Hee-freakin'-haw. Every biologist who doesn't actually work for Monsanto or Cargill saw this one coming decades ago. Families like the brassicas are more promiscuous than a San Francisco bathouse. They cross breed all the time with their wild relatives.
It doesn't even take sexual reproduction to do it. Plant viruses transfer genetic material from one plant to another sometimes completely unrelated one. All it takes is one or two out of billions to start the evolutionary ball rolling.
The whole point of the exercise was to sell more herbicides. By making the crops herbicide resistant you encourage farmers to change the way they farm to buy tons of the stuff. There are other methods that produce more nutrition per acre - and even per dollar - but they don't sell the product that the agrichem industry is pushing.
Ah, but you fail to grasp the true beauty of capitalism. I'd put out ads everywhere ATFFC products were sold saying:
"Bought a Bobbie's Bits product? Embarassed to cash the refund check? I'll pay you fifty cents on the dollar in cash for your refund cheque."
Then I'd take them into my bank by the hundred weight without a shred of self consciousness. Bring in one, you're a pervert. Bring in a thousand, you're a businessman.
Sean McMullen wrote a very nice series that used this as a plot element. The first book is Souls in the Great Machine . Takes place in Australia about 2000 years in the future.
Good guess. Invading Iraq has been a plank in the Republican Party Platform since his daddy was president. It's been on the PNAC's Middle East plans - which can be summed up as "There's a whole bunch of our oil over there with a bunch of Ay-rabs living on top of it" - for a long time. Phantom nukes and the gas we gave him were excuses.
Eh? Golden goose? Federal judges get a salary whether they hear one course or a thousand.
Judge Kimball for reasons that appear clear, wants to see this thing go to trial. My suspicion is that he wants to make sure SCO has been given every reasonable chance to present their evidence and have it heard. This would leave them little or nothing to appeal on if (when) things don't go their way. He doesn't want to get reversed and probably won't given how careful he's been so far.
Heh. BBSpot just took the next logical step, software that does all your shopping for you automatically based on your income and Amazon purchase history. I'm hoping this one remains satire for a little while.
The taste? Love in a canoe (f***ing close to water)? Aerated heifer pee? If that's beer, spam is steak?
Sadly, when the makers of the original Czech Budvar (the original Budweiser) tried to sell their beer in the states they had to change the name to Czechvar. Budvar and Beer of Kings had all been snapped up by Anheuser Busch.
I tried it out with my own lock. 30 seconds and it was open. I called the Kryptonite company. At the time they were aware of the problem and are rushing their next generation of cylinders into production.
Interestingly enough, the problem was first reported in Britain in 1992. But it didn't go anywhere. Hurray for the age of fast information dissemination. And fast technology transfer to the bad guys.
We all understand that this will never replace the mouse and keyboard. Hands are just, well, more dextrous.
But for some disabled it will be a godsend. High spinal cord injuries and other conditions can make it difficult to use or control the hands to the degree required by mouse and keyboard. The ability to use the face will make life a lot easier for these people.
It certainly sounds good at first glance to bring computers to classrooms in Africa. But take a look at what's happened in the States.
Companies donate (usually old) machines to schools. The schools then get caught in the software upgrade cycle and end up spending more than they would if they didn't have the computers at all.
In a lot of countries a computer isn't what the schools really need anyway. Textbooks would be a lot more useful in most cases.
The company I work for is making privacy a big part of its marketing appeal. "Take back your data." "Your information is yours." The Powers That Be want people to be sure that we won't misuse their information. What would a good model privacy policy be for a company that wants its customers to feel warm and fuzzy about their data privacy?
I already talked to EPIC and EFF. For fire-breathing privacy advocates they weren't terribly helpful. They said, more or less, "Nobody has ever asked us this. We're more interested in government policy than what corporations are doing."
Algorithmic music systems go back at least as far as Mozart. Composers made up algorithms to generate tunes with some sort of randomization (e.g. dice) to make key decisions.
