Aside from the heated (or icy) debate over whether or not cryonics is a good idea - that is, whether or not there is any hope for ever reanimating a frozen body - there is, in some places, just as heated a debate over whether or not it should be allowed at all.
They need combine this technology with those unmanned military reconnaisance gliders, and deploy about a million of them above LA. Maybe countelss flying hunks of aerogel can start us on the road to recovery after the Bush administration's wussification of the EPA.
I'm afraid that if Windows, for instance, were to become interactive in a physical sense that my computer usage would fluctuate seasonally. I mean, I can't very well have all those windows open when it's cold outside, now can I?
I think we've found the perfect replacement for those boring Mars rover designs. I'd like to see this think hobbling around the red planet taking mass spec measurements of things.
And when the Martians come to investigate the lander, it'll be alien stompin' time! Ka-krash!
They'd have a steady steady supply of applicants from local universities. Particularly I'm thinking of RPI, which is just across the river in Troy, and has excellent CS and engineering programs...
And it's a beautiful area. Near the adirondacs and catskills. Near Lage George. A freshly dredged Hudson River (new lower PCB content!). 3 hour trainride to NYC, but without the big city drawbacks.
It has all the requirements for an excellent technological hub. Plus snowstorms that drop a good two feet of snow in February, which is really something the Silicon Valley currently lacks.
I'm afraid you are confusing the terms "anti-bacterial" and "antibiotic." Anti-bacterial is a very broad, vague term that can be applied to any substance or product that exhibits the ability to kill bacteria. It is a marketing buzzword, used to play on the consumer's fear of microbes and misunderstanding of microbiology. Rubbing alcohol, vinegar, and boiling water would all easily fit under the anti-bacterial label.
The products that you list - anti-bacterial cosmetics and soaps - kill microbes due to very high or low pH, alcohol content, the presence of detergents that lyse cell walls/membranes, and the presence of other toxic chemicals that kill a broad spectrum of organisms in a very general way - the same way bleach kills just about anything you dump it on.
But bleach, alcohol, detergents, etc, are NOT antibiotics. Antibiotics are drug-like compounds that kill bacteria in a targeted fashion, by interfering with growth, cell wall development, and/or metabolic pathways. Antibiotics bind to specific enzymes, proteins, or other structural molecules. Bacteria are able to gain resistance to antibiotics by accumulating changes in the structure of these molecules (via mutations).
So, nonspecific general anti-bacterial compounds, and NOT antibiotics, are present in these cosmetics and soaps. Microbes CANNOT easily develop resistance to nonspecific anti-bacterials. Thus, use of these anti-bacterial products has no effect on the evolution of antibiotic resistant strains of pathogens.
Interestingly, it should be noted that the formulation of many of these household anti-bacterial products is essentially identical to the forerunning "non-anti-bacterial" versions. All liquid hand soaps, for instance, are anti-bacterial to begin with. So the addition of the "anti-bacterial" buzzword on the bottle is just a marketing ploy.
Well, it's good, but it isn't the great solution to our plastic pollution problems. As the author of the article points out, the thing that makes the material biodegradable - its water-solubility - is also its major drawback. I wouldn't anticipate starch-based bags replacing traditional plastic ones in the shopping bag market any time soon. Perhaps in other packaging markets...
Starch-based replacements for plastics aren't a new concept. Ever had something shipped to you packed in those cylindrical extruded starch packing peanuts? They're out there replacing the old foam polystyrene ones to some extent, and they dissolve in water quite readily. And taste pretty bland, unfortunately.:^)
Now if they could make a plastic-like material out of a more water resistant polysaccharide like chitin or cellulose, then the environmentalists could start celebrating.
Well, I could wrap a case in duct tape and *detect* an intrusion by checking if anyone had cut back the tape... or rig it with C4 and listen for loud exploding noises. But I would think that intrusion *prevention* or good chassis access control would be a more useful technology. Or case mod, as it were.
I've come across his site before, and left drooling slightly. Those are freggin nice suckers, and I must say that I'm extremely impressed with his abilities.
I would even the steep price tag more or less justifiable, considering the impress-your-friends factor. People spend more on PDAs. But... well, what good is a replica light saber if you can't saber duel with yer buddies? The specs mention that the plasma lamp is encased in a virtually indestructible polycarbonate (actually, it reads "polycarbonite," which is either a typo or a clever pun) housing.
