The argument is that IPv4 is excessively complex. The header has a vast amount of information, much of which any stateful device will nee to check and validate. With IPv6, the extra information either doesn't apply (as in the case of fragmentation) or is pushed into secondary headers and only examined by layers that actually NEED to care.
Since I used fragmentation as an example, when is fragmentation important? Well, let's say Business A uses standard ethernet frames (1500 bytes) and Business B uses jumbo frames (6000 bytes). Business B's packets will be fragmented into 4 parts at the point where jumbo frames are no longer supported. They will be re-assembled into a jumbo frame on Business A's firewall (in order for the packet to be validated) and will then be broken up again as Business A's network won't support jumbo packets.
All that takes time. If a fragment is dropped, in transit, the jumbo packet won't reassemble correctly and will be dropped, forcing the entire jumbo packet to be resent. (In other words, a dropped packet is 4 times as expensive.)
With IPv6, that doesn't happen. Business B connects to Business A. Negotiation identifies that the largest packet that will travel intact is 1500 bytes, so Business B (when sending to Business A) will use packets of that size. No fragmentation, a drop will cost 1500 bytes not 6000 bytes, and it doesn't involve Business B reducing its MTU to anyone else, so if other people can receive jumbo packets fine, the connection isn't degraded.
It doesn't help that IPv4 is based around byte-alignment and bit flags, whereas modern computers assume 32-bit or 64-bit words. Having things word-aligned and word-sized is much more efficient on a modern computer. That is something that has genuinely changed over time and wasn't merely a case of really bad design.
And that comes to a different conclusion how? Less waste = more speed. More speed = more business. More business = more money. If it makes the business people money, why should they care about the technical details of why? My business case for IPv6 is that it makes money, and that making money is a Good Thing (for businesses).
So convert them whilst they're not looking. Most people use DSL or cable, where others control the software and the configuration. If you wanted to be more forceful, Windows is vulnerable to viruses and viruses can install software - including TCP/IP stacks. (Mind you, I wouldn't recommend doing the latter, but technically it would be possible and it would defeat the laziness issue.)
Today's Internet should be trivial.
on
IPv6 Readiness Report
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Most home users use DSL or cable modems and the ISPs would be quite capable of pushing new firmware to those to become IPv4/IPv6 gateways. You can then convert the entire "real" Internet to IPv6 without home users ever having to lift a finger.
Once that's been done, it's just a case of those same ISPs offering a CD to accelerate Internet usage (ie: which use native IPv6 rather than the gateway) and conversion is complete. Complete conversion of the Internet, by converting each ring in turn transparently to all outside layers, should be possible over the course of a few months at most. A solid concerted effort could probably achieve everything up to the end-user level in a matter of weeks, without a single person realizing what was happening.
Of course, I don't seriously expect that to happen. Not because it can't, but because the level of cooperation needed is likely beyond most businesses today. It's purely a political problem, not a technological one.
The link is most helpful and I'm glad to say that I did see that Linux is indeed still supported and they do still offer a trial version for it. I'm downloading all 133.5 megabytes of it as I type, eternally grateful I'm not on my original 300 baud modem.
Didn't Microsoft patent FAT, recently? I wonder... It would take some doing to get the spin right - people can be stupid at times, but that would be pushing it. Maybe, though... Just maybe...
Hold on a moment. Close your eyes and count to three. One... Two... Three... Now, open your eyes and try, say, pinging::127.0.0.1 and see if you can reach your loopback address. Hey! It worked! Magic, I tell ya!
This one's easy. Firewalls don't like fragmented packets, because you can't verify subsequent parts. This means that firewalls either offer limited protection (ie: let the remaining fragments through) or re-assemble the packets themselves (which is slow).
IPv6 doesn't support fragmented packets. It forces both sides to restrict the MTU of that connection to the smallest MTU of any intermediate network component. In consequence, firewalls don't need to check for fragmentation and don't need to reserve any space for extra state information.
The practical upshot is that your bottleneck (the firewall) can handle far more connections with far lower latencies, which means B2B (business-to-business) and e-commerce network traffic can run much more smoothly and the system can manage much higher numbers of connections.
