Oracle apparently made a $25K donation to governor Gray Davis' campaign fund after the sale was made...
This is true, but misleading, because the money was received by the head of the Dep't of Information Technology, not Davis himself, nor his campaign fund directly. The contract appears to have been completely mishandled, and perhaps manipulated, by the governor's cabinet, the CA Dep't of Information Technology, and its head, Elias Cortez, who's already been suspended pending the current investigations. Cabinet secretaries involved have already resigned, embarassed at their lack of proper review of the contract. There appears to be some malfeasance on the part of software advisors to the state who made money on the deal, and $25K & $50K campaign checks that've been making the rounds to one & all. It's all available in the latest article on the deal. All in all a dirty deal, but I don't see where Davis, even though he was the Governor, could have had any precognition of the stupidity going on in the lower halls of the government before the deal was completed.
Despite GOP willingness to paint with as broad a brush as possible in an election year, Davis appears not to have known much about the deal until it hit the news, about when/. first reported it. Since then, it's been his own office working with the Assembly that've sought to find out what happened.
Think about it. The Governor does not personally handle or approve all software purchases, nor should he. There appears to be quite a bit of crooked behavior on the part of Oracle and the leaders of the CA Dep't of IT, as well as a lack of proper review by those overseeing the department, and Davis is looking into it with the Assembly. If anyone finds evidence that Davis was a part of the deal then sure, nail his ass to the wall, but don't make insinuations there's no evidence for. That just cheapens the discussion, and ignores the fact that it is Davis who began the investigations, Davis who sent in the CA Highway Patrol to stop document shredding at the Dep't of IT, and Davis who's asked for and received the resignations of 3 top cabinet officials for failing to do a proper review of the deal. I don't mind disagreeing on political issues, but corruption in the governor's chair is a serious charge that requires more than non-evidence.
Oh, and his opponent, Bill Simon, saying that the oracle deal takes food out of the mouths of children is rich. This guy wants to gut children's services, make abortion illegal, and stop state tracking of all racial data regarding education, health care, etc. I guess if you don't want to solve a problem, you start by ignoring it.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. it's the only thing that ever has.
I agree, and not to be picky, but you should atribute any quotes you use, anywhere, even in your.sig. In case you didn't know who said that, it was the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead.
I agree with getting "true professionals" and the antics of poor teachers, but I think the problem is a tug of war between two unreasonable parties - the unions and state legislatures. The unions don't want improved standards without improved (read decent) and attractive compensation, and so many state legislatures are so conservative that they don't want to give out any new money without getting improvement beforehand, a virtual impossibility. Also, as much as unions need to be willing to sift out the chaff from their membership, so do the school districts need to be better organized, less bureaucratic, and less dogmatic in teaching methods. Alot of people blame the unions, but I feel the problem's broad-based, with everyone from the president down to your local high school's principal thinking they have the answer.
I also think that, if only for the fact that the teacher's the only adult in a room of 30 kids, that having to act in loco parentis is kind of unavoidable. But like you said, stay away from moral education.
As a molecular biologist I run into this level of scientific ignorance on a regular basis. Everyone I talk to about my work assumes I'm either cloning embryos for their organs, producing genetically-engineered food, sequencing the human genome, or trying to cure Ebola - whatever they've caught most recently on the nightly news. They talk about how unethical it is to do any one of the above, ignorant of anything more than the few catchphrases & soundbites they caught or how such research is done, and even more ignorant of the fact that the scientific community had spent the past 2 decades warning ethicists & politicians of their discoveries in order to get them to get in front of the issues & prepare people morally & politically for these things that seem now so sudden. The entire perception of science suffers from Mad Scientist Syndrome, perpetuating the belief that we have to clamp down on what these crazy scientists can & can't study, or else we'll end up in some world out of Gattaca.
The main problem is that mainstream science reporting is usually done by journalists with no scientific background who add hype to their stories to increase readership, dumb them down to a 5th-grade level (or lower) to make them "more accessible", or are themselves so intellectually ill-equipped to analyze their subject that their reporting makes no sense. Even old, august science & technology magazines like Scientific American are noticeably dumbing down their articles. Reading the LA or NY Times' "science" section just brings me to tears. It's become all tech gadget reviews and featherweight feature articles that, in their journalistic quest to "voice both sides" of an issue like if global warming, fail to convey the balance of scientific opinion on the subject, currently running at about 99% agreeing that it is occurring, in favor of "equal time". Either that, or fluff like profiles of brave cancer patients & shit. When there are so many real issues out there the public needs to be informed and educated on, this level of reporting is almost criminal.
A good portion of the blame rests as well on the silence of good scientists too, who often shun writing or speaking for public consumption for fear of risking their reputations or funding by creating a forum for disagreement. But I feel it's mostly scientific reporting in the media that's keeping people stupid, along with the Dick & Jane level of science education in schools. Then again, how can you teach kids about scientific thinking when they have trouble with math & english? It's all a great big fuckup that needs to be addressed.
For fuck's sake, pay good teachers WELL, and I'm talking at about above $50K to start - that way we'll get good people. Insure quality in schools, not with the current rampant test, test, test and test again bullshit & writing your congressmen, but with your own personal attention, time, work, and yes, even your money if you can at your kid's school. Pay close attention to your kid's studies. Complain about slack teachers who let kids skate through. Do it now. You can either wait 10 years for your kid to be done with school before the government gets around to fixing things, or you can be part of the solution yourself. You scientists, go to the schools, talk to the science teachers. They want your help. They want you to help them show kids what science is like. Same thing for you accountants with math, and you writers & journalists with english. It's your job too, and if your local school is failing kids you should bear part of the blame. Have a sense of pride and community dammit.
