Privacy works like this. I dislike having my time wasted unnecessarily, if that involves filling out registration forms with blatant lies to ward off the otherwise inevitable surge of spam, so be it.
Basically, if a company provides some assurance that they will not A) spam me, B) sell the info to someone who will spam me, C) lose, misplace, or get hax0red in some manner that causes my information to wind up in the hands of people who would do A or B. Then I have no problem sharing info.
If personal information got used for basically anything other than marketing, (people who want you to give them your money), or fraud (people who cut out the middleman and take your money). The whole personal privacy thing would be a non-issue.
It should be a non-issue.
Getting from here to there may require a better crop of humanity than we have to hand, however.
the mode is merely the most common result, which just accounts for all the personal projects that are placed on ourgeforge and go nowhere for various reasons.
A truer survery would take into account codebase size vs. contributers or some other measure. (Which I believe occured some time back, with similar results to this one, the majority of work was done by a small group of individuals)
This is a good idea, and if it wasn't for general public apathy it would have been implemented long ago.
Cradle-to-grave manufacturing *is* the future, unless we plan to relocate mining operatings to metropolian landfills sometime soon. Aside from the strict environmental viewpoint of not shi*ing where you live, there is a limited supply of some of the critical elements used in electronics manufacture. (I've momentarily vented the mineral they were contemplating mining in a active volcano for)
So, implementing something like this (after stepping on the people who whine when anything suddenly costs more than yesterday), you can either tag the fee driectly to the MSRP, or thru some more complicated method involving total mass of harardous/recylcable materials. Each removable component sold in a OEM box would have an individual prce attached to it, summed to the total fee for the box, allowing components to be turned in individually, and allowing individual part purchases and upgrades.
Ideally, the fee would be treated as a deposit, with the fee being returned to the consumer upon return, the cost being made up by the materials vaule of the item. Which would act as a general incentive for users to actually return the parts (much along the lines of pop bottles (where such incentives exist))
I'm rather fond of how the 'fitness function' is a simple labelled box. Truth of the matter is, this is where all the important (read HARD) stuff happens, and its waved off in the 'a miracle occurs' manner. Cute.
The fitness function amounts to taking your new baby Genertic Algorithm and throwing it into the wildernes filled with GA-eating beasties. Those that manage to survive for more than X amount of time are now determined to be 'fit'.
The catch of course, is that 'fit' for you, and 'fit' for the GA, don't always equate nicely. If a GA decides that it can surive best by eating the rest of your test subjects, well....
If you go look at the page and even begin to think that its a marvelously kean concept, note that people have been failing to get this to work on a large scale for thee past 20 years. Go google on 'genetic algorithms','autonomous agents','self-evolving networks', or just look up exactly how sucessful people are at winning the Loebner prize.
The author seems to take the stance of 'I find the implications personally frightening, so let us keep this tech under wraps.'
I find this attitude rather distressing. No real logical reasoning, just a affirmation that there are potential consequences. To this I say. "Well duh!"
At some point, a human clone will be born, will they be human? Yes. Will they be treated like a freak by a good portion of society? Quite likely.
People are xenophobes by nature, only the scale of the affliction varies.
What I'm attempting to get across is, people are asking the wrong question. A simple variation on "should we allow the cloning of humans?" makes it into "why should we...?"
That is the important question after all.
Personally, I think it's a total waste of time, and counterproductive to humanity in general. Watch how fast the superbugs rampage throught the population when you have entire crops of individuals with identical MHC's. I also consider it an inherent ego trip. But it is not inherently wrong. It is little different than parents attempting to mold their natural children into the image they have set out for them, which most people find distasteful, but which is still legal in every country under the sun.
The problem with this is the scale of implementation it requires. I'm not really in the mood to run the numbers, it's reasonably easy to do
Step 1. Find volume of sphere the size of earth + 50km (include the meaningful portion of the atmosphere)
Step 2. Find volume of earth, subract from value determined in Step 1.
Step 3. Find mass of C02 contained in determined volume. To to this, you need to calculate the mass of the atmosphere within the volume. At STP (sea level, 273K) there is 1mol per 22.4L. About 0.05% of this is CO2. So you get 1mol of CO2 for every 448L of atomosphere (I'm aware I'm ignoring the atmospheric pressure gradient, but I also lopped off about 50km of sky, call it even:)
Step 4. realize that value determined in step 3 is a shockingly large number.
