And of course Michel won a (joint) Nobel prize for that work too.
I actually had the privilage of having a short visiting fellowship to his lab in Munich in the period between him solving the structure and winning the prize. Wonderful guy.
I'm sitting in the Scottish Highlands with a 2-way connection to Hughes Europe provided by Bridge Broadband (just a reseller - www.bridgebroadband.co.uk). They do 2-way for 99 per month and are pretty good about non-standard setups - seem to take a line something like while they won't guarentee to keep you running if your not using their specified configuration they'll have a damm good shot at trying:-). As a reseller I suspect they're the size of three men and a dog - but there is definate advantages to having what is effectively a 'mon & pop' satellite ISP.
Apparantly there's now a fair sized market for this sort of thing in northern scotland - for example many rural post offices have satellite connections to link into the post office's IT systems.
Don't know about roaming per se, but what I think is their main salesman makes a great point of demo'ing satellite broadband by turning up at a seminar/demo, setting up his portable dish outside the venue and having the whole caboodle running in about 10 or 15 minutes. Again I doubt they would officially support it, but they'd probably smile benignly on one's attempts. Anyway take home message must be that aligning the dish really cannot be that hard given the right equipment.
Actually the Chinese fleet was far superior in size and numbers to anything the europeans could offer at that point. What went 'wrong' as it were was political. Europe's patchwork quilt of competing nation-states provided the motivation for expansion. China, Mongol India, Islam and all the other possible civilizations around at that time would probably have got their eventually but at a much slower rate.
Western civilization only really started to have any real technological advantage over everyone else from the mid 18th C onwards. Before that we were inferior if anything.
Re:America needs to rethink some priorities
on
NASA's New Space Wheels
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"rich are wasting vast amounts of the country's money on useless trinkets"
Ah, but wasting money on useless trinkets is of great value in economic terms because it keeps the money supply circulating.
I think you'll find Keynes discussed this at considerable length.
Just found they've got Joglaresa in the classical section. Somewhat eosoteric, but Belinda Sykes is highly critically acclaimed in her field and has a voice that can certainly produce the 'shiver down the spine' effect for me. That's at least one sale they've got from me next week.
I suppose the popular music equivelent would be having someone like Robert Fripp.
Certainly true, however I think there's some additional special considerations in IBM's case.
I've been around IT as a coder in one form or another since 1985. Back in those days, before the rise of Microsoft, Big Blue was regarded with the same mixture of fear and loathing that Microsoft are now. Actually I think it was worse because deep down there's always the appreciation that Microsoft has never been _totally_ controlled by the suits in the same way that IBM was.
In the late 80's of course IBM went through a period of making the largest losses in corporate history. All the chickens of arrogantly backing it's own corporate world-view of software/hardware to the exclusion of everything else - in short it's own sheer bloody arrogance - came home to roost with vengence.
Now while I'm sure that IBM never had a coorporate road-to-jeruselem experience, I think that the trauma of that period does seem to have rubbed off on coorporate culture to some extent. Fundementally I think IBM has taken on board the message that it's own best corporate interests are in working with the IT community and not against it or trying to force it down it's own exclusive vision of the future. So whilst I don't doubt for one minute that IBM lawyers put IBM's interests first, I think that IBM is more likely to see it's interests in supporting the GPL and Open Source than many an other large corporate IT company would be.
Definatly. I was about 5 or 6 at the time and I remember running out of the house and right to the top of our garden when I heard the Dr Who music come on.
Jeez, I know this shouldn't matter, but in the UK calling a chip 'Prescott' is going to make your corporate sysadm cringe at the thought of having to service a 'Prescott inside' labelled box.
John Prescott is the rather 'colourful' deputy leader of the labour party. A union man with a merchant navy background, John Prescott is known for his rather casual acquaintance with English and an style of electionaring which includes physically assaulting the voters. Probably best summed up by one political comic strip which has him as a somewhat overweight and confused rottweiller.