Business processes today reach beyond the four walls of a company and into the extended enterprise. This is new territory for many organizations, but at divine it's what we do.
divine helps companies maximize profits through better collaboration, interaction, and knowledge sharing across their entire value chain.
I can understand deterioration of analog film making a digital viewing better, but if, like I'm sure 99% of us here will be, I'm sitting in the first midnight show of AotC watching a digitally-produced analog film print in an otherwise tricked-out theater, am I really going to see that much of a difference?
I ask only because unless it's appreciably better than a NEW print it's not really worth the 50 mile drive into LA. I'd analogize it to listening to a song on a CD vs. listening to it on a brand-new vinyl disc - the analog printing might even look smoother, I don't know. Hell, just 'cause that's the way Lucas wants it doesn't mean it's better - ask Jar-Jar.
And on the subject of DLP as a whole, the studios are jacking theaters big-time. They want them to foot all the costs of going digital in an age where they're raping them to the tune of about 90% of the profit from ticket sales. After the "cinematic arms race" over stadium seating, many have gone out of business already, and those still running are hurting. I'm amazed they get by on candy/popcorn/soda sales as it is.
If you're ever wondering why your local theater has no money for improvements, look no further than the studios.
I don't see this. Mail-order gene synthesis [gene-synthesis.info] is still available with no restrictions. You can fabricate your own viruses that way.
Speaking as a molecular biologist who works with bacterial viruses, I'd like to quibble a bit about this. All the link you gave is to is a site that makes synthetic DNA sequences and puts them in a plasmid or phagemid vector. That has no relation to making a unique virus. Theoretically, I'd say custom-designing an AIDS-like viral disease vector from the ground up would take the full effort of about 6 people over 3-4 years & would require Biohazard Level 3 facilities to avoid killing yourself. A good Ebola-style killer is much more difficult because of the BL-4 conditions needed, probably needing almost a decade. Factor in even longer time frames if you'd like to invent a cure for this bug before you throw it out there, so you can keep your evil friends from dying.
DNA is just a chemical, and alone it just sits there. The DNA the company you linked to makes is not in the form of a viral genome, and therefore can't be a viral component. Assuming the DNA itself has the proper phage origin of replication needed to perpetuate in a virus, it still needs a good bacterial host and a "helper" phage of some sort to co-infect with it and provide the remaining genetic material, the genes encoding the proteins your DNA lacks.
Lastly, the main thing keeping biological weapons from being mass-produced is the fright level. The people with the knowledge of how to do this stuff know they can, with the design of the right agent, eliminate humanity. Most of these people are pretty smart and don't want to do that.
Current US-government research [nano.gov] is becoming more heavily funded by the military.
It always has been. DOD/DOE have always been big funders of research.
There's ongoing interest in a DNA reader
What, you mean like this one? Of course it's not nanotech, but you can usually get one for about 300K a pop. The ABI 3730xl DNA analyzer is the current state of the art in "DNA reading", and requires its own benchspace. Somehow I doubt I'll be doing high-quality DNA sequencing in my pocket anytime soon.
Re:Thank God for the police...
on
Worst Buy
·
· Score: 2
I understand your worries, but I think you're confusing detainment procedure (what the police do) with court procedure (what the court does). The police have no requirement of "due process", which is a legal term that only has meaning in a court case.
In almost every police department, handcuffing people you're placing under arrest is standard procedure, nevermind their behavior before you arrest them. The purpose is to subdue the person you're arresting to prevent any attacks on the police officer or others before they happen. The handcuffs don't mean you're guilty and are by no means a form of mistreatment, just a precautionary measure. You never know how someone will react after being told they're under arrest - the most normal people sometimes lose their shit in such situations.
Mr. Abraham made no comment in his post about Miranda, but I'm sure it was read to him, as it's another part of standard procedure when someone is arrested.
You're also mistaken about having to charge someone. The charge in such an arrest was made by the store, being one of fraud which changed to trespass as the store managers tried to finesse their tale. The job of the police in this situation is NEVER to try & judge who's right & who's wrong - that's the court's job. They are supposed to figure out what the dispute is, and detain those who may have violated the law. So, when the police thought he may be charged with fraud, they arrested him. But then, the charges started to change with the stories of the BB management, and the officer in charge wisely decided to defuse the situation. I just think it was a good example of the system working.
Their new movie, called 'Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron'
A bit O/T I guess, but I had to note that I've unfortunately seen the preview for this film a number of times, and when you're dying for thew preview to end, it doesn't exactly speak well of the film. Whatta piece of wasteful pop pablum.
Re:Out of the woodwork :)
on
Worst Buy
·
· Score: 2
I don't know why, but in my mind this looks like an episode of "In the Heat of the Night".
"They call me MR. ABRAHAM."
Re:Nothing better to do?
on
Worst Buy
·
· Score: 2
Besides, there is one other thing to consider here...people have PAID for the card at that price. Even if it were a honest typo, Best Buy (or any other company) is obliged to give the option to either use the money towards the proper purchase price, give a refund or give store credit. They only have rights to your money in exchange for goods or services rendered.
In fact, it's easy to argue that regardless of the price itself being a mistake initially, when Best Buy took the money for promising to ship the item, their action validated that price and bound them to complete their end of the bargain. They are bound to deliver the item, and if they choose not to or try to alter the terms of the sale, are in a highly actionable position under the law.
