Please, take a look at the policy section of Obama's website. It clearly delineates what he wants to change, why, and how he's going to pay for these changes.
Pulling out of Iraq, universal healthcare, actually finishing the job in Afghanistan, rebuilding our manufacturing infrastructure. These are some of the things that Obama mentions in detail. His platform isn't just empty platitudes, although the news media certainly loves to make it appear that way sometimes (the media, more than anything, has proven whose side they're on (not ours) throughout this election).
I don't know where you stand politically, but actually take a look at his policies. As a libertarian, his social policies are clearly in line with freedom, and his economic ones are a heck of a lot better than McCain's. He also refuses to play dirty politics -- he thanked McCain for his military service during his acceptance speech last night. When's the last time you heard a candidate say anything nice about their opponent in an election cycle?
If you choose not to vote for him, please at least understand what you're voting for in his stead (unless you really believe that last 8 years of the republicans were a godsend, in which case I don't think we have enough common ground to discuss).
I've lived in the second poorest nation in South America (Paraguay) and visited quite a few more. US policies are the proximate cause for many many of the developing world's troubles.
Quick example: Cotton. The US heavily subsidizes cotton, and then dumps surpluses on the world market for cheaper than Parguayans can grow it. They get trapped in a debt cycle, because they have to use pesticides (made by and loaned by Monsanto) so the cotton grows, and then they have a less than amazing year, and they go into the hole. Their Monsanto contract says they must keep growing cotton until they can pay off the debt.
It's really really ugly. Plenty of places have plenty of problems at their own, but at an absolute minimum, US foreign policy is contributing to their problems (likely substantially).
You know, it just occured to me that this is really false.
The spammer shares the costs with the recipient's ISP, and ultimately the recipient (through increased ISP costs). The cost of any one individual spam is very low, but taken together they quickly become noticable.
The junk snail mailer pays for all of the mailing costs, but each piece of junk mail he sends must be recycled or thrown away, creating a small effect on the cost of garbage for each individual user. The cost of any individual junk mail is very low, but taken together, they do have an appreciable effect on the cost of trash collection.
I've read this essay, but I found it lacking in detail. Is there any analysis out there with full detail on how the worm works? I'm trying to understand the distributed command function and i'm just not seeing anything on it.
Unfortunately, the corporations seem to win no matter what you do. Running a ballot measure is incredibly expensive. It costs a lot of money to raise public awareness of an issue and run things like get out the vote measures.
Dragging out a measure with a revote tilts things well in favor of corporations, who have the cash to sustain such an operation. Now the reformers are going to have to fundraise all over again so they can try to put forth an effort in the next election.
I do not think that most of our society's ills can be fixed by legalizing drugs.
I do, however, think it would help a lot. With the possible exception of very hard drugs (heroin, crack cocaine) that are inherently dangerous to the user, the choice to use drugs should be a choice left in the hands of the user.
Criminalizing otherwise productive people who happen to enjoy smoking weed or other drugs in a relatively safe, nonviolent manner is just silly. Throwing potheads in jail is not the answer to anything. The underground drug trade does support organized crime, and gangs, and eliminating this would do our society some good but it's certainly not a magic fix. But that's not the point.
I am an adult, I should have the right to do as I please with my body. I find alcohol far more dangerous in its lowering of inhibitions than pot, ectasy, ketamine, LSD, mushrooms, peyote, and probably some other drugs too. If people are doing bad things while on drugs, by all means, the judge should bar them from doing drugs as part of the probation/parole conditions. But banning EVERYBODY is really a violation of rights.
Evolution has been observed and tested over and over again in real life studies. The most advantageousely traited organisms live to spread their genes, and the organisms with the worst traits die before they can reproduce (much).
For examples: species evolution of fruit flies in the laboratory and of Tilapia fish in East African lakes, as well as the English moths (their exact species escapes me at the moment).
The exact mechanisms of evolution and what exactly involved into what things is still constantly squabbled over. But the basics have been proven. There is near-universal agreement among biologists on this, despite what many creationists would like you to believe.
I'm with you. But looks like it'll be drowned out by the 240,000 comments from people who want the government to protect their precious children so they don't have to.
