I think you misunderstand the scale difference here. Cloning methods are understood, it's just really, really hard to do complex organisms. The fact that it's been done multiple times with different mammals in the past five years indicates that it was just an extension of existing techniques.
On the atomic simulation side we can't accurately simulate a single water molecule. There's no way to scale up the existing methods to anything even remotely biological. In addition, there's nothing on the horizon that would indicate that it would even be a possibility. We'd need an entirely new way to deal with this, and since there are literally thousands of really, really smart people who have been working on this problem for the last forty years (including multiple Nobel prize winners, and of course, yours truly:^) I don't suspect we're going to see anything in the future.
The difference between Dolly and accurate quantum simulation is the difference between someone in the days of early powered flight saying "We'll never go faster than sound" and a Homo Erectus looking up at the moon and thinking that he could pile up enough rocks to get there.
As far as I understand it, the Schrödinger equation (and perhaps some other quantum mechanical theories) allows us to model the behavior of electrons completely
IWAQC (I Was A Quantum Chemist), so I'll bite. In theory, this is true. All you have to do is solve the Schrodinger equation for the system and you're done. The problem is that we can only solve it exactly for a few systems, the most complex being the hydrogen atom. Even the He atom is beyond our abilities, at least in the realm of exactness.
Now, you can get into any number of simulation methods- there's standard Hartree Fock, density functional theory, a bevy of semi-empirical methods and a host of others. The problem is that all of them are approximate, often wildly so. Even for the simplest system, they have a lot of trouble reproducing reality. Quick: which end of the CN- ion is negative? You'll get different answers with different basis sets in Gaussian, much less the changes you get from introducing correlation methods.
Assume that you somehow manage to solve the equation "well enough". That's nice, but all of the above assumes only a single point in time. My grad work was in introducing time into the picture. Electrons move really fast. (Well, they don't really move in the way you and I think about motion, but still) You'll need to solve the above, nearly impossible set of equations every tenth of a femtosecond at the slowest if you want to have any hope of modling things accurately- really, you probably should be doing it every attosecond.
Ten years ago I managed a crappy simulation of a few lithium and hydrogen atoms undergoing a few tens of femtoseconds of a reaction. Computers are faster, yes, but Moore's law is never going to solve this issue.
"Nobody really needs this." "0.5% of the population even knows how to do this"
True. Probably 1% of the Office population will use these features- I sure won't. But since OO doesn't have it, that 1% won't switch. Add another 5-10% who won't switch because it sounds neat and they might use it in the future. Lots and lots of people buy software based on what they think they might use, not what they actually do.
Pick another feature that OO doesn't do well. Scripting, for example- even OO advocates have to admit it sucks. Scientific functions in the spreadsheet, although this may have improved since last time I had to work with it. You just lost more people. This little stuff builds up. Yeah, any given person only uses 10% of Office, but everyone uses a different 10%.
If you really want OO to compete, it's got to have 90+% of every odd feature of Office, or people just aren't going to switch. (I won't get into the slow speed, huge memory usage and general ugliness of OO.) I'm trying to switch, but it's hard even for a geek.
Re:Have you considered small claims court?
on
Region-free PS3
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· Score: 1
On the other hand, you're assuming that they'll even show up in court. A lot of companies won't bother, resulting in instant decision for you. The $1500 or so it will cost them for the laptop isn't as much as it would be to waste a couple of lawyer-hours.
Have you considered small claims court?
on
Region-free PS3
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· Score: 1
IANAL, but it seems to me this would work well. You have a company that is failing to live up to it's contractual obligations by not fixing something under the warranty. Sue them for the cost of the laptop- without a NIC or a burner it's pretty clearly a boat anchor.
I welcome any legal-minded/. types to correct me if I'm clueless.
I can't get my 4-year-old to shut up, ever. High volume monologues, singing, questions and so forth every single minute he's awake. Please, please tell me we might get the sullen teenager stage early.
As far as the article, uh duh. Said four year old knew a number of words by 10 months- Mama, Dada, Adah (Adam, his name) My current toddler is slower, but he certainly knew Mama and Dada well before a year. At 14 months, his favorite word is Uh-oh. Not a favorite of ours, since he uses it appropriately...
