Adult stem cells aren't much use in research. It has been established that they are too limited and that all efforts to generalize them will render them incompatible with the original person - they're rejected as foreign bodies.
I'm actually citing my late father's research papers on the subject. And, yes, he did have considerable expertise on the subject and taught me about the various mechanisms and transport modes involved -- long before Wikipedia existed, I should add. I also attended a number of the conference talks he gave on the subject and helped develop software for distinguishing isotopes that gave similar AMS results that required high levels of expertise (not something doctors usually have) to tell apart.
So, yes, I do know what I'm talking about. I've been studying those lab notes and papers of his, together with the rival research and the findings by geneticists, for 15 years - 15 years more than you have studied the subject, I might add. I may not be the top expert in the field, but I'm probably the closest to an expert a layman could ever hope to be.
Personally, I'd prefer it if the stem cell researchers could find a way to reverse the damage and bring him up to full health. It's not an either-or situation. Every day TP is alive and well, there is a chance (however microscopic) of a breakthrough. However, I also respect the fact that you've got to draw the line somewhere and I respect where he's drawn his. The only question that remains is whether the US (the country capable of funding R&D at the necessary rate) will actually back stem cell research enough to save him and countless others. Not just from Alzheimers but from any death that results from a relatively small number of cells that cannot be repaired by the body unaided.
Alzheimer's is the result of tau protein brain plaques crushing neurons to death. Tau proteins seem to form around foreign particles in the brain. It is quite plausible that this process is some form of very primitive "immune" response that evolved in single-cell lifeforms or some sort of colony (a jellyfish would probably benefit from toxic chemicals being engulfed even if it meant part of the colony being destroyed).
This leads to two questions:
1) How did the foreign bodies get into the brain in the first place? 2) Would it be more harmful or less to deactivate the immune response?
It may be that solving (1) would be sufficient. It is certainly necessary, especially if (2) shows that removing the response would actually lead to a worse condition due to toxic buildup. (1) is certainly sufficient for some forms of Alzheimers, such as that caused by aluminum toxicity.
Television ads intended to reach the same number of people globally would be pretty much guaranteed to cost more. In the end, you can't make money without spending money.
It's a huge transactional database, yes. What's your point?
When building a fault-tolerant system you've two choices:
a) Build the system such that you have N databases (not 1) with transactions sent to any of them replicated across the others. By doing transactions in bulk over some period (say every 5 mins), everything within that 5 min window will always be in the correct order on all instances of the system. By having the kiosks retain the past 5 mins of transactions and the electronic address of each server, if one goes down it can round-robin to the next and dump the buffer into it.
b) Use NACK-oriented reliable multicast and have each transaction automatically forwarded to all N servers at the same time.
You use leased lines and MPLS to create the virtual circuits needed for this. One fully reliable, trans-continental system. Because each kiosk "sees" one server (even though it may change at any given time) and that server is always current, it "sees" a single master system even though no master system exists.
Look, this is stuff I know you youngsters have a hard time understanding, but my generation had already solved these problems before half of the current Slashdot population was born. Now gerroff my lawn!
Governments do that all the time. When you want to publish a statement but can't make an official announcement, you leak it to the press. Standard operating procedure.
It's reasonable to provide law enforcement some headstart, though not indefinite. How about a compromise? If Congress has to be informed within 48 hours, the public has to be informed within 72 hours whether or not Congress has taken action. It doesn't take a day for computer forensics teams to make backups of applicable system logs from the target, any zombies used, etc.
I do agree that all prior breaches (well, within reason - say since 1998) should be listed to the extent that they are known. Chances are, for a lot of that time, companies were being broken into left and right with no awareness of it whatsoever. The exception should be banks and other financial institutions, since they have been required by the busineess world to use computers for a very long time and are required to have far higher standards. For them, I'd say 1988 would be a better cutoff point.
