Eh? You don't HAVE to download the newest kernel. There ARE individuals who LIKE to download the latest and greatest and play with it and they are invaluable as aiding in the debugging effort. Sure, linux could go all cloistered and slow like *BSD and only release the occassional new update, but then, this is slow precisely because there aren't thousands of users helping find the bugs.
The BSD system works for a slow-developing system but it really isn't keeping up with the fast pace of hardware development the way linux is. Someone buys a brandnew video card, wants to take advantage of it. Will they stand a better chance of that with linux or *BSD in the near future? They will with linux because within a couple weeks, a new kernel with support for that card will be released and those early adopters get to make use of their new hardware NOW as opposed to months from now.
I've been contemplating playing with FreeBSD for a while, if for no other reason than to gain experience with yet another unix-like system. For most of what I do, I imagine it would be fine (lyx, web, email, learning a wee bit of programming) but there is one thing I doubt as far as *BSDs capabilities: GAMES.
I have several loki games and I run several other windoze games under wine. I recently got DRI hardware 3d accel working (REAL nice) with my ATI Radeon card and it works well with the games. Can *BSD handle any of this? I assume the XFree/DRI thing is not a problem (is it?) but what about actually running the games?
If I can't run my games on it as well as I can thus far on linux, then it is ultimately a non-contender. Also, can one run StarOffice on it? Sure, sure, you can complain about this or that aspect of StarOffice but it DOES do the job nearly as well as Office on windoze does, to a greater extent than ANY other available linux suite. If it (staroffice) could do citations/references like lyx can then I would use it exclusively but... Can *BSD run StarOffice?
OK, I am finally curious enough to ask this question: What is it about linux and *BSD that makes it only MOSTLY posix compliant? Why are they not FULLY posix compliant, that is, what would be needed to make them compliant and what are the real barriers (other than inertia) to making them fully posix compliant?
There are MANY genes involved in the process of apoptosis. The deactivation or mutation of several of which are required for cancer. A cell that starts dividing like crazy, regardless of DNA damage or cell-cell signals is normally stopped cold and self-destructed via apoptotic genes. When a cell loses that function, it is well on its way to being cancerous.
Longevity is not simply some apoptotic barrier, it is due to many factors, much of which is tied to DNA damage. You DON'T want you damaged-DNA-containing cells to keep reproducing in order to keep you young. The cost of your extended youth would be many abnormal tissues, malignant and non-malignant tumors, etc. Simply stopping apoptosis isn't going to make you forever young, it simply would be accomplishing some of the initial required steps for cancer development.
What you really need is improved/more DNA protective machinery (free radical scavangers) and repair machinery coupled, telomere length maintenance, and STRONG apoptotic mechanisms to catch the damaged cells that get past the repair machinery. THEN you get longevity without the abnormal growth of cells that shouldn't be permitted to continue.
Oh yes, the EVIL of government regulation: that keeps your water clean and safe to drink, keeps your workplace safe, protects your air from being tremendously fouled by unregulated business, CREATED competition in the phone/long-distance business (you are probably too young to remember the days of ONLY AT&T, not owning your phone, no choice in phone service provider).
Oh yeah...we saw what deregulation/unregulation does. It created all the evils of the early industrial revolution in which pollution was horrendous, workers received NO consideration for quality of life, job safety, etc, unions were REALLY not OK and workers were horribly abused physically, the environment was free for utter anhililation. Please, let's go back to THAT.
Ah, simple and seemingly logical argument but flawed. The truth is that sperm are produced all the time by the billions in a man and that requires constant, non-stop cell divisions. The cells that make sperm are not younger than the body making those sperm.
Something similar occurs for the egg though not to the same extent since the eggs are already pre-made, so to speak, by the time a female is born. What has yet to happen is maturation of the set number of eggs. They are dormant, for the most part, and they form early and so are not subject to as many cell divisions as spermatagonia but they are not young cells either.
My personal theory is related to your general idea... The vast bulk of DNA repair enzymes are tied to transcription (or tightly associated with transcription). What THIS means is that each of your cells saves time and energy repairing the DNA that it uses - DNA that is actively transcribed into RNA - and for the most part ignores DNA that is not transcribed. In all cells except neurons, MOST genes are turned off and not transcribed and so are not a primary target for repair. Neurons, on the other hand, are the one cell type that has the most DNA being actively transcribed all the time. Thus, neurons have more of the cellular DNA subject to repair than any other cell.
