteran sergeants.) Sorry, I don't believe that today's infantrymen are that much bigger and tougher than we were -- the human body hasn't changed, but the amount of crap the brass wants to load onto it keeps going up and up. And this is in the desert! Pretty soon the Iraqis won't have to kill American soldiers, just wait for them to drop dead of heatstroke.
- Polls are not news - Predictions of the future are not news - Implications aren't news - Health claims aren't news - Science claims aren't news - Political news is so biased it can't really be considered news any more - News you can use is not news - Human events stories are not news - Profiles of local people are not news - Any report with music is not news
After reading that list, I have to ask: so, um, what do you consider news, anyway?
Hohman transfers are slow and cheap; that's why we use them. If you have a much more energy-dense fuel supply (plutonium certainly fills the bill) there are much faster routes available.
If you can't tell the difference between explosions contained in an internal combustion engine to power the drive shaft vs. being moved forward by the actual explosions, then I can't help you.
You're missing the point. The explosions in your car happen very very fast, and the bulk of the vehicle absorbs most of the shock; with the combination of these two effects, you don't perceive them as explosions. Ditto for an Orion drive. As an intermediate case, consider a pulsejet, which is "moved forward by the actual explosions" in much the same way. Pulsejets were incredibly unpleasant to fly, but that had more to do with the engine being mounted near the pilot than with the propulsion technology itself -- and of course you wouldn't mount an Orion drive right next to a human crew anyway, or they'd have a lot worse things than vibration to worry about.
it's doubtful that the company with which the agreement was made is going to look fondly on any attempt to decrease what they were promised (i.e. profits)
Of course they won't look fondly on it, any more than Reznor looks findly on working for them. So what? Both sides have to do what they signed a contract to do; neither has to pretend to like it. What are they going to do to him -- terminate his contract?
Obviously you were never in charge of an IT organization. These control freaks are attempting to keep the business network running reliably.... The IT folks are not here to grant your technological wishes.
Well, I have been in charge of IT (for a small company, granted) and I have to say, your post reflects a fundamental, dangerous, and regrettably common misunderstanding of what corporate IT is for. The purpose of IT is not IT; the purpose of IT is to enable users to get things done. And if users can get things done better on Macs, then by God, it's IT's job to support those Macs. And "support" does not mean willful ignorance -- the latter, unfortunately, being what a lot of shake'n'bake IT techs show any time the word "Apple" is mentioned in their presence.
The gung-ho type we don't mind, they are consistent and wear their beliefs on their sleeve. They are honest and straightforward.
HAHAHAHAHA!
The current crop of jingoists are a bunch of cowards who think war is fine and dandy, as long as it's other people doing the dying. Damn near every top pro-war politician and commentator who was of age to serve during Vietnam found some way to stay out of uniform, and their kids aren't in any hurry to sign up for Iraq either. Oh, how "honest and straightforward" of them!
It's this new, smug, "I'm ashamed of my country" kind of American that I cannot stand
When your country does something wrong -- and when your country is a democracy, in which the leaders are theoretically responsible to the people -- it is good and right to be ashamed. Being ashamed isn't enough, of course; you should also do something to change it. Which, in the civilized world, includes bitching loudly and publicly. The idea that we should keep our mouths shut except to parrot platitudes of support for our Glorious Leaders is repulsive.
I'd hate to know how you'd feel if you were French and actually had to live with the knowledge that not only did your country surrender to Germany without a fight
If you really think France surrendered "without a fight" I'd recommend reading some more history. They were beaten, on the battlefield, by an army which could easily have done the same thing to any other country -- yes, including both the US and Australia -- that had the misfortune to be right next door to Germany at the time. And, in fact, did. The Wehrmacht in its heyday was unstoppable, and it took the Allies years (and a whole hell of a lot of lives) to swamp it in a war of attrition.
BTW, if your country was invaded, you would be cowering behind those "jingoist jerks", you hypocrite.
