A similar but slightly less pie-in-the-sky thing would be to use the lab computers for batch processing during the night.
The Virginia Tech cluster having been in the news so much lately, I thought of another time at VT that we've had quite a cluster accidentially. Or, rather not accidentially. rdickert is a guy who was on the VT distributed.net RC5-64 team. His stats are here. At some point, he had installed the d.net client on almost all of the computers in the math emporium, and I think some in the CS labs. For those not familiar, the math emporium is an off-campus location owned by the university where people can come to use computers for various things. The computers there always have mathematica and matlab on them, among various other things. Anyway, when he was using them (~1998, scroll down on his stats), they were I think somewhere around 300 Mhz G-3's, and there were about 500 of them.
Yep. Eventually they figured it out, and shut it down, but wha'eva.
(You can get a dui for sitting in the driver seat of a parked car with the engine off.)
Incorrect. DUI by definition stands for driving under the influence. If you are not driving, then you can not by definition be driving under the influence.
Driving us usually vague, i.e. if you are sitting in the driver's seat of the car, and a key is in the ignition, whether or not the car is on, you are the driver. However, you cannot be convicted of driving under the influence, sitting in the driver's seat, if there is no indication that you were going to drive. Until you use some functionality of the car that differentiates the front seat from an armchair in a metal cage, you aren't driving.
The real problem, as I see it, with the two party system is that most people believe that the two parties are diametrically opposed. In a roundabout sense, yes, you have to be either for or against an issue, such as (let's say a really politically devisive one, like) abortion.
But, what most people don't think about except subconsiously is that they extend this to parties as a whole, i.e. if you are against abortion, by definition you're also against social welfare programs and for tax cuts for major businesses.
The parties come in where one person doesn't meet all the criteria you want in a candidate. But, a lot of people just take the bad stances on issues with the good.
The current one that I've heard is that, while the civilian population is in something like computer development year 40, while the military is in development year 95. Or, in other words, if the civilian population is discovering and creating new computer "stuff" at a rate which we label as the control rate, the expieremental rate of the military is more than twice as fast. Which is scary.
---Conspiracy Theory---
The thing is, though, it's probably not true. I mean, I know people that work for the military, and not once has any one ever even hinted at the ability to do anything beyond current capabilities of civilian population. Even the stuff that you see that's the "next big thing", like automated machinery or combat suits with integrated HUDs, look so 6 years ago compared to the latest from Apple.
Thank you. Thank you. Try the overpriced hamburgers and soggy fries while you wait to ride Splash Mountain.
Ugh, you're not kiddin'. My son is comming along sometime late may / early june this year, so I guess I should be saving up for the Disney World vacation that's probably 4 years away.
Last time I was there, tickets cost ~$50, and that just got you in the door. I hadn't done this without parents before; when I decided to go with friends, I thought I could get away with it for the price of the ticket + minimal cost for a souvineer to prove i'd been there. Nope. Mickey Mouse shaped pizza, aprox 5 inches in diameter = $8, medium soft drink = $3, blah blah.
I think the park exists as a way to get people to buy the food.
It's hard to tell. I don't think salaries are published. And the cost of living here is so rediculously cheap (10 minutes outside of town, 2400 sq ft house on 10 acres = 120,000), so I don't know.
Thanks for your much more rational reply; I honestly appreciate it, and courtesy of course is to be repaid with courtesy.
I don't really think that, aside from DNA, the fact that something looks similar is a good reason for guiltless destruction. I really just mean that while, yes, it will (hopefully, given a bunch of conditions) turn into a human, at 14 days old, it really isn't much of anything except a ball of cells. Yeah, DNA is why humans are humans, but when is a human a human and not a "thing"? No one knows (or rather, everyone knows and no one agrees).
Elsewhere in this topic, I saw a guy who suggested that we use the same criteria to determine if a fetus is alive that we use to determine of comatose patients are alive, or execution victims (is victim the right word?). If we can read a brain pattern, it's alive. No brain pattern, not alive. I think that's actually remarkably fair.
It's a fair point about chimps and humans sharing so much DNA - the bits that are different must be important. But, again, it's also important to note that it's not 98%, it's more like 99.99993%. Why is it important? I dunno, i just think it is.