It doesn't matter if you put CO2 into the atmosphere with this process because it's the same CO2 the plant fixed from the atmosphere while it was growing. The net effect of the grow/burn cycle is zero, from our point of view.
Contrast with Oil and Coal where you're putting CO2 into the atmosphere that was fixed out millenia ago.
Those city limits cover the whole of EU. True VAT rates vary a little between countries but they're all in similar range - I think the cheapest is 15% (Denmark?) and Eire was 25% at one point, maybe still is, but most are arount the 17 - 20% mark.
Then again, I don't have to pay for health insurance.
By the nature of the 'profession' status & influence largely overlap here. Courtesan has never been an official position, but at times there's been plenty of status associated with being one. Post-classical societies always tend to be somewhat ambivalent about the 'profession' - indeed FF captures this rather well as in one episode the captain calls Inra a whore with explosive results - she's both a high-status woman and an object of derision - two opposing views that one suspects can be held simultaniously by the same person. Indeed that what makes the idea of having a Courtesan type character really interesting. Lots of potential for dramatic tension in there.
Nice article about Courtesans on Salon (fitting really:-) at http://archive.salon.com/sex/feature/2000/11/15/co urtesan_1/print.html
Ha, that's ridiculously easy. First one that comes to mind, and it must have taken a good five seconds, is Nell Gwynn.
There's countless others, 19th C France in particular is a good hunting ground to go looking. Courtesans operate by influence rather than having direct power and their exploits tend to be written out of the historical record as they're never regarded as wholly legitimate - particularly by the wives of the men who are seeing them:-)
Look at it this way. If your a man of some position and intelligence in a traditional society where most women repressed into a servile role, and you have the opportunity to 'visit' a women of know charm, wit and sophistication with the extra frisson of possible sex thrown in are you not going to be interested? In a world where there's relatively few of these women around and demand outstrips supply the social standing of such women will increase.
She was more of a courtesan character. Or a traditional ghesia. There's been several societies where women in that class have had a high, albeit somewhat ambivelent, status - generally because they're selling wit and sophistication as well as sex - indeed the sex can be a very small part of the whole package.
First up the venerable Afro-Celt Sound System. The second album is probably the best - if you can find it grab an mp3 of the first track 'Release' and play loud:-)
Second is Ojos de Brujo - the album "Bari". Only seems to be available on the UK Amazon. Doesn't hit you quite so forcibly in the face as the Afro-Celts, but powerful, vibrant music you won't hear on FM Radio.
There's a load of excellent music being produced right now, but the trouble is from the RIAA's point of few is that the mass common taste is fragmenting and their marketing budgets are insufficient to control us all any longer.
All the really interesting stuff seems to being created by artists, groups and cultures outside the mainstream, but being influenced by cross-currents from within and without it.
Listen without prejudice - try these two for starters...
If the bbc feels obliged to put it's archive online as an act of public service it rather highlights the way one of our other public institutions - the Ordnance Survey (http://www.ordsvy.gov.uk/) - seems more than happy to keep all it's data heavily restricted and screw every last penny our of anyone who wants to use it.
Proteins can be stabilised by increasing the number of S-S cross links from pairs of cysteines. Also the immediate intracellular environment matters and the precise nature of the proteins themselves - some of which can be amazingly stable.
Still, I agree with the sentiment. I grew some hot spring bacteria myself for protein studies back in the early 80's and even though these *only* grew at 80 degrees C I remember looking at the incubator (i.e. adapter oven) and wondering how the little buggers ever managed to do that.
Only a fraction of a fraction of a % of all microorganisms are in any way pathogenic. Indeed your body largely functions as efficiently as it does because of the large quantities of symbiotic bacteria living on and in you.
Think of yourself more as an ecosystem than a single organism:-)
Not really. These black smoker type bacteria are way outside the normal confines of how 'life' handles extreme conditions using very unusual combinations of proteins and other biochemicals to survive. For example normal proteins are completely unstable in these types of conditions denaturing within seconds.
