Any particular reason to stick with the name Firebird for Mozilla other than the fact it's already been publicized?
Aw, geez, but they already made up T-shirts and coffee mugs...
But seriously, maybe I misread something back there, but I believe it is Mozilla's streamlined standalone-browser project, Phoenix, that is going through a namechange to Firebird, not Mozilla itself.
-ks
Re:Gene sequencing/splicing
on
Ancient DNA
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Excellent point; I was going to say something to that effect myself. Modern DNA sequencing techniques involve digesting or shredding massive genomic pieces of DNA into small fragments, in the neighborhood of 300 - 700 base pairs in length. The reason for this lies with the sequencers, which can only get a maximum of around 700 base pairs of reliable data per run.
Sequences of the resulting fragments of DNA are used to reconstruct the entire genome based on the overlap between sequenced fragments. Overlap and a certain degree of redundency, in fact, is necessary as a form of error checking, as sequencing methods have an inherant error rate.
So, if these prehistoric DNA fragments overlap sufficiently, it is theoretically possible for their sequences to be used to reconstruct an entire genome.
However, a bigger concern might be damage to DNA. DNA, like all biological molecules, suffers a certain degree of degredation over time due to high energy radiation, exposure to free radicals, normal biochemical processes (such as nucleases present in the original cell, or secreted by microbes in the environment), etc. There are biochemical mechanisms in living cells that continually work to repair these damages, but in a dead, frozen cell those systems would not be present, and the DNA would just accumulate damage. Such damage can inhibit or introduce large error into sequencing attempts, so it is possible that the original sequence of the DNA can never be recovered.
Which is still too few, as the SNES controller has 6 buttons counting the L and R, 8 buttons if you count Start and Select, 9 if you include the direction pad, 12 if you list each major direction separately, and 19 if you throw in several buttons that it doesn't actually have.
"In fact, at present it is one of the coolest stars known," Bond told SPACE.com.
The astronomer then proceded to slick back his hair and donned a pair of shades, while rythmically snapping the fingers of his free hand.
"Oh, yeah," added Bond.
Re:to the tune of "if your'e happy & you know
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 1
The original author of that piece of satire is John Robbins (who is, interestingly, the hier of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream empire, and now an advocate of healthy eating and sustainable living), and the original version can be found here.
Evidently, the song has been updated slightly to make it slightly more timely, and my quick googling unfortunately didn't turn up a second author to whom that may be attributed.
-ks
Re:Not a troll: How many civilians died last time?
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 1
I mean, I would think it'd be relatively low, what with all the expensive gagetry we're using nowadays.
You'd think. Except for the fact that it isn't infantry shoot-outs in the desert that result in large numbers of civilian casualties. This high tech gagetry, which produces bigger, more powerful bombs that can fly farther and with less ground guidance is what creates the most collateral damage. Bombing a city from a hundred miles away and ensuring that the targeted structures are populated exclusively by enemy combatants is difficult.
An interesting example illustrating many of these bad practices over and over and over can be found in the comment section of bug 22274, a not-quite-valid-but-frequently-reported-"bug" involving tabled images, alignment, descenders, and Quirks mode.
The first time I noticed that functionality in Moz I found my way to the above page and spent a good hour or two reading through all the comments. Aside from gaining an education in some of the nitty gritties of html and css standards, I was struck by how frequently the bug was re-reported and by how abusive the commenters became (especially when their bug was labeled "invalid"). It's nice to see a page with explicit etiquette standards. Lets hope the bugzillians abide by them.
Can't they go for a policitally correct / socially sensitive / thoughtful of the children phrase like "cannot-see energy" or "we have no fscking clue where it is energy"?
How about black energy? Or, always-being-kept-down-by-the-man energy?
Had you read the article, the first sentence would have informed you that the porcine heart was surgically grafted to the neck of the sheep, as opposed to being grown in situ.
The medical and scientific implications of this experiment have less to do with the surgical grafting procedure than with the fact that the process was done in such a way as to prevent immunological rejection of the pig heart by the majority of the sheep in the study. It is this rejection by the immune system that prevents pig parts from being used in organ transplants for humans.
