If the game has DRM or is too expensive, don't buy it. Pirate it!
This attitude doesn't help. If lots of people steal a game, it tells publishers a market for the product exists but it's too easy to acquire said product without paying. This leads business-types to require the implementation of even more draconian measures, which leads to more problems for users and thus more stealing... you can see where this is going.
The best strategy is to not play the game at all. Yes, this idea 'sucks' in many ways, especially if it's a really good game. But boycotts only work if people eliminate the product or service from their lives completely, or at least give all the market share - both mental and monetary - to a worthy competitor.
If you’re doing something you enjoy, you’re getting paid what you consider a reasonable recompense for your performance, and you stay up all night anyway... how is free pizza not a good deal?
Because as soon as you argue yourself into complying, it gets easier and easier for you manager to ask you to do it again. And then it gets easier and easier to ask for such effort for tasks that are less and less worth the effort. Then other departments see how projects still manage to get done within ridiculous time frames, and thus some idiot in a boardroom start assuming that the aforementioned ridiculous time frames are actually quite reasonable. That's when the de rigueur late nights now become de facto late nights.
The worst part, though, is that you'll find yourself starting to hate pizza.
Won't this problem be solved by an inevitable lawsuit? I'm hardly a lawyer, but this kind of thing sounds like libel to me. Even if the victim can't find out the identity of the bully, can't they at least go after the people who provided the public forum for the bullying? I'm not just asking rhetorically; I'm genuinely interested in an answer.
On the other hand, the 'meaningless' work done by those 'mediocre' scientists could very well be setting the foundation for the next Einstein to do something truly marvelous. Science is not a series of disconnected "Eureka!" moments; it's a steady accumulation of small but meaningful hypotheses that allow those superstars to formulate workable theories.
And what about all those potential superstars being lost, because they can't get the work experience they need to develop their potential? How many of those next Einsteins have gone off to work in something totally unrelated because of financial concerns? Sometimes it takes a lifetime for someone to produce that truly meaningful work. By narrowing our focus to people doing 'useful' work, we kill a lot of long-term potential that could arise from the research being done for the sake of research.
That 'free' bit is a great selling point but is probably one of the site's biggest flaws. The comment in the summary about 'a site with the least riff-raff' isn't just a silly notion. When I used OKCupid regularly, I encountered a large number of women I would classify as crazy. That's not to say the other sites manage to filter out 100% of the crazies but personal experience has shown a connection between 'Cheap' and 'Crazy,' thus a free site is going to have a higher proportion of 'riff-raff.'
Immortal strikes me as the wrong choice of wording here, as these cells can still die quite easily. Aggressive would be a better fit, as the mutated cells have their suppression mechanisms deactivated, leading to proliferation of mutated cells which then spawn further mutations, and the cycle goes on until the cancer cells start invading surrounding tissue and/or metastasizing throughout the body.
Keep in mind that the pharmaceutical industry isn't just the rich guys in suits that head those massive companies which are raking in obscene amounts of money. There are plenty of smaller companies as well, cranking out the everyday drugs that people take for granted and making very little money in the process.
The cost being talked about could largely be opportunity cost, as the people who aren't taking their doses of well-established, off-patent, one-dollar-per-dose medications will many times need a new prescription, once the ailment that wasn't cured comes roaring back. Multiply that by many of these types of drugs and many people abusing them, and you see that manufacturers are forced to put out bigger orders of these low margin items. If people would just take their meds properly, then the resources opened up can be put towards products that might just turn a profit, and allow the business to grow instead of just survive.
It's not like a lot of "TV shows" and "movies" being "performed" by "actors" are that great, and yet their writers are all on strike over how they're getting screwed out of royalty money. And yet I'm sure it'll work for them, so why not for songwriters?
What I don't understand about the ID vs. evolution argument is why ID is always assumed to mean belief in God/support for organized religion and evolution/natural selection couldn't have been "intelligently designed."
Because ID is frequently invoked by creationists after attempts at injecting creationist ideas into science classes have been rejected.
Because any real scientists - even the ones who have strong religious beliefs - don't impose presumptions onto their research.
Because the terms 'intelligent designer' and 'creator' might as well be the same damn thing, and no amount of wordplay can disguise the fact that intelligent design is nothing more than a non-denominational version of creationism.
