I know that the gimps here pride themselves on their mean spiritedness, and snobbishness; God knows an original idea can't come from a mere reader, it had to be handed down from Einstein.
God I've been thinking about dropping this place because there is *NO* discussion here. Only a few pampered pets to get points and a bunch of wanna bes.
As all life is compartmentalized (and generally subcompartmentalized), then compartmentalization is a necessary event in the creation of Earthlike life. The theories that start with the ocean being an amino acid soup (and how did those amino acids get us the DNA we need for replication?) are all fine and good, but they really don't get at how clumps of lipids, proteins and DNA became self replicating and distinct from that clump over there.
This hypothesis, at least, is an attempt to get at the problem of compartmentalization of life, though it doesn't seem to involve lipids as elements in that compartmentalization, really. It is a necessary step, but not the whole picture.
Articles like this remind me of why I think we're missing out by not having the old 8 bit computers with a built-in Basic interpreter. Some clever folks wrote a nice little assembler that used the Basic interpreter (Petspeed, for those who remember it) and writing assembly was about as hard as writing Basic.
Most of the concepts in this article would be picked up by people -if- they had access to as easy-to-use assemblers as they had in those days. These days, with the crap that passes for an OS (Windoze, etc.. excusing Linux, as it has a gazillion coding tools for free), its a wonder anyone learns how to use a mouse (and you probably have to take a $2000 Windoze class to learn how to do that).
Because they're red. You know, those Red Lobsters just don't have the right philosophical attitude, waving their lobster claws around and generally raising a fuss.
If they were *good* red lobsters, they wouldn't be so objectionable!
I think it would be better to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars on this kind of problem than to study something painfully obscure. Old computers parts are loaded with heavy metals and are a water quality disaster waiting to happen. Recycling methods optimized for converting old mother boards and electronic parts would yield such a tangible human benefit.
Kudos to California and HP for trying to find a way around this problem.
Why the hell not? I am so fucking sick of people invoking morality (or "ethics;" IMO it's a distinction without a difference, but that's a whole 'nother argument) as an argument against biological research. No one ever brings these arguments up in chemistry, or physics, or math...
Actually I beg to differ. There was a time when people found out that adding organic lead compounds into gasoline improved octane ratings, so gasoline companies did this. Later, other people pointed out that lead is poisonous, and worked to get the lead out of the gasoline (much to the chagrin of the oil companies, who wanted to keep putting it in gasoline).
So these days we drive cars that burn lead-free gasoline. That was a moral, ethical, and health issue which squarely belongs in the realm of chemistry. I'm sure with a little work, people can find others (e.g. DDT, lead paints, etc).
Advisory board turnover versus scientific review
on
Politicizing Science
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· Score: 1
Without being too specific, I'm relatively close to someone who works for the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. As such I know a little about the politics there and who has been filling what position, etc.
Generally in government departments there is a rapid change in the people running things when a new President takes office, especially ones as politically charged as those dealing with health and genetics. However, the Bush Administration seemed to ignore the health departments for the longest time. Clinton appointees stayed in positions for well over a year, long past the time a more aggressive administration would have replaced them. A simple example is the head of the CDC, who was not replaced until after the anthrax scare.
That administrations like their advisory committees to reflect their own views should not be a surprise. The unfortunate thing is the tone of the article suggested that this trend extended to the level of scientific *review*, which it does not. They are not replacing people who determine the actual merits of a particular bit of science, they're filling posts that advise on what to do with the science ex post facto.
For 15 years, ever since K. Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation launched the nanocraze, the field has been plagued by sci-fi notions of tiny robotic "molecular assemblers" running around shoving atoms together. But as buckyball pioneer Richard Smalley remarks, molecular assemblers have long existed: "We call them catalysts."
It doesn't surprise me that a physical chemist like Smalley sees what a lot of nanotech enthusiasts seem to forget: there is a branch of science that's dealt with atomic level materials for a long time, and it goes by the name of chemistry. The really interesting element in the new nanotech is that with the range of visualization tools we have, things that were once a kind of black magic (noble metal catalysts) can go from an art to a science and go from being pulled out of the blue to being intelligently designed.
But evolution is a theory. It can't be proven unless (according to the scientific process) someone sees it happen. To the best of my knowledge, no one has seen anything evolve into something else. Thus it remains a theory.
