No, don't you see?!? Terrorists are a forgetful bunch. If the courts order the feds to turn over their wiretaps, the terrorists are going to read the conversations they've had and will enact their dastardly, forgotten plans!
"Oh man! I totally forgot Osama wanted me to blow up that bridge! Thank you, NSA, for reminding me!"
It is essential for national security that we not release the tapes so the terrorists aren't reminded! We have to keep their plans secret from them!/joke
It looks like someone has gone through and used all their mod points to mark me troll. One or two of those responses I could see possibly being misinterpreted as trolling, but not all of them. Why the partisanship about nuclear power? It's not as if our opinions here directly set the agenda for energy policy, why would someone stoop to abusing mod points?
Maybe several people actually did independantly think I was trolling. I don't think my posts could be read as such.
I haven't actually read through it though, so I can't say if it's good or not. A few years ago I took a class on it, but that was taught from powerpoint. To keep myself up-to-date on my subject area I just read articles as they come out on pubmed. But as far as one-stop big picture developmental neurobiology, I guess that book on google is the only one I know of. Sorry.
Well, I am thinking for myself. As for research, I'm busy with another area. And it's important to keep in mind even if I did make my mind up about which is better currently, that has no bearing on which one is going to be used.
It's trivial to me, in other words, so I'm going to use my time for more important things.
Solar takes a lot of space and puts out a lot less power. It's also costlier. And the process of manufacturing solar panels is horrible for the environment.
Nuclear power is, believe it or not, the cleanest technology we have available, even if you consider the highly radioactive waste and the (typically minute) risk of meltdown.
What about mining for... and I'm going to sound ignorant about this because I am... whatever it is you put into the nuclear plant? Uranium? That's an environmental impact.
As for power, it seems to me that adding more solar panels/ collectors will improve that.
Cost is related to economies of scale. If more solar panels are purchased, the price will come down as the manufacture efficiency improves.
And as far as bad for the environment, as I understand it there are cleaner forms of solar power, not to mention that there's of course room for technological improvements on solar power. People who say that solar power is bad for the environment seem remarkably short sighted. Solar power is not perfect as is, but neither is nuclear, we seem to have invested a lot more time and effort into nuclear so far, and it doesn't seem that the dangers of nuclear are going anywhere.
Solar panels don't explode, but every solar panel is manufactured with some pretty nasty chemicals. Is the guaranteed environmental impact of manufacturing billions of solar panels less of an issue than the minuscule risk of a melt down?
You say nuclear power's problems have been mitigated by learning from our mistakes, why would the same not be true for solar?
That's exactly right, but people prefer letting the papers think for them.
I don't know if that's it so much as the "papers" seem to know what they're talking about. I don't. Critical? K? These are things I know nothing about. There are people on/. who swear on all things holy that nuclear power is completely safe, almost to the point of suggesting Chernobyl and 3 mile island were trivial, not actually radioactive, or hoaxes. There seem to be other people who say there is no such thing as safe nuclear power. Both camps seem to know a lot more about it than I do. You guys work it out and then tell me which it is. In the mean time, I'm pulling for solar power. It works for plants, and I have yet to hear any controversey about will solar panels explode. And don't suggest that people who don't know the ins and outs of nuclear power are dumb or I'll start quizing you on developmental neurobiology.
... and to prove that last point I just realized that I was redundant with the non-coding DNA and introns. I think. No wait, I meant to do that, this way if you misread "introns" it will still be covered by the "non-coding DNA" bit. And that's the last biochemistry joke out of me today.
That's, what, 28 incorrect base pairs out of 4000? I'm not a biologist, but is this considered an acceptable error rate? Even the hopes of 99.999% accuracy seems really awful when there are about 3 billion base pairs in a human genome.
That's a very good question, but consider that 100% is impossible. Even the cell's own machinery, under development for millions of years, makes mistakes at a frequency that would be lethal if that's all there was.
In this case, the error rate seems in the neighborhood of rival techologies. The way to deal with it is the same way the cell uses: redundancy. Sequence segments or the whole thing more than once, the likelyhood of bases in error is significantly decreased. If you run 3 sequencings, there's even a smaller chance that you'll have an error 2 out of 3 times.
Anyway, thanks to the way the genome works, the vast VAST majority of errors won't matter as much: non-coding DNA, introns, the codons themselves have a high degree of redundancy (IE TCT codes for serine, if the last T gets read as a C accidentally, it will still give you serine.)
Granted, there are important uses the sequence itself has. Fortunately most of those themselves can be done redundantly. If you're trying to run an in-situ hybridization for a sequence and your probe has one or two errors in it, my understanding is that would mess up the in-situ, but people often use more than one probe.
I should point out I'm not a biochemist, so take everything with a grain of salt. As with everything, I am definitely not error free.
