Hardly. I'm not comparing genetically modified fish with man-eating dinosaurs. If you think more carefully about the end of Jurassic Park, you'd remember something about how all the dinosaurs were either rendered sterile or all of the same gender (I forget which now, but I think it was more likely the same gender, and it turned out they were able to change their gender).
But the point of the whole thing was that while it seems innocuous enough to have salmon that merely grow faster because of its genetically modified disposition, it doesn't mean that there aren't any problems we cannot foresee. Just because it seems like there shouldn't be any problems, doesn't mean there won't be. I hardly think it alarmist when people are wanting to release GM salmon into the wild and think that "it's ok, because they are all sterile".
Besides, alarmists' concerns can be very real - remember that just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.:)
Seriously though, in light of the canola seed lawsuit in Canada where the farmer is being sued for having GM modified seeds created by Monsanto on his farm because it was blown onto his property from his neighbor's farm, the other poster's premise about these salmons being IP and fishermen being sued for having IP without having paid for them will be very possible.
Sounding like "the end of Jursassic Park (movie)", I was specifically referring to what I think they were saying, not necessarily what actually happend - that life will always find a way to survive and procreate. I certainly don't mean that these salmons will turn hermaphroditic (though as you pointed out, some species of fish are transsexual - nevermind the fine points between transsexual and hermaphroditic), nor that there will be killer salmon out there eating people. But I think that genetic engineering and modification is still at a stage where people are still not very sure what is going on when they are tinkering with these things. I still think that they are not sure what is going on when they pump the animals with the growth hormones either (besides that they are growing faster/bigger). Certainly, to be reactionary about these things without being informed about the topic is bad, but so is thinking about releasing these salmon without having observed these salmon in controlled and isolated environments.
Quite frankly, I just didn't realize that they've already gone to the point of genetically modifying animals that they are considering releasing into the environment and possibly for consumption. I thought we still had a ways to go on the GM plants.
I think that just as you say, we should be more informed about the topic, so too, should the people doing these genetic modification experiments become more knowledgeable about the consequences of what they are doing before they unleash it onto the world. After all, once released, there's no way of catching them again. And even if they are sterile, who knows, maybe nature WILL find a way - like what the end of Jurassic Park was trying to say.
The ringed pattern makes it look more like a ripple, with crests and troughs, and seem to have been something energetic that happened that had the energy radiated outward in a circle.
See, now THAT was informative. But then, I have another question: I understand dust can get radiated too - don't they get inhaled into the body? (Yeah, I know, the mucus traps the dust and we pick/blow our nose to get it out). How about the air molecules? Oxygen? Nitrogen? I understand one of the concerns about Chernobyl was that the wind was going to carry radioactive particles to Western Europe and such, which doesn't seemed to have happened or wasn't of significance (that we know of), what about that?
If we keep using nuclear sources of energy and every once in a while, an "accident" happens and irradiates everyone, evolution will eventually "select" humans who are resistant to mutation due to radiation. As they say, what doesn't kill us will only make us stronger.:)
ummm...but what about the people at Hiroshima? Didn't they eat anything that was irradiated by the bomb? Or was it just so weak and brief that most of the foodstuff that grew later didn't have significant radiation?
Magnetic field watermarking technology....
on
Magnet Patent Suits
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· Score: 2
Perhaps someone should devise a way to make these magnets to exhbit a special pattern of magnetic fields (even better if each magnet has a unique pattern) - a kind of magnetic field watermarking, if you will (like the SDMI sort). Then whenever they see magnets then can use some kind of magnetic watermark detector to see if it's Magnequench magnet! That should help them make sure that people are using genuine Magnequench magnet. I'll bet the watermarking will be as effective as SDMI's music watermarking scheme!
Not exactly agreeing with you, when I saw that statement about single point of failure right after the statement about the 80% less heat and 80% less power (do the two really translate so directly like that?), I thought that there must be some other points of failure in EACH machine, so just because the CPU is not as likely to fail doesn't mean some other part couldn't be a single point of failure. Of course, if you argue that the single point of failure refers to the whole rack, that's a different story, but from the way it was stated, it seemed to refer to the single machine, and I really don't see how running a cooler server changes single point of failure to NEARLY zero, just as you say.
Maybe people just like to use mission-critical sounding buzzword phrases like "single-point of failure" (or mission-critical, for that matter:)
Methinks, perhaps, an example that predates Dragonball is more appropriate - Popeye.
Popeye was definitely vegetarian-oriented.