I served for ten years (two years reserve, eight years active duty, including Desert Storm) and I'm pretty sure that even as a fat old guy with a bum leg, I could still step up and defend US soil if I had to. The "rah rah USA" crowd would be screaming, crying, and pissing their pants.
The "what kind of world would you rather live in" argument for religious belief is really dumb. Would I rather live in a world where there was a just and merciful God who would reward the virtuous, punish the wicked, and make sure everything turned out all right in the end? Sure. But I'd also rather live in a world without cholera, hurricanes, and Paris Hilton. Unfortunately, my preference for such a world will not make these unpleasant things go away -- and it won't cause God to spring into existence, either.
Would you rather live in a world that has meaning and purpose, and a moral absolute, or would you rather live in a world where nothing you does ever matters and the only purpose of existence is for you to feel good about yourself enough to continue to procreate?
Straw man; I don't believe that nothing I do matters, and neither do any of the other non-religious-believers I know. There's a lot in my life that has meaning and purpose: my family, my friends, my work, and my community all come to mind. And there is a moral absolute here, when judged by those standards: that which is good is that which helps make the world the kind of world I want to live in, and my children to inherit. Not by faith, which has never accomplished anything*, but by works. You go on believing in the kind of world you want. Me, I'll be over here making it happen.
*At this point in the argument it's canonical to cite MLK or Gandhi or Mother Theresa and say, "What about so-and-so? Their faith accomplished something!" To which I reply: no, it didn't. Their faith may have motivated them to accomplish something, sure. But you can bet that they were surrounded by a bunch of very faithful people who were just as miserable as they were, and did nothing about it except to pray for relief. What makes people like these few stand out in history is that they didn't rely on faith, they got out and actually did something.
To be corny- nobody's ever died from OD'ing on religion.
The numberless dead in every religious war and genocide since the recorded beginning of religion ~10,000 years ago would disagree with you... if they could.
Um, vapor is one of two ways water can exist in a vacuum. (Ice is the other; liquid water is right out.) "Water vapor" just means a bunch of individual H20 molecules floating around.
It should be an interesting test. If the ID crowd are sincere in their claim that the Desginer doesn't have to be divine, they'll be delighted. If, on the other hand, they're really just a bunch of religious fanatics, they'll be appalled. (I know which way I'm betting.)
And the potential for anarchy is more than a slight worry for me, being that even if you could replicate the inner-workings of life, it doesn't mean you can give it a "soul".
Do you believe bacteria have souls? Or a knowledge of right and wrong? Because that's what they're working on, you know -- essentially a very similar bacterium. It's a looong time before we have to worry about the mechanics of soul manufacture.
n my personal experience, government IT projects (especially social welfare systems) tend to have a higher problem rate than commercial projects due to conflicting political goals, pork-barrel spending, and faulty oversight. *shrug*
Yeah, like that stupid DARPANet thing. Thank God that never went anywhere! Imagine what the world would be like today if it had become some kind of universal standard. Fortunately, instead, everyone gets "online" with competitive, efficient, private networks run according to good solid capitalist principles. Why, right now, I'm uploading this post to Compuserve with my blazing fast 9600 kbps modem, and my friends on GEnie and Prodigy can even read what I write now that the interoperability contracts have been signed! Will wonders never cease?
I don't know of Disney being anti-OSS specifically, but they're certainly anti-open-content, which I see as closely related. They certainly fight against anything falling into the public domain (although they have no trouble using public domain sources for their own work) and against the fair ue doctrine, and I wouldn't be surprised if they find a reason to go after the Creative Commons and similar licenses at some point.
First of all, as another posted pointed out, the GPL hasn't been tested in a US court; more generally. it is not a magic bullet that guarantees your software will be Henceforth And Forever Free, and it would be nice if people would stop assuming it is. Second, not everyone wants their software to be "Free" in the way RMS does -- the Artistic License is a nice middle ground between the GPL and the BSD, it's the license under which one of the most popular pieces of software ever written (Perl) is released, and it certainly should be possible for authors to use it without being afraid that an ill-informed court will undercut their rights.