I'm really tired, so i'm probably not making much sense.
To answer you and the AC further down in this thread:
Athletics is entirely self-funded. They receive no money from tuition, with the exception of the "student athletic fee" which students pay (required but separate from tuition), which covers going to all home games, which students don't pay for.
And, yes, ALL of the athletic teams at VT lose money, except the football team, which rakes in millions. But, the football team props up all the other teams with the extra money.
So, while the university paid for the G5s, the football team paid for it's self in ticket sales. Not to mention, paying for all the other sports teams, and bringing in a crap load of money to the university through likeness rights and merchandise with the official VT logo.
Don't know about VT - but in general, seems like sport's gambling is more important than academics in this nation's institutions of higher learning.
My father-in-law used to think this (football and academics inversely proportional). But, if this is the case, why doesn't Ohio State have a terrible academic program? Why doesn't Rutgers have an excellent football program? It can be both, this school is a great school, and it's hard as crap.
my parent post mentioned killing embryos, and he could have only been talking about human embryos. I was just stating that they're human to the extent that they will become human if they survive, but they are not, in their present form, human.
In fact, take a look at this: http://www.paternityangel.com/PicsAndPhotos /Foetal Develop/1stTrimester.htm
Kind of blows you out of the water, doesn't it. This is currently accepted hard science. At 14 days after conception (twice my origional statment of 7 days), the embryo is a three-part ball of cells, with the cells that will form nervous system on the outside, the middle cells will form the bones and blood, and the inner ones the digestive tract and other various organs that all vertebrates have.
At this point, it is not a human, except for the blueprints. At this point, it is *exactly* like ALL other vertebrates.
With the *sole* exception of a few pairs of DNA instructions, a 7 week old embryo is exactly identical to a 1/39th developed embryo of another vertebrate.
To put this in perspective, this is like setting up a default shopping cart, and leaving a text file with a code specification of what the shopping cart is going to be when you've had 9 months to code it. The existance of the text file doesn't change the fact that, with the exception of the contents of that text file, it is identical to all other shopping carts when they first get set up.
Or, it's like building a house. You draw a set of blueprints, and then you pour a slab of concrete. At this point, the only thing that differentiates it from any other house of the same size in the same state of construction is the blueprint.
Now, I don't appreciate your condescending tone, especially when so many of your facts are so blatantly wrong. Number one, first and foremost, for someone who claims to know so much about human biology and physiology, you sure aren't able to distinguish the difference between "embryo" and "fetus".
Number two, the 19th century biologist analogy is completely uncalled for, as my fiancee just (13 months ago) graduated from Virginia Tech, the only school in Virginia / Maryland / Delaware that has a Vet school. The animal science program here is top notch, one of the best in the country. They don't teach outdated ideas. So, until you have a degree which focuses almost entirely on animal breeding, genetics, reproduction, slection, and care, please don't spout such drivel.
I did not say that a 3 week old embryo (not fetus) *looked* like a koala. I said that, biologically and mathematically, it is identical, and I'll grant "with the exception of DNA".
If life begins at conception, what about the horror of the millions of babies that are killed every year when eggs are fertalized and then don't implant into the womb? How many babies have you killed? Assuming you've ever had sex, of course.
Have I ever heard of Pinker? Of course not, I don't read whacked-out religious drivel. Have you ever heard of Darwin? Bet you have.
Humans are animals. An embryo is not a fetus. A human embryo is exactly like all other animalia embryos for the first bit of developemnt. That picture that floats around the internet of the 5 week old embryo that has been aborted that has these cute little tiny feet is a farce, it is not and could not be real. It is a photoshop, and a ploy on which so much religious anti-abortion literature has been written that it staggers the imagination. At 5 weeks of development, the embryo has only been symetrical for a couple of days, and is just starting to produce extremity protrusions. It will not have toes until several weeks later.
and yes, there's some poor, poor fools still using Internet Exploder.
You mean, that small portion (95%) of people that use internet explorer? Yes, they're clearly in the wrong.
I agree, though. It's hard to see linux as bad for the economy. It's free, and it offers, at the least, zero service to the world. And whenever it offers more than zero service, it's making money.