During the course of writing this I got curious. here are the numbers.
* Radius of earth is 6378km.
* 1 mol of CO2 masses 44g
* Radius of sphere is (4/3)(pi)r^3
I actually expected worse, and that is probably an overestimate, CO2 composition is actually less than 0.05% and the gradient is pretty steep as the altidude increases. Even still, how much bacteria do you need to make a signifiant dent in 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2?
Side note for the americans: a tonne is a METRIC ton, which equates to 2200lb, which makes it about 2.75 billion tons instead, lucky you.
Ahh. I can see the wee green ones coming out from under the bridge already.
I originally misinterpreted the scope of the article, thinking that Norwich was under fire for the use of genetic testing. But, alas, not all was as it seemed. Rather they have admitted to using genetic tests that haven't completed trials. Entirely different story. In blackjack this would be called peeking at the hole card, also refered to as cheating. They improved their odds on the short run and got themselves branded for the trouble.
The flipside of the coin is those who have gotten testing done, found to their dismay some near-term uncurable malady, then turned around and signed up for a policy with somewhat less than complete disclosure on the 're-existing medical conditions' portion of the form. The most vocal opponents of genetic testing seem to think it is their Cthulhu-given right to do this. They are wrong. (I possess no humility, no IMHO for you, one year)
The insurance companies have every right to use (approved) tests to calculate the odds, it is a business. They are also obligated to tell you about said tests. If you don't like it, take your business elsewhere. Welcome to capitalism.
Playing the long odds at the track is NOT a good investment strategy.
Slashdot Mirror
If I had designd the thing. The phone in would leave one of the following messages.
"Patient needs Food", "Patient is dying"
Uh. if you don't get the joke, go pick up a copy of MAME or something.
Many...many quarters.
Privacy works like this. I dislike having my time wasted unnecessarily, if that involves filling out registration forms with blatant lies to ward off the otherwise inevitable surge of spam, so be it.
Basically, if a company provides some assurance that they will not A) spam me, B) sell the info to someone who will spam me, C) lose, misplace, or get hax0red in some manner that causes my information to wind up in the hands of people who would do A or B. Then I have no problem sharing info.
If personal information got used for basically anything other than marketing, (people who want you to give them your money), or fraud (people who cut out the middleman and take your money). The whole personal privacy thing would be a non-issue.
It should be a non-issue.
Getting from here to there may require a better crop of humanity than we have to hand, however.
I can't be the only person who immediately contemplated swabbing their friends steering wheels with rubbing alcohol.
No driving for you. ONE YEAR!
the mode is merely the most common result, which just accounts for all the personal projects that are placed on ourgeforge and go nowhere for various reasons.
A truer survery would take into account codebase size vs. contributers or some other measure. (Which I believe occured some time back, with similar results to this one, the majority of work was done by a small group of individuals)
This is a good idea, and if it wasn't for general public apathy it would have been implemented long ago.
Cradle-to-grave manufacturing *is* the future, unless we plan to relocate mining operatings to metropolian landfills sometime soon. Aside from the strict environmental viewpoint of not shi*ing where you live, there is a limited supply of some of the critical elements used in electronics manufacture. (I've momentarily vented the mineral they were contemplating mining in a active volcano for)
So, implementing something like this (after stepping on the people who whine when anything suddenly costs more than yesterday), you can either tag the fee driectly to the MSRP, or thru some more complicated method involving total mass of harardous/recylcable materials. Each removable component sold in a OEM box would have an individual prce attached to it, summed to the total fee for the box, allowing components to be turned in individually, and allowing individual part purchases and upgrades.
Ideally, the fee would be treated as a deposit, with the fee being returned to the consumer upon return, the cost being made up by the materials vaule of the item. Which would act as a general incentive for users to actually return the parts (much along the lines of pop bottles (where such incentives exist))
I'm rather fond of how the 'fitness function' is a simple labelled box. Truth of the matter is, this is where all the important (read HARD) stuff happens, and its waved off in the 'a miracle occurs' manner. Cute.