First the "no": No, because, as you point out, it wouldn't get into your system. Anti-venom is in the form of antibodies, and these are nice big proteins. Intact protiens cannot pass through the epithelium lining your digestive tract, so the digestive system does a very thorough job of chopping up proteins up prior to absorption into the body.
Yes, some tiny amount of the protein may find its way into the bloodstream through a cut or hole in a membrane somewhere... But it doesn't matter, because exposure to anti-venom antibodies does not confer immunity. Anti-venom works when antibodies in the anti-venom bind to the toxic components in venom, thereby rendering the components inactive and targeting them for destruction by the immune system.
Which brings us to the "no with a but": No, exposure to the antibodies won't help you to build up an immunity. But, if those eggs happen to have an amount of the original venom in them, things might be different. If the toxic components of the venom are small molecules (which are more likely to pass through the epithelial lining intact) rather than enzymes (I honestly don't remember what the active ingredients in snake hemo- and neurotoxins are), or even if enough venom enzyme make its way into the body, then the immune system would be exposed to the venom in non-lethal doses. Then the egg would serve as an innoculation, the individual's own immune system would have an opportunity to produce his or her own anti-venom antibodies, and immunity to the venom in question could be built up.
Having grown up in New England, and having lived in upstate New York, I can say that where I come from we decidedly do not call carbonated beverages "soda-pop." It's usually "soda," or "soft drink" if one is trying to sound more like a restaurant.
"Pop" calls to mind images of popsicles, blow pops, and someone's dad.
Q: How was the male contraceptive pill created? A: As with most revolutionary discoveries, entirely by accident! A patient involved in a double blind clinical trial for an entirely different product somehow managed to cram a placebo pill into his urethra.
Q: How does it work? A: The pill, or, more accurately, "penile plunger," as it has been technically termed, temporarily obstructs the outlet of the urethra. As a result, the patient is rendered infertile for a full 6 hours, after which time the pill dissolves and dislodges harmlessy.
Q: Are there any side effects that I should know about? A: Being a purely mechanical devide, the male contraceptive pill has very few side effects to worry about. Acute pain and a kidney-stone-like sensation are common. Additionally, patients are advised not to drink prior to or during use of the male pill, due to a slight risk of bladder explosion.
Are they ringed? Nematodes are so small that you'd have a hard time seeing them at all. We're talking around one mm in length. If, on the other hand, the white worms are more like a centimeter long, and if you can discern a lighter ring near the front end, they are in fact "whiteworms," a species of ringed worm fairly closely related to the earthworm.
Nematodes, by contrast, are not ringed worms(phylum Annelida), and belong to a completely different phylum (Nemotoda).
Whiteworms live under much the same conditions as earthworms, and can actually achieve a higher biomass in a given culture. They reproduce much faster, possibly explaining why they replaced your earthworm population.
Frogs do not live in saltwater. No frog larvae (tadpoles) are able to survive in salt water. A very small minority of frogs are able to tolerate brackish water as adults (Bufo marinus, the infamous caine toad, is one such animal), but no adult frogs live in seawater either.
I'm sure you're right about why sea walls are illegal, but if the legislation is limited to points along the coast, then your specific example is incorrect. Destruction of the habitat of shorebirds or the nesting sties of seaturtles would be a better example.
Well, it was a biological experiment, not just a technogical one. It was important that they observe the dog's unadulterated biological reaction to the weightless environment. What if weightlessness had some acute biological consequence?
In the end, they did gather important data about life support in space capsules ("don't insulate so well"). So, yea, I agree it wasn't humane treatment, but at least it wasn't gratuitous.
Slashdot Mirror
Any particular reason to stick with the name Firebird for Mozilla other than the fact it's already been publicized?
Aw, geez, but they already made up T-shirts and coffee mugs...
But seriously, maybe I misread something back there, but I believe it is Mozilla's streamlined standalone-browser project, Phoenix, that is going through a namechange to Firebird, not Mozilla itself.
-ks
Excellent point; I was going to say something to that effect myself. Modern DNA sequencing techniques involve digesting or shredding massive genomic pieces of DNA into small fragments, in the neighborhood of 300 - 700 base pairs in length. The reason for this lies with the sequencers, which can only get a maximum of around 700 base pairs of reliable data per run.
