Gee, thanks, I'll definately take that advice next time.
In 1987, the drug's creators had originally obtained a "methods" patent on using the combination of two generic vasodilators (hydralazine and isosorbide dinitrate) that seemed to have a pronounced beneficial effect in treating heart failure.
The methods patent, which expires in 2007, was not race-specific.
Soon thereafter the patent owners applied for a new race-specific methods patent to use the generic combination to treat heart failure in African-American patients.
If my knowledge of pharmecetical patents is so out of whack as to be foolish, that doesn't say a lot for the lawyers, judges, and patent inspectors involved in this case.
Or, they could just patent the use of this drug to treat cancer, rather than the drug itself. It's been attempted before, where heart medication that was just about to go generic was suddenly patented as being target to people of African descent. I'm not sure what the end result of that attempt was however.
Isn't this the way that the information network is suposedly done in Diamond Age? As long as the encryption is good enough and the bandwidth wide enough, there's no reason such a system couldn't work. At present, I doubt that the second condition is true, however. Constantly sending and recieving other people's data is going to tax your device's already too small battery, which will of course cause people to turn the feature off, which will severly hamper it's usefulness.
...it seems rather odd to me that we could've had a significant population of ancestors that failed to leave a fossil record.
That isn't at difficult to explain. The problem lies in the assumption that evolution is continuous, steady change over time and that fossilization events are spread evenly throughout history. In reality, neither of those is true. Sudden changes in environment the rate of evolution to increase as ecological niches are created and destroyed. Likewise, fossilization events are rare and not spaced evenly throughout history. All it requires to create a seamingly large gap in the fossil record is for there to be a dearth of fossilization events while at the same time a sudden change in environment.
Ok, if you insist I not be flippant about the subject, so be it.
What creationists don't understand is that science isn't about killing religion, science couldn't care less what the religious implications of its discoveries are. Science is about the quest for knowledge, and knowing that humanity didn't evolve naturally would be the most important piece of knowledge ever discovered. In short, if evidence existed that contradicted our current scientific beliefs, it is in every scientists interests to bring that evidence to the table; the risk might be large but the payoff is enormous.
Unfortunately, the claim of an intelligent creator is difficult bordering on impossible to prove scientifically; it makes no predictions that can be tested, it happened so far in the past that there no remaining evidence to support it, and, unlike evolution, it is not an ongoing phenomonon.
What if there's no such thing as gravity, and we're all just held down by the FSM's noodly appendage? What if the world were created last Thursday, complete with us and all our memories? What if the entire universe is just a figment of my (deranged) imagination?
See, hypotheticals are fun!
In all seriousness though, assuming that someone/something reached down and tweaked our DNA, then left the solar system leaving no other evidence behind takes a pretty big leap. Especially when we have no reason to think that such a tweaking is necissary to explain our evolution.
That would assume that no one is going to be driving his old car, which almost definatly is not the case. In the long run, he'll sell his car to someone else, who'll sell their car to someone else, who'll sell their car to someone else, etc. etc. until the actual car that is taken off the road is undrivable, unmaintainable, or massively inneficient. Obviously, there are special cases where this doesn't happen (Cash for Clunkers) but that is generally how it works.
Worse than that even, this is using your strength in one industry segment (physics acceleration) to support sales of an arguably different segment (graphics acceleration).
This article is full of nonsense, it's not even worth the read. For example...
Movie pictures are beamed on the screen by the projector at the back of the cinema. But in the future, you could use a data link that works with millimetre waves.
If I were a science teacher, I think I would have a weekly contest "What's wrong with this?". I'd give all the kids a website, newspaper article, creationist newsletter (probably lose my job over that one but oh well), etc... and have them come up with a list of all the reasons that it is nonsense. Start with easy stuff (like the difference between EM and Ionizing radiation) and move to more challanging things later (like what a valid sample size is). We need to expose kids to the idea that not everything they read is gospel, to think critically about what they read and see and actually apply their education.
This will end with one of two things happening (possibly both). Places that sell software will be legally required to give you a shpeel about how they are only selling a liscense and it is not transferable and nothing will change. Or, software producers move to a limited lifespan/subscription model instead; and we'll all be paying $X per year for whatever software we use.
