Re:Supes threw the fight already (plus, the stats)
on
Superhero Smackdown
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· Score: 2
Little known fact:
What Superman *actually* gave Batman was a hunk of green beachglass with an embedded superbright LED. Batman, not knowing any better, gained a warm fuzzy sense of security. Superman got the Bat to shut the hell up for five minutes.
And, really, in the end, isn't that what it's all about?
Yes, it's a model that adapts to modern times... But that's not why Warner and Universal have signed on. With CDRW drives all but standard with new computers and CD burning so popular, offering this (which is priced to compete with CDs, not CDRs) won't put an end to home CD burning. And they know it.
To me, it looks like these two giants are making a small investment now so that if and when Palladium and trusted security prevents the average non-techie home Windows user from burning his or her own CDs, Warner and Universal will have ready a business model and the associated infrastructure capable of filling the ensuing vacuum. Then it's just sit back and reap the rewards.
I seem to recall hearing that Russia was having big financial problems with their space program, and that if they didn't scrape up funding in some form, that it may adversely impact the long term construction plans for the ISS over the next few years.
Would the full size final version of this thinger be able to ferry big structural pieces or modules, in place of the Russian rockets? I get the impression that the it would be too small, which would suck.
Re:A fertile mule does not mean a fertile mind.
on
Mule Gives Birth
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· Score: 2
I find the science fascinating. Likewise, people's inability to use the English language.
This was more a case of my inability to proofread my own typing.
I seem to have a typo every time I get a story accepted. You'd think I'd learn...
So what is really interesting is whether the offspring are fertile. If so, then we can start breeding mules from mules, and we have a new species.
And where does the infertility in mules normally lie? Is it a male thing or a female thing? Or both?
The infertility arises from the fact that normally, during meiosis (the production of sex cells), like chromosomes in the diploid compliment of chromosomes (one chromosome from each parent) pair up, separate, and produce haploid daughter cells. Mules are in the awkward position of having 31 chromosomes from the donkey parent and 32 from the horse parent, giving them an odd number of chromosomes total, even though they are in a diploid state.
On the one hand this gives the mule "hybrid vigour" - it exhibits many of the desirable characteristics of each parent. On the other hand, this odd number of chromosomes poses problems for meiosis - the normal meiotic process just doesn't produce viable sex cells. (So, in answer to your question, the infertility is a male and female thing.)
The fact that the foal was born at all suggests that the mother, the father, the foal, or some combination has some manner of chromosomal aberration - an extra chromosome from one parent, or something along those lines - resulting ultimately in a viable diploid zygote.
Chromosomal aberrations often result in infertility to begin with... but lets pretend that the foal is fertile, and is able to breed with horses, donkeys, or future siblings. It's offspring will not exhibit the hybrid vigour that is observed in the mule, because the offspring will not have the characteristic compliment of horse and donkey chromosomes. And since that vigour is the reason why people breed mules in the first place, a new breed of fertile mule would not be that useful.
Mabye my immunobio knowledge isn't up to snuff, but I don't see how recruiting white blood cells to the site of an inflammation response would help to reduce swelling and pain. White blood cells ought to end up at sites of inflammation anyway.
Local6.com not being helpful in the explanation department, I checked out http://www.coldlaser.com/, only to learn the following:
"Certain wavelengths of light have the ability to penetrate high-water content material such as animal tissue. This penetration allows the process of photobiostimulation on animal cells is similar to photosynthesis in plant cells whereby light sets in motion a chain of chemical reactions. In human tissue the resulting photochemical reaction produces an increase in the cellular metabolism rate which expedites cell repair and the stimulation of several systems: the immune, lymphatic and vascular." (http://www.coldlaser.com/services.html)
Which strikes me as silly and poorly understood. On the other hand, the treatment only costs $45, is covered by insurance, and also involves patients "learning proper posture and stress-reducing relaxation techniques," which we know from years of clinival use to be helpful, so, hey, whatever. If Dr. Smith enjoys shining lasers into his patients' wrists, power to him.
Inside sources reveal that the ape sweathouse is working on a script for FOX's remake of Return to the Planet of the Apes. This is double the number of talentless, smelly simians as were used to hammer out script for the first, Tim Burton directed, PoA remake.
