The notion that this would somehow effect the ability for police to conduct normal law enforcement is a bit silly for a bunch of reasons. Here's the biggest: Let's assume for a moment that the bad guys decide to try to use trapster as you suggest. Say someone calls in to report a squad car in the neighborhood of 1st and Main at 7pm. For the next hour, by your theory, that corner should be relatively safe from crime since the criminals would avoid it. Unfortunately, cops don't stay in the same place for the whole hour. They drive around, and after an hour could be in a completely different area of town.
In reality, if the bad guys actually tried to use the system as you suggest, it would make the police force look much bigger than they actually are since the same car would likely be reported multiple times by different people over the course of the hour. The end result is that crime would decrease overall due to the criminals assuming that the data was accurate.
This system works for speed traps, since they tend to operate in a specific area for a while, but for other uses, it would be all but useless.
The New York Times, LA Times, and many other newspapers were "Foxitized" well before Fox. Most of Fox News's popularity comes from people who were sick of the rest of media being so ridiculously biased in one direction.
Damn straight. People hate it when the media is so biased in the direction of accuracy. Fox was a breath of fresh air since they weren't tied down by minor annoyances like reality.
Seriously, while the NYT, LAT, etc. may have some bias, they have long been balanced out by their counterparts on the other side. NYP, WSJ, Washington Times, Pittsburgh News Tribune, USA Today (the most read newspaper in the US)... The irony of the grandparent is that he complains about Murdoch "foxetizing" the Wall Street Journal-- a paper with such a strong right-wing bias that they literally drove a top White House adviser to suicide due to their repeated slanders (Vince Foster, though I know all the right-wingnuts are convinced that Hillary had him murdered). The WSJ was a FAR right-wing newspaper-- particularly its editorial page-- long before Fox acquired it.
Hillary Clinton is complaining about the media's bias against her because it works in her favor to do so. She not only wins sympathy votes from her supporters, but she has managed to deflect ALL criticism of her as mere "media bias". This is exactly what Bush did with the 60 minutes report on his draft dodging. He turned one poorly vetted story into a condemnation of any criticisms of his failure to complete his contracted military service.
The myth of the "Liberal Media" is so absurdly false that it's hard to believe that anyone buys into it anymore, but it is still constantly thrown out. It can be discredited with just a little critical thought, yet apparently most Americans are incapable of critical thinking. Let's go back to the 90's. Nearly every day, allegations of crimes or misdeeds by the Clinton Administration were printed on the cover of virtually every major newspaper in America. After Eight years and tens of millions of dollars of investigations-- probably even hundreds of millions if you count the private investigations done by the media and right-wingers with a cause-- almost every story was completely discredited, often by the most cursory examination, but that didn't stop new allegations from appearing the next day.
Now jump forward to the present administration. There is absolutely no reasonable doubt that this administration has committed TRULY impeachable crimes. Illegally outing a covert intelligence agent for political purposes, knowingly misrepresenting Iraq's possession of WMD's, lying about Saddam Hussein's ties to Al Qaeda, violating the 4th amendment on an almost unbelievable scale (and lying about it), illegally firing US Attorneys for political reasons, destroying emails and other documents in clear violation of the presidential records act, illegal electioneering, advisers just plain ignoring subpoenas to appear before congress, the complete disregard and later destruction of habeas corpus... There are literallyhundredsofscandals that this administration has been involved with, and they have all been largely ignored by the mainstream media. Sure the stories are mentioned, but they are rarely covered by more than a story or two and then it's off to the latest Britney story. They are almost never really dug into. If even one in ten of the scandals are true (and the real number is probably far higher than that) than this is almost certainly the most corrupt administration in US history.
If the media is so biased to the left, how can you explain such an apparent bias towards the right? Hell, even the evil NYT was one of the biggest champions of the Iraq War, and without its support we possibly never would hav
The iPhone is a (mostly) great phone, but a pretty mediocre PDA. It's calendar is particularly weak. It also lacks some pretty common features such as voice dialing (more important than usual with the iPhone since it lacks a real keyboard-- it's dangerous to dial an iPhone while driving), voice notes, and a few other things that are slipping my mind right now. It's also pretty weak for email, though it might have gotten better in the last upgrade or two. I use the Gmail iPhone interface (http://m.gmail.com) which fixes most of the internal clients shortcomings. If you need a Smartphone for any of these features, I'd recommend looking at a Blackberry. If you can get by with these weaknesses (or you're willing to gamble that they will be fixed once the SDK is available) than the iPhone is great.