They also will probably email you the same information, that doesn't mean you should pop open a laptop while you drive down the freeway to check for traffic warnings.
I wonder if there's a frequency for gullibility, aggression, fear, etc...
I don't know about that, but I bet there's a frequency for the placebo effect. Your anecdote reminds me of the people that are 'alergic' to WiFi, but only when they know it's around. I'm not necissarily saying that there's nothing to it, but I'd require some pretty significant double blind tests before I buy into the idea of a nauseating sound. If nothing else I would think there would be plenty of times when such a frequency would be prodeced in industry, leading to everyone that works there beign constantly nauseous.
I'm confused what the purpose of this article is. Is it 'Gee Whiz' look what you can build at home? Or is it look how much money was wasted creating the original? Or what?
Yes, the original version costs $1 Million to create, this was created for $250. Except, you know, she didn't have to come up with the idea, and she didn't have to do any of the original research, and there's no garauntee that hers won't cause permanent blindness, and hers doesn't work. But other than that it is a total bargain.
Care to explain? The system would certainly take energy, a significant amount of it in fact. But that energy could be produced on the ground as opposed to having to take it with you as is done in rocket launches. Put your moving pieces inside of an evacuated tube and fire/turn the projectiles using magnets there will be very little energy lost to friction. The current estimates for the power requirements of a launch loop are a 500 Mw power plant for 35 launches per day and can be scaled up to 80 launches per hour with sufficient power (17 Gw).
You're assuming that each object tossed up will mean energy lost to the system. In reality, you'd want to keep the projectiles at high speed, including during the 'catch and throw back' parts by having them curve around a structure rather than stop and start again. The launch loop idea is perhaps easier to understand since it doesn't use discrete projectiles but rather one, very long, flexible belt that is looped at the ends.
The advantages over a space elevator are much faster launches, easier to lift the cargo (using magnets to borrow energy from your projectile/belt as compared to beaming power up with a laser), much higher launch capacity, and the ability to build them anywhere on the planet (as opposed to only the equator for a space elevator).
I know it's a bit outside of NASA's purview, for the moment at least, but how about a contest to build structures that are held up by kinetic energy. You launch material to the top of your structure, catch it there, and throw it back down; transfering enough energy in the process to hold the structure aloft. This kind of thing could eventually be used to build Launch Loops or Space Fountains and is a pretty big engineering challenge that is probably solvable today with a little effort. And it's no more outlandish than a space elevator (probably less so in fact).
I would think this is the easiest security problem in the world to solve. If no activity for X minutes, lock the PC and send an email reminder to the user that says "Hey Dumbass, lock your PC when you leave".
Re:Treat ain't worth the paper its written on
on
Iran's Nuclear Ambitions
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Iran launches one at Isreal, in which case it is 100% Iran's fault. -Or- Isreal launches one at Iran, in which case it is 100% Iran's fault.
The logic there is amazing. For the record, I'm not trying to say that it's 100% Isreal's fault either. Just trying to point out that it's a bit more complicated that your statement seems to imply.
Passengers should be banned, too. That increases reaction time.
Except, you know, for the fact that they don't. At least, not nearly as badly. Realistically, there needs to be a limit on what is and what isn't considered distracted driving. We already have one threashold based on BAC. Why look at the quality of people's driving at and above that level, and say any behaviors that reduce your driving ability as much or more than that are illegal. As numerous studies have pointed out, talking on a phone meets that requirement. Listening to the radio or talking to a passenger does not.
The problem is that it's easier to find loopholes than it is to plug them. All it takes is one guy at DHS thinking in his cubical to come up with a semi-plausible legal rational for this kind of thing. To have the rational refuted takes someone willing to sacrafice years of their life and fight it all the way to the supreme court. It takes thousands of man hours, sometimes millions of dollars to refute even the simpliest of arguments. And what happens after? The DHS says 'oh well' and goes back to the way things were before. No one is held accountable, no one is punished, and there is nothing to prevent the same worthless peon from coming up with another rational a week later.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-11275848_ITM
Gee, thanks, I'll definately take that advice next time.
In 1987, the drug's creators had originally obtained a "methods" patent on using the combination of two generic vasodilators (hydralazine and isosorbide dinitrate) that seemed to have a pronounced beneficial effect in treating heart failure.
