Why?
Java is a much nicer development system than say Flash.
Really? I do a lot of desktop and server java, but not much applet development. It's not great, and I expect that if you want to do animations, music and that, there are better tools for producing flash versions.
Nope, pretty much all board game apps require Java, many bank websites, etc require this. I'm not saying they should, just saying they do.
That may change in the near future. In my area, applets are often used for simple chemical structure editors, but there are some commercial and free/open-source javascript solutions for this. Even 3D molecular viewers, like twirlymol:
using words like truther and denier just brings in stupid partisan bullshit in what SHOULD be a healthy debate
This would be much more convincing if the rest of your post weren't exactly the kind of ignorant, paranoid rant that causes people to be labeled deniers in the first place.
I would have said that it would be more convincing if "Al Gore" wasn't always preceded with "Reverend". Unless I'm mistaken, he's not a priest.
In bioinformatics , a relatively young field, most consumers of the software work in a lab and the input is fairly simple. An open source effort could pick up that slack but then who deserves credit for that work?
Well one good example of generally used academic software is RasMol, and it's (spiritual) successor, Jmol. RasMol started as a project by Roger Sayle as part of a PhD on graphics software, but became the main free viewer for macromolecular structures.
Jmol has taken the idea of a viewer much, much further and is even used by mathematicians to show surfaces. It now supports translucent surfaces for orbitals, a complex scripting language like a subset of javascript, and reads a large number of file formats. It has been used in 3D caves, may come to Android in the near future, is used on wikipedia, and tons more.
The strange thing is that the project has gone through a number of 'owners' from the original author. the current one - Robert Hanson - is only the latest 'Doctor', in the metaphor of 'Dr Who' of Peter Murray-Rust. He publishes papers on his work with Jmol, just as the other Dr.s did : Dan Gezelter, Bradley A. Smith, Egon Willighagen, etc. So it is both open source and publishable, which are both important
I used some stuff in my thesis that was written in Fortran 66, adapted from Fortran IV of all places. It took years more to clean out the rest of that and get everything at least into F950/95. It's still buggy, brittle, inflexible and probably indecipherable, but it's slowly getting better and more adaptable.
Bah! I've tried to read code that was auto-translated from fortran to c. (Also, I was walking uphill to work both ways!:)
The problem with software in academia is that it is often devoted to a sole purpose. It is not a generalized solution -- conversely -- it's often a demonstration of a solution so specific that it's never been done.
... it was built by the researchers to validate their own work, not to be used by others.
The main purpose of academic software is to produce papers... except for text mining software, which does the opposite:)
Software engineers would be horrified at most academic software, which tend to have just one 'release'/version, no source control, no formal testing framework, no design documents, no possibility of bug reports, etc. I know because I used to write stuff like that...
Nowadays, I contribute to projects that have these things (CDK, bioclipse, my stuff on github) but I've seen some bad examples. Even code where the README file said "there is little commenting in the code as I don't believe in doing that" !!
There's at least some limited evidence of modern behaviors in Africa something around 70,000 years ago. You're a few decades out of date here. In particular see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klasies_River_Caves
I think timelines are still fuzzy enough to suggest that modern behaviors evolved in Africa itself.
Well surely you need _some_ kind of language to be able to say to a bunch of your friends : "Hey! Fancy going on a beach trip... to Australia?".
Why stop there? Just print anything you need. Food, homes, clean air, world peace, immortality serum. At that point, the world is pretty much your oyster.
But what about cheap slutty beautiful women? You can't print that! You need cold hard cash!
I guess you haven't seen that documentary called "Weird Science". It's very informative on this process.
And that includes slashdot car and pizza analogies.
To anyone confused over that statement, let me explain: The analogy given here is like a busted fourth- or fifth-hand Chevy stationwagon. Nobody really wants it and it doesn't really work, but it does fill space AND it benefits the person who owns it just barely more than not having any car would.
And that includes slashdot car and pizza analogies.
Unless he is claiming researchers are contributing code to said products that they know contains security bugs and then when it is released reporting it and claiming a bug bounty (and hiding the fact they contributed it since the rules say you can't do that of course).
But he isn't. So the anology is complete and utter garbage.
Where's BadAnalogyGuy when you need him? Also : I've never seen a pizza analogy on slashdot. I'm curious - what are they like?
