Exactly so. I am sorry I don't have any mod points at the moment, or I would mod you up.
Superficial, careless people notice the benefits of social media. Thoughtful, careful people are aware of the drawbacks and realise that they outweigh the benefits.
Bacteriophages are a good partial answer. Viruses that prey on and destroy specific bacteria, they have some great advantages along with their limitations.
On the plus side, they are tailored for one specific strain of bacterium and kill those alone. What's more, they usually kill virtually all of them. Then the viruses have nothing to attack, and go dormant. There is no question - as far as I know, so far - of bacteria developing resistance. The phage's attack is extremely basic - rather like an anti-tank shot. They just bore into the bacterium, commandeer its DNA and start churning out more phages.
Also, the specificity means that a phage is extremely focused in its effects. None of the huge overkill of antibiotics, which - as their name implies - are pretty hostile to all living material.
The downside is significant, but manageable. Each phage kills only one type of bacterium, so you need to create a library of phages. An institute in Tbilisi, Georgia had such a library in Soviet times; I don't know how much of its stock has survived. It could be built up again at fairly low cost.
Since the bacteria against which antibiotics fail are quite few in number so far, it should be feasible to develop phages fast enough to keep up with them.
Perhaps the biggest problem lies in the absence of vast undeserved profits. That's the main reason why the Western world went overboard on antibiotics in the first place, leading to undeserved neglect of other antibacterial techniques.
The best tool is the one you write, dummy. Don't you enjoy programming?
If everyone agreed with you about that there would be several hundred million operating systems, networks, database systems, spreadsheets, word processors, etc. today.
Whereas in fact only programming languages have reached that point - because everyone actually does write their own.
That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard... at any rate since Sun first established the "Java" trademark and generously announced that it wouldn't sue inhabitants of the island of Java if they used the name to describe their home.
"America's urban coastal cities have enjoyed an explosion in their technology sectors. New York's Silicon Alley and Boston's biotech corridor are world-class incubators of talent and startups".
I must be way out of touch, because I just can't think of many specific achievements that all that world-class talent has brought about.
Processor chips - well, I think it's clear that a lot of useful progress has not been made there. GPUs, perhaps some advances. What's new in software, though? When was there last a really important new operating system? It all seems to be apps for extracting money from consumers.
"Imagine: You're a physicist who has dedicated your career to understanding the fundamental structure of matter. You have a stack of reprints, a decent position, and a modicum of admiration from the three other specialists who have read your papers. Suddenly, aliens weigh in with knowledge that's a thousand years ahead of yours. So much for your job and your sense of purpose".
While this is a very plausible scenario, isn't it really an indictment of the stupid, irrational way we run our society? Any system that makes amazing new knowledge seem harmful is obviously a rotten system.
These ideas were quite thoroughly explored around 1960 by Fred Hoyle and others. Hoyle's novel "A for Andromeda" and the associated BBC series describe events following the reception of a coherent set of messages apparently from a distant alien species. The messages contain detailed information - including the complete recipe for creating an intelligent (apparently) human individual. Then the question arises: who is she really, where do her loyalties lie, and since she may be far cleverer than any human being, how can we trust her?
Hoyle had also presented similar ideas in a slightly less extreme format in his novel "Ossian's Ride", in which a mysterious entity called the Industrial Corporation of Eire (ICE) buys up and cordons off the whole south-west tip of Ireland, establishing a futuristic city with amazingly advanced technology. Where did the knowledge come from?
Of course such stories skate lightly over the practical difficulties of decoding complex alien messages, but the core dilemma is very real. It is similar to the problem posed in James P Hogan's "Two Faces of Tomorrow" - arguably essential reading for anyone interested in AI - which asks, "if a computer system is clever enough to solve problems human beings can't, could they afford to trust it?"
Iran was already committing an act of war by enriching uranium outside of the nonproliferation agreement.
No it wasn't. Your talk of "war" is meaningless provocation.
"Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968 and ratified it in 1970, making Iran's nuclear program subject to IAEA verification". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
That means that Iran has been rigorously inspected ever since 1970, proving that it not only has no nuclear weapons, but that it has not even begun working toward their possession - which would take many years. On the other hand Israel, India and Pakistan never even signed the NPT and have sizeable thermonuclear arsenals. That, apparently, has never bothered the US government.