What you COULD try to do is use glia DNA or neuronal DNA as a source for cloning, hoping that 1) a lot more of that DNA is open for business normally, so to speak, is therefore subject to constant surveillance and repair, and 2) a lot more of neuronal DNA is not silenced relative to other cell-types, and therefore not in need of turning on in the egg. Less chance for the hypothesized errors.
Another source for DNA for cloning would be adult stem cells that must retain the ability to become one of a range of cell-types at any time and, therefore, much of their DNA is also not likely to be heavily modified for silencing vs fully differentiated cells.
There ARE human clones. They are called "identical twins". They are more identical to each other than any laboratory clone could be to the DNA donor for it.
You could do the same thing - clone people into identical twins - by borrowing the normal way it happens. You let an embryo develop to around the 16 cell stage or so, split it into two 8 cell embryos, implant them and viola! You just cloned someone. Really cool would be to do it twice and create the first identical quadruplets. All clones.
Sure, it isn't as unusual as an adult with a (near) identical twin who is many years younger (a classic clone) but it IS cloning to perfection, so to speak.
I will certainly consider it but I think I will still give a few other things a shot first to make sure that the "problems" I sometimes have are real vs due to lack of lyx knowledge.
For instance, I have a paper ready for submission but my thesis advisor has to review it first. He complains that the font used (by default) in lyx for the abstract is too small. I cannot seem to change this font...as if lyx is set to use one font size and ONLY one font size for an abstract style. Other issues have to do with formatting that, so far, I can only seem to clear up by learning latex commands, which I would rather avoid whenever possible.
OK... Oh yeah, I'm not a programmer, I'm a biologist. I forgot for a moment and thought I actually had time to quit my research and learn a programming language, dive into the source of one of these projects and fix their critical weakness vis a vis research writing.
I certainly DID mention what I use. I use lyx plus pybliographic. This suffices for the most part but lyx isn't quite as "friendly" as many wordprocessors are and there are some quirks that drive me nuts.
In spite of the fact that most of the sci-journals I submit to do not accept Word documents, I have to ultimately open my lyx docs in Word to save them as word documents for in-house use. Lyx and latex just don't do doc. At least, with a number of the word processors, there is an ability to save docs in Word format- and if they had the reference/citation ability I mention, they would be near perfect for use.
One could do their writing and citing, save the doc in word format and only have to dick with a few formatting errors in the real Word package to make it identical to the original.
I stand by what I wrote. You CANNOT write research papers (in school/college/work) or any kind of scientific article without citing references. A hell of a lot of people have to write papers in school, no? A lot of people, from CS to physicists to biologists to doctors HAVE to cite references in any official papers of any importance. You simply cannot do this properly with word processors that require you to add reference pages and citations by hand as an afterthought.
Mundane writing is fine but it is ONLY thing that ALL available wordprocessors do with near equal ability. You can do this with a simple text editor. What not a single wordprocessor in linux can do is what each of the MAJOR wordprocessors in the windoze and mac worlds CAN do (via an additional software package like EndNote)...handle references/citations/bibliographies. To do this, the wordprocessors have to be friendly to the addon app. NONE of the linux wordprocessors are like this. Not a single one even considers the possibility that people may actually need to cite references - hence they (the developers) expect all writing to be based on nothing. Heresay. They obviously don't recall college or primary school in which they HAD to cite references. They obviously have simple jobs that do not require extensive research to back up what they state/write. If they did, they would realize that you MUST cite references or your words are no better than the bark of a neighbor's dog. Mere noise.
I am tired of recommending to these developers that they would actually have something different from EVERYONE else if they made their package friendly to not only the casual writer, but also the professional who makes proper attributes in their writing.
THERE IS NOT A SINGLE LINUX WORDPROCESSOR THAT IS A SERIOUS WORDPROCESSOR. A REAL and serious wordprocessor would support references/citations in some way. In the Windoze and Mac world, Word or Wordperfect have EndNote to handle citations and generation of bibliography pages. In linux the ONLY apps that can do this are latex plus bibtex or lyx plus pybliographic or sixpack.
It is impossible to write serious research papers or professional scientific papers without a bibliography/citation capability of some type. It is unacceptable to have to create a reference page or pages by hand and then enter your citations throughout your paper by hand. With lyx, which is not properly a "wordprocessor", this is trivial and easy via pybliographic or sixpack (or you can do it semi-automatically within lyx as long as you know the index names of all your citations).
