When I entered college freshman year, I was a physics major. I had passed all the tests so I could skip the 101 courses and head straight into the upperclass courses.
Two years later, I switched to a mathematics major. I had been THE ONLY physics major in the graduating class. The others had switched schools or majors. The professors didn't care, especially the full professors (as opposed to the empty, lol). It was always assumed that I would continue onto graduate school, but I didn't have the patience to waste away in a lab for 4-5 additional years, especially for the shit pay junior professors get.
For every AIDS-denying doctor, there are thousands who are actually working to help the problem. If I were a betting man, I'd would have more to say about that.
Public funding is responsible for more R&D into AIDS than private corporations.
Monetary incentives brings out the greed in people. That's not a side of humanity that I would particularly want to nourish.
On a personal note, the sheer number of Slashdot posters that have reduced the very real AIDS problem into another version of "gubmit vs. freedom" is frightening to me. For the love of Jesus H. fuckin' Christ, people are dying, and we don't need rich uncle Pharm as a drain on resources. We can't fight a PANDEMIC half-heartedly. Nobody can.
I guess I shouldn't be suprised, this sort of shit is not new; adolescent-minded White people have always had a reason for their abominations. Read your history.
British Medical Journal 2000;321:833, Letter from Michael Schull, president, MSF-Canada
EDITOR: Do drug patents kill? If they do the risk is felt overwhelmingly by the poor. AIDS will soon become the leading cause of death worldwide, and 95% of people infected with HIV worldwide live in the world's poorest countries. Effective treatments are mostly patent protected, with the result that the annual cost to treat a single patient with AIDS is up to 100 times the average gross domestic product per capita in developing countries.1
These staggering facts have led to a campaign to increase access to essential AIDS medicines in poorer countries, including a loosening of patent protections on medicines.2
Opposition comes mainly from pharmaceutical companies, which argue that without patent protection profits will dry up, eliminating the incentive to conduct research into new drugs. But who really pays for AIDS research? The reality is that taxpayers, not shareholders, have borne most of the cost. Publicly funded research councils have contributed hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars to AIDS drug research. Indeed, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry lobby group, estimates that private industry finances only about 43% of drug development.1 Five commonly used drugs against AIDS -- didanosine, lamivudine, nevirapine, stavudine, and zidovudine -- were developed largely as a result of public funds.
If the looneytarians in the crowd will stop screaming bloody murder for five minutes, maybe they'd recognize that this is also a matter of sovereignty. Brazil is one of many countries where AIDS is killing people like the bubonic plague did before the Enlightenment. It is a time of public health emergency, and it is not up to Roche, the US, or anybody else to decide for them. People are dying, and all these arguments about long-term damage are bullshit.
I think it's time we tie those leashes back on. Whenever you hear a deregulator complain that companies won't do business here with too much regulation, I say look at the world around you. Take a drive. Thanks to deregulation, they've already left for Mexico, China, Taiwan, anywhere they can get cheap labor. No self-respecting corporate exec wants to leave the US - there's too much money here.
The management asked Napster to ban users who downloaded RATM stuff without asking the band first. On their site, Tom Morello explains, and points to a page where they have a ton of music to download. They are for music sharing, their managment (Sony) isn't.
Yes, the normal buckyballs are made of 60 carbon atoms, arranged like the verticies on a soccer ball (hexagons and pentagons).
Silicon and carbon belong to the same group on the periodic table. Both have a +4 charge on them, which is most likely why these researchers chose to use silicon.
I know that carbon is a non-metal, and it bonds covalently with other atoms. Silicon is a transition metal (I think), and I think that it uses ionic bonds. Covalent bonds are much stronger than ionic ones - probably why they were having trouble assembling the cage. I bet the 60-atom silicon cages they tried to make fell apart, like the bridges of toothpicks I made back in second grade.
I'm not sure what tungsten adds to the mix, or why it is chosen above all other elements. Perhaps it is because tungsten is resistant to temperature changes.
... Kuester, chair of the IPL section's Special Committee on Patents and the Internet, adds, "The whole world has had to adjust to this new communication medium, so why would we expect the patent system to handle it overnight without a few bumps in the road?"