More connections with lower latencies, more business transactions. More transactions, more profit.
IPv6 includes the following features that either don't exist in IPv4 or you need to install bunches of other stuff to get it to work:
Zero configuration of the IP stack. It's self-configuring, completely.
Privacy. IPv6 mandates IPSec and I believe all IPv6 stacks out there provide that.
Speed. IPv6 addressing is heirarchical and the headers are simpler and stacked, so much less information needs to be processed even though the headers are technically longer.
Mobility. IPv6 supports Mobile IP - indeed, that was a design consideration - with fully optimized routing. It's only available under IPv4 as a hacked implementation of a workaround.
Routing. Native IPv6 routing (as opposed to RIP-ng and OSPFv6) is designed from first principles, as opposed to being something that has evolved over time to be sub-optimal but backwards-compatiable.
Multicast. IPv6 mandates multicast, which will reduce bandwidth consumption on broadcasts drastically.
Anycast. This allows you to find a service by querying the network rather than some moron in technical support.
MTU feedback. Your computer won't send what the network can't carry. This means you don't get packet fragmentation, which is great for firewalls and users on networks with restricted packet size. This will become more significant as jumbo packets increase in popularity.
Tell me again why you don't need IPv6. Only, this time, say how you're going to meet these criteria whilst you're at it.
For installing IPv6 on Linux: Go to any IPv6 provider (British Telecom, Hurricane Electric, WIDE - there are plenty of them). Download the script. Enter your IPv4 address and MAC address into their web form. Run their script on your machine. You are now fully IPv6-ready. (Most Linux distros come fully IPv6-enabled.)
For installing IPv6 on any *BSD: Pretty much the same. All the *BSDs have been IPv6-ready for a long time, under the KAME project banner.
For installing IPv6 under Windows: You go to Microsoft Research and install the stack. Unless it's already on the CD - it is, for some versions of Windows.
For actually implementing an IPv6 stack? Well, for that you want the RFCs on the IETF website, and the IPv6 evaluation kit (TAHI) that is listed on Freshmeat. I didn't type all the damn information for the various testing packages into the record for nothing!
Aside from that, I really can't think of anything you could need a guide for.
I think so, but that one I'm not sure about. The last successful one did have some cycling, because they had fuel tank sensor problems.
Since the interview talks of freezing/expansion being a significant part of the problem, then yes. The more you cycle the tanks, the more cracking in the foam. In fact, it's slightly worse than that. Once cracks have formed, they'll gather moisture. When the fuel is reloaded, this will not only cause the regular cracking, but you'll get freeze-cracking from the ice forming on the inside of the foam.
Apparently, a researcher has produced webbing that the foam can be formed around, which will add enough integrity that foam cannot fall off in chunks. NASA has apparently declined to invest in the idea, but there doesn't seem to be any clear reason on why.
I was kinda saying the same thing, only slightly more diplomatically.:) (Not my fault if there are no diplomats on Slashdot! It's a virus that wiped 'em all out, I tell you.)
Seriously, I do accept that there are food addicts whose brain chemistry has (for whatever reason) become just as altered as a heroin addict's. They are not at fault for having the condition, but I would agree that it is their responsibility to not feed that addiction and to make such adjustments as are necessary to prevent it being a problem.
I completely agree that people don't exercise enough. I've seen way too many people drive to pick up the post......at the end of the driveway. I don't consider myself to get nearly enough exercise to stay healthy - on a typical weekend I'll walk about fifteen to twenty miles over hills and I probably put in an additional five miles a day during the week. I would probably benefit from adding another few miles a day and maybe another ten over the weekend.
However, compared to 98% of people in America, I'm probably a fitness freak. That's scary. That's more than scary.
I don't believe McDonald's should be sued for serving fat with added carbohydrate molecules (except maybe for claiming that it's food). Maybe it would be more effective if health insurance and/or health care providers quit covering people who wilfully abuse their bodies. Resources are limited, may as well use them wisely.