Don't be naive. The people who have fought hardest to have draconian copyright laws enacted (Disney, Sony, Microsoft, et al.) are also those who have the most to fear from open source. They will be delighted to have any legal precedent that weakens the power of authors to enforce copyright under the terms of any open source license, and will use such precedent any chance they get. Artistic, GPL, BSD, doesn't matter -- they hate the whole idea of open source, and this decision is a powerful tool for them.
Speaking as a scientist, I'll say this: thanks for letting me know that any speculation about anything I'm not 100% sure of is worthless. I'll stop any work on anything that isn't obvious right away. In return, I ask that you live up to your end of the bargain: give up any and all technology that has resulted from anyone ever speculating a little bit beyond the then-current limits of knowledge, and go back to chipping flint tools and living in a cave. Do we have a deal?
"Microsoft for instance has excelled in marketing the operating system, and has a good track record in fending off competition."
Thos are not things Windows does well. Those are things Microsoft's marketing and legal arms do well. So, if I want to sell something, or crush people who are selling something that competes with what I'm selling, great, Microsoft is the place to be. On the other hand, if I want to, you know, run my computer, I want a good operating system, not a good salesman.
Why would a government who wants to "control those people" embrace the globalized free market?
You mean, like China? They've done a pretty good job of embracing the globalized free market, but I don't think anyone can deny that the Chinese government still has a pretty strong interest in control.
Or are you so unconcerned because the Australians are mostly white? Because, you know, governments run by white people never do eeevil things like those little yellow people do.
Except, the immigrants of old, did not come to your country, and want to out and out destroy it and replace it with a theocracy.
Then as now, a small minority did; and then as now, nativists seized on the statements and actions of a few fanatics to create a national hysteria about how that good American old-time religion was under dire threat from these strange alien infidels.
They also weren't so willing to do this, that they employed suicide bombers from within their numbers.
The suicide-bomber thing is unique, I admit. OTOH, immigrant (and native-born) terrorists weren't shy about planting bombs. You know the old cartoon image of the mad bomber, a guy in a mustache and a bowler hat holding a grenade with a lit fuse? There was a time when that wasn't a joke.
They also pretty much immigrated legally...not just sneaking in, and waving their old country's flags at protests.
You're conflating two phenomena: illegal immigration from Mexico and other Latin American countries, which may be vocal but is largely nonviolent, and Arab and other Muslim immigration from the Middle East, which is largely legal -- and done under much tougher laws than existed a hundred years ago. Also, again, largely noviolent, with a couple of notable exceptions; see "hysteria" above.
I'd dare say, at least in the old days for the immigrants to the US, they did want to become Americans, to integrate into the larger society, to speak English, etc.
No. They didn't. They formed ethnic ghettoes, clung fiercely to the old language and the old ways, and tried their damndest to re-create a little slice of the Old Country. The only part of America they wanted was the prosperity. Their kids and grandkids were the ones who got out. Like I said, I think a lot of modern Americans forget how difficult this process was, and how long it took, because for several generations, it was a done deal for all the major immigrant groups up until that point. However, we're seeing it happening with the children of the wave of Asian, especially Vietnamese, immigrants who started arriving in the mid-1970's; and it will happen with Middle Eastern and East African immigrants now, if we give it time. It's pretty much what America does.
Immigrants have hardly ever wanted to abandon their old culture for their new one. The historically high levels of immigration to the US and the UK have been driven by economics. "I can't get a job here in [wherever], so I'll pack up my family and 50 or so of my closest friends and see who's hiring in New York."