So, what... is this guy saying that the Patent Office isn't hundreds of years old?? What does he mean 'overnight'?? If I'm not mistaken, a govermnent department whose primary focus is technology should be doing a better job of keeping up with the world.
That's all I needed to hear - "Don't blame us, we're incompetent!"
This just came out of nowhere. $1 billion is an impressive sum; I think that Napster is trying to flash a huge wad of cash in front of the music execs' faces, to tantalize them.
That is a big promise Napster is making to the corporations. In high technology, industry dominance is never certain, especially five years down the road. Even as we type, radical p2p cells are consolidating their power...
With superconducting materials there is an impedence, but its magnitude is somewhere around 10-18 times that of copper. I am guessing with that number, but the point is that it's tiny. It is, for an engineer, infintesimal.
Interesting enough, not one of copper, silver, or gold - the best transition metal conductors at room temperature - exhibit superconductivity, at any temperature. When I had to write a paper on this, the highest-achieved-by-man superconductors were ceramics. Unusual elements like Ytterbium (Yb) were in the compounds they synthesized.
This just in: AuIn3@0.00005 K - The first ferromagnetic superconductor. So there's hope for eternal electromagnets after all.:)
It is not hypocrisy. Big sites cost lots of money to run; that's the reality. I don't like ads either, but it's the only real way for a site to support itself. From the user's point of view, it is a way of paying to use the site. Free software is easy to find these days, free bandwidth isn't. I don't like it, but that's the reality.
"The handful of crypto activists living in the world's smallest country is prepared for a blockade. Driven by a passion for Internet privacy, they've brought enough food, water and fuel for a year and moved to Sealand, a 25-yard-long steel and concrete former World War II fortress six miles from the English coast. In 1967, an eccentric former British major named Roy Bates declared Sealand a sovereign territory, eventually issuing his own stamps, flag and currency. Forty-four years later, Bates, now the crown prince of Sealand, has leased his island to a group of techno-libertarians and their start-up, a data sanctuary called HavenCo which promises cyber security and which may affront many of the world's major nations."
I thought this was very interesting; a possiblity that I never considered before.
Yeah, I know that there is no chance of something like that happening, I just wanted to be an optimist for a moment.:)
I don't know if you know about this, but the smallest nation in the world is not the Vatican, it's an nation called Sealand that is actually a former British air base. And they've decided to become a haven for internet privacy. Here's a quick description of the situation...
"The handful of crypto activists living in the world's smallest country is prepared for a blockade. Driven by a passion for Internet privacy, they've brought enough food, water and fuel for a year and moved to Sealand, a 25-yard-long steel and concrete former World War II fortress six miles from the English coast. In 1967, an eccentric former British major named Roy Bates declared Sealand a sovereign territory, eventually issuing his own stamps, flag and currency. Forty-four years later, Bates, now the crown prince of Sealand, has leased his island to a group of techno-libertarians and their start-up, a data sanctuary called HavenCo which promises cyber security and which may affront many of the world's major nations."
I always thought that the thing that the internet really needs to realize its potential is a declaration by the world's leaders (especially the US) that it is a kind of seperate pseudo-reality that does not recognize political borders. The internet could be treated like international waters.
I remember hearing about these flourescent(sp) discs a few months ago (it was vapor then too). But the time has given me an opportunity to think about the nature of storage in the not-so-distant future.
Everyone here must have at least a vauge familiarity with the C60 buckyball molecules. Supposedly, if the nanotechnology advances enough, the need of a hard disk or any other type of very-slow-compared-to-RAM will be gone and the computing world will have come full circle. All memory both for storage and
So, what I am asking is that will these discs be really necessary by the time they 'mature'? By the time FMD burners become inexpensive enough for the average Joe, will they be ready to go on the shelf? DVD's were around for a few years before they got to the level where they are now, and they still have a long way to go. Even years before they were introduced into the market, they were vapor just like these FMD's are now.
I recognize that there will most likely still be a market for (relatively) permanent storage of data without a power source. What I am wondering is if nature might have already shown us something really different. CDs, DVDs, and now FMDs may store using different techniques, but they all use the same idea of using a laser and microscopic pits to store data, and it's fundamentally two-dimensional. Even with 10 or so layers, it's still 2D, just like hard disks and RAM. With C60, it has the potential to be 3D. I just picture being able to do so much more with memorty that way, it might just be that I'm nuts.
