For quite some time, it was only the Google fanboys here (and there are quite a few) who were under any illusions about Google Incorporated.
Uh, yeah. Did you read the story? It's not that Google is outright EVIL(TM), it's that the other tech corporations think Google is EVIL(TM) because Google is bigger and more powerful. Techies still love Google, because they raise the general salary and promote good working conditions.
Microsoft was once A Good Company.
No, Microsoft was once an upstart. i.e. "The Underdog." They were never a "good" company. Their primary product (Microsoft BASIC) was a complete ripoff of University code. That started a trend in Microsoft history where every product was either a stolen or bought-out design. (Which isn't to say that Microsoft employees don't work hard. It's just that Microsoft as a corporation doesn't have an honest or original bone in its metaphorical body.)
Excuse me while I interpret your post as a load of BS. As another poster said, Christianity has been a strong force throughout the history of the US. Every President the US has ever had has claimed to be a Christian.[1] Yet you've conveniently ignored that fact, made an unsubstantiated opinion, then presented it as fact. Is that the scientific process?[2]
The truth of the matter is that the United States has been a Wartime economy since World War II.[3] The thing propping up such an economy? The Cold War, of course![4] The US outspent the Soviet Union at every turn, eventually causing the USSR to go bankrupt. The wartime economy then began to taper off, slowly reducing the amount of private and government funded research. By the end of the 90's, science was already in trouble, but no one noticed because of the technology boom.[5] (Itself an artificial boom caused by overspending.) The tech boom crashes, and suddenly the true state of things is revealed.
The entire Stem Cell issue, and ID issue are irrelevant to the US's technology bottom line. We simply can't afford the level of progress that was achieved in the Post WWII economy. We had one last "Hurrah" in the 80's and early 90's, then everything petered out after that. It's not sexy, it's not pretty, and there's no good place to put the blame. But that's the way it is.
No idea. They're actually unrelated to the movie series, so I've never taken the time to check them out. Many people claim they're quite funny, though.
This doesn't come as a surprise to anyone who's been following Star Wreck. They announced that the 20th would be the release date a while ago. It was even the first thing I blogged about.
The english order page is here, but the darn thing is quite expensive. It's listed as 24 euros, which is $29.35 in American money.
Also, the release date for Internet distribution is October 1st.
More correctly, it's "synthesizing new organisms". "From Scratch" implies, well, that you started from scratch. i.e. Nothing.:-)
Besides, if you remove DNA/RNA from a cell, is it still a cell and is it still alive?
Irrelevent. We have the technology to reanimate bacteria. However, we don't have the technology to construct a living bateria.
This story is a bit like all those cutsey headlines, "Faster Than Light Achieved! Einstein Wrong!" Then you go read the article and find that no relativity violation occurred, and that the FTL transmission had an *effective* speed of light.
Or it could be that you didn't read the article, thus you don't realize that this isn't really "From Scratch." In fact, you probably don't realize that the article talks about injecting custom DNA into a pre-existing organism.
The true test of creating new life "from scratch" is still not even close to coming to frutition.
But don't let that stand in the way of a good rant. We all love a good rant.:-)
FYI, the title is incorrect. There is no "from scratch" component to the life. What they're doing is building custom DNA, then injecting it into a living cell.
JavaScript. Please don't confuse Java with JavaScript. It just makes everyone's lives harder. (Especially when managers hire the new "Java" expert.):-/
One of the problems is that sometimes you just need a round trip to the server to tell script to do something to the page, you can accomplish that with a hidden IFrame or Frame, but that's not really what they were designed for and it requires the browser to interpret the result and attempt to render a page.
If you get an XML response in a hidden IFrame, it's just as good as the XMLHttpRequest. You can assign a listener to the IFrame so that you know when it's done loading. The listener can then walk the XML DOM for the information it needs to modify the HTML document.
Not sure if that's useful at all, but I figured I'd throw it out there.:-)
If Psycopathy has a genetic component, then has it survived natural selection.
Putting aside the arguments over "natural selection", it remains in the gene pool because it works. There are often situations that require someone to push through the bullcrap and make something happen. These sociopaths are far more suited to this task because they care nothing for the consequences, or who's opinion they ignore, or who's feelings they hurt. They may not even care about who lives or dies. (Which in some situations, someone will die no matter what course is taken.) The problem has always been that they are a tough fit for any society they create. As the article says, they want the next thrill immediately. Yet emergency situations requiring their brashness tend to be very rare.