The wonderful world of calories. A largely useless measure of energy, owing to the fact that the total energy exchange is what matters. Of the energy coming in, you must first subtract the energy actually used. (It is irrelevent, for all practical purposes, whether this is radiated as heat or converted into mechanical motion.)
Once you have done that, you must then subtract the chemical energy stored (sugars and fats, for the most part, but you can certainly build up bulk with a high protein diet). This is part of what contributes to your gain in weight, but it is not the whole picture. Cells are not dehydrated, they retain water. So, you've also got to add in the weight of all the extra water you're having to lug around. Seriously poor diets can lead to additional liquid retention.
All other chemical energy is excreted by the body. Since this cannot be quantified, in most cases, it is impossible to determine how small or how large a percentage of the total energy intake this actually is. The average is not necessarily that useful, as different genetic makeup will produce violently different results.
(It is doubtful an Eskimo would have the same metabolic rate as, say, someone from Western Samoa or the Steppes. It is absolutely guaranteed that their enzyme and hormone levels will differ, producing different levels of uptake and probably wildly different ratios on where the energy will go.)
That 5-15 lbs I mentioned? That is from using less energy, combined with extracting more and storing the sum of the differences. You could easily get 5-15 lbs out of that, over the course of a year. Hell, my weight varies by more than that in a typical year - mind you, that's because I only eat when I remember to.
Food is a complex issue and you need to observe the sum of all inputs AND the sum of all outputs in order to build a comprehensive picture. The inputs alone won't do.
HOWEVER, once you consider the problem as a whole, weight should not be a significant problem for anyone - virus or no - because you can adjust the variables accordingly. For this reason, I go back to my original statement. The majority of people who are obese are either food addicts or slobs. Anyone else (with any sense) would have adjusted things long before obesity became a possibility. (In the case of hypothyroidism, by taking medicines to regulate thyroid production.)
How long did it take for the Supreme Court to figure out that black people and women were people? A long time, but it did eventually take place.
Britain's House of Lords (the equiv. of the Supreme Court) had ruled that slavery was illegal... in 1770. In northern Europe, female leaders can be traced back to the first century AD and earlier.
In comparison, the UN reports that the slave trade does indeed still exist in America (although not as openly), the bulk of people on Death Row are black, and women in politics are regarded with intense suspicion. It is doubtful there will be a female President or a black President in the lifetime of any of Slashdot's readers. Conclusion: Nothing has really changed.
Ah, but that is not my assumption. I assume a "black box" with specifically exposed parameters, but I explicitly state that stuff is added to the body and stuff leaves the body, which means that it is not a closed system. Black box != closed, it is open with well-defined interfaces.
(A closed system has nothing entering and nothing leaving, which is self-evidently not how the body works.)
Now, if you were to argue that I consider the body to be an open system within a closed system, maybe. The body doesn't get much energy from sunlight, although synthesis of vitamin D does. The body is also self-regulating on temperature, which depends on environmental conditions.
No, there are no closed systems involved. Only interfaces.
The rule of the sum of all inputs equals the sum of all outputs is far from useless - athletes use that equation all the time to determine what to eat in order to maximise energy, the right sort of muscle, the right level of metabolism, etc. (Sprinters need much more energy much faster than racing drivers - who are often more concerned with fluid loss - or sumo wrestlers.)
The very top performers in physical activity have excrutiatingly complex diets that are very specifically tailored to the exact type and duration of the activity. If the outputs could not be associated with the inputs, such plans would be impossible.
Now, it is certainly true that these are specialists, with highly specialised needs, whereas most people have much more general requirements. Nonetheless, the mechanics don't change. Human physiology is no different whether you're Joe Q Average or Nigel Mansell. You've more variables to consider, true, but not that many more and they're not that different.
...that published an extensive paper on hyperdilution. Hey, normally they're pretty good, and not all "alternative" viewpoints are insane, but if the reality check bounces more than three feet in the air, it's time to reject the paper and call in the specialists.
I've spent endless hours arguing with researchers over control groups. In many cases, studies are adequate but I would not call them good. There are way too many cases in which controls are absolute junk.
