If he had an internal compass, he wouldn't need to ask which way was north. He would already know. Inertial guidance seems to be what you're observing.
Well, I'll tell you my system. I make up words. They're made up, so I don't use them in regular conversation. They're pronounceable, so I can remember them well enough. They won't be found in a dictionary, because they aren't real. If I have 4 or 5, I should have enough for most secure systems. I use less secure passwords for stuff where I don't care if you get in - my slashdot account, for instance.
What ticks me off are banks that only allow 4 digits for PINs. My old bank allowed 6, a 1 in a million chance, and harder to keep track of if you're trying to peek over my shoulder. 4 digits are almost impossible to hide effectively without wearing your tinfoil hand visors.
Screws are generally harder to put in than to take out, so clockwise motion is the harder of the two. This means with your right hand you turn from a wrist-down orientation to a wrist-up orientation. It's opposite for your left hand. Having only one body, my tests have been empirical, but I find it equally easy to insert screws with my (weaker) right hand as it is with my (stronger) left hand. But I generally start with my left because it feels more right. I suppose I could get a torque-measuring machine, and see which of the motions can supply more torque, but all that will do is determine whether or not I can bitch about it. And I'd rather bitch.
like the majority of the population, I'm right handed
Welcome to my world, you bastard! I have to use my off hand for shifting (I live in North America), I have to use the weaker muscles of my hand when inserting screws with a screwdriver, most can openers require that you turn them with your right hand (or turn the can upside down - that'll work!), my blackberry has the main control buttons by my fingers instead of by my thumb, the list goes on and on! But you have to use somewhat unusual actions when playing Link with the wii controller. My heart bleeds. </pseudo-rant>
All kidding aside, you'd be surprised with the number of inconveniences left-handed people deal with every day. I trained myself to be somewhat ambidextrous to compensate for that, in those rare circumstances where I'd rather do it poorly with my right hand than do it with difficulty or danger with my left hand.
Yeah, that was my first thought when I read about this, a year or two ago. Imagine the improvement from processing the human waste from all these places instead of the whole purification and decomposition process currently used. The fact that we already process it, and we would get usable materials out of the new process should have made it something that any city would want to test. If they did a pilot project in a bigger city, it wouldn't have to cripple the city's waste processing capability, and if it succeeded they could create new plants and other cities could jump on board.
It would also make sense for big farms. They could ship to a central plant for processing rather than all the hassle of disposing of their sewage the regular way. It might even cost them less, but if it was break-even it would still save space.
I really hope this takes off. Reduced waste, net-zero carbon emissions, local oil, what's not to love?
The second two examples deal with people instead of objects so it obviously doesn't make for an easy expendable test case.
This is easily resolved. Don't test in a country with a constitution similar to the U.S. Or use terrorists, since they're obviously not the people mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, as defined by the current administration. Either way.
How can we safely develop/test viruses? Simple. Two networks with no physical link to each other or any other network, one for development, one for testing. Absolutely no wireless networks! Transfers by physical media only, on specially marked media, and only from the dev network to the test network. The biggest risk to the rest of the world is in handling the physical media (making sure it isn't loaded into outside machines) and dismantling the computers for a different use after testing. It might be easiest to just throw away all the hard drives after the test.
This is the form-factor I've looked forward to most in the phone/PDA market. Easy enough to handle as a phone, and a screen that's wide enough to actually fit 80 characters on. I have some issues with the computer UI, but hopefully someone makes better use of the screen space. I don't need to waste one line of text to show me what else I'm running when I only get half a screen in the first place (I'd prefer a hidden menu-type listing). If I could pick my next cell phone, this is the form factor, if not the actual phone, that I would go for. Sadly, my work supplies Blackberries with their small screen, wide form-factor, and sub-chiclet buttons.
P.S. Of course, it's also the form-factor that Val Kilmer used in The Saint.:)
From the link... Then of course there is the question of people smuggling explosives on board in their body cavities, so in addition to nudity, you need body cavity searches. That will, I'm sure, provide additional airport entertainment. By the way, if you really don't think a terrorist could smuggle enough explosives on board in their rectum to make a difference, you haven't been following how people in prison store their shivs and heroin.
Puts a whole new spin on "blow it out your ass"...
The problem is that, if Heathrow Airport has about 70,000,000 passengers per year (1,000,000 flights × 70 passengers per flight [just guessing on this!]), that we'll have 70,000 suspected terrorists a year. That's about 2000 searches a day.
Well, your math is off, based on the numbers provided. You have 99.9% accuracy (1 in 1 000 false positives), rather than 99.99% accuracy (1 in 10 000 false positives). Something tells me 200 searches per day isn't too much more than is already happening in many airports. Even if it isn't, it's not an overly large number. This may actually be viable.
As stated on wikipedia (I'll let you look for other sources to confirm or refute) XXY males are almost always sterile. XXX females don't pass the condition along to their children, again not a viable condition although less problematic than XXY is. Turner syndrome is often the result of a missing or deformed X chromosome, and results in sterility.
