It still exists. I had a co-worker (a cute chinese girl) who spoke with a distinct valley accent. I almost burst out laughing the first time I heard her say "Like, take a Midol!" to another girl.
Western Digital has restarted HDD production in Thailand earlier than expected.
I'd definitely be a little careful about the first few batches of new drives that come off those assembly lines, considering all the decontamination, repair and re-calibration the flooded manufacturing equipment would have needed. Would be interesting to know if there's going to be a bump in their drive rate failure over the next few years for Western Digital, Hitachi, and Toshiba.
There's an parallel situation with semiconductor manufacturing. There's a interesting paucity of foreign companies with fabs in China.. There's only about three entries from foreign companies. All the other fabs in China belong to the native Chinese company SMIC, which has substantial state investment... as well as a history of IP-theft lawsuits.
It's almost as if semiconductor manufacturing corporations were smart enough to foresee the long-term consequences of building up their own future competitors.
The electronic medical record business is an absolute mess. One of the natural roles of government is the setting of standards. But while the rest of the medical field is piled high with regulation upon regulation, in this one field the government has decided decided to stand aside.
Dozens of different systems in use that theoretically should be able to talk to each other, but in practice reliant on format converters written by vendors that have a vested interest in making life difficult for competing vendors. And with each additional vendor, a geometrically increase in the possible permutations of formats to be converted.
Could have just given the rats the Voight-Kampff test.
Yeah, they tried, but it didn't go too well.
Researcher: "You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, . You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, but you’re not helping. Why is that? Rat: "Squeak?"
Researcher: Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about your mother. Rat: "Squeeeeeeak!" *BITE*
It's the ultimate weapon against drone aircraft. They flood the control frequencies with Jerry Springer and UFO Conspiracy documentaries, causing the controller to become too stupid to continue flying the aircraft.
Exactly. Why is it we have 800 channels of TV, and not one of them carries college level lectures? There are professors out there giving lectures every day. It would cost next to nothing to record them and air them, and would give the 5% of us who actually like to use our brains something to watch.
Could usually find some good stuff on PBS. The Mechanical Universe was a great example of a college lecture-type program.
"The CERN newsletter reports that a new paper by scientists at the University of Victoria has demonstrated that one of the prime observational justifications for the existence of dark matter can be explained without any dark matter at all, by a proper use of general relativity! What does this imply for cosmology and particle physics, both of which have been worrying about other aspects of dark matter?"
Impressive sounding claims that raised a big hoo-ha on Slashdot (and are echoed in similar replies to this story), until it was pointed out that the equations contained a mistake, such that the galaxy they modeled behaved as if it had a disk-shaped singularity embedded in it. A mistake that accounted for the observed effects in the model.
This sort of physics paper is exactly the type of preliminary result that needs to be mulled over before it front-page attention. It's pretty close to being flame-bait (and thus just ends up making everyone look stupid, except for the handful of physics experts who knew what they were talking about).
I guess the new figures make a little more sense. Bulldozer's performance was fairly similar to their previous (and smaller) Thuban Core, at 904 million transistors -- it was as if AMD decided to take more than half of their transistor design budget, heap it in a corner, and set it on fire.
Also (not particularly relevant), cocaine (and, IIRC, procaine and relatives) are the only anesthetics that are not central nervous system depressants.
I believe some arylcyclohexylamines also share this property.
"In the deep basement off the coast of mom's house, scientists have found a species of neckbeard that cultivates gardens of bacteria on its facial hair, then eats them.... The bristles that cover the neckbeard's facial hair and body are coated in gardens of symbiotic bacteria, which derive energy from Cheeto dust. The neckbeard eats the bacteria, using comb-like mouthparts to harvest them from its bristles."
If you don't release pressure from your lungs as the ambient pressure decreases (when diving, by ascending), you'll do catastrophic damage to your lungs.
Not holding your breath in a vacuum presents another problem though. Gas exchange in your lungs is a passive process, driven by concentration gradients. As the partial pressure of O2 in your alveoli drops to zero, the diffusion goes into reverse; blood passing through your lungs actually has its remaining oxygen content sucked out, causing you to black out almost instantly.
A bit of trivia. The genus name for malaria's primary mosquito vector, Anopheles, translates from Greek as "useless" or "good for nothing".
Given that malaria has probably killed more humans than any other single pathogen, historically -- I will not be sorry to see it go, regardless of any environmental collateral damage.