Take the example you mentioned. Sick animals aren't generally as active as ones that are healthy, so unless you factor that in, the study is screwed from the start. Then there's the question of emotional state - were the uninfected mice injected with a placebo, or were only the infected mice injected at all? If the latter, you have at least one other variable that is not being accounted for.
Then, there's always the question of whether the conditions were comparable. It would be fairly typical of researchers to forget that heat, light and air are variables too. It probably wouldn't help matters if one of the groups was close to a box containing rat snakes - stress alters eating habits substantially.
Finally, how big and how random were the groups? You need random groups of a size large enough to even out all other variables before statistics can be used. Grabbing a couple of mice for each group from Petsmart is not a meaningful study.
I've seen researchers who actually do think of how to best conduct an experiment to eliminate the unknowns, but I've also seen researchers who just want to publish and damn the accuracy, because it is through being published that they get paid. It is because there is no easy way to tell the difference (without repeating and varying the experiment, which most have neither the time or resources to do) that there is a heavy dependence on researchers doing their jobs well and why there is so much distrust (because that dependence has been abused by so many).
Of course, all this assumes the researchers did any research at all. There are cases - one currently unfolding in South Korea - where the results are simply fabricated from start to finish.
I would love to see the day when professional malpractice by researchers is treated with the seriousness it deserves. The knock-on effects are often substantial, with the potential for actual harm to many and a very significant risk of derailing the area of research for some time. These are not trivial consequences.
However, on the ever-so-slight possibility that you're being cynical, biology is a physical system and metabolism is actually a very trivial example of the law of conservation of energy and the laws of thermodynamics.
What is expended - regardless of form, plus what you retain, must always exactly equal what you start off with plus what you add. That will be true both of physical matter and of the energy contained therein. It doesn't get much simpler, or more universal. The steps are only important in this discussion in the sense of whether a virus could alter them significantly. The physics on which the steps operate are independent of the steps themselves and, in general, are more significant as you can quantify matter and energy rather more easily than you can quantify the exact mechanics of mitochondria or the precise ppm of different enzymes or hormones.
(I also prefer working in low-level terms, as you only have to look at one subject. The full range of fields in biology and biochemistry that you'd need to learn to cover the topic at the cellular level would be horrible and I doubt there's anyone - on Slashdot or otherwise - with doctorates in each and every single one of them.)
If you had an earthquake in California, would all of the roofnets there violate the patent? They are, after all, moving.
Since the Earth is, itself, a moving vehicle (albeit travelling through space), all buildings on it are moving along with it. That reduces to the same situation as a wireless LAN inside an aircraft, where all components are stationary relative to each other, but moving relative to an outside body.
Actually, it's worse than that, as most buildings are built over continental plates which are also moving.
(As for prior art, there are plenty of designs for mobile networks and you can find the software specifications on the IETF's website.)
It would be believable for a virus to impact the thyroid gland, or otherwise screw up metabolism. Hypothyroid conditions are certainly known. There are plenty of places along the long chain of events we call "metabolism" that could be attacked by a virus.
I would agree with you that it could easily be one more factor in obesity, but I would also agree that it probably doesn't amount to much more than 5-15 lbs. a year. Crappy eating (and drinking*) habits, a lack of exercise and a reliance on super-drugs to cure all of the self-inflicted consequences probably account for five times that, though.
(*Soft drinks are 99% calories with some sugar added for taste. Oh, and occasionally ground-up insects, as that's where most red food coloring comes from.)
...many things. First, you assume that the engine is extracting all the available energy from the fuel. This is probvably not the case. Most car exhaust contains oxides of nitrogen, which uses more energy to form than it releases. The engines are rarely kept at an optimal temperature for combustion. Cylinders are not particularly efficient devices. Because cars only have a very small number of gears, the engines are tuned for a very wide band of speeds, which means you lose efficiency. More gears and tighter bands would produce more usable power.
Second, you assume iron is the only metal. Titanium, although hard to extract right now, is not only lighter than steel, it is considerably stronger. This means that it should survive impacts very nicely. Vastly better than steel for the same weight.
