No, that's great sci-fi fodder, but what I'm refering to is the human toll.
A man and woman (or either alone) want to have a child and are unable to naturally
They consult a specialist who does this sort of thing
They have egg cells, sperm, other cells taken
Either the woman or volunteer hosts the embryo
Failure by stillbirth, premature birth, defects, etc. happen.
Illustrate the emotional cost of dead or ill formed and living children
The chief problem as I still understand is that the practice of cloning is still crude, with high failure rates. And by failure I mean all outcomes other than healthy with ten fingers and toes and will live to be 75 and have average intelligence and lead a normal life. For animals it's been easy to push past the public, except for PETA and others sympathetic to animals.
Have a birth mortality rate of one in two and you'd think there's a major problem, since even the worst rate in the world is better than that. Then there's when the lawyers get involved...
I think a well done example of how Cloning could not work out would be a service. Too bad nobody does these kinds of films in Hollywood anymore. Maybe an independant, but try to get your local cinema or ABC, CBS, NBC, etc. network to carry it.
Sadly, the public have this fun and harmless view of cloning, as brought forth by some movies such as Multiplicity. The dangers of birth defects and other pregnancy problems are still very high. Acceptable to test animals, but not to humans and human babies. Now would be a good time for a film to be made detailing the hazards of cloning.
Even though we
all think this patent is absurd, how are the courts going to hear our opinion?
Write an Amicus Brief. Your opinion, fact finding, etc. on behalf of Prodigy and file it with the court. Chances are Prodigy knows about this, but it doesn't hurt to toss in your 2 cents.
I worked at a college years ago and one thing was observed and related to me which I will toss out here. As go the popularity of certain TV shows so go the popularity of people enrolling in such programs in college/university. Right about now I bet there's going to be a boom in people signing up for Law Enforcement, Fire Sciences, EMT and Search and Rescue programs due to 9-11. But as L.A. Law was popular, we had a lot of pre-law (re: poli sci) students. Same trend for St. Elsewhere, and so on. Now, where do you suppose these people fit into the world when they all graduate? Suppose some just carve out their way, pushing IP and IP Protection. (Somehow I have this vision of Jon Lovitz driving a car very fast behind an ambulance in North, old paradigm)
Tho I often despise Talk Radio, I was subjected to it out of boredom during the 13 hour drive home yesterday. Something was discussed on one show, sadly I cannot recall station or host, to give due credit, suffice to say this isn't my idea:
Business ethics today are measured in profit/revenue terms. I.e. if it costs Bob, Inc. $2,000,000 to honor a contract which returns $1,000,000 and estimated legal and sundry expenses of breaking the contract are $500,000 then Bob, Inc. should break the contract. Honor has become a cost, one with zero value to many commercial concerns, thus it is discarded. Doing the "right thing" because it may preserve a business relationship with greater value down the road, or create additional business by reference, is often written off.
Now consider what BT stands to gain and stands to lose. "Hey, you want to partner with us after you tried to screw us? Fsck off!" But then, maybe there's still enough dumb MBA's out there who cost this out short term and respond, "Ok, sure, where do I sign?"
Years ago I thought the TQM movement was a way for an overpopulation of business majors to carve out a purpose for their existence. The DotCom failures seem to bear this out, since probably every one of them had Mission or Vision statements. Now it's the overpopulation of lawyers turn.
IIRC, Apple first employed Hyperlinking commercially on the Mac well over a decade ago. Consider Apple's and Xerox's suits over GUI desktops (against Microsoft and Apple respectively) and their failures. IANAL, but this seems like one of those, "If you had the patent or copyright that long ago, you should have protected your work sooner", deals where it gets tossed out of court.
BT has been on this for a long time, even though a film is available demonstrating the concept back in the late 60's.
All this is really telling us is that the Stupids have taken over control of Legal Strategies Department at BT. BT must also be pretty hard up for cash to try this sham. This is probably going to cost them court costs, for Prodigy as well, if Prodigy has the brains to countersue.
