There was a "bridge position" last time, namely the proposal that including the amendments the EU parliament had passed. Then the pro-patent Commission pushed through the thing in the Council of Ministers pretending the amendments never happened.
And then the pro-patent lobby decided to go "all or nothing" when it was time for the second reading in the parliament. But since the parliament were obviously not going to let the thing pass unamended (largely thanks to being pissed off at being ignored earlier), they chickened out at the last minute, so the thing got killed.
Hopefully they'll listen to the Parliament (you know, the ones directly elected by the people) more this time. I for one could've lived with the fully amended proposal.
The list of surveyed entries. The list is obviously leaning heavily towards natural sciences.
So it's hardly very well-rounded, which is probably good for Wikipedia here, since the natural science entries (In my experience) tend to hold a higher level of accuracy/quality than the humanities ones.
It'd be more intersting to see a larger survey, and with more obscure topics. In my opinion, an encyclopedia should be judged by its weakest entries, not its strongest.
Huh? What's ``you may not rewrite this article'' mean?
Absolutely nothing. If you're quoting the article within the bounds of fair use, then any copyright conditions don't apply. If you rewrite the article to the extent that it doesn't constitute a derivative work under copyright law, and the conditions don't apply.
And if you're not within the bounds of fair use, or creating a derivative work, then you need permission from them anyway, or you're committing copyright infringement.
I guess we can add a category of umlaut after the Heavy-metal umlaut, namely the Silly marketing umlaut. E.g. Häagen-Dazs.
I doubt they'll keep that name for the umlaut-saturated Scandinavian market though, since bläck/blæk/blekk means 'ink' in Swedish/Danish/Norwegian, and 'Blä!" is the Swedish equivalent of 'Yuck!'.
There are a lot more people to hero-worship me thinks.
So? News flash, buddy: Not everyone who gets attention deserves it. Not everyone who deserves attention wants it.
You're acting as if recognition and attention were the main reasons people hack on F/OSS software. It isn't, and never has been. If it's attention you want, you're better off candidating for some reality-TV show.
Lot more work goes into making GCC capable for professional work than hacking decss together [keep in mind most incarnations of decss tools were CRAP for the longest while at first].
.. so they deserve more recognition? Well, boo-hoo. That's not how the world works. If you want recognition, you've got to promote yourself. Or get someone else to promote you. Eric Raymond has made a nice career out of his (relatively meagre, in this context) contributions to FOSS.
Thing is, most don't really care for broad recognition. That's not why they're doing it. I don't see what your problem is? Jealousy?
(FWIW, I've got ~45k LOC in libgcj at last count, and as far as I'm concerned, DVD-Jon can have all the spotlight he wants.)
Or rather... Who is to say you are an expert? PHD does not make one an expert by default.
I'd say that yes it does. Earning a PhD in a subject means that you have spent years studying that subject, and that that research has been scrutinized by a supervisor and outside parties who have studied that subject even longer.
If a PhD does not entitle you to 'expert' status in a particular subject, then nothing does.
Especially when we are talking about all the thousands of odd topic wiki articles about pop culture and non-scientific/non-historic articles.
Nobody said a PhD made you an expert in every subject. It makes you an expert in the subject you got your PhD in. However, in the sciences, there is a lot of overlap, so that someone who has a PhD in structural biochemistry can also be considered an expert on biochemistry in general, a good authority on chemistry, and well-versed in physics. But if a PhD in biochemistry says something about physics which a physics PhD disagrees with, you'd be better off listening to the latter.
If you want real professional articles then go get them from their sources or buy a scientific journal. If you want general or common knowledge then wiki it.
Wikipedia's stated goal is to create an encyclopedia of all human knowledge. Meaning most of that is expert knowledge. And the people looking at Wikipedia (or any encyclopedia) don't want 'common knowledge'. They want facts.