Well, polycarbonate is the same stuff they use to make high quality scratch resistant "virtually indestructible" eyeglass lenses. Quite a few of which I have personally destructed. So, I wonder how well the "blades" stand up to thwackin'.
I tend to agree. While I lived on campus, the internet connection was stable, insanely fast, and effectively free (with the purchase of a year of eduction and on-campus housing, for some $35,000). Not only was file sharing and searching very simple over the school network, but a large proportion of students used file sharing programs to effectively give the outside world access to a slice of the campus file library.
But I also found it very interesting that the article completely neglected to mention DSL. The new pricing schemes may turn people away from Cable... and just make them switch to DSL. DSL already has tiered payment schemes and, so far, the DSL suppliers haven't talked about shifting to a download-capping pricing scheme.
Mm. Don't hold your breath. There may be a possibility that life could survive in airtight pockets toward an interior warm core, but I don't see how there's any possibility that it could evolve there....or that we could find it without dismantling the moon.
As I recall Seth Brundle attempted a similar feat of affective computing around 1986. Following an epiphany on the nature of human flesh, the scientist undertook a marathon coding session in an effort to endow the systems controlling his telepods with the appropriate respect and/or "craziness" for organic matter.
Short-term results proved promising, but limitations in mid-80s quarantine technology ultimately resulted in several grotesque fly-like abominations, and ultimate termination of that line of research.
While my personal views on "social responsibility" are a little different, I tend to agree that pulling an oath out of thin air and giving coders the legal right to "just say no" to doing bad things isn't a very promising solution.
The reason the Hippocratic Oath is effective for reasons that can't apply to programming. Medical practitioners are bound both ethically and legally to their oath (I don't know how much legally - at the very least, breaching the oath invites malpractice suits), and adherance is enforced. Practitioners are licenced and monitored. Infrastructure is present to handle reports of malpractice, and to swiftly punish illegal, unethical, and irresponsible behavior.
Coders are not heavily regulated. They are not licenced in any standardized or official sense. There is no association that regularly and consistently scrutinizes their activity. The job market is very competitive, and they are seldom the subject of malpractice suits, so there is little pressure for them to band together to form a self monitoring group.
Unless or until we begin to licence programmers and regulate their activity, we can't hope to bind them in any legal sense to an standardized ethical code of behavior. If society does that, then it won't be an issue of "allowing coders to do the right thing," but one of "holding all coders responsible for their actions." Programmers, as a group, would be forced to regulate themselves because society would have the power to enforce ethical conduct.
I have to read normal journal articles all the time, and let me tell you, sometimes its the most tedious and boring part of being a scientist. Wading through reams of data and trying to figure out how their results are supposed to support their hypotheses is bad enough. Wading through reams of data and trying figure out what conclusions to draw from unexpected or inconclusive data... Holy cow, this will be a boring journal.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within gave a nearly flawless rendering of humans
I suspect I'm in the minority, but I was dissapointed with the humans in the FF movie. Personally, I certainly wouldn't go so far as to describe them as "nearly flawless." It looked and felt very plastic and artificial to me. The nice and big polygon count allowed the general shape to be right, but things like skin/textile texture, realistic seeming facial movements, and the physics of hair still have a long way to go.
Don't get me wrong - I could sit back and imagine that the characters were real, and put myself in their place, but a good 2D animated film is that way, too.
Well, it'd be great if I had a pair of thermoplastic shoelaces that snugly knotted themselves for me. It wouldn't be so great if I needed a knife to get my shoes off. Can these things be untangled?
I'm sorry, but I forgive them for going public with this prior to publication. The issue isn't going to cause a panic, since we already knew that fried foods are bad for you. The researchers and the institution aren't going to become rich off of the short-lived publicity. They just felt a moral obligation to release this data to the public as soon as possible, which is fine.
They didn't decide to *skip* the peer-review publication process. Their findings will still be submitted to a journal, and funding for further research by their lab and their institution will be contingent on the merit of that report.
Countless food related epidemiological studies of questionable validity, or performed by groups with biasing connections to industry, are published in journals and reported by the media every year - and half of them conflict with the other half. Remember the butter-margerine debate? Cholesterol in eggs? You can't count on peer review to weed out all the bad epidemiological correlations - you can only do that looking for corroborating experimental evidence.
It seems that China sent up 9 chicken eggs, but only three hatched. And of course, as is China's want, they are keeping ominously quiet about what became of the other 6 eggs. I get kind of annoyed about their tendency to never admit their failures, no matter how minor, unless someone else breaks the story first and they need to do some damage control.
