This will make organlegging possible. If you can just grab any kidney off the street and use it to replace a failing one, people will.
Or it might make xenografts (transplanting animal organs into humans) possible, I couldn't tell from the article. Which I guess PETA and other nutjobs would argue is still organlegging...
Anyway, you're right to point out that every new technology has benefits but also downsides. However, keep in mind that now if you wake up in a bath of ice and a note saying "thanks for your kidneys," all you'll have to do is steal someone else's, you won't have to steal it back from the person who stole it from you.
Without RTFA, this seems silly to me. Great you can map the brain but what real science will be done? What predictions or deeper understandings will be acquired?
Here's the quick answer to that question, special for all those who didn't RTFA or read the answers to identical questions asked above:
This may be of use for diseases, but the greatest use - understanding consciousness - is still well beyond simply mapping the brain
A variation on the sentiment "Why bother investigating this, it's beyond our understanding and is useless," which has been posed at some point to every serious scientific inquiry. "Why study fungus, you can't do anything useful with it!" is probably something Flemming heard right before he discovered penicillin.
Fortunately it's often wrong. In this case, it seems to me that knowing the map of a brain could have some real tangible uses
-Understanding the sequence of wiring a brain, we know some things about the order in which brain cells develop, and we know unconnected neurons die, but beyond that I'm not sure we know anything. Is there an organization to how the brain initializes itself? Could this be one thing that goes wrong in, say, autism?
-Better understanding of the interconnectivity of different regions of the brain. Obvious uses there for dealing with lesions to the brain, if you learn from this study that one of the areas damaged is highly connected to a distant part of the brain, you might want to watch out for effects on that other part of the brain
-Helping us understand how or if new neurons generated in adulthood integrate into the already existing, quite complicated network
-altering something and seeing how that affects the brain map, to study the plasticity of the brain and possibly learn how to learn better
That's just the ones I could think up, there are undoubtedly more reasons one of the authors could fill you in on, and there are probably even more uses that even they haven't thought of, that some other researcher will.
Anyway, since when did science ever need to have a clear use in mind before we did something? If you're anything like the typical slashdotter, you don't bother asking "What good will that do" when discussions of "Let's land on the moon or mars" come up. I would argue that this is clearly more useful than that, but that doesn't matter, it's not about knowing all that we can gain from an endeavor in advance.
I think they'd probably prefer not to, they'd prefer to go back to simpler times, before this damn internet thing, when they were still making money hand over fist.
If they succeed in this, the only thing that will happen is that some of my news portals will have less actual content and more blogging/editorials/crap (like fashion and celeb news).
The suits just don't understand that traffic is the new black.
No, black is still black. How many sites get tons of hits but no actual profits?
AP may be hurting themselves by doing this, or they may have, you know, actually studied their own buisness and concluded that this is how they will survive. We'll get to see for ourselves. Or not, since if they go under, who is going to report it? AP news?
Does anyone have data on how many truly false predictions have been made? Because one out of X might not be enough to condemn the politicos and glorify the scientist. Clearly these things do need to be managed carefully.
I don't know, but I'd predict that more things scientists have predicted have come true than politicians.
Of course, that IS a prediction coming from a scientist...
My immediate reaction is to say, "Ha! Science, bitches: It works!" and laugh at the officials who denounced the prediction. However, the very fact that the prediction was *so* precise, saying that the devastation would strike on a certain day, seems particularly irresponsible.
Science: it works bitches, but please take it with a grain of salt.
Is the AC talking to rcamans or me? Because if it's me, my mamma's basement ain't big enough for the both of us. Neither is my bomb shelter porn collection.
Actually, this is exactly what it's supposed to survive.
Well, I'm reasonably certain my computer can't withstand a nuclear attack, and I don't think most porn stars are radiation-resistant, so it's really trivial to me whether or not there is still an internet after a nuclear war.
Wait, so someone steals a product prototype from my company, and I, WORKING FOR THE COMPANY, review said prototype and say it blows
That's not the reason given for his firing, the one branch is supposed to be independant from the other branch, by law, in order to allow their pricing scheme, and did he say the product blows? And lastly, it's his JOB to review movies and presumably he's not just supposed to be in the can for the movie studio.
So basically, the two are not at all the same situation.
How is this different from a journalist writing about any other illegally acquired information, like say a classified document leaked from the White House?
It's quite different in that a classified document from the white house *might* have to be secret for matters of national security, to save lives. This is quite obviously not the case with "Wolverine." Fox just wanted to perpetrate the idea that downloading movies is somehow immoral, and it's always funny to me when large propaganda machines, especially those who enabled former presidents to commit war crimes, lecture me on morality.