I work for them (I speak only for myself, and not my employer), and they are definately cheaper than the SBC deal, especially if you want bundled internet/phone service. $68.00 a month will get you unlimited local, unlimited dialup, and unlimited long distance service. If you make a lot of phone calls and live in the midwest, it's a good way to go.
On the same lines, is it possible that the incredible amounts of caffeine ingested by American society might also be a contributing factor in the uprise of ADD/ADHD? It just seems like a possiblity to me.
To my knowledge, although it is a little rusty, there aren't any studies on this. It is possible though, but then again, all theories on ADHD are just theories. It may turn out that ADHD isn't really a disease at all, or that it's a side-effect of a different disease altogether, or that it has nothing to do with serotonin at all and the current theories are wrong.
They're all in the prelim testing stages now, although testing on animals seems to point to a balance of relative dopamine vs. serotonin levels as a main cause. The articles were evidently good enough science to make it into nature (see my above post)
They are. As many posters have noted, much of ADHD diagnosis where Ritalin is prescribed appears to be more of a money-making scheme than any legitimate reason. The side effects of ritalin can be severe, and in many cases, a different medication makes much more sense.
See http://www.adhd.com/treat/med.html for a list of meds currently used to treat ADHD. Scroll down to se the SSRI-type antidepressants.
Also, it's not my conjecture. It's one of the current leading theories on ADHD. If I'm not credible, perhaps nature is? http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?fi le=/m p/journal/v8/n1/abs/4001244a.html
You may wish to do some research of your own before accusing me of not making any sense. Surely, if a piece is good enough to be published in nature, it at least is valuable as a theory.
I was a psychology student, so I have a bit of knowledge. I switched to biology because psychology was a lot of guessing and too little hard science for my taste.
The current popular theory is that ADD and ADHD are caused by a low occurance of seratonin in the brain, which causes the brain to "make up" it's own stimulation, and causing destracted behavior, quickly jumping from subject to subject, self-stimulation when things are boring, etc.
Ritalin is a strong stimulant, which is a seratonin reuptake inhibitor. With normal people, ritalin makes them very hyperactive, due to an excess of seratonin, but in people with ADD, it raises their seratonin to normal levels, allowing them to better pay attention and not have the brain working overtime to self-stimulate. Caffiene works on many of the same receptors, so if you find that caffiene allows you to better concentrate, it may be a symptom of the disorder. Then again, you just may be addicted to caffiene =)
The scary thing is that the brain is very good at self-regulating seratonin levels in normal people. If the brain gets too flooded with seratonin, then it will reduce the number of receptors for the chemical to compensate for the over-flooding.
This is which cocaine addicts have such difficulty overcoming their addiction. After a while, they need cocaine just to feel normal again, due to the major reduction in dopamine (another neurotransmitter) receptors.
All of the normal perfectly healthy people that are being put on ritalin will cause an overflood of seratonin, causing the brain to reduce the number of seratonin receptors. In other words, putting a normal kid on ritalin can actually induce ADHD! This damage can take years to fix, and who knows what that does to a 5 year old during very important developmental stages.
One fundermental question that is still far from being solved and will benefit mankind more is the 'folding problem' --- That is, given an unknown DNA sequence (gene), what is the 3D structure of the protein it produces?
Unfortunately, it's not nearly that simple. There are many different ways any given protein can fold, most of which will produce a defective protein (functionally). The process of making sure given proteins fold correctly is a long one, involving several classes of enzymes.
There is a class of proteins called "chaperones" that among other things help proteins fold in the correct orientation. They bind to the polypeptide as it is being formed, help direct it to the right place in the cell, and ensure that it folds correctly. Another protein, called protein disulfide isomerase, rearranges S-S bonds during the folding process to ensure the correct tertiary structure happens. Yet another protein, called peptidyl prolyl isomerase also aids in folding
And, this doesn't even take into account the massive modifications that take place post translation as proteins travel through the Rough ER and Golgi apparatus, such as phosphorlyation or the addition of marker sugars such as mannose-6-phosphate.
In short, it's really not possible to determine structure simply from the DNA sequence. There are too many heavy modifications in the cell and too many possible structures to know how it will fold without seeing it in vivo.
I don't think it's nonsense at all. I'm 19, and the stuff I hear on the radio today is crap. Pure and utter crap, it's so bad that I've given up on modern radio entirely and listen exclusively to bands like Led Zepplin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the like.
