TheLink wrote "Read the article again till the end."
I suggest reading the literature on the subject as well. It is well known that immune destruction starts off IDDM, but there is no evidence -- including regard to what is reported in the article -- that immune suppression revives beta-cells in patients who have none left. I.e. the large majority of humans with IDDM have long since lost all their beta cells to the destructive process that has run its course, and there is no bringing those cells back from the dead.
And I stick to what I said about the big bad pharma angle being mixed up too. If a drug or combination of drugs has a surprising new effect then patent protection is likely to be available on the usual conditions no matter how much noise to the contrary is made on/. If this is a useful new application of BCG there is no rule nowadays that stops a patent for the new use.
The article is mixed up. Nobody is shunning islet-cell transplantation for (IDDM) diabetes. Many people in the field believe that the currently most promising procedure is one developed by surgeon James Shapiro in Canada. It is in human patient trials in more than one country already now. A drawback of course (a big one for some who would otherwise be potential patients) is the need for immunosuppressant therapy after the surgical procedure.
The 'big bad pharmaceutical co' angle is mixed up too. This is a surgical procedure. There is no new pharmaceutical at the centre of it. But if new combinations of immunosuppressants prove specially well adapted to patients who have this procedure, that would quite likely be a new combination of features, and patent protection would likely be available for whatever it turns out to be, anyway.
Absolutely this is the kind of case the law enforcers need to investigate and crack down on it hard.
I'll wait with bated breath to see if they really did get the 'Mr Big's and can nail them.
Unfortunately, it has occasionally turned out, with big organised crime operations, that the big guys really got away, and the criminal evidence against the others had crucial flaws, so that in the end, after years of delays and millions of taxpayers money in investigation costs and lawyers fees, even the smaller guys got off too.
I really hope this isn't going to be another one of those. For the time being, we can hope that the cybercops have earned their credit here.
According to the livejournalist concerned here, her statement of opposition to the current president, including, as it did, a juvenile or immature death-wish upon him, has earned her among other things an FBI file, and a "strong possibility" according to her attorney that she may be placed on the US no-fly list.
That would be a significant penalty imposed without due process, and no matter what other posters here have said, this is also an obvious free speech issue.
I'm not sure what kind of a comfort it is to say that it likely would have turned out even worse in China.
Whatever one might want to pray happen to the president, it's arguably time also for a prayer in memory of some traditional US civil liberties and protections.
most AIDS-related deaths aren't due to the virus itself, but rather it weakening your immune system enough for something else to get you.
That is in fact how everyone does from AIDS. A weak immune system isn't itself terminal, however, without defenses otherwise weak illnesses are life-threatening.
IMO it's a very weird idea of causation that wants to say the main factor leading to death (the virus) is not a cause, just because there had to be a second contributory factor there as well.
As noted in the immediate parent post, the HIV virus breaks its sufferers so badly, that they die from something normally minor, that others just bounce off. Saying these deaths 'aren't due' to the virus is like saying that the spark didn't cause that forest fire, because, see, there was all that oxygen around, and that's what caused the fire, wouldn't have happened without it y'know!
This sugar (glycoaldehyde) + a 3 carbon sugar = ribose = a building block of deoxyribonucleic acid.
I think this is astronomers' chemistry, not biochemistry. For one thing, ribose is a 'building block' of RNA, not DNA. For another, the supposed addition reaction (does it take place in space? not in living organisms I think) calls for a larger 2nd starting material (containing 12 atoms per molecule). This is significantly more complex than the 8-atom glycolaldehyde that has reportedly been found already. Its occurrence in space has yet to be reported on. The reference to DNA is hype, I think.
I don't see any provision for it in the announcement, but does anyone know if the NIST committees will look at written submissions?
Or at any rate, maybe they could be asked to do that?
-wb-
Another reason why IP isn't what the label says
on
Is IP Property?
·
· Score: 1
IP isn't property. It never has and never will be. For example, A granted patent isn't valid if there's prior art.
There's another reason why one can argue that IP isn't 'property' in relation to its specific subject, e.g. the invention.