Just about any university in the US will be it's own ISP. They'll own a large network of servers, and nowadays to stay competitive, they'll also provide the dorms with free (or very low cost, like mine was) T1 connections to the internet. The servers themselves will have T3 connections.
As far as the game development side of Nintendo goes, I've always had a bias towards them since I was a kid playing Super Mario Bros.
The reason why this thing won't play DVD movies is because of royalties. The DVD consortium (I think its called) wants money per unit to be able to legally play DVD movies, somewhere in the range of $20 per console. With the added on cost and the legal burden added on by all the crap that's going on with DVDs right now, I think Nintendo made the right choice, sticking to their focus - they've always been a gaming company, not a consumer electronics company.
Slashdot Mirror
How true, for many different types of innovations and initiatives. Men's primal desires for killing and screwing manifesting as U.S. federal policy.
Two years later, I switched to a mathematics major. I had been THE ONLY physics major in the graduating class. The others had switched schools or majors. The professors didn't care, especially the full professors (as opposed to the empty, lol). It was always assumed that I would continue onto graduate school, but I didn't have the patience to waste away in a lab for 4-5 additional years, especially for the shit pay junior professors get.
For every AIDS-denying doctor, there are thousands who are actually working to help the problem. If I were a betting man, I'd would have more to say about that.
Public funding is responsible for more R&D into AIDS than private corporations.
Monetary incentives brings out the greed in people. That's not a side of humanity that I would particularly want to nourish.
On a personal note, the sheer number of Slashdot posters that have reduced the very real AIDS problem into another version of "gubmit vs. freedom" is frightening to me. For the love of Jesus H. fuckin' Christ, people are dying, and we don't need rich uncle Pharm as a drain on resources. We can't fight a PANDEMIC half-heartedly. Nobody can.
I guess I shouldn't be suprised, this sort of shit is not new; adolescent-minded White people have always had a reason for their abominations. Read your history.
If the looneytarians in the crowd will stop screaming bloody murder for five minutes, maybe they'd recognize that this is also a matter of sovereignty. Brazil is one of many countries where AIDS is killing people like the bubonic plague did before the Enlightenment. It is a time of public health emergency, and it is not up to Roche, the US, or anybody else to decide for them. People are dying, and all these arguments about long-term damage are bullshit.
I can find email addresses to the webmaster and certain clerks, but nothing that I'm confident the justices would read.
I think it's time we tie those leashes back on. Whenever you hear a deregulator complain that companies won't do business here with too much regulation, I say look at the world around you. Take a drive. Thanks to deregulation, they've already left for Mexico, China, Taiwan, anywhere they can get cheap labor. No self-respecting corporate exec wants to leave the US - there's too much money here.
------------
------------
Silicon and carbon belong to the same group on the periodic table. Both have a +4 charge on them, which is most likely why these researchers chose to use silicon.
I know that carbon is a non-metal, and it bonds covalently with other atoms. Silicon is a transition metal (I think), and I think that it uses ionic bonds. Covalent bonds are much stronger than ionic ones - probably why they were having trouble assembling the cage. I bet the 60-atom silicon cages they tried to make fell apart, like the bridges of toothpicks I made back in second grade.
I'm not sure what tungsten adds to the mix, or why it is chosen above all other elements. Perhaps it is because tungsten is resistant to temperature changes.
------------
So, what... is this guy saying that the Patent Office isn't hundreds of years old?? What does he mean 'overnight'?? If I'm not mistaken, a govermnent department whose primary focus is technology should be doing a better job of keeping up with the world.
That's all I needed to hear - "Don't blame us, we're incompetent!"
------------
That is a big promise Napster is making to the corporations. In high technology, industry dominance is never certain, especially five years down the road. Even as we type, radical p2p cells are consolidating their power...
------------
That should be 10 to the -18th power, not 10 to 18...