Having worked in places with hundreds of remote offices, for that matter having worked at CERN on data collection for nuclear accelerators, I think I might, just might, have an idea of what it takes to keep large numbers of systems in sync over continental distances.
The BBC and The Grauniad combined do a damn good job of covering the US news. Yes, there's lots of gaps, but there's fewer of them than from any US source. Which should frighten people a lot.
I dunno. The R100 was a flying hotel and a fleet of those would have been quite capable of carrying the same number of passengers modern airlines could.
Airlines with outstanding reputation for timliness and customer service probably could charge $25-$50 more per ticket and have the customers grateful for it. The problem is that it takes decades to build that kind of rep but mere seconds to destroy it. Much easier to pretend to cater for the unwashed masses because that means guaranteed profit now rather than a higher but riskier long-tern profit due to good, competent service.
It's the way Microsoft, T-Mobile, Comcast and talk-show hosts have bilked people for years.
Good software is fault-tolerant. Fault-tolerant software DOES have a backup strategy if the programmer screws up. In the modern world, standards for software have fallen, not risen. If they had risen, virtually all software would be fault-tolerant and this kind of problem would not exist.
That depends on how you define cost. The instantaneous cost is one part, but only a part. Even so, that cost isn't just frustrated customers. It's parking costs for the aircraft, staff wages, any technician overtime needed, costs due to food spoilage, loss of in-flight sales, etc. Delayed costs also matter. There's any loss of future custom to consider, since that is also a cost to the company. There's any increase in insurance costs for them as a result of any successful claims. It may well impact the airline's ability to purchase space at an airport or purchase a specific route. All these things are costs.
The problem is that many aren't quantifiable - too many unknowns - so an airline is incapable of knowing if a backup system is cheaper or not.
Oh, as for additional software licenses, many enterprise-level software vendors support floating licenses. So if you're doing cold standby (a whopping 30 seconds of outage), no additional licenses are needed.
I know Slashdotters don't always have the best manners, but this isn't Kuro5hin. We still have standards.
Whilst I agree that paper backup is probably out of the question, most computers are quite capable of handling multiple ethernet lines and most routers are capable of supporting hot standby configurations. Even cold standby is a 30 second failover. The same goes for backend servers - it doesn't take much to add a checkpoint/failover system (cold standby) and it's quite possible to configure most servers to support hot standby.
Asteroid takes out a data center? Well, then you've probably got bigger issues, but co-locating across the country is Standard Practice for most instustries.
This simply isn't about the problem. It's about whether the solution has been implemented. Nothing more.
That's one reason Britain still has a House of Lords. You can't bribe 'em and you can't "disappear" 'em. It's also why Britain keeps trying to get rid of said House and replace it with one that you CAN bribe or vanish. As imperfect as it is (it would be better if it were a true meritocratic House), it has prevented some of the more spectacular abuses of power seen elsewhere. Not all, sure. England has more CCTV cameras than people, they totally failed to prevent any of the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad abuses, and so on.
Nonetheless, the US' complete lack of any independent oversight or meritocratic branch is precisely why it was possible for the more gratuitous abuses to have taken place. Everyone in power needs to curry favour from everyone else in power far more than they need anything to actually work.
Given that the Politburo is the one source not paying NPR a damn thing these days, and given NPR's unnerving willingness to broadcasting material embarassing to the government far in excess of those media sources who you personally pay to tell you what's going on, you might want to consider which source is actually in the public's interest.
Apparently, the US' enemies operate on the theory that governments are inefficient and incompetent, so improving the US government would clearly destabilize it......or maybe not.
Slashdot Mirror
Adult stem cells aren't much use in research. It has been established that they are too limited and that all efforts to generalize them will render them incompatible with the original person - they're rejected as foreign bodies.