Article IV of the NPT explicitly permits enrichment of uranium for peaceful purposes.
Article IV
1. Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.
2. All the Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate, and have the right to participate in, the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Parties to the Treaty in a position to do so shall also co-operate in contributing alone or together with other States or international organizations to the further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty, with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world.
That shit is not used for electricity, it's used for bombs.
I don't know what "shit" you are talking about. Perhaps if you would use normal language instead of swearing incoherently, your meaning might be clearer.
Obviously, though, Iran has never enriched uranium to anything like the level that would be required for nuclear weapons. Uranium must be enriched to 3-5% U235 even for use in power generation - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... Viable nuclear weapons require at least 85% U235, whereas Iran has never enriched beyond 20%, which is done to provide isotopes for medical use and research.
The nuclear nonproliferation agreement makes sense and is agreed upon by anyone with a brain.
Yes - including me. But apparently not including you, since you reject Article IV of that agreement (see above).
Stuxnet - I bet the Iranians never believed the USA could do THAT. A real act of war if ever there was one.
It will be interesting to watch how the US government goes about preventing all "foreign" interference by way of the Internet and the Web without completely cutting the USA off from the rest of the world.
OK, why don't you eat some microplastic with every meal for a few months and then let us know how you are doing?
Then it will have been tested.
What's that you say? You don't want to eat microplastic? But that's very irrational: it hasn't been conclusively proved to be harmful.
In fact, you may have unwittingly opened up a gigantic new field of research. For instance, AFAIK it has never been scientifically proved that eating ground glass is harmful to humans. Nor dropping them off skyscrapers... Just think of the potential for new knowledge.
Tim Berners-Lee made his opinion about this perfectly clear in a 1997 document. The bottom line is simple: if you don't want something linked to, don't put it on the World Wide Web.
'Myth: "A normal link is an incitement to copy the linked document in a way which infringes copyright".
'This is a serious misunderstanding. The ability to refer to a document (or a person or any thing else) is in general a fundamental right of free speech to the same extent that speech is free. Making the reference with a hypertext link is more efficient but changes nothing else.
'When the "speech" itself is illegal, whether or not it contains hypertext links, then its illegality should not be affected by the fact that it is in electronic form.
'Users and information providers and lawyers have to share this convention. If they do not, people will be frightened to make links for fear of legal implications. I received a mail message asking for "permission" to link to our site. I refused as I insisted that permission was not needed'.
Also, of course, if Americans are not to use Chinese devices in case the Chinese government spies on them - who (outside the USA) is going to want to use American devices?
We know for sure that the US government systematically spies on Americans, and if they spy on Americans they certainly wouldn't baulk at spying on foreigners.
So, goodbye all Apple sales to China, Russia, India, Europe, Africa, South America...
'"We're deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don't share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunications networks," FBI Director Chris Wray testified'.
I wonder if Mr Wray would care to state exactly what "our values" are. I suspect the reason why politicians (and make no mistake, the FBI Director is a politician first, last and foremost) never list "our values" is either because they have forgotten what they are supposed to be, or because they are afraid listeners would burst out laughing.
Democracy? The USA was never meant to be a democracy - quite the contrary - and it is now definitely a plutocracy. Freedom? That depends, doesn't it - whose freedom to do what to whom? Freedom of speech? "It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them". - Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XX Freedom of assembly? Not anywhere near where any politicians are having a meeting, or anywhere the armed forces say you can't go. A free market? Everything is rigged, starting with interest rates and including the stock and bond markets.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly so. I am sorry I don't have any mod points at the moment, or I would mod you up.
Superficial, careless people notice the benefits of social media. Thoughtful, careful people are aware of the drawbacks and realise that they outweigh the benefits.
Greatly, I would say.
Bacteriophages are a good partial answer. Viruses that prey on and destroy specific bacteria, they have some great advantages along with their limitations.
On the plus side, they are tailored for one specific strain of bacterium and kill those alone. What's more, they usually kill virtually all of them. Then the viruses have nothing to attack, and go dormant. There is no question - as far as I know, so far - of bacteria developing resistance. The phage's attack is extremely basic - rather like an anti-tank shot. They just bore into the bacterium, commandeer its DNA and start churning out more phages.
Also, the specificity means that a phage is extremely focused in its effects. None of the huge overkill of antibiotics, which - as their name implies - are pretty hostile to all living material.