That reason is that the rights over the specific subject (effectively given to the rights-holder by the definition of what constitutes infringement) don't in sum add up to a property right over that specific subject (and never have, and should not). (For example, the patent owner doesn't actually _own_ an infringing specimen that falls under the patent, he gets certain rights to protect his trade, but that is different from ownership of anything.)
What the 'IP' owner's rights really add up to is a trade privilege over the specific subject (or, as the Germans quite descriptively call it, a 'protection right' -- Schutzrecht). (The bundle of rights is of course in itself an object of property, in that it can be sold, licensed, etc. but that is a different thing from saying that the specific subject, e.g. the invention itself, is the subject of a property right as opposed to a trade privilege).
It seems to me, now, that one strong reason why the expression 'intellectual property' has become so popular to describe the trade privilege rights conferred by patents etc is that it is useful for propaganda purposes when lobbying legislators.
It is easy, when you say 'my property rights need to be made more secure' to get an answer 'oh, yes, of course they should -- let us pass another law to make it so!'.
But if on the other hand you have to say 'my trade protection rights or monopoly privileges should be extended' then it is not nearly so obvious that the answer should automatically be yes. On the contrary, it is immediately much clearer, when the question is put like that, that there should be a policy of balancing the interests of the holders of rights with the interest of the public generally. If that happened, it would IMO be a good thing in the cause of saner legislation.
So I would applaud any effort to get 'IP' re-named 'trade protection rights' or something more accurate than the label 'IP' for denoting what the rights really are and what they do.
-wb-
But can the theory be applied?
on
Why We Fall Apart
·
· Score: 2, Informative
A general theory of ageing can sound good, but can it be applied?
If it could, then the first place where even a partial application should show some effects and some value would be in medicine.
I don't see any signs of applicability there, and it looks as if there is a good reason for that. As the article admits, biological bodies are made up of a vast number of bits and pieces all doing their specific thing. When each goes wrong it produces effects which can only be countered, if at all, by doing something specific to engage with the bit that has gone wrong.
General theory may not be able to provide any general help when there appears to be no general problem, only a lot of specific ones.
>>Well, do you hate them both equally? If not, you could (on probability) improve your position by voting for
>First, you're basing your vote off of hatred? And not real "you killed mah daddy" hatred, but Hate Week hatred? That's lame, right there.
>Second, where do you get off saying "improve" ? Don't you really mean "cause to deteriorate more slowly" ?
Try checking attributions. It was the original poster that said he hated both candidates. The point in reply is, if he doesn't dislike them equally, then there is something he can actually do to reduce the chance that the one he dislikes more will get elected. If there is one of them that he dislikes less, doesn't that make it less bad (for him) if the one he dislikes less gets in? And isn't a less bad outcome better than the worst, and isn't that relatively an improvement?
I've made a commitment with some of my friends that we will not vote for the lesser of 2 evils but instead we will vote for who we really want to be in office.
My democrat friends all want to vote for Kerry because they hate Bush.
And my conservative friends all want to vote for Bush because they like Bush.
I hate them both.
Well, do you hate them both equally? If not, you could (on probability) improve your position by voting for the candidate most likely to prevent the election of the one you hate more.
In a world without rational preference-voting (IRV, STV), that can sometimes mean a vote for a candidate who is not the closest to your own best preference. But that is because of the risk of splitting an opposition, in which event your vote could end up inadvertently helping the one that you really want to stop the most.
This new license is good because it's based on French laws rather than a French interpretation of US laws,
IANAFL, but I wonder exactly what were the differences in French law that really and essentially had to be taken into account? (It seems GPL has made the migration into Germany ok -- think netfilter -- so why not France too?)
There is one particular oddity about CeCiLL apart from the fact it is cast as a contract (of adhesion) rather than a licence. The contract may be formed not only by first exercise of any of the rights that it offers to grant (ok, no news there), but also -- and can they really mean this? -- merely by downloading the software (section 3.1(i))!
This seems to assume that French law really does subject you to whatever somebody chooses to put into a EULA just on the grounds that you downloaded it! Can that be right? If it's true, then I'm certainly going to keep my hands off computer keyboards next time I visit France!