Sequences of the resulting fragments of DNA are used to reconstruct the entire genome based on the overlap between sequenced fragments. Overlap and a certain degree of redundency, in fact, is necessary as a form of error checking, as sequencing methods have an inherant error rate.
So, if these prehistoric DNA fragments overlap sufficiently, it is theoretically possible for their sequences to be used to reconstruct an entire genome.
However, a bigger concern might be damage to DNA. DNA, like all biological molecules, suffers a certain degree of degredation over time due to high energy radiation, exposure to free radicals, normal biochemical processes (such as nucleases present in the original cell, or secreted by microbes in the environment), etc. There are biochemical mechanisms in living cells that continually work to repair these damages, but in a dead, frozen cell those systems would not be present, and the DNA would just accumulate damage. Such damage can inhibit or introduce large error into sequencing attempts, so it is possible that the original sequence of the DNA can never be recovered.
Really, GP32 has 4 buttons, counting the L and R.
Which is still too few, as the SNES controller has 6 buttons counting the L and R, 8 buttons if you count Start and Select, 9 if you include the direction pad, 12 if you list each major direction separately, and 19 if you throw in several buttons that it doesn't actually have.
to paraphrase Pink Floyd, "Mother, should I trust the government?"
And, not to add insult to injury, that was a quote, not a paraphrase. Perhaps if paraphrased it would have better fit with the context of the story.
"I hate every ape I see,
From chimpan-A to chimpanzee!
No, you'll never make a monkey out of me!"
"In fact, at present it is one of the coolest stars known," Bond told SPACE.com.
The astronomer then proceded to slick back his hair and donned a pair of shades, while rythmically snapping the fingers of his free hand.
"Oh, yeah," added Bond.
The original author of that piece of satire is John Robbins (who is, interestingly, the hier of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream empire, and now an advocate of healthy eating and sustainable living), and the original version can be found here.
Evidently, the song has been updated slightly to make it slightly more timely, and my quick googling unfortunately didn't turn up a second author to whom that may be attributed.
-ks
I mean, I would think it'd be relatively low, what with all the expensive gagetry we're using nowadays.
You'd think. Except for the fact that it isn't infantry shoot-outs in the desert that result in large numbers of civilian casualties. This high tech gagetry, which produces bigger, more powerful bombs that can fly farther and with less ground guidance is what creates the most collateral damage. Bombing a city from a hundred miles away and ensuring that the targeted structures are populated exclusively by enemy combatants is difficult.
An interesting example illustrating many of these bad practices over and over and over can be found in the comment section of bug 22274, a not-quite-valid-but-frequently-reported-"bug" involving tabled images, alignment, descenders, and Quirks mode.
The first time I noticed that functionality in Moz I found my way to the above page and spent a good hour or two reading through all the comments. Aside from gaining an education in some of the nitty gritties of html and css standards, I was struck by how frequently the bug was re-reported and by how abusive the commenters became (especially when their bug was labeled "invalid"). It's nice to see a page with explicit etiquette standards. Lets hope the bugzillians abide by them.
Rrowr is right!
But aside from her roles as producer, host, and hottie, did you know she was in a band called Marine Research?
Can't they go for a policitally correct / socially sensitive / thoughtful of the children phrase like "cannot-see energy" or "we have no fscking clue where it is energy"?
How about black energy? Or, always-being-kept-down-by-the-man energy?
Had you read the article, the first sentence would have informed you that the porcine heart was surgically grafted to the neck of the sheep, as opposed to being grown in situ.
The medical and scientific implications of this experiment have less to do with the surgical grafting procedure than with the fact that the process was done in such a way as to prevent immunological rejection of the pig heart by the majority of the sheep in the study. It is this rejection by the immune system that prevents pig parts from being used in organ transplants for humans.
-ks
guess I know how my grandparents felt about landing on the moon and TV.
...and TV??
Your grandparents landed on the moon??
This I find implausible.
No, and no with a but.
First the "no":
No, because, as you point out, it wouldn't get into your system. Anti-venom is in the form of antibodies, and these are nice big proteins. Intact protiens cannot pass through the epithelium lining your digestive tract, so the digestive system does a very thorough job of chopping up proteins up prior to absorption into the body.