Waterbears and their like are impressive, but they're still operating with a more 'mainstream' set of building blocks and their natural limits, whilst impressive, are not quite in the same league.
Have a look at the ribosomal rna family trees to get some idea of how far these extremophiles are away from the rest of the life on the planet.
Did these some time ago using global DCW data. Shows effects of progressive sealevel rises on England. 6 Metres (West Antartic & Greenland ice caps collapse) is drastic but still reconisably the same world. However if the East Antartic cap goes we're living in a completely different planet.
Outlook doesn't. It's a commercial product that comes with Office. I think in the distant past Outlook97 or thereabouts was free, but it's been commercial now for some time.
Marstons is in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England. Beer - well ale - capital of the World;-). Grew up in the place.
Marstons is the only place left using the Burton Union system - nice article here - http://www.beerhunter.com/documents/19133-000132.h tml. Unfortunatly most of the rest of the beer now brewed in Burton is the same commercial rubbish as elsewhere. Hell even Bass is owned by Coors now (when my parents were children there were over 50 breweries in Burton, there's now just two giants which can be dismissed, Marstons - which is a mid-sized regional brewer, and a Micro-brewery or two).
Until I left home my local was 'The Union', which was about a hundred yards outside the brewery gate, although the better pint was served about 5 miles away where they just had the barrels in the back room and poured direct from the wood. Like many Burtonians I've always been of the opinion that Pedigree doesn't travel, but that may just be local bias;-)
Has to be said as a long-term real ale fan born an raised in the beer capital of the world (Burton-on-Trent;-) I must agree with you on that one. I always found Boddingtons to be so poorly hop'ed it tasted sweet and the smell reminiscent of vomit.
Slashdot Mirror
And of course Michel won a (joint) Nobel prize for that work too.
I actually had the privilage of having a short visiting fellowship to his lab in Munich in the period between him solving the structure and winning the prize. Wonderful guy.
I'm sitting in the Scottish Highlands with a 2-way connection to Hughes Europe provided by Bridge Broadband (just a reseller - www.bridgebroadband.co.uk). They do 2-way for 99 per month and are pretty good about non-standard setups - seem to take a line something like while they won't guarentee to keep you running if your not using their specified configuration they'll have a damm good shot at trying :-). As a reseller I suspect they're the size of three men and a dog - but there is definate advantages to having what is effectively a 'mon & pop' satellite ISP.
Apparantly there's now a fair sized market for this sort of thing in northern scotland - for example many rural post offices have satellite connections to link into the post office's IT systems.
Don't know about roaming per se, but what I think is their main salesman makes a great point of demo'ing satellite broadband by turning up at a seminar/demo, setting up his portable dish outside the venue and having the whole caboodle running in about 10 or 15 minutes. Again I doubt they would officially support it, but they'd probably smile benignly on one's attempts. Anyway take home message must be that aligning the dish really cannot be that hard given the right equipment.
Actually the Chinese fleet was far superior in size and numbers to anything the europeans could offer at that point. What went 'wrong' as it were was political. Europe's patchwork quilt of competing nation-states provided the motivation for expansion. China, Mongol India, Islam and all the other possible civilizations around at that time would probably have got their eventually but at a much slower rate.
Western civilization only really started to have any real technological advantage over everyone else from the mid 18th C onwards. Before that we were inferior if anything.
"rich are wasting vast amounts of the country's money on useless trinkets"
Ah, but wasting money on useless trinkets is of great value in economic terms because it keeps the money supply circulating.
I think you'll find Keynes discussed this at considerable length.
Just found they've got Joglaresa in the classical section. Somewhat eosoteric, but Belinda Sykes is highly critically acclaimed in her field and has a voice that can certainly produce the 'shiver down the spine' effect for me. That's at least one sale they've got from me next week.
I suppose the popular music equivelent would be having someone like Robert Fripp.