It's "common knowledge" that eating too much sugar causes diabetes. (Try going out and asking some people in the street.) It's also completely false. (Try going out and asking some medical doctors). Popular myth or lesser-known fact? I think most our out for the latter.
That's one of the stupidest things I've seen with a +5 moderation in some time.
Blogvertisement? Okay. What exactly are they advertising here? What product are they selling?
Website advertisments - and how does that make 'em different from 95% of other sites Slashdot links to?
And Brainblog is apparently run out of Morocco. Oh, well that connection is obvious then? Nope. Oh, but their DNS servers are run by a guy in Los Angeles! That makes it all clear - only 15 minutes away from UCLA! (Nevermind that a few tens of thousands of people must live in a 15-minute radius of UCLA)
And UCLA is only 6 hours away from UCSF where the research was done! And they're both in the UC system! (Nevermind that it's one of the world's largest.)
Calling things "interesting coincidences" is not an excuse to not employ critical thinking.
Someone said that a good war movie isn't about what people do in war. It's about what war does to people.
I agree with that sentiment and I think one could perhaps adopt that here: A good space movie isn't about people doing things in space. It's about what space does to people.
And in that category, there really isn't any movie like "2001". I don't know any movie which has tackled the issues of space travel like that. Man and machine. Man and space. The mysteries of the universe. Alien intelligence. It's all in there, almost like a guide to the philosophical issues of the space age.
Not that it has any answers. You've got to find those on your own. But it poses questions nobody had dared do before in Sci-Fi films. And it manages to do it without being noisy about it, unlike, say, The Matrix, which is quite overt with its philosophical pretentions. (Or worse, the contemporary 1968 "Planet of the Apes")
Add to that the stunning special effects for its age which were truely groundbreaking, the great directing by Kubrick, including some now-legendary segues like the bone-to-spaceship cut. And his usual incredible attention to detail. (missing though, that Pan-Am and the Soviet Union would be gone by 2001)
A lot of people are talking about Star Wars. Really, I'm a huge Star Wars fan, but you just can't compare them. Star Wars was just a revival of the old Flash Gordon matine. It's a great movie in it's own right, but it doesn't really aim higher than to be entertaining, and it's not really a space movie. I mean, the fact it's in space isn't terribly relevant to the plot, is it?
In Sweden they've already started shutting down the analog networks. Phase one (the island of Gotland and towns of Gävle and Motala) just started a month ago.
It's proceeding stepwise but all analog transmitters should be completely off-line by Dec 13.
Of course, Swedes aren't quite as TV-addicted as USians. (IIRC the statistic is an average of about 2 hours a day vs 4.5)
The MD5 attacks currently available only 128 "dead space" bytes to generate a collision. So far from being a gibberish document, one can generate almost any document you want.
Only if you can manipulate both documents, and tailor the original documents MD5 as well as that of your target document.
I don't think that's what the grandparent poster was referring to at all.
Occam's Razor says that the *simplest* explanation is likely correct. Usually this is taken to mean the theory with the fewest assumptions beyond what is normally accepted.
No, did you read it? That's not what it says either. It says "Entities need not be multiplied needlessly", meaning that if you've got two equally valid explanations, you might as well go with the simpler one.
That does NOT mean that the simpler one is more likely to be correct. Only that there's no point in complicating things for no gain.
Main Entry: isotope Pronunciation: 'I-s&-"tOp Function: noun Etymology: is- + Greek topos place 1 : any of two or more species of atoms of a chemical element with the same atomic number and nearly identical chemical behavior but with differing atomic mass or mass number and different physical properties
(emphasis mine)
i can play pedant just as well as you can. you seem to enjoy it though, so knock yourself out.
You're not being particularily pedantic when you "nearly identical" becomes "exactly identical". Now, if your post had said "isotopes have nearly identical chemical properties" you'd have been right. If your post had said "isotopes have qualitively the same chemical binding properties" (but different quantative properties, such as bond distance and energy) you would have been right. But that's not what you wrote at all.