The downside is significant, but manageable. Each phage kills only one type of bacterium, so you need to create a library of phages. An institute in Tbilisi, Georgia had such a library in Soviet times; I don't know how much of its stock has survived. It could be built up again at fairly low cost.
Since the bacteria against which antibiotics fail are quite few in number so far, it should be feasible to develop phages fast enough to keep up with them.
Perhaps the biggest problem lies in the absence of vast undeserved profits. That's the main reason why the Western world went overboard on antibiotics in the first place, leading to undeserved neglect of other antibacterial techniques.
Eventually organisms will evolve to devour plastic and break down those yummy hydrocarbon bonds.
Maybe even in as little as a few hundred million years. In evolutionary terms, "eventually" tends to be a very, very long time.
If you use anyone as a "fact checker" you are probably hopelessly naive.
... which is truth and which is "fake news"?
People have been arguing that issue for thousands of years.
... there is so much legislation that needs to be repaired.
Beyond food, water and air what is "necessary" is subjective.
Actually, the need for those is subjective too. You don't need them unless you want to go on living, and there is no logical reason to do so.
Perhaps this is more true of some than of others.
The best tool is the one you write, dummy. Don't you enjoy programming?
If everyone agreed with you about that there would be several hundred million operating systems, networks, database systems, spreadsheets, word processors, etc. today.
Whereas in fact only programming languages have reached that point - because everyone actually does write their own.
Right there you’ve eliminated 95% of the applicable software.
Wouldn't it be more constructive to identify and perhaps compare some of the 5% that remain?
I don't know, but one thing .NET has over Java is that they didn't call everything "Java".
No, they called everything ".NET".
Duh.
That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard... at any rate since Sun first established the "Java" trademark and generously announced that it wouldn't sue inhabitants of the island of Java if they used the name to describe their home.
In 1900 a family needed a full-time home worker just to acquire unrefrigerated food and prepare three meals and clean the chamber pots.
Preferably in that order.
Because, if you can't or won't build a launching laser, the Monks have no other way of getting to their next port of call.
And entities that can't or won't build a launching laser are hardly sentient, so won't be missed.
... from TFA:
"While not an official designation, mid-tech jobs can be defined as skilled tech work that doesn’t require a college degree..."
The kind of work Bill Gates does, then?
"Do this for us or we'll make your star go supernova."
Build a launching laser.
"America's urban coastal cities have enjoyed an explosion in their technology sectors. New York's Silicon Alley and Boston's biotech corridor are world-class incubators of talent and startups".
I must be way out of touch, because I just can't think of many specific achievements that all that world-class talent has brought about.
Processor chips - well, I think it's clear that a lot of useful progress has not been made there. GPUs, perhaps some advances. What's new in software, though? When was there last a really important new operating system? It all seems to be apps for extracting money from consumers.
"Imagine: You're a physicist who has dedicated your career to understanding the fundamental structure of matter. You have a stack of reprints, a decent position, and a modicum of admiration from the three other specialists who have read your papers. Suddenly, aliens weigh in with knowledge that's a thousand years ahead of yours. So much for your job and your sense of purpose".
While this is a very plausible scenario, isn't it really an indictment of the stupid, irrational way we run our society? Any system that makes amazing new knowledge seem harmful is obviously a rotten system.
These ideas were quite thoroughly explored around 1960 by Fred Hoyle and others. Hoyle's novel "A for Andromeda" and the associated BBC series describe events following the reception of a coherent set of messages apparently from a distant alien species. The messages contain detailed information - including the complete recipe for creating an intelligent (apparently) human individual. Then the question arises: who is she really, where do her loyalties lie, and since she may be far cleverer than any human being, how can we trust her?
Hoyle had also presented similar ideas in a slightly less extreme format in his novel "Ossian's Ride", in which a mysterious entity called the Industrial Corporation of Eire (ICE) buys up and cordons off the whole south-west tip of Ireland, establishing a futuristic city with amazingly advanced technology. Where did the knowledge come from?
Of course such stories skate lightly over the practical difficulties of decoding complex alien messages, but the core dilemma is very real. It is similar to the problem posed in James P Hogan's "Two Faces of Tomorrow" - arguably essential reading for anyone interested in AI - which asks, "if a computer system is clever enough to solve problems human beings can't, could they afford to trust it?"