There are set rules for spelling, punctuation, and grammar for English in the US, and *that* is proper English.
Languages evolve, but that doesn't excuse anyone from inventing their own standards. At intervals, publishers of dictionaries and international linguistics commities get together and review which terms, expressions, pronunciations, and spellings have made their way into common use, and standards are occasionally updated to reflect the new usages.
But that doesn't give one permission to preempively incorporate slang into speech or writing and label it as the new "proper" English. Rules of language are there to facilitate clear, unambiguous expression of and interpretation of ideas by anyone fluent a given language. Chartoom slang, Ebonics, and regional dialects are not "proper English." They may function as languages in their respective communities, but if you've ever asked for directions from someone and been utterly unable to comprehend the local dialect, you can appreciate the necessity for a single set of standards applicable to the entire English speaking community.
Our moon acts like a big scrub brush. Captured debris with very low orbits would be slowed down by our atmosphere and would eventually fall to the surface, while objects with much higher orbits would be thrown out of those orbits by our moon.
I'm no astrophysicist, though, so don't quote me on that.
That's one way to look at it. But in real life we have a variety and selection of fast food establishments and computer processors.
For The Sims to be representative of real life in an even handed manner, it would have to offer either some degree of selection of different brands, or only a generic selection (McBurger, Fast Food King..).
The fact that it does neither, and instead will be endorsing a single brand, is evidence that it is *not* trying to simulate the real world, and gives us the right to rail on them for it.
I'd be a little wary of force feedback. I'm sure that it's bulit with all sorts of safety mechanisms and such... But what if your new NintendoGameBox becomes infected with a computer virus that spontaneously runs a "crush your hand in a meat grinder" simulation?
So my USB keyboard will be connected at around 500Mbps. About how many words a minute does that come out to?
Of course, you'll need all that keyboard bandwidth to type all the passwords. Because all your new wireless UWB devices will need to be password protected so they don't accidentally work on your neighbor's computer. On startup you'll log on to every individual computer component, each of wich will be scattered about the room (speakers on ceiling - zip drive on top of blender - DVD drive in sock drawer).
USB 5.0 will solve this password issue by providing a sleek insulated "password transfer conduit" that connects directly to your PC, interfacing, for security reasons, with each peripheral directly.
I tend to think that poorly-optomized html is just a drop in the bucket. If there were one thing to optomize, it ought to be images. The average page uses at least an order of magnitude more data for its images than the html. Using smaller images, or just saving things in more efficient formats, such as jpg, or lossless compression formats, would be a big step in the right direction.
The MS executive went on to state that, "out studies have shown that the average end buser is intimidated by security. In an attempt to find middle ground between acceptable security and just thowing sensitive information on your front lawn, we have implimented our trademark "random crash functionality" and "resource hog feature suite." Anecdotal evicence suggests that these measures will be sufficient ensure that no self respecting hacker will come near our crummy operating system.
Furthermore, we volunteer to personally maintain an extensive database of all your valuable data, including credit card numbers, filenames pirated media files, and love letters from your high school sweetheart. Just in case.
We graciously accept your thanks in advance. You're very welcome."
Shooting off another space mission to take pictures of the landing site from the first space mission isn't going to convince skeptics, who are convinced that all these space missions are big left wing conspiracies. What they need to do is go up there and dust the moon with some colored powder or something.
I knew that mobile phone service providers were pretty competative, but I didn't realize things had escalated into all out war. I envision strategic placement of towers to protect corporate mobile communication kingdoms...
"Sir, we have spotted what may be the periscope of a Verizon class submarine on radar!"
Well, judging from the little "NASA" on the side of the image, I'd say it's from NASA. Whether it's more or less comforting to know that NASA is spending free time depicting the total annihilation of the Earth, rather than sending messages to terrorists, I don't know.
The delineation of species boundaries necessarily takes into consideration more than the ability to interbreed and produce viable offspring. Indeed, the taxonomic definition of the "species" classification is very plastic, and differs with the groups of organisms considered.
