I did research in this field as far back as '01! Using viruses to induce genetic changes is neither novel or new.
The biggest challenge isn't engineering the genes you want to inject or getting the virus, or using the virus as a transport for those genes. Instead the hardest part is by far the delivery - which the author so callously disregards as being trivial and why it will replace stem cells.
Its extremely difficult to achieve targeted delivery of the virus and even more so for a diffuse dissemination of the virus as to coat multiple cells.
So yea it works, it has worked in animals due to their diminutive size. However, it is difficult, if not impossible to ever implement it in humans - mice yes, humans no.
If this gets reported on slashdot so should the dozens of similar articles that get published yearly with similar procedures for various other congenital conditions - neurological, muscular etc.
"neither artist has been especially specific about 'what it means,' or in instructing players on how they should interpret their work or what 'message' should be taken away."
That's because saying "to intentionally be controversial to garner attention for myself" doesn't go over well when you're trying to maintain a facade of artistic merit.
Rather than have a car's engine convert at say 30% efficiency, by burning gasoline, you get power from the grid instead. The grid gets power at ~20% efficiency from the distributor, which gets it at 20% efficiency from the power plant, which gets 20-30% efficiency from burning goal and oil. The amount of coal or oil you have to burn to get the same amount of energy as gasoline is therefore tremendously greater than if the car ran directly on either of those. By using electric vehicles greenhouse gas emission actually increase by several fold, not decrease. Of course people feel good cause they don't have any exhaust coming out of their pipe so it must be cleaner and better for the environment than their old cars! Right?
And lets not forget that all electric vehicles need some serious heavy-duty batteries. Batteries are essentially tanks of liquid toxics which have historically been very very poorly disposed off and have a massive environmental impact through seepage.
Electric cars can only be viable if the energy grid is fed off clean renewable sources. Even then you have to institute federal guidelines for battery disposal and recycling as well as a dedicated department and depots that deal with it. As it is now, electric cars are several orders of magnitude worse for the environment than plain old gas powered cars.
I can't tell if the article summary comment is tongue-in-cheek or actually serious. I should hope that it isn't the latter, its tough to believe people are really that delusional. How can a game written by 3-4 teen/early 20 year olds hope to compete against games that REQUIRE dozens of designers/artists? The cost and man-hours necessary to complete a modern game have effectively shoved small time developers out of business. Its not like they were muscled out, the technology and cost just ran away from them. Today, an amateur game maker can realistically hope to make games equivalent to those seen 15 years ago. How much market share will the 800th clone of pong or snake or RPG Maker-esque rpg really take away from licensed games? How fun is it, really, to play yet another generic 2d platformer?
Don't lie to yourself, nobody's clamoring to buy this to play any of those games. This is designed for piracy. I guarantee >95% use it exclusively for getting non-homebrew games.
His idea for a 10 year Kennedy-esque-moon-mission-analog of rapidly transforming our energy base from one of fossil fuels to renewable energy is not only a great idea economically for the long term but also great for the short term. Any time a country is in an economic slump, the best way to relieve it is by instituting widespread public works projects. Not only do they create short term wealth and job opportunities, but they have sustained maintenance work as well as the overall betterment of society through the finalization of said public work.
A recent poll (I think it was from last Thursday) said that over 90% of Americans are FOR the rapid mobilization of wind and solar power. It seems everyone's on board for this.
Except BOTH PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES. Which is quite mind-blowing since the populous as a whole is ALL FOR IT and if either did support such a plan, it would net them a HUGE amount of voters from both political parties. It seems everyone I talk to has energy on their mind, a couple have said that they'll vote for whichever candidate would push for Gore's plan or one like it.
Which leaves me to wonder, if neither Obama nor McCain seem to have any desire to embrace it, is it finally time for a viable third candidate, one who represents the publics opinion? Could we be seeing/should we deserve to see a candidate Gore?
I knew someone who took an online class. The instructor sent out an email a few weeks before the start of "classes" giving detailed instructions for how to download and log into second life. Their "classroom" was in second life. The instructions went on to say that the virtual avatars had to be dressed properly in appropriate avatars, show up in the classroom on time, and not engage in private conversations. All lectures would be given via chatting through the game. I only found out because said friend had never heard of second life. I explained to him what it was all about.
Needless to say that individual quickly dropped from that class.
So to answer your question, under-qualified holders of worthless masters degrees use second life to (unsuccessfully) create a semblance of academic credibility in a futile attempt to mitigate their self-loathing by substituting a virtual classroom for the real one no accredited university would ever let these pretentious assholes have.