As a fellow agnostic, you should understand all too well why ID is such a dangerous notion. The fact that we don't know everything is the very reason why scientific research must maintain neutrality. Otherwise we're not really getting any results that are worth a damn. The 'debate' isn't ID vs Evolution; it's really ID vs the Scientific Method.
Evolution would eventually be discarded if enough evidence could be gathered to support a new, but still refutable, hypothesis that made better predictions about observable phenomena than the theory of evolution does. ID by its nature cannot meet these requirements, as its fundamental assumption is that an unknown designer did it. It makes no testable predictions, it has no refutable hypothesis and any observation or experiment can be twisted to fit the original assumption with enough effort. ID is just creationism with some pseudo-scientific packaging and most of the red-flag terms taken away, and as such it has no place in a science class.
The money may be available under your scenario, but there's no guarantee it would be spent on science. Unless the budget is being allocated by science-minded people, or at the very least people who listen to science-minded advisers, a lot of that money might not ever be directed into useful research.
While everyone loves to demonize the military, the truth is a lot of that research is directed into some very pragmatic objectives (e.g. keep soldiers alive, protect infrastructure from damage, go farther on less fuel, etc.). Even the less pragmatic ideas (e.g. laser cannons on the moon) can result in funding going into areas of research that could lead to practical applications. Do you think we'd have nuclear power plants if it weren't for the race to build a better bomb?
Brains aren't flexible; they're squishy! You people should have learned this in high school biology lab... or was I the only one who dissected the pig's head for extra credit?
I haven't bought a gaming mag since I let my subscription to Nintendo Power expire back in 1996. Amazingly enough, that's the same year I was finally able to get a 'net connection at home. It's not exactly that simple, though, as I was also sick of the way NP hyped many mediocre games to death while ignoring some true gems. The few times I've flipped through any newer mag since then, I've been put off by the ads, the 'articles' that read like ads and the glowing praise of games that I later found to be utter trash.
While it's certainly not news that many magazines are trash, and that print media is being slowly killed by the internet, it's interesting to consider that the target audience for gaming mags are also people who tend to be more tech savvy than the average joe. If they're wondering about their inability to attract their target audience, I guess they haven't realized how much harder they're going to have to work compared to mags that cover other subjects.
You're right, a synthetic chromosome itself isn't exactly new, so I suppose I was a little overenthusiastic about that point. What's novel about this article's subject is that the genes were selected to result in a new functioning organism, and not just selected as a way of transmitting new genes into an existing organism, or as a method of cloning.
I don't have any links either, as I didn't find anything that could stand alone as a decent reference. Mind you, I also didn't look very hard.
enormity/nrmti/
-noun, plural -ties
1. outrageous or heinous character; atrociousness: the enormity of war crimes.
2. something outrageous or heinous, as an offense: The bombing of the defenseless population was an enormity beyond belief. 3. greatness of size, scope, extent, or influence; immensity: The enormity of such an act of generosity is staggering.
The summary's use of the term 'genetic code' actually plays down the enormity of what's written about in TFA. We've been able to assemble 'genetic code' for a long time now - designer oligomers are a very useful tool for researchers, especially with regards to techniques like PCR, which requires a primer to really get started. The accomplishment written about in the article is that a chromosome was constructed. This isn't merely a snippet of code, but hundreds of genes (composed of hundreds of thousands of base pairs), arranged appropriately on the necessary protein structures. When the article says it was painstakingly assembled, I don't doubt it. That kind of synthesis is remarkably difficult, time-consuming and prone to error if careful attention isn't given to every detail.
Also note that this isn't actually synthetic life, just a synthetic genome. The components which translate that genome into a functional organism (i.e. the cell and it's structures) were not created. But this is none the less a great leap forward, and I'm sure the resulting findings and work to come from this will unlock vast possibilities, as well as elucidate some currently unknown processes and problems in molecular biology.
Speaking of possibilities, let's also try not to get too caught up in the nonsense here. This stuff about combating global warming and building drugs and/or bioweapons is just idle speculation, and could be applied to pretty much any kind of molecular biology research. This is just one step, albeit a big one, towards a possible larger goal.
That would be something studied during the approval process for a particular drug when adapted for this particular dosage form. It's a good question to bring up, but it will definitely be answered with time and research.
Slashdot Mirror
If the game has DRM or is too expensive, don't buy it. Pirate it!
This attitude doesn't help. If lots of people steal a game, it tells publishers a market for the product exists but it's too easy to acquire said product without paying. This leads business-types to require the implementation of even more draconian measures, which leads to more problems for users and thus more stealing... you can see where this is going.