Unless I missed something in the article, the analogy here makes absolutely no sense.
Maybe they meant something like:
1) researchers find bugs in lab
2) they breed/multiply them, i.e. cut them into pieces and submit each sub-bug/symptom separately instead of the root cause that's responsible for all those sub-bugs
3) profit by way of quasi-redundant bug reports
4) ??? (read: I'm just guessing how you could maximise your profit in a way similarily malicious to the rat-breeding issue)
Ahhh. Well done : this at least makes some sense. I realise this is all speculation at this point, but the theory is that bug bounties make for bug reports that are too 'fine grained' because that's more profitable. Like, instead of "Bug : Language translation is broken in latest build" you get : "Bug : French translation broken..", "Bug : German Translation broken...", etc?
Now put in Babylon 5 and you've got some real *beep* going on.
"*beep*"?
Seriously, "*beep*"? You couldn't say "sh*t" or "s__t" or even "stuff", or just "shit"? The average reader here is probably 30, I'm pretty sure we can handle the occasional in-context swear word.
Just be grateful it wasn't "frack" or "frell" or similar...
If he can demonstrate self-replicating, self-repairing, self-bounding, inorganic structures then it will be life.
Out of curiosity; why do thinkt that those things are required for life? Why does life have to be self-repairing and to what extent?
what about self-bounding, do you mena that things that aren't self-bounding aren't alive?
What if I'm not self-replicating, does this mean that I aren't alive?
Hmmm. Well, as others have pointed out in the comments on this story, you can come up with definitions for life (like "reproduces") and then find counterexamples ("eunuchs"). Since we only have one example of life - on this planet - its a bit difficult to generalise
I must have read the properties I listed (self -replicating, -repairing, -bounding) in a book. I agree that you can think up situations where they don't hold, but it's a fairly good list. Note of course, that I'm really talking about cells; which are the basic unit of life. We are alive because we are made of living cells.
1. They were less complex, but much more so than these inorganic ones. It's not clear if the inner complexity of even the simplest cell will 'just happen' if you throw enough polyoxometallates (POMs? POXes?) into the mix. The transfer of information between cells is interesting (perhaps I should have read the article), but there may be other components necessary to drive the complexity up.
2. That video describes a plausible evolutionary pathway to the flagellum from ATP synthase. Possibly there is a similar pathway from a simple pore-forming protein up to ATP synthase, but that's not addressed there:). The point that functional complex systems evolve from other less-complex systems with (possibly) different functions is important though, of course.
Maybe you're getting confused with the T200 SunFire box you're lusting after on ebay?
On the contrary, the poster has exposed itself as a terminator with its inside knowledge of the latest models! Quick - to the bunker! (oh, wait : wrong forum).
This research is in fact incredibly exciting because it shows a way of experimenting with ways early life may have begun. It's using different materials - but that's actually a GOOD thing, as it stops us from trying to just recreate what we have when we don't know what, what we have, used to be. It forces us to think from scratch, as life would have started... and that IS exciting.
Well, you make a better case for his research than he does:)
Indeed, it is a good idea to have model systems that show the same features, but are not necessarily 'what happened'. They can show the principles are general enough to occur spontaneously with a reasonable probability. Another thing about inorganic cells is they are one of the possibilities for part of the systems in early life. In other words; something had to concentrate the chemicals and simple macromolecules that were starting to form so that they could react efficiently. The synthesis reactions also had to be driven in one direction, which can be done by sorting across a barrier (eg : a cell membrane)
Slashdot Mirror
Quickly, we need to block tags too! As a matter of fact, shut down the whole browsing feature! It's just a liability anyway.
Unplug the computer, it's the only way to be sure!
Pls, where can I find this "Free_Funny_Video_Spy_Malware_Trojan.exe" program? I would like to install it across all my machine networks, thx.
Why? Java is a much nicer development system than say Flash.
Really? I do a lot of desktop and server java, but not much applet development. It's not great, and I expect that if you want to do animations, music and that, there are better tools for producing flash versions.
Nope, pretty much all board game apps require Java, many bank websites, etc require this. I'm not saying they should, just saying they do.