People see evolution all the time. The simplest example, in bacteria, is the development of antibiotic resistance in strains that had no resistance before. There is also the classic example of the peppered moth in England, going from a peppery wingspan to a black wingspan as England used more and more coal, and then back to a peppery wing when the coal use went away.
These are documented examples of evolution in historic times.
Stephen Jay Gould said it best, when he mentioned that evolution was a theory, but it is also a fact. People tend to forget that when they try to wish away the facts of evolution.
In the Microsoft world, makers of software that play media streams ("media players") will have to get a licence from Microsoft before they will be allowed to process content encoded in the Windows Media format.
Microsoft's Media Player v9.0 adds an extra level of protection, calling an outside licensing server run by a copyright clearing house, which then issues an encrypted licence key before playback begins.
Ok, so if I'm off the Internet, and Microsoft's Media Player can't verify a thing, is it going to (a) break or (b) work anyway?
I'd bet on (b) myself. I think though, for most people, the take home lesson will be to stop using Microsoft supplied or derived media tools entirely.
So my question is, can a small voltage potential be applied to magnify the van der Waals forces?
Understand, a Van der Waals force is a third order electrostatic attractive force. The first order is pure electrostatic attraction, which you *would* affect with a voltage potential. Second order are permanent dipolar attractions, and third order are quantum fluctional dipolar attractions, or Van der Waals forces.
Trying to make Van der Waals more powerful by applying a voltage potential is a bit like making a firecracker more powerful by adding a few sticks of dynamite to it.
Just a note, I like your points, but where did you get the idea that MPEGs are more closed than other formats?
There is a difference between policing data at the application level and whether or not a file format is open/closed. If I had text files that had the *.foo extension, and then I wrote a daemon to go through my system and kill any *.foo files that were more than 14 days old, I'm policing the file extension. But I'm not dictating what the format of those files is.
I'm suggesting that if programs start treating generic MPEGS as some kind of foreign invader, and no longer access the data, or God forbid, remove them, then its worth looking into removing the offending programs. Or, if those programs are essential for some other reason, looking for a data format the programs don't treat like the plague.
That's the point, really. Though, to be sure, I'm also implying that if this kind of ugliness comes to pass with MPEGS, that consumer forces will drive a switch to a more free format.
The old saw in biochemistry is that a 10 K drop in temperature will cause an order of magnitude drop in the rate of biochemical reactions. But if the reaction is thermodynamically favorable it will still continue to move towards equilibrium. Kinetically hindered but exothermically favorable processes keep going at low temperature.
Just, they're 30,000 years or so slow:>
It sounds spectacular, but its the expected result. More so, its the result a freshman chem/biochem major should expect.
Because if you can locate someone by virtue of their cell phone, (or at least locate their cell phone), then some missing persons cases could be solved with this kind of technology.
If, instead, you're an adult with tastes you don't want the world to know (adult clubs, fringe politics,/. maybe (seriously, its been banned at my workplaces before)), you might find it an opportune time to start paying for your own cell instead of using one supplied by an employer.
* If certain software becomes hostile to copy survivability, switch to more user friendly software.
* If a file format becomes undesirable for some reason, switch formats. The shift from GIF to JPEG was accelerated when CI$ wanted royalties for GIFs. if MPEG becomes untenable, switch to a format WMA/Windoze, etc, wouldn't tell from any other binary.
I think all people are proving is that they can muck up a file format or two. But there are a number of ways of encoding music after the fact. Just, you may need to convert your precious MPEGs to a more modern (and less policed) format.
It is exciting tech, but a little frightening. Consider a world where "cortex technicians" come out of schools no more accredited than the tech institute down the street. They can play with your head, fiddle with the juice going into your visual centers. One mistake, and you (or a loved one) is fried.
I'm glad that there are researchers looking for lower amperage alternatives.
If you wanted to sell satellite launching services to neighboring countries, and you're competing with, say, China and Japan, showing you have an equivalent launching technology to the big guys would have significant public relations value.
Of course, you can't implement quicksort properly in FORTRAN because the language isn't recursive!
Actually, most any "nonrecursive" language can implement recursion using a stack. I've never bothered to do it in Fortran, but I translated a Turbo Pascal recursive maze algorithm to C= 64 Basic doing exactly that.
The thing that keeps getting missed is that the available base of Fortran programs were written by domain experts in the various physical sciences. And once you've written a several thousand line program that takes an expert of exceptional understanding to write, are you going to let Joe the Contractor or Fred the Grad Student rewrite it in C++/Java/Lisp/etc and break the code because he does something to the code he thinks is a good idea, but doesn't really work?