Popeye the sailor - girlfriend's name is Olive Oyl. Eats spinach and gets strong. Popeye, if I'm not mistaken, is a kind of bean as well. Then there's Sweetpea, and ultimately, there was Wimpy, who eats hamburgers (a guy who eats hamburgers is called Wimpy, is fat, and constantly have financial problems, hmmm....)
It seems that Rambus is now the patent and litigation company. Do they even sell memory anymore?:)
I don't know if there's an active boycott of Rambus products, but I think there should be. The industry should also do something about Rambus, if possible.
America, where dreams come true...
on
Tito In Space
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· Score: 3
but then, isn't it funny how an American has to go to Russia to make fulfill his own lifelong dream? You'd think that his dream of going up in space would be more reachable here in the U.S. than anywhere else. Ok, Ok, so if he wasn't in the U.S., he wouldn't have been able to make himself the millions that he needed to make this happen...but still, just seems very ironic to me.
But then there's the slight problem of schedule deadlines, timing and market share, isn't there? Hey, I care about quality of software, but from a business perspective, it's probably secondary. As long as it doesn't hurt business, a few (thousand) bugs isn't a big deal, right? Right?
Why is that? From the looks of the description of the project, it seems to be open source - at least that's what they say. I'm not sure what you mean by 'proprietary' vis-a-vis OpenDivX. Is it proprietary? How so? (I really don't see how it is from looking at the info at the site).
Umm...but all of the MPEG-x formats are lossy. They differ in degree of lossy-ness. Yes, MPEG-4 throws away more data (and also compresses better) than MPEG-1. But I'd say MPEG-4 is much better than some of the streaming format out there now, sometimes you could barely make out a blob of a head on some of these (new fangled) Internet streaming videos.
As far as open source MPEG-4 goes, that's why I brought up OpenDivX - at least from the look of it, it seems like an Open Source MPEG-4 codec that was originally stolen from Microsoft that they are trying to re-create so as to be non-stolen.
If not MPEG-4 (they can certainly make it legal, if they wanted to). MPEG-4 itself doesn't encourage piracy. Its characteristics allows pirates to copy DVD movies and such much more easily. But what we are talking about here is streaming, and it seems to me that for streaming purposes, the smaller the better, no?
And besides, they could certainly at least use MPEG-2? DVD's quality seems pretty good on MPEG-2. Why MPEG-1 is my question.
The other thing is, VCDs used MPEG-1 and was extremely lossy and definitely encouraged piracy (people all over Southeast Asia watched VCDs and DVDs more than VHS) as well.
I've seen some of the DivX encoded MPEG-4 videos, and it is not as lossy as you state. They are much better than the VCDs. They have pixelating artifacts when there's fast motion, but for slow motion or relatively still scenes, the quality is almost inditinguishable from DVD quality.
MPEG-4 itself is a standard, not a Microsoft IP, just like MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and the forthcoming MPEG-7. DivX;-) was stolen from Microsoft's own MPEG-4 codec, and that's why they are trying to re-write it to move away from that.
That said, I still say that OpenDivX's MPEG-4 codec would be really great for streaming once they have it redone. Streaming and MPEG-4 do not encourage piracy by themselves per se (geez, I'm beginning to sound like the NRA - 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people').
MPEG-1 is a bit older and not as efficient as the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 formats. So why not use MPEG-4? Project Mayo is working on OpenDivX, the an Open Source MPEG-4 codec. It'd seem to me that they should try to marry the two together, to use the OpenDivX on this streaming server. Unless there's some technical issue that I don't know about. Remember that MPEG-4 can reduce a DVD (~4.7GB?) down to a CD size (~700MB-800MB) with only a little degradation in quality and possibly size of the original image.
Actually, Gnutella is a protocol. What happens is whenever you create a prototype P2P program like Gnutella, you find out how it communicates, and then you could call it your protocol. Gnutella was a program first, protocol second. But now with the proliferation of clients, it becomes a protocol. I guess the same thing applies to Napster and OpenNap (though I'm not familiar with the way it works). JXTA, on the other hand, starts with the protocol, and is looking for clients and applications.
I think, though, P2P and distributed networking is trying to realize the dream of "The network is the computer" which I think is a quote attributed to Scott McNealy, if I'm not mistaken. hmm....
That is not to say that I don't believe it didn't have influence. What I am saying is the to infer the connection between spending $1 billion in Linux development and profitability is simply the wrong thing to do. Of course, if you were a linux/open source marketing machine, that's whole different story.