They're using the survival of the eggs to tout their life support system. But for all we know those other eggs came back scrambled, or horribly mutated into monster chickens. If they want the rest of the global community to be impressed with their space program, they ought to be a little more forthcoming with their data, success or failure.
I'll admit that it is pretty impressive that they've got something that works with such a simple design like this, but do-it-yourself isn't really an unusual phenomenon in academia.
When people (well, science students, grad students, and professionals, at least) think of scientific instruments, they tend to picture big complicated NMR machines, mass spec devices, HPLC systems, so on and so forth, with proprietary interface and database software, and service contracts that run tens of thousands of dollars a year.
These big instruments are manufactured and supported by huge corporations or little startups, and either way, the manufacturer will only design and produce (and support!) these devides if there is a sizable consumer demand - something to make it economically worthwhile to try and fill the niche. But for any given technology, there was a time before that particular technology was commonplace and mass-produced.
HPLC systems, NMR devices, CD spectrometers, X-ray crystallographic devices... (I'm a biochemist, so I apologize if my examples are skewed in that direction) these all started out as projects imposed on graduate students by research advisors in some budding new field. These first pioneering instruments, which worked well enough in many cases to generate fantastic data, had to be slapped together from off-the-shelf components and with a tight budget in mind.
Not to detract from the oo's and aaah's, but its good to keep things in perspective.
We already have a public data repository. Just encrypt all your important documents, post them to various usenet groups, and let Google permanently archive them.
I realize that it's a very symbolic and generous thing for NASA to do the whole teachers-in-space program. But what do we really get out of sending someone's 7th grade Earth Science teacher into orbit? Is it worth tens of millions of dollars for the ride, plus a several millions more in training expenses, to have this teacher bring up his/her class's bean sprout experiments, give two TV interviews, go on the high school lecture circuit, and mabye publish a book or two? ("Teachers Among The Stars: Education in the Space Age")
Probably not. NASA is looking for publicity, and frankly, that's what I would hope they get out of this program, too. I mean, it is public interest in the space program that is going to determine whether we send men to Mars ten years from now, or fifty.
I want a space-teacher who will be able to spark the interest of a whole generation of children, and teachers, and parents. Someone who actually has the talent to make people interested and excited about space, science, and exploration. Someone who will be able to reach an audience. Someone cool. Someone we trust.
I want Bill Nye to go up to the space station, and I want him to do cool experiments and film half a dozen special episodes of Bill Nye, The Science Guy up there. He's worth twenty 8th grade Earth Science teachers.
Asteroid study is a beautiful thing. Not only may we owe our evolutionary path to these speedy hunks of angry rock, but without them, we wouldn't have such quality films as Deep Impact and Armageddon, and thought provoking novels, such as 2061, by Arthur C Clarke.
Oh wait... that wasn't an asteroid, it was a comet... Of course, it wasn't thought proviking either.
Ooo, this irritates me. It irritates me even more that NASA scientists say absurd things and get misquoted all the time, just for hype's sake. But in particular it bugs me that this data can be so ignorantly misinterpreted.
What is chlorophyll, and how would one go about identifying it, and how is that indicative of life?
Chlorophyll is stable pigment molecule, at the heart of which is a coordinated Mg2+ ion, that occurs in the photosystem proteins of most photosynthetic orginisms (on Earth, anyway). It snags photons of particular wavelengths, uses this energy to boost electrons to stable higher energy levels, and passes these energized electrons off to the associated photosystem, where they are ultimately used to drive ATP synthesis and make other good stuff.
Scientists, including the ones huddled over the Pathfinder data, generally identify chlorophyll by its characteristic absorption spectra. So if, in the Mars data, we see something that seems to absorb with a similar fingerprint to chlorophyll, does that mean there's life on Mars!?!? No!
It doesn't mean there isn't, but it isn't even very good supporting evidence.
Just because it looks green doesn't make it chlorophyll. Lots of organic molecules absorbs in that region, and it wouldn't be surprising... Well you see where I'm going. Lemme jump to the more interesting point.
The thing that makes chlorophyll especially good at its job at capturing light energy and converting it to chemical energy isn't its structure: there are oodles of molecules out there that absorb photons and kick an electron into a relatively stable higher energy level. Chlorophyll's claim to fame is its buddy, the photosystem protein.