My thought exactly. Since she clearly thinks that Google needs to reduce its energy usage, perhaps she can suggest a way to do so? The really ironic part of the article was when she criticized Google for offsetting their energy use by generating green energy. Apparently the fact that Google's competitors might not do the same somehow reflects badly on Google. I don't quite get it...
What you seem to be missing is that Best Buy has a legal responsibility to protect the customers computer while it is in their care. They shouldn't need to be specifically told that her computer may contain personal data-- I think it's safe to assume that most computers contain things that are at least marginally private, so Best Buy should protect ALL computers in their care as if they contain private data.
IANAL, and it seems that you aren't either. Since you seem pretty confident about the law in question, perhaps you can post the specific section of the code that exempts Best Buy of their responsibility to protect the customers data and property in this case? Maybe some case law that backs up your theory? Or are you just talking out your ass?
I'd recommend watching the two free videos that I recommended earlier in this thread. They are well made videos, by entertaining speakers. It's kind of amazing how many of the anti-evolution arguments have been thoroughly refuted, yet are still repeated on a daily basis (occasionally even in court rooms under oath) as if they were valid. They don't deal with all of them in the video, but they do talk about some of the most famous. Even abiogenesis itself has been done in a lab environment, though not at a level to please anti-evolution zealots.
You're right, at it's very core is something that we can never know for 100% certain-- are the mutations random, or are they caused by some invisible hand. To me, this is an obvious place for okham's razor. The simplest answer is randomness, so until someone can show me something that suggests otherwise, I'll continue to assume that's the correct answer.
Whether you can add a GPS to the iPhone externally should be irrelevant to the patent. The patent seems to require that the phone have an integrated GPS. Even if adding an external GPS would fulfill the requirement, it still doesn't have removable storage. I'm not a patent attorney, but this seems to be pretty much the definition of a frivolous lawsuit.
the tragedy of this also includes the 1000's (or more?) of people in chronic and severe pain, who now cannot have it properly alleviated.
Why not? Most of the similar medicines are still on the market-- I believe even Vioxx is still available.
I still think that most of the corporate officers should be in prison. If the CEO was sent to prison when something like this happened-- even if it can't be proven that he was responsible, I guarantee that you'd see a whole lot fewer of these types of tragedies.
The FDA is the biggest example of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" in the US government. With the exception of a few right-wingnuts, nobody seriously argues that it should be done away with. Yet even though I disagree with Arthur B's basic arguments and probably pretty close to his whole ideaology, he is right that the FDA as it's set up today is causing almost as much harm as it is good. It fails to do it's most basic missions, whether it's ensuring the safety of medications (see Vioxx among others) or whether its ensuring the safety of our food supply (See Peter Pan Peanut Butter, and among many other massive food safety scares over the last several years).
I suspect that the course of action that I'd take is probably pretty close to the opposite of what Artur would recommend (Arthur: If I misread your political ideaology, I apologize!). I'm no expert, but there are a few things that I'd recommend: Triple, quadruple, maybe more their inspection staff so they have the ability to inspect every food producing plant at least once a year, and a least quarterly for large volume producers and plants with a history of issues. Give them more authority to shut down plants, force recalls, etc. (I'm not familiar enough with the problems of the dug saftey side to have any quick fixes, but they certainly need to be done.) Yes, all these things cost money. It would probably add a few pennies-- certainly less than $.50-- to your average daily food bill. How much is safe food worth to you?
One other thing that needs to happen for both food and drug safety and product saftey in general() is strict -criminal- sanctions against the corporate officers of any company that knowingly markets an unsafe product that results in someones death. Merck intentionally hid the fact that Vioxx increased the risk of heart attack & stroke. As many as 60,000 people died from heart attacks as a direct result of taking Vioxx, yet as far as I know, no one is in prison as a result.
Anyway. It's almost 2:30am, so I've got to crash. I hope this is somewhat coherent... Please forgive me if not.
Anybody else notice that they sued Apple? The patent specifically specifically says that the patented device contains "one or more replaceable memory card sockets", something that the iPhone annoyingly lacks. The iPhone also lacks a GPS, which is also specifically mentioned in the patent ("...with the location of the device as determined by a GPS section of the device").