What is needed is for SOME linux wordprocessor to actually include this functionality within itself, along the lines of a built-in EndNote or pybliographic or sixpack OR it needs to include a pipe that can be utilized by pybliographic or sixpack for interfunctionality. Pybliographic and sixpack use the lyxpipe to place citations into your lyx document. In lyx, you enter the bibliography name at the end by adding a reference section. When you print it, it automatically handles the citation formatting as well as the formatting of the reference page(s)...just like working with Word or Wordperfect on doze or the Mac with EndNote.
I have requested/suggested this functionality to everyone who is working on wordprocessors (koffice, Sun with staroffice, abiword, etc) but it never comes to anything. No scientist or serious researcher can make any use of the weak wordprocessors available to linux without this functionality. That leaves serious writers with lyx or latex, period.
If you want to write letters to mommy and daddy, or a letter to the editor at your local newspaper, then Abiword, kword, staroffice, etc, are fine. If you do SERIOUS writing: research, scientific publishing, etc, then they are pathetic toys of no use - merely glorified text editors.
I don't know what process is being used in the systems you mention but it is hardly necessary to destroy any DNA (or RNA for that matter) to get its information. There are several ways, off the top of my head, that information can be pulled from DNA without harming it: 1) plain, old sequencing. Been done for years. 2) Newer tech - DNA chip arrays. Analyze the florescence on the DNA chip vs your test DNA or RNA and you know its information content - no destruction necessary.
Beyond that, it is incredibly simple to produce limitless copies of any DNA or RNA you are interested in (PCR/RT-PCR, subcloning).
In any case, what does it matter if the nucleic acid is destroyed. Once you know its content, you can generate it again easily enough, though...what's the point of that?
Don't be so hasty to rule out reps of the galactic federation/empire. Perhaps the photo will demonstrate that the lander DID land safely, ready to work, but the image will also reveal footprints leading up to the craft and a few nuts and bolts laying on the ground, plus some pulled/cut wires.
See, the lander actually landed in Xenu's rock garden. Besides wrecking months of hard work, it also was set to broadcast images of Xenu's Martian vacation home as well as images of Xenu, in full gardening regalia!
It is also a well-known Scientology fact that Xenu has a habit of stuffing H-bombed soul clusters plucked from Earthen volcanos into his/her rock gardens. They produce a haunting wailing sound that tacks well with the desolate, lonely looking rock garden design. This information is NOT for the general public, afterall, but is for OTs VII and above. The lander would have broadcast OT VII "stuff" to everyone, fer Xenu's sake!
Re:How many people will rush out and upgrade?
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XFree 4.0.3 Released
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· Score: 1
I will immediately upgrade from my present 4.0.2 release to the 4.0.3 release. Why? Because I have an ATI Radeon card and want the best driver available. If you have one of these cards, then upgrading is assuredly called for since Radeon support is quite new.
Except for one big problem...My private life is none of your goddamn business. What I like, dislike, do (and whom with) is none of your goddamn business. If I wanted people's noses stuck into my personal life, I would create one of those lame, ridiculous personal websites with all my personal details up for every buttwipe, geek, dweeb, pervert, psycho, and yes, even normal to dive into. But I don't do this and I wont.
Unless I agree otherwise, my medical history, personal beliefs and attitudes, my hobbies, my preferences, my sex life is NOBODY'S business but mine (and those directly involved). Period.
I'm no gun nut, but I would certainly take up arms to protect my ultimate rights of privacy from the world you seem to envision as desireable. No. It. Is. NOT. Desireable.
Nasa's problems are not so much their own, but are actually imposed upon them from without. The government, changing every few years, sometimes headed with visionaries, other time by ignorant idiots (Bush, for instance). They cut the purse strings on a timeline that doesn't work with long-term plans as space exploration and development require. They don't see a real tangible result NOW, they think none can possibly be forthcoming.
Nasa is trying to do the best it can with pathetic resources it is allowed. If it was supported in any way along the lines it was in the 60s, we would be making great strides, would likely be well on the way to having humans on Mars, would be mining the moon, have large solar power satellites in orbit, etc. Don't blame Nasa because they cannot do this with $1.
