Cicpro disappeared from drugstores nearly overnight too during the 2001 anthrax problem. Everybody from businesses to panicky public was hording the stuff.
At the most only half of sexually promiscious people get infected. This is known from studies of African hookers and gay men. Its not clear why this is so. One or two percent of Caucasians have a mutation that blocks the virus, perhaps from some long ago similar epidemic.
Perhaps some of the others are quickly self-cured.
Even so, a 50% infection rate is serious. Even if the progression to fatallity is four times slower from the new drugs than it was in the early years, lots stil get ill and die.
The batteries are designed for 70-80K miles. Thats about twice as
long as I get for standard batteries. However, they cost three
times as much each to replace all 12 to 16 at the end of their useful life or $5000. The earliest customers will havent reached this distance yet.
Whats the time value of a movie? Netflix turnarounf is about two business days after requesting a new DVD and assuming they have ample supply. With downloading I'd want to be almost as fast to start viewing as I selected it.
Give that DNA readers seem to following Moore's Law, at some future time there will be a quick DNA reader. But then the bad guys will employ the disguise Ethan Hawke used. Maybe even clones.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the transition from the pre-scientific concept that "nature fits mathematic patterns" to "mathematics describes nature". The difference is crucial. People back to Pythogarous and Plato (and further back to Babylonians and Egyptians) ascribed to the concept that there perfect mathematical patterns that nature must fit. This sometimes forced people to force observation to
fit a preconceived model (e.g. circular orbits) rather than choose the best mathematics to fit the data. This stunted both science and mathematics. Galileo was clearly in the science camp. Perhaps Kepler and even Newton were in both camps. Newton was obsessed with pattern over experiement. A good portion of hs writings concern alchemy and Biblical chronology which people now ignore.
I still have an uneasiness with modern physics- that relatively simple equations explain most of nature's patterns and forces. And new mathematics had lead to ever deeper understanding of the cosmos. There is no a-priori reason this should be so unless one ascribes to the I.D. camp.
You have to build in operating costs for 10-15 years.
Operating costs include the maintence staff, data distribution
and the salaries of dozens to hundreds of scientists
who will use the beast.
These can be 2-3 times the construction cost over that
long period. This brings total costs into the gigabuck
range these days.
Back in the 1980s Intel, DEC, etc. might ship upgrades about every two years, while specialty proces companies like Floatoing Point Systems, MassPar, Connection Machine, etc. might be more like 3-5 years between generations. Five years has been an order of magnitude performance increase in the commodity processors.
In the scientific computing world there have been several episodes where someone comes up with a attached processor an order of magnitude faster than a general purpose CPU and try to get the market to use it. Each generation improved the programming interface eventually using some subset of C (now Cg) combined with a preprogrammed routine library.
All these companies died mainly because the commodity computer makers could pump out new generations about three times faster and eventually catch up. And the general purpose software was always easier to maintain than the special purpose software. Perhaps graphics card software will buck this trend because its a much larger market than specialty scientific computing. The NVIDAS and ATIs can ship new hardware generations as fast as the Intels and AMDs.
No one, robber baron or not, has given so much wealth to solving major problems of the human condition. He is as a great example to other billionaires out there. I predict he'll get the peace prize some years down the line.
Its small enough to put near interesting parts of the anatomy without difficulty and detection. As the iPod acquires more functionality, this one could open new markets.
The misconduct board has been operating for ten years, yet there have been very few firings and investiations. During that time there have been around 2000 fulltime and part time professors at MIT.
I always wondered when they say as many as half of high school and college students cheat in some fashion according to some surveys, how this becomes relatively rare in faculty. Several search engine studies of online academic journals have more less a one percent rate of xeno-plagarism. (Though the rates of auto-plagarism, the recycling of previous paragraphs by the same research groups is substantially higher.) Research miscondent is so rare that it still makes headlines.
Five years after Craig Ventor's DNA was decoded, they still dont have a precise number of human genes. Thats partly because the the first draft was very rough, being gradually completed by per-chromosome working groups. The other is because there still some ambiguity in how DNA maps into proteins. Mammal DNA with all its introns and exons can have multiple, ambiguous mappings. Some simpler, sub-mammal organisms its easier to do this.
A mouse DNA decoding project has been more precise. They specific match the gene and its resulting protein(s). Then they reverse manaufacture cDNA from the protein and archive these. I recall they are around 30K genes and 60K proteins. Human genes are being analysed in this fashion too, but not as complete yet.
Seismic imaging and 3D computer graphics film rendering, are a couple of areas that might desire ten thousand nodes for a few months, and then dont want them for a while. I've heard of IBM offering a similar product. A major animation house rented a HP/Compaq super-cluster.