As an industry of IP, lawsuit, counter-lawsuit develops we best keep in mind that it may not be lawyers who are responsible (blame it on corporate Get-Rich-Quick schemes, is this what they teach MBA's today?), buy the lawyers seem content to pursue, and in the end always manage to get paid.
Make lawyers and law firms pay out of their own pockets when they lose, particularly this big expensive corporate suits. That's about the only balance to power and it's a weak one.
That's a pretty cool image. Also a pretty cool article, too bad I missed it while on vacation (just got in 1.5 hours ago) of a geological nature. Points I visited:
Too bad I wasn't measuring G's. It might have been tricky, though without some really good eq. I was more interested in playing around with my new GPS.
One of the old worries of Dynamic memory, ages ago, was that some cosmic particle could corrupt it, not that I've ever seen evidence of this happening, maybe it was just BS.
As to the spin and orbital properties of an individual atom, particularly the risk which comes with such a density of memory, what could easily and commonly affect these properties? Strong RF? Magnetic fields? Xrays? (note: laptops currently survive airport Xrays, but I'm clueless as to how this happens and whether it's something that eventually will catch up with data stored on hard drives.)
Yesterday I was surfing the some pages from CNN's site and Time which showed the elaborate caves or bunkers outside of Kabul, which reportedly are a number of other locations in southern Afghanistan. Though Omar and bin-Laden have claimed these are only for their own self defense. In recent days these characters have shown themselves to be truly villains worthy of any James Bond:
Devastating weapons
Fanatical followers
Leaders bent on pure society, world domination
Using science and technology to support their own ends, even where use would appear to conflict with their beliefs.
My hunch, as with many allegedly new and cheaper technologies, is that price of the fuel cell batteries will still be high for years and companies like Sony will continue to have proprietary components, cemented together with silicone adhesives or such and designed to be replaceable and disposable, which come at a premium anyway.
Sadly, I can trot down to the office supply, or even (ugh) Fry's, and pick up AA, C, or D NiMH cells for next to nothing. As for NiCad cells, which I've had less success with, there's the HAM dealers who always have just about everything for the DIY'ers.
As to usable life I've found batteries stack up like in this order, best to worst, top to bottom:
Lead-Acid
NiMH
NiCad
Li-Ion
Duracells, Energizers, etc.
Primarily I use NiMH cells in my digital camera and they're just plain awesome the way they survive heavy current draw and recharge well. Two sets, about 1.5 years old and still going strong.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
o __________Notice _________ o
o If you are a cracker or o
o terrorist please use port o
o port 80 as it is secure. o
o Otherwise you may use the o
o non-secure port 2000. o
o Thanks and have a nice day o
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
I spent a few moments yesterday cutting open the dead battery from my Sony VAIO 505TX laptop. My thinking was the "battery" for the laptop was a few Lithium-Ion cells, which I could pick up at one of the local electronics outlets and replace (keeping in mind mA/Hrs, charging profiles, etc.) As luck would have it -- there were three US18650GR Sony Energytec cells, which are a special 3.6v battery only available from Sony's Energy Products division -- a circuit board which monitors the life, strength and other vital stats of the battery. So short of finding an industrial supplier and getting the cells, I can forget rebuilding or even enhancing my laptop battery, the one which works with my charger.
It's a possibility that I could get a Fuel-Cell battery, Lead acid, etc, but the only way I could use it with my laptop would be through the external powersupply connector, which means all the power management tools I normally have would know squat about the remaining time on the battery, since it would think it's running off an adaptor.
Neat idea, but some solutions aren't so straight forward. For now I'll use the charger to run it, and a Tripp Lite inverter to run it while away from home, but in my vehicle.
Then the name must actually be..
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 1
The Green Screen of Renewal
All of life is a cycle, now chant with me the XBox mantra "Ooh. Aah. Doh! Ooh. Aah. Doh!"