But it says in the Noble Quran that nothing is beyond the power of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. And it is also written that He will save those whom He wants to and let Shaitan lead others astray.
To a Jew the whole idea of "salvation" is kind of weird.
Been there, done that. The regulator tasted really foul. But it wasn't a high-skill death-defying maneuver. It was just puke-and-purge, puke-and-purge.
1) You can't see down, especially below and in front. How are you going to avoid running into things much less see the most interesting parts of the dive and keep from damaaging fragile coral heads?
2) What happens if you fall off and are being dragged by your head at two knots?
3) Ditching. You don't have a BC. You don't have fins. How quickly can you get your head out of the bubble? Since the people using this aren't going to be divers will they be able to do an emergency free ascent safely? You can get yourself seriously dead doing a free ascent from twelve feet if you are ignorant or careless.
4) There's a weight belt installed in the scubadoo. OK. You are still bouyant. What keeps your butt from floating up? If you're actually strapped to the thing ditching gets even trickier. See point 3.
5) The constant flow is a nice idea. But what if your consumption goes up or you just use a lot of air?
6) Swells. I assume the thing is gyroscopically stabilized. A good surge can still tip you. Water will flow into the bubble. A really strong one (I've been in them), and it's worse in shallow water, could make the the thing flip. Then the gyroscope is pointin the wrong way up. Not good. Very bad.
7) This is going to be used by the ignorant and inexperienced who have never been through NAUI or PADI (dive training organizations). Diving isn't completely safe under the best circumstances. With substandard equipment like this and no training it is an accident begging to happen.
8) They say in the promotional site that in an emergency a diver could reach the rider in "a few minutes". A few seconds can be way to f***ing long when a dive goes bad. A few minutes can be fatal.
9) Most people can manage 90 minutes at 30 feet hauling around their air under their own muscle power. This thing only gives you an hour. Why am I paying to get less diving in?
10) Back to ignorance. At 30' you should be perfectly fine. But nothing keeps the stupid and curious from going deeper. Is there a dive computer (let alone dive tables) on the dashboard? Even if there is will the customers have any idea what to do with it? Or the consequences of ignoring it?
All in all this seems like a very ill-conceived idea. Its chief benefit is that money will be safely in the bank.
Kim Stanley Robinson wrote the book on this, literally, with his "Red Mars", "Green Mars", "Blue Mars" series several years back. The "Reds" believed the planet, and whatever life was on it, should be preserved. The "Greens" held humans could and should do what was in their best interests as a species. We even have Halliburton, Bechtel, or whatever corporations have bought the White House at the time represented:-/
In the last couple of days there have been news stories heralding the fact that video gaming is cutting noticeable chunks out of TV viewership in the US. It might just be a reaction to the fact that TV these days doesn't suck - if it sucked it would be good for something.
It might also be the case that video games have a fairly solid place in modern life that will endure even if we are on a technological plateau. Broadcast TV hasn't changed that much. Even though it's struggling it's still holding in there.
A while back, when we were considering building a house and some specialty buildings, we looked into a number concrete technologies. Some of them have been out there for over twenty years and would be competitive in terms of labor and material costs as well as flexibility. The idea is cool, but it isn't necessarily an improvement.
Some of the technologies are:
Gunnite and Shotcrete Starting with a disposable "frame" and your rebar you spray successive layers of concrete and gradually build up the surface you want. This is pretty much the same as the robot in the article but with human operators. A good friend of mine used this to make all the rock work at the Portland Oregon zoo more than twenty years ago.
Liteforms and its successors There Insulation and modular forms in one package. The original version of this was big essentially styrofoam panels that served as forms for a normal concrete pour. Later products are more like hollow Legos. You set up your first course and then just build it up putting in rebar and your desired conduits as you go. We saw one man and two teenagers do a very complicated 4000+ square foot basement with curves and strange angles. It took them a weekend from laying it out to the actual concrete pour.