Honestly, how desperate for a power trip are such people as to force mid-to-late 20 year olds into a mockery of a traditional rule-centric "classroom" in a game primarily used for sexual gratification between human/animal hybrids.
Console makers learned this lesson long ago, I guess the memo missed Nintendo.
This controller isn't made for a specific game. As such, some people will buy it some not. Even if it has better functionality, developers will not develop for it since only a fraction of the Wii user population will own the controller. Its the same reason practically every peripheral/add-on for any game system ever sold has been a total failure. Super Scope, 32x, Sega CD etc etc ETC. The only add-ons that were successes were those that were made intentionally for only one specific game or a very small subset of specific games - DDR, Guitar Hero for example. They were considered successful only because they happened to have the "controller" packaged with the game and were never marketed as a general enhancement to the video game system. As such I wouldn't really consider them in the same category as this Wii controller.
Actually, the only REAL peripheral - i.e. those made for most/many games - that wasn't a total failure was the original Dual-Shock. The controller completely supplanted the old non-dual shock controller and the dual analog sticks were necessary to play practically every game only few months after release. In that case, Sony had a relatively small initial base before switching over, so not that many people were annoyed that their old controllers didn't work anymore. The Wii has a much, much larger user-base, and even worse, a much more video-game-ignorant proportion of owners. Try explaining to your 60 year old relatives why their new game doesn't work on their system anymore.
Point is, no developer would ever risk that happening, so no developer will ever make a game that only uses that controller. Sure, they might have a toggle option or something, but that means that game had to be built to accommodate both, and can never reach its full potential if it stuck to one control method. Imagine if on the 360 or PS3 every game had to be designed in such a way as to be playable both on the analog controls and digital controls.
I wouldn't say ANYTHING by him. Ender's Game is obvious, but his early sequels to it were too preachy, dull, and moved away from a preteen protagonist. His later sequels/retellings?, however, are great - the Ender's Shadow series.
Most phone companies have a stipulation in the contract that forces you to return the phone if you cancel the contract soon after starting it. In this case I would think that time would be about 6 months or so - enough time for them to squeeze out the 600/700 dollar cost.
From personal experience this is a very likely to be the case. In college when I participated in random psych experiments, as required by the class, I would notice gaping errors in testing that completely tainted the results.
Example: I signed up for 1/2 hour experiment, I get there and the tell me it's an hour long and I will be analyzing erotic art with a female student. They emphasized that, which I thought was pretty unnecessary and odd, and there was no girl in the waiting room with me before the experiment. Anyway I put all this together and figured it was just a fake-out and that I wasn't going to be doing any actual analysis. Sure enough the researcher comes in and says "ok she will be coming in soon, rearrange the tables and chairs how you like." Uhuh, yeah this isn't contrived. Anyway I intentionally put the chairs right next to each other just to be contrary, because at this point it was beyond ridiculous to keep playing along. Anyway then they came in, took pictures of the chairs, and told me it was all a trick to see how I would position them - WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED?!
Anyway, almost all the experiments I did had some kind of fatal flaw in it. I had another one - similar to what you're talking about - in which I was told to look at various numerical matrices which were then taken away and I was asked to answer 5 timed-questions about it. If I finished the question block a new matrix showed up, but the questions were complicated enough that I often could not even finish them before the timer ran out. This went on for ONE HOUR. After 10 minutes I was mentally exhausted and just putting in whatever for answers to get through all my blocks as fast as possible - I had totally stopped caring. At this point I also assumed that this must be the actual experiment - to gauge exhaustion. But no, when the researcher came in he thanked me and that's it - if it had been another experiment he would have had to tell me.
So unless we see the entire experimental procedure written down, it's impossible to determine if their findings were legitimately obtained. Unlike other disciplines, psych/neuro results are particular susceptible to improper experimental procedure. Like you say, they could have just detected boredom.
You're totally right. This is such a non-story and frankly mildly offensive in how full of himself the scientist is with sweeping comments like that.
As it stands currently, the amount of genetic degenerecy in amino acid coding means that they would easily have those double and tripled coded amino acids switched to something else. They could potentially add another 20-30 new amino acids with absolutely no change in the number or form of the base pairs used.
Its like finding a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, will never exist, and serves no purpose even if it was found. But apparently its equivalent from going to the iron age from the bronze age. Ha!
Holy shit that was a pain to watch. Billy is a fucking retard.
"Can you explain in english not in science-talk."