Some companies might have problems with this patent, but Apple's lawyers should have this laughed out of court in about three minutes.
As I said, I'm not a genetic biologist. I'm pretty well versed in evolutionary theory, but certainly not an expert. That said, my understanding of what is happening here is that an artificial mutation is being introduced. That mutation causes the mosquito to die unless they recieve the appropriate antibiotic. From the article:
By postponing death with tetracycline, the scientists can keep the altered bugs alive long enough to breed them in large numbers. When released into the wild, they no longer receive tetracycline so the previously silenced gene springs into action. The bugs stay alive long enough to breed with wild females, but their offspring die young.
Whenever any two organisms mate, there are random mutations. There is a possibility that one of those random mutations will impart immunity to the flawed gene passed down by the father. If that offspring breeds, it's children will likely inherit the immunity as well, therefore spreading the immunity through the population.
Natural selection works EXACTLY the same whether the flaw is an artificially created genetic mutation, or a natural one. Bacteria becoming immune to an antibiotic is also the same process-- those that survive the first generation pass whatever genes helped them survive on to their offspring, causing them to have an advantage. On, and on...
If there is a flaw in that reasoning, I'd be interested in hearing it, but I believe thats all pretty sound.
BTW, if anyone really does want to understand evolution more completely, check out the excellent FREE dvds from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. There are two available:
Both DVDs contain lectures by college lecturers to an audience of high school students. They are both quite accessible, and anyone in the Slashdot community should have no trouble grasping the content. One of the DVDs also contains a lecture by a Catholic Evolutionary biologist explaining how he reconciles his religious and scientific beliefs. No matter what your beliefs, doesn't it make sense to at least understand the topic? (This last bit is not directed at anyone in particular, but is directed at anyone who does not believe in evolution because of their religious beliefs.)
Not really... The great grandparent asked how you "evolve immunity", and the grandparent explained the process pretty clearly. I'll concede, I'm not a genetic biologist, nor an expert in the technique being used to eradicate the mosquitoes. There may be some reason that the outlined process wouldn't work in this case, but I can't see any. It certainly is possible for a species to evolve immunity to a genetic disorder (designed or otherwise)-- as you noted it's called natural selection.
Then Heinous Jay came along and said (in his typical eloquent, friendly and well-argued manner):
It's interesting how derisive you are in a post that betrays your utter lack of understanding for the current issue.
Unfortunately, there's nothing terribly "derisive" in the parent post. Evolution & Natural Selection is an easy topic. While there might be subtleties that are hard to grasp, there's no reason that the average slashdot reader couldn't grasp the fundamentals within 30 minutes, with the help of any number of web articles. Scratch that... There is one reason: They don't want to understand it. But willfully ignoring the evidence against your belief is not an acceptable solution. That sort of attitude is what lead us in to the war in Iraq, for example, and it's high time that more Americans started calling out this bullshit.
Natural selection is true, people. Just deal with it. If you're to moronic to understand it, than you're also to moronic to vote. Please do your country a favor and stay home come election day. (There. Now that's derisive. Still true, though.)
But all that said, my challenge to Mr. Heinous still stands... Since the grandparent is clearly mistaken about the evolutionary processes at hand, and since you are clearly such an expert, perhaps you can enlighten us about exactly what part of what he said "betray[ed his] utter lack of understanding for the current issue."
Just to be clear, that last reply was in no way intended to continue any arguments. You conceded your error, and I'm completely satisfied with that. It's late (1:30 AM) & I'm tired, so if it came across wrong at all, please forgive me!
Me: Fair point (though wrong. We don't "misspell" color, we just spell it differently.) You: Fine, then I didn't "misuse" observation, I just used it differently.
Umm... no. British English and American English spell some words differently. Neither in "wrong" just different. I'm sure if you look up the word "color" in a decent British dictionary, it will say effectively the same thing. It's possible that in British English, "observation" isn't a synonym for "remark", but since I did admit that I was American, my usage was correct.
(Aside: Even in the second definition, observations can still be wrong. I observed David Copperfield walk through the great wall of China several years ago. That doesn't mean that it really happened. Sorry, I don't mean to keep picking at nits, I just can't help myself sometimes.)
