I work for the company (CRi) that produced the polarized light imaging system (Oosight) that this guy credits for much of this new cloning success. In case anyone's interested the product website is here. and has links to movies of actual monkey eggs being manipulated and having their original DNA removed.
The basic principle is that the highly-ordered molecules on which the chromosomes are mounted are birefringent (they change the polarization-state of light), so if you know what the original polarization state was and if you can measure the state afterwards, then you can detect those molecules, even though they are transparent. As the BBC article says, this means you don't need to use toxic dyes to find them (which is obviously a bad idea, if you want the egg to actually survive the process).
I think you make a very valid point, but I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say younger generations are "immune" to it. For the younger generations, it's normal -- they've known nothing else.
The article makes the assumption that this new normal is bad. That in itself is questionable, but probably not entirely wrong. We're interrupted, we're context-switching, we're not capable of paying attention, etc. Older generations feel more stress in this kind of environment. Remove the constant flow of information, though, and the younger generations begin to exhibit ADD type behaviors. The lack of information causes stress. The problem is that we have no baseline for how the body is reacting to both types of environments.
It's possible that it's not so different from the country/city living argument. Neither of them are wrong, both have their benefits and drawbacks. Put a farmer in the middle of NYC, and he'll feel stress. Take a Wall Street broker and drop him in the middle of Nebraska without a cell phone or blackberry; he'd probably freak out. It's not that the new environment is bad -- it's just drastically different.
Some of the episodes, like 'Window of Opportunity' (The time ripple), 'Upgrades' (The super-arm bands), 'Jolinar's memories'/'The Devil you know' (Sokar) are so damn good, and really funny.
It depends on how you look at the move. I don't think Yahoo is necessarily going to attract new customers with this model.
However, with this move they're highly likely to retain their current paying customers. People who were paying for 20M get 2G for the same price. It's suddenly no longer worth the hassle to get an invite to Gmail, nor are you likely to move over once Gmail is public. Changing an email address is a pain, and if you were willing to pay before, you're likely to be willing to continue.
Mindstorms is a great toy, but when it comes down to it, it's rather cost prohibitive. The $100 starter box is really neat, but there simply aren't enough bricks. You're limited by what you can do because once you start building, you almost immediately need more sensors/motors/etc, and it's tough to justify spending another $100 to get that.
I think it's a shame that they're phasing it out, but at the same time, I'd much rather spend the $100 on a bunch of plain old bricks. Enough normal bricks might make some of those specialty Harry Potter pieces usable.
~d (longing for the days of the old Castle sets, where you built the damn thing yourself rather than putting 4 pieces together)
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
on
What You Can't Say
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· Score: 1
Oh boy. Where do I start?
Here's the thing, feminism keeps on expanding and expanding, adding new goals everytime one is met...its has been corrupted by greed and powerlust. No matter what you get, it'll never be enough...not good.
I disagree. I think that you believe you've got a very clear definition of the goals of feminism. I don't think they align well with what most feminists think. Feminism doesn't end just because women got the right to vote.
Totally with you on the salaries. Same pay for same jobs, but the problem is that still isn't fixed. I'm personally experiencing $.70 on my co-workers' dollars. The across the board thing is stupid.
Backlash-wise, I was thinking in totally different terms. I was considering the men who have been in female-dominated careers -- while they dont' have the salary problems that women have, there is a 'girls club' that they aren't in.
But every girl (feel free to call me a boy) I've met who described herself as a feminist was hostile towards men.
Most women who believe in gender equality don't call themselves feminists because of this very belief. I personally don't declare myself a feminist because of the stigma it carries; but I agree with the movement. What does that make me? A closet feminist?
They demand to be treated equally, and at the same time expect the guy to pay for diner and to open the door.
This is an odd argument; this is comparing being treated equally to being treated nicely. Furthermore, you're insinuating that if you're being treated equally, there's no reason to be nice. I open doors for people too -- that has nothing to do with gender equity; I got to the door first.
I'm not sure where you're getting this idea that women are trying to have their cake and eat it too. They're doing the same things that the guys are doing -- trying to navigate a mess of changing stanards when nobody knows what the rules are.
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 1
But since feminism reached its goals (enjoy that voting and education girls), feminism has stagnated and has decayed into nothing more than a form of sexism.
There are a few assumptions in this statement that need to be brought out:
#1: Feminism has reached its goals(??): I think the problem is that feminism doesn't HAVE defined goals, and is subject to way too much interpretation. My interpretation of feminism is that it would be ideal to have society be gender blind in situations where gender is not a necessary component. That's not complete, but certainly better than 20 years ago (Hey! I can get a loan all by myself!)