Interesting enough, not one of copper, silver, or gold - the best transition metal conductors at room temperature - exhibit superconductivity, at any temperature. When I had to write a paper on this, the highest-achieved-by-man superconductors were ceramics. Unusual elements like Ytterbium (Yb) were in the compounds they synthesized.
This just in: AuIn3@0.00005 K - The first ferromagnetic superconductor. So there's hope for eternal electromagnets after all. :)
It is not hypocrisy. Big sites cost lots of money to run; that's the reality. I don't like ads either, but it's the only real way for a site to support itself. From the user's point of view, it is a way of paying to use the site. Free software is easy to find these days, free bandwidth isn't. I don't like it, but that's the reality.
Here is the first paragraph...
"The handful of crypto activists living in the world's smallest country is prepared for a blockade. Driven by a passion for Internet privacy, they've brought enough food, water and fuel for a year and moved to Sealand, a 25-yard-long steel and concrete former World War II fortress six miles from the English coast. In 1967, an eccentric former British major named Roy Bates declared Sealand a sovereign territory, eventually issuing his own stamps, flag and currency. Forty-four years later, Bates, now the crown prince of Sealand, has leased his island to a group of techno-libertarians and their start-up, a data sanctuary called HavenCo which promises cyber security and which may affront many of the world's major nations."
I thought this was very interesting; a possiblity that I never considered before.
I don't know if you know about this, but the smallest nation in the world is not the Vatican, it's an nation called Sealand that is actually a former British air base. And they've decided to become a haven for internet privacy. Here's a quick description of the situation...
http://www.alternet.org/story.ht ml? StoryID=9315
"The handful of crypto activists living in the world's smallest country is prepared for a blockade. Driven by a passion for Internet privacy, they've brought enough food, water and fuel for a year and moved to Sealand, a 25-yard-long steel and concrete former World War II fortress six miles from the English coast. In 1967, an eccentric former British major named Roy Bates declared Sealand a sovereign territory, eventually issuing his own stamps, flag and currency. Forty-four years later, Bates, now the crown prince of Sealand, has leased his island to a group of techno-libertarians and their start-up, a data sanctuary called HavenCo which promises cyber security and which may affront many of the world's major nations."
It's early.
I always thought that the thing that the internet really needs to realize its potential is a declaration by the world's leaders (especially the US) that it is a kind of seperate pseudo-reality that does not recognize political borders. The internet could be treated like international waters.
I remember hearing about these flourescent(sp) discs a few months ago (it was vapor then too). But the time has given me an opportunity to think about the nature of storage in the not-so-distant future. Everyone here must have at least a vauge familiarity with the C60 buckyball molecules. Supposedly, if the nanotechnology advances enough, the need of a hard disk or any other type of very-slow-compared-to-RAM will be gone and the computing world will have come full circle. All memory both for storage and So, what I am asking is that will these discs be really necessary by the time they 'mature'? By the time FMD burners become inexpensive enough for the average Joe, will they be ready to go on the shelf? DVD's were around for a few years before they got to the level where they are now, and they still have a long way to go. Even years before they were introduced into the market, they were vapor just like these FMD's are now. I recognize that there will most likely still be a market for (relatively) permanent storage of data without a power source. What I am wondering is if nature might have already shown us something really different. CDs, DVDs, and now FMDs may store using different techniques, but they all use the same idea of using a laser and microscopic pits to store data, and it's fundamentally two-dimensional. Even with 10 or so layers, it's still 2D, just like hard disks and RAM. With C60, it has the potential to be 3D. I just picture being able to do so much more with memorty that way, it might just be that I'm nuts.
Just about any university in the US will be it's own ISP. They'll own a large network of servers, and nowadays to stay competitive, they'll also provide the dorms with free (or very low cost, like mine was) T1 connections to the internet. The servers themselves will have T3 connections.
As far as the game development side of Nintendo goes, I've always had a bias towards them since I was a kid playing Super Mario Bros.
The reason why this thing won't play DVD movies is because of royalties. The DVD consortium (I think its called) wants money per unit to be able to legally play DVD movies, somewhere in the range of $20 per console. With the added on cost and the legal burden added on by all the crap that's going on with DVDs right now, I think Nintendo made the right choice, sticking to their focus - they've always been a gaming company, not a consumer electronics company.