The guy deserves just what he got for being dumb enough to so publicly announce that he broke the law.
Is it a clear violation of the law? It really doesn't seem like it should be against the law, as who is losing out here? He's going to see the actual version, I've heard the ending especially was unfinished. There is NOTHING sacred about the release date for a movie, no crime seems to have been committed by watching it, only in uploading it to the internet, which was not his crime.
Anyway, even if a law was broken, that shouldn't justify him being fired, the law should punish as appropriate, no need for his employer to get their two cents in. In this case, if it is against the law, make him pay Fox studios whatever he would have paid to see it in the theater (presumably nothing since he is a movie critic) and be done with the punishment.
He got fired out of spite and misplaced anger. And maybe some bullshit about setting an example. There's no logical reason to fire him other than to continue acting as if movie piracy is a crime against humanity.
Which is not to say Fox didn't have a right to fire him, it's their choice, and of course their legal right to (probably.) Naturally I have no illusions that "It should be this way" translates to "Legally, it is this way over at fox." I'm just talking about what would be fair and make sense in an ideal world, maybe one where "wolverine" was a documentary...
That is one of the global warming metrics, right? Save the shrinking polar ice cap, right?
Yes, you nailed it right on the head, it's all "ice melting = bad," no one has taken any nuance into consideration. You've singlehandedly bested every climatologist/whatever they call themselves.
"See doc, there's a natural progression to blood pressure. High low high low. It's going up,BFD.
Now, I'm gunna eat this bag of potato chips and get a big mac and feel okay about it."
You have to love it how some people cling to the first rationalization that allows them to keep doing what they want, from the time they're kids right up to when they die.
They're the worst. Team fortress 2 and Left 4 dead are very fun games, at least the rare times people don't ruin it by using a glitch. See TFA for the example of team killing in left 4 dead through the elevator. Capture the point in TF2 also ruined many times by people going "under the map" and being unkillable.
I really don't understand it. If you want an empty victory, there are single player games with plenty of glitches, go masturbate by yourself.
I have little understanding of the computing/programming/whatever behind it, but Halo 3 and other games that seemed to have a central server didn't suffer from that, wheras TF2 (and TF1 before it) seem to connect you to other people hosting games rather than one centralized server, and they seem to have more glitch exploiting. I'd hazard a guess: it's easier to update your own servers to immediately sew up exploitable glitches than it is to force everyone to update theirs. I'm guessing the main reason not to have a centralized system like that is cost and speed. I'd be willing to pay more for TF2 or future sequels if it were more "managed" like Halo 3. I still occasionally play halo 3 even though it's not as much fun as TF2, simply because sometimes I don't want to start a game, then find someone doing shit like that and have to find another game, repeat.
I know that the team fortress... er... team isn't giving up, their blog (http://www.teamfortress.com/) indicates they are themselves extremely annoyed, and they seem to be coming up with new ways of trying to filter out the crap, scoring servers. And they also seem to constantly be taking out glitches. If TF2's servers are decentralized compared to Halo 3's, I wonder if they aren't regretting that decision, and if TF3 would have more centralized servers.
(One last reminder, I don't know anything concrete about the differences or similarities in connecting to games in Halo 3 versus TF2 other than one you click on some server name and often get glitching, and in the other you just hit play and there are much less glitches.)
Not to get all tinfoil-hat on everyone, but has anyone closer to a neutral third party got any information?
Well, I'm something of a third party. I know I haven't been nuked, so there's that. And my north korean GPS device isn't working, so I'm going to assume that either they weren't serious about the sattelite, the launch was a failure, or I was sold a very defective north korean GPS. I mean, it looks like a painted rock, but that's about what I would have expected...
I wouldn't be surprised if they dredge the thing out of the ocean only to find some North Korean expletive scrawled on the side - something like "screw you America, and your little submersible too!".
Hopefully they do find it, and the guidance system computer consists of a North Korean soldier.
Slashdot Mirror
This will make organlegging possible. If you can just grab any kidney off the street and use it to replace a failing one, people will.
Or it might make xenografts (transplanting animal organs into humans) possible, I couldn't tell from the article. Which I guess PETA and other nutjobs would argue is still organlegging...
Anyway, you're right to point out that every new technology has benefits but also downsides. However, keep in mind that now if you wake up in a bath of ice and a note saying "thanks for your kidneys," all you'll have to do is steal someone else's, you won't have to steal it back from the person who stole it from you.
And in those 2-3 weeks they keep the person in a steril room devoid of any potential bacteria/virus' that could harm the person.