A few years ago David Stork published a series of interviews anwith computer scientists about progress in artifical intelligence compared to the movie 2001. Stork is a cognitive scientist based in the S.F. area. Video's of these interviews were shown on PBS.
This material only looks at the computer side of 2001. Kubrick's interviews also looked at space travel, exterrestial intelligence, and potential social changes 35 years hence.
The first year was kind of exciting beacuase everything they were finding was new. However Spirit is pretty much just seeing the same slightly altered basalt rocks on Sol 600 as it was on Sol 10, 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500.
Ditto for Opportunity. It found those hematite blueberries and sulfur-rich layered rocks in the first crater, then saw them again in the next five craters its visited.
Some of the other things were interesting too- the dust devil movies, eclipses of Martian moons and so on.
horror stories during dot.com bust
on
The H-1B Swindle
·
· Score: 1
Many H1-Bs were stranded during the dot.com bust.
However the state department suspended the requirement
they return home, allowing them to stay if had
applied for a green card. In earlier years they
would have been requiredto return home if they
hadnt found a new position in 12 months.
Having worked for the largest commercial software writer in my sector for a decade, writing a chuck of code to the point where is all compiles and runs is only 1/3 of the work at best. Refining to team and customer sasitifaction, removing bugs. support and marketing can easily be 60-80% of the work. Especially if you work in teams with people of different specialties.
will "Franken-germs" take over the world?
on
The Los Alamos Bug
·
· Score: 1
Think the riots over GM food in Europe and Africa are wild?
Wait until artificial germs and animal life come along. These are more mobile and mix with other living things.
Several viruses have already been constructed from scratch- polio and 1918 flu. Its not clear whether they have the same power as the original. These just have a couple dozen proteins and genes. Minimal life is thought to rquire about four hundred or so.
Some ecological groups in California have successfully obtained injunctions against windmills because of bird deaths.
The numbers of deaths are controversial, but one study I saw said about one every two years per windmill.
No alternative power is perfect. Hydroelectric has issues with recreation, fish, sediments, floods and water quality. Geothermal pushes brine waters around and in some places cause small earthquakes. Solar uses lots of land and the solar cell manufacturing uses lots of toxic chemicals.
Slashdot Mirror
Cicpro disappeared from drugstores nearly overnight too during the 2001 anthrax problem. Everybody from businesses to panicky public was hording the stuff.
With tens of millions of people having taken HIV tests, even the tiniest error rate is going to have some false positives and negatives.
At the most only half of sexually promiscious people get infected. This is known from studies of African hookers and gay men. Its not clear why this is so. One or two percent of Caucasians have a mutation that blocks the virus, perhaps from some long ago similar epidemic. Perhaps some of the others are quickly self-cured.
Even so, a 50% infection rate is serious. Even if the progression to fatallity is four times slower from the new drugs than it was in the early years, lots stil get ill and die.
The batteries are designed for 70-80K miles. Thats about twice as long as I get for standard batteries. However, they cost three times as much each to replace all 12 to 16 at the end of their useful life or $5000. The earliest customers will havent reached this distance yet.
I guess we'll have to be proactive then and ban fuel cells and hydrogen power systems before they get established :-)
Every power source has its drawbacks. Environmentalists have even been able to slow windmill installations because they occasionally kill birds.
Whats the time value of a movie? Netflix turnarounf is about two business days after requesting a new DVD and assuming they have ample supply. With downloading I'd want to be almost as fast to start viewing as I selected it.
Give that DNA readers seem to following Moore's Law, at some future time there will be a quick DNA reader. But then the bad guys will employ the disguise Ethan Hawke used. Maybe even clones.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the transition from the pre-scientific concept that "nature fits mathematic patterns" to "mathematics describes nature". The difference is crucial. People back to Pythogarous and Plato (and further back to Babylonians and Egyptians) ascribed to the concept that there perfect mathematical patterns that nature must fit. This sometimes forced people to force observation to fit a preconceived model (e.g. circular orbits) rather than choose the best mathematics to fit the data. This stunted both science and mathematics. Galileo was clearly in the science camp. Perhaps Kepler and even Newton were in both camps. Newton was obsessed with pattern over experiement. A good portion of hs writings concern alchemy and Biblical chronology which people now ignore.
I still have an uneasiness with modern physics- that relatively simple equations explain most of nature's patterns and forces. And new mathematics had lead to ever deeper understanding of the cosmos. There is no a-priori reason this should be so unless one ascribes to the I.D. camp.
You have to build in operating costs for 10-15 years. Operating costs include the maintence staff, data distribution and the salaries of dozens to hundreds of scientists who will use the beast. These can be 2-3 times the construction cost over that long period. This brings total costs into the gigabuck range these days.