The problem with disclaimers...
on
Worst Buy
·
· Score: 2
A disclaimer is a statement of the rights and reponsibilities the company believes it has & doesn't have. It is not a statement of law. Just because a person or institution claims they have a right to do something doesn't mean they have the right to do it. I could "reserve the right" to kill anyone who steps on my property on sight, but I'm still a murderer liable to be punished if I actually do it.
In pretty much all states there are laws against false advertising. Exceptions have been made for "obvious mistakes", but as has been shown by other info here, Best Buy was not commiting an error, but trying to backtrack on a special offer that got a little too much attention. It appears they probably did mean to honor this deal, but had changed their minds when it got too pricey for them.
Thank God for the police...
on
Worst Buy
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Maybe a little O/T, but everyone please notice that the police in this instance behaved completely properly throughout the situation, to the point of empathizing with this gentleman.
With the cops, when they fsck up, everyone's on their back. Nobody notices when the system works, and it appears to be working well here.
As for Best Buy, get a good lawyer who'll work for a split of the rewards for such harrassing behavior, and drain them dry.
Make sure you get your GeForce4 out of it, too. Make that manager hand it to you himself.
The False Blank CD Sales Statistic & RIAA Spin
on
The Culture of CD Burning
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
From the article:
Last year, recordable discs outsold CDs for the first time.
I've seen this statistic before, and it's misleading as hell. The conclusion made in the article cited and previous articles I've found in the LA Times & NY Times, is that CD copying is exploding, with the recording industry losing out on what could have been a boost in sales. This, however, is a lie, and a wonderful example of using statistics to mislead people.
It's a lie because all the statistic shows is the number of individual blank CD-Rs sold. There is NO USE INFORMATION associated with this number. As is well-known on/., people burn CDs to back-up their work, store pictures and video, copy CDs they already own to reduce wear on their purchased CDs, burn ISOs of downloaded programs, etc, etc, etc. The use is limited only by the imagination of the person with the burner. Yet, RIAA would have us all believe that 90% or more are used to copy CDs. I don't buy it, and they don't have the information to prove it.
Lastly, there's this nugget:
Even Harvard Law School students are getting into the act. When Hilary Rosen, the head of the Recording Industry Association of America, lectured at Harvard last week, she asked how many of the law students had illegally downloaded music. About one-third of them put their hands up. But when she asked how many had burned CDs for friends, the vast majority raised their hands.
''And some of these people are thinking of going into the entertainment industry,'' Rosen said afterward, shaking her head in disbelief. ''This is what we're up against.''
What Rosen is "up against" is called FAIR USE. The sort of CD copying for a friend is exactly what is protected, even under the current DMCA-clouded copyright landscape, under the home audio & recording act. You ARE permitted to copy & share your music, burn CDs for friends, etc. The law that allows you to make tape copies makes no differentiation between analog & digital media. So Rosen's head-shaking is so much dross & corporate lobbying. I agree on targeting people who sell copies, that's dirty. But sharing with friends & family? Gimme a break - that's free advertising.
First, if Google's management has any sort of head on its shoulders it's not going to compromise its integrity as a web-searching tool in such a way.
Second, if they ever did that to/., say, in response to disparaging comments about them, we'd all scream bloody murder.
Why would you want to advocate "disappearing" scientology websites? Like our civil liberties, what you let them do to the scientologists, you let them do to us. Fight their misuse of the DMCA and the injustice of the DMCA itself to preserve our freedom to speak, don't advocate shutting them up because they want to shut us up.
Consider me educated about centrifugal force being a fictitious force in changing frames of reference. Glad there are some smarties here to set us right.
Sorry to be a physics geek here, but there's no such thing as "centrifugal" force, unless you're talking about the force caused by a centrifuge dropped from a height.
There IS "centripetal" force, that refers to the force on an object travelling in a circle, which pushes outward from the axis of said circle on an object while it's travelling about the radius. Say you're spinning a ball on a string around over your head. Your work is translated into acceleration around the axis of the circle as the ball spins around your head, but the force is perpendicular to the path of the ball at any one moment, radiating from the axis. This is proven visually by noting that as you put in more work, spinning the ball faster, the angle from vertical of the string the ball's attached to increases toward 90 degrees. See? Force pushing outward, ball moving in circle. When the string is released though (or the CD breaks up) the ball moves in a straight line matching that along which it was travelling at the moment of release -- momentum then is in action.
To repeat, no centrifugal force. For all our computer learnin', it's surprising that so few paid attention in physics 101.
WRONG. Testosterone, as a steroid, like cholesterol, can be and is absorbed by the digestive tract. I will give you that it's an exceedingly poor route of administration compared to injection. Neveretheless, the point is that herbal remedies, by being less pure and having less knowledge of what is in them, makes them potentially very dangerous.
Ack! You're right, I did get it wrong, looking again. It's 6.022x10^23 molecules / mole. You're not going to indict me on a typo, are you?
I wasn't saying that drugs below 1 molar concentration weren't effective though, but that for all homeopathic remedies, dilutions near or exceeding - 10^23 were performed, such that there is none of the supposedly effective chemical in the dose given. They don't "seem to low to be effective", there's simply nothing in them other than water. If you take a pure solution of a chemical and dilute it, through serial dilutions, to an exponential degree greater than avogadro's number (as is done for homeopathic medicines), you end up with nothing but water.
For example, let's say I have a pure solution of distilled ethanol, 100%, 200 proof. I dilute by 1 to 10 in water, and now I have a 10% EtOH solution. Another 10-fold dilution gives me a 1% solution. But, the fact that molecules are discreet physical objects provides us with a factual limit to dilution, such that any dilution greater than 24 10-fold dilutions results in just water. Most all homeopathic remedies use at LEAST that much of a dilution, usually doing between 50 to 200-fold dilutions over between 10 and 100 iterations, meaning that at minimum you're diluting 10^50, way beyond the actual limit provided by avogadro's number.