#2: Feminism has stagnated: Back to that goals thing. If you believe the goals have been accomplished, of course it has stagnated...if you believe otherwise though....
#3: Feminism has decayed into nothing more than a form of sexism: It's rather easy to take the scary feminazis and paint all "feminists" with that brush. It isn't quite accurate though. I'm not denying that there are crazy man-hating psychotics; but I hardly think they're the norm.
I think it really all comes back to the first part of the statement though. There are women out there who still experience gender inequity. To them, the movement isn't over yet. We haven't even really started to hit the backlash of men's gender inequity yet.
I noticed that the emacs package for XP (had to reinstall the thing, again) was missing last week, but I really didn't think very much of it. But that would mean it was cracked a significant amount of time ago...
Surprising that there hasn't been much news of it.
Well, to dive into the book a little more, one of the things that she specifically points out is where people draw their energy from, and what kinds of activities drained them.
I'm the kind of person who needs to be around people. Being by myself for too long is not a good thing. I never appreciated the fact that my boyfriend is exactly the opposite -- going out to a movie is kinda draining for him, but it's not even on my radar. Parties are exhausting for him, but I'll go out 4 or 5 nights in a row before wanting a break. Conversely, he finally figured out that I can't sit at home every night for a week -- it drives me bats.
So I'll stand by my statement that I didn't understand; not because I'm not capable of understanding it, but because I had never even thought of looking at it through that perspective.
I've actually read this book, so I understand the approach that the reviewer is taking. I think you might be reading it wrong.
The author does in fact define introversion as hard-wired, much like which hand you write with. After reading the book, it's not a far leap to make -- people think and react differently. [Growing up in a family mix of very introverted and very extroverted people, it was pretty obvious to me.] So, no, technically, it's not going to be altered.
The value of the book comes in pointing out how introverted people function in an extrovert-oriented world; which, as the reviewer said, pretty much happens in the first 1/3 of the book.
If nothing else, this book was a serious eye-opener for me. I'm a *very* extroverted person. My SO is *seriously* introverted -- I don't think I ever really had a clue about why he complained about being overwhelmed so much. Conversely, he never really understood why solitude made me so upset.
While it's not the most scientific of books, it's an awfully good point to start a discussion.
Aside from the cost and privacy issues, is this even logistically possible? According to the USPS, they'll have unique identification for every sender and receiver of mail. (Which, will apparently save them $2 billion by not having to forward mis-addressed mail)
Really, if we can't keep Social Security organized, don't know who has entered the country, and allow thousands of people escape paying taxes every year, are we going to be able to keep track of every single person living in the country via the Post Office?
I don't know -- I can't see this being very useful. If I want to track a mailing, I'll use Fed Ex. I just don't see the "consumer demand" for this, and I can't see it being at all useful for making our mail "safer".
I'm a big fan of the open source movement, but I'm not sure that voting software *needs* to be open source, because there is value in securing the source code itself.
Security through Obscurity is not Inherently Evil.
Of course, if the only security a system has is based on the fact that nobody can see the code, I'd say that system is hosed. I highly doubt voting software would fall into this category.
It's unfortunate that obscuring code has taken on the negative connotation of "hiding bugs." That's not always the case. Keeping the inner workings of a system secret is a valid security measure, and used in conjunction with other means it can create a well-secured system.
I think the process they are taking is a step in the right direction. I believe that independent code reviews strengthen privately owned code. I think it's a mistake to deny access to those who have the ability to challenge the system. But I'm not sure open sourcing the code will make it any more secure.
the old myths: the hero's journey, the reluctant messiah story, which is one of the oldest stories and has been with us in every culture, in every time in some way or form. And they basically put it in a modern context... (quoting a quote is bad, I know)
I think this is a really important, well spoken point, and it might shed light on why I had a hard time getting through the CSM article.
When I read articles like this, they always seem to come across as saying "Look how Christian the [insert item of discussion] is!" But that's just the problem -- the storylines of the Matrix aren't uniquely Christian. Questioning reality, belief in a higher power, the reluctant messiah are all themes throughout almost every religion and every culture.
I suppose I feel there's a not-so-subtle difference in noting how the story lines up with what one believes and claiming that the story draws heavily from one's religion. For some reason, I felt this article was the latter...
In my opinion, the genre died because we're getting too lazy to use our own imagination and the market saw this trend and let the games pass away.
I'd almost think the opposite: the genre might have been weakened because it wasn't flexible enough.