Photosynthetic organisms have evolved special large, multi-subunit, many-hundred-amino acid proteins to harvest light energy, and most of these just happen to use chlorophyll, of all the available pigments. At some point in distant history, a very successful photosynthetic protein evolved, using the chlorophyll molecule as a catcher's mitt. This protein then became the evolutionary fuel for countless photosynthetic descendants over the next several billion years.
Note, however, that many organisms *do* use photosynthetic pigments other than chlorophyll. If versatile photosystem proteins had evolved for these pigments, then the plant life on Earth would likely be some pretty shade of orange or yellow, instead of green. So the key isn't *chlorophyll*, its *protein.* It is, and I can't stress this enough, *extremely* unlikely that two independent evolutionary pathways would produce light-harvesting proteins that utilize the chlorophyll pigment.
SO, the presence of chlorophyll, much less, of green splotches, does not do much to support the Mars-Life-ers.
Unless we postulate that life evolved on one of the two planets and spread to the other by some sort of meteorite. Which is a whole other rant all to itself.
Skimming down the list of purported violations, one gets the impression that Blizzard/Vivendi has no intention of being clever or strategic with this whole Bnet business. Without the shiny shield of the DMCA the Blizzard suit takes on the patina of a run-of-the-mill "he stole my popsicle" lawsuit.
Obviously they didn't steal code. They reverse engineered, which is prohibited by the EULA, but isn't a copyright issue.
Same deal with screenshots... They weren't making money off of them. The EULA gives guidelines for how screenshots may be used, but since they didn't mention violation of EULA, Bnetd should be able to put up a fair use defense.
They may have an argument with the "public performance" issue, but it is difficult to understand what they mean. The difference between Blizzard and Microsoft is that MS wants you to make.NET software... But the Battle.net name trademark crap just sounds like filler material.
Blizzard is throwing its weight around, trying to squash Bnetd with its vast bulk. Like a swarm of Protoss carriers... Lets hope Bnetd's lawyers bothered to develop "Lockdown."
Slashdot Mirror
Aside from the heated (or icy) debate over whether or not cryonics is a good idea - that is, whether or not there is any hope for ever reanimating a frozen body - there is, in some places, just as heated a debate over whether or not it should be allowed at all.
t m
In France the law states that bodies must be buried or cremated, so cryonics effectively isn't legal.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1870301.s
There was also another discussion on this topic more recently on the BBC's site.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/2133961.stm
They need combine this technology with those unmanned military reconnaisance gliders, and deploy about a million of them above LA. Maybe countelss flying hunks of aerogel can start us on the road to recovery after the Bush administration's wussification of the EPA.
I'm afraid that if Windows, for instance, were to become interactive in a physical sense that my computer usage would fluctuate seasonally. I mean, I can't very well have all those windows open when it's cold outside, now can I?
brrrrrrrrr
I think we've found the perfect replacement for those boring Mars rover designs. I'd like to see this think hobbling around the red planet taking mass spec measurements of things.
And when the Martians come to investigate the lander, it'll be alien stompin' time! Ka-krash!
They'd have a steady steady supply of applicants from local universities. Particularly I'm thinking of RPI, which is just across the river in Troy, and has excellent CS and engineering programs...
And it's a beautiful area. Near the adirondacs and catskills. Near Lage George. A freshly dredged Hudson River (new lower PCB content!). 3 hour trainride to NYC, but without the big city drawbacks.
It has all the requirements for an excellent technological hub. Plus snowstorms that drop a good two feet of snow in February, which is really something the Silicon Valley currently lacks.
I'm afraid you are confusing the terms "anti-bacterial" and "antibiotic." Anti-bacterial is a very broad, vague term that can be applied to any substance or product that exhibits the ability to kill bacteria. It is a marketing buzzword, used to play on the consumer's fear of microbes and misunderstanding of microbiology. Rubbing alcohol, vinegar, and boiling water would all easily fit under the anti-bacterial label.
The products that you list - anti-bacterial cosmetics and soaps - kill microbes due to very high or low pH, alcohol content, the presence of detergents that lyse cell walls/membranes, and the presence of other toxic chemicals that kill a broad spectrum of organisms in a very general way - the same way bleach kills just about anything you dump it on.
But bleach, alcohol, detergents, etc, are NOT antibiotics. Antibiotics are drug-like compounds that kill bacteria in a targeted fashion, by interfering with growth, cell wall development, and/or metabolic pathways. Antibiotics bind to specific enzymes, proteins, or other structural molecules. Bacteria are able to gain resistance to antibiotics by accumulating changes in the structure of these molecules (via mutations).