Back in the 1980s Intel, DEC, etc. might ship upgrades about every two years, while specialty proces companies like Floatoing Point Systems, MassPar, Connection Machine, etc. might be more like 3-5 years between generations. Five years has been an order of magnitude performance increase in the commodity processors.
In the scientific computing world there have been several episodes where someone comes up with a attached processor an order of magnitude faster than a general purpose CPU and try to get the market to use it. Each generation improved the programming interface eventually using some subset of C (now Cg) combined with a preprogrammed routine library.
All these companies died mainly because the commodity computer makers could pump out new generations about three times faster and eventually catch up. And the general purpose software was always easier to maintain than the special purpose software. Perhaps graphics card software will buck this trend because its a much larger market than specialty scientific computing. The NVIDAS and ATIs can ship new hardware generations as fast as the Intels and AMDs.
No one, robber baron or not, has given so much wealth to solving major problems of the human condition. He is as a great example to other billionaires out there. I predict he'll get the peace prize some years down the line.
Its small enough to put near interesting parts of the anatomy without difficulty and detection. As the iPod acquires more functionality, this one could open new markets.
The misconduct board has been operating for ten years, yet there have been very few firings and investiations. During that time there have been around 2000 fulltime and part time professors at MIT.
I always wondered when they say as many as half of high school and college students cheat in some fashion according to some surveys, how this becomes relatively rare in faculty. Several search engine studies of online academic journals have more less a one percent rate of xeno-plagarism. (Though the rates of auto-plagarism, the recycling of previous paragraphs by the same research groups is substantially higher.) Research miscondent is so rare that it still makes headlines.
American university have been doing this for over a decade, yet this is the third slashdot thread touting this ESA project. Yawn.
The "orange star" has certainly been pretty in North American skies lately.
Five years after Craig Ventor's DNA was decoded, they still dont have a precise number of human genes. Thats partly because the the first draft was very rough, being gradually completed by per-chromosome working groups. The other is because there still some ambiguity in how DNA maps into proteins. Mammal DNA with all its introns and exons can have multiple, ambiguous mappings. Some simpler, sub-mammal organisms its easier to do this.
A mouse DNA decoding project has been more precise. They specific match the gene and its resulting protein(s). Then they reverse manaufacture cDNA from the protein and archive these. I recall they are around 30K genes and 60K proteins. Human genes are being analysed in this fashion too, but not as complete yet.
Seismic imaging and 3D computer graphics film rendering, are a couple of areas that might desire ten thousand nodes for a few months, and then dont want them for a while. I've heard of IBM offering a similar product. A major animation house rented a HP/Compaq super-cluster.
A few years ago David Stork published a series of interviews anwith computer scientists about progress in artifical intelligence compared to the movie 2001. Stork is a cognitive scientist based in the S.F. area. Video's of these interviews were shown on PBS.
This material only looks at the computer side of 2001. Kubrick's interviews also looked at space travel, exterrestial intelligence, and potential social changes 35 years hence.
One Martian year is 669 Martian days (Sols) or 686 Earth days, or a little under two earth years. Sol 669 is around Nov 18. Happy birthday Spirit.
The first year was kind of exciting beacuase everything they were finding was new. However Spirit is pretty much just seeing the same slightly altered basalt rocks on Sol 600 as it was on Sol 10, 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500.
Ditto for Opportunity. It found those hematite blueberries and sulfur-rich layered rocks in the first crater, then saw them again in the next five craters its visited.
Some of the other things were interesting too- the dust devil movies, eclipses of Martian moons and so on.
Many H1-Bs were stranded during the dot.com bust. However the state department suspended the requirement they return home, allowing them to stay if had applied for a green card. In earlier years they would have been requiredto return home if they hadnt found a new position in 12 months.
Having worked for the largest commercial software writer in my sector for a decade, writing a chuck of code to the point where is all compiles and runs is only 1/3 of the work at best. Refining to team and customer sasitifaction, removing bugs. support and marketing can easily be 60-80% of the work. Especially if you work in teams with people of different specialties.
Think the riots over GM food in Europe and Africa are wild? Wait until artificial germs and animal life come along. These are more mobile and mix with other living things.
Several viruses have already been constructed from scratch- polio and 1918 flu. Its not clear whether they have the same power as the original. These just have a couple dozen proteins and genes. Minimal life is thought to rquire about four hundred or so.
Some ecological groups in California have successfully obtained injunctions against windmills because of bird deaths. The numbers of deaths are controversial, but one study I saw said about one every two years per windmill.
No alternative power is perfect. Hydroelectric has issues with recreation, fish, sediments, floods and water quality. Geothermal pushes brine waters around and in some places cause small earthquakes. Solar uses lots of land and the solar cell manufacturing uses lots of toxic chemicals.