We just took delivery of a brand spanking new HP3000, which we'll be running MPE on, apparently for the next 5 years.
We're moving from 2 HP9000 servers to 1 HP9000 and 1 HP3000. This dictated by the software we'll be running. I expect all applications will, over the next 5 years be ported to something else.
It's been delievered and our finance, personnel, payroll and other functions will run on it.
Having been in a shop which employed a variety of Pr1me systems, there will undoubtably be 3rd party support for these for years to come. Just expect HP's end of development to grind to a halt.
CS and other hobbyists get all sniffly for the good old days. I was having a huge amount of fun a couple weeks ago hacking a 6502. That we even recall such an occasion should suggest to you that so long as some of us are alive, remembering and playing around with such artifacts defines who we are.
I was around back then. My father even tried to get me interested in hobby computing, as opposed to my high-voltage experiments with transistors, capacitors, resistors and other things which could explode and poke an eye out. Eventually I got access to a DEC PDP system while in Explorers (at Dow Chemical in Midland, MI, no less) and once I discovered big, huge, high current processors (all TTL logic *8^) you could fry an egg on, I've never looked back. (much like today's P4 and Athlon, hey Thanksgiving baking tip, toss a turkey in one of these machines and cook it in half the time!)
Maybe some day, when I get tired of making small electronic curcuits explode, I'll get one of these and build an SAP (simple as posssible) computer out of one, just for jollies, assuming I still have eyes left.
Speaking of other media where ideas failed.. Who remembers the goofy Commodore Amiga ad that ran during a Super Bowl? Science fictiony man walks down a hallway of shimmering walls, climbs a stairway and puts his fingers on the keyboard of an Amiga as a voice over says something like "get ready for a whole new experience in home computers" They shot around $1 Million for 30 seconds and left everyone thinking, "Huh?" IIRC, at the same time IBM was using a Charlie Chaplin look-alike to successfully move PC's and sign businesses.
Communication is the key, but often the suits pay too much attention to style over substance, as presented by ad or web design agencies. A good web designer should care about the welfare of a client, because repeat and ongoing business with a client is less costly than trying to bring on new ones, also works great for building good references.
Another problem is (whatever department you want to call it; Communications, Public Relations, etc.) people still think in glossy 2D manifestations of information. Yeah, I've looked at some corporate reports, sales brochures, and such and have been so impressed I've run out and bought stuff (sometimes even from them(!)), but this sort of thing failed miserably while their audience still slogged through the web on 9.6k, 14.4k modems, which made downloading pages tedious. Even at 56K, which many probably have by now, some sites are shear torture to surf, because of the download time, per page and the number of pages one must hit to finally get where they want to be. Too observations:
New names for old meanings: I find Microsoft applications famous for this, but I went through school learning one terminology for things and they come along and rename it all so I never know where to look for stuff in help or on web pages. (Note: I'm not just blaming M$, just using as example, many do this)
Customer service was what every user expected from the start. In the past couple years, though, I've seen fewer phone numbers and email addresses on Contact Us pages, often replaced by forms, which who knows whatever happens to. When I want to contact someone, now, I make a pest out of myself by getting their number of a whois lookup and calling them. (Ha-ha!)
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like Stem Cell research, if so then this is old and was covered relentlessly during the debate before Bush made his stand on the issue.
No, that's great sci-fi fodder, but what I'm refering to is the human toll.
A man and woman (or either alone) want to have a child and are unable to naturally
They consult a specialist who does this sort of thing
They have egg cells, sperm, other cells taken
Either the woman or volunteer hosts the embryo
Failure by stillbirth, premature birth, defects, etc. happen.
Illustrate the emotional cost of dead or ill formed and living children
The chief problem as I still understand is that the practice of cloning is still crude, with high failure rates. And by failure I mean all outcomes other than healthy with ten fingers and toes and will live to be 75 and have average intelligence and lead a normal life. For animals it's been easy to push past the public, except for PETA and others sympathetic to animals.