I know a lot of other people like me as well, who refuse to listen to the crap that is modern music. Some listen to indie bands, some get into the local music scene, some gravitate toward older music, and some tune out of music alltogether.
Of course, there will always be the sheeple who buy Britney Spears and stuff. But, most of their audience is children who will grow up and realize that it's all crap. Hell, I liked New Kids on the Block when I was 5, now my 6 year old sister is a big fan of Britney, I grew out of it and so will she.
You don't think uneducated immigrants from Mexico hate us? I used to work at a Mexican resturant full of (legal) mexican immigrants and they all hated the US. They only wanted our money, but didn't give a shit about our cultural and social ideas.
Actually, I remember reading something about that that was really interesting.
Evidently, gun deaths in the LA south central area have gone down significantly in the last year or so. Some committee was instituted to find out way.
Turns out the gun deaths have been going down significantly because gang members are now holding their guns upsidedown while they are shooting, which ovbiously makes for some poor aim. Turns out it's the current trend with the gangs, and it's caused deaths to significantly decrease.
Actually, I work for a reigonal Midwest ISP. I love it. The customers are *very* important to them and so are their employees. We don't have to follow a script or company line of any sort, except to not put down customers equipment unnecessarily. We fix things the way we like best. We answer the phone how we like. And you know what? Even though my ISP is one of the most expensive in the area ($21.95/mo for dialup), we still get *tons* of customer referrals and appreciation letters.
I can tell you about v.92, since I support it at my local ISP. It's a *bitch*. Three months will go along with no issues, and then one day the modem suddenly won't connect. 75 percent of the time, forcing an init string, or other software fixes, will fix the problem (after a long diagnostic process). The other 25%, though, they'll never work again and we have to send them off to the OEM, who will tell the customer that their POS Conexant HSP Micromodem is just fine and it's really us...
I would absolutely *love* to get an interview with Spiner. I watch TNG religiously and he has always been my favorite character from the series. When I saw him in Independence Day, I was blown away. I didn't even recgonize him at first. It was pretty cool.
Slashdot Mirror
Where do I begin --
Please, take a look at the policy section of Obama's website. It clearly delineates what he wants to change, why, and how he's going to pay for these changes.
Pulling out of Iraq, universal healthcare, actually finishing the job in Afghanistan, rebuilding our manufacturing infrastructure. These are some of the things that Obama mentions in detail. His platform isn't just empty platitudes, although the news media certainly loves to make it appear that way sometimes (the media, more than anything, has proven whose side they're on (not ours) throughout this election).
I don't know where you stand politically, but actually take a look at his policies. As a libertarian, his social policies are clearly in line with freedom, and his economic ones are a heck of a lot better than McCain's. He also refuses to play dirty politics -- he thanked McCain for his military service during his acceptance speech last night. When's the last time you heard a candidate say anything nice about their opponent in an election cycle?
If you choose not to vote for him, please at least understand what you're voting for in his stead (unless you really believe that last 8 years of the republicans were a godsend, in which case I don't think we have enough common ground to discuss).
I've lived in the second poorest nation in South America (Paraguay) and visited quite a few more. US policies are the proximate cause for many many of the developing world's troubles.
Quick example: Cotton. The US heavily subsidizes cotton, and then dumps surpluses on the world market for cheaper than Parguayans can grow it. They get trapped in a debt cycle, because they have to use pesticides (made by and loaned by Monsanto) so the cotton grows, and then they have a less than amazing year, and they go into the hole. Their Monsanto contract says they must keep growing cotton until they can pay off the debt.
It's really really ugly. Plenty of places have plenty of problems at their own, but at an absolute minimum, US foreign policy is contributing to their problems (likely substantially).
You know, it just occured to me that this is really false.
The spammer shares the costs with the recipient's ISP, and ultimately the recipient (through increased ISP costs). The cost of any one individual spam is very low, but taken together they quickly become noticable.
The junk snail mailer pays for all of the mailing costs, but each piece of junk mail he sends must be recycled or thrown away, creating a small effect on the cost of garbage for each individual user. The cost of any individual junk mail is very low, but taken together, they do have an appreciable effect on the cost of trash collection.
May I refer you to read Ishmael?
