I know that crossbreeding with closely related species will introduce new genes into an organism - most economically used plants are hybrids anyway. Plants in general seem to be quite forgiveable when it comes to hybridization, differently than for instance mammals, which mostly don't even generate viable offspring if you try to crossbreed, and if they do, then the offspring ist almost ever infertile even after crossbreeding closely related species.
It is still a different mechanism at work than GM. A hybridized plant, while often fertile, will not yield seeds that produce the same hybrid again, it will mostly produce something similar to the wild plants the hybrid comes from. You can't grow a Golden Delicious apple tree from the seeds in a Golden Delicious. What you will get is a crap apple tree. Hybrids are a mixture of chromosomes from different species, and if you try to breed them, they will split up into their original species again. Getting hybrid seeds out into the wild thus is quite unproblematic.
GM is different. The new gene is directly inserted into the DNA. And it will survive further breeding at its place, if the designer of the GMO has not added Terminator functionality to prevent breeding. The piece of DNA that was introduced via the gene vector can get loose again (the retro virus which carried it into the DNA is still embedded there), and then infect other organisms - not necessarily of the same species. This does not happen with crossbred organisms. You could create superweeds just by having several different strains of GM plants in the same region which are genetically modified to be resistant against different types of weedkillers.
I don't say GM is bad (you seem under the impression I would, which explains the tone of your reply), I just want to point out that putting crossbreeding and GM in the same camp is a fundamentally flawed argument - because they are fundamentally different.
But the Archaeopteryx is a theropod (actually, it is a paravus, which makes it a maniraptor, which in turn are theropods). Thus your argument does not hold.
And yes, the Archaeopteryx is not a bird, but an extremely close relative to the first bird. The paraves include the aviales, which are "the birds".
There is a small but important difference between crossbreeding and GM. In general, crossbreeding does not affects the genes, just the allels (the actual expression of a gene). Crossbreeding shuffles allel combinations, and you then can select from the filial generation the ones most close to your breeding goal and continue. But you introduce no new genes into the living. Even crossbreeding between species does not affect genes too much, as two releated species have more than 99% of all genes in common (e.g. the chimpanzee and the human have 99,7% of all genes in common).
GM introduces genes which come from completely different strains of life. Mainly, one introduces genes from bacteria into plants or animals or vice versa. The most common technique to achieve this are gene vectors. A retro virus acts as a DNA shuttle. It gets the bits of DNA which should be introduced into the host, and then the host's cells are infected with this retro virus. It unloads its DNA freight into the genome of the host by introducing all its own viral genome and the DNA bits into the host's DNA. Then it starts to replicate using the normal DNA replication mechanism of its host, which then produces identic copies of the retro virus including the additional DNA. The normal immune answer of the host kills off the virus, but hopefully the bits of DNA it introduced into the host cell's DNA stay there and get replicated when the cell multiplies, producing the same protein(es) it did in its original organism.
One could thus compare crossbreeding roughly as editing config files and fiddling around with parameters, and GM with actually patching the binaries.
I don't know how the GM luddites come into play here, as there is no GM at work. It's just cells multiplying, and no single gene gets modified in the process.
No, the Kernel is XNU, which is a derivate of the Mach 3.0 kernel with an BSD-API, with the BSD process model, BSD inter process communication, the BSD file system and BSD network stack. It's thus a hybrid Mach/BSD-kernel.
If the government "gets out of marriage", then it just means that marriage has no legal meaning, no consequences, no rights and no responsibilities. If that is what you want, then I'm ok with it.
If we really want to be pedantic, the operating system is the kernel and the drivers, and everything else is an application. In my CS course (long, long ago), an operating system was defined as "the program that manages all computing resources and makes them available to the applications". There are some special applications coming with most operating systems, and they are called "shell" (and can be a command line or a GUI or whatever you want to use), whose task it is to allow a user to start, control and stop applications, but they are not part of the operating system.
Android uses Linux as its kernel. Thus, yes. Android is more than just Linux, you could call it Dalvik/Linux if you want. But Android definitely includes Linux.
The whole idea of GNU is to allow for fragmentation at will and without asking for permission from previous developers. And for them to incorporate the good ideas you included into your own fork back into their work without asking you in return.
Non-traditional houses means you don't have any experience how this construction will be in shape in five, ten or fifty years time. But normally, houses exists that long. And the regulations in place try to make sure of that. Constructing houses is a complex problem, and each new construction might have hidden problems which only appear after a few years. I remember the breaking down of the roof of a ice skating hall here around, where several factors contributed to the accident (which left about a dozen people dead).
It's not that easy. Each road that addresses traffic congestion somewhere and is really able to ease it, actually lowers traffic costs on this relation. And if traffic cost decreases, transports that where inefficient and/or too costly before now become economically feasible. Thus more traffic occurs, until the costs due to additional traffic congestion rise high enough to stop further traffic increases. That's the Jevons Paradox, that was mentioned in the article, applied to traffic: adding new roads to ease congestion problems might cause more traffic congestion.
First, it's not an invention. Second, it does not strive for a perfect reproduction (otherwise we could just take a photo). Third, no one claims this is art.
Because a balloon would not direct much of the light into the town, but basicly everywhere. Sun light is (nearly) parallel, and to reflect it into a town, you need a plane reflector. Only a small part of the balloon's surface would reflect the light into the desired direction.