Certainly true, however I think there's some additional special considerations in IBM's case.
I've been around IT as a coder in one form or another since 1985. Back in those days, before the rise of Microsoft, Big Blue was regarded with the same mixture of fear and loathing that Microsoft are now. Actually I think it was worse because deep down there's always the appreciation that Microsoft has never been _totally_ controlled by the suits in the same way that IBM was.
In the late 80's of course IBM went through a period of making the largest losses in corporate history. All the chickens of arrogantly backing it's own corporate world-view of software/hardware to the exclusion of everything else - in short it's own sheer bloody arrogance - came home to roost with vengence.
Now while I'm sure that IBM never had a coorporate road-to-jeruselem experience, I think that the trauma of that period does seem to have rubbed off on coorporate culture to some extent. Fundementally I think IBM has taken on board the message that it's own best corporate interests are in working with the IT community and not against it or trying to force it down it's own exclusive vision of the future. So whilst I don't doubt for one minute that IBM lawyers put IBM's interests first, I think that IBM is more likely to see it's interests in supporting the GPL and Open Source than many an other large corporate IT company would be.
Definatly. I was about 5 or 6 at the time and I remember running out of the house and right to the top of our garden when I heard the Dr Who music come on.
Jeez, I know this shouldn't matter, but in the UK calling a chip 'Prescott' is going to make your corporate sysadm cringe at the thought of having to service a 'Prescott inside' labelled box.
John Prescott is the rather 'colourful' deputy leader of the labour party. A union man with a merchant navy background, John Prescott is known for his rather casual acquaintance with English and an style of electionaring which includes physically assaulting the voters. Probably best summed up by one political comic strip which has him as a somewhat overweight and confused rottweiller.
What next - the Lewinsky chip?
It doesn't matter if you put CO2 into the atmosphere with this process because it's the same CO2 the plant fixed from the atmosphere while it was growing. The net effect of the grow/burn cycle is zero, from our point of view.
Contrast with Oil and Coal where you're putting CO2 into the atmosphere that was fixed out millenia ago.
Those city limits cover the whole of EU. True VAT rates vary a little between countries but they're all in similar range - I think the cheapest is 15% (Denmark?) and Eire was 25% at one point, maybe still is, but most are arount the 17 - 20% mark.
Then again, I don't have to pay for health insurance.
By the nature of the 'profession' status & influence largely overlap here. Courtesan has never been an official position, but at times there's been plenty of status associated with being one. Post-classical societies always tend to be somewhat ambivalent about the 'profession' - indeed FF captures this rather well as in one episode the captain calls Inra a whore with explosive results - she's both a high-status woman and an object of derision - two opposing views that one suspects can be held simultaniously by the same person. Indeed that what makes the idea of having a Courtesan type character really interesting. Lots of potential for dramatic tension in there.
:-) at http://archive.salon.com/sex/feature/2000/11/15/co urtesan_1/print.html
Nice article about Courtesans on Salon (fitting really
Ha, that's ridiculously easy. First one that comes to mind, and it must have taken a good five seconds, is Nell Gwynn.
:-)
There's countless others, 19th C France in particular is a good hunting ground to go looking. Courtesans operate by influence rather than having direct power and their exploits tend to be written out of the historical record as they're never regarded as wholly legitimate - particularly by the wives of the men who are seeing them
Look at it this way. If your a man of some position and intelligence in a traditional society where most women repressed into a servile role, and you have the opportunity to 'visit' a women of know charm, wit and sophistication with the extra frisson of possible sex thrown in are you not going to be interested? In a world where there's relatively few of these women around and demand outstrips supply the social standing of such women will increase.
She was more of a courtesan character. Or a traditional ghesia. There's been several societies where women in that class have had a high, albeit somewhat ambivelent, status - generally because they're selling wit and sophistication as well as sex - indeed the sex can be a very small part of the whole package.