That said, I don't disagree with you, or with most of johannesg second paragraph (though how he made the jump from the first sentence to the rest is a bit of a mystery). But there's a difference between criticizing America and bashing it, and johannesg catapulted clear across the line. I've never really considered myself a "patriot", but I used to feel that in spite of it's flaws I was fortunate to live in one of the greatest countries in the world (and I don't mean great as in might). Since Bush has taken office, he has made me almost ashamed to admit where I'm from. That doesn't mean that I'm willing to sit idly by while some idiot starts calling people "Americans" as if it were an insult, merely because he doesn't agree with the point that he was making.
I still believe that we are a great nation at heart, but unfortunately we've been hijacked by a relative few who have the money and lack of morals to do whatever it takes to further their agenda. I'm hopeful that in November, we'll be able to begin the long, slow road to recovering respect in the world.
I just looked through the first several pages of Google results for "dtrace". Not only do I see anything vaguely resembling a rendering program, I don't even see anything related to any projects other than the "DTrace" at hand. There are peripheral projects related to DTrace, but they all have other names and reference DTrace on their websites. Had you expended 15 seconds worth of effort (two seconds if you use Firefox and are able to right-click), you would have found the projects home page as the very first link in the results. It took more effort for you to thank the guy who posted the wikipedia link then it would have for you to have found it on your own. The editors may have neglected to include a link, but it was you who was lazy.
Assume for a moment that you had used Google, and somehow found the wrong project. What is the worst that would have happened? Most likely, the project you found would have been significantly different enough that you would have figured out what was wrong. But even if you had not figured out that you were looking at the wrong project, how would you really have been hurt by your misunderstanding? For that matter, how do you know that the link posted by the other guy is right? Maybe he linked to the wrong project and nobody noticed.
This is the Internet. The editorial standards are a bit lower here. You have to understand that not every article that you read on the net will explain everything in such a way that a fourth grader can understand it. I assume that you are not a fourth grader, so maybe it's time that you learned some critical reading skills and stop expecting people to spell everything out for you.
For someone so well versed in English that they can recognize someone's nationality by their grammar, you sure don't have a very good grasp of the language. There's more than one definition to the word "observation". For the record, according to Merriam-Webster:
1 a: an act or instance of observing a custom, rule, or law b: observance 2 a: an act of recognizing and noting a fact or occurrence often involving measurement with instruments b: a record or description so obtained 3: a judgment on or inference from what one has observed; broadly : remark statement
Note definition three. I could have said "he made a remark", but I chose it's synonym "observation" instead.
gr8scot: "Americans misspell "colour" and a lot of other words."
Fair point (though wrong. We don't "misspell" color, we just spell it differently. Once again, check the dictionary.). So what word or other phrase in the relevant post (the complete text: subject: "Actually..." Body: "Isn't this pretty similar to what Apple was doing with schools back in the 80's?") makes you 90% certain that Mongoose is an American?
As I said, I have absolutely no problem with people criticizing America, just do it honestly. There's plenty about us to criticize, why make shit up?
gr8scot: "Mongoose wouldn't need to "randomly assume" anything"
You didn't even get the recipient of the reply right. I wasn't replying to Mongoose, I was (sort of) defending him. Three points in your reply, and everyone of them is outright wrong. That might be a record even for Slashdot! Ok, probably not, but it's stil pretty bad.
So what is it about his post that made you think he was American? Seems a bit of completely unwarranted anti-Americanism to me. He made a perfectly reasonable (if inaccurate) observation, given the topic at hand.
I'm American. I have no problem with you criticizing America for our policies, our behavior, whatever (I'll frequently be right there with you). But don't randomly assume that just because you disagree with someone they they must be an American. There are plenty of idiots here, but you have your fair share of them, too. (Not that I'm calling you an idiot, Mongoose)
This is all true, but you're missing a fundamental point... There is absolutely no reason why any of those systems need to be connected in any way to the plane's control, navigation and communication systems as the article states. These should be two completely separate networks. You still would get simplified wiring, but you'd need two wires instead of one.
Thanks for your input. Some quick googling suggests that the current state-of-the-art hydrogen conversion is approaching 75% efficiency (See http://www.qsinano.com/white_papers/2006_09_15.pdf, note this is lab efficiency, not truly applied yet). Assuming that the efficiency continues to improve, I would expect that that value will rise notably by 2020 and beyond. When you factor in the NG used, transmission losses, etc., compressed air is only about 80% efficient (see post 101 of the SciAm discussion), so it would seem that hydrogen might be feasible as a replacement in the not terribly distant future.