And it's your 'pedantry' that started this. You wrote a completely bogus 'correction' to someone else's post saying they had the exact same chemical properties. Which is completely wrong. You then went on to say that chemical properties had nothing to do with heavy water toxicity. Which is also completely wrong.
Pathetic. So rather than conceding that you're utterly in the wrong (or just shutting the hell up), you go out and dig up some random links you think "prove" otherwise.
And what shitty links! A wikipedia talk page is not a reliable source. But did you even bother to read it? It points out the very same stuff I did. Namely that isotopes have significant effects on chemical kinetics. Now look up Kinetic isotope effect like I told you to.
Nor is a publicity piece written in popular scientific terms, whether it is from the IAEA or elsewhere meaningful. May I suggest you look in a chemistry textbook instead of appealing to authorities where there aren't any.
Now, since you know better than me (and yes I am a physical chemist) Mr Random Slashdotter, tell me specifically what I wrote that was wrong, or even better, tell me what makes heavy water toxic.
None of it is cut-and-pasted, thank you very much, since I do in fact know what I'm talking about.
Care to provide a URL for where I allegedly lifted this material? Or perhaps point out just what makes it so 'quite clear' that I don't know what I'm talking about, and why?
Atomic mass comes from the nucleus, not the electrons. The number of electrons in deuterium and hydrogen is exactly the same. Moreover, the chemical properties of H2O and D2O are exactly the same. Deuterium is slightly toxic for altogether different reasons than chemical properties.
Informative my ass. That's just plain wrong. If you'd bothered to study chemistry beyond the high-school level you'd probably come into contact with a rather central part of chemistry named kinetics. Kinetics has everything to do with nuclear mass. Since deuterium weighs twice as much as hydrogen, it moves at half the speed.
This means different bond strengths. Different vibrational energy levels. And most importantly: completely different reaction kinetics. If a reaction involves the forming or breaking of a hydrogen bond (thus moving the hydrogen atom), it will proceed much slower if a deuterium atom is involved instead. This is called the "kinetic isotope effect" and is a frequently-used method for investigating reaction mechanisms. Google for it.
And this is precisely the reason why deuterium is toxic. The enzymatic catalysis going on in the body are sensitive to this kind of stuff. If a certain step in a multiple-step reaction moves to slowly, the next step may not be able to occur. Hydrogen ions are directly involved in some of the cells most critical reactions, such as the in ATP synthase.
Besides which, your words fall on their own unreasonableness. If the chemical properties aren't the reason for deuterium's toxicity then what the heck is the reason? It's not radiation - deuterium is stable. It certainly isn't mechanical toxicity (as with asbestos).
It can't be anything other than chemical effects.
Re:To the rag that is the Wash. Times: Let them sc
on
Reining in Google
·
· Score: 3, Informative
1. The Washington Times != The Washington Post. One is a bastion of DC journalism. The other is only slightly better than a tabloid.
Uh, I wouldn't even say the Washington Times is that good even.
It was founded by the Moonies, which is IMHO, a cult and certainly not an uncontroversial organization by any other standards.
Add to that the fact that it was explicitly created by Moon to create an 'alternative' to the Post that was more in line with his own opinions. Which is just a wonderful premise to start a quality newspaper on. Not.
(Not that there's anything wrong with op-eds. But if it's the raison d'etre of your paper, I wouldn't call it a 'newspaper'.)
Ok, but enough shooting the messenger.. The actual op-ed piece speaks for itself. It's a load of baloney. Filled with a nonsense interpretation of copyright law, tons of statements and allegations without any arguments or reasoning to back them up.
And more than a few straw-men like: "Our laws say if you wish to copy someone's work, you must get their permission. Google wants to trash that."
Google wants to abolish copyright laws. Riiight. (sarcasm)
OpenOffice.org gets lots of attention partly *because* it supports Windows, so supporting Windows isn't the problem.
Quite true. Same goes for Firefox, Gimp, BitTorrent and others pieces of software which are some of the most popular and successful in the FOSS world.