This news has been bouncing around the biology world for a few days now. To add some perspective, the "super flu" was created via the technique known as Serial Passage, developed by Louis Pasteur. Yup, that Louis Pasteur. All you really need is a sufficiently large colony of ferrets, a source stock of H5N1, and some time -- there is not going to be any secret Atomic-Bomb recipe in the paper, the virus does the hard work itself, via evolution.
Oh, and by the way... At one of the labs I used to work at, my fellow researchers once were chatting about what the various stereotypes for their colleagues were. I learned that the virologist stereotype among the other researchers was "a little bit crazy". Nightnight.
Huh. Confused me a bit, as I previously thought the German side decided to rename themselves as EMD (for Emanuel Merck Darmstadt). Didn't realize the new name only applied when they're operating in the U.S.
Many of us who've worked in laboratories are quite familar with EMD, they're a major supplier of chemicals to the pharmaceutical industry (and other chemical industries). I'll be there are bottles of stuff labeled EMD in some of Merck's (U.S.) facilities right now.
There's a famous story about the African Grey parrot Alex. One of the researchers was cooking a Cornish Hen, at which Alex exclaimed "Oh No, Paco!" (Paco being another parrot). Upon being told it wasn't Paco, Alex then laughed in a very human style.
It was easy to tout the latter's unique panel design composed of multiple cylindrical modules to a non-technical audience. They seemed Apple-like in their sophisticated industrial design. Solyndra assembly and installation were elegant and slick. Perhaps these qualities played better at dinner parties than discussion of efficiency ratings, production costs or manufacturing scalability.
the software secretly chronicles a user's phone experience, from its apps, battery life and texts.
Let's hope someone succeeds in reverse engineering and implementing a copy of the CarrierIQ protocol, as I wish it to be known that my favorite App is the "Nude Crocheting Pocket Guide", and my current battery life is "Purple".
I will also be happy to forward my texts (which I shall not utter here) to the phone company as well, as soon as an international SMS character set for the language of Morder is approved.
That's part of the problem. One of the speculated reasons the Atom processor is so far behind, is that Intel was afraid it would cannibalize more profitable segments of its mobile CPU market. As a result, they launched it with a bunch of contractual restrictions on it (customers had to agree not to use it in any notebook larger than 10"-form factor), while using pricing models that discouraged 3rd party graphics (Atoms bundled with Intel's chipset were sometimes actually cheaper than solo Atoms, making nVidia ION combos uneconomical).
Since AMD had no strong CPUs in the netbook segment, everyone had to simply accept these restrictions at first, until AMD introduced their Ontaria and Zacate series.
Well, a few things to keep in mind. One is that phages are very specific to their hosts (like a antibiotic with a super-narrow spectrum of activity), and two similar strains of bacteria can have very different phage susceptibility profiles. In an epidemic (such as a Cholera outbreak), you are likely facing all one strain, but for community infections you will need to a large library of phages, which requires considerable expertise to maintain and use. On the plus side, you can avoid collateral damage to friendly bacteria, and resistance can be evolved around.
A set of phage "cocktails" would simplify your library. However, this worsens another problem, as people develop immune reactions against phages. Very quickly after your initial encounter, you will likely develop a response against it. This also tends to limit phage treatment to areas that are topologically outside of the body (superficial surfaces, gut lumen).
Probably the biggest hurdle would actually be our pharmaceutical regulatory structure, which is pretty inflexible and might not know how to deal with something something like this. If every phage strain is required to have a separate approval, that would pretty much kill development right away.
As RDRAM failed to match SDRAM technically and price-wise, Intel was saved by their competitors selling Intel-compatible chipsets, for otherwise few people would have bough Intel CPUs. Because Intel was contractually obligated to only ship RDRAM-compatible motherboards.
It wasn't long after this, that Intel started forcing 3rd party chipset makers out. No such thing as gratitude in this business, I guess.
In particular, the AFL-CIO's Paul Almeida advocated for the internet blacklist, saying 'the First Amendment does not protect stealing goods off trucks'"
Slashdot Mirror
It still exists. I had a co-worker (a cute chinese girl) who spoke with a distinct valley accent. I almost burst out laughing the first time I heard her say "Like, take a Midol!" to another girl.
Western Digital has restarted HDD production in Thailand earlier than expected.
I'd definitely be a little careful about the first few batches of new drives that come off those assembly lines, considering all the decontamination, repair and re-calibration the flooded manufacturing equipment would have needed. Would be interesting to know if there's going to be a bump in their drive rate failure over the next few years for Western Digital, Hitachi, and Toshiba.
Why isn't China in the hard drive business?