Oh, you mean english to people who aren't slack-jawed idiots. The way he says it makes it sound like he's proud that he's so fucking stupid.
What a fucking jackass. How can someone that stupid be put out there as a news-person? On national television?
I'm hoping for the one day when the scientist being interviewed tells the guy to get a fucking education and then explains what's going on in adequate detail with plenty of scientific concepts.
This is really the worst of two worlds for Microsoft.
First they announce it'll come out in 2010, effectively killing what little market they had for the OS.
Second, there's no way it will come out then, effectively cutting off their future income.
Why would you announce this with those two facts glaring in their face? Wouldn't it be far wiser to announce this in say, August 2009 - when their OS is legitimately 5-6 months away?
Meant by society. There are societal norms present in every culture. Its not so much 'meant' as it is 'what is expected or regular.'
Culturally it's 'regular' or 'expected' that two people have sex alone or privately. I don't think society as a whole believes that 'sexual intercourse to be performed in large tubs of grated parmesan cheese by dozens of people at once' is regular.
Granted, I don't think either choice should be regulated, but I think its naive of you to believe that there is no relative consensus about things like this in every society. That is to say, that society does not perceive 'sex as a private act between two people' and 'cheese orgy' as equally palatable (pun unintended) or socially acceptable.
You're totally right. They aren't communist. What they are is fascist.
"Anti-individualistic, the fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity.... The fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.... Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number...."
Best description of China I ever read. That's straight from Mussolini's "The Doctrine of Fascism."
On a related note anyone read the article on how Chinese police jailed parents who tried to go back to the faulty death-traps - I mean schools - their government had built. The police were also instructed to keep foreign press away from the schools and to not let anyone take photos. A pretty good example of how the most important thing is the state above all - including it seems the needless deaths of children.
I have to wonder how you come to such ridiculous leaps in logic. Our government's army fighting a war overseas and doing what people do in a war means that they will do the same to us at home? Yeah man, the US government is totally gonna declare your front door a battlefield and warrant-less search you. Woah, to stop it we better not let them do that stuff in Iraq. And all those indoctrinated military folks, when they return will only know how to oppress us, since that's all they've been doing for the last X years. Remember like those WW2 vets, shit they set back America 5 decades with their para-militarism and wanton oppression.
Your comment is like as if in WW2 people had said "shit we shouldn't bomb German cities, pretty soon our own government will bomb us!"
War is not a fucking trial nor is it a legislature. The government is not setting legal precedent against its own population by doing what every country has ALWAYS done in war and will ALWAYS do in war because THATS WAR FUCKING IS. How jaded can you be?
Seriously, do you bother to think about what you're writing or is it just stream of consciousness alarmist nonsense direct from some primitive unfiltered part of your brain. Or even worse, you're actually delusion and honestly think that our nation's policies in a fucking war actually translate directly to domestic actions.
Actually it won't be rubber stamped. Unless the individual has some family history of the genetic disease or symptoms which are suggestive of it genetic testing is NOT OFFERED by physicians.
Likewise if a family member has such symptoms or his side of the family has these traits, genetic testing is disallowed unless the person actually agrees to it. I.e. a wife wants to know if her husband has Huntington's, she cannot force him to take a test or bring a sample to a physician and ask for it to be tested. Even if she only wants the information for future conception, the doctor won't allow it.
What's to keep someone - anyone - your wife, boss, insurer, whoever, from taking that toothpick you used after lunch and sending it in to one of these companies?
I think the law is intended to protect YOU from others, not from yourself. If you actually have some problem then you can go to a physician and have total confidence that the only person who will know the result is you and him. Hell, you can even withhold it from him if you wish. As it is now a person can send in ANYONE'S DNA and get their result.
I'd rather go to a doctor than leave that second option as a possibility. That's the option that leads down the road to real Gattaca-style shit. It's a future I'd rather NOT live in.
Yes because everyone has to pay taxes on it. That was my point. If you force everyone to buy insurance the overall price for everyone actually goes down. This is because right now I pay more for my health insurance to cover the uninsured. How? Uninsured have to be helped by the hospital who to break even has to raise their prices, which get passed onto the insurance company and thus people who actually have insurance.
It's good to see stories like this. Here's an example of the government making progress towards better security. I remember that one of their big challenges was how to get all the disparate agencies working together and sharing information.
Choosing wikipedia as a model is a great idea. Its like someone in a meeting actually had some worthwhile input when they asked "how can we improve communication?" - "how about we use a modern tool that has essentially revolutionized how factual information is disseminated."