Few FOSS devs are so zealous that they'd refuse a windows port, all else being equal. The "problem" here is that one of the features of FOSS is avoiding vendor lock-in. So if your software is heavily bound to a certain proprietary platform, then you'll have to expect that the people not using that platform won't be interested.
The other "side" of the problem as I see it, is that while Windows has the vast majority of users, it doesn't have the vast majority of FOSS developers. I think most would be happy to see lots more FOSS on Windows, but there are just too few devs prepared to do the work.
I've seen people port more FOSS stuff I've written to BeOS than Windows!
It's not intended as an attack on the person, but on the opinion. I didn't even contend that the person held that opinion (and I hope they don't).
And no, I don't believe it makes me 'look like an idiot'.
While I'd be the first to agree there are a lot of idiots using the word 'imperialism' in all kinds of contexts where it isn't warranted, I believe it is warranted in this case.
How else would you describe the opinion that it's okay to subjugate other people against their will, such as proposing that they follow laws they don't support? That is imperialism. And it is a Bad Thing.
The United States of America was born out of the struggle against it. In fact, imperialistic trade practices were the very spark that ignited that flame! (Boston Tea Party, anyone?)
So think about that before you get a knee-jerk ("left-wing-nutcase!") reaction to someone using the word "imperialist".
Actually, I'm saying nothing of the sort. I'm saying that the example you gave is an example of someone venting their frustrations. Have you ever gotten angry at a sibling or friend and yelled, "If I catch you, I'm gonna kill you?" Were you really going to kill them? Perhaps you felt like smashing a few kneecaps, but did you do so?
Talk about context. You're completely ignoring the fact that the israelites did kill Babylonians. There is no reason to believe what they were saying was not meant literally.
The rest of your post is a straw-man. You're bashing arguments that I did not make, and then you (for the second time) imply that I'm stupid or illiterate because I disagree with you.
That says a lot more about your character than about my intelligence.
You're just saying "The Bible isn't condoning violence, it's the people in the Bible who are condoning violence".
That argument is worthless, because you can used for video games, movies, books and anything else. It's not the movie that condones violence. It's the characters in it!
It's their software, shouldn't they be able to sell it or not sell it where they wish?
Nobody said otherwise. (I now take a step back to avoid being hit by the falling straw-man)
It's very simple. Microsoft doesn't have to sell their software in Korea if they don't want to. Although they'd probably not be able to stop it, since it could be imported via a third country.
But if Microsoft does want to sell their product in Korea, they have to follow the rules and laws passed by the Korean government. It's as simple as that. Bitching about (in your mind) unfair laws might be okay if South Korea was a dictatorship, but it's not. South Korea is a democracy. Those laws have the support of their people.
Or are you simply some imperialist who believe you know what's better for them than they do?
Besides which, Microsoft isn't going to get out of Korea. They can't afford to. Not because of the money, but because it would create the incentive for them to switch. There are nearly 50 million people in South Korea. Whatever platform they moved to (Linux, Mac), it would be a huge boost for that platform, which would mean a much larger strategic loss for Microsoft than it would in terms of Windows licenses.
Microsoft needs to sustain it's monopoly to survive. Why do you think they're fighting the OpenDocument format so hard? They need to stop other platforms from becoming viable alternatives. And a large modern nation like Korea certainly has the resources to do so.
Because the Bible glorifies "sinful" acts? Ok, whatever.
I already addressed your "point" here. I have to say that it's rather disturbing that so many people can equate containing certain themes to glorifying those same themes.
Bullshit. There are plenty of examples of outright glorification of violence in the old testament. For example Psalms 137:8-9:
O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
The person who kills the children(!) of Babylon shall be happy. If that isn't glorification of violence, I don't know what is.
Slashdot Mirror
There was a "bridge position" last time, namely the proposal that including the amendments the EU parliament had passed. Then the pro-patent Commission pushed through the thing in the Council of Ministers pretending the amendments never happened.