We are, and we have. What's special about this case is that it's done with humans, not that it was done at all. It's not newsworthy in a biological achievement sense, only in the sensationalist sense that we can't do it in the US, and becuase it's "forbidden fruit", it makes headlines.
By "doing it with sheep or fish", I meant performing a cloning operation with sheep or fish. Not "it". Errrr, whatever.
Anyway, my wife-to-be and I have discussed this (she has a degree in animal science, and knows everything there is to know about mamal-fucking (and no, there's no chance that we're going to break up)).
We're neither one of us particularly fond of abortion, but we are realistic. It's important to realize a few things.
One, it's possible, and even likely and frequent, to "get pregnant", i.e. sperm and egg combine, and have the egg just not implant into the uterine wall and fall out of the girl. This happens ALL THE TIME. It's one of the reasons I just don't buy "life begins at conception" and "the day after pill is essentially abortion". I wonder if people would still say those things if they knew that they probably personally had had several "abortions" accidentally. Assuming they'd had sex more times than the number of children they have, of course.
Oh, and also, the day after pill is essentially the same thing as taking 5 birth control pills - it's just a big dose of progesterone that makes the uterine lining less likely to allow an egg to implant. Which *shocker* is encouraging, with an outside addition of drugs, the body's natural function that happens on it's own anyway sometimes.
Two, of course, is the thing I mentioned in the parent post. A 14 day old human embryo is indestinguishable from a comparable aged mamal of any kind, and still resembles most warm-blooded animailia.
Pretty clear - they DID clone embryos, then killed them.
Let's not get into a killing-an-embryo-is-killing-humans discussion. A 7-day old human embryo is indistinguishable from most other embryos at that percentage through fetal developemnt (~1/39th). At 1/39th development, it is identical to all mamals and almost identical to all vertebrates. Mathematically and biologically, this is no different than doing it with sheep or fish.
Oh, I thought you were one of the ones who was saying it was a frivilous waste to upgrade, etc, and that we only built the supercomputer for the money. Which is true, but i was just pointing out that, yes, it's making us lots of money, but we desperately need that.
BTW, Funny, Insightful, and Troll? I must be good or something.
No VT needed the PR probably more then Apple now they get grant money out the wazoo
Please don't begrudge us this. Virginia's state legislature has cut over 28% from our 2002 level of funding, while just recently passing laws which effectively cap tuition hikes at about 5% per year. My tuition has gone from $1500/semester (2001 in state) to almost $2200/semester (2004 in state).
And please don't respond with "blah blah, if they used the money more effectively". We're up against the wall here. About 5 professors in my department (History) out of 25 or so have been laid off, or sent on research sabbatical so that they don't have to be paid. We've fired over 1/2 of the maintenance staff, and people on campus no longer have trash cans in their dorm hallways - they have to take their trash outside to a dumpster. The snow trucks in Blacksburg have far less salt than they had last year to clear the roads (I only think of this as I sit here at Netmar and watch today's 3 inches of snow fall). I now this isn't grave hardship, but seriously, we've cut about everything we can.
The supercompuer gives us both grants and positive PR. Students see that, despite the state of the economy, we're trying to push to the top of research institutes. We're trying to push ourselves above 67th (or whatever) on that college engineering school ratings, trying to compete with our neighbor down interstate 64, who, for no discernable reason, has an engineering program with the inflated ranking of ~ 15th. And yes, we get grants from the government and money from private industry in exchange for timesharing on the bigmac.
Just let this one go. We need the money, the BigMac has not only made us money, but has raised awareness of the university. It's a good thing.
It's this type of mentality that keeps people from using linux on the desktop, you know this, right?
"What you've been doing for years sucks, you need to support this new stuff, or else you're stupid". Software developers don't like that. Not to mention that linux is no where near ready for the world's desktop. Until it can do simple things like 3D graphics, or (for god's sake) cut and paste between different applications, without sacrificing a goat, it won't be ready.
But, you know why those problems still exist in linux? The mentality of "you're stupid, do it my way" even extends between developers of linux software.
Now, I agree, there is NO place for windows anymore in a server environment, save *only perhaps* two minor things, those being 1.) the extended functionality of exchange server, for companies who use outlook to manage dates and contacts, not just email, and 2.) streaming video, for which there are linux counterpart servers, but not for all windows streaming formats, and not that are as good.