Do you know where they derive their profits from? Do you know how much profit did IBM turn on Linux specifically? I'm sure IBM can make Linux more profitable for them in the future than it is now, and it's just a matter of time. I have no doubt that open source and profitability are not mutually exclusive goals either.
In fact, I think the best way to make open source and Linux profitable is what IBM is doing, not necessarily what RedHat is doing. IBM provides more solutions. Whereas very often, RedHat just provide more questions (ok, it's just me).
Sometimes I wonder if these kinds of mistakes erring on the side of open source isn't intentional (whether consciously or unconsciously). Slashdot editors can hide behind the semi-official line of "we are/are not real journalists" to promote their agenda and plead ignorance when the facts are wrong (as they often are).
That being said, I have found some very useful and informative and correct information, many of them coming from the community that make up Slashdot. I find it disappointing when the editors who are responsible for deciding which stories to post and for adding editorial content don't get their facts straight, and depend on the community to correct them.
In-depth knowledge of enterprise level data computer is NOT a prerequisite to being a nerd, but if you are going to be an authoritative source of information pretending to have some journalistic integrity, you should have your facts straight. Anyone with even a scant knowledge of commercial database system should know that comparing Oracle and DB2 with Postgres and MySql is comparing apples and oranges. They are not even close to being in the same class. If you don't know why, perhaps you should find out yourself.
There is no direct and definite correlation between their investment in Linux and their profitability. As someone else pointed out, it's only a small part of IBM. I remember about 7 years ago, when Microsoft's worth (back when it was still relatively small) was only about as much as IBM's AS/400 business line...
Perhaps it's because many people feel that while anime is great, it'd make more sense to leave stuff like that on a more anime-centric site (after all, isn't that why animefu.com was created?) Why CmdrTaco feel the urge to post stuff there and here is beyond me. Personally, I think anime related stuff, unless truly groundbreaking, should stay off of Slashdot. I think that he posted the thing also to promote animefu.com - I could be wrong...
We could probably say the same about you guys with the cameras. I don't know which is worse, having a government that tells you what is decent and what isn't, or a government that watches my every move in the public space with a thousands and thousands of cameras.
Arguably, the censorship (or in this case, FCC's guideline for decency in broadcasting) seem like the lesser of two evil only in the sense that they are going after the broadcasters - we have the wonderful thing we called the Internet now that prevents us from being censored, so your average citizens aren't affected.
The camera thing is already there and is affecting the average citizen. Of course, it should be noted that only criminals who commit crimes in public places need to worry.
Isn't technology great? Too bad they don't yet have technology that will prevent you from commiting crimes instead of punishing you afterwards for commiting crimes. Perhaps embedded chips that shocks you when you are about to commit a crime, even if it is as low tech as people watching cameras and manually press a button to shock criminals in the middle of committing a crime (as opposed to a chip that can sense your brain wave patterns and knows you are thinking evil thoughts and zap you accordingly).
Perhaps a different technology will come along, say artificial genetic selection - the DNA would be modified such that all people with violent and criminal dispositions will be prevented from being born, so that all through the world, there would be a flock of docile, obedient, and possibly intelligence reduced people, except for a handful of wealthy powerful people that pay to enhance their own abilities. These people would control the world through the money and the power that they wield as a minority elite (oh, wait...).
:-)
Negative Refractive Index stuff and Solar Sails
on
How Solar Sails Work
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· Score: 3
Instead of aluminum coated mylar, maybe they'd like to investigate the use of 3M's (no, I don't work for 3M or have stock in 3M) Radiant Mirror Film, which was first covered last year in this article which explains 3M's research into the birefringent effect. This film would be able to reflect more light than conventional light reflective material such as metal film coated mirrors.
On a separate though, I wonder if they could use the negative refractive index composite material in making the solar sails, since they are probably still investigating the material to use for the sail?
From yesterday's linked article:
"``negative refraction'' would make possible the construction of a lens capable of focusing light to limits not currently achievable. "
and a related article on the Economist about how negative refractive index material can possibly help make a "perfect lens"
Perhaps they could use the phenomenon of the negative refractive index to make more efficient or more maneuverable sails?
Slashdot Mirror
But the point of the whole thing was that while it seems innocuous enough to have salmon that merely grow faster because of its genetically modified disposition, it doesn't mean that there aren't any problems we cannot foresee. Just because it seems like there shouldn't be any problems, doesn't mean there won't be. I hardly think it alarmist when people are wanting to release GM salmon into the wild and think that "it's ok, because they are all sterile".