I think modern Americans tend to forget this, because of the pattern of immigration to the US. There was a critical period of about 50 years in the middle of the 20th century when immigration was much, much more difficult than at just about any time before or since. So the huge numbers of Irish, Italians, Poles, etc. who came here in the years before WW1 had time to assimilate. The ethnic ghettoes disappeared; the old languages died out except for a scattering of loanwords and very light accents; by the time the gates opened back up, ethnic divisions that had once been deadly serious and nostalgia for "the Old Country" were largely relegated to the status of old jokes.
But the fact of the matter is, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these immigrants were seen as every bit as alien as Middle Eastern and Asian immigrants are now considered to be, and with good reason! They came largely from peasant societies that had changed little since the Middle Ages -- they sure as hell didn't have the values of Industrial-Revolution-era America -- and the conflicts that resulted, frankly, made 9/11 look like child's play. Roughly from the end of the Civil War to WW1, large parts of America looked like Ethniklashistan.
And yet, somehow, the nation not only survived but prospered. Golly. Imagine that.
Mitochondria are a hell of a lot more than "degraded bacteria;" try taking the mitochondria out of your cells and see how long you last.;)
Also, human mitichondrial DNA is just as much "human DNA" as is nuclear DNA. Sure, it was bacterial originally, but the point at which it became a vital part of our cells was very early in the evolution of eukaryotes, a looong time before there was any such thing as human being... or a mammal... or, for that matter, anything more complex than a jellyfish. Our mitochondria have evolved along with the rest of us for the last two-billion-plus years. I understand the distinction you're trying to make -- basically, this study only measures matrilineal diversity, rather than diversity as a whole -- but it could probably be phrased better.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah ... they're starting to warm up to it ... kinda ... except it's still too heavy and it doesn't work right ... and a bunch of stuff has been taken out of the original concept ... but yeah, it's great!
IOW, it's still a POS, just not quite as much a POS as before. And, oh yeah, it costs money the Army doesn't have.
Jesus. I was a grunt back in the dark ages (late 80's) and I can't tell you how glad I am that we didn't have to lug that crap around with us. The amount we did have to carry was already a killing load; the senior NCO's, who got their start in Vietnam, always told us exactly what we should throw away, and were unanimous in their opinion we were still carrying too much stuff. (And they had heard the same thing from their Korea-veteran sergeants.) Sorry, I don't believe that today's infantrymen are that much bigger and tougher than we were -- the human body hasn't changed, but the amount of crap the brass wants to load onto it keeps going up and up. And this is in the desert! Pretty soon the Iraqis won't have to kill American soldiers, just wait for them to drop dead of heatstroke.
- Polls are not news
- Predictions of the future are not news
- Implications aren't news
- Health claims aren't news
- Science claims aren't news
- Political news is so biased it can't really be considered news any more
- News you can use is not news
- Human events stories are not news
- Profiles of local people are not news
- Any report with music is not news
After reading that list, I have to ask: so, um, what do you consider news, anyway?
Yeah, but, but ... T. rex bit first!
Hohman transfers are slow and cheap; that's why we use them. If you have a much more energy-dense fuel supply (plutonium certainly fills the bill) there are much faster routes available.
If you can't tell the difference between explosions contained in an internal combustion engine to power the drive shaft vs. being moved forward by the actual explosions, then I can't help you.
You're missing the point. The explosions in your car happen very very fast, and the bulk of the vehicle absorbs most of the shock; with the combination of these two effects, you don't perceive them as explosions. Ditto for an Orion drive. As an intermediate case, consider a pulsejet, which is "moved forward by the actual explosions" in much the same way. Pulsejets were incredibly unpleasant to fly, but that had more to do with the engine being mounted near the pilot than with the propulsion technology itself -- and of course you wouldn't mount an Orion drive right next to a human crew anyway, or they'd have a lot worse things than vibration to worry about.
Drug smugglers are probably the last people in the world who want marijuana legalized.
it's doubtful that the company with which the agreement was made is going to look fondly on any attempt to decrease what they were promised (i.e. profits)
Of course they won't look fondly on it, any more than Reznor looks findly on working for them. So what? Both sides have to do what they signed a contract to do; neither has to pretend to like it. What are they going to do to him -- terminate his contract?