There are many other non-lethal weapons under development than just this. There is ultrasonic weapons in testing that can incapacitate individuals with nausea and/or pain/cramping. There is a REAL stun gun that was actually posted on slashdot about a year ago in which an ultraviolet laser is combined with high electric charge to produce a phaser in the mold of star trek - the ultraviolet laser is used to ionize a column of air to your target nearly simultaneous with a burst of electricity ala a taser. The ionized air column acts as a direct path to your target for your electric shock. The weapon can be dialed to whatever strength you want...mild stun to (potentially) lethal jolt. And it can shoot around corners (via mirrors)! Beautiful! Use that instead of a pussy paintball gun. YOu KNOW when you get hit.
Age DOES matter in many respects, irregardless of experience. It does depend on what you are after from the individual, however.
Maturity is very much related to age. It is biologically demonstrated that people in their low 20s are still not fully mature in their brain development. The younger you go, the less mature, and this DOES affect judgement and respect. I can easily respect someone's skill but have absolutely no trust in their judgement.
I have never found a person in their teens who is truly logical, systematic, and MATURE in their thought processes outside certain technical tasks. It is also rather rare to find a young 20-something with emotional maturity.
Annectdotal evidence of those older than their 20s being "immature" is not scientifically and objectively relevant. You cannot argue the scientific, biological evidence.
Like it or not, until one reaches somewhere into their later 20s, their brain is NOT fully developed and they are NOT emotionally mature. Their ultimate judgement is suspect until proven otherwise. If you are in your teens, then you are so addled with rageing hormones that your logic and emotional sensibilities are simply outa wack. Biological fact.
Quite the contrary. The Republicans that stole the recent election are, heart and soul, beyond question, in the bed with the Corporate States of America ideal. They are, a priori, against ANY antitrust legislation or legal action. This is as much a part of their inherent, invariant nature as is a blind belief in their own infallable moral judgement.
One can say with total certitude that the Bush syndicate will do anything and everything they can to censor whatever disagrees with their personal moral lies, will do anything they can to help corporations, the bigger and richer the better, against the general public good, against labor, against humanity. They tout their god with every breath, forgetting that a rich man can get into heaven as easily as a camel can thread itself through the head of a needle (to paraphrase their own religious nonsense that they conveniently ALWAYS ignore).
This is a damaged and damaging syndicate in office. It is also ASSURED to be a single term syndicate.
Even if a sample of your DNA (in some cells) were transported to a crimescene by the perp, it would not convict YOU. The perp, beyond his or her control will leave behind their own DNA. In any case, there is DNA all over the place belonging to a whole host of different people who have been in the area of the crime.
The DNA must be directly associated with the victim in some way and then all the different DNA samples that may come from the victim (other people and pets the person encountered prior to or after the crime) have to be matched to a suspect. A suspect usually doesn't come out of thin air, there is a path that leads to a suspect. THEN, if any of the DNA matches that of the suspect, THEN that person has some explaining to do.
DNA doesn't ensure a conviction. A solid alibi trumps DNA (DNA can hang around for quite a while). It simply helps confirm whether a particular suspect was or was not the perp. It is not the end-all, be-all of modern crime scene investigation. You would certainly be crying out for DNA if you were jailed and you didn't do it...
Your description is of a company that is already dead but hasn't had the decency to lie down.
The only thing hanging around does is mean that when the full fall comes, you will be there with the rest of them, all your handwringing changing nothing.
You also indicate that your co-workers are quite talented too. Well, again, quit. They are talented and will also find new, good jobs.
You are flogging yourself over a non-issue. Quit, take one of the job offers, the rest, in ones and groups will quit over a short time and find new jobs that will likely be better overall (given your description).
Kind of off topic but... The only part of evolution that is THEORY is the how it happens - the overall mechanism. The FACT of evolution, for which there is no question at all in scientific circles, just is and isn't disputed at all.
The theory of evolution is among the most scientifically supported theories in science, right up there with relativity, atomic theory, and the like.
Re:Let's hope a rogue state doesn't have a stinger
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Laser-equipped 747
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· Score: 1
This logic applies to ALL aircraft, be it F117 or B-52. Big deal? How many US military aircraft have been shot down by shoulder launched missles as you describe? How many planes did the US lose to this sort of attack in Desert Storm? NONE.
This is essentially not a threat - the aircraft are kept on guarded US military bases (and a 747 can be deployed to well-protected sites just like a B-52). At most, an infiltrator might snag ONE plane on takeoff before his ticket got punched but then, there is a WING of such aircraft, not just one.
