A couple decades ago, maybe. These days, people openly bitch about the party on a routine basis, online and offline (although any talk of organizing to actually do anything about it will attract immediate official attention).
A better example would be North Korea, where accidentally damaging your Glorious Leader lapel pin can get you sent to a prison camp.
It would take about 80 years to run a company with $2.5 billion in the bank to the ground with 300 employees, even if they never ever sold a single product from now on until 2092...
That assumes the company management decides not to light huge piles of money on fire.*
*And by "light on fire", I mean "make pointless and expensive acquisitions".
Oh, it certainly does, the experiment is in progress right now as we speak. You can be sure the science textbooks our descendants write will be updated with what we learn in the process.
What remains is whether these textbooks will reference our wisdom or our folly.
I'm turning up the following in search. Many variations in exact wording, due to it being a translation:
"Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn." -St. Augustine, "De Genesi ad Litteram Libri Duodecim"
And which cooling mechanisms are these? According to TFA, melting the polar icecap actually removes an important cooling mechanism. Other mechanisms, such as the ocean's ability to abosrb CO2, are pretty much maxed out. Do you have a planet size air conditioner nobody else knows about?
With substantial removal of ice cover from land areas, we get increased erosion from previously inaccessible terrain, leading to increased amounts of certain minerals available in the ocean, which remove CO2 through carbonate formation. Another major mechanism for CO2 removal is the occurrence of global oceanic anoxic events, which leads to massive oceanic burying of organic carbon (there is some speculation that anoxic periods were responsible for the formation of some major oil deposits, as well as some extinction events).
Of course, geological mechanisms such as this function on geological time scales, so I wouldn't expect these effects to kick in on any timescale observable by our human civilization.
It is an internship meaning it is completely voluntary.
Quite right, Tovarishch -- If bad things just happen to refuseniks afterwards, it is entirely coincidental. But that's no problem, because we are all happy volunteers!
Why did AV publishers stop doing live install cds??
They realized it was cutting into the re-occurring subscription fees for installed AV packages, which are a major source of their revenue (this includes most free AV companies also, as they try to up-sell you on premium subscriptions). Microsoft is an exception, since their AV business mainly serves as a method of defending their core OS business.
Open water piracy would take a dent as there would be no crew to kidnap, and there would be no incentive for ship owners to follow pirates' demands to reroute ships. After all, if you're going to lose a ship and its cargo either way, then might as well do it by not appeasing pirates.
I'd bet self-navigation is already extensively used today (in open ocean), and that modern crews are there to meet legal requirements, and for maintenance and onboard operations. Completely unmanned ships would probably reduce piracy for ransom, but might increase piracy for theft (of cargo, or the ship itself).
How can the vaccinated students be at risk? They're supposed to be immune.
There's always a certain proportion of vaccine recipients who do not seroconvert following immunization (this proportion varies depending on the vaccine in question); for most vaccines you can test for an antibody response afterwards, but in the general population this is not done for reasons of time and cost effectiveness. In the past, these individuals would have received some protection from herd immunity (which is effective until the proportion of unprotected individuals reaches a certain threshold -- think of it like a smoldering fire that snuffs itself out, because it could not spread to new fuel faster than the currently burning areas were consumed).
For certain special populations where protection is critical, a verification of seroconversion might be routinely performed. For instance, in my medical school class, we had a student who did not respond to the Hepatitis B vaccination.
If the odds of becoming pregnant through rape are 5%, that actually puts them at somewhat higher than through ordinary means (which are thought to be about 1 in 30). How does one account for that?
In addition to previous responses (that they subconsciously pick ovulating women), it would also make sense if rapists were selectively targeting women who, on average, were younger and/or healthier than the general female population.
Isn't this insect doing something like this coral symbiosis [wikipedia.org]?
Before I popped open the article, I figured it was going to be another one of those symbiont cases, or at the most one of those kleptoplasty cases (where the organism integrates and uses ingested chloroplasts). Turns out it's much more interesting -- the aphid apparently has it's own carotenoid synthesis pathways, and (it is hypothesized) can use it to reduce NAD+ for the purposes of pumping protons to drive ATP synthesis.
It's not a full photosynthesis pathway like plants have. They won't be able to get as much energy, nor can they fix CO2 to make organic substrates. But it is their own endogenous system that's at work (although parts of that system may have been obtained through horizontal gene transfer).
I'd rather have page up/page down there than the back/forward buttons that were there before - I've hit the back key and lost everything that I was typing into a webpage far too many times with those damn things.