So, nonspecific general anti-bacterial compounds, and NOT antibiotics, are present in these cosmetics and soaps. Microbes CANNOT easily develop resistance to nonspecific anti-bacterials. Thus, use of these anti-bacterial products has no effect on the evolution of antibiotic resistant strains of pathogens.
Interestingly, it should be noted that the formulation of many of these household anti-bacterial products is essentially identical to the forerunning "non-anti-bacterial" versions. All liquid hand soaps, for instance, are anti-bacterial to begin with. So the addition of the "anti-bacterial" buzzword on the bottle is just a marketing ploy.
Well, it's good, but it isn't the great solution to our plastic pollution problems. As the author of the article points out, the thing that makes the material biodegradable - its water-solubility - is also its major drawback. I wouldn't anticipate starch-based bags replacing traditional plastic ones in the shopping bag market any time soon. Perhaps in other packaging markets...
:^)
Starch-based replacements for plastics aren't a new concept. Ever had something shipped to you packed in those cylindrical extruded starch packing peanuts? They're out there replacing the old foam polystyrene ones to some extent, and they dissolve in water quite readily. And taste pretty bland, unfortunately.
Now if they could make a plastic-like material out of a more water resistant polysaccharide like chitin or cellulose, then the environmentalists could start celebrating.
Well, I could wrap a case in duct tape and *detect* an intrusion by checking if anyone had cut back the tape... or rig it with C4 and listen for loud exploding noises. But I would think that intrusion *prevention* or good chassis access control would be a more useful technology. Or case mod, as it were.
-ks
I've come across his site before, and left drooling slightly. Those are freggin nice suckers, and I must say that I'm extremely impressed with his abilities.
I would even the steep price tag more or less justifiable, considering the impress-your-friends factor. People spend more on PDAs. But... well, what good is a replica light saber if you can't saber duel with yer buddies? The specs mention that the plasma lamp is encased in a virtually indestructible polycarbonate (actually, it reads "polycarbonite," which is either a typo or a clever pun) housing.
Well, polycarbonate is the same stuff they use to make high quality scratch resistant "virtually indestructible" eyeglass lenses. Quite a few of which I have personally destructed. So, I wonder how well the "blades" stand up to thwackin'.
-ks
Looks like windows, kinda feels like windows, stable, UNIX based, runs most of the big important Windows programs...
We're talking Mac's with OS X, right?
I tend to agree. While I lived on campus, the internet connection was stable, insanely fast, and effectively free (with the purchase of a year of eduction and on-campus housing, for some $35,000). Not only was file sharing and searching very simple over the school network, but a large proportion of students used file sharing programs to effectively give the outside world access to a slice of the campus file library.
But I also found it very interesting that the article completely neglected to mention DSL. The new pricing schemes may turn people away from Cable... and just make them switch to DSL. DSL already has tiered payment schemes and, so far, the DSL suppliers haven't talked about shifting to a download-capping pricing scheme.
-ks
Mm. Don't hold your breath. There may be a possibility that life could survive in airtight pockets toward an interior warm core, but I don't see how there's any possibility that it could evolve there. ...or that we could find it without dismantling the moon.
As I recall Seth Brundle attempted a similar feat of affective computing around 1986. Following an epiphany on the nature of human flesh, the scientist undertook a marathon coding session in an effort to endow the systems controlling his telepods with the appropriate respect and/or "craziness" for organic matter.
Short-term results proved promising, but limitations in mid-80s quarantine technology ultimately resulted in several grotesque fly-like abominations, and ultimate termination of that line of research.
While my personal views on "social responsibility" are a little different, I tend to agree that pulling an oath out of thin air and giving coders the legal right to "just say no" to doing bad things isn't a very promising solution.
The reason the Hippocratic Oath is effective for reasons that can't apply to programming. Medical practitioners are bound both ethically and legally to their oath (I don't know how much legally - at the very least, breaching the oath invites malpractice suits), and adherance is enforced. Practitioners are licenced and monitored. Infrastructure is present to handle reports of malpractice, and to swiftly punish illegal, unethical, and irresponsible behavior.
Coders are not heavily regulated. They are not licenced in any standardized or official sense. There is no association that regularly and consistently scrutinizes their activity. The job market is very competitive, and they are seldom the subject of malpractice suits, so there is little pressure for them to band together to form a self monitoring group.