Since there would also be lost efficiency going the other way (hydrogen > electricity), it probably isn't a very good sole storage solution, but it would seem to be a good solution to burn hydrogen in place of the NG. That would obviously result in further reduced efficiency, but would remove any Co2 from the equation. I'm not a chemist, physicist, or really any other -ist, but it seems like there is at least some potential there.
Slashdot Mirror
The notion that this would somehow effect the ability for police to conduct normal law enforcement is a bit silly for a bunch of reasons. Here's the biggest: Let's assume for a moment that the bad guys decide to try to use trapster as you suggest. Say someone calls in to report a squad car in the neighborhood of 1st and Main at 7pm. For the next hour, by your theory, that corner should be relatively safe from crime since the criminals would avoid it. Unfortunately, cops don't stay in the same place for the whole hour. They drive around, and after an hour could be in a completely different area of town.
In reality, if the bad guys actually tried to use the system as you suggest, it would make the police force look much bigger than they actually are since the same car would likely be reported multiple times by different people over the course of the hour. The end result is that crime would decrease overall due to the criminals assuming that the data was accurate.
This system works for speed traps, since they tend to operate in a specific area for a while, but for other uses, it would be all but useless.
The New York Times, LA Times, and many other newspapers were "Foxitized" well before Fox. Most of Fox News's popularity comes from people who were sick of the rest of media being so ridiculously biased in one direction.
Damn straight. People hate it when the media is so biased in the direction of accuracy. Fox was a breath of fresh air since they weren't tied down by minor annoyances like reality.
Seriously, while the NYT, LAT, etc. may have some bias, they have long been balanced out by their counterparts on the other side. NYP, WSJ, Washington Times, Pittsburgh News Tribune, USA Today (the most read newspaper in the US)... The irony of the grandparent is that he complains about Murdoch "foxetizing" the Wall Street Journal-- a paper with such a strong right-wing bias that they literally drove a top White House adviser to suicide due to their repeated slanders (Vince Foster, though I know all the right-wingnuts are convinced that Hillary had him murdered). The WSJ was a FAR right-wing newspaper-- particularly its editorial page-- long before Fox acquired it.
Hillary Clinton is complaining about the media's bias against her because it works in her favor to do so. She not only wins sympathy votes from her supporters, but she has managed to deflect ALL criticism of her as mere "media bias". This is exactly what Bush did with the 60 minutes report on his draft dodging. He turned one poorly vetted story into a condemnation of any criticisms of his failure to complete his contracted military service.
The myth of the "Liberal Media" is so absurdly false that it's hard to believe that anyone buys into it anymore, but it is still constantly thrown out. It can be discredited with just a little critical thought, yet apparently most Americans are incapable of critical thinking. Let's go back to the 90's. Nearly every day, allegations of crimes or misdeeds by the Clinton Administration were printed on the cover of virtually every major newspaper in America. After Eight years and tens of millions of dollars of investigations-- probably even hundreds of millions if you count the private investigations done by the media and right-wingers with a cause-- almost every story was completely discredited, often by the most cursory examination, but that didn't stop new allegations from appearing the next day.
Now jump forward to the present administration. There is absolutely no reasonable doubt that this administration has committed TRULY impeachable crimes. Illegally outing a covert intelligence agent for political purposes, knowingly misrepresenting Iraq's possession of WMD's, lying about Saddam Hussein's ties to Al Qaeda, violating the 4th amendment on an almost unbelievable scale (and lying about it), illegally firing US Attorneys for political reasons, destroying emails and other documents in clear violation of the presidential records act, illegal electioneering, advisers just plain ignoring subpoenas to appear before congress, the complete disregard and later destruction of habeas corpus... There are literally hundreds of scandals that this administration has been involved with, and they have all been largely ignored by the mainstream media. Sure the stories are mentioned, but they are rarely covered by more than a story or two and then it's off to the latest Britney story. They are almost never really dug into. If even one in ten of the scandals are true (and the real number is probably far higher than that) than this is almost certainly the most corrupt administration in US history.