But, for a desktop system? We as a community have to get over the biggest hurdle (GNU/Hurdle??) first. And that is ourselves.
From the other end of the spectrum (mail administrator, not specifically of an ISP), I can tell you that there are very good arguements for limiting port 25. I'll get to that in a minute.
What I wouldn't do is what some of the apartment-wide ethernet services do around here: either block or limit EVERYTHING that's p2p or ftp or whatever. For a while, it was rumored that one of them had incomming port 21 blocked. That's bad practice.
But, blocking port 25 is a perfectly legitimate idea. First, because you should never run a mail exchange on a dhcp (or any dynamic) address. Second, the ISP's SMTP server is there for the express purpose of sending your mail. Just accept it and use it for it's intended purpose. Now, it doesn't stop you from sending spam, but what it does do is make sure that if you do, there's logs showing that it was you that did it.
OK, i get it. I messed up, i meant to reply to your parent post, the one that was like "is there any legitimate use of this port", and the answer is "no". But, you already knew that.
I used to do the same method of virus protection: Firewall, and don't be dumb, and keep things up to date.
I got viruses. Minor ones, but still. Know how? Someone on my internal house network (roommate? girlfriend?) got a virus and it spread. Even though I didn't click on anything - I just had a windows share open so that I could get to my south park episodes on the downstairs tv-computer.
Now? I have AV software installed. I don't keep it resident in memory, but about once a week, I go through and update it and scan everything, just to make sure.
Granted it costs money to update virus scanners, but that should be part of the one time purchasing fee.
Granted, the TWO MONTHS figure you point out is absurdly low, but consider this: If you paid for webhosting with a one-time fee, would you expect it to work indefinately? When you go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, do they let you come back the next day on the same ticket?
When you sell something with a recurring cost to the producer, and no recurring cost to the customer, as time approaches infinity, gross profit for the company approaches zero (not to mention net, which approaches negative infinity). It's simply a bad buisness model: You cannot expect to expend resources and, therefore, money on customers indefinately because they paid one time.
Regardless of how shady AV companies are or aren't (and I imagine there's a measure of shadiness, like all huge mega-corps, even if they do provide a valuable service to the internet), they do have recurring costs associated with one-time licenseure: Bandwidth costs money, paying people to identify and protect against viruses costs money, updating websites costs money.
Now, I do have to admit that it can be pricey. $30/yr for Symantec antivirus is a bit excessive, probably, and I'd like it more if it were $10 (which I think is probably fair), or even $1/month, just bill my credit card (which is really actually dumb, because cc processing fees would knock it down to probably 70 cents).
From an operations standpoint, the impacts of Sitefinder are unfortunatly minimal now. Most of the major operational issues brought up when it was first released have been solved by either Verisign or by various application developers (ISC and other DNS developers) and are no longer an issue.
Except for things like this:
Option 1 - MailServer: "OK, you sent me mail from this domain, let's reverse look it up to see if it actually exists... nslookup domain... OK, so I'm gonna go ahead and reject that spam."
Option 2 - MailServer "OK, you sent me mail from this domain, let's reverse look it up to see if it actually exists... nslookup domain... OK, it exists, let's look it up by IP to make sure it actually is the domain you're from... nslookup IP... ok, I'm going to go ahead and reject this, and either stop sending spam, or configure your reverse zones".
Option 3 - MailServer: "OK, you sent this, I'm going to check and see if you're valid... nslookup domain... nslookup IP... fantastic! Welcome to my humble abode, and don't worry about that mail, it's been taken care of".
Or, with SiteFinder, Option 4 - MailServer: "I hate my life. Are you a valid domain? Yes? No? I don't care, I'm barely here. My existance is meaningless, my spirit is broken. I think I'm going to cat/dev/urandom to a file for a while."
Slashdot Mirror
A similar but slightly less pie-in-the-sky thing would be to use the lab computers for batch processing during the night.