Building Blocks A German company whose name escapes me makes a sort of foamed concrete masonry block. Less than half the weight and more than 80% of the structural strength of regular concrete. It's put together with mortar and can be cut with a Sawzall (with the right blade). Unfortunately they have been very conservative about finding new uses and marketing for this product.
The styrofoam forms have the advantages of also being their own (very high R-value) insulation. You get the further advantages of a single monolithic pour for the who building. The walls have to be vertical, but that is something that the magic 80% of people would want anyway.
Gunnite and shotcrete can be used for the curved ceilings and hobbit-hole style walls if that's what you want.
So my gut feeling is that it's a really cool hack, but the alternatives will probably be cheaper quite a while to come. Also, a big part of real construction is reconciling the architect's drawing with reality. Things change on a job. The site isn't exactly what needs to be, even with good site prep. There are change orders. Or the concrete pumping company has decided to strengthen its bottom line by selling you product that has too much water. Or things aren't quite working right and have to be corrected on the fly.
Turning the robot on and letting it go probably works better in the lab than on the job site.
I've been using the older version of the Gyration mouse for over a year. It took a little getting used to, but it works perfectly well. Battery life is fine, tracking sensitivity is perfectly adequate. I really don't see any reason to switch to a newer version.
The only down side is picking it up, mousing, putting it down, switching to the keyboard, and picking it back up again. It ends up wasting a fair amount of time over the course of a day.
Re:What if you didn't like American Gods?
on
King Rat
·
· Score: 1
I think there's something a little deeper going on. Back in the Bad Old Days, when most of us lived in small towns and villages, Elfland was over the hill or through the forest or across the water.
We're more urban now. Mirkwood (aka the Black Forest) has been cut down. All that's across the Atlantic is Europe or the Americas (most of us forget about Africa). China isn't exotic and magical. It's the world's workshop.
So where does that leave Faerie? It has to be somewhere familiar enough to identify with but exotic enough to be fantastic. One obvious answer, which is used by many of the cutting edge urban fantasists, is what I call "The city behind the city". London Below or the London where King Rat lives. The Market in Pinkwater's "The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Doom", Seattle in "The Wizard of Pigeons", Simon Green's Nightside.
It's the city you always knew seen from a different angle.
As for Gaiman, well, I've always enjoyed his short stories more than his novels. Chac un a son gout.
Slashdot Mirror
Hee-freakin'-haw. Every biologist who doesn't actually work for Monsanto or Cargill saw this one coming decades ago. Families like the brassicas are more promiscuous than a San Francisco bathouse. They cross breed all the time with their wild relatives.
It doesn't even take sexual reproduction to do it. Plant viruses transfer genetic material from one plant to another sometimes completely unrelated one. All it takes is one or two out of billions to start the evolutionary ball rolling.
The whole point of the exercise was to sell more herbicides. By making the crops herbicide resistant you encourage farmers to change the way they farm to buy tons of the stuff. There are other methods that produce more nutrition per acre - and even per dollar - but they don't sell the product that the agrichem industry is pushing.
I wish I had mod points. This is an excellent and succinct view of the state of the world.
Ah, but you fail to grasp the true beauty of capitalism. I'd put out ads everywhere ATFFC products were sold saying:
"Bought a Bobbie's Bits product? Embarassed to cash the refund check? I'll pay you fifty cents on the dollar in cash for your refund cheque."
Then I'd take them into my bank by the hundred weight without a shred of self consciousness. Bring in one, you're a pervert. Bring in a thousand, you're a businessman.
Sean McMullen wrote a very nice series that used this as a plot element. The first book is Souls in the Great Machine . Takes place in Australia about 2000 years in the future.
They teach evolution in Persian schools. *sigh*
Bioject has been doing this since 1985
Microsoft and Rolex?
