While all your points are well taken, this is a path that will be pursued aggressively. Stimulating adult cells to return to a stem cell state avoids many ethical, legal AND medical complications of using 'natural' stem cells. Honestly, just for the zero-rejection aspect, adult stem cells are worth putting the lion's share of research into.
Unfortunately, just like with 'greenhouse gasses', the science has long since been trumped by rhetoric, special interests, and political posturing. Hopefully this is good science being reported and will lead to a plethora of treatments.
Look, let's all just admit two things right up front. The Nobel Committee awards feel good prizes for people who a) want to hurt America/capitalism or b) hate George W. Bush. They admitted as much when they gave the prize to Jimmy Carter.
What has Al done again? Oh, that's right, produced a movie that has so many flaws that it's very difficult to point at a single piece of it that is not FACTUALLY wrong in some fundamental respect. I think he pronounced his name properly at one point . . .
It should be possible to design a completely idiot proof reactor that would automatically disable itself in the event of coolant loss. Dunno why reactors aren't designed like that from the start.
The primary reason is that repeated, frivolous lawsuits have made it unviable to build nuclear plants in the US for decades... why research something you can't build?
I'm a geek; I'm voting for Edwards. What do you think? Am I right or what?
Well, you're not right, but I find it hard to follow that voting for a sleazy trial lawyer can be interpreted as anyone as a GOOD thing.
Because of Edwards, many, many, MANY women have had to undergo painful and unnecessary surgery so their doctors can avoid lawsuits. If you had to pick a big contributor to health care costs all around, it falls right on on Edwards and his ilk.
As a geek, I don't think someone living in the back pocket of the trail lawyer industry should be in the Whitehouse. You think we have too much litigation on tech topics right now? Just wait if this scumbag hits the big time.
Then you probably aren't a modern public education schoolteacher or administrator. For a minor child at a public institution it could be invaluable for one good reason: stupid-ass lawsuits.
Right now, there's a class of lawyers (and, sadly enough, parents) that are looking for some ridiculous lawsuit like it was the lotto. If a kid says he's going to the bathroom and shoots up behind the school and dies, guess who gets the blame? Not the kid, not his parents, not rap music, not the drug dealer, not even violent video games... they blame the school.
Our schools are turning more and more violent because, once again, stupid-ass lawsuits (and equally moronic judges) require that every juvenile delinquent and criminal (note, I don't say potential criminals, I mean KNOWN criminals) has a 'right' to be in school.
With a tracking technology and the requirement that every person at a school have a RFID tag (temporary ones for visitors) to even get on the grounds, you can at least keep the people off the property that have no business there. If a kid says s/he's going to do something and strays outside the bounds, then an alarm goes off and you can suspend them our counsel them depending on how far along the anti-social moron track they've gone down.
With proper technology, things like people 'leaving' their IDs behind will trigger an alarm (they use something like this today for firefighters who stop moving for a certain period of time). Either the kid is trying to scam the system or, perhaps, they really are in trouble and need help. Likewise, if 2 or more tags are moving in synch (indicating that someone is carrying both tags), this can be spotted.
Also, it could help with attendance. Right now, in our district, there's an automated system that calls up parents when their kids are absent from school. Hook up the RFID idea with this and you give more control to the parents to monitor their kids. My kid is 13 and you can be DAMN sure she's going to have a tracker on her first car so I can monitor her. This isn't big brother... this is called being responsible for children!
If he lists DDT as a 'bad innovation', I have my doubts about the credibility of the book. DDT has been demonized as some sort of supertoxin, which it most definitely is not. Properly used, it is a very effective and safe pesticide, especially when non-bug species are involved. Most of the studies that lambasted DDT turned out to have terribly flawed protocols and, at the same time, there are countless documented examples of the good it has done. Mind you, as a pesticide, you wouldn't want to spray it recklessly... well, duh, that describes EVERY pesticide! Eggshell thinning? Almost certainly a myth. Cancer in humans? Nope, no evidence of that. Destroyed biota? Uh-uh, didn't happen.
Perhaps the author merely pulled DDT as an example out of the air, but that would reflect poorly on his skills as well.
I mean this in all sincerity, but I wish this virtual turf war would turn real and these groups would start shooting each other. More dead spammers would do a lot to make cyberspace a happier place!
Lemme put it to you in very simple, easy-to-understand terms.
1) 'Mandatory licensing' means 'sell at less than your R&D costs' 2) This means the drug company would lose money 3) Companies that lose money go out of business 4) No new drugs will get made 5) Untold millions, billions, trillions (etc.) people over the years will die or suffer because the drugs they need will never get made
Simple enough, fool? Gosh, I hope the 'winners' in humanity appreciate your insight when they could have had new drugs to save their lives.
