Isn't this genetic bottleneck already credited to the Mt Toba explosion (Indonesia) which happened about 70,000 years ago?
The Mt Toba explosion is believed to have been so huge (vastly larger than Krakatoa) that it plunged the whole earth into a "nuclear winter"-like period (just look up "Mount Toba" or "Toba catastrophe theory" in Wikipedia).
In any event, we already knew that there was a genetic bottleneck about 70,000 years ago, as those Wikipedia articles indicate. What's the real genetics news here?
If I am flying to Australia from the UK, I don't particularly want to visit the US at all. I am certainly not intending to leave the airport.
But the plane still lands at San Francisco, and I am photographed and fingerprinted, just so that I can board a connecting flight and leave the country without ever walking out of the terminal building. It is a brief transit stop spent in the airport waiting lounges - not a tourist or business visit to the US.
Funny thing is - the flights don't transit through Canada or Mexico, which I would prefer. They all go through the US. Choices are limited here.
So non-Americans do get caught up accidentally (i.e. unintentionally) in the US border insanity just because some travel agent put them on a flight that happened to touch down in the US for a couple of hours while they were travelling from somehow outside the US to somewhere else outside the US.
I have also transited through Singapore - a one party police state in effect - and it never subjected me to the same process of fingerprinting and photographing that the US did for a similar transit stop.
So, yes, I'd say it was an accident encountering the US border. I would have preferred not to.
Before you can sell a new product, you have to make the potential market aware of their need for the product. This is where advertising comes in. Lots of advertisers with baseball bats.
Don't ask people, "Why pay for something when you can get the same feel and functionality for free?"
Ask the retailers, "Why do you sell people MS Office for $300 when you could just pre-install OpenOffice for free?"
Answer: there is no profit in "free", and the users will probably just pirate MS Office anyway because (a) they can, and (b) that is what they are used to.
Clever users refuse to pay for MS Office and install the free OpenOffice themselves. Even cleverer ones find a computer with *free* Ubuntu pre-installed, and save on MS Windows (prices in that link are in AUD, not USD).
Or did the US govt decide that whatever MS was costing the US internally through lack of competition and monopoly rent, it was more than bringing into the US from other countries by doing the same thing to overseas markets (extracting monopoly rent from the rest of the world and destroying non-American competition)?
Kind of "we don't care what you do to us, as long as you do it even more to the others." Microsoft's world domination is an extension of US domination - think balance of trade and how much revenue MS is pulling into the US through licence fees.
This is why the EU is stricter about Microsoft's anti-competitive behaviour than the US is. It costs Europe more than it costs the US.
Why don't the Yahoo board just go over Microsoft's head and offer the shareholders of Microsoft a deal and buy out Microsoft ("Yahoo Windows")? They say attack is the best form of defence.
Oh, wait, Ballmer and Gates ARE the shareholders of Microsoft....
The really funny thing is watching all you people talk about this as if it is the future.
You have no way of knowing whether you are in a convincing artificial reality right now.
In fact, Hegel - back in the 1830s - already taught that all "reality" is virtual. It is *essentially* appearance. It is all a show, folks. It is meaningless to discuss "real reality versus artifical reality", because there is no absolute distinction between them. They are just "more real" and "less real" in relation to each other.
We philosophers knew all about the problems of virutal reality and knowledge of the world back in the 1600s and 1700s and 1800s - long before computers were invented.
Computers just help the people with no imagination to get the problem a few centuries late.
"Now it's entirely possible that the kernel developers never heard of this obscure nuance of the Intel processor."
I am a really amateur assembly language programmer. I know that the setting of the direction flag changes the direction of the string operation. That is what the flag is there for.
I really, really, REALLY would hope that the kernel hackers knew what I know.
It just means that the kernel could think it was in forward gear when it was really in reverse gear. ("Somebody moved the gear lever when I wasn't looking!")
That *could* make a difference to the outcome.
And yeah, I would prefer a kernel that knew which gear it was in before it stepped on the gas.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't this genetic bottleneck already credited to the Mt Toba explosion (Indonesia) which happened about 70,000 years ago?
The Mt Toba explosion is believed to have been so huge (vastly larger than Krakatoa) that it plunged the whole earth into a "nuclear winter"-like period (just look up "Mount Toba" or "Toba catastrophe theory" in Wikipedia).
In any event, we already knew that there was a genetic bottleneck about 70,000 years ago, as those Wikipedia articles indicate. What's the real genetics news here?
"animals like salamanders .. can regrow lost tails .... 'Why can't a mammal do the same thing?'"
I for one welcome our new tail-growing military overlords...
I suppose it would help soldiers to swing through the trees during jungle warfare.
Yes.
If I am flying to Australia from the UK, I don't particularly want to visit the US at all. I am certainly not intending to leave the airport.
But the plane still lands at San Francisco, and I am photographed and fingerprinted, just so that I can board a connecting flight and leave the country without ever walking out of the terminal building. It is a brief transit stop spent in the airport waiting lounges - not a tourist or business visit to the US.