Slashdot Mirror
Eh? You don't HAVE to download the newest kernel. There ARE individuals who LIKE to download the latest and greatest and play with it and they are invaluable as aiding in the debugging effort. Sure, linux could go all cloistered and slow like *BSD and only release the occassional new update, but then, this is slow precisely because there aren't thousands of users helping find the bugs.
The BSD system works for a slow-developing system but it really isn't keeping up with the fast pace of hardware development the way linux is. Someone buys a brandnew video card, wants to take advantage of it. Will they stand a better chance of that with linux or *BSD in the near future? They will with linux because within a couple weeks, a new kernel with support for that card will be released and those early adopters get to make use of their new hardware NOW as opposed to months from now.
I've been contemplating playing with FreeBSD for a while, if for no other reason than to gain experience with yet another unix-like system. For most of what I do, I imagine it would be fine (lyx, web, email, learning a wee bit of programming) but there is one thing I doubt as far as *BSDs capabilities: GAMES.
I have several loki games and I run several other windoze games under wine. I recently got DRI hardware 3d accel working (REAL nice) with my ATI Radeon card and it works well with the games. Can *BSD handle any of this? I assume the XFree/DRI thing is not a problem (is it?) but what about actually running the games?
If I can't run my games on it as well as I can thus far on linux, then it is ultimately a non-contender. Also, can one run StarOffice on it? Sure, sure, you can complain about this or that aspect of StarOffice but it DOES do the job nearly as well as Office on windoze does, to a greater extent than ANY other available linux suite. If it (staroffice) could do citations/references like lyx can then I would use it exclusively but... Can *BSD run StarOffice?
OK, I am finally curious enough to ask this question: What is it about linux and *BSD that makes it only MOSTLY posix compliant? Why are they not FULLY posix compliant, that is, what would be needed to make them compliant and what are the real barriers (other than inertia) to making them fully posix compliant?
There are MANY genes involved in the process of apoptosis. The deactivation or mutation of several of which are required for cancer. A cell that starts dividing like crazy, regardless of DNA damage or cell-cell signals is normally stopped cold and self-destructed via apoptotic genes. When a cell loses that function, it is well on its way to being cancerous.
Longevity is not simply some apoptotic barrier, it is due to many factors, much of which is tied to DNA damage. You DON'T want you damaged-DNA-containing cells to keep reproducing in order to keep you young. The cost of your extended youth would be many abnormal tissues, malignant and non-malignant tumors, etc. Simply stopping apoptosis isn't going to make you forever young, it simply would be accomplishing some of the initial required steps for cancer development.
What you really need is improved/more DNA protective machinery (free radical scavangers) and repair machinery coupled, telomere length maintenance, and STRONG apoptotic mechanisms to catch the damaged cells that get past the repair machinery. THEN you get longevity without the abnormal growth of cells that shouldn't be permitted to continue.
Oh yes, the EVIL of government regulation: that keeps your water clean and safe to drink, keeps your workplace safe, protects your air from being tremendously fouled by unregulated business, CREATED competition in the phone/long-distance business (you are probably too young to remember the days of ONLY AT&T, not owning your phone, no choice in phone service provider).
Oh yeah...we saw what deregulation/unregulation does. It created all the evils of the early industrial revolution in which pollution was horrendous, workers received NO consideration for quality of life, job safety, etc, unions were REALLY not OK and workers were horribly abused physically, the environment was free for utter anhililation. Please, let's go back to THAT.
Ah, simple and seemingly logical argument but flawed. The truth is that sperm are produced all the time by the billions in a man and that requires constant, non-stop cell divisions. The cells that make sperm are not younger than the body making those sperm.
Something similar occurs for the egg though not to the same extent since the eggs are already pre-made, so to speak, by the time a female is born. What has yet to happen is maturation of the set number of eggs. They are dormant, for the most part, and they form early and so are not subject to as many cell divisions as spermatagonia but they are not young cells either.
My personal theory is related to your general idea... The vast bulk of DNA repair enzymes are tied to transcription (or tightly associated with transcription). What THIS means is that each of your cells saves time and energy repairing the DNA that it uses - DNA that is actively transcribed into RNA - and for the most part ignores DNA that is not transcribed. In all cells except neurons, MOST genes are turned off and not transcribed and so are not a primary target for repair. Neurons, on the other hand, are the one cell type that has the most DNA being actively transcribed all the time. Thus, neurons have more of the cellular DNA subject to repair than any other cell.