And then the pro-patent lobby decided to go "all or nothing" when it was time for the second reading in the parliament. But since the parliament were obviously not going to let the thing pass unamended (largely thanks to being pissed off at being ignored earlier), they chickened out at the last minute, so the thing got killed.
Hopefully they'll listen to the Parliament (you know, the ones directly elected by the people) more this time. I for one could've lived with the fully amended proposal.
The list of surveyed entries. The list is obviously leaning heavily towards natural sciences.
So it's hardly very well-rounded, which is probably good for Wikipedia here, since the natural science entries (In my experience) tend to hold a higher level of accuracy/quality than the humanities ones.
It'd be more intersting to see a larger survey, and with more obscure topics. In my opinion, an encyclopedia should be judged by its weakest entries, not its strongest.
Huh? What's ``you may not rewrite this article'' mean?
Absolutely nothing. If you're quoting the article within the bounds of fair use, then any copyright conditions don't apply. If you rewrite the article to the extent that it doesn't constitute a derivative work under copyright law, and the conditions don't apply.
And if you're not within the bounds of fair use, or creating a derivative work, then you need permission from them anyway, or you're committing copyright infringement.
It's just a nonsense statement. IMHO.
So it is! Guess I need to switch to a bigger font in my browser..
:)
That's still funny though, since it'd make the proununciation "blahk" and "blah" doesn't sound too good to english ears
I guess we can add a category of umlaut after the Heavy-metal umlaut, namely the Silly marketing umlaut. E.g. Häagen-Dazs.
I doubt they'll keep that name for the umlaut-saturated Scandinavian market though, since bläck/blæk/blekk means 'ink' in Swedish/Danish/Norwegian, and 'Blä!" is the Swedish equivalent of 'Yuck!'.
There are a lot more people to hero-worship me thinks.
.. so they deserve more recognition? Well, boo-hoo. That's not how the world works. If you want recognition, you've got to promote yourself. Or get someone else to promote you. Eric Raymond has made a nice career out of his (relatively meagre, in this context) contributions to FOSS.
So? News flash, buddy:
Not everyone who gets attention deserves it.
Not everyone who deserves attention wants it.
You're acting as if recognition and attention were the main reasons people hack on F/OSS software. It isn't, and never has been. If it's attention you want, you're better off candidating for some reality-TV show.
Lot more work goes into making GCC capable for professional work than hacking decss together [keep in mind most incarnations of decss tools were CRAP for the longest while at first].
Thing is, most don't really care for broad recognition. That's not why they're doing it. I don't see what your problem is? Jealousy?
(FWIW, I've got ~45k LOC in libgcj at last count, and as far as I'm concerned, DVD-Jon can have all the spotlight he wants.)
Or rather... Who is to say you are an expert? PHD does not make one an expert by default.
I'd say that yes it does. Earning a PhD in a subject means that you have spent years studying that subject, and that that research has been scrutinized by a supervisor and outside parties who have studied that subject even longer.
If a PhD does not entitle you to 'expert' status in a particular subject, then nothing does.
Especially when we are talking about all the thousands of odd topic wiki articles about pop culture and non-scientific/non-historic articles.
Nobody said a PhD made you an expert in every subject. It makes you an expert in the subject you got your PhD in. However, in the sciences, there is a lot of overlap, so that someone who has a PhD in structural biochemistry can also be considered an expert on biochemistry in general, a good authority on chemistry, and well-versed in physics. But if a PhD in biochemistry says something about physics which a physics PhD disagrees with, you'd be better off listening to the latter.
If you want real professional articles then go get them from their sources or buy a scientific journal. If you want general or common knowledge then wiki it.
Wikipedia's stated goal is to create an encyclopedia of all human knowledge. Meaning most of that is expert knowledge. And the people looking at Wikipedia (or any encyclopedia) don't want 'common knowledge'. They want facts.