Funny thing is - the flights don't transit through Canada or Mexico, which I would prefer. They all go through the US. Choices are limited here.
So non-Americans do get caught up accidentally (i.e. unintentionally) in the US border insanity just because some travel agent put them on a flight that happened to touch down in the US for a couple of hours while they were travelling from somehow outside the US to somewhere else outside the US.
I have also transited through Singapore - a one party police state in effect - and it never subjected me to the same process of fingerprinting and photographing that the US did for a similar transit stop.
So, yes, I'd say it was an accident encountering the US border. I would have preferred not to.
Yes, but we could break those legs.
Before you can sell a new product, you have to make the potential market aware of their need for the product. This is where advertising comes in. Lots of advertisers with baseball bats.
So this is where Gartner gets its advice.
I have often wondered...
Ask the retailers, "Why do you sell people MS Office for $300 when you could just pre-install OpenOffice for free?"
Answer: there is no profit in "free", and the users will probably just pirate MS Office anyway because (a) they can, and (b) that is what they are used to.
Clever users refuse to pay for MS Office and install the free OpenOffice themselves. Even cleverer ones find a computer with *free* Ubuntu pre-installed, and save on MS Windows (prices in that link are in AUD, not USD).
And it weighs even less than the Apple one.
And just to be safe, you should go there and deliver it by hand.
Or did the US govt decide that whatever MS was costing the US internally through lack of competition and monopoly rent, it was more than bringing into the US from other countries by doing the same thing to overseas markets (extracting monopoly rent from the rest of the world and destroying non-American competition)?
Kind of "we don't care what you do to us, as long as you do it even more to the others." Microsoft's world domination is an extension of US domination - think balance of trade and how much revenue MS is pulling into the US through licence fees.
This is why the EU is stricter about Microsoft's anti-competitive behaviour than the US is. It costs Europe more than it costs the US.
"surely putting a person in it would be a waste"
I have often felt this way about war too.
So after eating a diet of salads for years, the Moon people progress to eating salad with lamb?
You are obviously planning to populate the moon with Greeks. (And they would go from being Hellenic to Selenic).
In other words, it is sort of like drowning, only dryer.
By the time OOOXML is a usable standard, *we* will have expired.
Here:
...
5 END
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!"
20 GOTO 10
I've fixed it. Oh wait a minute, now it doesn't
What if your ISP puts *everythng* in the slow lane for buses?
Isn't that net neutrality?
I tried using one of these fancy 3D printers to print my assignments, but all it did was make my mistakes stick out.
"if I take one step towards a bird without even looking at it or intending to eat it..."
You're a cat, aren't you? Come on, 'fess up.
Hey everybody, there's a cat posting on Slashdot! I thought only dogs were able to post anonymously on the Internet.
(And another proof you are a cat: you misspelled "paranoia". It is well known that cats can't spell. I've seen Lolcats. I'm not fooled.)
This is why I only access sites written in foreign languages which the ISPs and their advertisers cannot understand.
Sites like Slashdot.
(And I set Google to Pig Latin. O-one-nay an-cay understand-ay y-may eries-quay!)
You know. If they are doing simple text analysis, Pig Latin just might work as an encryption method.
Why don't the Yahoo board just go over Microsoft's head and offer the shareholders of Microsoft a deal and buy out Microsoft ("Yahoo Windows")? They say attack is the best form of defence.
Oh, wait, Ballmer and Gates ARE the shareholders of Microsoft....
The really funny thing is watching all you people talk about this as if it is the future.
You have no way of knowing whether you are in a convincing artificial reality right now.
In fact, Hegel - back in the 1830s - already taught that all "reality" is virtual. It is *essentially* appearance. It is all a show, folks. It is meaningless to discuss "real reality versus artifical reality", because there is no absolute distinction between them. They are just "more real" and "less real" in relation to each other.
We philosophers knew all about the problems of virutal reality and knowledge of the world back in the 1600s and 1700s and 1800s - long before computers were invented.
Computers just help the people with no imagination to get the problem a few centuries late.
There. Was that trollish enough?
While I have a pocket reference to some highly irregular expressions.
"Now it's entirely possible that the kernel developers never heard of this obscure nuance of the Intel processor."
I am a really amateur assembly language programmer. I know that the setting of the direction flag changes the direction of the string operation. That is what the flag is there for.
I really, really, REALLY would hope that the kernel hackers knew what I know.
And more. Lots more.
It just means that the kernel could think it was in forward gear when it was really in reverse gear. ("Somebody moved the gear lever when I wasn't looking!")
That *could* make a difference to the outcome.
And yeah, I would prefer a kernel that knew which gear it was in before it stepped on the gas.
Everyone should learn $(SELF->FAVOURITE_LANGUAGE).
There. That will save everyone else the need to post.
"You can use them ..."
No, you *have* to use them, and that is the problem.
"Keep the simple things simple, and make the complex things achievable" is the goal of a good programming language.
Not: "whatever your transport needs, a Boeing 747 is always the answer." Sometimes a pair of roller skates would be more practical.