To me, it seems that the genre split itself -- those who loved the storyline and excitement of adventure games moved on to other things like Theif and Half-life, which guides them more towards the FPS type game. Those who loved the experimental, imaginative points of the game now have simulation games -- things like Roller Coaster Tycoon (a personal fav) give people more than just "poke at the system and see how it responds."
There will always be a niche market for the adventure game -- I just think that there are other genres which support the reason people liked those games in the first place.
Did you even read what I wrote? Or the cease and desist?
It's an attempt by Google to have the word removed from one 'dictionary' as a test on having them removed from ALL of them.
The cease and desist does not depend on the removal of the word. That was *one* of the options. The other was to acknowledge the trademark Google owned in the definition.
they cannot get away with this since google is a verb
Really. Want to define it for me? I'll quote Webster.com:
Google:
The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary.
'Verbing' a trademarked name doesn't mean that it's impervious to trademark law. Google is making the case now because they ought to -- they *own* the trademark.
I think that an update should be posted at the article level ASAP
Agreed.
Perhaps it should say "or else...uh...we'll just ask you nicely to change it a little"
The current text of the article portrays the situation inaccurately (and makes it seem incredibly irrational) -- there's no use in mudslinging when it isn't the case.
We ask that you help us to protect our brand by deleting the definition of
"google" found at wordspy.com or revising it to take into account the
trademark status of Google.
The story makes this out to be a whole lot worse than it is. It doesn't seem like they're being unreasonable. They're likely not going to go on an all out attack, they just want the trademark status accounted for.
There's a little
write up on msn.com which makes some good points though. Most importantly, really push to make sure that the information an employer isn't allowed to consider is removed from the report.
Other than that, I'm not sure there's much you can do, since there doesn't seem to be legislation protecting you.
I've been talking about something like this for *years* -- but I want it at work. I'm really sick and tired of needing to stretch constantly just to keep my back muscles from going into total shock..
Really, I'd just need a place for the keyboard...it's too bad a treadmill wouldn't fit in my cube...
Can I just throw a big "me too" on to Lea's comment?
Fact of the matter is, there are a million reasons why women aren't currently flocking to Computer Science. It's reasonable to assume that those reasons look similar to why men aren't flocking in droves to nursing (although I do believe the numbers are growing) Everyone has their reason -- one of them may be that men in computer science fail to appreciate what women *do* know.
Pointing out the deficiencies in women really says more about the pointer than about the pointee. The number of languages you know measures very little if you don't know which one to use for which job. Getting above X or Y on the SAT doesn't specifically make you smarter. Getting 5's on the AP doesn't mean much either. In fact, raising the whole issue makes me look at the poster's scores, note how I totally whooped his ass in said categories, and I wind up taking the rest of the comment with a grain of salt.
No, I don't think it's distorted at all -- it's simply not going into all the detail. People who go through fertility treatments often have a bunch o' embryos pre-created. Once they're pregnant, they don't need the extra ones. The process of creating one embryo at a time is incrdibly costly -- the people going in for treatment know ahead of time that many will be created, not all will be used. That's a choice they make.
This is not out of sync with reality. There's an embryo that exists that could either by biohazard or science. If the parents say 'hey - give it to science' then off they go. The point of the scenario is willing donation -- which does occur.
And I find it hard to believe that the above process is more difficult to follow through on then finding an 1 cm fetus in an abortion.
Yeah, that was exactly my point. Since we're stuck at this argument of 'when life begins' -- and people disagree on that, we can't really have an argument of truth, but one of politics.
Slashdot Mirror
The basic principle is that the highly-ordered molecules on which the chromosomes are mounted are birefringent (they change the polarization-state of light), so if you know what the original polarization state was and if you can measure the state afterwards, then you can detect those molecules, even though they are transparent. As the BBC article says, this means you don't need to use toxic dyes to find them (which is obviously a bad idea, if you want the egg to actually survive the process).
The article makes the assumption that this new normal is bad. That in itself is questionable, but probably not entirely wrong. We're interrupted, we're context-switching, we're not capable of paying attention, etc. Older generations feel more stress in this kind of environment. Remove the constant flow of information, though, and the younger generations begin to exhibit ADD type behaviors. The lack of information causes stress. The problem is that we have no baseline for how the body is reacting to both types of environments.
It's possible that it's not so different from the country/city living argument. Neither of them are wrong, both have their benefits and drawbacks. Put a farmer in the middle of NYC, and he'll feel stress. Take a Wall Street broker and drop him in the middle of Nebraska without a cell phone or blackberry; he'd probably freak out. It's not that the new environment is bad -- it's just drastically different.