Any views from French lawyers on the question whether EULAs (or any other terms dictated in a sw package) automatically apply in France just by the fact you downloaded them?
Possibly CeCiLL may need some additional careful legal consideration before it is finalised!
This topic is just not news: good audio-amp books that deal with it well have been around for years. For example, some really good explanations and designs relating to this topic are given in a series of books by John Linsley Hood, findable at http://engineering-books-online.com/search_John_Li nsley_Hood/searchBy_Author.html.
(Some knowledge of analog(ue!) audio electronics is needed to follow some of the points fully.)
IMO some of the information can be summarised like this: Very good amplifiers can be made both with vacuum tubes (or valves!) or with transistors, and very good examples of each tend to sound alike. Some quite subtle distortion issues can arise in transistor amplifiers, from details of the way in which high-frequency rolloff is applied to obtain feedback-amplifier stability against unwanted high-frequency oscillation.
In an earlier life (!) I built/modified some audio amps to JLH's designs, I also decided to choose commercial amps on the basis of checking their design circuitry, (where the manufacturer would agree to disclose it, which not all did), to see if their hf stability circuitry is applied in the way that JLH's design criteria indicate that they should be. Not all high-price audio amps do that.
With examples that do, I found that my ears can (or at least they used to be able to) distinguish what I would call an unforced, neutral, clean sound quality, with undistorted transients, specially audible (for example) in the way that a triangle-sound is left clean and un-fuzzed, and in the way that the sounds coming from the mass of a band or orchestra emerge as distinguishable individuals rather than as a fuzzy sound-mass. Of course, good recordings and input signals as well as good speakers are needed for any such subjective aural tests, and naturally any amp suffers to some extent if overloaded. It needs also to be noted that the standard that is met by an overloaded tube amp but not by an average overloaded transistor amp is a standard that tolerates a very high and audible level of certain kinds of distortion.
The French demonstrated a rather effective solution to such a situation back in 1788 or so
Well I'm not sure you've chosen a very apt example there, because one of the first things the French revolutionary National Assembly did, in early 1791, was to pass a patent law stating that "it would be to attack the rights of man in their essence not to regard an industrial discovery as the property of its author".
In the theater there is a concept known as "suspension of disbelief."
Yeah, that's what they always call it, but that's hardly what it is. I guess nobody stops disbeleving in the reality of the scene, what they do is imagine. Just as Shakespeare said, "make imaginary puissance". It's not 'suspension of disbelief', it's 'engaging the imagination'.
While CD's are (mostly) opaque to visible wavelengths, they're totally transparent to the infra-red.
I think you are talking about the transparency of the plastics material. The useful absorbance is of course due to the metallized layer in the CD (or layers if more than one CD is used), no-one suggests that the plastics material in itself is a useful filter.
... solar observers have used floppy disks and compact disks (both CDs and CD-ROMs) as protective filters
I have discovered another use for AOL CDs!
Sorry to spoil your day, I just tried it and it's yet another thing that AOL disks are useless for:-)
I just tried a glimpse with various CDs. I find that a single unlacquered CD thickness leaves too much brightness, but 2 CD thicknesses (silver/recorded sides towards the sun) might be ok. (Care now!! Don't blame me if it's too bright for you!)
But another thing is, the CDs probably need to be unlacquered on the non-recorded side (or at least have a partly unlacquered patch to see through). The colored lacquers cause light-scatter and fuzziness of the object seen. (The latest AOL disk had a thick red layer on the non-recorded side, and this made a very fuzzy sight, which I think will be useless for finding a small dot only about 1/32 the diameter of the sun.)
-wb-
Structured assembly language not new
on
High Level Assembly
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
HLA looks like a complex programming environment.
Assuming a common role of assembler, to fine-tune a critical smallish bit of code, I can see the convenience of having a higher level than normal of language constructs. It can make the flow of logic more transparent, (e.g. nestable conditional blocks, loops with readable criteria, repeat-until, do-while, switch/case structure, etc).
On the other hand, providing this kind of pseudo-high level language structure in assembler programs has been around a long time, and can be done more simply. I still have an assembler macro library around that in its original version (circulated on 80s bbs networks) did this for at least some early versions of MASM and TASM.