What you COULD try to do is use glia DNA or neuronal DNA as a source for cloning, hoping that 1) a lot more of that DNA is open for business normally, so to speak, is therefore subject to constant surveillance and repair, and 2) a lot more of neuronal DNA is not silenced relative to other cell-types, and therefore not in need of turning on in the egg. Less chance for the hypothesized errors.
Another source for DNA for cloning would be adult stem cells that must retain the ability to become one of a range of cell-types at any time and, therefore, much of their DNA is also not likely to be heavily modified for silencing vs fully differentiated cells.
There ARE human clones. They are called "identical twins". They are more identical to each other than any laboratory clone could be to the DNA donor for it.
You could do the same thing - clone people into identical twins - by borrowing the normal way it happens. You let an embryo develop to around the 16 cell stage or so, split it into two 8 cell embryos, implant them and viola! You just cloned someone. Really cool would be to do it twice and create the first identical quadruplets. All clones.
Sure, it isn't as unusual as an adult with a (near) identical twin who is many years younger (a classic clone) but it IS cloning to perfection, so to speak.
I will certainly consider it but I think I will still give a few other things a shot first to make sure that the "problems" I sometimes have are real vs due to lack of lyx knowledge.
For instance, I have a paper ready for submission but my thesis advisor has to review it first. He complains that the font used (by default) in lyx for the abstract is too small. I cannot seem to change this font...as if lyx is set to use one font size and ONLY one font size for an abstract style. Other issues have to do with formatting that, so far, I can only seem to clear up by learning latex commands, which I would rather avoid whenever possible.
OK... Oh yeah, I'm not a programmer, I'm a biologist. I forgot for a moment and thought I actually had time to quit my research and learn a programming language, dive into the source of one of these projects and fix their critical weakness vis a vis research writing.
I certainly DID mention what I use. I use lyx plus pybliographic. This suffices for the most part but lyx isn't quite as "friendly" as many wordprocessors are and there are some quirks that drive me nuts.
In spite of the fact that most of the sci-journals I submit to do not accept Word documents, I have to ultimately open my lyx docs in Word to save them as word documents for in-house use. Lyx and latex just don't do doc. At least, with a number of the word processors, there is an ability to save docs in Word format- and if they had the reference/citation ability I mention, they would be near perfect for use.
One could do their writing and citing, save the doc in word format and only have to dick with a few formatting errors in the real Word package to make it identical to the original.
I stand by what I wrote. You CANNOT write research papers (in school/college/work) or any kind of scientific article without citing references. A hell of a lot of people have to write papers in school, no? A lot of people, from CS to physicists to biologists to doctors HAVE to cite references in any official papers of any importance. You simply cannot do this properly with word processors that require you to add reference pages and citations by hand as an afterthought.
Mundane writing is fine but it is ONLY thing that ALL available wordprocessors do with near equal ability. You can do this with a simple text editor. What not a single wordprocessor in linux can do is what each of the MAJOR wordprocessors in the windoze and mac worlds CAN do (via an additional software package like EndNote)...handle references/citations/bibliographies. To do this, the wordprocessors have to be friendly to the addon app. NONE of the linux wordprocessors are like this. Not a single one even considers the possibility that people may actually need to cite references - hence they (the developers) expect all writing to be based on nothing. Heresay. They obviously don't recall college or primary school in which they HAD to cite references. They obviously have simple jobs that do not require extensive research to back up what they state/write. If they did, they would realize that you MUST cite references or your words are no better than the bark of a neighbor's dog. Mere noise.
I am tired of recommending to these developers that they would actually have something different from EVERYONE else if they made their package friendly to not only the casual writer, but also the professional who makes proper attributes in their writing.
THERE IS NOT A SINGLE LINUX WORDPROCESSOR THAT IS A SERIOUS WORDPROCESSOR. A REAL and serious wordprocessor would support references/citations in some way. In the Windoze and Mac world, Word or Wordperfect have EndNote to handle citations and generation of bibliography pages. In linux the ONLY apps that can do this are latex plus bibtex or lyx plus pybliographic or sixpack.
It is impossible to write serious research papers or professional scientific papers without a bibliography/citation capability of some type. It is unacceptable to have to create a reference page or pages by hand and then enter your citations throughout your paper by hand. With lyx, which is not properly a "wordprocessor", this is trivial and easy via pybliographic or sixpack (or you can do it semi-automatically within lyx as long as you know the index names of all your citations).