Indeed. [/Teal'C]
However, with this move they're highly likely to retain their current paying customers. People who were paying for 20M get 2G for the same price. It's suddenly no longer worth the hassle to get an invite to Gmail, nor are you likely to move over once Gmail is public. Changing an email address is a pain, and if you were willing to pay before, you're likely to be willing to continue.
I think it's a shame that they're phasing it out, but at the same time, I'd much rather spend the $100 on a bunch of plain old bricks. Enough normal bricks might make some of those specialty Harry Potter pieces usable.
~d (longing for the days of the old Castle sets, where you built the damn thing yourself rather than putting 4 pieces together)
Here's the thing, feminism keeps on expanding and expanding, adding new goals everytime one is met...its has been corrupted by greed and powerlust. No matter what you get, it'll never be enough...not good.
I disagree. I think that you believe you've got a very clear definition of the goals of feminism. I don't think they align well with what most feminists think. Feminism doesn't end just because women got the right to vote.
Totally with you on the salaries. Same pay for same jobs, but the problem is that still isn't fixed. I'm personally experiencing $.70 on my co-workers' dollars. The across the board thing is stupid.
Backlash-wise, I was thinking in totally different terms. I was considering the men who have been in female-dominated careers -- while they dont' have the salary problems that women have, there is a 'girls club' that they aren't in.
But every girl (feel free to call me a boy) I've met who described herself as a feminist was hostile towards men.
Most women who believe in gender equality don't call themselves feminists because of this very belief. I personally don't declare myself a feminist because of the stigma it carries; but I agree with the movement. What does that make me? A closet feminist?
They demand to be treated equally, and at the same time expect the guy to pay for diner and to open the door.
This is an odd argument; this is comparing being treated equally to being treated nicely. Furthermore, you're insinuating that if you're being treated equally, there's no reason to be nice. I open doors for people too -- that has nothing to do with gender equity; I got to the door first.
I'm not sure where you're getting this idea that women are trying to have their cake and eat it too. They're doing the same things that the guys are doing -- trying to navigate a mess of changing stanards when nobody knows what the rules are.
There are a few assumptions in this statement that need to be brought out:
#1: Feminism has reached its goals(??): I think the problem is that feminism doesn't HAVE defined goals, and is subject to way too much interpretation. My interpretation of feminism is that it would be ideal to have society be gender blind in situations where gender is not a necessary component. That's not complete, but certainly better than 20 years ago (Hey! I can get a loan all by myself!)
#2: Feminism has stagnated: Back to that goals thing. If you believe the goals have been accomplished, of course it has stagnated...if you believe otherwise though....
#3: Feminism has decayed into nothing more than a form of sexism: It's rather easy to take the scary feminazis and paint all "feminists" with that brush. It isn't quite accurate though. I'm not denying that there are crazy man-hating psychotics; but I hardly think they're the norm.
I think it really all comes back to the first part of the statement though. There are women out there who still experience gender inequity. To them, the movement isn't over yet. We haven't even really started to hit the backlash of men's gender inequity yet.
linkage
Surprising that there hasn't been much news of it.
I'm the kind of person who needs to be around people. Being by myself for too long is not a good thing. I never appreciated the fact that my boyfriend is exactly the opposite -- going out to a movie is kinda draining for him, but it's not even on my radar. Parties are exhausting for him, but I'll go out 4 or 5 nights in a row before wanting a break. Conversely, he finally figured out that I can't sit at home every night for a week -- it drives me bats.
So I'll stand by my statement that I didn't understand; not because I'm not capable of understanding it, but because I had never even thought of looking at it through that perspective.
The author does in fact define introversion as hard-wired, much like which hand you write with. After reading the book, it's not a far leap to make -- people think and react differently. [Growing up in a family mix of very introverted and very extroverted people, it was pretty obvious to me.] So, no, technically, it's not going to be altered.
The value of the book comes in pointing out how introverted people function in an extrovert-oriented world; which, as the reviewer said, pretty much happens in the first 1/3 of the book.
If nothing else, this book was a serious eye-opener for me. I'm a *very* extroverted person. My SO is *seriously* introverted -- I don't think I ever really had a clue about why he complained about being overwhelmed so much. Conversely, he never really understood why solitude made me so upset. While it's not the most scientific of books, it's an awfully good point to start a discussion.
Really, if we can't keep Social Security organized, don't know who has entered the country, and allow thousands of people escape paying taxes every year, are we going to be able to keep track of every single person living in the country via the Post Office?
I don't know -- I can't see this being very useful. If I want to track a mailing, I'll use Fed Ex. I just don't see the "consumer demand" for this, and I can't see it being at all useful for making our mail "safer".