And yes, people did get by for years without the medical and pharmaceutical practices. They also had an average age of mortality in their 40s.
And the whining about funding for clinical trials of alternative medicines is BS. If you're so sure it works, why don't you found a company and raise the VC capital yourself? Oh, I know why, because intelligent, informed venture capitalists who know their science would laugh you out of the room.
I absolutely cannot believe the level of level 2+ comments from supposedly intelligent people here who think there's something to homeopathic and alternative therapies. Most of them obviously haven't read Park's book, nor would they probably care to.
As for homeopathy, this is a practice that relies on diluting chemicals or extracts in water until there's no possibility of that chemical being in the liquid administered, relying on the "water memory" of the chemical for efficacy. Despite never having been shown to be efficacious in double-blinded clinical trials, it's ridiculous from the view of chemistry, physics, and what we know of the universe, due to a little problem called Avogadro's number (about 6.3x10^23, the number of molecules in one mole of a substance). Each of these serial dilutions of extracts causes the concentration to descend so far below avogadro's number that there is no chemical in what is administered. Park demonstrates in the book, using simple high school chemistry (which obviously many here are having difficulty remembering) that homeopathy, as practiced by the homeopathic industry, is simply the drinking of water.
It all has to do with a little something known as proof of efficacy, the most important part of any clinical trial. As one doctor said regarding the recent governmental report on "alternative" medicines (to paraphrase), "There are only two kinds of medicine -- that which works and that which doesn't. If something that's considered to be alternative is shown to work then it's adopted. If not, it is not."
People, there is medicine and there is quackery. The double-blind clinical trial is the only way of distinguishing between the two, and even then conditions have to be constructed carefully to insure accurate results. Thank God the FDA doesn't rely on the anecdotal evidence of family members, the testimonials of paid spokespeople, or the promises of the herbal supplement industry.
The FDA was created to help people see through all this snake oil & empty promises, but now, through exemptions for "herbal supplements" pushed through congress, led by Sen. Orrin Hatch, we have a renaissance of this sort of lies and deception of the populace. Unlike homeopathic remedies, herbal supplements many times do have powerful agents in them. Only because of their designation as a food and not a drug, they get around FDA requirements for purity, consistency, and efficacy. Because of widely varying concentrations of agents including ephedrine and hormones, and a level of quality that runs the gamut due to a complete lack of quality control, we have a multibillion-dollar industry whose products have been reported to cause strokes, heart disease and liver damage. In one report in the LA Times last month it was reported that the makers of an herbal supplement in Utah were adding crystal meth to their weight loss product, causing a spate of strokes & heart conditions in middle-aged people before being caught & shut down.
It's a tragedy, and it's a needless danger created because the average person has little more than an elementary school level of understanding of science. And I can't believe that so many of you are gullible enough to be taken in by these hucksters. Please, read and study before putting drugs in your body that aren't approved by the FDA.
We don't need any high-tech solution here, when there's been the Trucker's Friend, good old speed(tm), around for years, keeping losers who haven't cracked the book awake & alert the entire week before finals for decades.
I mean, really. Your favorite pot connection can usually hook you up with some speed on a same-day basis, if he's not carrying some with him normally, which he usually is. You'd be surprised how much potheads use speed to cram after baking themselves for the first 3/4 of the semester. Like pot, it's not known to be physically addictive, it's effective, not bad for you when used sparingly, and usually not too expensive.
Don't tell me none of you 133t programmers out there haven't done it at least once to get through a tough project.
From the Wired article on Leahy's stopping CBDTPA, there's this nugget:
"Also this week, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California) told Wired News he was drafting a House bill that would be similar to the CBDTPA."
Looks like Mr. Schiff, the "representative from Disney", representing the mouse's backyard in Glendale, CA, also now needs to be slapped down. What saddens me is that it's reps from my own party (Dems) that are doing this. Just goes to show that whoever is paying for the candidacy gets to make the law. I'm willing to support someone else in the primary over this issue alone.
In Windows I use Webwasher, a great program from Germany, to maintain complete control over what web servers are doing to my computer while surfing. It blocks that popup crap and gives you lots of controls to secure yourself against ads (malicious or not), webbugs, cookies, animations, etc. Also, once configured it can be easily clicked on or off from the system tray if it's giving you problems with a site.
I must've put it on about a half-dozen computers owned by friends & family, and each of them have been very happy with it.
Now people want us to have "addictiveness" warnings? How are we ever supposed to do that?
If we start warning about video games that are "addictive", where does it end? I've got about a dozen books I've read 3-4 times in a row that I'm happy to say I'm addicted to. Shall we place addictiveness warnings on The Lord of the Rings because of its engrossing nature, or warnings of possible depression on Tolstoy? Or how about a forewarning of existential confusion on Camus? Dickinson's poems make me almost deliriously happy -- I'm sure there's a warning for that. How many people have killed themselves because they couldn't measure up to Nietsche's ideal? I'm sure it must be more than one.
Turning to my DVD collection, God, I watch so many great films so many times, I'm sure I'm just about to put a noose about my neck. Citizen Kane is all too liable to make me see the futility of acquiring things at the loss of one's humanity - I'm sure it'll send me into a death spiral of despair any moment now.
For God's sake, are we now going to legislate and put a warning label on anything engaging, anything engrossing, anything that captures the interest and imagination of the human mind? The day I see a warning that my entertainment might actually entertain me is the day I pack off for a desert island.