Have a birth mortality rate of one in two and you'd think there's a major problem, since even the worst rate in the world is better than that. Then there's when the lawyers get involved...
I think a well done example of how Cloning could not work out would be a service. Too bad nobody does these kinds of films in Hollywood anymore. Maybe an independant, but try to get your local cinema or ABC, CBS, NBC, etc. network to carry it.
Well, maybe so, but I'm sure there's piles of other related things to patent about this, procedures, treatments, machines that go Bing!, etc.
Sadly, the public have this fun and harmless view of cloning, as brought forth by some movies such as Multiplicity. The dangers of birth defects and other pregnancy problems are still very high. Acceptable to test animals, but not to humans and human babies. Now would be a good time for a film to be made detailing the hazards of cloning.
Write an Amicus Brief. Your opinion, fact finding, etc. on behalf of Prodigy and file it with the court. Chances are Prodigy knows about this, but it doesn't hurt to toss in your 2 cents.
I worked at a college years ago and one thing was observed and related to me which I will toss out here. As go the popularity of certain TV shows so go the popularity of people enrolling in such programs in college/university. Right about now I bet there's going to be a boom in people signing up for Law Enforcement, Fire Sciences, EMT and Search and Rescue programs due to 9-11. But as L.A. Law was popular, we had a lot of pre-law (re: poli sci) students. Same trend for St. Elsewhere, and so on. Now, where do you suppose these people fit into the world when they all graduate? Suppose some just carve out their way, pushing IP and IP Protection. (Somehow I have this vision of Jon Lovitz driving a car very fast behind an ambulance in North, old paradigm)
Business ethics today are measured in profit/revenue terms. I.e. if it costs Bob, Inc. $2,000,000 to honor a contract which returns $1,000,000 and estimated legal and sundry expenses of breaking the contract are $500,000 then Bob, Inc. should break the contract. Honor has become a cost, one with zero value to many commercial concerns, thus it is discarded. Doing the "right thing" because it may preserve a business relationship with greater value down the road, or create additional business by reference, is often written off.
Now consider what BT stands to gain and stands to lose. "Hey, you want to partner with us after you tried to screw us? Fsck off!" But then, maybe there's still enough dumb MBA's out there who cost this out short term and respond, "Ok, sure, where do I sign?"
Years ago I thought the TQM movement was a way for an overpopulation of business majors to carve out a purpose for their existence. The DotCom failures seem to bear this out, since probably every one of them had Mission or Vision statements. Now it's the overpopulation of lawyers turn.
Maybe the followup patent was one for a really large TAB key.
IIRC, Apple first employed Hyperlinking commercially on the Mac well over a decade ago. Consider Apple's and Xerox's suits over GUI desktops (against Microsoft and Apple respectively) and their failures. IANAL, but this seems like one of those, "If you had the patent or copyright that long ago, you should have protected your work sooner", deals where it gets tossed out of court.
All this is really telling us is that the Stupids have taken over control of Legal Strategies Department at BT. BT must also be pretty hard up for cash to try this sham. This is probably going to cost them court costs, for Prodigy as well, if Prodigy has the brains to countersue.
As an industry of IP, lawsuit, counter-lawsuit develops we best keep in mind that it may not be lawyers who are responsible (blame it on corporate Get-Rich-Quick schemes, is this what they teach MBA's today?), buy the lawyers seem content to pursue, and in the end always manage to get paid.
Make lawyers and law firms pay out of their own pockets when they lose, particularly this big expensive corporate suits. That's about the only balance to power and it's a weak one.
Death Valley, -282 ft
South Rim of Grand Canyon, ~7200 ft
Meteor Crater (between Flagstaff and Winslow, Arizona
Too bad I wasn't measuring G's. It might have been tricky, though without some really good eq. I was more interested in playing around with my new GPS.