SVG? New? Not that is news! SVG 1.1 was ratified on the 14th of January, 2003. Most SVG users either view the files in the Adobe Plugin, or translate to raster images for vector charting and the like. (I actually had a pretty cool 3D pie chart program for awhile there. SVG came out of one end, translated by Batik, then viewed as a PNG.)
why should I care about it
You shouldn't. It's just technology marching on. If you need to do vector graphics, you'll find it far more up-to-date and better supported than PostScript. If you don't need to do Vector graphics (or don't even know what vector graphics ARE) then you definitely don't care.
As a computer expert of 20 years and programmer of 15 years, how will this effect me?
You'll need a new bullet-point on your resume in a few years?
Will I have to learn totally new things, or does it build on the old ones?
You know XML? You know PostScript? How about ECMAScript? Yes? You're good to go then.
Who owns the patents to this new technology?
It's older than the hills technology. I dunno, maybe my great grandmother had a patent at some point, but there are none now. (Unless someone invents a stupid one like "Method for storing Vector graphics in XML." Hmm... maybe it is patented.)
Will Microsoft release their own version of it and crush everyone?
Microsoft Internet Explorer (Exploder in my book) needs the Adobe plugin. AFAIK, Microsoft is mostly ignoring it.
Hey now. Let's go easy on the insults. Just because he's got fans galore doesn't mean the guy has an ego to match. In fact, most of the interviews I've seen with him have shown him to be quite modest. As an aviator he does good work. Let's leave it at that.:-)
Whether Webster declares that it's obsolete or not, many people still use the word that way. Thus it's still correct until English stops being a living language, or it falls out of common usage.;-)
On the other hand, its payload fraction should more than make up for it.
The payload fraction may be high, but the payload mass is not guaranteed to be so. The original NASA design for the NASP (a.k.a. The X-30) called for a two man craft with a rather small payload. A lot more testing would have to have been done before they could even think of scaling it up larger.
Yes, but will the general public?:)
You said it yourself. Fly them in space for 10 years, and the public will begin to calm down.;-)
Besides, if we can't even get a CANDU to be completely reliable, how can we get a nuclear thermal rocket to be?
I'd say that the primary difference is that a CANDU reactor is a closed-loop system designed for 30+ years of use, whereas an NTR is an open system designed for 30-50 hours of firing. The types of maintenece problems that occur in regular reactors, simply wouldn't occur in a maintenence-free reactor that will only have a useful life of a few years at most.
Also, you have to look at the differences in design. CANDU wants to run in a nice, safe area where the reaction can be controlled. NTR engines want the reaction the ramp WAY up there, limited primarily by the turbopumps and the heat conductivity of the materials. (Tungsten is one of the best heat conductors that can withstand high temperatures.)
The failure modes I could envision are:
1. The reactor begins to melt down. The turbopumps remain active and the rocket makes it to orbit. The engines are as good as scrap. The cladding holds and the materials remain contained.
2. The reactor beings to melt down. The turbopumps are unable to keep up or non-functional. The reactor shutdown fails. The engine literally melts off and falls into the drink. The molten liquids would cool quickly and form radioactive beads. There is little danger to humans due to the water shielding, though some marine life obtains high doses of radiation. The beads are found and recovered a few months later.
3. The rocket explodes, spewing radioactive shrapnel into the drink. Same cleanup procedure and issues as point 2.
4. Engines stop firing for some unknown reason and the ship falls into the drink. See points 2 and 3.
5. Engines stop firing for some unknown reason and the range officer destroys the craft. See points 2 and 3.
6. Engines begin melting, spewing flakes of radioactive material into the surrounding atmosphere. Most (if not all) of the material finds its way into the drink, or disperses enough to add a very minor amount of radioisotopes to the eco-system.
One could probably imagine a few more scenarios, but none that would lead to cataclysmic consequences.:-)
The thing is, MPDT engines are already light - I read a paper on a small, 20kg *lab model* which could sap 7.1 MW of power and produce enough thrust for 90N (0.45g) acceleration using 3 mg/s of Ar and 34,000 amps (Choueiri & Ziemer at EPPDYL/Princeton). Use superalloys and scale it up, and it's easy to picture getting several Gs from it. The engines are already here, it's that darn issue of power production in the range of 1/2 MW/kg of generator;)
Last I heard, they were thinking of using the MPDT as an "assist" booster. i.e. An MPDT craft would have strap-on SRBs that would help it get off the ground. Once sufficient altitude was reached, pure MPDT mode could be achieved.