I've done that a couple of times, including losing lengthy Slashdot response posts. I've been dealing with it by using the Lazarus plugin (for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari), which allows me to retrieve lost form submissions.
Note: the plugin encrypts saved form data, but it might still be a problem for users with high security requirements.
One problem with testosterone and its derivatives, is their status as a controlled substance, and potential for diversion (at the distribution level; IM injections being immune to patient diversion). While I think the panic over anabolic steroids is ridiculous (hauling baseball players in front of congress?), I'm sure it ends up increasing paperwork and costs, and the big pharma companies may decide the potential political/legal circus is not worth it.
I'm sure there are plenty of opportunistic 3rd-tier companies that wouldn't mind if the potential profit were large enough (as they apparently are for a number of other controlled substances) -- but it's possible the WHO may be asking for restrictions on profit margin.
I notice one of them actually works, the other is a piece of plastic with a print of a newspaper stuck to it.
The creator of which one should be rewarded? (think carefully before you answer)
After thinking about it a bit, this would be my answer:
For the one that came after (and actually works), I see no reason why they shouldn't be rewarded for the effort on the parts that actually made it work. Patents on novel engineering regarding the guts of the device that made it a functioning tablet? No problem.
For the one that came first (and doesn't work), the non-functional mock-up offers only style; the external look and design. Those are the only elements he should get credit for -- but it just so happens that elements of style are among the patents at question in this trial.
Why? CO2 is the ONLY emission that the biosphere of the entire planet is built around consuming.
I beg to differ. Fixed nitrogen (mostly NOx) is another such emission, consumed by the biosphere whether in vapor or dissolved forms, from combustion by-products, sewage, or fertilizer run-off (especially fertilizer). So are Phosphates, found in detergents, fertilizer, and sewage (and of all major nutrients, possibly the most highly bio-concentrated in terms of the ratio between ambient environment and living organism). Unfortunately, while artificial applications of these nutrients are a boon to agriculture, their haphazard disposal results in eutrophication of freshwater bodies, and dead zones and red tides along coasts. As with all complex systems, the details are important.
In terms of CO2, if we were to assume all other factors remain the same (distribution of temperature and precipitation), we'd likely see some benefit to crops which utilize C3 photosynthesis AND are at least sometimes limited by CO2 uptake vs other nutrients -- I suspect rice, cassava, and potatoes would fall into this category, but not sure about soy and most fruits and vegetables (they're also C3 plants, but not sure how CO2-limited they are). C4-based plants and crops (wheat, corn) will likely show little benefit, being capable of high-intensity photosynthesis in the presence of low CO2 concentration.
The distribution of other limiting factors is the key. I suspect over-all biological production (on land) will rise, but the benefits will vary. For instance, swaths of Canada and Russia will benefit from a longer growing season; Saharan Africa may become greener as well due to more precipitation, while the mid and south-west US could experience reduced biological productivity. But these details of precipitation changes are one of those things associated with complex models (that critics like to deride) and lots of potential error.
Oceanic productivity will also be affected. CO2 could be a limiting factor in niche cases (sea-grass beds, maybe), but in broad swaths of the ocean, other factors predominate (nitrogen, phosphorous, iron, dissolved O2). Acidification is an interesting problem -- you don't need as complex of a model to determine the degree, it's a much more straightforward function. Organisms utilizing carbonate skeletons (and those that eat them) will suffer, while those using siliceous or organic frameworks may benefit from reduced competition. Likewise, lower O2 solubility and changes in inter-strata mixing will benefit some organisms (jellyfish) while penalizing others (possibly commercial fish species).
Personally, I think reducing CO2 production through laws is a fool's game, when enforcement is divided among multiple sovereign players, some who stand to gain an economic advantage by cheating. But I have a beef with climate denialists anyway -- they interfere with our ability to plan and invest in the technology and infrastructure required to adapt to climate changes.
...A couple bright Bobbies think this is too easy and follow the clowns. Assange drives to Liverpool where he boards a freighter bound for Venezuela as a black crewman...
Can we also get a live band to play "Yakity Sax" while this brillant plan unfolds?
For readers who were impressed by Blindsight, I'd like to recommend William Barton's When Heaven Fell. There are some similar themes, including the enslavement of humanity (and most sentient species in our corner of the galaxy) by a race of Eusocial aliens who are non-sentient (but unlike your typical SF example, there apparently is no Queen to assassinate or negotiate with, nor any hidden hive-mind who just happens to mis-understand humanity). Despite being non-sentient, their co-operative efforts allow them to build advanced weapons and AI servants superior to anything humans have.