Third, you assume that impact resistance requires the vehicle's survival. F1 and Indycar disprove this. You can certainly build vehicles using carbon composites that are designed to shatter, for the explicit purpose of getting energy away from the vehicle's occupant(s). Since a wrecked car is unlikely to be repaired (and even if it is, it'll often be substantially weaker), there is little actual advantage in having the car mostly intact but unusable anyway.
Fourth, you assume that car bodies are particularly efficient. Many have a lot of drag (which is why cyclists have topped 100 mph by staying close behind cars), the underbody is covered in pipes and gaps creating all kinds of nasty airflows, etc. You also only need significant grip when accelerating (that includes cornering, as it's a change in velocity, and emergency manoevers). If you're going in a straight line at uniform speed, you only have to overcome air resistance, and that's not going to require a whole lot.
This is not to say that you can build a car that can take advantage of all - or indeed any - of these characteristics. If it's not been done, there is no proof it can be done. However, a lack of proof is not proof of lack. All it proves is that nobody has (yet) established what the "ultimate" car would actually be - even in theory.
There are actual biological disorders known to cause obesity, so it is entirely possible that some fraction of those may be caused by a contageous pathogen. That is not impossible. Improbable, as the law of conservation of energy prohibits energy being created out of nothing, but not impossible.
The two most common causes of obesity are compulsive overeating (which is an actual addition and can often only be effectively treated as such), and gratuitous overeating (where the person is just a slob). The latter is rarer than you might think, as being a slob is not much of a survival trait. Addictions, however, are often derived from survival traits. Severely deranged ones, but survival traits nonetheless.
Now, addictive behaviours can appear to be contageous, as extreme dysfunctions tend to create extreme stress in others, which can in turn cause those others to become dysfunctional themselves. (We're talking fairly extreme cases, here.) As such, any research that theorises pathogens must first eliminate acutely dysfunctional groups. Otherwise, you're going to end up chasing shadows.
Eliminating acutely dysfunctional researchers who are paid by corporate sponsors to achieve pre-defined results would also be a good idea, but that would eliminate 95% of all researchers, which could cause problems down the road.
Slashdot Mirror
...if the Slashdot editors aren't adding salt to it. (Salted wine? Yuk!)
Since I used fragmentation as an example, when is fragmentation important? Well, let's say Business A uses standard ethernet frames (1500 bytes) and Business B uses jumbo frames (6000 bytes). Business B's packets will be fragmented into 4 parts at the point where jumbo frames are no longer supported. They will be re-assembled into a jumbo frame on Business A's firewall (in order for the packet to be validated) and will then be broken up again as Business A's network won't support jumbo packets.
All that takes time. If a fragment is dropped, in transit, the jumbo packet won't reassemble correctly and will be dropped, forcing the entire jumbo packet to be resent. (In other words, a dropped packet is 4 times as expensive.)
With IPv6, that doesn't happen. Business B connects to Business A. Negotiation identifies that the largest packet that will travel intact is 1500 bytes, so Business B (when sending to Business A) will use packets of that size. No fragmentation, a drop will cost 1500 bytes not 6000 bytes, and it doesn't involve Business B reducing its MTU to anyone else, so if other people can receive jumbo packets fine, the connection isn't degraded.
It doesn't help that IPv4 is based around byte-alignment and bit flags, whereas modern computers assume 32-bit or 64-bit words. Having things word-aligned and word-sized is much more efficient on a modern computer. That is something that has genuinely changed over time and wasn't merely a case of really bad design.
And that comes to a different conclusion how? Less waste = more speed. More speed = more business. More business = more money. If it makes the business people money, why should they care about the technical details of why? My business case for IPv6 is that it makes money, and that making money is a Good Thing (for businesses).
So convert them whilst they're not looking. Most people use DSL or cable, where others control the software and the configuration. If you wanted to be more forceful, Windows is vulnerable to viruses and viruses can install software - including TCP/IP stacks. (Mind you, I wouldn't recommend doing the latter, but technically it would be possible and it would defeat the laziness issue.)
Once that's been done, it's just a case of those same ISPs offering a CD to accelerate Internet usage (ie: which use native IPv6 rather than the gateway) and conversion is complete. Complete conversion of the Internet, by converting each ring in turn transparently to all outside layers, should be possible over the course of a few months at most. A solid concerted effort could probably achieve everything up to the end-user level in a matter of weeks, without a single person realizing what was happening.