Who would have thought the government would adopt the idea of wikipedia? Pretty cool and pretty nerdy.
How come people suddenly have the money to buy insurance when a state mandates it?
Suddenly when a law tells your ass to buy insurance for your own benefit, that money that you had ear-marked for something retarded like a plasma tv or your over-expensive SUV goes towards protecting you from incurring thousands of dollars of debt creating a huge burden on society.
People can afford health care! Actually if everyone is forced to get it, the cost per person will actually go down since only the limited 'the well off people' won't have to be fully paying for the uninsured. The only reason we have the problem now is because people are greedy and stupid and think they should spend their money on retarded shit rather than their own well-being.
The government says "hey, we won't tax you up the ass for socialized health care so you can go ahead and get your own, pick and choose." Unfortunately the government doesn't say "you HAVE to get private insurance." Which is what the big fucking problem is.
The problem isn't that people can't afford it, its that they're unwilling to give up shit to do so. Rather than force them to get insurance, what socialized health care aims to do is to put the burden on the people who already pay for it, while giving those same people, people who CAN afford healthcare but refuse to make sacrifices, free healthcare.
What they should be doing is following Massachusetts's new laws. The heart of Democrat country! Which *gasp* force people to get insurance. And its actually working! They have a very low number of uninsured and those that are TRULY too poor to afford insurance - i.e. aren't wasting their money on stupid shit - are supported by the state.
The key here is that you're actually maintaining the current freedom of the ability to choose your provider/insurance, the ability of hospitals to compete with on another, the ability to drive down cost by having everyone pay their equal share AND catch those that fall between the cracks.
Doesn't that seem much more reasonable? If they really can't afford it then they get free health care, if they can then they have to get it.
I had a friend recently diagnosed with esophageal adenocarcinoma. He lives in Toronto. It took him THREE WEEKS to get treatment. I'll repeat that again THREE WEEKS. His wife called me up tell me he was in such excruciating pain - for which he wasn't given medication until his appointment - that he had begged her to end his life. She was asking me for advice on what she could do with whatever resources she had to alleviate his pain. I'm not exaggerating. That's what socialized health care gets you.
Another friend who has unfortunately passed away was diagnosed 3 years ago with the same thing. He was diagnosed and given treatment THE SAME DAY. This was in America. He could then pick and choose which physician he wanted to do his surgery. Unfortunately the cancer had disseminated too diffusely and the surgery provided only palliation.
HMOs don't exist anymore - functionally they've been driven out by PPOs for the very reason you site. The ones that do exist do so in name only.
Because the hospitals here in America are PRIVATIZED they compete with one another. In my area we have radio ads for how fast they will see you in the ER, with guarantees set for time - if it takes longer than 30 minutes to see you, everything they do is free. Of course, it never takes them over 30 minutes to see you. A couple other hospitals have a 20 minute guarantees.
No one waits for hours in the ER because its privatized and because there's competition.
Do you know why Canadian doctors emigrate to the US? I know a half dozen personally that have done this. In Canada a surgeon for instance is given a fixed salary of say 150k, which amounts to X number of surgeries. However, Canada pays you that amount as long as you have done X amount, and pays no more if you do more work >X (sounds pretty much how all eastern block European countries did all jobs - but I digress). Point is, the surgeon completes X amounts of surgeries in 7 months or so. Since he is no longer compensated for doing his job further, he doesn't do it. The surgeon wants to work, he wants to be paid in full like his American cousin at 250k but the Canadian government - since its socialized and he has no choice but one employer - won't raise his wage or pay him for doing more surgeries.
What does this all amount to? Doctors that are on vacation 5 months per year and a health system that leaves people to die of cancer for weeks at a time since there's simply no manpower. It's not like the physicians want to not do work, they didn't became doctors to be on vacation half the year. Since they have no other employer possible in Canada they do the only thing they can do - leave the country and become doctors here, so they can actually work full time! Doctors want to work and the Canadian government won't pay them to do it!
But yeah, socialized health care is so much better!
Slashdot Mirror
I did research in this field as far back as '01! Using viruses to induce genetic changes is neither novel or new.
The biggest challenge isn't engineering the genes you want to inject or getting the virus, or using the virus as a transport for those genes. Instead the hardest part is by far the delivery - which the author so callously disregards as being trivial and why it will replace stem cells.
Its extremely difficult to achieve targeted delivery of the virus and even more so for a diffuse dissemination of the virus as to coat multiple cells.