Even if that idea doesn't work, we would end up with a VERY powerful space-only engine that would be cheaper, safer, easier to use, and more powerful than either NTR or Orion.;-)
I am sure you can find some wackos who would go "All those ex-inhabitants if Chernobyl are wimps, I would raise children and grow tomatoes there!", "I eat plutonium for breakfast, it adds a zing to my toast!", "Look Ma, them gamma rays are harmless, and warm and tingly too!", "I would like to glow in the dark, it would be cool!" etc.
Then they'd be right-wing nut jobs. Not much better.;-)
I have no problem with that as long as the fuel can be delivered to orbit safely instead of ending up in my strawberries or tuna.
That, we can do quite effectively. Our experience with RTGs (including losing and later recovering a couple of them in the drink) has given our space program good experience with buidling safe containers for transporting such materials. So far, none of the containers have failed.:-)
Ooookkaayyy. You have a very interesting definition of customers. If you really think that the government is NASA's customer, then NASA has succeeded wildly in their goals. They've given them everything they've asked for!
And I don't know why you insist on perpetuting this idea that I'm disagreeing with you on cost overruns. No, the Shuttle was not a "success", though it was declared one because it met the final goals it was supposed to achieve. The fact that the original goals of cheap access were lost is beside the point. The point is that the holding company of NASA (our government) has screwed their subsidiary wildly, then been surprised when things didn't work as planned. What did they think was going to happen, NASA would magically put out the same level of tech as they did in the 60's when they had better funding, technology, and no politicians telling them what to do?
In any case, you're being very annoying. When you figure out what point it is you want to make, pop back in and we'll chat. Otherwise, go rant at someone else.
Slashdot Mirror
For quite some time, it was only the Google fanboys here (and there are quite a few) who were under any illusions about Google Incorporated.
Uh, yeah. Did you read the story? It's not that Google is outright EVIL(TM), it's that the other tech corporations think Google is EVIL(TM) because Google is bigger and more powerful. Techies still love Google, because they raise the general salary and promote good working conditions.
Microsoft was once A Good Company.
No, Microsoft was once an upstart. i.e. "The Underdog." They were never a "good" company. Their primary product (Microsoft BASIC) was a complete ripoff of University code. That started a trend in Microsoft history where every product was either a stolen or bought-out design. (Which isn't to say that Microsoft employees don't work hard. It's just that Microsoft as a corporation doesn't have an honest or original bone in its metaphorical body.)
The United States Marine Corps uses a license-built derivative of the Harrier.
d _landing
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_take-off_an
Excuse me while I interpret your post as a load of BS. As another poster said, Christianity has been a strong force throughout the history of the US. Every President the US has ever had has claimed to be a Christian.[1] Yet you've conveniently ignored that fact, made an unsubstantiated opinion, then presented it as fact. Is that the scientific process?[2]
The truth of the matter is that the United States has been a Wartime economy since World War II.[3] The thing propping up such an economy? The Cold War, of course![4] The US outspent the Soviet Union at every turn, eventually causing the USSR to go bankrupt. The wartime economy then began to taper off, slowly reducing the amount of private and government funded research. By the end of the 90's, science was already in trouble, but no one noticed because of the technology boom.[5] (Itself an artificial boom caused by overspending.) The tech boom crashes, and suddenly the true state of things is revealed.
The entire Stem Cell issue, and ID issue are irrelevant to the US's technology bottom line. We simply can't afford the level of progress that was achieved in the Post WWII economy. We had one last "Hurrah" in the 80's and early 90's, then everything petered out after that. It's not sexy, it's not pretty, and there's no good place to put the blame. But that's the way it is.
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
No idea. They're actually unrelated to the movie series, so I've never taken the time to check them out. Many people claim they're quite funny, though.
Shhh! Don't tell anyone that I'm not really "blogging" as much as publishing online articles. They might get wise on me. ;-)
> But as I understand it, the movie isn't finished yet.
You understand incorrectly. The movie is quite finished. They're now taking orders for the DVDs, and will begin sending them out by Sept. 6th.
October 1st is probably the date you have in mind. That's when free Internet Distribution will begin.
This doesn't come as a surprise to anyone who's been following Star Wreck. They announced that the 20th would be the release date a while ago. It was even the first thing I blogged about.
The english order page is here, but the darn thing is quite expensive. It's listed as 24 euros, which is $29.35 in American money.
Also, the release date for Internet distribution is October 1st.