He may be full of righteous anger towards his record company, but it sounds like he got what he deserved.
If you forget to lock your house when you leave for work, do you deserve to have your TV stolen?
Obviously you were never in charge of an IT organization. These control freaks are attempting to keep the business network running reliably. ... The IT folks are not here to grant your technological wishes.
Well, I have been in charge of IT (for a small company, granted) and I have to say, your post reflects a fundamental, dangerous, and regrettably common misunderstanding of what corporate IT is for. The purpose of IT is not IT; the purpose of IT is to enable users to get things done. And if users can get things done better on Macs, then by God, it's IT's job to support those Macs. And "support" does not mean willful ignorance -- the latter, unfortunately, being what a lot of shake'n'bake IT techs show any time the word "Apple" is mentioned in their presence.
The gung-ho type we don't mind, they are consistent and wear their beliefs on their sleeve. They are honest and straightforward.
HAHAHAHAHA!
The current crop of jingoists are a bunch of cowards who think war is fine and dandy, as long as it's other people doing the dying. Damn near every top pro-war politician and commentator who was of age to serve during Vietnam found some way to stay out of uniform, and their kids aren't in any hurry to sign up for Iraq either. Oh, how "honest and straightforward" of them!
It's this new, smug, "I'm ashamed of my country" kind of American that I cannot stand
When your country does something wrong -- and when your country is a democracy, in which the leaders are theoretically responsible to the people -- it is good and right to be ashamed. Being ashamed isn't enough, of course; you should also do something to change it. Which, in the civilized world, includes bitching loudly and publicly. The idea that we should keep our mouths shut except to parrot platitudes of support for our Glorious Leaders is repulsive.
I'd hate to know how you'd feel if you were French and actually had to live with the knowledge that not only did your country surrender to Germany without a fight
If you really think France surrendered "without a fight" I'd recommend reading some more history. They were beaten, on the battlefield, by an army which could easily have done the same thing to any other country -- yes, including both the US and Australia -- that had the misfortune to be right next door to Germany at the time. And, in fact, did. The Wehrmacht in its heyday was unstoppable, and it took the Allies years (and a whole hell of a lot of lives) to swamp it in a war of attrition.
BTW, if your country was invaded, you would be cowering behind those "jingoist jerks", you hypocrite.
I served for ten years (two years reserve, eight years active duty, including Desert Storm) and I'm pretty sure that even as a fat old guy with a bum leg, I could still step up and defend US soil if I had to. The "rah rah USA" crowd would be screaming, crying, and pissing their pants.
The "what kind of world would you rather live in" argument for religious belief is really dumb. Would I rather live in a world where there was a just and merciful God who would reward the virtuous, punish the wicked, and make sure everything turned out all right in the end? Sure. But I'd also rather live in a world without cholera, hurricanes, and Paris Hilton. Unfortunately, my preference for such a world will not make these unpleasant things go away -- and it won't cause God to spring into existence, either.
Would you rather live in a world that has meaning and purpose, and a moral absolute, or would you rather live in a world where nothing you does ever matters and the only purpose of existence is for you to feel good about yourself enough to continue to procreate?
Straw man; I don't believe that nothing I do matters, and neither do any of the other non-religious-believers I know. There's a lot in my life that has meaning and purpose: my family, my friends, my work, and my community all come to mind. And there is a moral absolute here, when judged by those standards: that which is good is that which helps make the world the kind of world I want to live in, and my children to inherit. Not by faith, which has never accomplished anything*, but by works. You go on believing in the kind of world you want. Me, I'll be over here making it happen.