There isn't anything wrong with humanity as a whole, just the way we live.
I've read this essay, but I found it lacking in detail. Is there any analysis out there with full detail on how the worm works? I'm trying to understand the distributed command function and i'm just not seeing anything on it.
Unfortunately, the corporations seem to win no matter what you do. Running a ballot measure is incredibly expensive. It costs a lot of money to raise public awareness of an issue and run things like get out the vote measures.
Dragging out a measure with a revote tilts things well in favor of corporations, who have the cash to sustain such an operation. Now the reformers are going to have to fundraise all over again so they can try to put forth an effort in the next election.
No kidding. Thank you for that.
I love slashdot but I hate the sexism I see here from time to time. Difficult to be an IT professional and a feminist, I guess.
As a lesbian, thank you for that.
I always appreciate it when people stand up for their beliefs, even if they don't immediately affect them.
Actually, this isn't a bad idea, especially if the worm will only infect a certain block of IP addresses.. keeps it from getting out of hand.
I do not think that most of our society's ills can be fixed by legalizing drugs.
I do, however, think it would help a lot. With the possible exception of very hard drugs (heroin, crack cocaine) that are inherently dangerous to the user, the choice to use drugs should be a choice left in the hands of the user.
Criminalizing otherwise productive people who happen to enjoy smoking weed or other drugs in a relatively safe, nonviolent manner is just silly. Throwing potheads in jail is not the answer to anything. The underground drug trade does support organized crime, and gangs, and eliminating this would do our society some good but it's certainly not a magic fix. But that's not the point.
I am an adult, I should have the right to do as I please with my body. I find alcohol far more dangerous in its lowering of inhibitions than pot, ectasy, ketamine, LSD, mushrooms, peyote, and probably some other drugs too. If people are doing bad things while on drugs, by all means, the judge should bar them from doing drugs as part of the probation/parole conditions. But banning EVERYBODY is really a violation of rights.
IAABiologist..
Evolution has been observed and tested over and over again in real life studies. The most advantageousely traited organisms live to spread their genes, and the organisms with the worst traits die before they can reproduce (much).
For examples: species evolution of fruit flies in the laboratory and of Tilapia fish in East African lakes, as well as the English moths (their exact species escapes me at the moment).
The exact mechanisms of evolution and what exactly involved into what things is still constantly squabbled over. But the basics have been proven. There is near-universal agreement among biologists on this, despite what many creationists would like you to believe.
I'm with you. But looks like it'll be drowned out by the 240,000 comments from people who want the government to protect their precious children so they don't have to.
Mostly right. HIV attacks the T4 helper cells.
I work for them (I speak only for myself, and not my employer), and they are definately cheaper than the SBC deal, especially if you want bundled internet/phone service. $68.00 a month will get you unlimited local, unlimited dialup, and unlimited long distance service. If you make a lot of phone calls and live in the midwest, it's a good way to go.
To my knowledge, although it is a little rusty, there aren't any studies on this. It is possible though, but then again, all theories on ADHD are just theories. It may turn out that ADHD isn't really a disease at all, or that it's a side-effect of a different disease altogether, or that it has nothing to do with serotonin at all and the current theories are wrong.
They're all in the prelim testing stages now, although testing on animals seems to point to a balance of relative dopamine vs. serotonin levels as a main cause. The articles were evidently good enough science to make it into nature (see my above post)
They are. As many posters have noted, much of ADHD diagnosis where Ritalin is prescribed appears to be more of a money-making scheme than any legitimate reason. The side effects of ritalin can be severe, and in many cases, a different medication makes much more sense.
i le=/m p/journal/v8/n1/abs/4001244a.html
See http://www.adhd.com/treat/med.html for a list of meds currently used to treat ADHD. Scroll down to se the SSRI-type antidepressants.
Also, it's not my conjecture. It's one of the current leading theories on ADHD. If I'm not credible, perhaps nature is?
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?f
You may wish to do some research of your own before accusing me of not making any sense. Surely, if a piece is good enough to be published in nature, it at least is valuable as a theory.
I was a psychology student, so I have a bit of knowledge. I switched to biology because psychology was a lot of guessing and too little hard science for my taste.