I'm actually citing my late father's research papers on the subject. And, yes, he did have considerable expertise on the subject and taught me about the various mechanisms and transport modes involved -- long before Wikipedia existed, I should add. I also attended a number of the conference talks he gave on the subject and helped develop software for distinguishing isotopes that gave similar AMS results that required high levels of expertise (not something doctors usually have) to tell apart.
So, yes, I do know what I'm talking about. I've been studying those lab notes and papers of his, together with the rival research and the findings by geneticists, for 15 years - 15 years more than you have studied the subject, I might add. I may not be the top expert in the field, but I'm probably the closest to an expert a layman could ever hope to be.
Personally, I'd prefer it if the stem cell researchers could find a way to reverse the damage and bring him up to full health. It's not an either-or situation. Every day TP is alive and well, there is a chance (however microscopic) of a breakthrough. However, I also respect the fact that you've got to draw the line somewhere and I respect where he's drawn his. The only question that remains is whether the US (the country capable of funding R&D at the necessary rate) will actually back stem cell research enough to save him and countless others. Not just from Alzheimers but from any death that results from a relatively small number of cells that cannot be repaired by the body unaided.
Alzheimer's is the result of tau protein brain plaques crushing neurons to death. Tau proteins seem to form around foreign particles in the brain. It is quite plausible that this process is some form of very primitive "immune" response that evolved in single-cell lifeforms or some sort of colony (a jellyfish would probably benefit from toxic chemicals being engulfed even if it meant part of the colony being destroyed).
This leads to two questions:
1) How did the foreign bodies get into the brain in the first place?
2) Would it be more harmful or less to deactivate the immune response?
It may be that solving (1) would be sufficient. It is certainly necessary, especially if (2) shows that removing the response would actually lead to a worse condition due to toxic buildup. (1) is certainly sufficient for some forms of Alzheimers, such as that caused by aluminum toxicity.
Television ads intended to reach the same number of people globally would be pretty much guaranteed to cost more. In the end, you can't make money without spending money.
It's a huge transactional database, yes. What's your point?
When building a fault-tolerant system you've two choices:
a) Build the system such that you have N databases (not 1) with transactions sent to any of them replicated across the others. By doing transactions in bulk over some period (say every 5 mins), everything within that 5 min window will always be in the correct order on all instances of the system. By having the kiosks retain the past 5 mins of transactions and the electronic address of each server, if one goes down it can round-robin to the next and dump the buffer into it.
b) Use NACK-oriented reliable multicast and have each transaction automatically forwarded to all N servers at the same time.
You use leased lines and MPLS to create the virtual circuits needed for this. One fully reliable, trans-continental system. Because each kiosk "sees" one server (even though it may change at any given time) and that server is always current, it "sees" a single master system even though no master system exists.
Look, this is stuff I know you youngsters have a hard time understanding, but my generation had already solved these problems before half of the current Slashdot population was born. Now gerroff my lawn!
No, like Orcs, they are oblivious to their former status of Elves prior to being Corrupted by Morgoth.
Browsers used to be able to run Tcl/Tk. Good time, good times....
Governments do that all the time. When you want to publish a statement but can't make an official announcement, you leak it to the press. Standard operating procedure.
It's reasonable to provide law enforcement some headstart, though not indefinite. How about a compromise? If Congress has to be informed within 48 hours, the public has to be informed within 72 hours whether or not Congress has taken action. It doesn't take a day for computer forensics teams to make backups of applicable system logs from the target, any zombies used, etc.
I do agree that all prior breaches (well, within reason - say since 1998) should be listed to the extent that they are known. Chances are, for a lot of that time, companies were being broken into left and right with no awareness of it whatsoever. The exception should be banks and other financial institutions, since they have been required by the busineess world to use computers for a very long time and are required to have far higher standards. For them, I'd say 1988 would be a better cutoff point.
Having worked in places with hundreds of remote offices, for that matter having worked at CERN on data collection for nuclear accelerators, I think I might, just might, have an idea of what it takes to keep large numbers of systems in sync over continental distances.