The best strategy is to not play the game at all. Yes, this idea 'sucks' in many ways, especially if it's a really good game. But boycotts only work if people eliminate the product or service from their lives completely, or at least give all the market share - both mental and monetary - to a worthy competitor.
While it's impressive that the bacteria can endure 553 days in space, the real question is whether they can also sort tiny screws in space.
If you’re doing something you enjoy, you’re getting paid what you consider a reasonable recompense for your performance, and you stay up all night anyway... how is free pizza not a good deal?
Because as soon as you argue yourself into complying, it gets easier and easier for you manager to ask you to do it again. And then it gets easier and easier to ask for such effort for tasks that are less and less worth the effort. Then other departments see how projects still manage to get done within ridiculous time frames, and thus some idiot in a boardroom start assuming that the aforementioned ridiculous time frames are actually quite reasonable. That's when the de rigueur late nights now become de facto late nights.
The worst part, though, is that you'll find yourself starting to hate pizza.
Won't this problem be solved by an inevitable lawsuit? I'm hardly a lawyer, but this kind of thing sounds like libel to me. Even if the victim can't find out the identity of the bully, can't they at least go after the people who provided the public forum for the bullying? I'm not just asking rhetorically; I'm genuinely interested in an answer.
On the other hand, the 'meaningless' work done by those 'mediocre' scientists could very well be setting the foundation for the next Einstein to do something truly marvelous. Science is not a series of disconnected "Eureka!" moments; it's a steady accumulation of small but meaningful hypotheses that allow those superstars to formulate workable theories.
And what about all those potential superstars being lost, because they can't get the work experience they need to develop their potential? How many of those next Einsteins have gone off to work in something totally unrelated because of financial concerns? Sometimes it takes a lifetime for someone to produce that truly meaningful work. By narrowing our focus to people doing 'useful' work, we kill a lot of long-term potential that could arise from the research being done for the sake of research.
That 'free' bit is a great selling point but is probably one of the site's biggest flaws. The comment in the summary about 'a site with the least riff-raff' isn't just a silly notion. When I used OKCupid regularly, I encountered a large number of women I would classify as crazy. That's not to say the other sites manage to filter out 100% of the crazies but personal experience has shown a connection between 'Cheap' and 'Crazy,' thus a free site is going to have a higher proportion of 'riff-raff.'
'We found his humor delightfully nerdy, and he fitted right in,' said Kevin Grazier, who is a planetary scientist and author.
Ugh, really? It's hard to keep feeling superior to the artsies when other scientists are using words like 'fitted' in this context.
Immortal strikes me as the wrong choice of wording here, as these cells can still die quite easily. Aggressive would be a better fit, as the mutated cells have their suppression mechanisms deactivated, leading to proliferation of mutated cells which then spawn further mutations, and the cycle goes on until the cancer cells start invading surrounding tissue and/or metastasizing throughout the body.
I wish I had mod points, because that really made me laugh. Ah, the memories of a world before Google.
Keep in mind that the pharmaceutical industry isn't just the rich guys in suits that head those massive companies which are raking in obscene amounts of money. There are plenty of smaller companies as well, cranking out the everyday drugs that people take for granted and making very little money in the process.
The cost being talked about could largely be opportunity cost, as the people who aren't taking their doses of well-established, off-patent, one-dollar-per-dose medications will many times need a new prescription, once the ailment that wasn't cured comes roaring back. Multiply that by many of these types of drugs and many people abusing them, and you see that manufacturers are forced to put out bigger orders of these low margin items. If people would just take their meds properly, then the resources opened up can be put towards products that might just turn a profit, and allow the business to grow instead of just survive.
It's not like a lot of "TV shows" and "movies" being "performed" by "actors" are that great, and yet their writers are all on strike over how they're getting screwed out of royalty money. And yet I'm sure it'll work for them, so why not for songwriters?
Aren't those people who don't understand the public nature of the Internet the very ones who are exorcising their rights?
It's being released on Dec. 7th, according to its website.
Because ID is frequently invoked by creationists after attempts at injecting creationist ideas into science classes have been rejected.
Because any real scientists - even the ones who have strong religious beliefs - don't impose presumptions onto their research.
Because the terms 'intelligent designer' and 'creator' might as well be the same damn thing, and no amount of wordplay can disguise the fact that intelligent design is nothing more than a non-denominational version of creationism.