Yes, some tiny amount of the protein may find its way into the bloodstream through a cut or hole in a membrane somewhere... But it doesn't matter, because exposure to anti-venom antibodies does not confer immunity. Anti-venom works when antibodies in the anti-venom bind to the toxic components in venom, thereby rendering the components inactive and targeting them for destruction by the immune system.
Which brings us to the "no with a but":
No, exposure to the antibodies won't help you to build up an immunity. But, if those eggs happen to have an amount of the original venom in them, things might be different. If the toxic components of the venom are small molecules (which are more likely to pass through the epithelial lining intact) rather than enzymes (I honestly don't remember what the active ingredients in snake hemo- and neurotoxins are), or even if enough venom enzyme make its way into the body, then the immune system would be exposed to the venom in non-lethal doses. Then the egg would serve as an innoculation, the individual's own immune system would have an opportunity to produce his or her own anti-venom antibodies, and immunity to the venom in question could be built up.
But those are big "if"s
Having grown up in New England, and having lived in upstate New York, I can say that where I come from we decidedly do not call carbonated beverages "soda-pop." It's usually "soda," or "soft drink" if one is trying to sound more like a restaurant.
"Pop" calls to mind images of popsicles, blow pops, and someone's dad.
-ks
French years are shorter. They felt the American year was killing off their French culture.
Did anyone else interpret that headline as announcing a Farscape-sponsored commercial for fruits and veggies?
"Farscape oranges. They're out of this world."
From the official FAQ:
Q: How was the male contraceptive pill created?
A: As with most revolutionary discoveries, entirely by accident! A patient involved in a double blind clinical trial for an entirely different product somehow managed to cram a placebo pill into his urethra.
Q: How does it work?
A: The pill, or, more accurately, "penile plunger," as it has been technically termed, temporarily obstructs the outlet of the urethra. As a result, the patient is rendered infertile for a full 6 hours, after which time the pill dissolves and dislodges harmlessy.
Q: Are there any side effects that I should know about?
A: Being a purely mechanical devide, the male contraceptive pill has very few side effects to worry about. Acute pain and a kidney-stone-like sensation are common. Additionally, patients are advised not to drink prior to or during use of the male pill, due to a slight risk of bladder explosion.
So if I get in, do I get adamantium claws?
Only if you have bone claws to begin with.
Are they ringed? Nematodes are so small that you'd have a hard time seeing them at all. We're talking around one mm in length. If, on the other hand, the white worms are more like a centimeter long, and if you can discern a lighter ring near the front end, they are in fact "whiteworms," a species of ringed worm fairly closely related to the earthworm.
Nematodes, by contrast, are not ringed worms(phylum Annelida), and belong to a completely different phylum (Nemotoda).
Whiteworms live under much the same conditions as earthworms, and can actually achieve a higher biomass in a given culture. They reproduce much faster, possibly explaining why they replaced your earthworm population.
Take a look at this thread from a recent article on laser weapons.
Frogs do not live in saltwater. No frog larvae (tadpoles) are able to survive in salt water. A very small minority of frogs are able to tolerate brackish water as adults (Bufo marinus, the infamous caine toad, is one such animal), but no adult frogs live in seawater either.
I'm sure you're right about why sea walls are illegal, but if the legislation is limited to points along the coast, then your specific example is incorrect. Destruction of the habitat of shorebirds or the nesting sties of seaturtles would be a better example.
Perhaps some sort of sand/concrete which will degrade pleasantly?
Perhaps by playing a Bach concerto and releasing a soothing lavendar fragrance as it melts to form a replica of Rodin's The Thinker.
Well, it was a biological experiment, not just a technogical one. It was important that they observe the dog's unadulterated biological reaction to the weightless environment. What if weightlessness had some acute biological consequence?
In the end, they did gather important data about life support in space capsules ("don't insulate so well"). So, yea, I agree it wasn't humane treatment, but at least it wasn't gratuitous.
Somehow the idea of sex with 50ms latency doesn't sound so appealing...
Neither does the age of the sexually transmitted computer virus...