Of course, I don't seriously expect that to happen. Not because it can't, but because the level of cooperation needed is likely beyond most businesses today. It's purely a political problem, not a technological one.
Some Linux distros don't ship with IPv6-enabled net tools, but do include distinct IPv6 versions. Dunno why, that's just so broken.
The link is most helpful and I'm glad to say that I did see that Linux is indeed still supported and they do still offer a trial version for it. I'm downloading all 133.5 megabytes of it as I type, eternally grateful I'm not on my original 300 baud modem.
Didn't Microsoft patent FAT, recently? I wonder... It would take some doing to get the spin right - people can be stupid at times, but that would be pushing it. Maybe, though... Just maybe...
Hold on a moment. Close your eyes and count to three. One... Two... Three... Now, open your eyes and try, say, pinging
IPv6 doesn't support fragmented packets. It forces both sides to restrict the MTU of that connection to the smallest MTU of any intermediate network component. In consequence, firewalls don't need to check for fragmentation and don't need to reserve any space for extra state information.
The practical upshot is that your bottleneck (the firewall) can handle far more connections with far lower latencies, which means B2B (business-to-business) and e-commerce network traffic can run much more smoothly and the system can manage much higher numbers of connections.
More connections with lower latencies, more business transactions. More transactions, more profit.
QED.
Tell me again why you don't need IPv6. Only, this time, say how you're going to meet these criteria whilst you're at it.
For installing IPv6 on any *BSD: Pretty much the same. All the *BSDs have been IPv6-ready for a long time, under the KAME project banner.
For installing IPv6 under Windows: You go to Microsoft Research and install the stack. Unless it's already on the CD - it is, for some versions of Windows.
For actually implementing an IPv6 stack? Well, for that you want the RFCs on the IETF website, and the IPv6 evaluation kit (TAHI) that is listed on Freshmeat. I didn't type all the damn information for the various testing packages into the record for nothing!
Aside from that, I really can't think of anything you could need a guide for.
Since the interview talks of freezing/expansion being a significant part of the problem, then yes. The more you cycle the tanks, the more cracking in the foam. In fact, it's slightly worse than that. Once cracks have formed, they'll gather moisture. When the fuel is reloaded, this will not only cause the regular cracking, but you'll get freeze-cracking from the ice forming on the inside of the foam.
Apparently, a researcher has produced webbing that the foam can be formed around, which will add enough integrity that foam cannot fall off in chunks. NASA has apparently declined to invest in the idea, but there doesn't seem to be any clear reason on why.
I thought The Thing was a character from the Fantastic Four or some other comic. Or was it the name of a really bad movie?
Seriously, I do accept that there are food addicts whose brain chemistry has (for whatever reason) become just as altered as a heroin addict's. They are not at fault for having the condition, but I would agree that it is their responsibility to not feed that addiction and to make such adjustments as are necessary to prevent it being a problem.
I completely agree that people don't exercise enough. I've seen way too many people drive to pick up the post...
However, compared to 98% of people in America, I'm probably a fitness freak. That's scary. That's more than scary.
I don't believe McDonald's should be sued for serving fat with added carbohydrate molecules (except maybe for claiming that it's food). Maybe it would be more effective if health insurance and/or health care providers quit covering people who wilfully abuse their bodies. Resources are limited, may as well use them wisely.
Once you have done that, you must then subtract the chemical energy stored (sugars and fats, for the most part, but you can certainly build up bulk with a high protein diet). This is part of what contributes to your gain in weight, but it is not the whole picture. Cells are not dehydrated, they retain water. So, you've also got to add in the weight of all the extra water you're having to lug around. Seriously poor diets can lead to additional liquid retention.
All other chemical energy is excreted by the body. Since this cannot be quantified, in most cases, it is impossible to determine how small or how large a percentage of the total energy intake this actually is. The average is not necessarily that useful, as different genetic makeup will produce violently different results.