Blizzard's lawyers would rather have their collective livers eaten by weasels than even HINT a vaguely native-american race could be evil (at least for PCs).
This translates to the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer.
Good God, I want to puke anytime someone says this old, rehashed and erroneous line.
First of all it implies that wealth is a zero-sum game. It's not. If you don't know what a zero-sum game is, then you are either too ignorant or too stupid to post on slashdot. Wealth grows through the efforts of people.
In freedom-based societies (which many, but not all, democracies/republics around the world are), the tendency is for the rich to get richer and the poor to get richer. In the United States, for example, people tend to start out in the bottom quintile of wealth. Well, duh! They are young and inexperienced! As they gain experience and accumulate wealth, they get richer. Everyone starts out young and inexperienced and therefore, in most cases, poor. The majority of millionaires (and those in the upper quintile) started out in the bottom four quintiles (mostly in the bottom 2).
This doesn't address the various totalitarian regimes around the world. Quintile mobility is very rare in those countries. But, please, don't haul out a phrase that is just an ignorant tool of class warriors. Reality is too important for that.
...unlike the movie, however, this is actually based on facts.
Global warming does exist... on Mars. And, in fact, on every body in the solar system that we can measure accurately including the Earth. Polar ice caps are melting that aren't terrestrial. Until people realize that whatever human beings are doing to the atmosphere is not and cannot be the whole story, then the "It's all our fault!" environmental movement is bankrupt both morally and intellectually.
Here's some other Inconvenient Truths... * DDT is not very dangerous to the environment * One of the founders of Greenpeace supports nuclear power * The Kyoto Treaty exempts some of the biggest carbon polluters of all
This comment reminds me of a law passed in Britain quite a few years ago concerning the original factory 'sweatshops'. Children were being used, you see, and the hours were long and the conditions difficult. Someone became offended by their tragedy and they passed a law against using children in factories. The children, thus freed, went back to their old profession: starving to death.
If these people are working under what you consider poor conditions, please consider that they aren't being forced to work there. The very real alternative of dying is in their lives. And before you say they should be given much better working conditions, that would mean they would lose the only REAL economic advantage they have which is that they are cheap. Would you be willing to go to that sweatshop and say, "Hey, good news! We're getting ergonomic wrist wraps, better chairs, more lighting, higher pay. The bad news is that we have to fire half of you to go starve. But the good news is that the women might find work in prositution!"
The main reason the songs don't really match up to other recent Disney offerings was that Sting was given no time to write them. Oh, he wrote a lot of songs... that were never used.
During production, they noticed that parts of the movie fell flat. No laughs, nothing to keep people's interest. So they rewrote the script to up the laugh factor and that meant that a lot of the songs (which had been written with the original script in mind) had to be chucked. You will find them on the album for the movie, though.
Don't forget, which most pundits have left out, that the number associated with each candidate (right next to arrow) ALSO shows up where they should punch. Anyone who can't look at a '5', follow the arrow to another '5' and realize that's the one they need to punch had better get a few clues before voting again.
At first I thought (like others) that there would be a problem with numbers running out. But I realized that if you allocated, say, a trillion numbers as the 'one shots' (only 12 digits out of a 16 digit number), this would be enough to discourage black hats who would try gobs of numbers.
Part two of the scheme is that you put a strict time limit on each transaction, say a week. After the transaction occurs (or if the time limit comes up), the number goes dead again. There were be very few (percentage-wise) live numbers at any one time. After a suitable dead period, you throw it back in the pot of possible numbers.
In many ways I view this as a non-issue. Sure, each country might have to have a solution tailored to local conditions, where possible, but once you do have a local solution than intercountry transfers become transparent. That's where X.com being a bank comes in handy (monetary conversion).
Ironically, Canada will probably be one of the easiest countries to tie in. Close relations with the US (and well-integrated banking concerns) will make it easy, I believe. I know they use credit cards up north! =)
Duuuhhhhh, haven't you heard about the way M$ strongarmed OEMs to pay per computer they sold EVEN IF Windows wasn't on it? A free OS is a lot less free when your hardware has a 'Microsoft tax' added onto it.
By all reports, the technology they are working on is quite impressive, but it's a shame that so many/.ers can't ignore the 'amiga' name for a few seconds and see what they are actually producing. Here's my prediction: if it works as they say it does (good bet) and they can get enough interested coders on it (sales look good right now), then it will be a success. At that point, the amiga name will be an asset.