Slashdot Mirror
Oracle apparently made a $25K donation to governor Gray Davis' campaign fund after the sale was made...
This is true, but misleading, because the money was received by the head of the Dep't of Information Technology, not Davis himself, nor his campaign fund directly. The contract appears to have been completely mishandled, and perhaps manipulated, by the governor's cabinet, the CA Dep't of Information Technology, and its head, Elias Cortez, who's already been suspended pending the current investigations. Cabinet secretaries involved have already resigned, embarassed at their lack of proper review of the contract. There appears to be some malfeasance on the part of software advisors to the state who made money on the deal, and $25K & $50K campaign checks that've been making the rounds to one & all. It's all available in the latest article on the deal. All in all a dirty deal, but I don't see where Davis, even though he was the Governor, could have had any precognition of the stupidity going on in the lower halls of the government before the deal was completed.
Despite GOP willingness to paint with as broad a brush as possible in an election year, Davis appears not to have known much about the deal until it hit the news, about when /. first reported it. Since then, it's been his own office working with the Assembly that've sought to find out what happened.
Think about it. The Governor does not personally handle or approve all software purchases, nor should he. There appears to be quite a bit of crooked behavior on the part of Oracle and the leaders of the CA Dep't of IT, as well as a lack of proper review by those overseeing the department, and Davis is looking into it with the Assembly. If anyone finds evidence that Davis was a part of the deal then sure, nail his ass to the wall, but don't make insinuations there's no evidence for. That just cheapens the discussion, and ignores the fact that it is Davis who began the investigations, Davis who sent in the CA Highway Patrol to stop document shredding at the Dep't of IT, and Davis who's asked for and received the resignations of 3 top cabinet officials for failing to do a proper review of the deal. I don't mind disagreeing on political issues, but corruption in the governor's chair is a serious charge that requires more than non-evidence.
Oh, and his opponent, Bill Simon, saying that the oracle deal takes food out of the mouths of children is rich. This guy wants to gut children's services, make abortion illegal, and stop state tracking of all racial data regarding education, health care, etc. I guess if you don't want to solve a problem, you start by ignoring it.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. it's the only thing that ever has.
I agree, and not to be picky, but you should atribute any quotes you use, anywhere, even in your .sig. In case you didn't know who said that, it was the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead.
I agree with getting "true professionals" and the antics of poor teachers, but I think the problem is a tug of war between two unreasonable parties - the unions and state legislatures. The unions don't want improved standards without improved (read decent) and attractive compensation, and so many state legislatures are so conservative that they don't want to give out any new money without getting improvement beforehand, a virtual impossibility. Also, as much as unions need to be willing to sift out the chaff from their membership, so do the school districts need to be better organized, less bureaucratic, and less dogmatic in teaching methods. Alot of people blame the unions, but I feel the problem's broad-based, with everyone from the president down to your local high school's principal thinking they have the answer.
I also think that, if only for the fact that the teacher's the only adult in a room of 30 kids, that having to act in loco parentis is kind of unavoidable. But like you said, stay away from moral education.
As a molecular biologist I run into this level of scientific ignorance on a regular basis. Everyone I talk to about my work assumes I'm either cloning embryos for their organs, producing genetically-engineered food, sequencing the human genome, or trying to cure Ebola - whatever they've caught most recently on the nightly news. They talk about how unethical it is to do any one of the above, ignorant of anything more than the few catchphrases & soundbites they caught or how such research is done, and even more ignorant of the fact that the scientific community had spent the past 2 decades warning ethicists & politicians of their discoveries in order to get them to get in front of the issues & prepare people morally & politically for these things that seem now so sudden. The entire perception of science suffers from Mad Scientist Syndrome, perpetuating the belief that we have to clamp down on what these crazy scientists can & can't study, or else we'll end up in some world out of Gattaca.
The main problem is that mainstream science reporting is usually done by journalists with no scientific background who add hype to their stories to increase readership, dumb them down to a 5th-grade level (or lower) to make them "more accessible", or are themselves so intellectually ill-equipped to analyze their subject that their reporting makes no sense. Even old, august science & technology magazines like Scientific American are noticeably dumbing down their articles. Reading the LA or NY Times' "science" section just brings me to tears. It's become all tech gadget reviews and featherweight feature articles that, in their journalistic quest to "voice both sides" of an issue like if global warming, fail to convey the balance of scientific opinion on the subject, currently running at about 99% agreeing that it is occurring, in favor of "equal time". Either that, or fluff like profiles of brave cancer patients & shit. When there are so many real issues out there the public needs to be informed and educated on, this level of reporting is almost criminal.
A good portion of the blame rests as well on the silence of good scientists too, who often shun writing or speaking for public consumption for fear of risking their reputations or funding by creating a forum for disagreement. But I feel it's mostly scientific reporting in the media that's keeping people stupid, along with the Dick & Jane level of science education in schools. Then again, how can you teach kids about scientific thinking when they have trouble with math & english? It's all a great big fuckup that needs to be addressed.
For fuck's sake, pay good teachers WELL, and I'm talking at about above $50K to start - that way we'll get good people. Insure quality in schools, not with the current rampant test, test, test and test again bullshit & writing your congressmen, but with your own personal attention, time, work, and yes, even your money if you can at your kid's school. Pay close attention to your kid's studies. Complain about slack teachers who let kids skate through. Do it now. You can either wait 10 years for your kid to be done with school before the government gets around to fixing things, or you can be part of the solution yourself. You scientists, go to the schools, talk to the science teachers. They want your help. They want you to help them show kids what science is like. Same thing for you accountants with math, and you writers & journalists with english. It's your job too, and if your local school is failing kids you should bear part of the blame. Have a sense of pride and community dammit.