(It is doubtful an Eskimo would have the same metabolic rate as, say, someone from Western Samoa or the Steppes. It is absolutely guaranteed that their enzyme and hormone levels will differ, producing different levels of uptake and probably wildly different ratios on where the energy will go.)
That 5-15 lbs I mentioned? That is from using less energy, combined with extracting more and storing the sum of the differences. You could easily get 5-15 lbs out of that, over the course of a year. Hell, my weight varies by more than that in a typical year - mind you, that's because I only eat when I remember to.
Food is a complex issue and you need to observe the sum of all inputs AND the sum of all outputs in order to build a comprehensive picture. The inputs alone won't do.
HOWEVER, once you consider the problem as a whole, weight should not be a significant problem for anyone - virus or no - because you can adjust the variables accordingly. For this reason, I go back to my original statement. The majority of people who are obese are either food addicts or slobs. Anyone else (with any sense) would have adjusted things long before obesity became a possibility. (In the case of hypothyroidism, by taking medicines to regulate thyroid production.)
Britain's House of Lords (the equiv. of the Supreme Court) had ruled that slavery was illegal... in 1770. In northern Europe, female leaders can be traced back to the first century AD and earlier.
In comparison, the UN reports that the slave trade does indeed still exist in America (although not as openly), the bulk of people on Death Row are black, and women in politics are regarded with intense suspicion. It is doubtful there will be a female President or a black President in the lifetime of any of Slashdot's readers. Conclusion: Nothing has really changed.
(A closed system has nothing entering and nothing leaving, which is self-evidently not how the body works.)
Now, if you were to argue that I consider the body to be an open system within a closed system, maybe. The body doesn't get much energy from sunlight, although synthesis of vitamin D does. The body is also self-regulating on temperature, which depends on environmental conditions.
No, there are no closed systems involved. Only interfaces.
The rule of the sum of all inputs equals the sum of all outputs is far from useless - athletes use that equation all the time to determine what to eat in order to maximise energy, the right sort of muscle, the right level of metabolism, etc. (Sprinters need much more energy much faster than racing drivers - who are often more concerned with fluid loss - or sumo wrestlers.)
The very top performers in physical activity have excrutiatingly complex diets that are very specifically tailored to the exact type and duration of the activity. If the outputs could not be associated with the inputs, such plans would be impossible.
Now, it is certainly true that these are specialists, with highly specialised needs, whereas most people have much more general requirements. Nonetheless, the mechanics don't change. Human physiology is no different whether you're Joe Q Average or Nigel Mansell. You've more variables to consider, true, but not that many more and they're not that different.
I've spent endless hours arguing with researchers over control groups. In many cases, studies are adequate but I would not call them good. There are way too many cases in which controls are absolute junk.
Take the example you mentioned. Sick animals aren't generally as active as ones that are healthy, so unless you factor that in, the study is screwed from the start. Then there's the question of emotional state - were the uninfected mice injected with a placebo, or were only the infected mice injected at all? If the latter, you have at least one other variable that is not being accounted for.
Then, there's always the question of whether the conditions were comparable. It would be fairly typical of researchers to forget that heat, light and air are variables too. It probably wouldn't help matters if one of the groups was close to a box containing rat snakes - stress alters eating habits substantially.
Finally, how big and how random were the groups? You need random groups of a size large enough to even out all other variables before statistics can be used. Grabbing a couple of mice for each group from Petsmart is not a meaningful study.
I've seen researchers who actually do think of how to best conduct an experiment to eliminate the unknowns, but I've also seen researchers who just want to publish and damn the accuracy, because it is through being published that they get paid. It is because there is no easy way to tell the difference (without repeating and varying the experiment, which most have neither the time or resources to do) that there is a heavy dependence on researchers doing their jobs well and why there is so much distrust (because that dependence has been abused by so many).
Of course, all this assumes the researchers did any research at all. There are cases - one currently unfolding in South Korea - where the results are simply fabricated from start to finish.
I would love to see the day when professional malpractice by researchers is treated with the seriousness it deserves. The knock-on effects are often substantial, with the potential for actual harm to many and a very significant risk of derailing the area of research for some time. These are not trivial consequences.