Besides, alarmists' concerns can be very real - remember that just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. :)
Seriously though, in light of the canola seed lawsuit in Canada where the farmer is being sued for having GM modified seeds created by Monsanto on his farm because it was blown onto his property from his neighbor's farm, the other poster's premise about these salmons being IP and fishermen being sued for having IP without having paid for them will be very possible.
Quite frankly, I just didn't realize that they've already gone to the point of genetically modifying animals that they are considering releasing into the environment and possibly for consumption. I thought we still had a ways to go on the GM plants.
I think that just as you say, we should be more informed about the topic, so too, should the people doing these genetic modification experiments become more knowledgeable about the consequences of what they are doing before they unleash it onto the world. After all, once released, there's no way of catching them again. And even if they are sterile, who knows, maybe nature WILL find a way - like what the end of Jurassic Park was trying to say.
The ringed pattern makes it look more like a ripple, with crests and troughs, and seem to have been something energetic that happened that had the energy radiated outward in a circle.
It would obviously not be as controversial, but I think that's a female fish...
See, now THAT was informative. But then, I have another question: I understand dust can get radiated too - don't they get inhaled into the body? (Yeah, I know, the mucus traps the dust and we pick/blow our nose to get it out). How about the air molecules? Oxygen? Nitrogen? I understand one of the concerns about Chernobyl was that the wind was going to carry radioactive particles to Western Europe and such, which doesn't seemed to have happened or wasn't of significance (that we know of), what about that?
If we keep using nuclear sources of energy and every once in a while, an "accident" happens and irradiates everyone, evolution will eventually "select" humans who are resistant to mutation due to radiation. As they say, what doesn't kill us will only make us stronger. :)
ummm...but what about the people at Hiroshima? Didn't they eat anything that was irradiated by the bomb? Or was it just so weak and brief that most of the foodstuff that grew later didn't have significant radiation?
Perhaps someone should devise a way to make these magnets to exhbit a special pattern of magnetic fields (even better if each magnet has a unique pattern) - a kind of magnetic field watermarking, if you will (like the SDMI sort). Then whenever they see magnets then can use some kind of magnetic watermark detector to see if it's Magnequench magnet! That should help them make sure that people are using genuine Magnequench magnet. I'll bet the watermarking will be as effective as SDMI's music watermarking scheme!
Maybe people just like to use mission-critical sounding buzzword phrases like "single-point of failure" (or mission-critical, for that matter :)
Popeye was definitely vegetarian-oriented. Popeye the sailor - girlfriend's name is Olive Oyl. Eats spinach and gets strong. Popeye, if I'm not mistaken, is a kind of bean as well. Then there's Sweetpea, and ultimately, there was Wimpy, who eats hamburgers (a guy who eats hamburgers is called Wimpy, is fat, and constantly have financial problems, hmmm....)
I don't know if there's an active boycott of Rambus products, but I think there should be. The industry should also do something about Rambus, if possible.
but then, isn't it funny how an American has to go to Russia to make fulfill his own lifelong dream? You'd think that his dream of going up in space would be more reachable here in the U.S. than anywhere else. Ok, Ok, so if he wasn't in the U.S., he wouldn't have been able to make himself the millions that he needed to make this happen...but still, just seems very ironic to me.
But then there's the slight problem of schedule deadlines, timing and market share, isn't there? Hey, I care about quality of software, but from a business perspective, it's probably secondary. As long as it doesn't hurt business, a few (thousand) bugs isn't a big deal, right? Right?
Why is that? From the looks of the description of the project, it seems to be open source - at least that's what they say. I'm not sure what you mean by 'proprietary' vis-a-vis OpenDivX. Is it proprietary? How so? (I really don't see how it is from looking at the info at the site).
As far as open source MPEG-4 goes, that's why I brought up OpenDivX - at least from the look of it, it seems like an Open Source MPEG-4 codec that was originally stolen from Microsoft that they are trying to re-create so as to be non-stolen.
And besides, they could certainly at least use MPEG-2? DVD's quality seems pretty good on MPEG-2. Why MPEG-1 is my question.
The other thing is, VCDs used MPEG-1 and was extremely lossy and definitely encouraged piracy (people all over Southeast Asia watched VCDs and DVDs more than VHS) as well.
I've seen some of the DivX encoded MPEG-4 videos, and it is not as lossy as you state. They are much better than the VCDs. They have pixelating artifacts when there's fast motion, but for slow motion or relatively still scenes, the quality is almost inditinguishable from DVD quality.