As to the spin and orbital properties of an individual atom, particularly the risk which comes with such a density of memory, what could easily and commonly affect these properties? Strong RF? Magnetic fields? Xrays? (note: laptops currently survive airport Xrays, but I'm clueless as to how this happens and whether it's something that eventually will catch up with data stored on hard drives.)
So .. when your disk drive needs repair .. take it to a quantum mechanic...
Devastating weapons
Fanatical followers
Leaders bent on pure society, world domination
Using science and technology to support their own ends, even where use would appear to conflict with their beliefs.
Sadly, I can trot down to the office supply, or even (ugh) Fry's, and pick up AA, C, or D NiMH cells for next to nothing. As for NiCad cells, which I've had less success with, there's the HAM dealers who always have just about everything for the DIY'ers.
As to usable life I've found batteries stack up like in this order, best to worst, top to bottom:
Lead-Acid
NiMH
NiCad
Li-Ion
Duracells, Energizers, etc.
Primarily I use NiMH cells in my digital camera and they're just plain awesome the way they survive heavy current draw and recharge well. Two sets, about 1.5 years old and still going strong.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
o __________Notice _________ o
o If you are a cracker or o
o terrorist please use port o
o port 80 as it is secure. o
o Otherwise you may use the o
o non-secure port 2000. o
o Thanks and have a nice day o
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
It's a possibility that I could get a Fuel-Cell battery, Lead acid, etc, but the only way I could use it with my laptop would be through the external powersupply connector, which means all the power management tools I normally have would know squat about the remaining time on the battery, since it would think it's running off an adaptor.
Neat idea, but some solutions aren't so straight forward. For now I'll use the charger to run it, and a Tripp Lite inverter to run it while away from home, but in my vehicle.
All of life is a cycle, now chant with me the XBox mantra "Ooh. Aah. Doh! Ooh. Aah. Doh!"
We're moving from 2 HP9000 servers to 1 HP9000 and 1 HP3000. This dictated by the software we'll be running. I expect all applications will, over the next 5 years be ported to something else.
Having been in a shop which employed a variety of Pr1me systems, there will undoubtably be 3rd party support for these for years to come. Just expect HP's end of development to grind to a halt.
I knew, but forget who, someone who actually made one. I think it was a 386, overclocked, with a switch which shut it down when the cup was removed.
CS and other hobbyists get all sniffly for the good old days. I was having a huge amount of fun a couple weeks ago hacking a 6502. That we even recall such an occasion should suggest to you that so long as some of us are alive, remembering and playing around with such artifacts defines who we are.
Maybe some day, when I get tired of making small electronic curcuits explode, I'll get one of these and build an SAP (simple as posssible) computer out of one, just for jollies, assuming I still have eyes left.
Is it still in production anywhere and what's the current record for overclocking one of these babies?
Speaking of other media where ideas failed.. Who remembers the goofy Commodore Amiga ad that ran during a Super Bowl? Science fictiony man walks down a hallway of shimmering walls, climbs a stairway and puts his fingers on the keyboard of an Amiga as a voice over says something like "get ready for a whole new experience in home computers" They shot around $1 Million for 30 seconds and left everyone thinking, "Huh?" IIRC, at the same time IBM was using a Charlie Chaplin look-alike to successfully move PC's and sign businesses.
Communication is the key, but often the suits pay too much attention to style over substance, as presented by ad or web design agencies. A good web designer should care about the welfare of a client, because repeat and ongoing business with a client is less costly than trying to bring on new ones, also works great for building good references.
New names for old meanings: I find Microsoft applications famous for this, but I went through school learning one terminology for things and they come along and rename it all so I never know where to look for stuff in help or on web pages. (Note: I'm not just blaming M$, just using as example, many do this)
Customer service was what every user expected from the start. In the past couple years, though, I've seen fewer phone numbers and email addresses on Contact Us pages, often replaced by forms, which who knows whatever happens to. When I want to contact someone, now, I make a pest out of myself by getting their number of a whois lookup and calling them. (Ha-ha!)