It's "common knowledge" that eating too much sugar causes diabetes. (Try going out and asking some people in the street.) It's also completely false. (Try going out and asking some medical doctors). Popular myth or lesser-known fact? I think most our out for the latter.
Great source you've got there, nazi scum.
(They're holocaust denyers. See also their wikipedia entry)
That's one of the stupidest things I've seen with a +5 moderation in some time.
Blogvertisement? Okay. What exactly are they advertising here? What product are they selling?
Website advertisments - and how does that make 'em different from 95% of other sites Slashdot links to?
And Brainblog is apparently run out of Morocco. Oh, well that connection is obvious then? Nope. Oh, but their DNS servers are run by a guy in Los Angeles! That makes it all clear - only 15 minutes away from UCLA! (Nevermind that a few tens of thousands of people must live in a 15-minute radius of UCLA)
And UCLA is only 6 hours away from UCSF where the research was done! And they're both in the UC system! (Nevermind that it's one of the world's largest.)
Calling things "interesting coincidences" is not an excuse to not employ critical thinking.
Oh wow, you heard about it in 1996. Good for you. But why does that deserve a high moderation?
It's still a recent result (page says april 2005) and in case you missed it, it's the same researcher (Ren Ng) that's mentioned on that Siggraph page.
They've presumably made progress in 9 years. That isn't worth reporting on?
Someone said that a good war movie isn't about what people do in war. It's about what war does to people.
I agree with that sentiment and I think one could perhaps adopt that here: A good space movie isn't about people doing things in space. It's about what space does to people.
And in that category, there really isn't any movie like "2001". I don't know any movie which has tackled the issues of space travel like that. Man and machine. Man and space. The mysteries of the universe. Alien intelligence. It's all in there, almost like a guide to the philosophical issues of the space age.
Not that it has any answers. You've got to find those on your own. But it poses questions nobody had dared do before in Sci-Fi films. And it manages to do it without being noisy about it, unlike, say, The Matrix, which is quite overt with its philosophical pretentions. (Or worse, the contemporary 1968 "Planet of the Apes")
Add to that the stunning special effects for its age which were truely groundbreaking, the great directing by Kubrick, including some now-legendary segues like the bone-to-spaceship cut. And his usual incredible attention to detail. (missing though, that Pan-Am and the Soviet Union would be gone by 2001)
A lot of people are talking about Star Wars. Really, I'm a huge Star Wars fan, but you just can't compare them. Star Wars was just a revival of the old Flash Gordon matine. It's a great movie in it's own right, but it doesn't really aim higher than to be entertaining, and it's not really a space movie. I mean, the fact it's in space isn't terribly relevant to the plot, is it?
Well, that's what I think anyway.
In Sweden they've already started shutting down the analog networks. Phase one (the island of Gotland and towns of Gävle and Motala) just started a month ago.
It's proceeding stepwise but all analog transmitters should be completely off-line by Dec 13.
Of course, Swedes aren't quite as TV-addicted as USians. (IIRC the statistic is an average of about 2 hours a day vs 4.5)
The MD5 attacks currently available only 128 "dead space" bytes to generate a collision. So far from being a gibberish document, one can generate almost any document you want.
Only if you can manipulate both documents, and tailor the original documents MD5 as well as that of your target document.
I don't think that's what the grandparent poster was referring to at all.
Occam's Razor says that the *simplest* explanation is likely correct. Usually this is taken to mean the theory with the fewest assumptions beyond what is normally accepted.
No, did you read it? That's not what it says either. It says "Entities need not be multiplied needlessly", meaning that if you've got two equally valid explanations, you might as well go with the simpler one.
That does NOT mean that the simpler one is more likely to be correct. Only that there's no point in complicating things for no gain.
No, it doesn't.
(emphasis mine)
i can play pedant just as well as you can. you seem to enjoy it though, so knock yourself out.