I remember the time too. And I know that embedding objects into documents was all the rage in 1993. And even from systems to systems. CORBA's first spec was published in 1991. OLE and COM were combined into DCOM about the same time. I had university lessons in the CORBA and the DCOM object model at the time. So I would call Eolas' patents obvious in 1993.
Slashdot Mirror
It is still a different mechanism at work than GM. A hybridized plant, while often fertile, will not yield seeds that produce the same hybrid again, it will mostly produce something similar to the wild plants the hybrid comes from. You can't grow a Golden Delicious apple tree from the seeds in a Golden Delicious. What you will get is a crap apple tree. Hybrids are a mixture of chromosomes from different species, and if you try to breed them, they will split up into their original species again. Getting hybrid seeds out into the wild thus is quite unproblematic.
GM is different. The new gene is directly inserted into the DNA. And it will survive further breeding at its place, if the designer of the GMO has not added Terminator functionality to prevent breeding. The piece of DNA that was introduced via the gene vector can get loose again (the retro virus which carried it into the DNA is still embedded there), and then infect other organisms - not necessarily of the same species. This does not happen with crossbred organisms. You could create superweeds just by having several different strains of GM plants in the same region which are genetically modified to be resistant against different types of weedkillers.
I don't say GM is bad (you seem under the impression I would, which explains the tone of your reply), I just want to point out that putting crossbreeding and GM in the same camp is a fundamentally flawed argument - because they are fundamentally different.
That's the same as claiming there would be no difference between a mouse and an elephant, just because both are grey.
And yes, the Archaeopteryx is not a bird, but an extremely close relative to the first bird. The paraves include the aviales, which are "the birds".
GM introduces genes which come from completely different strains of life. Mainly, one introduces genes from bacteria into plants or animals or vice versa. The most common technique to achieve this are gene vectors. A retro virus acts as a DNA shuttle. It gets the bits of DNA which should be introduced into the host, and then the host's cells are infected with this retro virus. It unloads its DNA freight into the genome of the host by introducing all its own viral genome and the DNA bits into the host's DNA. Then it starts to replicate using the normal DNA replication mechanism of its host, which then produces identic copies of the retro virus including the additional DNA. The normal immune answer of the host kills off the virus, but hopefully the bits of DNA it introduced into the host cell's DNA stay there and get replicated when the cell multiplies, producing the same protein(es) it did in its original organism.
One could thus compare crossbreeding roughly as editing config files and fiddling around with parameters, and GM with actually patching the binaries.
I don't know how the GM luddites come into play here, as there is no GM at work. It's just cells multiplying, and no single gene gets modified in the process.
No, the Kernel is XNU, which is a derivate of the Mach 3.0 kernel with an BSD-API, with the BSD process model, BSD inter process communication, the BSD file system and BSD network stack. It's thus a hybrid Mach/BSD-kernel.
That's fine with me as there are enough puppies and kittens out there.
If the government "gets out of marriage", then it just means that marriage has no legal meaning, no consequences, no rights and no responsibilities. If that is what you want, then I'm ok with it.
If we really want to be pedantic, the operating system is the kernel and the drivers, and everything else is an application. In my CS course (long, long ago), an operating system was defined as "the program that manages all computing resources and makes them available to the applications". There are some special applications coming with most operating systems, and they are called "shell" (and can be a command line or a GUI or whatever you want to use), whose task it is to allow a user to start, control and stop applications, but they are not part of the operating system.
Actually, Linus' stated goal was "world domination".
Android uses Linux as its kernel. Thus, yes. Android is more than just Linux, you could call it Dalvik/Linux if you want. But Android definitely includes Linux.
No, as Mac OS X is based on DARWIN, which is a BSD kernel, not Linux.
You are stating this as if it was a bad thing.
Linux is a kernel. Everything else is just a particular distribution. End of message.
Non-traditional houses means you don't have any experience how this construction will be in shape in five, ten or fifty years time. But normally, houses exists that long. And the regulations in place try to make sure of that. Constructing houses is a complex problem, and each new construction might have hidden problems which only appear after a few years. I remember the breaking down of the roof of a ice skating hall here around, where several factors contributed to the accident (which left about a dozen people dead).
Caroline Criado-Perez didn't kill anyone.
I don't advocate any special way to reduce traffic :) I just wanted to point out that Jevons Paradox is also valid for road construction.
It's not that easy. Each road that addresses traffic congestion somewhere and is really able to ease it, actually lowers traffic costs on this relation. And if traffic cost decreases, transports that where inefficient and/or too costly before now become economically feasible. Thus more traffic occurs, until the costs due to additional traffic congestion rise high enough to stop further traffic increases. That's the Jevons Paradox, that was mentioned in the article, applied to traffic: adding new roads to ease congestion problems might cause more traffic congestion.
So your rant: total phail.
You can also 3D print metal, it's a slightly different process, but nevertheless, there are metal 3D printers out there.
So because you suffered because of 9/11 you are allowed no longer to adhere to law?
Who makes the equipment also controls the backdoors.
I wonder how a) to stabilize such a design in the air and b) what happens if the wind goes.
Because a balloon would not direct much of the light into the town, but basicly everywhere. Sun light is (nearly) parallel, and to reflect it into a town, you need a plane reflector. Only a small part of the balloon's surface would reflect the light into the desired direction.
I remember the time too. And I know that embedding objects into documents was all the rage in 1993. And even from systems to systems. CORBA's first spec was published in 1991. OLE and COM were combined into DCOM about the same time. I had university lessons in the CORBA and the DCOM object model at the time. So I would call Eolas' patents obvious in 1993.