The advent of the use of genetic markers for classification provides some greater degree of accuracy and standardization in the process, but it does not eliminate the inherant flexibility in the definition. (From a bioinformatic standpoint, there is a whole other set of problems with trying to accurately portray evolutionary distances from genetic variation.)
Consider a group of animals with a continuous distribution over a very large area. All the members of this population are capable of interbreeding, and the uninterrupted distribution allows for genetic drift throughout the entire population. Individuals from different geographic regions will have subtly different physical characteristics, but the whole population is still considered a single species. This is a fairly classic situation. (The benefit of a large gene pool likely outweights the benifit of these subspecies differentiating into wholly different species, if you want to look at it that way.)
Then, consider a group of animals with a discontinuous distributuion over a large range. Individual populations may be able to interbreed with one another, but there is no natural genetic exchange among these separate populations. Subtle differences between the groups may, in this case, warrent classification as separate species, because they represent different gene pools drifting in different directions.
The complexity of the issue compounds when one looks outside the animal kingdom. For instance, essentially the entire family or orchids, with some 1000 genera and 20,000 species, exhibits a high degree of genetic plasticity, with species readily hybridizing across genera. And again, the definition of "species" must be reevaluated when one considers the bacterial world.
Anyway, the point of all this is to show that the grey zone is there for a reason. The alternative is to explicity redefine taxonomic criteria for every different group of organisms, which defeats the entire purpose of a single classification system.
So this is how Aussies do dentistry. While it's swell and all to be able to painlessly zap a hole in my tooth, it doesn't eliminate the fact that you'd be zapping a hole in my tooth.
The Brits, on the other hand, have gone for a no-hole approach. They're using a new treatment called Healozone, which involves fitting a rubber cap over the tooth and then smothering it with ozone, which eliminates all the bacteria in a matter of seconds. Painless, and much more cool.
Slashdot Mirror
Little known fact:
What Superman *actually* gave Batman was a hunk of green beachglass with an embedded superbright LED. Batman, not knowing any better, gained a warm fuzzy sense of security. Superman got the Bat to shut the hell up for five minutes.
And, really, in the end, isn't that what it's all about?
Yes, it's a model that adapts to modern times... But that's not why Warner and Universal have signed on. With CDRW drives all but standard with new computers and CD burning so popular, offering this (which is priced to compete with CDs, not CDRs) won't put an end to home CD burning. And they know it.
To me, it looks like these two giants are making a small investment now so that if and when Palladium and trusted security prevents the average non-techie home Windows user from burning his or her own CDs, Warner and Universal will have ready a business model and the associated infrastructure capable of filling the ensuing vacuum. Then it's just sit back and reap the rewards.
Why should an email from my gf look the same as a email from my boss?
Well I dunno. Is your girlfriend also your boss? If so that's a good reason. It's also perverse, you sicko.
I seem to recall hearing that Russia was having big financial problems with their space program, and that if they didn't scrape up funding in some form, that it may adversely impact the long term construction plans for the ISS over the next few years.
Would the full size final version of this thinger be able to ferry big structural pieces or modules, in place of the Russian rockets? I get the impression that the it would be too small, which would suck.
I find the science fascinating. Likewise, people's inability to use the English language.
This was more a case of my inability to proofread my own typing.
I seem to have a typo every time I get a story accepted. You'd think I'd learn...
So what is really interesting is whether the offspring are fertile. If so, then we can start breeding mules from mules, and we have a new species.
And where does the infertility in mules normally lie? Is it a male thing or a female thing? Or both?
The infertility arises from the fact that normally, during meiosis (the production of sex cells), like chromosomes in the diploid compliment of chromosomes (one chromosome from each parent) pair up, separate, and produce haploid daughter cells. Mules are in the awkward position of having 31 chromosomes from the donkey parent and 32 from the horse parent, giving them an odd number of chromosomes total, even though they are in a diploid state.
On the one hand this gives the mule "hybrid vigour" - it exhibits many of the desirable characteristics of each parent. On the other hand, this odd number of chromosomes poses problems for meiosis - the normal meiotic process just doesn't produce viable sex cells. (So, in answer to your question, the infertility is a male and female thing.)
The fact that the foal was born at all suggests that the mother, the father, the foal, or some combination has some manner of chromosomal aberration - an extra chromosome from one parent, or something along those lines - resulting ultimately in a viable diploid zygote.