That's actually a very good question.
There's an parallel situation with semiconductor manufacturing. There's a interesting paucity of foreign companies with fabs in China.. There's only about three entries from foreign companies. All the other fabs in China belong to the native Chinese company SMIC, which has substantial state investment... as well as a history of IP-theft lawsuits.
It's almost as if semiconductor manufacturing corporations were smart enough to foresee the long-term consequences of building up their own future competitors.
The electronic medical record business is an absolute mess. One of the natural roles of government is the setting of standards. But while the rest of the medical field is piled high with regulation upon regulation, in this one field the government has decided decided to stand aside.
Dozens of different systems in use that theoretically should be able to talk to each other, but in practice reliant on format converters written by vendors that have a vested interest in making life difficult for competing vendors. And with each additional vendor, a geometrically increase in the possible permutations of formats to be converted.
My prediction for this merger? http://xkcd.com/927
Could have just given the rats the Voight-Kampff test.
Yeah, they tried, but it didn't go too well.
Researcher: "You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, . You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, but you’re not helping. Why is that?
Rat: "Squeak?"
Researcher: Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about your mother.
Rat: "Squeeeeeeak!" *BITE*
They have anti-aircraft TV shows? We're screwed.
It's the ultimate weapon against drone aircraft. They flood the control frequencies with Jerry Springer and UFO Conspiracy documentaries, causing the controller to become too stupid to continue flying the aircraft.
Don't forgot Sonic Hedgehog (SHH), an important protein used in development.
Which ends up being an unfunny problem for doctors, that have to explain to a mom that her baby's congenital malformation is caused by a "Sonic Hedgehog Mutation": http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7074/full/439266d.html
Exactly. Why is it we have 800 channels of TV, and not one of them carries college level lectures? There are professors out there giving lectures every day. It would cost next to nothing to record them and air them, and would give the 5% of us who actually like to use our brains something to watch.
Could usually find some good stuff on PBS. The Mechanical Universe was a great example of a college lecture-type program.
Remember this story on Slashdot from 2005?
http://science.slashdot.org/story/05/10/10/1052224/good-bye-dark-matter-hello-general-relativity
"The CERN newsletter reports that a new paper by scientists at the University of Victoria has demonstrated that one of the prime observational justifications for the existence of dark matter can be explained without any dark matter at all, by a proper use of general relativity! What does this imply for cosmology and particle physics, both of which have been worrying about other aspects of dark matter?"
Impressive sounding claims that raised a big hoo-ha on Slashdot (and are echoed in similar replies to this story), until it was pointed out that the equations contained a mistake, such that the galaxy they modeled behaved as if it had a disk-shaped singularity embedded in it. A mistake that accounted for the observed effects in the model.
This sort of physics paper is exactly the type of preliminary result that needs to be mulled over before it front-page attention. It's pretty close to being flame-bait (and thus just ends up making everyone look stupid, except for the handful of physics experts who knew what they were talking about).
I guess the new figures make a little more sense. Bulldozer's performance was fairly similar to their previous (and smaller) Thuban Core, at 904 million transistors -- it was as if AMD decided to take more than half of their transistor design budget, heap it in a corner, and set it on fire.
Also (not particularly relevant), cocaine (and, IIRC, procaine and relatives) are the only anesthetics that are not central nervous system depressants.
I believe some arylcyclohexylamines also share this property.
like-wringing-out-a-beard dept.
"In the deep basement off the coast of mom's house, scientists have found a species of neckbeard that cultivates gardens of bacteria on its facial hair, then eats them. ... The bristles that cover the neckbeard's facial hair and body are coated in gardens of symbiotic bacteria, which derive energy from Cheeto dust. The neckbeard eats the bacteria, using comb-like mouthparts to harvest them from its bristles."
If you don't release pressure from your lungs as the ambient pressure decreases (when diving, by ascending), you'll do catastrophic damage to your lungs.
Not holding your breath in a vacuum presents another problem though. Gas exchange in your lungs is a passive process, driven by concentration gradients. As the partial pressure of O2 in your alveoli drops to zero, the diffusion goes into reverse; blood passing through your lungs actually has its remaining oxygen content sucked out, causing you to black out almost instantly.
I have the first Transformer, I'm very pleased with it.
Was it more than meets the eye?
A bit of trivia. The genus name for malaria's primary mosquito vector, Anopheles, translates from Greek as "useless" or "good for nothing".
Given that malaria has probably killed more humans than any other single pathogen, historically -- I will not be sorry to see it go, regardless of any environmental collateral damage.