(Most of the identifiers would probably have to be changed for compatibility with newer assemblers because it used non-standard initial characters to enable constructs looking a bit like (ignore the 1--- 's, they just adjust formatting in the Slashdot editor)
1----.if (test)
1----.orif (another test)
1------ (whatever code)
1----.else
1--------.while (yet another test)
1----------- (whatever other code)
1--------.endwhile
1----.endif
and suchlike constructs).
As I first read it, it was a macro library carrying a by-line from 'Jim Holtman, 1982'. It was not very big, the whole thing (even after some more macros for other logic-extensions were added)came to an include-file size of no more than about 10 kb.
Maybe it's not clear why anything bigger would be needed.
One thing that comes out again here, but only by implication, from these reports, is the amazing accuracy and precision (still amazing to me anyhow) of the ephemerides (~ solar system maps) used to plan these missions. They knew where Mars would be for MER to within, what, was it about a meter or two? Maybe not that close for Saturn but still good enough not to need main-engine course corrections in five years...
Kudos to the chief JPL mapmaker Dr Myles Standish and his crew!
From an almost-ex-tie-wearer (don't often do it these days): Many of the 'best' ties are/were in silk, and were both non-washable and even hard to dryclean without losing shape. So most of them probably didn't/don't get washed or cleaned often, or maybe not at all.
Many hospital germs, including the most dangerous antibiotic-resistant MRSA, have been found transmitted in/on noses and hands of medical staff.
Some hospitals now have dispensers for alcohol hand-rub in each ward/department, for everybody to use on their hands when entering and leaving, and some tests seem to have shown these alcohol rubs to be the most effective thing yet against contagion.
Maybe tie-bags for medics are not such a bad idea to add to that.....
Slashdot Mirror
TheLink wrote "Read the article again till the end."
/. If this is a useful new application of BCG there is no rule nowadays that stops a patent for the new use.
I suggest reading the literature on the subject as well. It is well known that immune destruction starts off IDDM, but there is no evidence -- including regard to what is reported in the article -- that immune suppression revives beta-cells in patients who have none left. I.e. the large majority of humans with IDDM have long since lost all their beta cells to the destructive process that has run its course, and there is no bringing those cells back from the dead.
And I stick to what I said about the big bad pharma angle being mixed up too. If a drug or combination of drugs has a surprising new effect then patent protection is likely to be available on the usual conditions no matter how much noise to the contrary is made on
-wb-
The article is mixed up. Nobody is shunning islet-cell transplantation for (IDDM) diabetes. Many people in the field believe that the currently most promising procedure is one developed by surgeon James Shapiro in Canada. It is in human patient trials in more than one country already now. A drawback of course (a big one for some who would otherwise be potential patients) is the need for immunosuppressant therapy after the surgical procedure.
The 'big bad pharmaceutical co' angle is mixed up too. This is a surgical procedure. There is no new pharmaceutical at the centre of it. But if new combinations of immunosuppressants prove specially well adapted to patients who have this procedure, that would quite likely be a new combination of features, and patent protection would likely be available for whatever it turns out to be, anyway.
-wb-
It's an interesting numerical puzzle, but misnamed.
A ruler is a practical object of use, and there's nothing optimal in practice about a ruler that has some of its markings missing!
-wb-
Absolutely this is the kind of case the law enforcers need to investigate and crack down on it hard.
I'll wait with bated breath to see if they really did get the 'Mr Big's and can nail them.
Unfortunately, it has occasionally turned out, with big organised crime operations, that the big guys really got away, and the criminal evidence against the others had crucial flaws, so that in the end, after years of delays and millions of taxpayers money in investigation costs and lawyers fees, even the smaller guys got off too.
I really hope this isn't going to be another one of those. For the time being, we can hope that the cybercops have earned their credit here.
-wb-
According to the livejournalist concerned here, her statement of opposition to the current president, including, as it did, a juvenile or immature death-wish upon him, has earned her among other things an FBI file, and a "strong possibility" according to her attorney that she may be placed on the US no-fly list.