Unless or until we begin to licence programmers and regulate their activity, we can't hope to bind them in any legal sense to an standardized ethical code of behavior. If society does that, then it won't be an issue of "allowing coders to do the right thing," but one of "holding all coders responsible for their actions." Programmers, as a group, would be forced to regulate themselves because society would have the power to enforce ethical conduct.
Er, at least that's what I think.
I have to read normal journal articles all the time, and let me tell you, sometimes its the most tedious and boring part of being a scientist. Wading through reams of data and trying to figure out how their results are supposed to support their hypotheses is bad enough. Wading through reams of data and trying figure out what conclusions to draw from unexpected or inconclusive data... Holy cow, this will be a boring journal.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within gave a nearly flawless rendering of humans
I suspect I'm in the minority, but I was dissapointed with the humans in the FF movie. Personally, I certainly wouldn't go so far as to describe them as "nearly flawless." It looked and felt very plastic and artificial to me. The nice and big polygon count allowed the general shape to be right, but things like skin/textile texture, realistic seeming facial movements, and the physics of hair still have a long way to go.
Don't get me wrong - I could sit back and imagine that the characters were real, and put myself in their place, but a good 2D animated film is that way, too.
Well, it'd be great if I had a pair of thermoplastic shoelaces that snugly knotted themselves for me. It wouldn't be so great if I needed a knife to get my shoes off. Can these things be untangled?
I'm sorry, but I forgive them for going public with this prior to publication. The issue isn't going to cause a panic, since we already knew that fried foods are bad for you. The researchers and the institution aren't going to become rich off of the short-lived publicity. They just felt a moral obligation to release this data to the public as soon as possible, which is fine.
They didn't decide to *skip* the peer-review publication process. Their findings will still be submitted to a journal, and funding for further research by their lab and their institution will be contingent on the merit of that report.
Countless food related epidemiological studies of questionable validity, or performed by groups with biasing connections to industry, are published in journals and reported by the media every year - and half of them conflict with the other half. Remember the butter-margerine debate? Cholesterol in eggs? You can't count on peer review to weed out all the bad epidemiological correlations - you can only do that looking for corroborating experimental evidence.
It seems that China sent up 9 chicken eggs, but only three hatched. And of course, as is China's want, they are keeping ominously quiet about what became of the other 6 eggs. I get kind of annoyed about their tendency to never admit their failures, no matter how minor, unless someone else breaks the story first and they need to do some damage control.
They're using the survival of the eggs to tout their life support system. But for all we know those other eggs came back scrambled, or horribly mutated into monster chickens. If they want the rest of the global community to be impressed with their space program, they ought to be a little more forthcoming with their data, success or failure.
I'll admit that it is pretty impressive that they've got something that works with such a simple design like this, but do-it-yourself isn't really an unusual phenomenon in academia.
When people (well, science students, grad students, and professionals, at least) think of scientific instruments, they tend to picture big complicated NMR machines, mass spec devices, HPLC systems, so on and so forth, with proprietary interface and database software, and service contracts that run tens of thousands of dollars a year.
These big instruments are manufactured and supported by huge corporations or little startups, and either way, the manufacturer will only design and produce (and support!) these devides if there is a sizable consumer demand - something to make it economically worthwhile to try and fill the niche. But for any given technology, there was a time before that particular technology was commonplace and mass-produced.
HPLC systems, NMR devices, CD spectrometers, X-ray crystallographic devices... (I'm a biochemist, so I apologize if my examples are skewed in that direction) these all started out as projects imposed on graduate students by research advisors in some budding new field. These first pioneering instruments, which worked well enough in many cases to generate fantastic data, had to be slapped together from off-the-shelf components and with a tight budget in mind.
Not to detract from the oo's and aaah's, but its good to keep things in perspective.
We already have a public data repository. Just encrypt all your important documents, post them to various usenet groups, and let Google permanently archive them.
I realize that it's a very symbolic and generous thing for NASA to do the whole teachers-in-space program. But what do we really get out of sending someone's 7th grade Earth Science teacher into orbit? Is it worth tens of millions of dollars for the ride, plus a several millions more in training expenses, to have this teacher bring up his/her class's bean sprout experiments, give two TV interviews, go on the high school lecture circuit, and mabye publish a book or two? ("Teachers Among The Stars: Education in the Space Age")
Probably not. NASA is looking for publicity, and frankly, that's what I would hope they get out of this program, too. I mean, it is public interest in the space program that is going to determine whether we send men to Mars ten years from now, or fifty.