Crackers don't always compromise a system for content. Off the top of my head I can think of several reasons why a cracker would dive into a machine that had NO user files on it.
Storage space
The 'joy' of the crack
To use the platform in other attacks
Just to be a shithead and abuse the innocent user
Tell ya what. Why not post your IP address to a major cracking site and say "I've got nothing you want, so I'm safe, right fellas?" Stand back. Wait 30 minutes.
Wolverine has been overused, but he's popular, so c'est la vie. Anyway, since this movie focused a lot on him, perhaps they have enough sense to veer off to one of the other characters before they follow-up on the very obvious Weapon-X dangling plot threads.
As for Watchmen, it's the best movie adaptation of a comic that hasn't been made yet.
Other ideas: a Superman movie that Doesn't Suck. A Batman movie that Doesn't Suck. Hell, I'd even be willing to give a Wonder Woman movie a chance (Lucy Lawless perhaps?) once they get it through their Hollywood dope-addled heads that the story is important!
I was thinking the same thing (re: Transmeta). Low power processors, low power ram, plus the possibilities of replacing the hard drive (which requires power to stay spinning) could make for a very energy-efficient box.
Hell, as long as we are dreaming, why not some of these long-promised, low-energy color flat-panel displays! =) Mmmmm... a laptop that runs for a week on one recharge...
A point that many seem to miss is blindingly simple and yet profound in its implications:
Microsoft can't be trusted.
Sounds silly like that, doesn't it? Yet, they've proven over and over again that they will break the law (none of these candyass phrases like 'anti-competitive practices'). If there might have been some mistake, they had a chance to correct their error years ago the last time they were dragged into court. Fat lot of good that did.
Microsoft is a giant CRIMINAL corporation. They break the law, so they are criminals. Period.
If you don't break it up, then you have to have hundreds of people whose sole job is to keep tabs on the company while MS will work every trick in the book to keep them from doing said job. Plus, they will scream bloody murder every single time that an auditor or investigator has to check for compliance. They've proven THAT habit, time and time again.
The only solution is to institute structural changes in the company that makes compliance unavoidable, rather than voluntary. As long as it remains a single entity, that will be impossible.
That said, the only question is how to break it up, not if we should.
Slashdot Mirror
While all your points are well taken, this is a path that will be pursued aggressively. Stimulating adult cells to return to a stem cell state avoids many ethical, legal AND medical complications of using 'natural' stem cells. Honestly, just for the zero-rejection aspect, adult stem cells are worth putting the lion's share of research into.
Unfortunately, just like with 'greenhouse gasses', the science has long since been trumped by rhetoric, special interests, and political posturing. Hopefully this is good science being reported and will lead to a plethora of treatments.
Unpopular systems get few new games made for them. Popular systems get many new games made for them. If you have a Wii, you really should care.
In other words, when was the last time you saw an Atari 5200 game hit the market? =)
Wow, I'm glad I had my sarcasm filters on!
Look, let's all just admit two things right up front. The Nobel Committee awards feel good prizes for people who a) want to hurt America/capitalism or b) hate George W. Bush. They admitted as much when they gave the prize to Jimmy Carter.
What has Al done again? Oh, that's right, produced a movie that has so many flaws that it's very difficult to point at a single piece of it that is not FACTUALLY wrong in some fundamental respect. I think he pronounced his name properly at one point . . .
If the new Nitrous Oxide technologies work out, these guys will be laughing their way to the blood bank. =)
The primary reason is that repeated, frivolous lawsuits have made it unviable to build nuclear plants in the US for decades... why research something you can't build?
I'm a geek; I'm voting for Edwards. What do you think? Am I right or what?
Well, you're not right, but I find it hard to follow that voting for a sleazy trial lawyer can be interpreted as anyone as a GOOD thing.
Because of Edwards, many, many, MANY women have had to undergo painful and unnecessary surgery so their doctors can avoid lawsuits. If you had to pick a big contributor to health care costs all around, it falls right on on Edwards and his ilk.
As a geek, I don't think someone living in the back pocket of the trail lawyer industry should be in the Whitehouse. You think we have too much litigation on tech topics right now? Just wait if this scumbag hits the big time.
I cannot think of any legitimate use for this.
Then you probably aren't a modern public education schoolteacher or administrator. For a minor child at a public institution it could be invaluable for one good reason: stupid-ass lawsuits.