Meanwhile, at AMD/ATI Headquarters:
"Well, fuck it. We're going to 449 cores."
This news has been bouncing around the biology world for a few days now. To add some perspective, the "super flu" was created via the technique known as Serial Passage, developed by Louis Pasteur. Yup, that Louis Pasteur. All you really need is a sufficiently large colony of ferrets, a source stock of H5N1, and some time -- there is not going to be any secret Atomic-Bomb recipe in the paper, the virus does the hard work itself, via evolution.
Oh, and by the way... At one of the labs I used to work at, my fellow researchers once were chatting about what the various stereotypes for their colleagues were. I learned that the virologist stereotype among the other researchers was "a little bit crazy". Nightnight.
Huh. Confused me a bit, as I previously thought the German side decided to rename themselves as EMD (for Emanuel Merck Darmstadt). Didn't realize the new name only applied when they're operating in the U.S.
Many of us who've worked in laboratories are quite familar with EMD, they're a major supplier of chemicals to the pharmaceutical industry (and other chemical industries). I'll be there are bottles of stuff labeled EMD in some of Merck's (U.S.) facilities right now.
There's a famous story about the African Grey parrot Alex. One of the researchers was cooking a Cornish Hen, at which Alex exclaimed "Oh No, Paco!" (Paco being another parrot). Upon being told it wasn't Paco, Alex then laughed in a very human style.
This is a bit offtopic, but I came across this article on EDN that does a bit of technical analysis on Solyndra's product itself, and what were some of the benefits and shortcomings of their tubular solar collector design:
http://www.edn.com/article/520093-Solyndra_Its_technology_and_why_it_failed.php
It was easy to tout the latter's unique panel design composed of multiple cylindrical modules to a non-technical audience. They seemed Apple-like in their sophisticated industrial design. Solyndra assembly and installation were elegant and slick. Perhaps these qualities played better at dinner parties than discussion of efficiency ratings, production costs or manufacturing scalability.
the software secretly chronicles a user's phone experience, from its apps, battery life and texts.
Let's hope someone succeeds in reverse engineering and implementing a copy of the CarrierIQ protocol, as I wish it to be known that my favorite App is the "Nude Crocheting Pocket Guide", and my current battery life is "Purple".
I will also be happy to forward my texts (which I shall not utter here) to the phone company as well, as soon as an international SMS character set for the language of Morder is approved.
In 2011, Intel competes with itself.
That's part of the problem. One of the speculated reasons the Atom processor is so far behind, is that Intel was afraid it would cannibalize more profitable segments of its mobile CPU market. As a result, they launched it with a bunch of contractual restrictions on it (customers had to agree not to use it in any notebook larger than 10"-form factor), while using pricing models that discouraged 3rd party graphics (Atoms bundled with Intel's chipset were sometimes actually cheaper than solo Atoms, making nVidia ION combos uneconomical).
Since AMD had no strong CPUs in the netbook segment, everyone had to simply accept these restrictions at first, until AMD introduced their Ontaria and Zacate series.
Well, a few things to keep in mind. One is that phages are very specific to their hosts (like a antibiotic with a super-narrow spectrum of activity), and two similar strains of bacteria can have very different phage susceptibility profiles. In an epidemic (such as a Cholera outbreak), you are likely facing all one strain, but for community infections you will need to a large library of phages, which requires considerable expertise to maintain and use. On the plus side, you can avoid collateral damage to friendly bacteria, and resistance can be evolved around.
A set of phage "cocktails" would simplify your library. However, this worsens another problem, as people develop immune reactions against phages. Very quickly after your initial encounter, you will likely develop a response against it. This also tends to limit phage treatment to areas that are topologically outside of the body (superficial surfaces, gut lumen).
Probably the biggest hurdle would actually be our pharmaceutical regulatory structure, which is pretty inflexible and might not know how to deal with something something like this. If every phage strain is required to have a separate approval, that would pretty much kill development right away.
As RDRAM failed to match SDRAM technically and price-wise, Intel was saved by their competitors selling Intel-compatible chipsets, for otherwise few people would have bough Intel CPUs. Because Intel was contractually obligated to only ship RDRAM-compatible motherboards.
It wasn't long after this, that Intel started forcing 3rd party chipset makers out. No such thing as gratitude in this business, I guess.
In particular, the AFL-CIO's Paul Almeida advocated for the internet blacklist, saying 'the First Amendment does not protect stealing goods off trucks'"
That's ok, we're stealing off Tubes, not Trucks.