Well, Fred the Grad Student is almost a disposable part, so maybe you let him futz on it a year or two, but in general, a scientist doesn't get many kudos spending several months to a year rewriting code that already works. He would be better off publishing science, rather than catering to the current fashion in languages.
The elimination of electronics (and nothing but electronics) pushes us technologically back to about 1900 (assuming no other ill effects), as that's about the time radio is being developed into something useful. Now, if the whole gamut of other technologies are available at a 20th century (or 21st century) level, then recovery is fast. The materials scientists could rebuild the tools to make chips, the knowledge hasn't been lost, and we'd be up and running in a few years.
Of course, no "Survivor" and no "Temptation Island", 'till televisions are reinvented:)
Everything? From nothing to now in 2 generations.
on
Rebooting The World?
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· Score: 1
The interesting question this asks, is how quickly can an educated group without tools rebuild technology? To me, I think it would depend on easy access to the kinds of tools that built older civilizations. Wind would help; windmills can be made from wood, and trees are common enough. Running water would help, both for a water supply and as a source of power. Clay helps, helps a lot, to make bricks and therefore kilns, and from kilns come metals and porcelains. From the get go, assuming the land were clean enough and a diverse enough and well educated group were assembled, you could end up with a technology equal to that of Early America (the 1700s) in a few years.
Projecting the rate of growth beyond that is a little more difficult, because one technological innovation relies on others to bootstrap up the technological ladder. But perhaps 19th century technology at the end of a generation, with some 20th century elements (antibiotics, for sure), and with the recapitulation of a technology infrastructure, the rebuilding to near current levels by the second generation.
To get a feel for how this might be done, check out the Foxfire books, the ones that talk about old technologies, and how people lived their lives in the Appalachian mountains. Often they had to bootstrap their technology, and were pretty ingenious about doing it.
Complex carbon molecules have been found for ages in space. I recall some 10-20 years ago when they found glycine (an amino acid) and trumpeted that as an advance. Now more recently they've found signs of benzene in space, so I guess it's time for the ol' hip hip hurrah again.
Water is a common element in space. No news there.
Slashdot Mirror
I know that the gimps here pride themselves on their mean spiritedness, and snobbishness; God knows an original idea can't come from a mere reader, it had to be handed down from Einstein.
God I've been thinking about dropping this place because there is *NO* discussion here. Only a few pampered pets to get points and a bunch of wanna bes.
Im tired of this. Guys like you make me puke.
As all life is compartmentalized (and generally subcompartmentalized), then compartmentalization is a necessary event in the creation of Earthlike life. The theories that start with the ocean being an amino acid soup (and how did those amino acids get us the DNA we need for replication?) are all fine and good, but they really don't get at how clumps of lipids, proteins and DNA became self replicating and distinct from that clump over there.
This hypothesis, at least, is an attempt to get at the problem of compartmentalization of life, though it doesn't seem to involve lipids as elements in that compartmentalization, really. It is a necessary step, but not the whole picture.
Gray
Articles like this remind me of why I think we're missing out by not having the old 8 bit computers with a built-in Basic interpreter. Some clever folks wrote a nice little assembler that used the Basic interpreter (Petspeed, for those who remember it) and writing assembly was about as hard as writing Basic.
Most of the concepts in this article would be picked up by people -if- they had access to as easy-to-use assemblers as they had in those days. These days, with the crap that passes for an OS (Windoze, etc.. excusing Linux, as it has a gazillion coding tools for free), its a wonder anyone learns how to use a mouse (and you probably have to take a $2000 Windoze class to learn how to do that).
Yeah! undead and red. Course they gotta be banned.
Attack of the Undead Seafood Zombies, coming to a web site near you...
Because they're red. You know, those Red Lobsters just don't have the right philosophical attitude, waving their lobster claws around and generally raising a fuss.
If they were *good* red lobsters, they wouldn't be so objectionable!
I think it would be better to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars on this kind of problem than to study something painfully obscure. Old computers parts are loaded with heavy metals and are a water quality disaster waiting to happen. Recycling methods optimized for converting old mother boards and electronic parts would yield such a tangible human benefit.
Kudos to California and HP for trying to find a way around this problem.
Gray
Actually I beg to differ. There was a time when people found out that adding organic lead compounds into gasoline improved octane ratings, so gasoline companies did this. Later, other people pointed out that lead is poisonous, and worked to get the lead out of the gasoline (much to the chagrin of the oil companies, who wanted to keep putting it in gasoline).