MPEG-4 itself is a standard, not a Microsoft IP, just like MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and the forthcoming MPEG-7. DivX ;-) was stolen from Microsoft's own MPEG-4 codec, and that's why they are trying to re-write it to move away from that.
That said, I still say that OpenDivX's MPEG-4 codec would be really great for streaming once they have it redone. Streaming and MPEG-4 do not encourage piracy by themselves per se (geez, I'm beginning to sound like the NRA - 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people').
MPEG-1 is a bit older and not as efficient as the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 formats. So why not use MPEG-4? Project Mayo is working on OpenDivX, the an Open Source MPEG-4 codec. It'd seem to me that they should try to marry the two together, to use the OpenDivX on this streaming server. Unless there's some technical issue that I don't know about. Remember that MPEG-4 can reduce a DVD (~4.7GB?) down to a CD size (~700MB-800MB) with only a little degradation in quality and possibly size of the original image.
I think, though, P2P and distributed networking is trying to realize the dream of "The network is the computer" which I think is a quote attributed to Scott McNealy, if I'm not mistaken. hmm....
Do you know where they derive their profits from? Do you know how much profit did IBM turn on Linux specifically? I'm sure IBM can make Linux more profitable for them in the future than it is now, and it's just a matter of time. I have no doubt that open source and profitability are not mutually exclusive goals either.
In fact, I think the best way to make open source and Linux profitable is what IBM is doing, not necessarily what RedHat is doing. IBM provides more solutions. Whereas very often, RedHat just provide more questions (ok, it's just me).
That being said, I have found some very useful and informative and correct information, many of them coming from the community that make up Slashdot. I find it disappointing when the editors who are responsible for deciding which stories to post and for adding editorial content don't get their facts straight, and depend on the community to correct them.
In-depth knowledge of enterprise level data computer is NOT a prerequisite to being a nerd, but if you are going to be an authoritative source of information pretending to have some journalistic integrity, you should have your facts straight. Anyone with even a scant knowledge of commercial database system should know that comparing Oracle and DB2 with Postgres and MySql is comparing apples and oranges. They are not even close to being in the same class. If you don't know why, perhaps you should find out yourself.
There is no direct and definite correlation between their investment in Linux and their profitability. As someone else pointed out, it's only a small part of IBM. I remember about 7 years ago, when Microsoft's worth (back when it was still relatively small) was only about as much as IBM's AS/400 business line...
Perhaps it's because many people feel that while anime is great, it'd make more sense to leave stuff like that on a more anime-centric site (after all, isn't that why animefu.com was created?) Why CmdrTaco feel the urge to post stuff there and here is beyond me. Personally, I think anime related stuff, unless truly groundbreaking, should stay off of Slashdot. I think that he posted the thing also to promote animefu.com - I could be wrong...
Arguably, the censorship (or in this case, FCC's guideline for decency in broadcasting) seem like the lesser of two evil only in the sense that they are going after the broadcasters - we have the wonderful thing we called the Internet now that prevents us from being censored, so your average citizens aren't affected.
The camera thing is already there and is affecting the average citizen. Of course, it should be noted that only criminals who commit crimes in public places need to worry.
Isn't technology great? Too bad they don't yet have technology that will prevent you from commiting crimes instead of punishing you afterwards for commiting crimes. Perhaps embedded chips that shocks you when you are about to commit a crime, even if it is as low tech as people watching cameras and manually press a button to shock criminals in the middle of committing a crime (as opposed to a chip that can sense your brain wave patterns and knows you are thinking evil thoughts and zap you accordingly).
Perhaps a different technology will come along, say artificial genetic selection - the DNA would be modified such that all people with violent and criminal dispositions will be prevented from being born, so that all through the world, there would be a flock of docile, obedient, and possibly intelligence reduced people, except for a handful of wealthy powerful people that pay to enhance their own abilities. These people would control the world through the money and the power that they wield as a minority elite (oh, wait...).
:-)
On a separate though, I wonder if they could use the negative refractive index composite material in making the solar sails, since they are probably still investigating the material to use for the sail?
From yesterday's linked article:
"``negative refraction'' would make possible the construction of a lens capable of focusing light to limits not currently achievable. "
and a related article on the Economist about how negative refractive index material can possibly help make a "perfect lens"
Perhaps they could use the phenomenon of the negative refractive index to make more efficient or more maneuverable sails?