However, on the ever-so-slight possibility that you're being cynical, biology is a physical system and metabolism is actually a very trivial example of the law of conservation of energy and the laws of thermodynamics.
What is expended - regardless of form, plus what you retain, must always exactly equal what you start off with plus what you add. That will be true both of physical matter and of the energy contained therein. It doesn't get much simpler, or more universal. The steps are only important in this discussion in the sense of whether a virus could alter them significantly. The physics on which the steps operate are independent of the steps themselves and, in general, are more significant as you can quantify matter and energy rather more easily than you can quantify the exact mechanics of mitochondria or the precise ppm of different enzymes or hormones.
(I also prefer working in low-level terms, as you only have to look at one subject. The full range of fields in biology and biochemistry that you'd need to learn to cover the topic at the cellular level would be horrible and I doubt there's anyone - on Slashdot or otherwise - with doctorates in each and every single one of them.)
Since the Earth is, itself, a moving vehicle (albeit travelling through space), all buildings on it are moving along with it. That reduces to the same situation as a wireless LAN inside an aircraft, where all components are stationary relative to each other, but moving relative to an outside body.
Actually, it's worse than that, as most buildings are built over continental plates which are also moving.
(As for prior art, there are plenty of designs for mobile networks and you can find the software specifications on the IETF's website.)
That wireless LAN! That wireless LAN! I do not like that wireless LAN!
Would you, could you, ping a plane? Would you, could you, ping a train?
I will! I will! I will patent them on a plane, I will patent them on a train. I will patent LANs here and there, I will patent wireless everywhere!
I would agree with you that it could easily be one more factor in obesity, but I would also agree that it probably doesn't amount to much more than 5-15 lbs. a year. Crappy eating (and drinking*) habits, a lack of exercise and a reliance on super-drugs to cure all of the self-inflicted consequences probably account for five times that, though.
(*Soft drinks are 99% calories with some sugar added for taste. Oh, and occasionally ground-up insects, as that's where most red food coloring comes from.)
Second, you assume iron is the only metal. Titanium, although hard to extract right now, is not only lighter than steel, it is considerably stronger. This means that it should survive impacts very nicely. Vastly better than steel for the same weight.
Third, you assume that impact resistance requires the vehicle's survival. F1 and Indycar disprove this. You can certainly build vehicles using carbon composites that are designed to shatter, for the explicit purpose of getting energy away from the vehicle's occupant(s). Since a wrecked car is unlikely to be repaired (and even if it is, it'll often be substantially weaker), there is little actual advantage in having the car mostly intact but unusable anyway.
Fourth, you assume that car bodies are particularly efficient. Many have a lot of drag (which is why cyclists have topped 100 mph by staying close behind cars), the underbody is covered in pipes and gaps creating all kinds of nasty airflows, etc. You also only need significant grip when accelerating (that includes cornering, as it's a change in velocity, and emergency manoevers). If you're going in a straight line at uniform speed, you only have to overcome air resistance, and that's not going to require a whole lot.
This is not to say that you can build a car that can take advantage of all - or indeed any - of these characteristics. If it's not been done, there is no proof it can be done. However, a lack of proof is not proof of lack. All it proves is that nobody has (yet) established what the "ultimate" car would actually be - even in theory.
The two most common causes of obesity are compulsive overeating (which is an actual addition and can often only be effectively treated as such), and gratuitous overeating (where the person is just a slob). The latter is rarer than you might think, as being a slob is not much of a survival trait. Addictions, however, are often derived from survival traits. Severely deranged ones, but survival traits nonetheless.
Now, addictive behaviours can appear to be contageous, as extreme dysfunctions tend to create extreme stress in others, which can in turn cause those others to become dysfunctional themselves. (We're talking fairly extreme cases, here.) As such, any research that theorises pathogens must first eliminate acutely dysfunctional groups. Otherwise, you're going to end up chasing shadows.
Eliminating acutely dysfunctional researchers who are paid by corporate sponsors to achieve pre-defined results would also be a good idea, but that would eliminate 95% of all researchers, which could cause problems down the road.