So yea it works, it has worked in animals due to their diminutive size. However, it is difficult, if not impossible to ever implement it in humans - mice yes, humans no.
If this gets reported on slashdot so should the dozens of similar articles that get published yearly with similar procedures for various other congenital conditions - neurological, muscular etc.
"neither artist has been especially specific about 'what it means,' or in instructing players on how they should interpret their work or what 'message' should be taken away."
That's because saying "to intentionally be controversial to garner attention for myself" doesn't go over well when you're trying to maintain a facade of artistic merit.
Just wait till cloud computing supplants networking as everybody's favorite buzzword:
"Hey Bob, yeah, I'm just cloudin' with some clients, be with you in a sec."
"We have an impressive cloud infrastructure and our services can allow anyone to become more cloudy."
It's going to happen! :(
And of course, we can't forget the groan worthy puns from news agencies "Cloudy days ahead for Dell!" - ugh.
Actually in many ways it makes it worse.
Rather than have a car's engine convert at say 30% efficiency, by burning gasoline, you get power from the grid instead. The grid gets power at ~20% efficiency from the distributor, which gets it at 20% efficiency from the power plant, which gets 20-30% efficiency from burning goal and oil. The amount of coal or oil you have to burn to get the same amount of energy as gasoline is therefore tremendously greater than if the car ran directly on either of those. By using electric vehicles greenhouse gas emission actually increase by several fold, not decrease. Of course people feel good cause they don't have any exhaust coming out of their pipe so it must be cleaner and better for the environment than their old cars! Right?
And lets not forget that all electric vehicles need some serious heavy-duty batteries. Batteries are essentially tanks of liquid toxics which have historically been very very poorly disposed off and have a massive environmental impact through seepage.
Electric cars can only be viable if the energy grid is fed off clean renewable sources. Even then you have to institute federal guidelines for battery disposal and recycling as well as a dedicated department and depots that deal with it. As it is now, electric cars are several orders of magnitude worse for the environment than plain old gas powered cars.
I can't tell if the article summary comment is tongue-in-cheek or actually serious. I should hope that it isn't the latter, its tough to believe people are really that delusional. How can a game written by 3-4 teen/early 20 year olds hope to compete against games that REQUIRE dozens of designers/artists? The cost and man-hours necessary to complete a modern game have effectively shoved small time developers out of business. Its not like they were muscled out, the technology and cost just ran away from them. Today, an amateur game maker can realistically hope to make games equivalent to those seen 15 years ago. How much market share will the 800th clone of pong or snake or RPG Maker-esque rpg really take away from licensed games? How fun is it, really, to play yet another generic 2d platformer?
Don't lie to yourself, nobody's clamoring to buy this to play any of those games. This is designed for piracy. I guarantee >95% use it exclusively for getting non-homebrew games.
His idea for a 10 year Kennedy-esque-moon-mission-analog of rapidly transforming our energy base from one of fossil fuels to renewable energy is not only a great idea economically for the long term but also great for the short term. Any time a country is in an economic slump, the best way to relieve it is by instituting widespread public works projects. Not only do they create short term wealth and job opportunities, but they have sustained maintenance work as well as the overall betterment of society through the finalization of said public work.
A recent poll (I think it was from last Thursday) said that over 90% of Americans are FOR the rapid mobilization of wind and solar power. It seems everyone's on board for this.
Except BOTH PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES. Which is quite mind-blowing since the populous as a whole is ALL FOR IT and if either did support such a plan, it would net them a HUGE amount of voters from both political parties. It seems everyone I talk to has energy on their mind, a couple have said that they'll vote for whichever candidate would push for Gore's plan or one like it.
Which leaves me to wonder, if neither Obama nor McCain seem to have any desire to embrace it, is it finally time for a viable third candidate, one who represents the publics opinion? Could we be seeing/should we deserve to see a candidate Gore?
I knew someone who took an online class. The instructor sent out an email a few weeks before the start of "classes" giving detailed instructions for how to download and log into second life. Their "classroom" was in second life. The instructions went on to say that the virtual avatars had to be dressed properly in appropriate avatars, show up in the classroom on time, and not engage in private conversations. All lectures would be given via chatting through the game. I only found out because said friend had never heard of second life. I explained to him what it was all about.
Needless to say that individual quickly dropped from that class.
So to answer your question, under-qualified holders of worthless masters degrees use second life to (unsuccessfully) create a semblance of academic credibility in a futile attempt to mitigate their self-loathing by substituting a virtual classroom for the real one no accredited university would ever let these pretentious assholes have.