The Virginia Tech cluster having been in the news so much lately, I thought of another time at VT that we've had quite a cluster accidentially. Or, rather not accidentially. rdickert is a guy who was on the VT distributed.net RC5-64 team. His stats are here. At some point, he had installed the d.net client on almost all of the computers in the math emporium, and I think some in the CS labs. For those not familiar, the math emporium is an off-campus location owned by the university where people can come to use computers for various things. The computers there always have mathematica and matlab on them, among various other things. Anyway, when he was using them (~1998, scroll down on his stats), they were I think somewhere around 300 Mhz G-3's, and there were about 500 of them.
Yep. Eventually they figured it out, and shut it down, but wha'eva.
~Will
(You can get a dui for sitting in the driver seat of a parked car with the engine off.)
Incorrect. DUI by definition stands for driving under the influence. If you are not driving, then you can not by definition be driving under the influence.
Driving us usually vague, i.e. if you are sitting in the driver's seat of the car, and a key is in the ignition, whether or not the car is on, you are the driver. However, you cannot be convicted of driving under the influence, sitting in the driver's seat, if there is no indication that you were going to drive. Until you use some functionality of the car that differentiates the front seat from an armchair in a metal cage, you aren't driving.
The real problem, as I see it, with the two party system is that most people believe that the two parties are diametrically opposed. In a roundabout sense, yes, you have to be either for or against an issue, such as (let's say a really politically devisive one, like) abortion.
But, what most people don't think about except subconsiously is that they extend this to parties as a whole, i.e. if you are against abortion, by definition you're also against social welfare programs and for tax cuts for major businesses.
The parties come in where one person doesn't meet all the criteria you want in a candidate. But, a lot of people just take the bad stances on issues with the good.
---Conspiracy Theory---
Military Technology:
The current one that I've heard is that, while the civilian population is in something like computer development year 40, while the military is in development year 95. Or, in other words, if the civilian population is discovering and creating new computer "stuff" at a rate which we label as the control rate, the expieremental rate of the military is more than twice as fast. Which is scary.
---Conspiracy Theory---
The thing is, though, it's probably not true. I mean, I know people that work for the military, and not once has any one ever even hinted at the ability to do anything beyond current capabilities of civilian population. Even the stuff that you see that's the "next big thing", like automated machinery or combat suits with integrated HUDs, look so 6 years ago compared to the latest from Apple.
~Will
Thank you. Thank you. Try the overpriced hamburgers and soggy fries while you wait to ride Splash Mountain.
Ugh, you're not kiddin'. My son is comming along sometime late may / early june this year, so I guess I should be saving up for the Disney World vacation that's probably 4 years away.
Last time I was there, tickets cost ~$50, and that just got you in the door. I hadn't done this without parents before; when I decided to go with friends, I thought I could get away with it for the price of the ticket + minimal cost for a souvineer to prove i'd been there. Nope. Mickey Mouse shaped pizza, aprox 5 inches in diameter = $8, medium soft drink = $3, blah blah.
I think the park exists as a way to get people to buy the food.
Ah well, I guess I'd better start saving now.
~Will
It's hard to tell. I don't think salaries are published. And the cost of living here is so rediculously cheap (10 minutes outside of town, 2400 sq ft house on 10 acres = 120,000), so I don't know.
~Wx
Thanks for your much more rational reply; I honestly appreciate it, and courtesy of course is to be repaid with courtesy.
I don't really think that, aside from DNA, the fact that something looks similar is a good reason for guiltless destruction. I really just mean that while, yes, it will (hopefully, given a bunch of conditions) turn into a human, at 14 days old, it really isn't much of anything except a ball of cells. Yeah, DNA is why humans are humans, but when is a human a human and not a "thing"? No one knows (or rather, everyone knows and no one agrees).
Elsewhere in this topic, I saw a guy who suggested that we use the same criteria to determine if a fetus is alive that we use to determine of comatose patients are alive, or execution victims (is victim the right word?). If we can read a brain pattern, it's alive. No brain pattern, not alive. I think that's actually remarkably fair.
It's a fair point about chimps and humans sharing so much DNA - the bits that are different must be important. But, again, it's also important to note that it's not 98%, it's more like 99.99993%. Why is it important? I dunno, i just think it is.
I'm really tired, so i'm probably not making much sense.
Later, man.
~Will
To answer you and the AC further down in this thread:
Athletics is entirely self-funded. They receive no money from tuition, with the exception of the "student athletic fee" which students pay (required but separate from tuition), which covers going to all home games, which students don't pay for.