I want a space-teacher who will be able to spark the interest of a whole generation of children, and teachers, and parents. Someone who actually has the talent to make people interested and excited about space, science, and exploration. Someone who will be able to reach an audience. Someone cool. Someone we trust.
I want Bill Nye to go up to the space station, and I want him to do cool experiments and film half a dozen special episodes of Bill Nye, The Science Guy up there. He's worth twenty 8th grade Earth Science teachers.
Asteroid study is a beautiful thing. Not only may we owe our evolutionary path to these speedy hunks of angry rock, but without them, we wouldn't have such quality films as Deep Impact and Armageddon, and thought provoking novels, such as 2061, by Arthur C Clarke.
Oh wait... that wasn't an asteroid, it was a comet... Of course, it wasn't thought proviking either.
Ooo, this irritates me. It irritates me even more that NASA scientists say absurd things and get misquoted all the time, just for hype's sake. But in particular it bugs me that this data can be so ignorantly misinterpreted.
What is chlorophyll, and how would one go about identifying it, and how is that indicative of life?
Chlorophyll is stable pigment molecule, at the heart of which is a coordinated Mg2+ ion, that occurs in the photosystem proteins of most photosynthetic orginisms (on Earth, anyway). It snags photons of particular wavelengths, uses this energy to boost electrons to stable higher energy levels, and passes these energized electrons off to the associated photosystem, where they are ultimately used to drive ATP synthesis and make other good stuff.
Scientists, including the ones huddled over the Pathfinder data, generally identify chlorophyll by its characteristic absorption spectra. So if, in the Mars data, we see something that seems to absorb with a similar fingerprint to chlorophyll, does that mean there's life on Mars!?!? No!
It doesn't mean there isn't, but it isn't even very good supporting evidence.
Just because it looks green doesn't make it chlorophyll. Lots of organic molecules absorbs in that region, and it wouldn't be surprising... Well you see where I'm going. Lemme jump to the more interesting point.
The thing that makes chlorophyll especially good at its job at capturing light energy and converting it to chemical energy isn't its structure: there are oodles of molecules out there that absorb photons and kick an electron into a relatively stable higher energy level. Chlorophyll's claim to fame is its buddy, the photosystem protein.
Photosynthetic organisms have evolved special large, multi-subunit, many-hundred-amino acid proteins to harvest light energy, and most of these just happen to use chlorophyll, of all the available pigments. At some point in distant history, a very successful photosynthetic protein evolved, using the chlorophyll molecule as a catcher's mitt. This protein then became the evolutionary fuel for countless photosynthetic descendants over the next several billion years.
Note, however, that many organisms *do* use photosynthetic pigments other than chlorophyll. If versatile photosystem proteins had evolved for these pigments, then the plant life on Earth would likely be some pretty shade of orange or yellow, instead of green. So the key isn't *chlorophyll*, its *protein.* It is, and I can't stress this enough, *extremely* unlikely that two independent evolutionary pathways would produce light-harvesting proteins that utilize the chlorophyll pigment.
SO, the presence of chlorophyll, much less, of green splotches, does not do much to support the Mars-Life-ers.
Unless we postulate that life evolved on one of the two planets and spread to the other by some sort of meteorite. Which is a whole other rant all to itself.
-!splut
Skimming down the list of purported violations, one gets the impression that Blizzard/Vivendi has no intention of being clever or strategic with this whole Bnet business. Without the shiny shield of the DMCA the Blizzard suit takes on the patina of a run-of-the-mill "he stole my popsicle" lawsuit.
.NET software... But the Battle.net name trademark crap just sounds like filler material.
Obviously they didn't steal code. They reverse engineered, which is prohibited by the EULA, but isn't a copyright issue.
Same deal with screenshots... They weren't making money off of them. The EULA gives guidelines for how screenshots may be used, but since they didn't mention violation of EULA, Bnetd should be able to put up a fair use defense.
They may have an argument with the "public performance" issue, but it is difficult to understand what they mean. The difference between Blizzard and Microsoft is that MS wants you to make
Blizzard is throwing its weight around, trying to squash Bnetd with its vast bulk. Like a swarm of Protoss carriers... Lets hope Bnetd's lawyers bothered to develop "Lockdown."