Honestly, how desperate for a power trip are such people as to force mid-to-late 20 year olds into a mockery of a traditional rule-centric "classroom" in a game primarily used for sexual gratification between human/animal hybrids.
No it doesn't, not anymore.
Console makers learned this lesson long ago, I guess the memo missed Nintendo.
This controller isn't made for a specific game. As such, some people will buy it some not. Even if it has better functionality, developers will not develop for it since only a fraction of the Wii user population will own the controller. Its the same reason practically every peripheral/add-on for any game system ever sold has been a total failure. Super Scope, 32x, Sega CD etc etc ETC. The only add-ons that were successes were those that were made intentionally for only one specific game or a very small subset of specific games - DDR, Guitar Hero for example. They were considered successful only because they happened to have the "controller" packaged with the game and were never marketed as a general enhancement to the video game system. As such I wouldn't really consider them in the same category as this Wii controller.
Actually, the only REAL peripheral - i.e. those made for most/many games - that wasn't a total failure was the original Dual-Shock. The controller completely supplanted the old non-dual shock controller and the dual analog sticks were necessary to play practically every game only few months after release. In that case, Sony had a relatively small initial base before switching over, so not that many people were annoyed that their old controllers didn't work anymore. The Wii has a much, much larger user-base, and even worse, a much more video-game-ignorant proportion of owners. Try explaining to your 60 year old relatives why their new game doesn't work on their system anymore.
Point is, no developer would ever risk that happening, so no developer will ever make a game that only uses that controller. Sure, they might have a toggle option or something, but that means that game had to be built to accommodate both, and can never reach its full potential if it stuck to one control method. Imagine if on the 360 or PS3 every game had to be designed in such a way as to be playable both on the analog controls and digital controls.
That's really insightful. I hope mods don't miss this comment.
I wouldn't say ANYTHING by him. Ender's Game is obvious, but his early sequels to it were too preachy, dull, and moved away from a preteen protagonist. His later sequels/retellings?, however, are great - the Ender's Shadow series.
Most phone companies have a stipulation in the contract that forces you to return the phone if you cancel the contract soon after starting it. In this case I would think that time would be about 6 months or so - enough time for them to squeeze out the 600/700 dollar cost.
"So, now we know what step three is: setup a security agency in US to resell otherwise unavailable data."
Did the editors just allow the entire thread to be trolled?
From personal experience this is a very likely to be the case. In college when I participated in random psych experiments, as required by the class, I would notice gaping errors in testing that completely tainted the results.
Example: I signed up for 1/2 hour experiment, I get there and the tell me it's an hour long and I will be analyzing erotic art with a female student. They emphasized that, which I thought was pretty unnecessary and odd, and there was no girl in the waiting room with me before the experiment. Anyway I put all this together and figured it was just a fake-out and that I wasn't going to be doing any actual analysis. Sure enough the researcher comes in and says "ok she will be coming in soon, rearrange the tables and chairs how you like." Uhuh, yeah this isn't contrived. Anyway I intentionally put the chairs right next to each other just to be contrary, because at this point it was beyond ridiculous to keep playing along. Anyway then they came in, took pictures of the chairs, and told me it was all a trick to see how I would position them - WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED?!
Anyway, almost all the experiments I did had some kind of fatal flaw in it. I had another one - similar to what you're talking about - in which I was told to look at various numerical matrices which were then taken away and I was asked to answer 5 timed-questions about it. If I finished the question block a new matrix showed up, but the questions were complicated enough that I often could not even finish them before the timer ran out. This went on for ONE HOUR. After 10 minutes I was mentally exhausted and just putting in whatever for answers to get through all my blocks as fast as possible - I had totally stopped caring. At this point I also assumed that this must be the actual experiment - to gauge exhaustion. But no, when the researcher came in he thanked me and that's it - if it had been another experiment he would have had to tell me.
So unless we see the entire experimental procedure written down, it's impossible to determine if their findings were legitimately obtained. Unlike other disciplines, psych/neuro results are particular susceptible to improper experimental procedure. Like you say, they could have just detected boredom.
You're totally right. This is such a non-story and frankly mildly offensive in how full of himself the scientist is with sweeping comments like that.
As it stands currently, the amount of genetic degenerecy in amino acid coding means that they would easily have those double and tripled coded amino acids switched to something else. They could potentially add another 20-30 new amino acids with absolutely no change in the number or form of the base pairs used.