So these days we drive cars that burn lead-free gasoline. That was a moral, ethical, and health issue which squarely belongs in the realm of chemistry. I'm sure with a little work, people can find others (e.g. DDT, lead paints, etc).
Without being too specific, I'm relatively close to someone who works for the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. As such I know a little about the politics there and who has been filling what position, etc.
Generally in government departments there is a rapid change in the people running things when a new President takes office, especially ones as politically charged as those dealing with health and genetics. However, the Bush Administration seemed to ignore the health departments for the longest time. Clinton appointees stayed in positions for well over a year, long past the time a more aggressive administration would have replaced them. A simple example is the head of the CDC, who was not replaced until after the anthrax scare.
That administrations like their advisory committees to reflect their own views should not be a surprise. The unfortunate thing is the tone of the article suggested that this trend extended to the level of scientific *review*, which it does not. They are not replacing people who determine the actual merits of a particular bit of science, they're filling posts that advise on what to do with the science ex post facto.
For 15 years, ever since K. Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation launched the nanocraze, the field has been plagued by sci-fi notions of tiny robotic "molecular assemblers" running around shoving atoms together. But as buckyball pioneer Richard Smalley remarks, molecular assemblers have long existed: "We call them catalysts."
It doesn't surprise me that a physical chemist like Smalley sees what a lot of nanotech enthusiasts seem to forget: there is a branch of science that's dealt with atomic level materials for a long time, and it goes by the name of chemistry. The really interesting element in the new nanotech is that with the range of visualization tools we have, things that were once a kind of black magic (noble metal catalysts) can go from an art to a science and go from being pulled out of the blue to being intelligently designed.
Gray
But evolution is a theory. It can't be proven unless (according to the scientific process) someone sees it happen. To the best of my knowledge, no one has seen anything evolve into something else. Thus it remains a theory.
People see evolution all the time. The simplest example, in bacteria, is the development of antibiotic resistance in strains that had no resistance before. There is also the classic example of the peppered moth in England, going from a peppery wingspan to a black wingspan as England used more and more coal, and then back
to a peppery wing when the coal use went away.
These are documented examples of evolution in historic times.
Stephen Jay Gould said it best, when he mentioned that evolution was a theory, but it is also a fact. People tend to forget that when they try to wish away the facts of evolution.
Gray
From the article:
In the Microsoft world, makers of software that play media streams ("media players") will have to get a licence from Microsoft before they will be allowed to process content encoded in the Windows Media format.
Microsoft's Media Player v9.0 adds an extra level of protection, calling an outside licensing server run by a copyright clearing house, which then issues an encrypted licence key before playback begins.
Ok, so if I'm off the Internet, and Microsoft's Media Player can't verify a thing, is it going to (a) break or (b) work anyway?
I'd bet on (b) myself. I think though, for most people, the take home lesson will be to stop using Microsoft supplied or derived media tools entirely.
So my question is, can a small voltage potential be applied to magnify the van der Waals forces?
Understand, a Van der Waals force is a third order electrostatic attractive force. The first order is pure electrostatic attraction, which you *would* affect with a voltage potential. Second order are permanent dipolar attractions, and third order are quantum fluctional dipolar attractions, or Van der Waals forces.
Trying to make Van der Waals more powerful by applying a voltage potential is a bit like making a firecracker more powerful by adding a few sticks of dynamite to it.
Just a note, I like your points, but where did you get the idea that MPEGs are more closed than other formats?
There is a difference between policing data at the application level and whether or not a file format is open/closed. If I had text files that had the *.foo extension, and then I wrote a daemon to go through my system and kill any *.foo files that were more than 14 days old, I'm policing the file extension. But I'm not dictating what the format of those files is.
I'm suggesting that if programs start treating generic MPEGS as some kind of foreign invader, and no longer access the data, or God forbid, remove them, then its worth looking into removing the offending programs. Or, if those programs are essential for some other reason, looking for a data format the programs don't treat like the plague.
That's the point, really. Though, to be sure, I'm also implying that if this kind of ugliness comes to pass with MPEGS, that consumer forces will drive a switch to a more free format.
Gray
The old saw in biochemistry is that a 10 K drop in temperature will cause an order of magnitude drop in the rate of biochemical reactions. But if the reaction is thermodynamically favorable it will still continue to move towards equilibrium. Kinetically hindered but exothermically favorable processes keep going at low temperature.