That may change in the near future. In my area, applets are often used for simple chemical structure editors, but there are some commercial and free/open-source javascript solutions for this. Even 3D molecular viewers, like twirlymol:
http://baoilleach.blogspot.com/2009/01/twistymol-is-dead-long-live-twirlymol.html
There are many advantages, such as better page integration, no startup time, no "install java" popup, etc.
using words like truther and denier just brings in stupid partisan bullshit in what SHOULD be a healthy debate
This would be much more convincing if the rest of your post weren't exactly the kind of ignorant, paranoid rant that causes people to be labeled deniers in the first place.
I would have said that it would be more convincing if "Al Gore" wasn't always preceded with "Reverend". Unless I'm mistaken, he's not a priest.
What if your child was Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot?
Hitler was not a mass murderer at the age of 5. If a divine being knows the fate of a child is to be a dictator, then there is no free will.
... spend their time building straw men to burn, rather than trying to understand where the disconnect in communication is :)
You know that burning straw men in arguments is very bad for climate change, right?
And Bethesda lawyers are *actually* killing people in the millions. Oh wait.
Heh. "In shock news today, the lawyers of a prominent games company invaded Poland at the head of a large army of tanks..."
In bioinformatics , a relatively young field, most consumers of the software work in a lab and the input is fairly simple. An open source effort could pick up that slack but then who deserves credit for that work?
Well one good example of generally used academic software is RasMol, and it's (spiritual) successor, Jmol. RasMol started as a project by Roger Sayle as part of a PhD on graphics software, but became the main free viewer for macromolecular structures.
Jmol has taken the idea of a viewer much, much further and is even used by mathematicians to show surfaces. It now supports translucent surfaces for orbitals, a complex scripting language like a subset of javascript, and reads a large number of file formats. It has been used in 3D caves, may come to Android in the near future, is used on wikipedia, and tons more.
The strange thing is that the project has gone through a number of 'owners' from the original author. the current one - Robert Hanson - is only the latest 'Doctor', in the metaphor of 'Dr Who' of Peter Murray-Rust. He publishes papers on his work with Jmol, just as the other Dr.s did : Dan Gezelter, Bradley A. Smith, Egon Willighagen, etc. So it is both open source and publishable, which are both important
I used some stuff in my thesis that was written in Fortran 66, adapted from Fortran IV of all places. It took years more to clean out the rest of that and get everything at least into F950/95. It's still buggy, brittle, inflexible and probably indecipherable, but it's slowly getting better and more adaptable.
Bah! I've tried to read code that was auto-translated from fortran to c. (Also, I was walking uphill to work both ways! :)
The problem with software in academia is that it is often devoted to a sole purpose. It is not a generalized solution -- conversely -- it's often a demonstration of a solution so specific that it's never been done.
... it was built by the researchers to validate their own work, not to be used by others.
The main purpose of academic software is to produce papers ... except for text mining software, which does the opposite :)
Software engineers would be horrified at most academic software, which tend to have just one 'release'/version, no source control, no formal testing framework, no design documents, no possibility of bug reports, etc. I know because I used to write stuff like that...
Nowadays, I contribute to projects that have these things (CDK, bioclipse, my stuff on github) but I've seen some bad examples. Even code where the README file said "there is little commenting in the code as I don't believe in doing that" !!
Where would YOU draw the line?
Probably at two Utes.
Heh. "Oh, I'm sorry, your honour. Two YOUTHS..."
There's at least some limited evidence of modern behaviors in Africa something around 70,000 years ago. You're a few decades out of date here. In particular see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klasies_River_Caves
I think timelines are still fuzzy enough to suggest that modern behaviors evolved in Africa itself.
Well surely you need _some_ kind of language to be able to say to a bunch of your friends : "Hey! Fancy going on a beach trip ... to Australia?".
ur mum's face are an ass.
cower in my shadow some more behind your chosen act of loosening based pseudonym, feeb.
you're completely pathetic.
Are loosening based pseudonyms more feeble than other pseudonyms?
Why stop there? Just print anything you need. Food, homes, clean air, world peace, immortality serum. At that point, the world is pretty much your oyster.
But what about cheap slutty beautiful women? You can't print that! You need cold hard cash!
I guess you haven't seen that documentary called "Weird Science". It's very informative on this process.
And that includes slashdot car and pizza analogies.