Argh. Sorry. Rant over.
Extending the Enterprise
Business processes today reach beyond the four walls of a company and into the extended enterprise. This is new territory for many organizations, but at divine it's what we do.
divine helps companies maximize profits through better collaboration, interaction, and knowledge sharing across their entire value chain.
FUCKING RUN.
RUN HARD.
RUN NOW.
I can understand deterioration of analog film making a digital viewing better, but if, like I'm sure 99% of us here will be, I'm sitting in the first midnight show of AotC watching a digitally-produced analog film print in an otherwise tricked-out theater, am I really going to see that much of a difference?
I ask only because unless it's appreciably better than a NEW print it's not really worth the 50 mile drive into LA. I'd analogize it to listening to a song on a CD vs. listening to it on a brand-new vinyl disc - the analog printing might even look smoother, I don't know. Hell, just 'cause that's the way Lucas wants it doesn't mean it's better - ask Jar-Jar.
And on the subject of DLP as a whole, the studios are jacking theaters big-time. They want them to foot all the costs of going digital in an age where they're raping them to the tune of about 90% of the profit from ticket sales. After the "cinematic arms race" over stadium seating, many have gone out of business already, and those still running are hurting. I'm amazed they get by on candy/popcorn/soda sales as it is.
If you're ever wondering why your local theater has no money for improvements, look no further than the studios.
I don't see this. Mail-order gene synthesis [gene-synthesis.info] is still available with no restrictions. You can fabricate your own viruses that way.
Speaking as a molecular biologist who works with bacterial viruses, I'd like to quibble a bit about this. All the link you gave is to is a site that makes synthetic DNA sequences and puts them in a plasmid or phagemid vector. That has no relation to making a unique virus. Theoretically, I'd say custom-designing an AIDS-like viral disease vector from the ground up would take the full effort of about 6 people over 3-4 years & would require Biohazard Level 3 facilities to avoid killing yourself. A good Ebola-style killer is much more difficult because of the BL-4 conditions needed, probably needing almost a decade. Factor in even longer time frames if you'd like to invent a cure for this bug before you throw it out there, so you can keep your evil friends from dying.
DNA is just a chemical, and alone it just sits there. The DNA the company you linked to makes is not in the form of a viral genome, and therefore can't be a viral component. Assuming the DNA itself has the proper phage origin of replication needed to perpetuate in a virus, it still needs a good bacterial host and a "helper" phage of some sort to co-infect with it and provide the remaining genetic material, the genes encoding the proteins your DNA lacks.
Lastly, the main thing keeping biological weapons from being mass-produced is the fright level. The people with the knowledge of how to do this stuff know they can, with the design of the right agent, eliminate humanity. Most of these people are pretty smart and don't want to do that.
Current US-government research [nano.gov] is becoming more heavily funded by the military.
It always has been. DOD/DOE have always been big funders of research.
There's ongoing interest in a DNA reader
What, you mean like this one? Of course it's not nanotech, but you can usually get one for about 300K a pop. The ABI 3730xl DNA analyzer is the current state of the art in "DNA reading", and requires its own benchspace. Somehow I doubt I'll be doing high-quality DNA sequencing in my pocket anytime soon.
I understand your worries, but I think you're confusing detainment procedure (what the police do) with court procedure (what the court does). The police have no requirement of "due process", which is a legal term that only has meaning in a court case.
In almost every police department, handcuffing people you're placing under arrest is standard procedure, nevermind their behavior before you arrest them. The purpose is to subdue the person you're arresting to prevent any attacks on the police officer or others before they happen. The handcuffs don't mean you're guilty and are by no means a form of mistreatment, just a precautionary measure. You never know how someone will react after being told they're under arrest - the most normal people sometimes lose their shit in such situations.
Mr. Abraham made no comment in his post about Miranda, but I'm sure it was read to him, as it's another part of standard procedure when someone is arrested.
You're also mistaken about having to charge someone. The charge in such an arrest was made by the store, being one of fraud which changed to trespass as the store managers tried to finesse their tale. The job of the police in this situation is NEVER to try & judge who's right & who's wrong - that's the court's job. They are supposed to figure out what the dispute is, and detain those who may have violated the law. So, when the police thought he may be charged with fraud, they arrested him. But then, the charges started to change with the stories of the BB management, and the officer in charge wisely decided to defuse the situation. I just think it was a good example of the system working.
Their new movie, called 'Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron'
A bit O/T I guess, but I had to note that I've unfortunately seen the preview for this film a number of times, and when you're dying for thew preview to end, it doesn't exactly speak well of the film. Whatta piece of wasteful pop pablum.
We're talking completely empty prepackaged Britney Spears - style crap here.
I don't know why, but in my mind this looks like an episode of "In the Heat of the Night".
"They call me MR. ABRAHAM."
Besides, there is one other thing to consider here...people have PAID for the card at that price. Even if it were a honest typo, Best Buy (or any other company) is obliged to give the option to either use the money towards the proper purchase price, give a refund or give store credit. They only have rights to your money in exchange for goods or services rendered.
In fact, it's easy to argue that regardless of the price itself being a mistake initially, when Best Buy took the money for promising to ship the item, their action validated that price and bound them to complete their end of the bargain. They are bound to deliver the item, and if they choose not to or try to alter the terms of the sale, are in a highly actionable position under the law.
A disclaimer is a statement of the rights and reponsibilities the company believes it has & doesn't have. It is not a statement of law. Just because a person or institution claims they have a right to do something doesn't mean they have the right to do it. I could "reserve the right" to kill anyone who steps on my property on sight, but I'm still a murderer liable to be punished if I actually do it.