If the media is so biased to the left, how can you explain such an apparent bias towards the right? Hell, even the evil NYT was one of the biggest champions of the Iraq War, and without its support we possibly never would hav
The iPhone is a (mostly) great phone, but a pretty mediocre PDA. It's calendar is particularly weak. It also lacks some pretty common features such as voice dialing (more important than usual with the iPhone since it lacks a real keyboard-- it's dangerous to dial an iPhone while driving), voice notes, and a few other things that are slipping my mind right now. It's also pretty weak for email, though it might have gotten better in the last upgrade or two. I use the Gmail iPhone interface (http://m.gmail.com) which fixes most of the internal clients shortcomings. If you need a Smartphone for any of these features, I'd recommend looking at a Blackberry. If you can get by with these weaknesses (or you're willing to gamble that they will be fixed once the SDK is available) than the iPhone is great.
My thought exactly. Since she clearly thinks that Google needs to reduce its energy usage, perhaps she can suggest a way to do so? The really ironic part of the article was when she criticized Google for offsetting their energy use by generating green energy. Apparently the fact that Google's competitors might not do the same somehow reflects badly on Google. I don't quite get it...
What you seem to be missing is that Best Buy has a legal responsibility to protect the customers computer while it is in their care. They shouldn't need to be specifically told that her computer may contain personal data-- I think it's safe to assume that most computers contain things that are at least marginally private, so Best Buy should protect ALL computers in their care as if they contain private data.
IANAL, and it seems that you aren't either. Since you seem pretty confident about the law in question, perhaps you can post the specific section of the code that exempts Best Buy of their responsibility to protect the customers data and property in this case? Maybe some case law that backs up your theory? Or are you just talking out your ass?
Who said anything about RC? He's talking about autopilot.
I'd recommend watching the two free videos that I recommended earlier in this thread. They are well made videos, by entertaining speakers. It's kind of amazing how many of the anti-evolution arguments have been thoroughly refuted, yet are still repeated on a daily basis (occasionally even in court rooms under oath) as if they were valid. They don't deal with all of them in the video, but they do talk about some of the most famous. Even abiogenesis itself has been done in a lab environment, though not at a level to please anti-evolution zealots.
You're right, at it's very core is something that we can never know for 100% certain-- are the mutations random, or are they caused by some invisible hand. To me, this is an obvious place for okham's razor. The simplest answer is randomness, so until someone can show me something that suggests otherwise, I'll continue to assume that's the correct answer.
Whether you can add a GPS to the iPhone externally should be irrelevant to the patent. The patent seems to require that the phone have an integrated GPS. Even if adding an external GPS would fulfill the requirement, it still doesn't have removable storage. I'm not a patent attorney, but this seems to be pretty much the definition of a frivolous lawsuit.
Why not? Most of the similar medicines are still on the market-- I believe even Vioxx is still available.
I still think that most of the corporate officers should be in prison. If the CEO was sent to prison when something like this happened-- even if it can't be proven that he was responsible, I guarantee that you'd see a whole lot fewer of these types of tragedies.
The FDA is the biggest example of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" in the US government. With the exception of a few right-wingnuts, nobody seriously argues that it should be done away with. Yet even though I disagree with Arthur B's basic arguments and probably pretty close to his whole ideaology, he is right that the FDA as it's set up today is causing almost as much harm as it is good. It fails to do it's most basic missions, whether it's ensuring the safety of medications (see Vioxx among others) or whether its ensuring the safety of our food supply (See Peter Pan Peanut Butter, and among many other massive food safety scares over the last several years).
I suspect that the course of action that I'd take is probably pretty close to the opposite of what Artur would recommend (Arthur: If I misread your political ideaology, I apologize!). I'm no expert, but there are a few things that I'd recommend: Triple, quadruple, maybe more their inspection staff so they have the ability to inspect every food producing plant at least once a year, and a least quarterly for large volume producers and plants with a history of issues. Give them more authority to shut down plants, force recalls, etc. (I'm not familiar enough with the problems of the dug saftey side to have any quick fixes, but they certainly need to be done.) Yes, all these things cost money. It would probably add a few pennies-- certainly less than $.50-- to your average daily food bill. How much is safe food worth to you?
One other thing that needs to happen for both food and drug safety and product saftey in general() is strict -criminal- sanctions against the corporate officers of any company that knowingly markets an unsafe product that results in someones death. Merck intentionally hid the fact that Vioxx increased the risk of heart attack & stroke. As many as 60,000 people died from heart attacks as a direct result of taking Vioxx, yet as far as I know, no one is in prison as a result.