*At this point in the argument it's canonical to cite MLK or Gandhi or Mother Theresa and say, "What about so-and-so? Their faith accomplished something!" To which I reply: no, it didn't. Their faith may have motivated them to accomplish something, sure. But you can bet that they were surrounded by a bunch of very faithful people who were just as miserable as they were, and did nothing about it except to pray for relief. What makes people like these few stand out in history is that they didn't rely on faith, they got out and actually did something.
To be corny- nobody's ever died from OD'ing on religion.
... if they could.
The numberless dead in every religious war and genocide since the recorded beginning of religion ~10,000 years ago would disagree with you
Um, vapor is one of two ways water can exist in a vacuum. (Ice is the other; liquid water is right out.) "Water vapor" just means a bunch of individual H20 molecules floating around.
It should be an interesting test. If the ID crowd are sincere in their claim that the Desginer doesn't have to be divine, they'll be delighted. If, on the other hand, they're really just a bunch of religious fanatics, they'll be appalled. (I know which way I'm betting.)
And the potential for anarchy is more than a slight worry for me, being that even if you could replicate the inner-workings of life, it doesn't mean you can give it a "soul".
Do you believe bacteria have souls? Or a knowledge of right and wrong? Because that's what they're working on, you know -- essentially a very similar bacterium. It's a looong time before we have to worry about the mechanics of soul manufacture.
n my personal experience, government IT projects (especially social welfare systems) tend to have a higher problem rate than commercial projects due to conflicting political goals, pork-barrel spending, and faulty oversight. *shrug*
Yeah, like that stupid DARPANet thing. Thank God that never went anywhere! Imagine what the world would be like today if it had become some kind of universal standard. Fortunately, instead, everyone gets "online" with competitive, efficient, private networks run according to good solid capitalist principles. Why, right now, I'm uploading this post to Compuserve with my blazing fast 9600 kbps modem, and my friends on GEnie and Prodigy can even read what I write now that the interoperability contracts have been signed! Will wonders never cease?
I don't know of Disney being anti-OSS specifically, but they're certainly anti-open-content, which I see as closely related. They certainly fight against anything falling into the public domain (although they have no trouble using public domain sources for their own work) and against the fair ue doctrine, and I wouldn't be surprised if they find a reason to go after the Creative Commons and similar licenses at some point.
First of all, as another posted pointed out, the GPL hasn't been tested in a US court; more generally. it is not a magic bullet that guarantees your software will be Henceforth And Forever Free, and it would be nice if people would stop assuming it is. Second, not everyone wants their software to be "Free" in the way RMS does -- the Artistic License is a nice middle ground between the GPL and the BSD, it's the license under which one of the most popular pieces of software ever written (Perl) is released, and it certainly should be possible for authors to use it without being afraid that an ill-informed court will undercut their rights.
Don't be naive. The people who have fought hardest to have draconian copyright laws enacted (Disney, Sony, Microsoft, et al.) are also those who have the most to fear from open source. They will be delighted to have any legal precedent that weakens the power of authors to enforce copyright under the terms of any open source license, and will use such precedent any chance they get. Artistic, GPL, BSD, doesn't matter -- they hate the whole idea of open source, and this decision is a powerful tool for them.
Speaking as a scientist, I'll say this: thanks for letting me know that any speculation about anything I'm not 100% sure of is worthless. I'll stop any work on anything that isn't obvious right away. In return, I ask that you live up to your end of the bargain: give up any and all technology that has resulted from anyone ever speculating a little bit beyond the then-current limits of knowledge, and go back to chipping flint tools and living in a cave. Do we have a deal?
"Microsoft for instance has excelled in marketing the operating system, and has a good track record in fending off competition."
Thos are not things Windows does well. Those are things Microsoft's marketing and legal arms do well. So, if I want to sell something, or crush people who are selling something that competes with what I'm selling, great, Microsoft is the place to be. On the other hand, if I want to, you know, run my computer, I want a good operating system, not a good salesman.
Why would a government who wants to "control those people" embrace the globalized free market?