In pretty much all states there are laws against false advertising. Exceptions have been made for "obvious mistakes", but as has been shown by other info here, Best Buy was not commiting an error, but trying to backtrack on a special offer that got a little too much attention. It appears they probably did mean to honor this deal, but had changed their minds when it got too pricey for them.
Maybe a little O/T, but everyone please notice that the police in this instance behaved completely properly throughout the situation, to the point of empathizing with this gentleman.
With the cops, when they fsck up, everyone's on their back. Nobody notices when the system works, and it appears to be working well here.
As for Best Buy, get a good lawyer who'll work for a split of the rewards for such harrassing behavior, and drain them dry.
Make sure you get your GeForce4 out of it, too. Make that manager hand it to you himself.
From the article:
Last year, recordable discs outsold CDs for the first time.
I've seen this statistic before, and it's misleading as hell. The conclusion made in the article cited and previous articles I've found in the LA Times & NY Times, is that CD copying is exploding, with the recording industry losing out on what could have been a boost in sales. This, however, is a lie, and a wonderful example of using statistics to mislead people.
It's a lie because all the statistic shows is the number of individual blank CD-Rs sold. There is NO USE INFORMATION associated with this number. As is well-known on /., people burn CDs to back-up their work, store pictures and video, copy CDs they already own to reduce wear on their purchased CDs, burn ISOs of downloaded programs, etc, etc, etc. The use is limited only by the imagination of the person with the burner. Yet, RIAA would have us all believe that 90% or more are used to copy CDs. I don't buy it, and they don't have the information to prove it.
Lastly, there's this nugget:
Even Harvard Law School students are getting into the act. When Hilary Rosen, the head of the Recording Industry Association of America, lectured at Harvard last week, she asked how many of the law students had illegally downloaded music. About one-third of them put their hands up. But when she asked how many had burned CDs for friends, the vast majority raised their hands.
''And some of these people are thinking of going into the entertainment industry,'' Rosen said afterward, shaking her head in disbelief. ''This is what we're up against.''
What Rosen is "up against" is called FAIR USE. The sort of CD copying for a friend is exactly what is protected, even under the current DMCA-clouded copyright landscape, under the home audio & recording act. You ARE permitted to copy & share your music, burn CDs for friends, etc. The law that allows you to make tape copies makes no differentiation between analog & digital media. So Rosen's head-shaking is so much dross & corporate lobbying. I agree on targeting people who sell copies, that's dirty. But sharing with friends & family? Gimme a break - that's free advertising.
First, if Google's management has any sort of head on its shoulders it's not going to compromise its integrity as a web-searching tool in such a way.
Second, if they ever did that to /., say, in response to disparaging comments about them, we'd all scream bloody murder.
Why would you want to advocate "disappearing" scientology websites? Like our civil liberties, what you let them do to the scientologists, you let them do to us. Fight their misuse of the DMCA and the injustice of the DMCA itself to preserve our freedom to speak, don't advocate shutting them up because they want to shut us up.
Uncle.
Consider me educated about centrifugal force being a fictitious force in changing frames of reference. Glad there are some smarties here to set us right.
Sorry to be a physics geek here, but there's no such thing as "centrifugal" force, unless you're talking about the force caused by a centrifuge dropped from a height.
There IS "centripetal" force, that refers to the force on an object travelling in a circle, which pushes outward from the axis of said circle on an object while it's travelling about the radius. Say you're spinning a ball on a string around over your head. Your work is translated into acceleration around the axis of the circle as the ball spins around your head, but the force is perpendicular to the path of the ball at any one moment, radiating from the axis. This is proven visually by noting that as you put in more work, spinning the ball faster, the angle from vertical of the string the ball's attached to increases toward 90 degrees. See? Force pushing outward, ball moving in circle. When the string is released though (or the CD breaks up) the ball moves in a straight line matching that along which it was travelling at the moment of release -- momentum then is in action.
To repeat, no centrifugal force. For all our computer learnin', it's surprising that so few paid attention in physics 101.
Testoserone cannot be swallowed.
WRONG. Testosterone, as a steroid, like cholesterol, can be and is absorbed by the digestive tract. I will give you that it's an exceedingly poor route of administration compared to injection. Neveretheless, the point is that herbal remedies, by being less pure and having less knowledge of what is in them, makes them potentially very dangerous.
Ack! You're right, I did get it wrong, looking again. It's 6.022x10^23 molecules / mole. You're not going to indict me on a typo, are you?
I wasn't saying that drugs below 1 molar concentration weren't effective though, but that for all homeopathic remedies, dilutions near or exceeding - 10^23 were performed, such that there is none of the supposedly effective chemical in the dose given. They don't "seem to low to be effective", there's simply nothing in them other than water. If you take a pure solution of a chemical and dilute it, through serial dilutions, to an exponential degree greater than avogadro's number (as is done for homeopathic medicines), you end up with nothing but water.
For example, let's say I have a pure solution of distilled ethanol, 100%, 200 proof. I dilute by 1 to 10 in water, and now I have a 10% EtOH solution. Another 10-fold dilution gives me a 1% solution. But, the fact that molecules are discreet physical objects provides us with a factual limit to dilution, such that any dilution greater than 24 10-fold dilutions results in just water. Most all homeopathic remedies use at LEAST that much of a dilution, usually doing between 50 to 200-fold dilutions over between 10 and 100 iterations, meaning that at minimum you're diluting 10^50, way beyond the actual limit provided by avogadro's number.