Right now, there's a class of lawyers (and, sadly enough, parents) that are looking for some ridiculous lawsuit like it was the lotto. If a kid says he's going to the bathroom and shoots up behind the school and dies, guess who gets the blame? Not the kid, not his parents, not rap music, not the drug dealer, not even violent video games... they blame the school.
Our schools are turning more and more violent because, once again, stupid-ass lawsuits (and equally moronic judges) require that every juvenile delinquent and criminal (note, I don't say potential criminals, I mean KNOWN criminals) has a 'right' to be in school.
With a tracking technology and the requirement that every person at a school have a RFID tag (temporary ones for visitors) to even get on the grounds, you can at least keep the people off the property that have no business there. If a kid says s/he's going to do something and strays outside the bounds, then an alarm goes off and you can suspend them our counsel them depending on how far along the anti-social moron track they've gone down.
With proper technology, things like people 'leaving' their IDs behind will trigger an alarm (they use something like this today for firefighters who stop moving for a certain period of time). Either the kid is trying to scam the system or, perhaps, they really are in trouble and need help. Likewise, if 2 or more tags are moving in synch (indicating that someone is carrying both tags), this can be spotted.
Also, it could help with attendance. Right now, in our district, there's an automated system that calls up parents when their kids are absent from school. Hook up the RFID idea with this and you give more control to the parents to monitor their kids. My kid is 13 and you can be DAMN sure she's going to have a tracker on her first car so I can monitor her. This isn't big brother... this is called being responsible for children!
If he lists DDT as a 'bad innovation', I have my doubts about the credibility of the book. DDT has been demonized as some sort of supertoxin, which it most definitely is not. Properly used, it is a very effective and safe pesticide, especially when non-bug species are involved. Most of the studies that lambasted DDT turned out to have terribly flawed protocols and, at the same time, there are countless documented examples of the good it has done. Mind you, as a pesticide, you wouldn't want to spray it recklessly... well, duh, that describes EVERY pesticide! Eggshell thinning? Almost certainly a myth. Cancer in humans? Nope, no evidence of that. Destroyed biota? Uh-uh, didn't happen.
Perhaps the author merely pulled DDT as an example out of the air, but that would reflect poorly on his skills as well.
I mean this in all sincerity, but I wish this virtual turf war would turn real and these groups would start shooting each other. More dead spammers would do a lot to make cyberspace a happier place!
it s nice to see humanity win one for a change
who can really put a price on that?
Wow, ignorance really IS that rampant.
Lemme put it to you in very simple, easy-to-understand terms.
1) 'Mandatory licensing' means 'sell at less than your R&D costs'
2) This means the drug company would lose money
3) Companies that lose money go out of business
4) No new drugs will get made
5) Untold millions, billions, trillions (etc.) people over the years will die or suffer because the drugs they need will never get made
Simple enough, fool? Gosh, I hope the 'winners' in humanity appreciate your insight when they could have had new drugs to save their lives.
Blizzard's lawyers would rather have their collective livers eaten by weasels than even HINT a vaguely native-american race could be evil (at least for PCs).
Good God, I want to puke anytime someone says this old, rehashed and erroneous line.
First of all it implies that wealth is a zero-sum game. It's not. If you don't know what a zero-sum game is, then you are either too ignorant or too stupid to post on slashdot. Wealth grows through the efforts of people.
In freedom-based societies (which many, but not all, democracies/republics around the world are), the tendency is for the rich to get richer and the poor to get richer. In the United States, for example, people tend to start out in the bottom quintile of wealth. Well, duh! They are young and inexperienced! As they gain experience and accumulate wealth, they get richer. Everyone starts out young and inexperienced and therefore, in most cases, poor. The majority of millionaires (and those in the upper quintile) started out in the bottom four quintiles (mostly in the bottom 2).
This doesn't address the various totalitarian regimes around the world. Quintile mobility is very rare in those countries. But, please, don't haul out a phrase that is just an ignorant tool of class warriors. Reality is too important for that.
...unlike the movie, however, this is actually based on facts.
Global warming does exist... on Mars. And, in fact, on every body in the solar system that we can measure accurately including the Earth. Polar ice caps are melting that aren't terrestrial. Until people realize that whatever human beings are doing to the atmosphere is not and cannot be the whole story, then the "It's all our fault!" environmental movement is bankrupt both morally and intellectually.
Here's some other Inconvenient Truths...
* DDT is not very dangerous to the environment
* One of the founders of Greenpeace supports nuclear power
* The Kyoto Treaty exempts some of the biggest carbon polluters of all
This comment reminds me of a law passed in Britain quite a few years ago concerning the original factory 'sweatshops'. Children were being used, you see, and the hours were long and the conditions difficult. Someone became offended by their tragedy and they passed a law against using children in factories. The children, thus freed, went back to their old profession: starving to death.