Good guess. Invading Iraq has been a plank in the Republican Party Platform since his daddy was president. It's been on the PNAC's Middle East plans - which can be summed up as "There's a whole bunch of our oil over there with a bunch of Ay-rabs living on top of it" - for a long time. Phantom nukes and the gas we gave him were excuses.
Eh? Golden goose? Federal judges get a salary whether they hear one course or a thousand.
Judge Kimball for reasons that appear clear, wants to see this thing go to trial. My suspicion is that he wants to make sure SCO has been given every reasonable chance to present their evidence and have it heard. This would leave them little or nothing to appeal on if (when) things don't go their way. He doesn't want to get reversed and probably won't given how careful he's been so far.
Heh. BBSpot just took the next logical step, software that does all your shopping for you automatically based on your income and Amazon purchase history. I'm hoping this one remains satire for a little while.
The taste? Love in a canoe (f***ing close to water)? Aerated heifer pee? If that's beer, spam is steak?
Sadly, when the makers of the original Czech Budvar (the original Budweiser) tried to sell their beer in the states they had to change the name to Czechvar. Budvar and Beer of Kings had all been snapped up by Anheuser Busch.
Sorry. That should have been "at the time they had been aware of the problem for about 48 hours".
I tried it out with my own lock. 30 seconds and it was open. I called the Kryptonite company. At the time they were aware of the problem and are rushing their next generation of cylinders into production.
Interestingly enough, the problem was first reported in Britain in 1992. But it didn't go anywhere. Hurray for the age of fast information dissemination. And fast technology transfer to the bad guys.
We all understand that this will never replace the mouse and keyboard. Hands are just, well, more dextrous.
But for some disabled it will be a godsend. High spinal cord injuries and other conditions can make it difficult to use or control the hands to the degree required by mouse and keyboard. The ability to use the face will make life a lot easier for these people.
It certainly sounds good at first glance to bring computers to classrooms in Africa. But take a look at what's happened in the States.
Companies donate (usually old) machines to schools. The schools then get caught in the software upgrade cycle and end up spending more than they would if they didn't have the computers at all.
In a lot of countries a computer isn't what the schools really need anyway. Textbooks would be a lot more useful in most cases.
The company I work for is making privacy a big part of its marketing appeal. "Take back your data." "Your information is yours." The Powers That Be want people to be sure that we won't misuse their information. What would a good model privacy policy be for a company that wants its customers to feel warm and fuzzy about their data privacy?
I already talked to EPIC and EFF. For fire-breathing privacy advocates they weren't terribly helpful. They said, more or less, "Nobody has ever asked us this. We're more interested in government policy than what corporations are doing."
Algorithmic music systems go back at least as far as Mozart. Composers made up algorithms to generate tunes with some sort of randomization (e.g. dice) to make key decisions.
But it says in the Noble Quran that nothing is beyond the power of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. And it is also written that He will save those whom He wants to and let Shaitan lead others astray.
To a Jew the whole idea of "salvation" is kind of weird.
Religion doesn't necessarily mean your religion.
Been there, done that. The regulator tasted really foul. But it wasn't a high-skill death-defying maneuver. It was just puke-and-purge, puke-and-purge.
1) You can't see down, especially below and in front. How are you going to avoid running into things much less see the most interesting parts of the dive and keep from damaaging fragile coral heads?
2) What happens if you fall off and are being dragged by your head at two knots?
3) Ditching. You don't have a BC. You don't have fins. How quickly can you get your head out of the bubble? Since the people using this aren't going to be divers will they be able to do an emergency free ascent safely? You can get yourself seriously dead doing a free ascent from twelve feet if you are ignorant or careless.
4) There's a weight belt installed in the scubadoo. OK. You are still bouyant. What keeps your butt from floating up? If you're actually strapped to the thing ditching gets even trickier. See point 3.
5) The constant flow is a nice idea. But what if your consumption goes up or you just use a lot of air?