First up the venerable Afro-Celt Sound System. The second album is probably the best - if you can find it grab an mp3 of the first track 'Release' and play loud :-)
Second is Ojos de Brujo - the album "Bari". Only seems to be available on the UK Amazon. Doesn't hit you quite so forcibly in the face as the Afro-Celts, but powerful, vibrant music you won't hear on FM Radio.
There's a load of excellent music being produced right now, but the trouble is from the RIAA's point of few is that the mass common taste is fragmenting and their marketing budgets are insufficient to control us all any longer.
0 00 000HPO/qid=1062705336/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_3/002-603109 8-9586405?v=glance&s=music&n=507846
8 JO G/ref=sr_aps_music_1_1/202-7650678-5037421
All the really interesting stuff seems to being created by artists, groups and cultures outside the mainstream, but being influenced by cross-currents from within and without it.
Listen without prejudice - try these two for starters...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00007
If the bbc feels obliged to put it's archive online as an act of public service it rather highlights the way one of our other public institutions - the Ordnance Survey (http://www.ordsvy.gov.uk/) - seems more than happy to keep all it's data heavily restricted and screw every last penny our of anyone who wants to use it.
Proteins can be stabilised by increasing the number of S-S cross links from pairs of cysteines. Also the immediate intracellular environment matters and the precise nature of the proteins themselves - some of which can be amazingly stable.
Still, I agree with the sentiment. I grew some hot spring bacteria myself for protein studies back in the early 80's and even though these *only* grew at 80 degrees C I remember looking at the incubator (i.e. adapter oven) and wondering how the little buggers ever managed to do that.
Only a fraction of a fraction of a % of all microorganisms are in any way pathogenic. Indeed your body largely functions as efficiently as it does because of the large quantities of symbiotic bacteria living on and in you.
:-)
Think of yourself more as an ecosystem than a single organism
Not really. These black smoker type bacteria are way outside the normal confines of how 'life' handles extreme conditions using very unusual combinations of proteins and other biochemicals to survive. For example normal proteins are completely unstable in these types of conditions denaturing within seconds.
Waterbears and their like are impressive, but they're still operating with a more 'mainstream' set of building blocks and their natural limits, whilst impressive, are not quite in the same league.
Have a look at the ribosomal rna family trees to get some idea of how far these extremophiles are away from the rest of the life on the planet.
Global Warming and the End of England
Outlook doesn't. It's a commercial product that comes with Office. I think in the distant past Outlook97 or thereabouts was free, but it's been commercial now for some time.
Marstons is in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England. Beer - well ale - capital of the World ;-). Grew up in the place.
h tml. Unfortunatly most of the rest of the beer now brewed in Burton is the same commercial rubbish as elsewhere. Hell even Bass is owned by Coors now (when my parents were children there were over 50 breweries in Burton, there's now just two giants which can be dismissed, Marstons - which is a mid-sized regional brewer, and a Micro-brewery or two).
;-)
Marstons is the only place left using the Burton Union system - nice article here - http://www.beerhunter.com/documents/19133-000132.
Until I left home my local was 'The Union', which was about a hundred yards outside the brewery gate, although the better pint was served about 5 miles away where they just had the barrels in the back room and poured direct from the wood. Like many Burtonians I've always been of the opinion that Pedigree doesn't travel, but that may just be local bias
Yah! I've always thought Bods smells of Vomit myself. Nice to find someone else independently with the same opinion.
Has to be said as a long-term real ale fan born an raised in the beer capital of the world (Burton-on-Trent ;-) I must agree with you on that one. I always found Boddingtons to be so poorly hop'ed it tasted sweet and the smell reminiscent of vomit.
OTOH Marston's Pedigree rocks.
Bleurgh. Boddingtons like Guinness? Guinness is a stout, Boddintons is a 'bitter' or ale. Nothing alike at all.
:-)
Of course, the best beer in the world is Marstons Pedigree servered anywhere within 20 miles of the brewery straight from the wood.