As an older gamer, I have somewhat the same experience as you in that many games don't seem as interesting, but I think it might be age more than innovation/quality. I think back to the "old" days of game playing and realize there were only really a very few games that really drew me in like that, but since I'm remembering 20+ years of playing it all sort of compresses. I adored the oringial Civilization and played it far too much. But thinking back to that time (grad school) there are only two other games I remember- NetTrek and Marathon. So, in a five year period there I have 3 "great" games. That's not a lot.
There are good/innovative games out there today. I just got a copy of Oblivion, which frankly actually *is* exciting to me. Yes, it's been done before, but (at least so far) not this well. Prior to that I've been playing Puzzle Pirates, one of the oddest hybrids imaginable. Laugh all you want, but here's an MMOR(RRRR)PG that has a totally functional economy and a world far deeper than the cheesy graphics would indicate. I'm really looking forward to Spore- yeah, it's SimWorld on steroids, but it's only possible with the serious power of modern machines. I find myself moving away from the simpler FPSs and even strategy games (Alpha Centauri is still king as far as I'm concerned) to things with a story- you can always tell a good story and entertain me. The mountains of books in my house is testament to that- the technology hasn't changed in 400 years but I still buy tons of them.
The other problem is that with age it's harder to spend that immersion time that draws you in. I've got a job, a house, a wife and two young kids. Between all of that, my gaming time is vastly more limited than it used to me. I can't play things that need that 8-hour stretch to get into, and I can't play things that won't let me drop them instantly when the baby wakes up and needs to be fed.
If you read Squyres' book, you'll see you're sort of correct. Yes, they designed them for more than 90 days- that was the *minimum* they were willing to accept. However, they fully expected both to be dead long before this, victims of dust buildup on the solar panels. They didn't expect the Martians to be cleaning them off so frequently.
Hey, at least the Canadians are spending real money- their government runs a surplus, kind of like we did before Bush took over. The US government isn't spending my money- it's just running up the national credit card and letting my kids pay off the cost of the war in Iraq.
*Real* conservatives fucking hate this. Too bad there aren't any real conservatives left in the Republican party. I left years ago.
I don't mind losing. Losing a good game is fine. Back when I played board games I lost more than I won since I played with a smart group and still had a blast. When I play something like Unreal I crank the bots up to "Inhuman" and lose about 80% of the matches. I play Alpha Centauri at Transcend and win maybe one out of five.
I *do* mind playing when the competition level isn't even remotely even. I can't practice ten hours a day, and someone who does is going to be vastly better than I am, even if I'm smarter. (Hardly a given- hard core players know every advantage, every strategy, etc) When the final score is 150-0 what's the point of even playing, especially when I know that I can't improve enough given my limited play time to eventually even things out? Perhaps if I devote all my spare time I might be able to make it 149-1. What's worse is that the guy on the other end isn't having any fun either- it's damn boring to win 150-0.
So I play different sorts of games, most which rely less on twitch and more on strategy/skill. Back when I played Guild Wars I was a pretty good Monk- not top competition level, but enough to keep a team alive even at the highest PvE levels provided Leeeroy wasn't playing. I like Puzzle Pirates a lot- the games involve enough strategy that I can keep up with most folks. (Even if I can't seem to get a handle on Bilging.)
I'm in the same boat- I've got a job, a wife and two young kids. I can't play a standard MMORPG- I can't play enough to make it worthwhile, it's tough to really be in a guild when you can't play a lot and have to stop in an instant when the baby wakes up, etc. For that matter, I can't play competitive online games of any kind- I'm going to get owned by the 15-year-olds who do nothing but play every non-school moment.
I got quite a few hours of fun out of Guild Wars though. No subscription fees. You can basically play it single player using henchmen for much of the game, and even when you end up having to team with humans because the henchies aren't smart enough you're only with them for an hour or so since few missions last longer. You can ignore the PvP side entirely if you want, although it's a lot of fun. Play a healer and you'll never lack for a group, although it gets boring long term.