And, yes, ALL of the athletic teams at VT lose money, except the football team, which rakes in millions. But, the football team props up all the other teams with the extra money.
So, while the university paid for the G5s, the football team paid for it's self in ticket sales. Not to mention, paying for all the other sports teams, and bringing in a crap load of money to the university through likeness rights and merchandise with the official VT logo.
Don't know about VT - but in general, seems like sport's gambling is more important than academics in this nation's institutions of higher learning.
My father-in-law used to think this (football and academics inversely proportional). But, if this is the case, why doesn't Ohio State have a terrible academic program? Why doesn't Rutgers have an excellent football program? It can be both, this school is a great school, and it's hard as crap.
~Wx
my parent post mentioned killing embryos, and he could have only been talking about human embryos. I was just stating that they're human to the extent that they will become human if they survive, but they are not, in their present form, human.
In fact, take a look at this:s /Foetal Develop/1stTrimester.htm
http://www.paternityangel.com/PicsAndPhoto
Kind of blows you out of the water, doesn't it. This is currently accepted hard science. At 14 days after conception (twice my origional statment of 7 days), the embryo is a three-part ball of cells, with the cells that will form nervous system on the outside, the middle cells will form the bones and blood, and the inner ones the digestive tract and other various organs that all vertebrates have.
At this point, it is not a human, except for the blueprints. At this point, it is *exactly* like ALL other vertebrates.
~Wx
With the *sole* exception of a few pairs of DNA instructions, a 7 week old embryo is exactly identical to a 1/39th developed embryo of another vertebrate.
To put this in perspective, this is like setting up a default shopping cart, and leaving a text file with a code specification of what the shopping cart is going to be when you've had 9 months to code it. The existance of the text file doesn't change the fact that, with the exception of the contents of that text file, it is identical to all other shopping carts when they first get set up.
Or, it's like building a house. You draw a set of blueprints, and then you pour a slab of concrete. At this point, the only thing that differentiates it from any other house of the same size in the same state of construction is the blueprint.
Now, I don't appreciate your condescending tone, especially when so many of your facts are so blatantly wrong. Number one, first and foremost, for someone who claims to know so much about human biology and physiology, you sure aren't able to distinguish the difference between "embryo" and "fetus".
Number two, the 19th century biologist analogy is completely uncalled for, as my fiancee just (13 months ago) graduated from Virginia Tech, the only school in Virginia / Maryland / Delaware that has a Vet school. The animal science program here is top notch, one of the best in the country. They don't teach outdated ideas. So, until you have a degree which focuses almost entirely on animal breeding, genetics, reproduction, slection, and care, please don't spout such drivel.
I did not say that a 3 week old embryo (not fetus) *looked* like a koala. I said that, biologically and mathematically, it is identical, and I'll grant "with the exception of DNA".
If life begins at conception, what about the horror of the millions of babies that are killed every year when eggs are fertalized and then don't implant into the womb? How many babies have you killed? Assuming you've ever had sex, of course.
Have I ever heard of Pinker? Of course not, I don't read whacked-out religious drivel. Have you ever heard of Darwin? Bet you have.
Humans are animals. An embryo is not a fetus. A human embryo is exactly like all other animalia embryos for the first bit of developemnt. That picture that floats around the internet of the 5 week old embryo that has been aborted that has these cute little tiny feet is a farce, it is not and could not be real. It is a photoshop, and a ploy on which so much religious anti-abortion literature has been written that it staggers the imagination. At 5 weeks of development, the embryo has only been symetrical for a couple of days, and is just starting to produce extremity protrusions. It will not have toes until several weeks later.
Get over yourself, accept modern science.
~Will
and yes, there's some poor, poor fools still using Internet Exploder.
You mean, that small portion (95%) of people that use internet explorer? Yes, they're clearly in the wrong.
I agree, though. It's hard to see linux as bad for the economy. It's free, and it offers, at the least, zero service to the world. And whenever it offers more than zero service, it's making money.
~Will
We are, and we have. What's special about this case is that it's done with humans, not that it was done at all. It's not newsworthy in a biological achievement sense, only in the sensationalist sense that we can't do it in the US, and becuase it's "forbidden fruit", it makes headlines.