Anyway. It's almost 2:30am, so I've got to crash. I hope this is somewhat coherent... Please forgive me if not.
Anybody else notice that they sued Apple? The patent specifically specifically says that the patented device contains "one or more replaceable memory card sockets", something that the iPhone annoyingly lacks. The iPhone also lacks a GPS, which is also specifically mentioned in the patent ("...with the location of the device as determined by a GPS section of the device").
Some companies might have problems with this patent, but Apple's lawyers should have this laughed out of court in about three minutes.
Whenever any two organisms mate, there are random mutations. There is a possibility that one of those random mutations will impart immunity to the flawed gene passed down by the father. If that offspring breeds, it's children will likely inherit the immunity as well, therefore spreading the immunity through the population.
Natural selection works EXACTLY the same whether the flaw is an artificially created genetic mutation, or a natural one. Bacteria becoming immune to an antibiotic is also the same process-- those that survive the first generation pass whatever genes helped them survive on to their offspring, causing them to have an advantage. On, and on...
If there is a flaw in that reasoning, I'd be interested in hearing it, but I believe thats all pretty sound.
BTW, if anyone really does want to understand evolution more completely, check out the excellent FREE dvds from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. There are two available:
Both DVDs contain lectures by college lecturers to an audience of high school students. They are both quite accessible, and anyone in the Slashdot community should have no trouble grasping the content. One of the DVDs also contains a lecture by a Catholic Evolutionary biologist explaining how he reconciles his religious and scientific beliefs. No matter what your beliefs, doesn't it make sense to at least understand the topic? (This last bit is not directed at anyone in particular, but is directed at anyone who does not believe in evolution because of their religious beliefs.)
Then Heinous Jay came along and said (in his typical eloquent, friendly and well-argued manner):
Unfortunately, there's nothing terribly "derisive" in the parent post. Evolution & Natural Selection is an easy topic. While there might be subtleties that are hard to grasp, there's no reason that the average slashdot reader couldn't grasp the fundamentals within 30 minutes, with the help of any number of web articles. Scratch that... There is one reason: They don't want to understand it. But willfully ignoring the evidence against your belief is not an acceptable solution. That sort of attitude is what lead us in to the war in Iraq, for example, and it's high time that more Americans started calling out this bullshit.
Natural selection is true, people. Just deal with it. If you're to moronic to understand it, than you're also to moronic to vote. Please do your country a favor and stay home come election day. (There. Now that's derisive. Still true, though.)
But all that said, my challenge to Mr. Heinous still stands... Since the grandparent is clearly mistaken about the evolutionary processes at hand, and since you are clearly such an expert, perhaps you can enlighten us about exactly what part of what he said "betray[ed his] utter lack of understanding for the current issue."
Umm... His post seems pretty right on the money to me. Since you're obviously an expert, perhaps you can point out the flaw in his reasoning?
Just to be clear, that last reply was in no way intended to continue any arguments. You conceded your error, and I'm completely satisfied with that. It's late (1:30 AM) & I'm tired, so if it came across wrong at all, please forgive me!
Umm... no. British English and American English spell some words differently. Neither in "wrong" just different. I'm sure if you look up the word "color" in a decent British dictionary, it will say effectively the same thing. It's possible that in British English, "observation" isn't a synonym for "remark", but since I did admit that I was American, my usage was correct.
(Aside: Even in the second definition, observations can still be wrong. I observed David Copperfield walk through the great wall of China several years ago. That doesn't mean that it really happened. Sorry, I don't mean to keep picking at nits, I just can't help myself sometimes.)
That said, I don't disagree with you, or with most of johannesg second paragraph (though how he made the jump from the first sentence to the rest is a bit of a mystery). But there's a difference between criticizing America and bashing it, and johannesg catapulted clear across the line. I've never really considered myself a "patriot", but I used to feel that in spite of it's flaws I was fortunate to live in one of the greatest countries in the world (and I don't mean great as in might). Since Bush has taken office, he has made me almost ashamed to admit where I'm from. That doesn't mean that I'm willing to sit idly by while some idiot starts calling people "Americans" as if it were an insult, merely because he doesn't agree with the point that he was making.