Still waiting on Oblivion though. My wife commented last night that she doesn't expect to interact with me for the next month or so:^)
The first time I went there, I had to laugh at the list of threat letters and their responses. Stickin' it to the man, and there's nothing RIAA can do about it. Cool!
But long term, this attitude is just self-defeating. It makes it really easy for the RIAA/MPAA to paint anyone who actually wants to use P2P or or download non-DRM infested music legally as just another pirate. I despise both organizations to the extent I pretty much don't buy their stuff anymore (I make an exception for my kids-they're too young to understand), but I'm not going to go to the Piratebay to download it. I'll just do without.
You really want to stick it to the man? Don't torrent something from Piratebay. Go buy something off of Magnatune or eMusic instead. Prove the RIAA wrong when they say that non-DRM music can't possibly work. Even buying music or a video from the iTunes store is vastly preferable
Believe me, plenty of the folks in my company would have had no hesitation about pulling the trigger on a civilian if so ordered. (Never came up in my company, a couple of guys two blocks over did end up shooting a guy about a dozen times after he tried to run them over.) A fair number were happy to talk about bringing back law and order by simply shooting anyone in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Ironically, we were stationed in Rampart. We had people coming up to us all the time to thank us for protecting them from the police. At the time I thought it was odd (and sad), until I found out they had very good reason to be afraid.
Remember, SpaceX's grand accomplishment so far has been a static test firing of a very small vehicle. Two other attempts to launch have been scrubbed, one damaging the Falcon1 so badly during defueling that it required replacing an entire stage.
The Falcon1 is still vapor, the 5 and 9 and this capsule are beyond vaporware. I *really* hope these guys succeed, but before commenting on the failure of the government remember that they haven't even gotten to where NASA was in 1960.
This is the "Bullet catch", one of the most famous tricks in stage magic. Several magicians have quite literally died performing it. As you might imagine, it *is* a trick- Mythbusters had a fun episode on this recently.
The answer is "maybe". It completely depends on the application and how technical your people are. Hiring someone who can manage an OSS course management system is going to cost more than a Blackboard support person. Will you make it up in not paying Blackboard? Maybe. Can you get a replacement person when the OSS guy gets hit by a bus or gets offered more money? Maybe.
The latter one is worrying my boss. I support an OS CMS (Dokeos), OS electronic porfolio (OSPI), OS image management system (MDID) and a few others. I'm the only guy here who understands them- everything else here is Windows/IIS other than the portal. What happens when I leave? You put out an ad for "Academic technology person: Blackboard experience" and you'll get dozens of applications. Put one out for Sakai, Moodle or the even more obscure Dokeos and you'll be lucky to get one. You need to get someone who can program, who isn't afraid of unfamiliar code and who can still do the rest of the job.
Can you buy support from someone like RedHat? Sometimes, but a lot of academic stuff is pretty obscure, not used by more than a few dozen schools and highly specialized. We have support for our OSS portal (uPortal) but frankly it sucks- the latest upgrade was a nightmare, managed by paid support people who could barely understand the system. We're still trying to figure out all the details in various places because a key person left suddenly.
At least with a company you have someone to blame. It may not help (I'm fighting a commercial company with utterly worthless support and a badly broken product right now) but I can point the finger at them and say "It's their fault, not ours!"
when bacteria fail to understand that evolution is only a theory!
Re:Only real answer is free character transfer
on
World of Queuecraft
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· Score: 1
And big cities are where you can switch servers. (Once you leave you are instanced, as you note) As a city fills up, GW auto-creates more, but you can move and talk between them easily.
A city is easier to create than an entire world, sure. But Blizzard has effectively an infinite budget to throw at the problem, and allowing people to move back and forth effectively auto-levels the load instantly: new logins go to the new server, and then people move themselves if lag becomes a problem. The only real issue I see is game state- you wouldn't be able to do this in a battle, obviously. Blizzard could set up zones where game state is the same across servers (no monsters, etc, equivalent to GW cities) and only let people swap there. IIRC, WoW doesn't have player derived content like UO houses so the rest of the world is basically the same. (I haven't played WOW, just GW)
Re:Only real answer is free character transfer
on
World of Queuecraft
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· Score: 1
Guild Wars handles this without problems. You can switch servers at any time- it takes a few seconds, and you can communicate between servers. Someone just shouts out "MEET AT AMERICAN 3" and you're done.