6) Swells. I assume the thing is gyroscopically stabilized. A good surge can still tip you. Water will flow into the bubble. A really strong one (I've been in them), and it's worse in shallow water, could make the the thing flip. Then the gyroscope is pointin the wrong way up. Not good. Very bad.
7) This is going to be used by the ignorant and inexperienced who have never been through NAUI or PADI (dive training organizations). Diving isn't completely safe under the best circumstances. With substandard equipment like this and no training it is an accident begging to happen.
8) They say in the promotional site that in an emergency a diver could reach the rider in "a few minutes". A few seconds can be way to f***ing long when a dive goes bad. A few minutes can be fatal.
9) Most people can manage 90 minutes at 30 feet hauling around their air under their own muscle power. This thing only gives you an hour. Why am I paying to get less diving in?
10) Back to ignorance. At 30' you should be perfectly fine. But nothing keeps the stupid and curious from going deeper. Is there a dive computer (let alone dive tables) on the dashboard? Even if there is will the customers have any idea what to do with it? Or the consequences of ignoring it?
All in all this seems like a very ill-conceived idea. Its chief benefit is that money will be safely in the bank.
Kim Stanley Robinson wrote the book on this, literally, with his "Red Mars", "Green Mars", "Blue Mars" series several years back. The "Reds" believed the planet, and whatever life was on it, should be preserved. The "Greens" held humans could and should do what was in their best interests as a species. We even have Halliburton, Bechtel, or whatever corporations have bought the White House at the time represented :-/
In the last couple of days there have been news stories heralding the fact that video gaming is cutting noticeable chunks out of TV viewership in the US. It might just be a reaction to the fact that TV these days doesn't suck - if it sucked it would be good for something.
It might also be the case that video games have a fairly solid place in modern life that will endure even if we are on a technological plateau. Broadcast TV hasn't changed that much. Even though it's struggling it's still holding in there.
Some of the technologies are:
The styrofoam forms have the advantages of also being their own (very high R-value) insulation. You get the further advantages of a single monolithic pour for the who building. The walls have to be vertical, but that is something that the magic 80% of people would want anyway.
Gunnite and shotcrete can be used for the curved ceilings and hobbit-hole style walls if that's what you want.
So my gut feeling is that it's a really cool hack, but the alternatives will probably be cheaper quite a while to come. Also, a big part of real construction is reconciling the architect's drawing with reality. Things change on a job. The site isn't exactly what needs to be, even with good site prep. There are change orders. Or the concrete pumping company has decided to strengthen its bottom line by selling you product that has too much water. Or things aren't quite working right and have to be corrected on the fly.
Turning the robot on and letting it go probably works better in the lab than on the job site.
I've been using the older version of the Gyration mouse for over a year. It took a little getting used to, but it works perfectly well. Battery life is fine, tracking sensitivity is perfectly adequate. I really don't see any reason to switch to a newer version.
The only down side is picking it up, mousing, putting it down, switching to the keyboard, and picking it back up again. It ends up wasting a fair amount of time over the course of a day.
I think there's something a little deeper going on. Back in the Bad Old Days, when most of us lived in small towns and villages, Elfland was over the hill or through the forest or across the water.
We're more urban now. Mirkwood (aka the Black Forest) has been cut down. All that's across the Atlantic is Europe or the Americas (most of us forget about Africa). China isn't exotic and magical. It's the world's workshop.
So where does that leave Faerie? It has to be somewhere familiar enough to identify with but exotic enough to be fantastic. One obvious answer, which is used by many of the cutting edge urban fantasists, is what I call "The city behind the city". London Below or the London where King Rat lives. The Market in Pinkwater's "The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Doom", Seattle in "The Wizard of Pigeons", Simon Green's Nightside.
It's the city you always knew seen from a different angle.
As for Gaiman, well, I've always enjoyed his short stories more than his novels. Chac un a son gout.