If these people are working under what you consider poor conditions, please consider that they aren't being forced to work there. The very real alternative of dying is in their lives. And before you say they should be given much better working conditions, that would mean they would lose the only REAL economic advantage they have which is that they are cheap. Would you be willing to go to that sweatshop and say, "Hey, good news! We're getting ergonomic wrist wraps, better chairs, more lighting, higher pay. The bad news is that we have to fire half of you to go starve. But the good news is that the women might find work in prositution!"
The main reason the songs don't really match up to other recent Disney offerings was that Sting was given no time to write them. Oh, he wrote a lot of songs... that were never used. During production, they noticed that parts of the movie fell flat. No laughs, nothing to keep people's interest. So they rewrote the script to up the laugh factor and that meant that a lot of the songs (which had been written with the original script in mind) had to be chucked. You will find them on the album for the movie, though.
Don't forget, which most pundits have left out, that the number associated with each candidate (right next to arrow) ALSO shows up where they should punch. Anyone who can't look at a '5', follow the arrow to another '5' and realize that's the one they need to punch had better get a few clues before voting again.
Part two of the scheme is that you put a strict time limit on each transaction, say a week. After the transaction occurs (or if the time limit comes up), the number goes dead again. There were be very few (percentage-wise) live numbers at any one time. After a suitable dead period, you throw it back in the pot of possible numbers.
In many ways I view this as a non-issue. Sure, each country might have to have a solution tailored to local conditions, where possible, but once you do have a local solution than intercountry transfers become transparent. That's where X.com being a bank comes in handy (monetary conversion).
Ironically, Canada will probably be one of the easiest countries to tie in. Close relations with the US (and well-integrated banking concerns) will make it easy, I believe. I know they use credit cards up north! =)
Duuuhhhhh, haven't you heard about the way M$ strongarmed OEMs to pay per computer they sold EVEN IF Windows wasn't on it? A free OS is a lot less free when your hardware has a 'Microsoft tax' added onto it.
By all reports, the technology they are working on is quite impressive, but it's a shame that so many /.ers can't ignore the 'amiga' name for a few seconds and see what they are actually producing. Here's my prediction: if it works as they say it does (good bet) and they can get enough interested coders on it (sales look good right now), then it will be a success. At that point, the amiga name will be an asset.
Crackers don't always compromise a system for content. Off the top of my head I can think of several reasons why a cracker would dive into a machine that had NO user files on it.
Tell ya what. Why not post your IP address to a major cracking site and say "I've got nothing you want, so I'm safe, right fellas?" Stand back. Wait 30 minutes.
[many chuckles]
Wolverine has been overused, but he's popular, so c'est la vie. Anyway, since this movie focused a lot on him, perhaps they have enough sense to veer off to one of the other characters before they follow-up on the very obvious Weapon-X dangling plot threads.
As for Watchmen, it's the best movie adaptation of a comic that hasn't been made yet.
Other ideas: a Superman movie that Doesn't Suck. A Batman movie that Doesn't Suck. Hell, I'd even be willing to give a Wonder Woman movie a chance (Lucy Lawless perhaps?) once they get it through their Hollywood dope-addled heads that the story is important!
I was thinking the same thing (re: Transmeta). Low power processors, low power ram, plus the possibilities of replacing the hard drive (which requires power to stay spinning) could make for a very energy-efficient box.
Hell, as long as we are dreaming, why not some of these long-promised, low-energy color flat-panel displays! =) Mmmmm... a laptop that runs for a week on one recharge...
A point that many seem to miss is blindingly simple and yet profound in its implications:
Microsoft can't be trusted.
Sounds silly like that, doesn't it? Yet, they've proven over and over again that they will break the law (none of these candyass phrases like 'anti-competitive practices'). If there might have been some mistake, they had a chance to correct their error years ago the last time they were dragged into court. Fat lot of good that did.
Microsoft is a giant CRIMINAL corporation. They break the law, so they are criminals. Period.
If you don't break it up, then you have to have hundreds of people whose sole job is to keep tabs on the company while MS will work every trick in the book to keep them from doing said job. Plus, they will scream bloody murder every single time that an auditor or investigator has to check for compliance. They've proven THAT habit, time and time again.
The only solution is to institute structural changes in the company that makes compliance unavoidable, rather than voluntary. As long as it remains a single entity, that will be impossible.
That said, the only question is how to break it up, not if we should.