Perhaps I'm missing something technical, but given that Blizzard is making ~1 billlllyyyyon dollars per year on WoW I think they could manage to program something up.
Yes, HDs have far more capacity. They are also fragile, expensive and usually fairly large for decent size. Carrying a portable HD around (other than in something like an iPod) is a royal pain, and last I checked iPod sized drives don't store that much more than Blu-ray.
As far as streaming, until FIOS shows up everywhere get real. It might work for office programs, but not games or high-def video. I've got 1.5Mbps DSL at home and decided to try out the Everquest2 demo. It took six hours to download, and that was for the tiny trial. (I never found out how tiny since it complains about not having DirectX 9.0c. Odd, since I have it.) MMORPGs can get away with downloading pieces as needed, but most other games can't. As far as video, I move NTSC-resolution video files around on our campus network a lot. 100 Mbps Ethernet is *not* sufficient, even GigE suffers under the load. The thought of copying HD video gives me shudders.
There is a market for cheap, replacable storage, both on the delivery and backup sides. Too bad I probably won't end up buying either one in a futile protest against DRM.
If you have the ThinkGeek binary clock it can do either Binary Coded Decimal (the default) or true binary. I forget the setting, but you hold down one of the buttons on the back when you turn it on.
True binary mode is damn hard to read fast- the BCD version is much easier.
You wouldn't be here otherwise.
(Or do you think a stork brought your parents? You might be like my adopted 4-year-old, who thinks that babies come from hospitals.)
Slashdot Mirror
On the atomic simulation side we can't accurately simulate a single water molecule. There's no way to scale up the existing methods to anything even remotely biological. In addition, there's nothing on the horizon that would indicate that it would even be a possibility. We'd need an entirely new way to deal with this, and since there are literally thousands of really, really smart people who have been working on this problem for the last forty years (including multiple Nobel prize winners, and of course, yours truly :^) I don't suspect we're going to see anything in the future.
The difference between Dolly and accurate quantum simulation is the difference between someone in the days of early powered flight saying "We'll never go faster than sound" and a Homo Erectus looking up at the moon and thinking that he could pile up enough rocks to get there.
As far as I understand it, the Schrödinger equation (and perhaps some other quantum mechanical theories) allows us to model the behavior of electrons completely
IWAQC (I Was A Quantum Chemist), so I'll bite. In theory, this is true. All you have to do is solve the Schrodinger equation for the system and you're done. The problem is that we can only solve it exactly for a few systems, the most complex being the hydrogen atom. Even the He atom is beyond our abilities, at least in the realm of exactness.
Now, you can get into any number of simulation methods- there's standard Hartree Fock, density functional theory, a bevy of semi-empirical methods and a host of others. The problem is that all of them are approximate, often wildly so. Even for the simplest system, they have a lot of trouble reproducing reality. Quick: which end of the CN- ion is negative? You'll get different answers with different basis sets in Gaussian, much less the changes you get from introducing correlation methods.
Assume that you somehow manage to solve the equation "well enough". That's nice, but all of the above assumes only a single point in time. My grad work was in introducing time into the picture. Electrons move really fast. (Well, they don't really move in the way you and I think about motion, but still) You'll need to solve the above, nearly impossible set of equations every tenth of a femtosecond at the slowest if you want to have any hope of modling things accurately- really, you probably should be doing it every attosecond.
Ten years ago I managed a crappy simulation of a few lithium and hydrogen atoms undergoing a few tens of femtoseconds of a reaction. Computers are faster, yes, but Moore's law is never going to solve this issue.
MySpace has thousands of pictures of scantily-clad 16-year old girls. Microsoft.com, not so much.
True. Probably 1% of the Office population will use these features- I sure won't. But since OO doesn't have it, that 1% won't switch. Add another 5-10% who won't switch because it sounds neat and they might use it in the future. Lots and lots of people buy software based on what they think they might use, not what they actually do.