To anyone confused over that statement, let me explain: The analogy given here is like a busted fourth- or fifth-hand Chevy stationwagon. Nobody really wants it and it doesn't really work, but it does fill space AND it benefits the person who owns it just barely more than not having any car would.
No meta-analogies!
And that includes slashdot car and pizza analogies.
Unless he is claiming researchers are contributing code to said products that they know contains security bugs and then when it is released reporting it and claiming a bug bounty (and hiding the fact they contributed it since the rules say you can't do that of course).
But he isn't. So the anology is complete and utter garbage.
Where's BadAnalogyGuy when you need him? Also : I've never seen a pizza analogy on slashdot. I'm curious - what are they like?
Unless I missed something in the article, the analogy here makes absolutely no sense.
Maybe they meant something like: 1) researchers find bugs in lab 2) they breed/multiply them, i.e. cut them into pieces and submit each sub-bug/symptom separately instead of the root cause that's responsible for all those sub-bugs 3) profit by way of quasi-redundant bug reports 4) ??? (read: I'm just guessing how you could maximise your profit in a way similarily malicious to the rat-breeding issue)
Ahhh. Well done : this at least makes some sense. I realise this is all speculation at this point, but the theory is that bug bounties make for bug reports that are too 'fine grained' because that's more profitable. Like, instead of "Bug : Language translation is broken in latest build" you get : "Bug : French translation broken..", "Bug : German Translation broken...", etc?
Uh, where do you think his kids came from?
Transporter accident?
Now put in Babylon 5 and you've got some real *beep* going on.
"*beep*"?
Seriously, "*beep*"? You couldn't say "sh*t" or "s__t" or even "stuff", or just "shit"? The average reader here is probably 30, I'm pretty sure we can handle the occasional in-context swear word.
Just be grateful it wasn't "frack" or "frell" or similar...
why have you got sunglasses in your pockets at all times? poof
Lives in a sunny country?
If he can demonstrate self-replicating, self-repairing, self-bounding, inorganic structures then it will be life.
Out of curiosity; why do thinkt that those things are required for life? Why does life have to be self-repairing and to what extent? what about self-bounding, do you mena that things that aren't self-bounding aren't alive? What if I'm not self-replicating, does this mean that I aren't alive?
Hmmm. Well, as others have pointed out in the comments on this story, you can come up with definitions for life (like "reproduces") and then find counterexamples ("eunuchs"). Since we only have one example of life - on this planet - its a bit difficult to generalise
I must have read the properties I listed (self -replicating, -repairing, -bounding) in a book. I agree that you can think up situations where they don't hold, but it's a fairly good list. Note of course, that I'm really talking about cells; which are the basic unit of life. We are alive because we are made of living cells.
1. They were less complex, but much more so than these inorganic ones. It's not clear if the inner complexity of even the simplest cell will 'just happen' if you throw enough polyoxometallates (POMs? POXes?) into the mix. The transfer of information between cells is interesting (perhaps I should have read the article), but there may be other components necessary to drive the complexity up.
2. That video describes a plausible evolutionary pathway to the flagellum from ATP synthase. Possibly there is a similar pathway from a simple pore-forming protein up to ATP synthase, but that's not addressed there :). The point that functional complex systems evolve from other less-complex systems with (possibly) different functions is important though, of course.
T-1000. Silly Terminator-Franchise-Wanna-Be-Geek.
Maybe you're getting confused with the T200 SunFire box you're lusting after on ebay?
On the contrary, the poster has exposed itself as a terminator with its inside knowledge of the latest models! Quick - to the bunker! (oh, wait : wrong forum).
This research is in fact incredibly exciting because it shows a way of experimenting with ways early life may have begun. It's using different materials - but that's actually a GOOD thing, as it stops us from trying to just recreate what we have when we don't know what, what we have, used to be. It forces us to think from scratch, as life would have started... and that IS exciting.
Well, you make a better case for his research than he does :)
Indeed, it is a good idea to have model systems that show the same features, but are not necessarily 'what happened'. They can show the principles are general enough to occur spontaneously with a reasonable probability. Another thing about inorganic cells is they are one of the possibilities for part of the systems in early life. In other words; something had to concentrate the chemicals and simple macromolecules that were starting to form so that they could react efficiently. The synthesis reactions also had to be driven in one direction, which can be done by sorting across a barrier (eg : a cell membrane)