You're not being particularily pedantic when you "nearly identical" becomes "exactly identical". Now, if your post had said "isotopes have nearly identical chemical properties" you'd have been right. If your post had said "isotopes have qualitively the same chemical binding properties" (but different quantative properties, such as bond distance and energy) you would have been right. But that's not what you wrote at all.
And it's your 'pedantry' that started this. You wrote a completely bogus 'correction' to someone else's post saying they had the exact same chemical properties. Which is completely wrong. You then went on to say that chemical properties had nothing to do with heavy water toxicity. Which is also completely wrong.
Pathetic. So rather than conceding that you're utterly in the wrong (or just shutting the hell up), you go out and dig up some random links you think "prove" otherwise.
And what shitty links! A wikipedia talk page is not a reliable source. But did you even bother to read it? It points out the very same stuff I did. Namely that isotopes have significant effects on chemical kinetics. Now look up Kinetic isotope effect like I told you to.
Nor is a publicity piece written in popular scientific terms, whether it is from the IAEA or elsewhere meaningful. May I suggest you look in a chemistry textbook instead of appealing to authorities where there aren't any.
Now, since you know better than me (and yes I am a physical chemist) Mr Random Slashdotter, tell me specifically what I wrote that was wrong, or even better, tell me what makes heavy water toxic.
None of it is cut-and-pasted, thank you very much, since I do in fact know what I'm talking about.
Care to provide a URL for where I allegedly lifted this material? Or perhaps point out just what makes it so 'quite clear' that I don't know what I'm talking about, and why?
Atomic mass comes from the nucleus, not the electrons. The number of electrons in deuterium and hydrogen is exactly the same. Moreover, the chemical properties of H2O and D2O are exactly the same. Deuterium is slightly toxic for altogether different reasons than chemical properties.
Informative my ass. That's just plain wrong. If you'd bothered to study chemistry beyond the high-school level you'd probably come into contact with a rather central part of chemistry named kinetics. Kinetics has everything to do with nuclear mass. Since deuterium weighs twice as much as hydrogen, it moves at half the speed.
This means different bond strengths. Different vibrational energy levels. And most importantly: completely different reaction kinetics. If a reaction involves the forming or breaking of a hydrogen bond (thus moving the hydrogen atom), it will proceed much slower if a deuterium atom is involved instead. This is called the "kinetic isotope effect" and is a frequently-used method for investigating reaction mechanisms. Google for it.
And this is precisely the reason why deuterium is toxic. The enzymatic catalysis going on in the body are sensitive to this kind of stuff. If a certain step in a multiple-step reaction moves to slowly, the next step may not be able to occur. Hydrogen ions are directly involved in some of the cells most critical reactions, such as the in ATP synthase.
Besides which, your words fall on their own unreasonableness. If the chemical properties aren't the reason for deuterium's toxicity then what the heck is the reason? It's not radiation - deuterium is stable. It certainly isn't mechanical toxicity (as with asbestos).
It can't be anything other than chemical effects.
1. The Washington Times != The Washington Post. One is a bastion of DC journalism. The other is only slightly better than a tabloid.
Uh, I wouldn't even say the Washington Times is that good even.
It was founded by the Moonies, which is IMHO, a cult and certainly not an uncontroversial organization by any other standards.
Add to that the fact that it was explicitly created by Moon to create an 'alternative' to the Post that was more in line with his own opinions. Which is just a wonderful premise to start a quality newspaper on. Not.
(Not that there's anything wrong with op-eds. But if it's the raison d'etre of your paper, I wouldn't call it a 'newspaper'.)
Ok, but enough shooting the messenger.. The actual op-ed piece speaks for itself. It's a load of baloney. Filled with a nonsense interpretation of copyright law, tons of statements and allegations without any arguments or reasoning to back them up.
And more than a few straw-men like: "Our laws say if you wish to copy someone's work, you must get their permission. Google wants to trash that."
Google wants to abolish copyright laws. Riiight. (sarcasm)
I concur.
