Last I heard, cancer was still caused by a group of cells that begin regenerating due to damage but for some reason never acknowledge the chemical signal to stop. There is, to my knowledge, no virus involved.
The anonymous coward I think went off on a rant and forgot to check his information before posting. Tsk tsk...
..Oh, and as for virii having a "right" to exist.. that may be, but unless you're opting to be the one put into a sealed tank to feed the virii, I don't think anyone will shed any tears over some particularly nasty diseases being cured.
I'm relatively new to Slashdot (I've only been reading it for about a year now), but I can't help but wonder when it was that Slashdot became a Linux news site, as opposed to generally interesting news. And why I happened to miss that particular announcement from the Geek Compound that's developed Slashdot.
Originally, Slashdot started out as a small site in which Rob Malda posted his opinions on things that interested him, and grew from there. It shows; on Slashdot, you might find news about BeOS, or quantum physics. Biology, archaeology, or information theory. That's why I keep coming back to it.
You don't see everyone else around here who doesn't run a Linux or BSD system posting flamey bits because they can't run the new window manager on their MacOS or Windows system. So many Linux people like to talk about the "Mac jihad", but I think that in general these days the Linux userbase has become even more zealous than the Mac jihad. Which is kind of sad, really, and something I'd attribute to Linux' recent spike in public popularity.
Anyway, trying to keep this on topic: I really don't think anyone should complain or say "Shame on [Hemos|CmdrTaco|Space Ghost]" for posting something that doesn't jive with your Linux-only interest. That's really not very intelligent behavior.
You're all geeks, supposedly, and part of that means finding creative solutions to problems. So stop flaming and find yourself a solution, whatever it might be.
- Cattywampus, who forsake the ability to moderate this to instead add his opinion into the entropy pool.
Want to help? Write a (good and short) editorial for your local newspapers. The chances of getting it printed right now are very, very good.
Here's an even better one. Call up the newspaper's reporter line. Lots and lots of reporters out there are just _looking_ for excuses to write a story. Tell them that you've got a story about what social outcasts feel concerning the events in Colorado. And prepare your "story" beforehand, so you can make it a good one. If you're still in high school, you might lead the reporter over to the library during the lunch hour for some impromptu interviews.
And write, write, write. Eventually, if you put out enough written word, someone is going to read it and echo it. Spread your ideas like a social virus.
Meantime, I can already see that this is starting to happen, because "Joe Public" isn't one individual. There are lots and lots of ignorant, yet not necessarily stupid, people out there that, when informed, will take the sort of action that you'd want such a person to take.
And _they_ do get elected to office.
As the great master Yoda said, "Do or do not, there is no try".;}
I couldn't believe it when I first looked at the responses. I read the license, didn't seem *that* long to me, and it looked like it covered all of the bits that had people up in arms about it before.
And what are the very first replies? "It's too long." Those, at least, subsided after several people demonstrated that it really wasn't much longer than any other of the popular licenses.
So then it just goes back to general negativity. "Apple's in this for no good." "They're just trying to save their OS". "Use Linux!". Blah blah blah.
What I would like to know is, of the people that are going to _contribute_ to Apple's Open Source Project, what do they think about the license?
Everyone else wanting to moan and gripe about a license on a product that they're never going to use anyway, kindly remove your foot from your mouth and go back to your respective projects. Thanks.
If you can generate plasma (helium nuclei, and that's not that hard), you can generate antimatter. There's a nuclear reaction with a common element that, when exposed to alpha particles (the plasma) generates positrons. But then things get sticky...
First, the process also generates free neutrons, which are a pain in the butt to control.
Second, if a fuel pellet of the element were to be used, it is most likely that the positrons would react with the rest of the fuel pellet instead of becoming free to be electromagnetically regulated. That would result in chaos, an uncontrolled reaction.
Third, even if the other shortcomings were worked around, and this is the part that has perplexed me: What do you do with the free energy from the matter/antimatter fusion? A positron/electron pair fusion will basically generate a large gamma photon burst, as well as some free neutrinos and (I think) harmless other bits. But, gamma photons have such a high frequency and short wavelength that there's no good way to harness them.