Chromosomal aberrations often result in infertility to begin with... but lets pretend that the foal is fertile, and is able to breed with horses, donkeys, or future siblings. It's offspring will not exhibit the hybrid vigour that is observed in the mule, because the offspring will not have the characteristic compliment of horse and donkey chromosomes. And since that vigour is the reason why people breed mules in the first place, a new breed of fertile mule would not be that useful.
Mabye my immunobio knowledge isn't up to snuff, but I don't see how recruiting white blood cells to the site of an inflammation response would help to reduce swelling and pain. White blood cells ought to end up at sites of inflammation anyway.
Local6.com not being helpful in the explanation department, I checked out http://www.coldlaser.com/, only to learn the following:
"Certain wavelengths of light have the ability to penetrate high-water content material such as animal tissue. This penetration allows the process of photobiostimulation on animal cells is similar to photosynthesis in plant cells whereby light sets in motion a chain of chemical reactions. In human tissue the resulting photochemical reaction produces an increase in the cellular metabolism rate which expedites cell repair and the stimulation of several systems: the immune, lymphatic and vascular."
(http://www.coldlaser.com/services.html)
Which strikes me as silly and poorly understood. On the other hand, the treatment only costs $45, is covered by insurance, and also involves patients "learning proper posture and stress-reducing relaxation techniques," which we know from years of clinival use to be helpful, so, hey, whatever. If Dr. Smith enjoys shining lasers into his patients' wrists, power to him.
Inside sources reveal that the ape sweathouse is working on a script for FOX's remake of Return to the Planet of the Apes. This is double the number of talentless, smelly simians as were used to hammer out script for the first, Tim Burton directed, PoA remake.
There are set rules for spelling, punctuation, and grammar for English in the US, and *that* is proper English.
Languages evolve, but that doesn't excuse anyone from inventing their own standards. At intervals, publishers of dictionaries and international linguistics commities get together and review which terms, expressions, pronunciations, and spellings have made their way into common use, and standards are occasionally updated to reflect the new usages.
But that doesn't give one permission to preempively incorporate slang into speech or writing and label it as the new "proper" English. Rules of language are there to facilitate clear, unambiguous expression of and interpretation of ideas by anyone fluent a given language. Chartoom slang, Ebonics, and regional dialects are not "proper English." They may function as languages in their respective communities, but if you've ever asked for directions from someone and been utterly unable to comprehend the local dialect, you can appreciate the necessity for a single set of standards applicable to the entire English speaking community.
Our moon acts like a big scrub brush. Captured debris with very low orbits would be slowed down by our atmosphere and would eventually fall to the surface, while objects with much higher orbits would be thrown out of those orbits by our moon.
I'm no astrophysicist, though, so don't quote me on that.
That's one way to look at it. But in real life we have a variety and selection of fast food establishments and computer processors.
For The Sims to be representative of real life in an even handed manner, it would have to offer either some degree of selection of different brands, or only a generic selection (McBurger, Fast Food King..).
The fact that it does neither, and instead will be endorsing a single brand, is evidence that it is *not* trying to simulate the real world, and gives us the right to rail on them for it.
I'd be a little wary of force feedback. I'm sure that it's bulit with all sorts of safety mechanisms and such... But what if your new NintendoGameBox becomes infected with a computer virus that spontaneously runs a "crush your hand in a meat grinder" simulation?
And that goes double for a LoveBoX.
Someone should get this guy together with some stop-motion animators. I'd love to see a feature length Legos: LOTR production.
So my USB keyboard will be connected at around 500Mbps. About how many words a minute does that come out to?
Of course, you'll need all that keyboard bandwidth to type all the passwords. Because all your new wireless UWB devices will need to be password protected so they don't accidentally work on your neighbor's computer. On startup you'll log on to every individual computer component, each of wich will be scattered about the room (speakers on ceiling - zip drive on top of blender - DVD drive in sock drawer).
USB 5.0 will solve this password issue by providing a sleek insulated "password transfer conduit" that connects directly to your PC, interfacing, for security reasons, with each peripheral directly.