What is needed is for SOME linux wordprocessor to actually include this functionality within itself, along the lines of a built-in EndNote or pybliographic or sixpack OR it needs to include a pipe that can be utilized by pybliographic or sixpack for interfunctionality. Pybliographic and sixpack use the lyxpipe to place citations into your lyx document. In lyx, you enter the bibliography name at the end by adding a reference section. When you print it, it automatically handles the citation formatting as well as the formatting of the reference page(s)...just like working with Word or Wordperfect on doze or the Mac with EndNote.
I have requested/suggested this functionality to everyone who is working on wordprocessors (koffice, Sun with staroffice, abiword, etc) but it never comes to anything. No scientist or serious researcher can make any use of the weak wordprocessors available to linux without this functionality. That leaves serious writers with lyx or latex, period.
If you want to write letters to mommy and daddy, or a letter to the editor at your local newspaper, then Abiword, kword, staroffice, etc, are fine. If you do SERIOUS writing: research, scientific publishing, etc, then they are pathetic toys of no use - merely glorified text editors.
I don't know what process is being used in the systems you mention but it is hardly necessary to destroy any DNA (or RNA for that matter) to get its information. There are several ways, off the top of my head, that information can be pulled from DNA without harming it: 1) plain, old sequencing. Been done for years. 2) Newer tech - DNA chip arrays. Analyze the florescence on the DNA chip vs your test DNA or RNA and you know its information content - no destruction necessary.
Beyond that, it is incredibly simple to produce limitless copies of any DNA or RNA you are interested in (PCR/RT-PCR, subcloning).
In any case, what does it matter if the nucleic acid is destroyed. Once you know its content, you can generate it again easily enough, though...what's the point of that?
Don't be so hasty to rule out reps of the galactic federation/empire. Perhaps the photo will demonstrate that the lander DID land safely, ready to work, but the image will also reveal footprints leading up to the craft and a few nuts and bolts laying on the ground, plus some pulled/cut wires.
See, the lander actually landed in Xenu's rock garden. Besides wrecking months of hard work, it also was set to broadcast images of Xenu's Martian vacation home as well as images of Xenu, in full gardening regalia!
It is also a well-known Scientology fact that Xenu has a habit of stuffing H-bombed soul clusters plucked from Earthen volcanos into his/her rock gardens. They produce a haunting wailing sound that tacks well with the desolate, lonely looking rock garden design. This information is NOT for the general public, afterall, but is for OTs VII and above. The lander would have broadcast OT VII "stuff" to everyone, fer Xenu's sake!
I will immediately upgrade from my present 4.0.2 release to the 4.0.3 release. Why? Because I have an ATI Radeon card and want the best driver available. If you have one of these cards, then upgrading is assuredly called for since Radeon support is quite new.
Except for one big problem...My private life is none of your goddamn business. What I like, dislike, do (and whom with) is none of your goddamn business. If I wanted people's noses stuck into my personal life, I would create one of those lame, ridiculous personal websites with all my personal details up for every buttwipe, geek, dweeb, pervert, psycho, and yes, even normal to dive into. But I don't do this and I wont.
Unless I agree otherwise, my medical history, personal beliefs and attitudes, my hobbies, my preferences, my sex life is NOBODY'S business but mine (and those directly involved). Period.
I'm no gun nut, but I would certainly take up arms to protect my ultimate rights of privacy from the world you seem to envision as desireable. No. It. Is. NOT. Desireable.
Nasa's problems are not so much their own, but are actually imposed upon them from without. The government, changing every few years, sometimes headed with visionaries, other time by ignorant idiots (Bush, for instance). They cut the purse strings on a timeline that doesn't work with long-term plans as space exploration and development require. They don't see a real tangible result NOW, they think none can possibly be forthcoming.
Nasa is trying to do the best it can with pathetic resources it is allowed. If it was supported in any way along the lines it was in the 60s, we would be making great strides, would likely be well on the way to having humans on Mars, would be mining the moon, have large solar power satellites in orbit, etc. Don't blame Nasa because they cannot do this with $1.