Depending on the transplant, you're probably not going to want to do anything other than lie in a bed during that time anyway.
Without RTFA, this seems silly to me. Great you can map the brain but what real science will be done? What predictions or deeper understandings will be acquired?
Here's the quick answer to that question, special for all those who didn't RTFA or read the answers to identical questions asked above:
Various complicated but important things.
This may be of use for diseases, but the greatest use - understanding consciousness - is still well beyond simply mapping the brain
A variation on the sentiment "Why bother investigating this, it's beyond our understanding and is useless," which has been posed at some point to every serious scientific inquiry. "Why study fungus, you can't do anything useful with it!" is probably something Flemming heard right before he discovered penicillin.
Fortunately it's often wrong. In this case, it seems to me that knowing the map of a brain could have some real tangible uses
-Understanding the sequence of wiring a brain, we know some things about the order in which brain cells develop, and we know unconnected neurons die, but beyond that I'm not sure we know anything. Is there an organization to how the brain initializes itself? Could this be one thing that goes wrong in, say, autism?
-Better understanding of the interconnectivity of different regions of the brain. Obvious uses there for dealing with lesions to the brain, if you learn from this study that one of the areas damaged is highly connected to a distant part of the brain, you might want to watch out for effects on that other part of the brain
-Helping us understand how or if new neurons generated in adulthood integrate into the already existing, quite complicated network
-altering something and seeing how that affects the brain map, to study the plasticity of the brain and possibly learn how to learn better
That's just the ones I could think up, there are undoubtedly more reasons one of the authors could fill you in on, and there are probably even more uses that even they haven't thought of, that some other researcher will.
Anyway, since when did science ever need to have a clear use in mind before we did something? If you're anything like the typical slashdotter, you don't bother asking "What good will that do" when discussions of "Let's land on the moon or mars" come up. I would argue that this is clearly more useful than that, but that doesn't matter, it's not about knowing all that we can gain from an endeavor in advance.
So really, the only thing this man hasn't done wrong was invade two countries?
You're kidding, right? That's what you got out of it? Honestly?
I can't wait for all the rationalizations by his supporters and deflections to how much worse GWB supposedly was.
I'll admit I was wrong, but only after he invades two countries simultaneously.
I think they'd probably prefer not to, they'd prefer to go back to simpler times, before this damn internet thing, when they were still making money hand over fist.
If they succeed in this, the only thing that will happen is that some of my news portals will have less actual content and more blogging/editorials/crap (like fashion and celeb news).
The suits just don't understand that traffic is the new black.
No, black is still black. How many sites get tons of hits but no actual profits?
AP may be hurting themselves by doing this, or they may have, you know, actually studied their own buisness and concluded that this is how they will survive. We'll get to see for ourselves. Or not, since if they go under, who is going to report it? AP news?
Does anyone have data on how many truly false predictions have been made? Because one out of X might not be enough to condemn the politicos and glorify the scientist. Clearly these things do need to be managed carefully.
I don't know, but I'd predict that more things scientists have predicted have come true than politicians.
Of course, that IS a prediction coming from a scientist...
My immediate reaction is to say, "Ha! Science, bitches: It works!" and laugh at the officials who denounced the prediction. However, the very fact that the prediction was *so* precise, saying that the devastation would strike on a certain day, seems particularly irresponsible.
Science: it works bitches, but please take it with a grain of salt.
Hm... not as catchy...
my tea leaves tell me that your town is going to be destroyed by an earthquake next week.
I'm interested in purchasing your tea leaves. I've also heard you have a tiger-repelling rock...
Is the AC talking to rcamans or me? Because if it's me, my mamma's basement ain't big enough for the both of us. Neither is my bomb shelter porn collection.
Actually, this is exactly what it's supposed to survive.
Well, I'm reasonably certain my computer can't withstand a nuclear attack, and I don't think most porn stars are radiation-resistant, so it's really trivial to me whether or not there is still an internet after a nuclear war.
Wait, so someone steals a product prototype from my company, and I, WORKING FOR THE COMPANY, review said prototype and say it blows
That's not the reason given for his firing, the one branch is supposed to be independant from the other branch, by law, in order to allow their pricing scheme, and did he say the product blows? And lastly, it's his JOB to review movies and presumably he's not just supposed to be in the can for the movie studio.
So basically, the two are not at all the same situation.
How is this different from a journalist writing about any other illegally acquired information, like say a classified document leaked from the White House?
It's quite different in that a classified document from the white house *might* have to be secret for matters of national security, to save lives. This is quite obviously not the case with "Wolverine." Fox just wanted to perpetrate the idea that downloading movies is somehow immoral, and it's always funny to me when large propaganda machines, especially those who enabled former presidents to commit war crimes, lecture me on morality.