The current popular theory is that ADD and ADHD are caused by a low occurance of seratonin in the brain, which causes the brain to "make up" it's own stimulation, and causing destracted behavior, quickly jumping from subject to subject, self-stimulation when things are boring, etc.
Ritalin is a strong stimulant, which is a seratonin reuptake inhibitor. With normal people, ritalin makes them very hyperactive, due to an excess of seratonin, but in people with ADD, it raises their seratonin to normal levels, allowing them to better pay attention and not have the brain working overtime to self-stimulate. Caffiene works on many of the same receptors, so if you find that caffiene allows you to better concentrate, it may be a symptom of the disorder. Then again, you just may be addicted to caffiene =)
The scary thing is that the brain is very good at self-regulating seratonin levels in normal people. If the brain gets too flooded with seratonin, then it will reduce the number of receptors for the chemical to compensate for the over-flooding.
This is which cocaine addicts have such difficulty overcoming their addiction. After a while, they need cocaine just to feel normal again, due to the major reduction in dopamine (another neurotransmitter) receptors.
All of the normal perfectly healthy people that are being put on ritalin will cause an overflood of seratonin, causing the brain to reduce the number of seratonin receptors. In other words, putting a normal kid on ritalin can actually induce ADHD! This damage can take years to fix, and who knows what that does to a 5 year old during very important developmental stages.
It's a nasty, nasty profit making scam.
Unfortunately, it's not nearly that simple. There are many different ways any given protein can fold, most of which will produce a defective protein (functionally). The process of making sure given proteins fold correctly is a long one, involving several classes of enzymes.
There is a class of proteins called "chaperones" that among other things help proteins fold in the correct orientation. They bind to the polypeptide as it is being formed, help direct it to the right place in the cell, and ensure that it folds correctly. Another protein, called protein disulfide isomerase, rearranges S-S bonds during the folding process to ensure the correct tertiary structure happens. Yet another protein, called peptidyl prolyl isomerase also aids in folding
And, this doesn't even take into account the massive modifications that take place post translation as proteins travel through the Rough ER and Golgi apparatus, such as phosphorlyation or the addition of marker sugars such as mannose-6-phosphate.
In short, it's really not possible to determine structure simply from the DNA sequence. There are too many heavy modifications in the cell and too many possible structures to know how it will fold without seeing it in vivo.
I know a lot of other people like me as well, who refuse to listen to the crap that is modern music. Some listen to indie bands, some get into the local music scene, some gravitate toward older music, and some tune out of music alltogether.
Of course, there will always be the sheeple who buy Britney Spears and stuff. But, most of their audience is children who will grow up and realize that it's all crap. Hell, I liked New Kids on the Block when I was 5, now my 6 year old sister is a big fan of Britney, I grew out of it and so will she.
You don't think uneducated immigrants from Mexico hate us? I used to work at a Mexican resturant full of (legal) mexican immigrants and they all hated the US. They only wanted our money, but didn't give a shit about our cultural and social ideas.
Actually, I remember reading something about that that was really interesting.
Evidently, gun deaths in the LA south central area have gone down significantly in the last year or so. Some committee was instituted to find out way.
Turns out the gun deaths have been going down significantly because gang members are now holding their guns upsidedown while they are shooting, which ovbiously makes for some poor aim. Turns out it's the current trend with the gangs, and it's caused deaths to significantly decrease.
Actually, I work for a reigonal Midwest ISP. I love it. The customers are *very* important to them and so are their employees. We don't have to follow a script or company line of any sort, except to not put down customers equipment unnecessarily. We fix things the way we like best. We answer the phone how we like. And you know what? Even though my ISP is one of the most expensive in the area ($21.95/mo for dialup), we still get *tons* of customer referrals and appreciation letters.
I can tell you about v.92, since I support it at my local ISP. It's a *bitch*. Three months will go along with no issues, and then one day the modem suddenly won't connect. 75 percent of the time, forcing an init string, or other software fixes, will fix the problem (after a long diagnostic process). The other 25%, though, they'll never work again and we have to send them off to the OEM, who will tell the customer that their POS Conexant HSP Micromodem is just fine and it's really us...
I would absolutely *love* to get an interview with Spiner. I watch TNG religiously and he has always been my favorite character from the series. When I saw him in Independence Day, I was blown away. I didn't even recgonize him at first. It was pretty cool.