I remember debating this novel with members of my old SF club, and one of the objections a friend had, was the number of gratuitious sex scenes in the book. I thought that the emptiness and gratuity of the sex scenes was actually an important but subtle point, although I couldn't quite explain it to him, until I realized the problem was that my friend was a History major, while I was a student of Biology; not too spoil too much, but if you read the book, think about what are the selection dynamics that lead to the evolution of Eusociality.
Not anymore, with Economics 2.0 right around the corner. Charlie Stross's Accelerando seems increasingly prescient:
"...add a delay factor for propagation across the system, call it six light-hours across, um, and I'd say..." she looks at Sirhan. "Oh dear."
"What?"
The orang-utan explains: "Economics 2.0 is more efficient than any human-designed resource allocation schema. Expect a market bubble and crash within twelve hours."
P.S. Pneumothorax doesn't mean you have a collapsed lung.
Absolutely correct, it refers to air in the pleural cavity (which would normally be not so much a cavity, as more of a "potential space").
In explaining a medical condition to a layman, I would have no problem telling him he had collapsed lung. But if I were to read "collapsed lung" in some de-jargonized medical record, I would have no idea if the writer meant Atelectasis instead.
Flash memory 25 year longevity prognosis: good, spinning hard drives: not so much.
Flash memory storage relies on trapped charges which eventually dissipate over time (if not refreshed). While older flash memory might be ok, as cell sizes have shrunk (and the number of bits per cell increased), retention times have plummeted -- I've heard that manufacturer's quoted retention times for modern flash usually run in the 5 to 10 year range.
How about this as a solution? In determining the Fair and Reasonable terms for licensing a FRAND patent, reciprocity (including that of non-FRAND patents) may be considered.
What this means, is that Apple's own terms for licensing Apple's patents may be considered when creating a definition for what is "Fair", when FRAND terms are demanded from other players.
Slashdot Mirror
Try insulting the Party in China.
A couple decades ago, maybe. These days, people openly bitch about the party on a routine basis, online and offline (although any talk of organizing to actually do anything about it will attract immediate official attention).
A better example would be North Korea, where accidentally damaging your Glorious Leader lapel pin can get you sent to a prison camp.
It would take about 80 years to run a company with $2.5 billion in the bank to the ground with 300 employees, even if they never ever sold a single product from now on until 2092...
That assumes the company management decides not to light huge piles of money on fire.*
* And by "light on fire", I mean "make pointless and expensive acquisitions".
Funny how this doesn't apply to "Global Warming"
Oh, it certainly does, the experiment is in progress right now as we speak. You can be sure the science textbooks our descendants write will be updated with what we learn in the process.
What remains is whether these textbooks will reference our wisdom or our folly.
I'm turning up the following in search. Many variations in exact wording, due to it being a translation:
"Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn." -St. Augustine, "De Genesi ad Litteram Libri Duodecim"
And which cooling mechanisms are these? According to TFA, melting the polar icecap actually removes an important cooling mechanism. Other mechanisms, such as the ocean's ability to abosrb CO2, are pretty much maxed out. Do you have a planet size air conditioner nobody else knows about?
With substantial removal of ice cover from land areas, we get increased erosion from previously inaccessible terrain, leading to increased amounts of certain minerals available in the ocean, which remove CO2 through carbonate formation. Another major mechanism for CO2 removal is the occurrence of global oceanic anoxic events, which leads to massive oceanic burying of organic carbon (there is some speculation that anoxic periods were responsible for the formation of some major oil deposits, as well as some extinction events).
Of course, geological mechanisms such as this function on geological time scales, so I wouldn't expect these effects to kick in on any timescale observable by our human civilization.
It is an internship meaning it is completely voluntary.
Quite right, Tovarishch -- If bad things just happen to refuseniks afterwards, it is entirely coincidental. But that's no problem, because we are all happy volunteers!
Why did AV publishers stop doing live install cds??
They realized it was cutting into the re-occurring subscription fees for installed AV packages, which are a major source of their revenue (this includes most free AV companies also, as they try to up-sell you on premium subscriptions). Microsoft is an exception, since their AV business mainly serves as a method of defending their core OS business.
Open water piracy would take a dent as there would be no crew to kidnap, and there would be no incentive for ship owners to follow pirates' demands to reroute ships. After all, if you're going to lose a ship and its cargo either way, then might as well do it by not appeasing pirates.