Let me clarify:
By "doing it with sheep or fish", I meant performing a cloning operation with sheep or fish. Not "it". Errrr, whatever.
Anyway, my wife-to-be and I have discussed this (she has a degree in animal science, and knows everything there is to know about mamal-fucking (and no, there's no chance that we're going to break up)).
We're neither one of us particularly fond of abortion, but we are realistic. It's important to realize a few things.
One, it's possible, and even likely and frequent, to "get pregnant", i.e. sperm and egg combine, and have the egg just not implant into the uterine wall and fall out of the girl. This happens ALL THE TIME. It's one of the reasons I just don't buy "life begins at conception" and "the day after pill is essentially abortion". I wonder if people would still say those things if they knew that they probably personally had had several "abortions" accidentally. Assuming they'd had sex more times than the number of children they have, of course.
Oh, and also, the day after pill is essentially the same thing as taking 5 birth control pills - it's just a big dose of progesterone that makes the uterine lining less likely to allow an egg to implant. Which *shocker* is encouraging, with an outside addition of drugs, the body's natural function that happens on it's own anyway sometimes.
Two, of course, is the thing I mentioned in the parent post. A 14 day old human embryo is indestinguishable from a comparable aged mamal of any kind, and still resembles most warm-blooded animailia.
~Wx
I'm a bit harsher in my view, far as I'm concerned if you can't be dropped alone into a forest and survive, good riddance.
So would you say you support abortion up to the 23rd trimester?
~Will
Pretty clear - they DID clone embryos, then killed them.
Let's not get into a killing-an-embryo-is-killing-humans discussion. A 7-day old human embryo is indistinguishable from most other embryos at that percentage through fetal developemnt (~1/39th). At 1/39th development, it is identical to all mamals and almost identical to all vertebrates. Mathematically and biologically, this is no different than doing it with sheep or fish.
~Will
Oh, I thought you were one of the ones who was saying it was a frivilous waste to upgrade, etc, and that we only built the supercomputer for the money. Which is true, but i was just pointing out that, yes, it's making us lots of money, but we desperately need that.
BTW, Funny, Insightful, and Troll? I must be good or something.
No VT needed the PR probably more then Apple now they get grant money out the wazoo
Please don't begrudge us this. Virginia's state legislature has cut over 28% from our 2002 level of funding, while just recently passing laws which effectively cap tuition hikes at about 5% per year. My tuition has gone from $1500/semester (2001 in state) to almost $2200/semester (2004 in state).
And please don't respond with "blah blah, if they used the money more effectively". We're up against the wall here. About 5 professors in my department (History) out of 25 or so have been laid off, or sent on research sabbatical so that they don't have to be paid. We've fired over 1/2 of the maintenance staff, and people on campus no longer have trash cans in their dorm hallways - they have to take their trash outside to a dumpster. The snow trucks in Blacksburg have far less salt than they had last year to clear the roads (I only think of this as I sit here at Netmar and watch today's 3 inches of snow fall). I now this isn't grave hardship, but seriously, we've cut about everything we can.
The supercompuer gives us both grants and positive PR. Students see that, despite the state of the economy, we're trying to push to the top of research institutes. We're trying to push ourselves above 67th (or whatever) on that college engineering school ratings, trying to compete with our neighbor down interstate 64, who, for no discernable reason, has an engineering program with the inflated ranking of ~ 15th. And yes, we get grants from the government and money from private industry in exchange for timesharing on the bigmac.
Just let this one go. We need the money, the BigMac has not only made us money, but has raised awareness of the university. It's a good thing.
~Will
It's this type of mentality that keeps people from using linux on the desktop, you know this, right?
"What you've been doing for years sucks, you need to support this new stuff, or else you're stupid". Software developers don't like that. Not to mention that linux is no where near ready for the world's desktop. Until it can do simple things like 3D graphics, or (for god's sake) cut and paste between different applications, without sacrificing a goat, it won't be ready.
But, you know why those problems still exist in linux? The mentality of "you're stupid, do it my way" even extends between developers of linux software.