Well, in a sense, this is 'life from scratch'
:-)
More correctly, it's "synthesizing new organisms". "From Scratch" implies, well, that you started from scratch. i.e. Nothing.
Besides, if you remove DNA/RNA from a cell, is it still a cell and is it still alive?
Irrelevent. We have the technology to reanimate bacteria. However, we don't have the technology to construct a living bateria.
This story is a bit like all those cutsey headlines, "Faster Than Light Achieved! Einstein Wrong!" Then you go read the article and find that no relativity violation occurred, and that the FTL transmission had an *effective* speed of light.
Or it could be that you didn't read the article, thus you don't realize that this isn't really "From Scratch." In fact, you probably don't realize that the article talks about injecting custom DNA into a pre-existing organism.
:-)
The true test of creating new life "from scratch" is still not even close to coming to frutition.
But don't let that stand in the way of a good rant. We all love a good rant.
FYI, the title is incorrect. There is no "from scratch" component to the life. What they're doing is building custom DNA, then injecting it into a living cell.
JavaScript. Please don't confuse Java with JavaScript. It just makes everyone's lives harder. (Especially when managers hire the new "Java" expert.) :-/
One of the problems is that sometimes you just need a round trip to the server to tell script to do something to the page, you can accomplish that with a hidden IFrame or Frame, but that's not really what they were designed for and it requires the browser to interpret the result and attempt to render a page.
:-)
If you get an XML response in a hidden IFrame, it's just as good as the XMLHttpRequest. You can assign a listener to the IFrame so that you know when it's done loading. The listener can then walk the XML DOM for the information it needs to modify the HTML document.
Not sure if that's useful at all, but I figured I'd throw it out there.
I think you'll find that the idea behind AJAX has been 20 years in the making. It's about time it caught on! ;-)
I had a feeling. Thanks for confirming that for me! :-)
If Psycopathy has a genetic component, then has it survived natural selection.
Putting aside the arguments over "natural selection", it remains in the gene pool because it works. There are often situations that require someone to push through the bullcrap and make something happen. These sociopaths are far more suited to this task because they care nothing for the consequences, or who's opinion they ignore, or who's feelings they hurt. They may not even care about who lives or dies. (Which in some situations, someone will die no matter what course is taken.) The problem has always been that they are a tough fit for any society they create. As the article says, they want the next thrill immediately. Yet emergency situations requiring their brashness tend to be very rare.
What is this new technology
SVG? New? Not that is news! SVG 1.1 was ratified on the 14th of January, 2003. Most SVG users either view the files in the Adobe Plugin, or translate to raster images for vector charting and the like. (I actually had a pretty cool 3D pie chart program for awhile there. SVG came out of one end, translated by Batik, then viewed as a PNG.)
why should I care about it
You shouldn't. It's just technology marching on. If you need to do vector graphics, you'll find it far more up-to-date and better supported than PostScript. If you don't need to do Vector graphics (or don't even know what vector graphics ARE) then you definitely don't care.
As a computer expert of 20 years and programmer of 15 years, how will this effect me?
You'll need a new bullet-point on your resume in a few years?
Will I have to learn totally new things, or does it build on the old ones?
You know XML? You know PostScript? How about ECMAScript? Yes? You're good to go then.
Who owns the patents to this new technology?
It's older than the hills technology. I dunno, maybe my great grandmother had a patent at some point, but there are none now. (Unless someone invents a stupid one like "Method for storing Vector graphics in XML." Hmm... maybe it is patented.)
Will Microsoft release their own version of it and crush everyone?
Microsoft Internet Explorer (Exploder in my book) needs the Adobe plugin. AFAIK, Microsoft is mostly ignoring it.
Use a mirror. Whiners.
...and the pure buyancy of Rutan's ego.
:-)
Hey now. Let's go easy on the insults. Just because he's got fans galore doesn't mean the guy has an ego to match. In fact, most of the interviews I've seen with him have shown him to be quite modest. As an aviator he does good work. Let's leave it at that.
BTW, Fun link of the day. Figured you might appreciate that one.
Whether Webster declares that it's obsolete or not, many people still use the word that way. Thus it's still correct until English stops being a living language, or it falls out of common usage. ;-)
On the other hand, its payload fraction should more than make up for it.
:)
;-)
:-)
;)
;-)
The payload fraction may be high, but the payload mass is not guaranteed to be so. The original NASA design for the NASP (a.k.a. The X-30) called for a two man craft with a rather small payload. A lot more testing would have to have been done before they could even think of scaling it up larger.