The guy deserves just what he got for being dumb enough to so publicly announce that he broke the law.
Is it a clear violation of the law? It really doesn't seem like it should be against the law, as who is losing out here? He's going to see the actual version, I've heard the ending especially was unfinished. There is NOTHING sacred about the release date for a movie, no crime seems to have been committed by watching it, only in uploading it to the internet, which was not his crime.
Anyway, even if a law was broken, that shouldn't justify him being fired, the law should punish as appropriate, no need for his employer to get their two cents in. In this case, if it is against the law, make him pay Fox studios whatever he would have paid to see it in the theater (presumably nothing since he is a movie critic) and be done with the punishment.
He got fired out of spite and misplaced anger. And maybe some bullshit about setting an example. There's no logical reason to fire him other than to continue acting as if movie piracy is a crime against humanity.
Which is not to say Fox didn't have a right to fire him, it's their choice, and of course their legal right to (probably.) Naturally I have no illusions that "It should be this way" translates to "Legally, it is this way over at fox." I'm just talking about what would be fair and make sense in an ideal world, maybe one where "wolverine" was a documentary...
You know, they say it was a clean break, but I think they're going to have a few rebound flings before calling it quits for reals.
That is one of the global warming metrics, right? Save the shrinking polar ice cap, right?
Yes, you nailed it right on the head, it's all "ice melting = bad," no one has taken any nuance into consideration. You've singlehandedly bested every climatologist/whatever they call themselves.
It would be quite remarkable to have video footage of polar bears in the Antarctic.
Go easy on him, FooAtWFU is a high school student from Wasilla, AK. He's special.
"See doc, there's a natural progression to blood pressure. High low high low. It's going up,BFD.
Now, I'm gunna eat this bag of potato chips and get a big mac and feel okay about it."
You have to love it how some people cling to the first rationalization that allows them to keep doing what they want, from the time they're kids right up to when they die.
They're the worst. Team fortress 2 and Left 4 dead are very fun games, at least the rare times people don't ruin it by using a glitch. See TFA for the example of team killing in left 4 dead through the elevator. Capture the point in TF2 also ruined many times by people going "under the map" and being unkillable.
I really don't understand it. If you want an empty victory, there are single player games with plenty of glitches, go masturbate by yourself.
I have little understanding of the computing/programming/whatever behind it, but Halo 3 and other games that seemed to have a central server didn't suffer from that, wheras TF2 (and TF1 before it) seem to connect you to other people hosting games rather than one centralized server, and they seem to have more glitch exploiting. I'd hazard a guess: it's easier to update your own servers to immediately sew up exploitable glitches than it is to force everyone to update theirs. I'm guessing the main reason not to have a centralized system like that is cost and speed. I'd be willing to pay more for TF2 or future sequels if it were more "managed" like Halo 3. I still occasionally play halo 3 even though it's not as much fun as TF2, simply because sometimes I don't want to start a game, then find someone doing shit like that and have to find another game, repeat.
I know that the team fortress... er... team isn't giving up, their blog (http://www.teamfortress.com/) indicates they are themselves extremely annoyed, and they seem to be coming up with new ways of trying to filter out the crap, scoring servers. And they also seem to constantly be taking out glitches. If TF2's servers are decentralized compared to Halo 3's, I wonder if they aren't regretting that decision, and if TF3 would have more centralized servers.
(One last reminder, I don't know anything concrete about the differences or similarities in connecting to games in Halo 3 versus TF2 other than one you click on some server name and often get glitching, and in the other you just hit play and there are much less glitches.)
Not to get all tinfoil-hat on everyone, but has anyone closer to a neutral third party got any information?
Well, I'm something of a third party. I know I haven't been nuked, so there's that. And my north korean GPS device isn't working, so I'm going to assume that either they weren't serious about the sattelite, the launch was a failure, or I was sold a very defective north korean GPS. I mean, it looks like a painted rock, but that's about what I would have expected...
and like any troll, the only way to react to it is ignore it
And like any troll, it would be far more satisfying to nuke them from space.
I wouldn't be surprised if they dredge the thing out of the ocean only to find some North Korean expletive scrawled on the side - something like "screw you America, and your little submersible too!".
Hopefully they do find it, and the guidance system computer consists of a North Korean soldier.
we should damned well disarm to put everyone on an equal footing.
Yes, that would be ideal. We should also get rid of all the guns in the world, as swords have less propensity to injure bystanders.
Since we can never actually do either, let's be done talking about pie in the sky for now.