I still believe that we are a great nation at heart, but unfortunately we've been hijacked by a relative few who have the money and lack of morals to do whatever it takes to further their agenda. I'm hopeful that in November, we'll be able to begin the long, slow road to recovering respect in the world.
Sorr for the rant, I just needed to vent a bit...
I just looked through the first several pages of Google results for "dtrace". Not only do I see anything vaguely resembling a rendering program, I don't even see anything related to any projects other than the "DTrace" at hand. There are peripheral projects related to DTrace, but they all have other names and reference DTrace on their websites. Had you expended 15 seconds worth of effort (two seconds if you use Firefox and are able to right-click), you would have found the projects home page as the very first link in the results. It took more effort for you to thank the guy who posted the wikipedia link then it would have for you to have found it on your own. The editors may have neglected to include a link, but it was you who was lazy.
Assume for a moment that you had used Google, and somehow found the wrong project. What is the worst that would have happened? Most likely, the project you found would have been significantly different enough that you would have figured out what was wrong. But even if you had not figured out that you were looking at the wrong project, how would you really have been hurt by your misunderstanding? For that matter, how do you know that the link posted by the other guy is right? Maybe he linked to the wrong project and nobody noticed.
This is the Internet. The editorial standards are a bit lower here. You have to understand that not every article that you read on the net will explain everything in such a way that a fourth grader can understand it. I assume that you are not a fourth grader, so maybe it's time that you learned some critical reading skills and stop expecting people to spell everything out for you.
For someone so well versed in English that they can recognize someone's nationality by their grammar, you sure don't have a very good grasp of the language. There's more than one definition to the word "observation". For the record, according to Merriam-Webster:
Note definition three. I could have said "he made a remark", but I chose it's synonym "observation" instead.
Fair point (though wrong. We don't "misspell" color, we just spell it differently. Once again, check the dictionary.). So what word or other phrase in the relevant post (the complete text: subject: "Actually..." Body: "Isn't this pretty similar to what Apple was doing with schools back in the 80's?") makes you 90% certain that Mongoose is an American?
As I said, I have absolutely no problem with people criticizing America, just do it honestly. There's plenty about us to criticize, why make shit up?
You didn't even get the recipient of the reply right. I wasn't replying to Mongoose, I was (sort of) defending him. Three points in your reply, and everyone of them is outright wrong. That might be a record even for Slashdot! Ok, probably not, but it's stil pretty bad.
Umm... Why was this moderated Troll? While many people may not agree with what he says, it most certainly was not a troll.
umm... maybe try google next time?
So what is it about his post that made you think he was American? Seems a bit of completely unwarranted anti-Americanism to me. He made a perfectly reasonable (if inaccurate) observation, given the topic at hand.
I'm American. I have no problem with you criticizing America for our policies, our behavior, whatever (I'll frequently be right there with you). But don't randomly assume that just because you disagree with someone they they must be an American. There are plenty of idiots here, but you have your fair share of them, too. (Not that I'm calling you an idiot, Mongoose)
Grammatically, linguistically and geographically you might be correct, but you have to give it to him that a moose are funnier than elk.
This is all true, but you're missing a fundamental point... There is absolutely no reason why any of those systems need to be connected in any way to the plane's control, navigation and communication systems as the article states. These should be two completely separate networks. You still would get simplified wiring, but you'd need two wires instead of one.
Thanks for your input. Some quick googling suggests that the current state-of-the-art hydrogen conversion is approaching 75% efficiency (See http://www.qsinano.com/white_papers/2006_09_15.pdf, note this is lab efficiency, not truly applied yet). Assuming that the efficiency continues to improve, I would expect that that value will rise notably by 2020 and beyond. When you factor in the NG used, transmission losses, etc., compressed air is only about 80% efficient (see post 101 of the SciAm discussion), so it would seem that hydrogen might be feasible as a replacement in the not terribly distant future.
Since there would also be lost efficiency going the other way (hydrogen > electricity), it probably isn't a very good sole storage solution, but it would seem to be a good solution to burn hydrogen in place of the NG. That would obviously result in further reduced efficiency, but would remove any Co2 from the equation. I'm not a chemist, physicist, or really any other -ist, but it seems like there is at least some potential there.
Ahh... I see what you're talking about. Perhaps that makes an even better case for the use of hydrogen as the storage medium.