The methods patent, which expires in 2007, was not race-specific.
Soon thereafter the patent owners applied for a new race-specific methods patent to use the generic combination to treat heart failure in African-American patients.
If my knowledge of pharmecetical patents is so out of whack as to be foolish, that doesn't say a lot for the lawyers, judges, and patent inspectors involved in this case.
Or, they could just patent the use of this drug to treat cancer, rather than the drug itself. It's been attempted before, where heart medication that was just about to go generic was suddenly patented as being target to people of African descent. I'm not sure what the end result of that attempt was however.
You damn youn^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HYes, I could see how that would be annoying.
Isn't this the way that the information network is suposedly done in Diamond Age? As long as the encryption is good enough and the bandwidth wide enough, there's no reason such a system couldn't work. At present, I doubt that the second condition is true, however. Constantly sending and recieving other people's data is going to tax your device's already too small battery, which will of course cause people to turn the feature off, which will severly hamper it's usefulness.
...it seems rather odd to me that we could've had a significant population of ancestors that failed to leave a fossil record.
That isn't at difficult to explain. The problem lies in the assumption that evolution is continuous, steady change over time and that fossilization events are spread evenly throughout history. In reality, neither of those is true. Sudden changes in environment the rate of evolution to increase as ecological niches are created and destroyed. Likewise, fossilization events are rare and not spaced evenly throughout history. All it requires to create a seamingly large gap in the fossil record is for there to be a dearth of fossilization events while at the same time a sudden change in environment.
Ok, if you insist I not be flippant about the subject, so be it.
What creationists don't understand is that science isn't about killing religion, science couldn't care less what the religious implications of its discoveries are. Science is about the quest for knowledge, and knowing that humanity didn't evolve naturally would be the most important piece of knowledge ever discovered. In short, if evidence existed that contradicted our current scientific beliefs, it is in every scientists interests to bring that evidence to the table; the risk might be large but the payoff is enormous.
Unfortunately, the claim of an intelligent creator is difficult bordering on impossible to prove scientifically; it makes no predictions that can be tested, it happened so far in the past that there no remaining evidence to support it, and, unlike evolution, it is not an ongoing phenomonon.
What if there's no such thing as gravity, and we're all just held down by the FSM's noodly appendage?
What if the world were created last Thursday, complete with us and all our memories?
What if the entire universe is just a figment of my (deranged) imagination?
See, hypotheticals are fun!
In all seriousness though, assuming that someone/something reached down and tweaked our DNA, then left the solar system leaving no other evidence behind takes a pretty big leap. Especially when we have no reason to think that such a tweaking is necissary to explain our evolution.
That would assume that no one is going to be driving his old car, which almost definatly is not the case. In the long run, he'll sell his car to someone else, who'll sell their car to someone else, who'll sell their car to someone else, etc. etc. until the actual car that is taken off the road is undrivable, unmaintainable, or massively inneficient. Obviously, there are special cases where this doesn't happen (Cash for Clunkers) but that is generally how it works.
Worse than that even, this is using your strength in one industry segment (physics acceleration) to support sales of an arguably different segment (graphics acceleration).
This article is full of nonsense, it's not even worth the read. For example...
Movie pictures are beamed on the screen by the projector at the back of the cinema. But in the future, you could use a data link that works with millimetre waves.
What. The. Fuck. is that supposed to mean?
If I were a science teacher, I think I would have a weekly contest "What's wrong with this?". I'd give all the kids a website, newspaper article, creationist newsletter (probably lose my job over that one but oh well), etc... and have them come up with a list of all the reasons that it is nonsense. Start with easy stuff (like the difference between EM and Ionizing radiation) and move to more challanging things later (like what a valid sample size is). We need to expose kids to the idea that not everything they read is gospel, to think critically about what they read and see and actually apply their education.
This will end with one of two things happening (possibly both). Places that sell software will be legally required to give you a shpeel about how they are only selling a liscense and it is not transferable and nothing will change. Or, software producers move to a limited lifespan/subscription model instead; and we'll all be paying $X per year for whatever software we use.
They also will probably email you the same information, that doesn't mean you should pop open a laptop while you drive down the freeway to check for traffic warnings.