There are many other non-lethal weapons under development than just this. There is ultrasonic weapons in testing that can incapacitate individuals with nausea and/or pain/cramping. There is a REAL stun gun that was actually posted on slashdot about a year ago in which an ultraviolet laser is combined with high electric charge to produce a phaser in the mold of star trek - the ultraviolet laser is used to ionize a column of air to your target nearly simultaneous with a burst of electricity ala a taser. The ionized air column acts as a direct path to your target for your electric shock. The weapon can be dialed to whatever strength you want...mild stun to (potentially) lethal jolt. And it can shoot around corners (via mirrors)! Beautiful! Use that instead of a pussy paintball gun. YOu KNOW when you get hit.
Nice try clown. DARPA invented the internet (it used to be ARPAnet).
Age DOES matter in many respects, irregardless of experience. It does depend on what you are after from the individual, however.
Maturity is very much related to age. It is biologically demonstrated that people in their low 20s are still not fully mature in their brain development. The younger you go, the less mature, and this DOES affect judgement and respect. I can easily respect someone's skill but have absolutely no trust in their judgement.
I have never found a person in their teens who is truly logical, systematic, and MATURE in their thought processes outside certain technical tasks. It is also rather rare to find a young 20-something with emotional maturity.
Annectdotal evidence of those older than their 20s being "immature" is not scientifically and objectively relevant. You cannot argue the scientific, biological evidence.
Like it or not, until one reaches somewhere into their later 20s, their brain is NOT fully developed and they are NOT emotionally mature. Their ultimate judgement is suspect until proven otherwise. If you are in your teens, then you are so addled with rageing hormones that your logic and emotional sensibilities are simply outa wack. Biological fact.
Quite the contrary. The Republicans that stole the recent election are, heart and soul, beyond question, in the bed with the Corporate States of America ideal. They are, a priori, against ANY antitrust legislation or legal action. This is as much a part of their inherent, invariant nature as is a blind belief in their own infallable moral judgement.
One can say with total certitude that the Bush syndicate will do anything and everything they can to censor whatever disagrees with their personal moral lies, will do anything they can to help corporations, the bigger and richer the better, against the general public good, against labor, against humanity. They tout their god with every breath, forgetting that a rich man can get into heaven as easily as a camel can thread itself through the head of a needle (to paraphrase their own religious nonsense that they conveniently ALWAYS ignore).
This is a damaged and damaging syndicate in office. It is also ASSURED to be a single term syndicate.
Even if a sample of your DNA (in some cells) were transported to a crimescene by the perp, it would not convict YOU. The perp, beyond his or her control will leave behind their own DNA. In any case, there is DNA all over the place belonging to a whole host of different people who have been in the area of the crime.
The DNA must be directly associated with the victim in some way and then all the different DNA samples that may come from the victim (other people and pets the person encountered prior to or after the crime) have to be matched to a suspect. A suspect usually doesn't come out of thin air, there is a path that leads to a suspect. THEN, if any of the DNA matches that of the suspect, THEN that person has some explaining to do.
DNA doesn't ensure a conviction. A solid alibi trumps DNA (DNA can hang around for quite a while). It simply helps confirm whether a particular suspect was or was not the perp. It is not the end-all, be-all of modern crime scene investigation. You would certainly be crying out for DNA if you were jailed and you didn't do it...
Your description is of a company that is already dead but hasn't had the decency to lie down.
The only thing hanging around does is mean that when the full fall comes, you will be there with the rest of them, all your handwringing changing nothing.
You also indicate that your co-workers are quite talented too. Well, again, quit. They are talented and will also find new, good jobs.
You are flogging yourself over a non-issue. Quit, take one of the job offers, the rest, in ones and groups will quit over a short time and find new jobs that will likely be better overall (given your description).
Kind of off topic but... The only part of evolution that is THEORY is the how it happens - the overall mechanism. The FACT of evolution, for which there is no question at all in scientific circles, just is and isn't disputed at all.
The theory of evolution is among the most scientifically supported theories in science, right up there with relativity, atomic theory, and the like.
This logic applies to ALL aircraft, be it F117 or B-52. Big deal? How many US military aircraft have been shot down by shoulder launched missles as you describe? How many planes did the US lose to this sort of attack in Desert Storm? NONE.
This is essentially not a threat - the aircraft are kept on guarded US military bases (and a 747 can be deployed to well-protected sites just like a B-52). At most, an infiltrator might snag ONE plane on takeoff before his ticket got punched but then, there is a WING of such aircraft, not just one.
It is not an issue.