That would be a significant penalty imposed without due process, and no matter what other posters here have said, this is also an obvious free speech issue.
I'm not sure what kind of a comfort it is to say that it likely would have turned out even worse in China.
Whatever one might want to pray happen to the president, it's arguably time also for a prayer in memory of some traditional US civil liberties and protections.
-wb-
The potential liability issues don't bear thinking about if the one doing the steering gets the rest into trouble .....
most AIDS-related deaths aren't due to the virus itself, but rather it weakening your immune system enough for something else to get you.
That is in fact how everyone does from AIDS. A weak immune system isn't itself terminal, however, without defenses otherwise weak illnesses are life-threatening.
IMO it's a very weird idea of causation that wants to say the main factor leading to death (the virus) is not a cause, just because there had to be a second contributory factor there as well.
As noted in the immediate parent post, the HIV virus breaks its sufferers so badly, that they die from something normally minor, that others just bounce off. Saying these deaths 'aren't due' to the virus is like saying that the spark didn't cause that forest fire, because, see, there was all that oxygen around, and that's what caused the fire, wouldn't have happened without it y'know!
-wb-
This sugar (glycoaldehyde) + a 3 carbon sugar = ribose = a building block of deoxyribonucleic acid.
I think this is astronomers' chemistry, not biochemistry. For one thing, ribose is a 'building block' of RNA, not DNA. For another, the supposed addition reaction (does it take place in space? not in living organisms I think) calls for a larger 2nd starting material (containing 12 atoms per molecule). This is significantly more complex than the 8-atom glycolaldehyde that has reportedly been found already. Its occurrence in space has yet to be reported on. The reference to DNA is hype, I think.
-wb-
I don't see any provision for it in the announcement, but does anyone know if the NIST committees will look at written submissions?
Or at any rate, maybe they could be asked to do that?
-wb-
IP isn't property. It never has and never will be. For example, A granted patent isn't valid if there's prior art.
There's another reason why one can argue that IP isn't 'property' in relation to its specific subject, e.g. the invention.
That reason is that the rights over the specific subject (effectively given to the rights-holder by the definition of what constitutes infringement) don't in sum add up to a property right over that specific subject (and never have, and should not). (For example, the patent owner doesn't actually _own_ an infringing specimen that falls under the patent, he gets certain rights to protect his trade, but that is different from ownership of anything.)
What the 'IP' owner's rights really add up to is a trade privilege over the specific subject (or, as the Germans quite descriptively call it, a 'protection right' -- Schutzrecht). (The bundle of rights is of course in itself an object of property, in that it can be sold, licensed, etc. but that is a different thing from saying that the specific subject, e.g. the invention itself, is the subject of a property right as opposed to a trade privilege).
It seems to me, now, that one strong reason why the expression 'intellectual property' has become so popular to describe the trade privilege rights conferred by patents etc is that it is useful for propaganda purposes when lobbying legislators.
It is easy, when you say 'my property rights need to be made more secure' to get an answer 'oh, yes, of course they should -- let us pass another law to make it so!'.
But if on the other hand you have to say 'my trade protection rights or monopoly privileges should be extended' then it is not nearly so obvious that the answer should automatically be yes. On the contrary, it is immediately much clearer, when the question is put like that, that there should be a policy of balancing the interests of the holders of rights with the interest of the public generally. If that happened, it would IMO be a good thing in the cause of saner legislation.
So I would applaud any effort to get 'IP' re-named 'trade protection rights' or something more accurate than the label 'IP' for denoting what the rights really are and what they do.
-wb-
A general theory of ageing can sound good, but can it be applied?
If it could, then the first place where even a partial application should show some effects and some value would be in medicine.
I don't see any signs of applicability there, and it looks as if there is a good reason for that. As the article admits, biological bodies are made up of a vast number of bits and pieces all doing their specific thing. When each goes wrong it produces effects which can only be countered, if at all, by doing something specific to engage with the bit that has gone wrong.
General theory may not be able to provide any general help when there appears to be no general problem, only a lot of specific ones.
-wb-
While I think it overall is a little silly IN THIS CASE
I think it's more than a little silly in this case, it's oppressive.