Yes, but will the general public?
You said it yourself. Fly them in space for 10 years, and the public will begin to calm down.
Besides, if we can't even get a CANDU to be completely reliable, how can we get a nuclear thermal rocket to be?
I'd say that the primary difference is that a CANDU reactor is a closed-loop system designed for 30+ years of use, whereas an NTR is an open system designed for 30-50 hours of firing. The types of maintenece problems that occur in regular reactors, simply wouldn't occur in a maintenence-free reactor that will only have a useful life of a few years at most.
Also, you have to look at the differences in design. CANDU wants to run in a nice, safe area where the reaction can be controlled. NTR engines want the reaction the ramp WAY up there, limited primarily by the turbopumps and the heat conductivity of the materials. (Tungsten is one of the best heat conductors that can withstand high temperatures.)
The failure modes I could envision are:
1. The reactor begins to melt down. The turbopumps remain active and the rocket makes it to orbit. The engines are as good as scrap. The cladding holds and the materials remain contained.
2. The reactor beings to melt down. The turbopumps are unable to keep up or non-functional. The reactor shutdown fails. The engine literally melts off and falls into the drink. The molten liquids would cool quickly and form radioactive beads. There is little danger to humans due to the water shielding, though some marine life obtains high doses of radiation. The beads are found and recovered a few months later.
3. The rocket explodes, spewing radioactive shrapnel into the drink. Same cleanup procedure and issues as point 2.
4. Engines stop firing for some unknown reason and the ship falls into the drink. See points 2 and 3.
5. Engines stop firing for some unknown reason and the range officer destroys the craft. See points 2 and 3.
6. Engines begin melting, spewing flakes of radioactive material into the surrounding atmosphere. Most (if not all) of the material finds its way into the drink, or disperses enough to add a very minor amount of radioisotopes to the eco-system.
One could probably imagine a few more scenarios, but none that would lead to cataclysmic consequences.
The thing is, MPDT engines are already light - I read a paper on a small, 20kg *lab model* which could sap 7.1 MW of power and produce enough thrust for 90N (0.45g) acceleration using 3 mg/s of Ar and 34,000 amps (Choueiri & Ziemer at EPPDYL/Princeton). Use superalloys and scale it up, and it's easy to picture getting several Gs from it. The engines are already here, it's that darn issue of power production in the range of 1/2 MW/kg of generator
Last I heard, they were thinking of using the MPDT as an "assist" booster. i.e. An MPDT craft would have strap-on SRBs that would help it get off the ground. Once sufficient altitude was reached, pure MPDT mode could be achieved.
Even if that idea doesn't work, we would end up with a VERY powerful space-only engine that would be cheaper, safer, easier to use, and more powerful than either NTR or Orion.
Definitions of exasperate on the Web:
e xasperate+&sourceid=mozilla&start=0&start=0&ie=utf -8&oe=utf-8
* exacerbate: exasperate or irritate
* infuriate: make furious
* worsen: make worse; "This drug aggravates the pain"
http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A
I am sure you can find some wackos who would go "All those ex-inhabitants if Chernobyl are wimps, I would raise children and grow tomatoes there!", "I eat plutonium for breakfast, it adds a zing to my toast!", "Look Ma, them gamma rays are harmless, and warm and tingly too!", "I would like to glow in the dark, it would be cool!" etc.
;-)
:-)
Then they'd be right-wing nut jobs. Not much better.
I have no problem with that as long as the fuel can be delivered to orbit safely instead of ending up in my strawberries or tuna.
That, we can do quite effectively. Our experience with RTGs (including losing and later recovering a couple of them in the drink) has given our space program good experience with buidling safe containers for transporting such materials. So far, none of the containers have failed.
Ooookkaayyy. You have a very interesting definition of customers. If you really think that the government is NASA's customer, then NASA has succeeded wildly in their goals. They've given them everything they've asked for!
And I don't know why you insist on perpetuting this idea that I'm disagreeing with you on cost overruns. No, the Shuttle was not a "success", though it was declared one because it met the final goals it was supposed to achieve. The fact that the original goals of cheap access were lost is beside the point. The point is that the holding company of NASA (our government) has screwed their subsidiary wildly, then been surprised when things didn't work as planned. What did they think was going to happen, NASA would magically put out the same level of tech as they did in the 60's when they had better funding, technology, and no politicians telling them what to do?
In any case, you're being very annoying. When you figure out what point it is you want to make, pop back in and we'll chat. Otherwise, go rant at someone else.