Pick another feature that OO doesn't do well. Scripting, for example- even OO advocates have to admit it sucks. Scientific functions in the spreadsheet, although this may have improved since last time I had to work with it. You just lost more people. This little stuff builds up. Yeah, any given person only uses 10% of Office, but everyone uses a different 10%.
If you really want OO to compete, it's got to have 90+% of every odd feature of Office, or people just aren't going to switch. (I won't get into the slow speed, huge memory usage and general ugliness of OO.) I'm trying to switch, but it's hard even for a geek.
On the other hand, you're assuming that they'll even show up in court. A lot of companies won't bother, resulting in instant decision for you. The $1500 or so it will cost them for the laptop isn't as much as it would be to waste a couple of lawyer-hours.
I welcome any legal-minded /. types to correct me if I'm clueless.
As far as the article, uh duh. Said four year old knew a number of words by 10 months- Mama, Dada, Adah (Adam, his name) My current toddler is slower, but he certainly knew Mama and Dada well before a year. At 14 months, his favorite word is Uh-oh. Not a favorite of ours, since he uses it appropriately...
There are good/innovative games out there today. I just got a copy of Oblivion, which frankly actually *is* exciting to me. Yes, it's been done before, but (at least so far) not this well. Prior to that I've been playing Puzzle Pirates, one of the oddest hybrids imaginable. Laugh all you want, but here's an MMOR(RRRR)PG that has a totally functional economy and a world far deeper than the cheesy graphics would indicate. I'm really looking forward to Spore- yeah, it's SimWorld on steroids, but it's only possible with the serious power of modern machines. I find myself moving away from the simpler FPSs and even strategy games (Alpha Centauri is still king as far as I'm concerned) to things with a story- you can always tell a good story and entertain me. The mountains of books in my house is testament to that- the technology hasn't changed in 400 years but I still buy tons of them.
The other problem is that with age it's harder to spend that immersion time that draws you in. I've got a job, a house, a wife and two young kids. Between all of that, my gaming time is vastly more limited than it used to me. I can't play things that need that 8-hour stretch to get into, and I can't play things that won't let me drop them instantly when the baby wakes up and needs to be fed.
If you read Squyres' book, you'll see you're sort of correct. Yes, they designed them for more than 90 days- that was the *minimum* they were willing to accept. However, they fully expected both to be dead long before this, victims of dust buildup on the solar panels. They didn't expect the Martians to be cleaning them off so frequently.
*Real* conservatives fucking hate this. Too bad there aren't any real conservatives left in the Republican party. I left years ago.
I *do* mind playing when the competition level isn't even remotely even. I can't practice ten hours a day, and someone who does is going to be vastly better than I am, even if I'm smarter. (Hardly a given- hard core players know every advantage, every strategy, etc) When the final score is 150-0 what's the point of even playing, especially when I know that I can't improve enough given my limited play time to eventually even things out? Perhaps if I devote all my spare time I might be able to make it 149-1. What's worse is that the guy on the other end isn't having any fun either- it's damn boring to win 150-0.
So I play different sorts of games, most which rely less on twitch and more on strategy/skill. Back when I played Guild Wars I was a pretty good Monk- not top competition level, but enough to keep a team alive even at the highest PvE levels provided Leeeroy wasn't playing. I like Puzzle Pirates a lot- the games involve enough strategy that I can keep up with most folks. (Even if I can't seem to get a handle on Bilging.)
Games should be fun. If it's not fun, why play?
I got quite a few hours of fun out of Guild Wars though. No subscription fees. You can basically play it single player using henchmen for much of the game, and even when you end up having to team with humans because the henchies aren't smart enough you're only with them for an hour or so since few missions last longer. You can ignore the PvP side entirely if you want, although it's a lot of fun. Play a healer and you'll never lack for a group, although it gets boring long term.
Still waiting on Oblivion though. My wife commented last night that she doesn't expect to interact with me for the next month or so :^)
But long term, this attitude is just self-defeating. It makes it really easy for the RIAA/MPAA to paint anyone who actually wants to use P2P or or download non-DRM infested music legally as just another pirate. I despise both organizations to the extent I pretty much don't buy their stuff anymore (I make an exception for my kids-they're too young to understand), but I'm not going to go to the Piratebay to download it. I'll just do without.