:>
Just, they're 30,000 years or so slow
It sounds spectacular, but its the expected result. More so, its the result a freshman chem/biochem major should expect.
Because if you can locate someone by virtue of their cell phone, (or at least locate their cell phone), then some missing persons cases could be solved with this kind of technology.
/. maybe (seriously, its been banned at my workplaces before)), you might find it an opportune time to start paying for your own cell instead of using one supplied by an employer.
If, instead, you're an adult with tastes you don't want the world to know (adult clubs, fringe politics,
* If certain software becomes hostile to copy survivability, switch to more user friendly software.
* If a file format becomes undesirable for some reason, switch formats. The shift from GIF to JPEG was accelerated when CI$ wanted royalties for GIFs. if MPEG becomes untenable, switch to a format WMA/Windoze, etc, wouldn't tell from any other binary.
I think all people are proving is that they can muck up a file format or two. But there are a number of ways of encoding music after the fact. Just, you may need to convert your precious MPEGs to a more modern (and less policed) format.
When one jumps on your back, or spills a Coke over your useful mousage terrain, you're not without a rodent anymore :>
It is exciting tech, but a little frightening. Consider a world where "cortex technicians" come out of schools no more accredited than the tech institute down the street. They can play with your head, fiddle with the juice going into your visual centers. One mistake, and you (or a loved one) is fried.
I'm glad that there are researchers looking for lower amperage alternatives.
If you wanted to sell satellite launching services to neighboring countries, and you're competing with, say, China and Japan, showing you have an equivalent launching technology to the big guys would have significant public relations value.
Of course, you can't implement quicksort properly in FORTRAN because the language isn't recursive!
Actually, most any "nonrecursive" language can implement recursion using a stack. I've never bothered to do it in Fortran, but I translated a Turbo Pascal recursive maze algorithm to C= 64 Basic doing exactly that.
The thing that keeps getting missed is that the available base of Fortran programs were written by domain experts in the various physical sciences. And once you've written a several thousand line program that takes an expert of exceptional understanding to write, are you going to let Joe the Contractor or Fred the Grad Student rewrite it in C++/Java/Lisp/etc and break the code because he does something to the code he thinks is a good idea, but doesn't really work?
Well, Fred the Grad Student is almost a disposable part, so maybe you let him futz on it a year or two, but in general, a scientist doesn't get many kudos spending several months to a year rewriting code that already works. He would be better off publishing science, rather than catering to the current fashion in languages.
Gray
I loved "The Black Cloud"; read it repeatedly once I found it. Too bad this grand old man has passed away.
Gray.
The elimination of electronics (and nothing but electronics) pushes us technologically back to about 1900 (assuming no other ill effects), as that's about the time radio is being developed into something useful. Now, if the whole gamut of other technologies are available at a 20th century (or 21st century) level, then recovery is fast. The materials scientists could rebuild the tools to make chips, the knowledge hasn't been lost, and we'd be up and running in a few years.
Of course, no "Survivor" and no "Temptation Island", 'till televisions are reinventedThe interesting question this asks, is how quickly can an educated group without tools rebuild technology? To me, I think it would depend on easy access to the kinds of tools that built older civilizations. Wind would help; windmills can be made from wood, and trees are common enough. Running water would help, both for a water supply and as a source of power. Clay helps, helps a lot, to make bricks and therefore kilns, and from kilns come metals and porcelains. From the get go, assuming the land were clean enough and a diverse enough and well educated group were assembled, you could end up with a technology equal to that of Early America (the 1700s) in a few years.
Projecting the rate of growth beyond that is a little more difficult, because one technological innovation relies on others to bootstrap up the technological ladder. But perhaps 19th century technology at the end of a generation, with some 20th century elements (antibiotics, for sure), and with the recapitulation of a technology infrastructure, the rebuilding to near current levels by the second generation.
To get a feel for how this might be done, check out the Foxfire books, the ones that talk about old technologies, and how people lived their lives in the Appalachian mountains. Often they had to bootstrap their technology, and were pretty ingenious about doing it.
My understanding is that glycine has been found outside the solar system. It's a pretty simple amino acid, but it's an amino acid.
Complex carbon molecules have been found for ages in space. I recall some 10-20 years ago when they found glycine (an amino acid) and trumpeted that as an advance. Now more recently they've found signs of benzene in space, so I guess it's time for the ol' hip hip hurrah again.
Water is a common element in space. No news there.