The BBC and The Grauniad combined do a damn good job of covering the US news. Yes, there's lots of gaps, but there's fewer of them than from any US source. Which should frighten people a lot.
I dunno. The R100 was a flying hotel and a fleet of those would have been quite capable of carrying the same number of passengers modern airlines could.
Maybe the computer glitch is an artificial intelligence called Friday. It then called up the airports and ordered the planes not to take off.
Fail over the TCP/IP connections (hot standby) or recover from a checkpoint (cold standby), re-sync with events and then continue. Why do you ask?
Seems a fashionable type of problem to have.
Airlines with outstanding reputation for timliness and customer service probably could charge $25-$50 more per ticket and have the customers grateful for it. The problem is that it takes decades to build that kind of rep but mere seconds to destroy it. Much easier to pretend to cater for the unwashed masses because that means guaranteed profit now rather than a higher but riskier long-tern profit due to good, competent service.
It's the way Microsoft, T-Mobile, Comcast and talk-show hosts have bilked people for years.
Good software is fault-tolerant. Fault-tolerant software DOES have a backup strategy if the programmer screws up. In the modern world, standards for software have fallen, not risen. If they had risen, virtually all software would be fault-tolerant and this kind of problem would not exist.
That depends on how you define cost. The instantaneous cost is one part, but only a part. Even so, that cost isn't just frustrated customers. It's parking costs for the aircraft, staff wages, any technician overtime needed, costs due to food spoilage, loss of in-flight sales, etc. Delayed costs also matter. There's any loss of future custom to consider, since that is also a cost to the company. There's any increase in insurance costs for them as a result of any successful claims. It may well impact the airline's ability to purchase space at an airport or purchase a specific route. All these things are costs.
The problem is that many aren't quantifiable - too many unknowns - so an airline is incapable of knowing if a backup system is cheaper or not.
Oh, as for additional software licenses, many enterprise-level software vendors support floating licenses. So if you're doing cold standby (a whopping 30 seconds of outage), no additional licenses are needed.
I know Slashdotters don't always have the best manners, but this isn't Kuro5hin. We still have standards.
Whilst I agree that paper backup is probably out of the question, most computers are quite capable of handling multiple ethernet lines and most routers are capable of supporting hot standby configurations. Even cold standby is a 30 second failover. The same goes for backend servers - it doesn't take much to add a checkpoint/failover system (cold standby) and it's quite possible to configure most servers to support hot standby.
Asteroid takes out a data center? Well, then you've probably got bigger issues, but co-locating across the country is Standard Practice for most instustries.
This simply isn't about the problem. It's about whether the solution has been implemented. Nothing more.
That's one reason Britain still has a House of Lords. You can't bribe 'em and you can't "disappear" 'em. It's also why Britain keeps trying to get rid of said House and replace it with one that you CAN bribe or vanish. As imperfect as it is (it would be better if it were a true meritocratic House), it has prevented some of the more spectacular abuses of power seen elsewhere. Not all, sure. England has more CCTV cameras than people, they totally failed to prevent any of the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad abuses, and so on.
Nonetheless, the US' complete lack of any independent oversight or meritocratic branch is precisely why it was possible for the more gratuitous abuses to have taken place. Everyone in power needs to curry favour from everyone else in power far more than they need anything to actually work.
Given that the Politburo is the one source not paying NPR a damn thing these days, and given NPR's unnerving willingness to broadcasting material embarassing to the government far in excess of those media sources who you personally pay to tell you what's going on, you might want to consider which source is actually in the public's interest.
Apparently, the US' enemies operate on the theory that governments are inefficient and incompetent, so improving the US government would clearly destabilize it. .....or maybe not.
And, yes, I'm sure you're right.
AC presumes the US' enemies are happy about it. Since your points are obvious, "thinking" clearly wasn't part of the activity.
I dunno. Is active radar really more disruptive than Minecraft?