I'd bet self-navigation is already extensively used today (in open ocean), and that modern crews are there to meet legal requirements, and for maintenance and onboard operations. Completely unmanned ships would probably reduce piracy for ransom, but might increase piracy for theft (of cargo, or the ship itself).
...and he's taken the last giant leap for mankind.
Godspeed, on his journey to the unknown continent from which no traveler returns.
What am I forgetting?
Lego caltrops on the floor.
How can the vaccinated students be at risk? They're supposed to be immune.
There's always a certain proportion of vaccine recipients who do not seroconvert following immunization (this proportion varies depending on the vaccine in question); for most vaccines you can test for an antibody response afterwards, but in the general population this is not done for reasons of time and cost effectiveness. In the past, these individuals would have received some protection from herd immunity (which is effective until the proportion of unprotected individuals reaches a certain threshold -- think of it like a smoldering fire that snuffs itself out, because it could not spread to new fuel faster than the currently burning areas were consumed).
For certain special populations where protection is critical, a verification of seroconversion might be routinely performed. For instance, in my medical school class, we had a student who did not respond to the Hepatitis B vaccination.
If the odds of becoming pregnant through rape are 5%, that actually puts them at somewhat higher than through ordinary means (which are thought to be about 1 in 30). How does one account for that?
In addition to previous responses (that they subconsciously pick ovulating women), it would also make sense if rapists were selectively targeting women who, on average, were younger and/or healthier than the general female population.
Isn't this insect doing something like this coral symbiosis [wikipedia.org]?
Before I popped open the article, I figured it was going to be another one of those symbiont cases, or at the most one of those kleptoplasty cases (where the organism integrates and uses ingested chloroplasts). Turns out it's much more interesting -- the aphid apparently has it's own carotenoid synthesis pathways, and (it is hypothesized) can use it to reduce NAD+ for the purposes of pumping protons to drive ATP synthesis.
It's not a full photosynthesis pathway like plants have. They won't be able to get as much energy, nor can they fix CO2 to make organic substrates. But it is their own endogenous system that's at work (although parts of that system may have been obtained through horizontal gene transfer).
When using an MVNO like Straight Talk that resells using T-Mobile's network, T-Mobile *does not allow non-network text messages thru*.
Interesting, do the blocked texts just go *poof*, or does the sender get an error/bounceback?
I'd rather have page up/page down there than the back/forward buttons that were there before - I've hit the back key and lost everything that I was typing into a webpage far too many times with those damn things.
I've done that a couple of times, including losing lengthy Slashdot response posts. I've been dealing with it by using the Lazarus plugin (for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari), which allows me to retrieve lost form submissions.
Note: the plugin encrypts saved form data, but it might still be a problem for users with high security requirements.
Its called testosterone.
One problem with testosterone and its derivatives, is their status as a controlled substance, and potential for diversion (at the distribution level; IM injections being immune to patient diversion). While I think the panic over anabolic steroids is ridiculous (hauling baseball players in front of congress?), I'm sure it ends up increasing paperwork and costs, and the big pharma companies may decide the potential political/legal circus is not worth it.
I'm sure there are plenty of opportunistic 3rd-tier companies that wouldn't mind if the potential profit were large enough (as they apparently are for a number of other controlled substances) -- but it's possible the WHO may be asking for restrictions on profit margin.
I notice one of them actually works, the other is a piece of plastic with a print of a newspaper stuck to it.
The creator of which one should be rewarded? (think carefully before you answer)
After thinking about it a bit, this would be my answer:
For the one that came after (and actually works), I see no reason why they shouldn't be rewarded for the effort on the parts that actually made it work. Patents on novel engineering regarding the guts of the device that made it a functioning tablet? No problem.
For the one that came first (and doesn't work), the non-functional mock-up offers only style; the external look and design. Those are the only elements he should get credit for -- but it just so happens that elements of style are among the patents at question in this trial.
Why? CO2 is the ONLY emission that the biosphere of the entire planet is built around consuming.
I beg to differ. Fixed nitrogen (mostly NOx) is another such emission, consumed by the biosphere whether in vapor or dissolved forms, from combustion by-products, sewage, or fertilizer run-off (especially fertilizer). So are Phosphates, found in detergents, fertilizer, and sewage (and of all major nutrients, possibly the most highly bio-concentrated in terms of the ratio between ambient environment and living organism). Unfortunately, while artificial applications of these nutrients are a boon to agriculture, their haphazard disposal results in eutrophication of freshwater bodies, and dead zones and red tides along coasts. As with all complex systems, the details are important.