The fitness function amounts to taking your new baby Genertic Algorithm and throwing it into the wildernes filled with GA-eating beasties. Those that manage to survive for more than X amount of time are now determined to be 'fit'.
The catch of course, is that 'fit' for you, and 'fit' for the GA, don't always equate nicely. If a GA decides that it can surive best by eating the rest of your test subjects, well....
If you go look at the page and even begin to think that its a marvelously kean concept, note that people have been failing to get this to work on a large scale for thee past 20 years. Go google on 'genetic algorithms','autonomous agents','self-evolving networks', or just look up exactly how sucessful people are at winning the Loebner prize.
I find this attitude rather distressing. No real logical reasoning, just a affirmation that there are potential consequences. To this I say. "Well duh!"
At some point, a human clone will be born, will they be human? Yes. Will they be treated like a freak by a good portion of society? Quite likely. People are xenophobes by nature, only the scale of the affliction varies.
What I'm attempting to get across is, people are asking the wrong question. A simple variation on "should we allow the cloning of humans?" makes it into "why should we...?"
That is the important question after all.
Personally, I think it's a total waste of time, and counterproductive to humanity in general. Watch how fast the superbugs rampage throught the population when you have entire crops of individuals with identical MHC's. I also consider it an inherent ego trip. But it is not inherently wrong. It is little different than parents attempting to mold their natural children into the image they have set out for them, which most people find distasteful, but which is still legal in every country under the sun.
Step 1. Find volume of sphere the size of earth + 50km (include the meaningful portion of the atmosphere)
Step 2. Find volume of earth, subract from value determined in Step 1.
Step 3. Find mass of C02 contained in determined volume. To to this, you need to calculate the mass of the atmosphere within the volume. At STP (sea level, 273K) there is 1mol per 22.4L. About 0.05% of this is CO2. So you get 1mol of CO2 for every 448L of atomosphere (I'm aware I'm ignoring the atmospheric pressure gradient, but I also lopped off about 50km of sky, call it even :)
Step 4. realize that value determined in step 3 is a shockingly large number.
During the course of writing this I got curious. here are the numbers. * Radius of earth is 6378km. * 1 mol of CO2 masses 44g * Radius of sphere is (4/3)(pi)r^3
Step1. ((4/3)(3.14)(6378000 + 50000)^3) = 1,111,837,835,182,613,504,000m^3
Step 2. 1,111,837,835,182,613,504,000m^3 - ((4/3)(3.14)(6378000 )^3)= 25,634,650,198,092,080,000m^3 = 25,634,650,198,092,080,000L
Step 3. 25,634,650,198,092,080,000L / 448 = 57,220,201,335,026,964mol = 2,517,688,858,741,186,828g = 2,517,688,858,741,187kg = 2,517,688,858,741 tonnes Step 4. Gunga.
I actually expected worse, and that is probably an overestimate, CO2 composition is actually less than 0.05% and the gradient is pretty steep as the altidude increases. Even still, how much bacteria do you need to make a signifiant dent in 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2?
Side note for the americans: a tonne is a METRIC ton, which equates to 2200lb, which makes it about 2.75 billion tons instead, lucky you.
Ahh. I can see the wee green ones coming out from under the bridge already.
I originally misinterpreted the scope of the article, thinking that Norwich was under fire for the use of genetic testing. But, alas, not all was as it seemed. Rather they have admitted to using genetic tests that haven't completed trials. Entirely different story. In blackjack this would be called peeking at the hole card, also refered to as cheating. They improved their odds on the short run and got themselves branded for the trouble.
The flipside of the coin is those who have gotten testing done, found to their dismay some near-term uncurable malady, then turned around and signed up for a policy with somewhat less than complete disclosure on the 're-existing medical conditions' portion of the form. The most vocal opponents of genetic testing seem to think it is their Cthulhu-given right to do this. They are wrong. (I possess no humility, no IMHO for you, one year)
The insurance companies have every right to use (approved) tests to calculate the odds, it is a business. They are also obligated to tell you about said tests. If you don't like it, take your business elsewhere. Welcome to capitalism.
Playing the long odds at the track is NOT a good investment strategy.