Well, if you're implying that the reason people played the PS2 more than current gen systems is because they're all poor, I'd say that's probably not the major cause. After all, it's not like playing games on the PS2 is free while playing them on the wii is an arm and a leg. It's cheaper yes, and the games too, but it doesn't SEEM like it's a gap that means most people can't afford it.
Of course, it does strike me that the order PS2, wii, 360, PS3 is increasing in price and decreasing in playtime, but I still think it's more related to game library, with the wii being an exception due to the controller.
The latest craze is these hover over links. Every time I see one.. I feel like heating up a steel spring with a blow torch, then carefully sliding it up the webmasters nose.
Wait, that's an option? Jesus... TAKE IT RIGHT NOW!
See, if I were Mr. Ploppy, I wouldn't have put the emphasis on pointed, I would have put the emphasis on "doctors suggested." Doctors and their suggestions traditionally have not had much impact on legislation concerning cutlery.
Try getting a grant when you have no university "home". The government gives you the grant on the basis of your past achievements and the reputation of the university at which you are working. The university does, or should, help polish and process grant applications. It provides a space for you to work, and colleagues to work with (at the very least - usually rather more).
For all that, the university takes a large chunk of whatever grants you get, correct? They're reimbursed for what services they provide quite well unless I'm mistaken (and again very well might be.) The justification for patents existing is that they encourage innovation, with that in mind, giving it to the university is rewarding the wrong person: the university is not the innovator.
finally... a good idea from the Obama camp, I was praying for at least one
Yes, FINALLY a good idea. It's been so long since he took the oh-so powerful office of "president elect," it's about time he started using that office to govern rather than setting up the transition. It's high time he started using his constitutional powers as almost-president to do some good.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm just pointing out that 'reminding' terrorists isn't on the agenda or even part of the problem.
woosh. And here I thought I was being silly putting "/joke" at the end of my post.
You know... it's always disturbing to me when my jokes get modded insightful, or when my serious posts get modded funny.
No, don't you see?!? Terrorists are a forgetful bunch. If the courts order the feds to turn over their wiretaps, the terrorists are going to read the conversations they've had and will enact their dastardly, forgotten plans!
"Oh man! I totally forgot Osama wanted me to blow up that bridge! Thank you, NSA, for reminding me!"
It is essential for national security that we not release the tapes so the terrorists aren't reminded! We have to keep their plans secret from them! /joke
A fatwa has been issued, calling for the immediate murder of "Anonymous coward."
It's news for 2 reasons
1. War of any type, even in places where there is always war, is news
2. Its a step up from the usual tactics of this place.
It looks like someone has gone through and used all their mod points to mark me troll. One or two of those responses I could see possibly being misinterpreted as trolling, but not all of them. Why the partisanship about nuclear power? It's not as if our opinions here directly set the agenda for energy policy, why would someone stoop to abusing mod points?
Maybe several people actually did independantly think I was trolling. I don't think my posts could be read as such.
Well, there is one textbook on that exact subject that I've heard of (you could read it here http://books.google.com/books?id=CcaSO-WJavIC&dq=developmental+neurobiology&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result)
I haven't actually read through it though, so I can't say if it's good or not. A few years ago I took a class on it, but that was taught from powerpoint. To keep myself up-to-date on my subject area I just read articles as they come out on pubmed. But as far as one-stop big picture developmental neurobiology, I guess that book on google is the only one I know of. Sorry.
Vampire teeth I guess.
Do some research and think for yourself!
Well, I am thinking for myself. As for research, I'm busy with another area. And it's important to keep in mind even if I did make my mind up about which is better currently, that has no bearing on which one is going to be used.
It's trivial to me, in other words, so I'm going to use my time for more important things.
So if I'm reading the title correctly, Lawyers with rolexes could get us into space?
Are those crickets?
Solar takes a lot of space and puts out a lot less power. It's also costlier. And the process of manufacturing solar panels is horrible for the environment.
Nuclear power is, believe it or not, the cleanest technology we have available, even if you consider the highly radioactive waste and the (typically minute) risk of meltdown.
What about mining for... and I'm going to sound ignorant about this because I am... whatever it is you put into the nuclear plant? Uranium? That's an environmental impact.
As for power, it seems to me that adding more solar panels/ collectors will improve that.
Cost is related to economies of scale. If more solar panels are purchased, the price will come down as the manufacture efficiency improves.
And as far as bad for the environment, as I understand it there are cleaner forms of solar power, not to mention that there's of course room for technological improvements on solar power. People who say that solar power is bad for the environment seem remarkably short sighted. Solar power is not perfect as is, but neither is nuclear, we seem to have invested a lot more time and effort into nuclear so far, and it doesn't seem that the dangers of nuclear are going anywhere.