-wb-
>>Well, do you hate them both equally? If not, you could (on probability) improve your position by voting for
>First, you're basing your vote off of hatred? And not real "you killed mah daddy" hatred, but Hate Week hatred? That's lame, right there.
>Second, where do you get off saying "improve" ? Don't you really mean "cause to deteriorate more slowly" ?
Try checking attributions. It was the original poster that said he hated both candidates. The point in reply is, if he doesn't dislike them equally, then there is something he can actually do to reduce the chance that the one he dislikes more will get elected. If there is one of them that he dislikes less, doesn't that make it less bad (for him) if the one he dislikes less gets in? And isn't a less bad outcome better than the worst, and isn't that relatively an improvement?
-wb-
I've made a commitment with some of my friends that we will not vote for the lesser of 2 evils
but instead we will vote for who we really want to be in office.
My democrat friends all want to vote for Kerry because they hate Bush.
And my conservative friends all want to vote for Bush because they like Bush.
I hate them both.
Well, do you hate them both equally? If not, you could (on probability) improve your position by voting for the candidate most likely to prevent the election of the one you hate more.
In a world without rational preference-voting (IRV, STV), that can sometimes mean a vote for a candidate who is not the closest to your own best preference. But that is because of the risk of splitting an opposition, in which event your vote could end up inadvertently helping the one that you really want to stop the most.
-wb-
This new license is good because it's based on French laws rather than a French interpretation of US laws,
IANAFL, but I wonder exactly what were the differences in French law that really and essentially had to be taken into account? (It seems GPL has made the migration into Germany ok -- think netfilter -- so why not France too?)
There is one particular oddity about CeCiLL apart from the fact it is cast as a contract (of adhesion) rather than a licence. The contract may be formed not only by first exercise of any of the rights that it offers to grant (ok, no news there), but also -- and can they really mean this? -- merely by downloading the software (section 3.1(i))!
This seems to assume that French law really does subject you to whatever somebody chooses to put into a EULA just on the grounds that you downloaded it! Can that be right? If it's true, then I'm certainly going to keep my hands off computer keyboards next time I visit France!
Any views from French lawyers on the question whether EULAs (or any other terms dictated in a sw package) automatically apply in France just by the fact you downloaded them?
Possibly CeCiLL may need some additional careful legal consideration before it is finalised!
-wb-
This topic is just not news: good audio-amp books that deal with it well have been around for years.i nsley_Hood/searchBy_Author.html .
For example, some really good explanations and designs relating to this topic are given in a series of books by John Linsley Hood, findable at http://engineering-books-online.com/search_John_L
(Some knowledge of analog(ue!) audio electronics is needed to follow some of the points fully.)
IMO some of the information can be summarised like this: Very good amplifiers can be made both with vacuum tubes (or valves!) or with transistors, and very good examples of each tend to sound alike. Some quite subtle distortion issues can arise in transistor amplifiers, from details of the way in which high-frequency rolloff is applied to obtain feedback-amplifier stability against unwanted high-frequency oscillation.
In an earlier life (!) I built/modified some audio amps to JLH's designs, I also decided to choose commercial amps on the basis of checking their design circuitry, (where the manufacturer would agree to disclose it, which not all did), to see if their hf stability circuitry is applied in the way that JLH's design criteria indicate that they should be. Not all high-price audio amps do that.
With examples that do, I found that my ears can (or at least they used to be able to) distinguish what I would call an unforced, neutral, clean sound quality, with undistorted transients, specially audible (for example) in the way that a triangle-sound is left clean and un-fuzzed, and in the way that the sounds coming from the mass of a band or orchestra emerge as distinguishable individuals rather than as a fuzzy sound-mass. Of course, good recordings and input signals
as well as good speakers are needed for any such subjective aural tests, and naturally any amp suffers to some extent if overloaded. It needs also to be noted that the standard that is met by an overloaded tube amp but not by an average overloaded transistor amp is a standard that tolerates a very high and audible level of certain kinds of distortion.