Its like finding a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, will never exist, and serves no purpose even if it was found. But apparently its equivalent from going to the iron age from the bronze age. Ha!
Holy shit that was a pain to watch. Billy is a fucking retard.
"Can you explain in english not in science-talk."
Oh, you mean english to people who aren't slack-jawed idiots. The way he says it makes it sound like he's proud that he's so fucking stupid.
What a fucking jackass. How can someone that stupid be put out there as a news-person? On national television?
I'm hoping for the one day when the scientist being interviewed tells the guy to get a fucking education and then explains what's going on in adequate detail with plenty of scientific concepts.
This is really the worst of two worlds for Microsoft.
First they announce it'll come out in 2010, effectively killing what little market they had for the OS.
Second, there's no way it will come out then, effectively cutting off their future income.
Why would you announce this with those two facts glaring in their face? Wouldn't it be far wiser to announce this in say, August 2009 - when their OS is legitimately 5-6 months away?
Meant by society. There are societal norms present in every culture. Its not so much 'meant' as it is 'what is expected or regular.'
Culturally it's 'regular' or 'expected' that two people have sex alone or privately. I don't think society as a whole believes that 'sexual intercourse to be performed in large tubs of grated parmesan cheese by dozens of people at once' is regular.
Granted, I don't think either choice should be regulated, but I think its naive of you to believe that there is no relative consensus about things like this in every society. That is to say, that society does not perceive 'sex as a private act between two people' and 'cheese orgy' as equally palatable (pun unintended) or socially acceptable.
You're totally right. They aren't communist. What they are is fascist.
"Anti-individualistic, the fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity.... The fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.... Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number...."
Best description of China I ever read. That's straight from Mussolini's "The Doctrine of Fascism."
On a related note anyone read the article on how Chinese police jailed parents who tried to go back to the faulty death-traps - I mean schools - their government had built. The police were also instructed to keep foreign press away from the schools and to not let anyone take photos. A pretty good example of how the most important thing is the state above all - including it seems the needless deaths of children.
I have to wonder how you come to such ridiculous leaps in logic. Our government's army fighting a war overseas and doing what people do in a war means that they will do the same to us at home? Yeah man, the US government is totally gonna declare your front door a battlefield and warrant-less search you. Woah, to stop it we better not let them do that stuff in Iraq. And all those indoctrinated military folks, when they return will only know how to oppress us, since that's all they've been doing for the last X years. Remember like those WW2 vets, shit they set back America 5 decades with their para-militarism and wanton oppression.
Your comment is like as if in WW2 people had said "shit we shouldn't bomb German cities, pretty soon our own government will bomb us!"
War is not a fucking trial nor is it a legislature. The government is not setting legal precedent against its own population by doing what every country has ALWAYS done in war and will ALWAYS do in war because THATS WAR FUCKING IS. How jaded can you be?
Seriously, do you bother to think about what you're writing or is it just stream of consciousness alarmist nonsense direct from some primitive unfiltered part of your brain. Or even worse, you're actually delusion and honestly think that our nation's policies in a fucking war actually translate directly to domestic actions.
Actually it won't be rubber stamped. Unless the individual has some family history of the genetic disease or symptoms which are suggestive of it genetic testing is NOT OFFERED by physicians.
Likewise if a family member has such symptoms or his side of the family has these traits, genetic testing is disallowed unless the person actually agrees to it. I.e. a wife wants to know if her husband has Huntington's, she cannot force him to take a test or bring a sample to a physician and ask for it to be tested. Even if she only wants the information for future conception, the doctor won't allow it.
What's to keep someone - anyone - your wife, boss, insurer, whoever, from taking that toothpick you used after lunch and sending it in to one of these companies?
I think the law is intended to protect YOU from others, not from yourself. If you actually have some problem then you can go to a physician and have total confidence that the only person who will know the result is you and him. Hell, you can even withhold it from him if you wish. As it is now a person can send in ANYONE'S DNA and get their result.
I'd rather go to a doctor than leave that second option as a possibility. That's the option that leads down the road to real Gattaca-style shit. It's a future I'd rather NOT live in.
Yes because everyone has to pay taxes on it. That was my point. If you force everyone to buy insurance the overall price for everyone actually goes down. This is because right now I pay more for my health insurance to cover the uninsured. How? Uninsured have to be helped by the hospital who to break even has to raise their prices, which get passed onto the insurance company and thus people who actually have insurance.
That was the whole point of my previous post.
Why is an internal intelligence network accessible from the internet? Is that like a 'lite' version of it or what?