As a fellow agnostic, you should understand all too well why ID is such a dangerous notion. The fact that we don't know everything is the very reason why scientific research must maintain neutrality. Otherwise we're not really getting any results that are worth a damn. The 'debate' isn't ID vs Evolution; it's really ID vs the Scientific Method.
Evolution would eventually be discarded if enough evidence could be gathered to support a new, but still refutable, hypothesis that made better predictions about observable phenomena than the theory of evolution does. ID by its nature cannot meet these requirements, as its fundamental assumption is that an unknown designer did it. It makes no testable predictions, it has no refutable hypothesis and any observation or experiment can be twisted to fit the original assumption with enough effort. ID is just creationism with some pseudo-scientific packaging and most of the red-flag terms taken away, and as such it has no place in a science class.
That would be an awesome name for a band.
Because of this recent story.
The money may be available under your scenario, but there's no guarantee it would be spent on science. Unless the budget is being allocated by science-minded people, or at the very least people who listen to science-minded advisers, a lot of that money might not ever be directed into useful research.
While everyone loves to demonize the military, the truth is a lot of that research is directed into some very pragmatic objectives (e.g. keep soldiers alive, protect infrastructure from damage, go farther on less fuel, etc.). Even the less pragmatic ideas (e.g. laser cannons on the moon) can result in funding going into areas of research that could lead to practical applications. Do you think we'd have nuclear power plants if it weren't for the race to build a better bomb?
Says the man whose email address references a Pauly Shore movie. ;D
Brains aren't flexible; they're squishy! You people should have learned this in high school biology lab... or was I the only one who dissected the pig's head for extra credit?
I haven't bought a gaming mag since I let my subscription to Nintendo Power expire back in 1996. Amazingly enough, that's the same year I was finally able to get a 'net connection at home. It's not exactly that simple, though, as I was also sick of the way NP hyped many mediocre games to death while ignoring some true gems. The few times I've flipped through any newer mag since then, I've been put off by the ads, the 'articles' that read like ads and the glowing praise of games that I later found to be utter trash.
While it's certainly not news that many magazines are trash, and that print media is being slowly killed by the internet, it's interesting to consider that the target audience for gaming mags are also people who tend to be more tech savvy than the average joe. If they're wondering about their inability to attract their target audience, I guess they haven't realized how much harder they're going to have to work compared to mags that cover other subjects.
You're right, a synthetic chromosome itself isn't exactly new, so I suppose I was a little overenthusiastic about that point. What's novel about this article's subject is that the genes were selected to result in a new functioning organism, and not just selected as a way of transmitting new genes into an existing organism, or as a method of cloning.
I don't have any links either, as I didn't find anything that could stand alone as a decent reference. Mind you, I also didn't look very hard.
enormity /nrmti/
-noun, plural -ties
1. outrageous or heinous character; atrociousness: the enormity of war crimes.
2. something outrageous or heinous, as an offense: The bombing of the defenseless population was an enormity beyond belief.
3. greatness of size, scope, extent, or influence; immensity: The enormity of such an act of generosity is staggering.
The summary's use of the term 'genetic code' actually plays down the enormity of what's written about in TFA. We've been able to assemble 'genetic code' for a long time now - designer oligomers are a very useful tool for researchers, especially with regards to techniques like PCR, which requires a primer to really get started. The accomplishment written about in the article is that a chromosome was constructed. This isn't merely a snippet of code, but hundreds of genes (composed of hundreds of thousands of base pairs), arranged appropriately on the necessary protein structures. When the article says it was painstakingly assembled, I don't doubt it. That kind of synthesis is remarkably difficult, time-consuming and prone to error if careful attention isn't given to every detail.
Also note that this isn't actually synthetic life, just a synthetic genome. The components which translate that genome into a functional organism (i.e. the cell and it's structures) were not created. But this is none the less a great leap forward, and I'm sure the resulting findings and work to come from this will unlock vast possibilities, as well as elucidate some currently unknown processes and problems in molecular biology.
Speaking of possibilities, let's also try not to get too caught up in the nonsense here. This stuff about combating global warming and building drugs and/or bioweapons is just idle speculation, and could be applied to pretty much any kind of molecular biology research. This is just one step, albeit a big one, towards a possible larger goal.
Well, those consoles have to be used for something until the good games come out.
That would be something studied during the approval process for a particular drug when adapted for this particular dosage form. It's a good question to bring up, but it will definitely be answered with time and research.