-wb-
The French demonstrated a rather effective solution to such a situation back in 1788 or so
Well I'm not sure you've chosen a very apt example there, because one of the first things the French revolutionary National Assembly did, in early 1791, was to pass a patent law stating that "it would be to attack the rights of man in their essence not to regard an industrial discovery as the property of its author".
-wb-
They also forgot Atlas Autocode (the first programming language I was exposed to, back in 1965).
-wb-
In the theater there is a concept known as "suspension of disbelief."
Yeah, that's what they always call it, but that's hardly what it is. I guess nobody stops disbeleving in the reality of the scene, what they do is imagine. Just as Shakespeare said, "make imaginary puissance". It's not 'suspension of disbelief', it's 'engaging the imagination'.
Not exactly what the doctor ordered for geeks who need to get out more already?
While CD's are (mostly) opaque to visible wavelengths, they're totally transparent to the infra-red.
I think you are talking about the transparency of the plastics material. The useful absorbance is of course due to the metallized layer in the CD (or layers if more than one CD is used), no-one suggests that the plastics material in itself is a useful filter.
I have discovered another use for AOL CDs!
Sorry to spoil your day, I just tried it and it's yet another thing that AOL disks are useless for
I just tried a glimpse with various CDs. I find that a single unlacquered CD thickness leaves too much brightness, but 2 CD thicknesses (silver/recorded sides towards the sun) might be ok. (Care now!! Don't blame me if it's too bright for you!)
But another thing is, the CDs probably need to be unlacquered on the non-recorded side (or at least have a partly unlacquered patch to see through). The colored lacquers cause light-scatter and fuzziness of the object seen. (The latest AOL disk had a thick red layer on the non-recorded side, and this made a very fuzzy sight, which I think will be useless for finding a small dot only about 1/32 the diameter of the sun.)
-wb-
HLA looks like a complex programming environment.
.if (test)
.orif (another test)
.else
.while (yet another test)
.endwhile
.endif
Assuming a common role of assembler, to fine-tune a critical smallish bit of code, I can see the convenience of having a higher level than normal of language constructs. It can make the flow of logic more transparent, (e.g. nestable conditional blocks, loops with readable criteria, repeat-until, do-while, switch/case structure, etc).
On the other hand, providing this kind of pseudo-high level language structure in assembler programs has been around a long time, and can be done more simply. I still have an assembler macro library around that in its original version (circulated on 80s bbs networks) did this for at least some early versions of MASM and TASM.
(Most of the identifiers would probably have to be changed for compatibility with newer assemblers because it used non-standard initial characters to enable constructs looking a bit like (ignore the 1--- 's, they just adjust formatting in the Slashdot editor)
1----
1----
1------ (whatever code)
1----
1--------
1----------- (whatever other code)
1--------
1----
and suchlike constructs).
As I first read it, it was a macro library carrying a by-line from 'Jim Holtman, 1982'. It was not very big, the whole thing (even after some more macros for other logic-extensions were added)came to an include-file size of no more than about 10 kb.
Maybe it's not clear why anything bigger would be needed.
-wb-
"first main-engine burrn in five years"
...
[only a] 78 mph change in speed
One thing that comes out again here, but only by implication, from these reports, is the amazing accuracy and precision (still amazing to me anyhow) of the ephemerides (~ solar system maps) used to plan these missions. They knew where Mars would be for MER to within, what, was it about a meter or two? Maybe not that close for Saturn but still good enough not to need main-engine course corrections in five years
Kudos to the chief JPL mapmaker Dr Myles Standish and his crew!
-wb-
From an almost-ex-tie-wearer (don't often do it these days): Many of the 'best' ties are/were in silk, and were both non-washable and even hard to dryclean without losing shape. So most of them probably didn't/don't get washed or cleaned often, or maybe not at all.
Many hospital germs, including the most dangerous antibiotic-resistant MRSA, have been found transmitted in/on noses and hands of medical staff.
Some hospitals now have dispensers for alcohol hand-rub in each ward/department, for everybody to use on their hands when entering and leaving, and some tests seem to have shown these alcohol rubs to be the most effective thing yet against contagion.
Maybe tie-bags for medics are not such a bad idea to add to that.....
-wb-