OpenOffice.org gets lots of attention partly *because* it supports Windows, so supporting Windows isn't the problem.
Quite true. Same goes for Firefox, Gimp, BitTorrent and others pieces of software which are some of the most popular and successful in the FOSS world.
Few FOSS devs are so zealous that they'd refuse a windows port, all else being equal. The "problem" here is that one of the features of FOSS is avoiding vendor lock-in. So if your software is heavily bound to a certain proprietary platform, then you'll have to expect that the people not using that platform won't be interested.
The other "side" of the problem as I see it, is that while Windows has the vast majority of users, it doesn't have the vast majority of FOSS developers. I think most would be happy to see lots more FOSS on Windows, but there are just too few devs prepared to do the work.
I've seen people port more FOSS stuff I've written to BeOS than Windows!
It's not intended as an attack on the person, but on the opinion. I didn't even contend that the person held that opinion (and I hope they don't).
And no, I don't believe it makes me 'look like an idiot'.
While I'd be the first to agree there are a lot of idiots using the word 'imperialism' in all kinds of contexts where it isn't warranted, I believe it is warranted in this case.
How else would you describe the opinion that it's okay to subjugate other people against their will, such as proposing that they follow laws they don't support? That is imperialism. And it is a Bad Thing.
The United States of America was born out of the struggle against it. In fact, imperialistic trade practices were the very spark that ignited that flame! (Boston Tea Party, anyone?)
So think about that before you get a knee-jerk ("left-wing-nutcase!") reaction to someone using the word "imperialist".
Actually, I'm saying nothing of the sort. I'm saying that the example you gave is an example of someone venting their frustrations. Have you ever gotten angry at a sibling or friend and yelled, "If I catch you, I'm gonna kill you?" Were you really going to kill them? Perhaps you felt like smashing a few kneecaps, but did you do so?
Talk about context. You're completely ignoring the fact that the israelites did kill Babylonians. There is no reason to believe what they were saying was not meant literally.
The rest of your post is a straw-man. You're bashing arguments that I did not make, and then you (for the second time) imply that I'm stupid or illiterate because I disagree with you.
That says a lot more about your character than about my intelligence.
That's still a load of nonsense.
You're just saying "The Bible isn't condoning violence, it's the people in the Bible who are condoning violence".
That argument is worthless, because you can used for video games, movies, books and anything else. It's not the movie that condones violence. It's the characters in it!
By that rationale, nothing condones violence.
It's their software, shouldn't they be able to sell it or not sell it where they wish?
Nobody said otherwise. (I now take a step back to avoid being hit by the falling straw-man)
It's very simple. Microsoft doesn't have to sell their software in Korea if they don't want to. Although they'd probably not be able to stop it, since it could be imported via a third country.
But if Microsoft does want to sell their product in Korea, they have to follow the rules and laws passed by the Korean government. It's as simple as that. Bitching about (in your mind) unfair laws might be okay if South Korea was a dictatorship, but it's not. South Korea is a democracy. Those laws have the support of their people.
Or are you simply some imperialist who believe you know what's better for them than they do?
Besides which, Microsoft isn't going to get out of Korea. They can't afford to. Not because of the money, but because it would create the incentive for them to switch. There are nearly 50 million people in South Korea. Whatever platform they moved to (Linux, Mac), it would be a huge boost for that platform, which would mean a much larger strategic loss for Microsoft than it would in terms of Windows licenses.
Microsoft needs to sustain it's monopoly to survive. Why do you think they're fighting the OpenDocument format so hard? They need to stop other platforms from becoming viable alternatives. And a large modern nation like Korea certainly has the resources to do so.
I already addressed your "point" here. I have to say that it's rather disturbing that so many people can equate containing certain themes to glorifying those same themes.
Bullshit. There are plenty of examples of outright glorification of violence in the old testament. For example Psalms 137:8-9:
The person who kills the children(!) of Babylon shall be happy. If that isn't glorification of violence, I don't know what is.