Now, I agree, there is NO place for windows anymore in a server environment, save *only perhaps* two minor things, those being 1.) the extended functionality of exchange server, for companies who use outlook to manage dates and contacts, not just email, and 2.) streaming video, for which there are linux counterpart servers, but not for all windows streaming formats, and not that are as good.
But, for a desktop system? We as a community have to get over the biggest hurdle (GNU/Hurdle??) first. And that is ourselves.
We have to stop getting in our own way.
~Will
From the other end of the spectrum (mail administrator, not specifically of an ISP), I can tell you that there are very good arguements for limiting port 25. I'll get to that in a minute.
What I wouldn't do is what some of the apartment-wide ethernet services do around here: either block or limit EVERYTHING that's p2p or ftp or whatever. For a while, it was rumored that one of them had incomming port 21 blocked. That's bad practice.
But, blocking port 25 is a perfectly legitimate idea. First, because you should never run a mail exchange on a dhcp (or any dynamic) address. Second, the ISP's SMTP server is there for the express purpose of sending your mail. Just accept it and use it for it's intended purpose. Now, it doesn't stop you from sending spam, but what it does do is make sure that if you do, there's logs showing that it was you that did it.
~Wx
OK, i get it. I messed up, i meant to reply to your parent post, the one that was like "is there any legitimate use of this port", and the answer is "no". But, you already knew that.
My bad.
~Wx
Exactly.
I used to do the same method of virus protection: Firewall, and don't be dumb, and keep things up to date.
I got viruses. Minor ones, but still. Know how? Someone on my internal house network (roommate? girlfriend?) got a virus and it spread. Even though I didn't click on anything - I just had a windows share open so that I could get to my south park episodes on the downstairs tv-computer.
Now? I have AV software installed. I don't keep it resident in memory, but about once a week, I go through and update it and scan everything, just to make sure.
~Will
Granted it costs money to update virus scanners, but that should be part of the one time purchasing fee.
Granted, the TWO MONTHS figure you point out is absurdly low, but consider this: If you paid for webhosting with a one-time fee, would you expect it to work indefinately? When you go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, do they let you come back the next day on the same ticket?
When you sell something with a recurring cost to the producer, and no recurring cost to the customer, as time approaches infinity, gross profit for the company approaches zero (not to mention net, which approaches negative infinity). It's simply a bad buisness model: You cannot expect to expend resources and, therefore, money on customers indefinately because they paid one time.
Regardless of how shady AV companies are or aren't (and I imagine there's a measure of shadiness, like all huge mega-corps, even if they do provide a valuable service to the internet), they do have recurring costs associated with one-time licenseure: Bandwidth costs money, paying people to identify and protect against viruses costs money, updating websites costs money.
Now, I do have to admit that it can be pricey. $30/yr for Symantec antivirus is a bit excessive, probably, and I'd like it more if it were $10 (which I think is probably fair), or even $1/month, just bill my credit card (which is really actually dumb, because cc processing fees would knock it down to probably 70 cents).
~Will
From an operations standpoint, the impacts of Sitefinder are unfortunatly minimal now. Most of the major operational issues brought up when it was first released have been solved by either Verisign or by various application developers (ISC and other DNS developers) and are no longer an issue.
/dev/urandom to a file for a while."
Except for things like this:
Option 1 -
MailServer: "OK, you sent me mail from this domain, let's reverse look it up to see if it actually exists... nslookup domain... OK, so I'm gonna go ahead and reject that spam."
Option 2 -
MailServer "OK, you sent me mail from this domain, let's reverse look it up to see if it actually exists... nslookup domain... OK, it exists, let's look it up by IP to make sure it actually is the domain you're from... nslookup IP... ok, I'm going to go ahead and reject this, and either stop sending spam, or configure your reverse zones".
Option 3 -
MailServer: "OK, you sent this, I'm going to check and see if you're valid... nslookup domain... nslookup IP... fantastic! Welcome to my humble abode, and don't worry about that mail, it's been taken care of".
Or, with SiteFinder, Option 4 -
MailServer: "I hate my life. Are you a valid domain? Yes? No? I don't care, I'm barely here. My existance is meaningless, my spirit is broken. I think I'm going to cat
~Will
That's what I meant. Check the list, if nothing needs those ports, just block 'em.
~Will