Iran was already committing an act of war by enriching uranium outside of the nonproliferation agreement.
No it wasn't. Your talk of "war" is meaningless provocation.
"Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968 and ratified it in 1970, making Iran's nuclear program subject to IAEA verification".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
That means that Iran has been rigorously inspected ever since 1970, proving that it not only has no nuclear weapons, but that it has not even begun working toward their possession - which would take many years. On the other hand Israel, India and Pakistan never even signed the NPT and have sizeable thermonuclear arsenals. That, apparently, has never bothered the US government.
Article IV of the NPT explicitly permits enrichment of uranium for peaceful purposes.
Article IV
1. Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.
2. All the Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate, and have the right to participate in, the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Parties to the Treaty in a position to do so shall also co-operate in contributing alone or together with other States or international organizations to the further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty, with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world.
That shit is not used for electricity, it's used for bombs.
I don't know what "shit" you are talking about. Perhaps if you would use normal language instead of swearing incoherently, your meaning might be clearer.
Obviously, though, Iran has never enriched uranium to anything like the level that would be required for nuclear weapons. Uranium must be enriched to 3-5% U235 even for use in power generation - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... Viable nuclear weapons require at least 85% U235, whereas Iran has never enriched beyond 20%, which is done to provide isotopes for medical use and research.
The nuclear nonproliferation agreement makes sense and is agreed upon by anyone with a brain.
Yes - including me. But apparently not including you, since you reject Article IV of that agreement (see above).
Stuxnet - I bet the Iranians never believed the USA could do THAT. A real act of war if ever there was one.
It will be interesting to watch how the US government goes about preventing all "foreign" interference by way of the Internet and the Web without completely cutting the USA off from the rest of the world.
OK, why don't you eat some microplastic with every meal for a few months and then let us know how you are doing?
Then it will have been tested.
What's that you say? You don't want to eat microplastic? But that's very irrational: it hasn't been conclusively proved to be harmful.
In fact, you may have unwittingly opened up a gigantic new field of research. For instance, AFAIK it has never been scientifically proved that eating ground glass is harmful to humans. Nor dropping them off skyscrapers... Just think of the potential for new knowledge.
... you could take your contributed code -- an everyone else's code -- and start your own developer group.
Are you sure that couldn't be construed as "harassment" or something else mean?
Tim Berners-Lee made his opinion about this perfectly clear in a 1997 document. The bottom line is simple: if you don't want something linked to, don't put it on the World Wide Web.
'Myth: "A normal link is an incitement to copy the linked document in a way which infringes copyright".
'This is a serious misunderstanding. The ability to refer to a document (or a person or any thing else) is in general a fundamental right of free speech to the same extent that speech is free. Making the reference with a hypertext link is more efficient but changes nothing else.
'When the "speech" itself is illegal, whether or not it contains hypertext links, then its illegality should not be affected by the fact that it is in electronic form.
'Users and information providers and lawyers have to share this convention. If they do not, people will be frightened to make links for fear of legal implications. I received a mail message asking for "permission" to link to our site. I refused as I insisted that permission was not needed'.
https://www.w3.org/DesignIssue...
Also, of course, if Americans are not to use Chinese devices in case the Chinese government spies on them - who (outside the USA) is going to want to use American devices?
We know for sure that the US government systematically spies on Americans, and if they spy on Americans they certainly wouldn't baulk at spying on foreigners.
So, goodbye all Apple sales to China, Russia, India, Europe, Africa, South America...
'"We're deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don't share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunications networks," FBI Director Chris Wray testified'.
I wonder if Mr Wray would care to state exactly what "our values" are. I suspect the reason why politicians (and make no mistake, the FBI Director is a politician first, last and foremost) never list "our values" is either because they have forgotten what they are supposed to be, or because they are afraid listeners would burst out laughing.
Democracy? The USA was never meant to be a democracy - quite the contrary - and it is now definitely a plutocracy.
Freedom? That depends, doesn't it - whose freedom to do what to whom?
Freedom of speech? "It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them". - Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XX
Freedom of assembly? Not anywhere near where any politicians are having a meeting, or anywhere the armed forces say you can't go.
A free market? Everything is rigged, starting with interest rates and including the stock and bond markets.
I could go on but I don't want to bore anyone.