I could swear the CIA had laws about separating their network from the internet. I mean for obvious reasons!
It's good to see stories like this. Here's an example of the government making progress towards better security. I remember that one of their big challenges was how to get all the disparate agencies working together and sharing information.
Choosing wikipedia as a model is a great idea. Its like someone in a meeting actually had some worthwhile input when they asked "how can we improve communication?" - "how about we use a modern tool that has essentially revolutionized how factual information is disseminated."
Who would have thought the government would adopt the idea of wikipedia? Pretty cool and pretty nerdy.
How come people suddenly have the money to buy insurance when a state mandates it?
Suddenly when a law tells your ass to buy insurance for your own benefit, that money that you had ear-marked for something retarded like a plasma tv or your over-expensive SUV goes towards protecting you from incurring thousands of dollars of debt creating a huge burden on society.
People can afford health care! Actually if everyone is forced to get it, the cost per person will actually go down since only the limited 'the well off people' won't have to be fully paying for the uninsured. The only reason we have the problem now is because people are greedy and stupid and think they should spend their money on retarded shit rather than their own well-being.
The government says "hey, we won't tax you up the ass for socialized health care so you can go ahead and get your own, pick and choose." Unfortunately the government doesn't say "you HAVE to get private insurance." Which is what the big fucking problem is.
The problem isn't that people can't afford it, its that they're unwilling to give up shit to do so. Rather than force them to get insurance, what socialized health care aims to do is to put the burden on the people who already pay for it, while giving those same people, people who CAN afford healthcare but refuse to make sacrifices, free healthcare.
What they should be doing is following Massachusetts's new laws. The heart of Democrat country! Which *gasp* force people to get insurance. And its actually working! They have a very low number of uninsured and those that are TRULY too poor to afford insurance - i.e. aren't wasting their money on stupid shit - are supported by the state.
The key here is that you're actually maintaining the current freedom of the ability to choose your provider/insurance, the ability of hospitals to compete with on another, the ability to drive down cost by having everyone pay their equal share AND catch those that fall between the cracks.
Doesn't that seem much more reasonable? If they really can't afford it then they get free health care, if they can then they have to get it.
You are so fucking wrong that it hurts.
I had a friend recently diagnosed with esophageal adenocarcinoma. He lives in Toronto. It took him THREE WEEKS to get treatment. I'll repeat that again THREE WEEKS. His wife called me up tell me he was in such excruciating pain - for which he wasn't given medication until his appointment - that he had begged her to end his life. She was asking me for advice on what she could do with whatever resources she had to alleviate his pain. I'm not exaggerating. That's what socialized health care gets you.
Another friend who has unfortunately passed away was diagnosed 3 years ago with the same thing. He was diagnosed and given treatment THE SAME DAY. This was in America. He could then pick and choose which physician he wanted to do his surgery. Unfortunately the cancer had disseminated too diffusely and the surgery provided only palliation.
HMOs don't exist anymore - functionally they've been driven out by PPOs for the very reason you site. The ones that do exist do so in name only.
Because the hospitals here in America are PRIVATIZED they compete with one another. In my area we have radio ads for how fast they will see you in the ER, with guarantees set for time - if it takes longer than 30 minutes to see you, everything they do is free. Of course, it never takes them over 30 minutes to see you. A couple other hospitals have a 20 minute guarantees.
No one waits for hours in the ER because its privatized and because there's competition.
Do you know why Canadian doctors emigrate to the US? I know a half dozen personally that have done this. In Canada a surgeon for instance is given a fixed salary of say 150k, which amounts to X number of surgeries. However, Canada pays you that amount as long as you have done X amount, and pays no more if you do more work >X (sounds pretty much how all eastern block European countries did all jobs - but I digress). Point is, the surgeon completes X amounts of surgeries in 7 months or so. Since he is no longer compensated for doing his job further, he doesn't do it. The surgeon wants to work, he wants to be paid in full like his American cousin at 250k but the Canadian government - since its socialized and he has no choice but one employer - won't raise his wage or pay him for doing more surgeries.
What does this all amount to? Doctors that are on vacation 5 months per year and a health system that leaves people to die of cancer for weeks at a time since there's simply no manpower. It's not like the physicians want to not do work, they didn't became doctors to be on vacation half the year. Since they have no other employer possible in Canada they do the only thing they can do - leave the country and become doctors here, so they can actually work full time! Doctors want to work and the Canadian government won't pay them to do it!
But yeah, socialized health care is so much better!