In terms of CO2, if we were to assume all other factors remain the same (distribution of temperature and precipitation), we'd likely see some benefit to crops which utilize C3 photosynthesis AND are at least sometimes limited by CO2 uptake vs other nutrients -- I suspect rice, cassava, and potatoes would fall into this category, but not sure about soy and most fruits and vegetables (they're also C3 plants, but not sure how CO2-limited they are). C4-based plants and crops (wheat, corn) will likely show little benefit, being capable of high-intensity photosynthesis in the presence of low CO2 concentration.
The distribution of other limiting factors is the key. I suspect over-all biological production (on land) will rise, but the benefits will vary. For instance, swaths of Canada and Russia will benefit from a longer growing season; Saharan Africa may become greener as well due to more precipitation, while the mid and south-west US could experience reduced biological productivity. But these details of precipitation changes are one of those things associated with complex models (that critics like to deride) and lots of potential error.
Oceanic productivity will also be affected. CO2 could be a limiting factor in niche cases (sea-grass beds, maybe), but in broad swaths of the ocean, other factors predominate (nitrogen, phosphorous, iron, dissolved O2). Acidification is an interesting problem -- you don't need as complex of a model to determine the degree, it's a much more straightforward function. Organisms utilizing carbonate skeletons (and those that eat them) will suffer, while those using siliceous or organic frameworks may benefit from reduced competition. Likewise, lower O2 solubility and changes in inter-strata mixing will benefit some organisms (jellyfish) while penalizing others (possibly commercial fish species).
Personally, I think reducing CO2 production through laws is a fool's game, when enforcement is divided among multiple sovereign players, some who stand to gain an economic advantage by cheating. But I have a beef with climate denialists anyway -- they interfere with our ability to plan and invest in the technology and infrastructure required to adapt to climate changes.
...A couple bright Bobbies think this is too easy and follow the clowns. Assange drives to Liverpool where he boards a freighter bound for Venezuela as a black crewman...
Can we also get a live band to play "Yakity Sax" while this brillant plan unfolds?
For readers who were impressed by Blindsight, I'd like to recommend William Barton's When Heaven Fell. There are some similar themes, including the enslavement of humanity (and most sentient species in our corner of the galaxy) by a race of Eusocial aliens who are non-sentient (but unlike your typical SF example, there apparently is no Queen to assassinate or negotiate with, nor any hidden hive-mind who just happens to mis-understand humanity). Despite being non-sentient, their co-operative efforts allow them to build advanced weapons and AI servants superior to anything humans have.
I remember debating this novel with members of my old SF club, and one of the objections a friend had, was the number of gratuitious sex scenes in the book. I thought that the emptiness and gratuity of the sex scenes was actually an important but subtle point, although I couldn't quite explain it to him, until I realized the problem was that my friend was a History major, while I was a student of Biology; not too spoil too much, but if you read the book, think about what are the selection dynamics that lead to the evolution of Eusociality.
Not anymore, with Economics 2.0 right around the corner. Charlie Stross's Accelerando seems increasingly prescient:
"...add a delay factor for propagation across the system, call it six light-hours across, um, and I'd say ..." she looks at Sirhan. "Oh dear."
"What?"
The orang-utan explains: "Economics 2.0 is more efficient than any human-designed resource allocation schema. Expect a market bubble and crash within twelve hours."
P.S. Pneumothorax doesn't mean you have a collapsed lung.
Absolutely correct, it refers to air in the pleural cavity (which would normally be not so much a cavity, as more of a "potential space").
In explaining a medical condition to a layman, I would have no problem telling him he had collapsed lung. But if I were to read "collapsed lung" in some de-jargonized medical record, I would have no idea if the writer meant Atelectasis instead.
from the as-long-as-the-kids-like-grandma dept.
Just wait until 4chan learns what they can do to grandma's PC. This isn't going to end well.
Flash memory 25 year longevity prognosis: good, spinning hard drives: not so much.
Flash memory storage relies on trapped charges which eventually dissipate over time (if not refreshed). While older flash memory might be ok, as cell sizes have shrunk (and the number of bits per cell increased), retention times have plummeted -- I've heard that manufacturer's quoted retention times for modern flash usually run in the 5 to 10 year range.
How about this as a solution? In determining the Fair and Reasonable terms for licensing a FRAND patent, reciprocity (including that of non-FRAND patents) may be considered.
What this means, is that Apple's own terms for licensing Apple's patents may be considered when creating a definition for what is "Fair", when FRAND terms are demanded from other players.