I tend to think that poorly-optomized html is just a drop in the bucket. If there were one thing to optomize, it ought to be images. The average page uses at least an order of magnitude more data for its images than the html. Using smaller images, or just saving things in more efficient formats, such as jpg, or lossless compression formats, would be a big step in the right direction.
The MS executive went on to state that, "out studies have shown that the average end buser is intimidated by security. In an attempt to find middle ground between acceptable security and just thowing sensitive information on your front lawn, we have implimented our trademark "random crash functionality" and "resource hog feature suite." Anecdotal evicence suggests that these measures will be sufficient ensure that no self respecting hacker will come near our crummy operating system.
Furthermore, we volunteer to personally maintain an extensive database of all your valuable data, including credit card numbers, filenames pirated media files, and love letters from your high school sweetheart. Just in case.
We graciously accept your thanks in advance. You're very welcome."
Shooting off another space mission to take pictures of the landing site from the first space mission isn't going to convince skeptics, who are convinced that all these space missions are big left wing conspiracies. What they need to do is go up there and dust the moon with some colored powder or something.
"Trlblzr wuz here! 02"
That'll convince them.
I knew that mobile phone service providers were pretty competative, but I didn't realize things had escalated into all out war. I envision strategic placement of towers to protect corporate mobile communication kingdoms...
"Sir, we have spotted what may be the periscope of a Verizon class submarine on radar!"
Well, judging from the little "NASA" on the side of the image, I'd say it's from NASA. Whether it's more or less comforting to know that NASA is spending free time depicting the total annihilation of the Earth, rather than sending messages to terrorists, I don't know.
Amy the gorilla runs around gesticulating idiotically
"Peter! Peter! Amy can't get stupid glove off! Peter! Glove stupid idea! Give banana! I kill you!"
The delineation of species boundaries necessarily takes into consideration more than the ability to interbreed and produce viable offspring. Indeed, the taxonomic definition of the "species" classification is very plastic, and differs with the groups of organisms considered.
The advent of the use of genetic markers for classification provides some greater degree of accuracy and standardization in the process, but it does not eliminate the inherant flexibility in the definition. (From a bioinformatic standpoint, there is a whole other set of problems with trying to accurately portray evolutionary distances from genetic variation.)
Consider a group of animals with a continuous distribution over a very large area. All the members of this population are capable of interbreeding, and the uninterrupted distribution allows for genetic drift throughout the entire population. Individuals from different geographic regions will have subtly different physical characteristics, but the whole population is still considered a single species. This is a fairly classic situation. (The benefit of a large gene pool likely outweights the benifit of these subspecies differentiating into wholly different species, if you want to look at it that way.)
Then, consider a group of animals with a discontinuous distributuion over a large range. Individual populations may be able to interbreed with one another, but there is no natural genetic exchange among these separate populations. Subtle differences between the groups may, in this case, warrent classification as separate species, because they represent different gene pools drifting in different directions.
The complexity of the issue compounds when one looks outside the animal kingdom. For instance, essentially the entire family or orchids, with some 1000 genera and 20,000 species, exhibits a high degree of genetic plasticity, with species readily hybridizing across genera. And again, the definition of "species" must be reevaluated when one considers the bacterial world.
Anyway, the point of all this is to show that the grey zone is there for a reason. The alternative is to explicity redefine taxonomic criteria for every different group of organisms, which defeats the entire purpose of a single classification system.
Well, if we go on the basis of clever names, ATI wins hands down. Plus, monkeys have always made me think of high quality shaders.
That would make for some pretty foul, polluted, toxic water. You might want to leave diving there to some lifeless submersibles.
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Consider these handcuffs a gift from Microsoft.
Go ahead. Try them on. Fits real nice, huh?
You will, of course, have to pay for them later.
-----
So this is how Aussies do dentistry. While it's swell and all to be able to painlessly zap a hole in my tooth, it doesn't eliminate the fact that you'd be zapping a hole in my tooth.
The Brits, on the other hand, have gone for a no-hole approach. They're using a new treatment called Healozone, which involves fitting a rubber cap over the tooth and then smothering it with ozone, which eliminates all the bacteria in a matter of seconds. Painless, and much more cool.
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