You really want to stick it to the man? Don't torrent something from Piratebay. Go buy something off of Magnatune or eMusic instead. Prove the RIAA wrong when they say that non-DRM music can't possibly work. Even buying music or a video from the iTunes store is vastly preferable
Ironically, we were stationed in Rampart. We had people coming up to us all the time to thank us for protecting them from the police. At the time I thought it was odd (and sad), until I found out they had very good reason to be afraid.
Dear Osama Bin Laden: Would you like to come to my bar mitzvah?
Dear Eagles fans: Would you be willing to sign Terrell Owens again?
The Falcon1 is still vapor, the 5 and 9 and this capsule are beyond vaporware. I *really* hope these guys succeed, but before commenting on the failure of the government remember that they haven't even gotten to where NASA was in 1960.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I want the "Don't use 1GB of memory" extension first.
This is the "Bullet catch", one of the most famous tricks in stage magic. Several magicians have quite literally died performing it. As you might imagine, it *is* a trick- Mythbusters had a fun episode on this recently.
The latter one is worrying my boss. I support an OS CMS (Dokeos), OS electronic porfolio (OSPI), OS image management system (MDID) and a few others. I'm the only guy here who understands them- everything else here is Windows/IIS other than the portal. What happens when I leave? You put out an ad for "Academic technology person: Blackboard experience" and you'll get dozens of applications. Put one out for Sakai, Moodle or the even more obscure Dokeos and you'll be lucky to get one. You need to get someone who can program, who isn't afraid of unfamiliar code and who can still do the rest of the job.
Can you buy support from someone like RedHat? Sometimes, but a lot of academic stuff is pretty obscure, not used by more than a few dozen schools and highly specialized. We have support for our OSS portal (uPortal) but frankly it sucks- the latest upgrade was a nightmare, managed by paid support people who could barely understand the system. We're still trying to figure out all the details in various places because a key person left suddenly.
At least with a company you have someone to blame. It may not help (I'm fighting a commercial company with utterly worthless support and a badly broken product right now) but I can point the finger at them and say "It's their fault, not ours!"
when bacteria fail to understand that evolution is only a theory!
A city is easier to create than an entire world, sure. But Blizzard has effectively an infinite budget to throw at the problem, and allowing people to move back and forth effectively auto-levels the load instantly: new logins go to the new server, and then people move themselves if lag becomes a problem. The only real issue I see is game state- you wouldn't be able to do this in a battle, obviously. Blizzard could set up zones where game state is the same across servers (no monsters, etc, equivalent to GW cities) and only let people swap there. IIRC, WoW doesn't have player derived content like UO houses so the rest of the world is basically the same. (I haven't played WOW, just GW)
Perhaps I'm missing something technical, but given that Blizzard is making ~1 billlllyyyyon dollars per year on WoW I think they could manage to program something up.
Yes, HDs have far more capacity. They are also fragile, expensive and usually fairly large for decent size. Carrying a portable HD around (other than in something like an iPod) is a royal pain, and last I checked iPod sized drives don't store that much more than Blu-ray.
As far as streaming, until FIOS shows up everywhere get real. It might work for office programs, but not games or high-def video. I've got 1.5Mbps DSL at home and decided to try out the Everquest2 demo. It took six hours to download, and that was for the tiny trial. (I never found out how tiny since it complains about not having DirectX 9.0c. Odd, since I have it.) MMORPGs can get away with downloading pieces as needed, but most other games can't. As far as video, I move NTSC-resolution video files around on our campus network a lot. 100 Mbps Ethernet is *not* sufficient, even GigE suffers under the load. The thought of copying HD video gives me shudders.
There is a market for cheap, replacable storage, both on the delivery and backup sides. Too bad I probably won't end up buying either one in a futile protest against DRM.
True binary mode is damn hard to read fast- the BCD version is much easier.
You wouldn't be here otherwise. (Or do you think a stork brought your parents? You might be like my adopted 4-year-old, who thinks that babies come from hospitals.)