You mean, like China? They've done a pretty good job of embracing the globalized free market, but I don't think anyone can deny that the Chinese government still has a pretty strong interest in control.
Or are you so unconcerned because the Australians are mostly white? Because, you know, governments run by white people never do eeevil things like those little yellow people do.
Except, the immigrants of old, did not come to your country, and want to out and out destroy it and replace it with a theocracy.
Then as now, a small minority did; and then as now, nativists seized on the statements and actions of a few fanatics to create a national hysteria about how that good American old-time religion was under dire threat from these strange alien infidels.
They also weren't so willing to do this, that they employed suicide bombers from within their numbers.
The suicide-bomber thing is unique, I admit. OTOH, immigrant (and native-born) terrorists weren't shy about planting bombs. You know the old cartoon image of the mad bomber, a guy in a mustache and a bowler hat holding a grenade with a lit fuse? There was a time when that wasn't a joke.
They also pretty much immigrated legally...not just sneaking in, and waving their old country's flags at protests.
You're conflating two phenomena: illegal immigration from Mexico and other Latin American countries, which may be vocal but is largely nonviolent, and Arab and other Muslim immigration from the Middle East, which is largely legal -- and done under much tougher laws than existed a hundred years ago. Also, again, largely noviolent, with a couple of notable exceptions; see "hysteria" above.
I'd dare say, at least in the old days for the immigrants to the US, they did want to become Americans, to integrate into the larger society, to speak English, etc.
No. They didn't. They formed ethnic ghettoes, clung fiercely to the old language and the old ways, and tried their damndest to re-create a little slice of the Old Country. The only part of America they wanted was the prosperity. Their kids and grandkids were the ones who got out. Like I said, I think a lot of modern Americans forget how difficult this process was, and how long it took, because for several generations, it was a done deal for all the major immigrant groups up until that point. However, we're seeing it happening with the children of the wave of Asian, especially Vietnamese, immigrants who started arriving in the mid-1970's; and it will happen with Middle Eastern and East African immigrants now, if we give it time. It's pretty much what America does.
Immigrants have hardly ever wanted to abandon their old culture for their new one. The historically high levels of immigration to the US and the UK have been driven by economics. "I can't get a job here in [wherever], so I'll pack up my family and 50 or so of my closest friends and see who's hiring in New York."
I think modern Americans tend to forget this, because of the pattern of immigration to the US. There was a critical period of about 50 years in the middle of the 20th century when immigration was much, much more difficult than at just about any time before or since. So the huge numbers of Irish, Italians, Poles, etc. who came here in the years before WW1 had time to assimilate. The ethnic ghettoes disappeared; the old languages died out except for a scattering of loanwords and very light accents; by the time the gates opened back up, ethnic divisions that had once been deadly serious and nostalgia for "the Old Country" were largely relegated to the status of old jokes.
But the fact of the matter is, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these immigrants were seen as every bit as alien as Middle Eastern and Asian immigrants are now considered to be, and with good reason! They came largely from peasant societies that had changed little since the Middle Ages -- they sure as hell didn't have the values of Industrial-Revolution-era America -- and the conflicts that resulted, frankly, made 9/11 look like child's play. Roughly from the end of the Civil War to WW1, large parts of America looked like Ethniklashistan.
And yet, somehow, the nation not only survived but prospered. Golly. Imagine that.
Mitochondria are a hell of a lot more than "degraded bacteria;" try taking the mitochondria out of your cells and see how long you last. ;)
... or a mammal ... or, for that matter, anything more complex than a jellyfish. Our mitochondria have evolved along with the rest of us for the last two-billion-plus years. I understand the distinction you're trying to make -- basically, this study only measures matrilineal diversity, rather than diversity as a whole -- but it could probably be phrased better.
Also, human mitichondrial DNA is just as much "human DNA" as is nuclear DNA. Sure, it was bacterial originally, but the point at which it became a vital part of our cells was very early in the evolution of eukaryotes, a looong time before there was any such thing as human being