If anybody's willing to solve those other bits, I'll go dig out one of my notebooks that has the formula for the reaction and things.;}
Slashdot Mirror
Last I heard, cancer was still caused by a group of cells that begin regenerating due to damage but for some reason never acknowledge the chemical signal to stop. There is, to my knowledge, no virus involved.
The anonymous coward I think went off on a rant and forgot to check his information before posting. Tsk tsk...
..Oh, and as for virii having a "right" to exist.. that may be, but unless you're opting to be the one put into a sealed tank to feed the virii, I don't think anyone will shed any tears over some particularly nasty diseases being cured.
I'm relatively new to Slashdot (I've only been reading it for about a year now), but I can't help but wonder when it was that Slashdot became a Linux news site, as opposed to generally interesting news. And why I happened to miss that particular announcement from the Geek Compound that's developed Slashdot.
Originally, Slashdot started out as a small site in which Rob Malda posted his opinions on things that interested him, and grew from there. It shows; on Slashdot, you might find news about BeOS, or quantum physics. Biology, archaeology, or information theory. That's why I keep coming back to it.
You don't see everyone else around here who doesn't run a Linux or BSD system posting flamey bits because they can't run the new window manager on their MacOS or Windows system. So many Linux people like to talk about the "Mac jihad", but I think that in general these days the Linux userbase has become even more zealous than the Mac jihad. Which is kind of sad, really, and something I'd attribute to Linux' recent spike in public popularity.
Anyway, trying to keep this on topic: I really don't think anyone should complain or say "Shame on [Hemos|CmdrTaco|Space Ghost]" for posting something that doesn't jive with your Linux-only interest. That's really not very intelligent behavior.
You're all geeks, supposedly, and part of that means finding creative solutions to problems. So stop flaming and find yourself a solution, whatever it might be.
- Cattywampus, who forsake the ability to moderate this to instead add his opinion into the entropy pool.
Want to help? Write a (good and short) editorial for your local newspapers. The chances of getting it printed right now are very, very good.
;}
Here's an even better one. Call up the newspaper's reporter line. Lots and lots of reporters out there are just _looking_ for excuses to write a story. Tell them that you've got a story about what social outcasts feel concerning the events in Colorado. And prepare your "story" beforehand, so you can make it a good one. If you're still in high school, you might lead the reporter over to the library during the lunch hour for some impromptu interviews.
And write, write, write. Eventually, if you put out enough written word, someone is going to read it and echo it. Spread your ideas like a social virus.
Meantime, I can already see that this is starting to happen, because "Joe Public" isn't one individual. There are lots and lots of ignorant, yet not necessarily stupid, people out there that, when informed, will take the sort of action that you'd want such a person to take.
And _they_ do get elected to office.
As the great master Yoda said, "Do or do not, there is no try".
I couldn't believe it when I first looked at the responses. I read the license, didn't seem *that* long to me, and it looked like it covered all of the bits that had people up in arms about it before.
And what are the very first replies? "It's too long." Those, at least, subsided after several people demonstrated that it really wasn't much longer than any other of the popular licenses.
So then it just goes back to general negativity. "Apple's in this for no good." "They're just trying to save their OS". "Use Linux!". Blah blah blah.
What I would like to know is, of the people that are going to _contribute_ to Apple's Open Source Project, what do they think about the license?
Everyone else wanting to moan and gripe about a license on a product that they're never going to use anyway, kindly remove your foot from your mouth and go back to your respective projects. Thanks.
- Cattywampus.
If you can generate plasma (helium nuclei, and that's not that hard), you can generate antimatter. There's a nuclear reaction with a common element that, when exposed to alpha particles (the plasma) generates positrons. But then things get sticky...
First, the process also generates free neutrons, which are a pain in the butt to control.
Second, if a fuel pellet of the element were to be used, it is most likely that the positrons would react with the rest of the fuel pellet instead of becoming free to be electromagnetically regulated. That would result in chaos, an uncontrolled reaction.
Third, even if the other shortcomings were worked around, and this is the part that has perplexed me: What do you do with the free energy from the matter/antimatter fusion? A positron/electron pair fusion will basically generate a large gamma photon burst, as well as some free neutrinos and (I think) harmless other bits. But, gamma photons have such a high frequency and short wavelength that there's no good way to harness them.
If anybody's willing to solve those other bits, I'll go dig out one of my notebooks that has the formula for the reaction and things.