And yes, people did get by for years without the medical and pharmaceutical practices. They also had an average age of mortality in their 40s.
And the whining about funding for clinical trials of alternative medicines is BS. If you're so sure it works, why don't you found a company and raise the VC capital yourself? Oh, I know why, because intelligent, informed venture capitalists who know their science would laugh you out of the room.
I absolutely cannot believe the level of level 2+ comments from supposedly intelligent people here who think there's something to homeopathic and alternative therapies. Most of them obviously haven't read Park's book, nor would they probably care to.
As for homeopathy, this is a practice that relies on diluting chemicals or extracts in water until there's no possibility of that chemical being in the liquid administered, relying on the "water memory" of the chemical for efficacy. Despite never having been shown to be efficacious in double-blinded clinical trials, it's ridiculous from the view of chemistry, physics, and what we know of the universe, due to a little problem called Avogadro's number (about 6.3x10^23, the number of molecules in one mole of a substance). Each of these serial dilutions of extracts causes the concentration to descend so far below avogadro's number that there is no chemical in what is administered. Park demonstrates in the book, using simple high school chemistry (which obviously many here are having difficulty remembering) that homeopathy, as practiced by the homeopathic industry, is simply the drinking of water.
It all has to do with a little something known as proof of efficacy, the most important part of any clinical trial. As one doctor said regarding the recent governmental report on "alternative" medicines (to paraphrase), "There are only two kinds of medicine -- that which works and that which doesn't. If something that's considered to be alternative is shown to work then it's adopted. If not, it is not."
People, there is medicine and there is quackery. The double-blind clinical trial is the only way of distinguishing between the two, and even then conditions have to be constructed carefully to insure accurate results. Thank God the FDA doesn't rely on the anecdotal evidence of family members, the testimonials of paid spokespeople, or the promises of the herbal supplement industry.
The FDA was created to help people see through all this snake oil & empty promises, but now, through exemptions for "herbal supplements" pushed through congress, led by Sen. Orrin Hatch, we have a renaissance of this sort of lies and deception of the populace. Unlike homeopathic remedies, herbal supplements many times do have powerful agents in them. Only because of their designation as a food and not a drug, they get around FDA requirements for purity, consistency, and efficacy. Because of widely varying concentrations of agents including ephedrine and hormones, and a level of quality that runs the gamut due to a complete lack of quality control, we have a multibillion-dollar industry whose products have been reported to cause strokes, heart disease and liver damage. In one report in the LA Times last month it was reported that the makers of an herbal supplement in Utah were adding crystal meth to their weight loss product, causing a spate of strokes & heart conditions in middle-aged people before being caught & shut down.
It's a tragedy, and it's a needless danger created because the average person has little more than an elementary school level of understanding of science. And I can't believe that so many of you are gullible enough to be taken in by these hucksters. Please, read and study before putting drugs in your body that aren't approved by the FDA.
Caveat emptor, YMMV, illegal drugs are bad, etc etc etc, BUT...
We don't need any high-tech solution here, when there's been the Trucker's Friend, good old speed(tm), around for years, keeping losers who haven't cracked the book awake & alert the entire week before finals for decades.
I mean, really. Your favorite pot connection can usually hook you up with some speed on a same-day basis, if he's not carrying some with him normally, which he usually is. You'd be surprised how much potheads use speed to cram after baking themselves for the first 3/4 of the semester. Like pot, it's not known to be physically addictive, it's effective, not bad for you when used sparingly, and usually not too expensive.
Don't tell me none of you 133t programmers out there haven't done it at least once to get through a tough project.
From the Wired article on Leahy's stopping CBDTPA, there's this nugget:
"Also this week, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California) told Wired News he was drafting a House bill that would be similar to the CBDTPA."
Looks like Mr. Schiff, the "representative from Disney", representing the mouse's backyard in Glendale, CA, also now needs to be slapped down. What saddens me is that it's reps from my own party (Dems) that are doing this. Just goes to show that whoever is paying for the candidacy gets to make the law. I'm willing to support someone else in the primary over this issue alone.
Why is this flamebait? I posted something relevant, useful, and non-threatening. What's the beef?
Hey all,
In Windows I use Webwasher, a great program from Germany, to maintain complete control over what web servers are doing to my computer while surfing. It blocks that popup crap and gives you lots of controls to secure yourself against ads (malicious or not), webbugs, cookies, animations, etc. Also, once configured it can be easily clicked on or off from the system tray if it's giving you problems with a site.
I must've put it on about a half-dozen computers owned by friends & family, and each of them have been very happy with it.
Now people want us to have "addictiveness" warnings? How are we ever supposed to do that?
If we start warning about video games that are "addictive", where does it end? I've got about a dozen books I've read 3-4 times in a row that I'm happy to say I'm addicted to. Shall we place addictiveness warnings on The Lord of the Rings because of its engrossing nature, or warnings of possible depression on Tolstoy? Or how about a forewarning of existential confusion on Camus? Dickinson's poems make me almost deliriously happy -- I'm sure there's a warning for that. How many people have killed themselves because they couldn't measure up to Nietsche's ideal? I'm sure it must be more than one.
Turning to my DVD collection, God, I watch so many great films so many times, I'm sure I'm just about to put a noose about my neck. Citizen Kane is all too liable to make me see the futility of acquiring things at the loss of one's humanity - I'm sure it'll send me into a death spiral of despair any moment now.
For God's sake, are we now going to legislate and put a warning label on anything engaging, anything engrossing, anything that captures the interest and imagination of the human mind? The day I see a warning that my entertainment might actually entertain me is the day I pack off for a desert island.