Solar panels don't explode, but every solar panel is manufactured with some pretty nasty chemicals. Is the guaranteed environmental impact of manufacturing billions of solar panels less of an issue than the minuscule risk of a melt down?
You say nuclear power's problems have been mitigated by learning from our mistakes, why would the same not be true for solar?
That's exactly right, but people prefer letting the papers think for them.
I don't know if that's it so much as the "papers" seem to know what they're talking about. I don't. Critical? K? These are things I know nothing about. There are people on /. who swear on all things holy that nuclear power is completely safe, almost to the point of suggesting Chernobyl and 3 mile island were trivial, not actually radioactive, or hoaxes. There seem to be other people who say there is no such thing as safe nuclear power. Both camps seem to know a lot more about it than I do. You guys work it out and then tell me which it is. In the mean time, I'm pulling for solar power. It works for plants, and I have yet to hear any controversey about will solar panels explode. And don't suggest that people who don't know the ins and outs of nuclear power are dumb or I'll start quizing you on developmental neurobiology.
No you fool! It's SARS!!! My god, just when I thought I was safe! Damn you europeans, bringing space SARS back with you, you'll kill us all!
... and to prove that last point I just realized that I was redundant with the non-coding DNA and introns. I think. No wait, I meant to do that, this way if you misread "introns" it will still be covered by the "non-coding DNA" bit. And that's the last biochemistry joke out of me today.
That's, what, 28 incorrect base pairs out of 4000? I'm not a biologist, but is this considered an acceptable error rate? Even the hopes of 99.999% accuracy seems really awful when there are about 3 billion base pairs in a human genome.
That's a very good question, but consider that 100% is impossible. Even the cell's own machinery, under development for millions of years, makes mistakes at a frequency that would be lethal if that's all there was.
In this case, the error rate seems in the neighborhood of rival techologies. The way to deal with it is the same way the cell uses: redundancy. Sequence segments or the whole thing more than once, the likelyhood of bases in error is significantly decreased. If you run 3 sequencings, there's even a smaller chance that you'll have an error 2 out of 3 times.
Anyway, thanks to the way the genome works, the vast VAST majority of errors won't matter as much: non-coding DNA, introns, the codons themselves have a high degree of redundancy (IE TCT codes for serine, if the last T gets read as a C accidentally, it will still give you serine.)
Granted, there are important uses the sequence itself has. Fortunately most of those themselves can be done redundantly. If you're trying to run an in-situ hybridization for a sequence and your probe has one or two errors in it, my understanding is that would mess up the in-situ, but people often use more than one probe.
I should point out I'm not a biochemist, so take everything with a grain of salt. As with everything, I am definitely not error free.
Well, if you're implying that the reason people played the PS2 more than current gen systems is because they're all poor, I'd say that's probably not the major cause. After all, it's not like playing games on the PS2 is free while playing them on the wii is an arm and a leg. It's cheaper yes, and the games too, but it doesn't SEEM like it's a gap that means most people can't afford it.
Of course, it does strike me that the order PS2, wii, 360, PS3 is increasing in price and decreasing in playtime, but I still think it's more related to game library, with the wii being an exception due to the controller.
But think of what Advertising has done for you? Without online advertising, the web wouldn't even have half the content it does now... or worse.
That would be okay, most days I don't actually browse through half the internet.
I ignored whatever it is you just said. You're probably used to that though.
The latest craze is these hover over links. Every time I see one.. I feel like heating up a steel spring with a blow torch, then carefully sliding it up the webmasters nose.
Wait, that's an option? Jesus... TAKE IT RIGHT NOW!
See, if I were Mr. Ploppy, I wouldn't have put the emphasis on pointed, I would have put the emphasis on "doctors suggested." Doctors and their suggestions traditionally have not had much impact on legislation concerning cutlery.
Try getting a grant when you have no university "home". The government gives you the grant on the basis of your past achievements and the reputation of the university at which you are working. The university does, or should, help polish and process grant applications. It provides a space for you to work, and colleagues to work with (at the very least - usually rather more).
For all that, the university takes a large chunk of whatever grants you get, correct? They're reimbursed for what services they provide quite well unless I'm mistaken (and again very well might be.) The justification for patents existing is that they encourage innovation, with that in mind, giving it to the university is rewarding the wrong person: the university is not the innovator.
Well yeah, but the on-the-job training is much better. Assuming you're getting your degree in something other than shoe sales that is.
I'll say! I thought I would never realize my dream of opening a non-franchise Popeye's Chicken in Luxembourge.
finally... a good idea from the Obama camp, I was praying for at least one
Yes, FINALLY a good idea. It's been so long since he took the oh-so powerful office of "president elect," it's about time he started using that office to govern rather than setting up the transition. It's high time he started using his constitutional powers as almost-president to do some good.