Security through Obscurity is not Inherently Evil.
Of course, if the only security a system has is based on the fact that nobody can see the code, I'd say that system is hosed. I highly doubt voting software would fall into this category. It's unfortunate that obscuring code has taken on the negative connotation of "hiding bugs." That's not always the case. Keeping the inner workings of a system secret is a valid security measure, and used in conjunction with other means it can create a well-secured system.
I think the process they are taking is a step in the right direction. I believe that independent code reviews strengthen privately owned code. I think it's a mistake to deny access to those who have the ability to challenge the system. But I'm not sure open sourcing the code will make it any more secure.
I think this is a really important, well spoken point, and it might shed light on why I had a hard time getting through the CSM article.
When I read articles like this, they always seem to come across as saying "Look how Christian the [insert item of discussion] is!" But that's just the problem -- the storylines of the Matrix aren't uniquely Christian. Questioning reality, belief in a higher power, the reluctant messiah are all themes throughout almost every religion and every culture.
I suppose I feel there's a not-so-subtle difference in noting how the story lines up with what one believes and claiming that the story draws heavily from one's religion. For some reason, I felt this article was the latter...
I'd almost think the opposite: the genre might have been weakened because it wasn't flexible enough.
To me, it seems that the genre split itself -- those who loved the storyline and excitement of adventure games moved on to other things like Theif and Half-life, which guides them more towards the FPS type game. Those who loved the experimental, imaginative points of the game now have simulation games -- things like Roller Coaster Tycoon (a personal fav) give people more than just "poke at the system and see how it responds."
There will always be a niche market for the adventure game -- I just think that there are other genres which support the reason people liked those games in the first place.
With all this story repetition, I'm starting to think I'm in 'Groundhog Day'...
It's an attempt by Google to have the word removed from one 'dictionary' as a test on having them removed from ALL of them.
The cease and desist does not depend on the removal of the word. That was *one* of the options. The other was to acknowledge the trademark Google owned in the definition.
they cannot get away with this since google is a verb
Really. Want to define it for me? I'll quote Webster.com:
'Verbing' a trademarked name doesn't mean that it's impervious to trademark law. Google is making the case now because they ought to -- they *own* the trademark.
Agreed.
Perhaps it should say "or else...uh...we'll just ask you nicely to change it a little"
The current text of the article portrays the situation inaccurately (and makes it seem incredibly irrational) -- there's no use in mudslinging when it isn't the case.
We ask that you help us to protect our brand by deleting the definition of "google" found at wordspy.com or revising it to take into account the trademark status of Google.
The story makes this out to be a whole lot worse than it is. It doesn't seem like they're being unreasonable. They're likely not going to go on an all out attack, they just want the trademark status accounted for.
In 10 years you're going to graduate from college. Assuming that you still pretty much refuse to practice the oboe, you're gonna be a CS Engineer.
Do yourself a favor. It's 1997. Put off grad school, and move to California for two years. Maybe three.
Then go to grad school, but skip the Ph.D, and get your Masters. You're going to wind up bailing anyway.
There's a little write up on msn.com which makes some good points though. Most importantly, really push to make sure that the information an employer isn't allowed to consider is removed from the report.
Other than that, I'm not sure there's much you can do, since there doesn't seem to be legislation protecting you.
Really, I'd just need a place for the keyboard...it's too bad a treadmill wouldn't fit in my cube...
Fact of the matter is, there are a million reasons why women aren't currently flocking to Computer Science. It's reasonable to assume that those reasons look similar to why men aren't flocking in droves to nursing (although I do believe the numbers are growing) Everyone has their reason -- one of them may be that men in computer science fail to appreciate what women *do* know.
Pointing out the deficiencies in women really says more about the pointer than about the pointee. The number of languages you know measures very little if you don't know which one to use for which job. Getting above X or Y on the SAT doesn't specifically make you smarter. Getting 5's on the AP doesn't mean much either. In fact, raising the whole issue makes me look at the poster's scores, note how I totally whooped his ass in said categories, and I wind up taking the rest of the comment with a grain of salt.
~d (just another girl in CS)
This is not out of sync with reality. There's an embryo that exists that could either by biohazard or science. If the parents say 'hey - give it to science' then off they go. The point of the scenario is willing donation -- which does occur.
And I find it hard to believe that the above process is more difficult to follow through on then finding an 1 cm fetus in an abortion.
Yeah, that was exactly my point. Since we're stuck at this argument of 'when life begins' -- and people disagree on that, we can't really have an argument of truth, but one of politics.