I wonder if there's a frequency for gullibility, aggression, fear, etc...
I don't know about that, but I bet there's a frequency for the placebo effect. Your anecdote reminds me of the people that are 'alergic' to WiFi, but only when they know it's around. I'm not necissarily saying that there's nothing to it, but I'd require some pretty significant double blind tests before I buy into the idea of a nauseating sound. If nothing else I would think there would be plenty of times when such a frequency would be prodeced in industry, leading to everyone that works there beign constantly nauseous.
I'm confused what the purpose of this article is. Is it 'Gee Whiz' look what you can build at home? Or is it look how much money was wasted creating the original? Or what?
Yes, the original version costs $1 Million to create, this was created for $250. Except, you know, she didn't have to come up with the idea, and she didn't have to do any of the original research, and there's no garauntee that hers won't cause permanent blindness, and hers doesn't work. But other than that it is a total bargain.
Which can, again, be supported magnetically by your projectile stream/belt.
Care to explain? The system would certainly take energy, a significant amount of it in fact. But that energy could be produced on the ground as opposed to having to take it with you as is done in rocket launches. Put your moving pieces inside of an evacuated tube and fire/turn the projectiles using magnets there will be very little energy lost to friction. The current estimates for the power requirements of a launch loop are a 500 Mw power plant for 35 launches per day and can be scaled up to 80 launches per hour with sufficient power (17 Gw).
You're assuming that each object tossed up will mean energy lost to the system. In reality, you'd want to keep the projectiles at high speed, including during the 'catch and throw back' parts by having them curve around a structure rather than stop and start again. The launch loop idea is perhaps easier to understand since it doesn't use discrete projectiles but rather one, very long, flexible belt that is looped at the ends.
Have a read if I'm not explaining this very well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop
The advantages over a space elevator are much faster launches, easier to lift the cargo (using magnets to borrow energy from your projectile/belt as compared to beaming power up with a laser), much higher launch capacity, and the ability to build them anywhere on the planet (as opposed to only the equator for a space elevator).
I know it's a bit outside of NASA's purview, for the moment at least, but how about a contest to build structures that are held up by kinetic energy. You launch material to the top of your structure, catch it there, and throw it back down; transfering enough energy in the process to hold the structure aloft. This kind of thing could eventually be used to build Launch Loops or Space Fountains and is a pretty big engineering challenge that is probably solvable today with a little effort. And it's no more outlandish than a space elevator (probably less so in fact).
Windows-L is even easier in Windows.
I would think this is the easiest security problem in the world to solve. If no activity for X minutes, lock the PC and send an email reminder to the user that says "Hey Dumbass, lock your PC when you leave".
They could very easily go missing, as the programs in place to account in such matters sort of don't work in Pakistan.
They don't always work very well in the US either.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/05/loose.nukes/index.html
Iran launches one at Isreal, in which case it is 100% Iran's fault.
-Or-
Isreal launches one at Iran, in which case it is 100% Iran's fault.
The logic there is amazing. For the record, I'm not trying to say that it's 100% Isreal's fault either. Just trying to point out that it's a bit more complicated that your statement seems to imply.
Passengers should be banned, too. That increases reaction time.
Except, you know, for the fact that they don't. At least, not nearly as badly. Realistically, there needs to be a limit on what is and what isn't considered distracted driving. We already have one threashold based on BAC. Why look at the quality of people's driving at and above that level, and say any behaviors that reduce your driving ability as much or more than that are illegal. As numerous studies have pointed out, talking on a phone meets that requirement. Listening to the radio or talking to a passenger does not.
They try, they don't always succeed, sometimes they fail miserably, but they do try. Which is better than 99% of the companies out there.
The problem is that it's easier to find loopholes than it is to plug them. All it takes is one guy at DHS thinking in his cubical to come up with a semi-plausible legal rational for this kind of thing. To have the rational refuted takes someone willing to sacrafice years of their life and fight it all the way to the supreme court. It takes thousands of man hours, sometimes millions of dollars to refute even the simpliest of arguments. And what happens after? The DHS says 'oh well' and goes back to the way things were before. No one is held accountable, no one is punished, and there is nothing to prevent the same worthless peon from coming up with another rational a week later.