So of the 3 shown here, 2 of which you mentioned, one almost never gets passed to offspring, the other two never do. I'd be curious to see what happens if a XXX and a XXY bred, but I doubt it's anything we'll hear about soon. Until they're actually shown to be viable, and not correcting back to the norm, I wouldn't consider these to be new species. It could be a step in that direction, though.
I'm still looking for an example where speciation lead to one group having a different number of chromosomes than another group.
We already know that some dogs of different species can't interbreed, even though they all have the same number of chromosomes, IIRC.
There is a species of cat, the Manx, which by definition is a crossbreed - the genetic defects are so severe that a purebred won't survive birth.
There have been examples of humans where one individual can't breed with another with very high viability, or no viability at all. The European royal families are a good example of this (Princess Margaret is just one example of the results of a risky genetic coupling).
The odd thing is, we insist that cats have different species, dogs have different species, and that humans don't. Even though each group has a common number of chromosomes. Obviously genetic drift could do to humans what has happened in other species. But what I'm still unclear on is, have we seen a successfully derived species with a different number of chromosomes than its forebears? I wouldn't count people with Downs Syndrome, although they may be a step in this direction.
And just what criteria are they using to make the claim that it is the "worlds fastest kayak"?
The only "they" that claimed it was the world's fastest was the submitter, bart_scriv, and I'm guessing the criteria was what would most likely get it accepted on slashdot. The article only mentions "one of the fastest in its class", a much more plausible and defensible statement.
You're late. There was a sci-fi story written like this, which I read in the last few years.
The gist of the story was a Muslim scientist created a retrovirus that would encode someone's DNA with the Koran. Some other group decimated the many Muslims that got the treatment by creating another virus that targeted the code created by the Koran retrovirus. The daughter of one of first people to get the treatment advanced the idea by doing away with the code to translate letters into DNA. Basically, anything added to your DNA by her was encoded with a one-time pad. It makes decryption a bitch, but it also makes targeted viruses impossible.
Cool story, and I would link to it if I could remember the name.
You raise a good point. There are those who have doubts of anything they personally haven't experienced. The only flaw with this is that it has been proven that peoples' experiences are subjective, sometimes to the point of having no bearing on reality (even without the use of drugs). So this leads to the question of what do you believe, if even your own senses can't be trusted completely. So now you have two choices with equal weight: believe what there is a preponderance of evidence to support, or believe nothing at all.
We generally call those who fall into the second group, or those who don't maintain any sort of internal consistency, "crazy".
Slashdot Mirror
If he had an internal compass, he wouldn't need to ask which way was north. He would already know. Inertial guidance seems to be what you're observing.
Some people would choose to eat crap and maybe live a while, while others might choose to eat nothing and starve to death.
It's pretty clear that in North America, most people would opt to eat crap. And it shows.
Well, I'll tell you my system. I make up words. They're made up, so I don't use them in regular conversation. They're pronounceable, so I can remember them well enough. They won't be found in a dictionary, because they aren't real. If I have 4 or 5, I should have enough for most secure systems. I use less secure passwords for stuff where I don't care if you get in - my slashdot account, for instance.
What ticks me off are banks that only allow 4 digits for PINs. My old bank allowed 6, a 1 in a million chance, and harder to keep track of if you're trying to peek over my shoulder. 4 digits are almost impossible to hide effectively without wearing your tinfoil hand visors.
Tomorrow: Microsoft patents walking..
No need to be alarmed. This will have little or no bearing on most slashdotters.
Boy did I read too much Heinlein when I was young.
Too much? You make it sound like you read a lot of his stuff. You can complete that list in, what, 2 or 3 books?
Something tells me that the rate of lynchings is going to be on the rise...
Screws are generally harder to put in than to take out, so clockwise motion is the harder of the two. This means with your right hand you turn from a wrist-down orientation to a wrist-up orientation. It's opposite for your left hand. Having only one body, my tests have been empirical, but I find it equally easy to insert screws with my (weaker) right hand as it is with my (stronger) left hand. But I generally start with my left because it feels more right. I suppose I could get a torque-measuring machine, and see which of the motions can supply more torque, but all that will do is determine whether or not I can bitch about it. And I'd rather bitch.
like the majority of the population, I'm right handed
Welcome to my world, you bastard! I have to use my off hand for shifting (I live in North America), I have to use the weaker muscles of my hand when inserting screws with a screwdriver, most can openers require that you turn them with your right hand (or turn the can upside down - that'll work!), my blackberry has the main control buttons by my fingers instead of by my thumb, the list goes on and on! But you have to use somewhat unusual actions when playing Link with the wii controller. My heart bleeds.
</pseudo-rant>
All kidding aside, you'd be surprised with the number of inconveniences left-handed people deal with every day. I trained myself to be somewhat ambidextrous to compensate for that, in those rare circumstances where I'd rather do it poorly with my right hand than do it with difficulty or danger with my left hand.
Ah well, my karma is currently excellent.
MS Office, the choice for handicapped people everywhere!
Yeah, that was my first thought when I read about this, a year or two ago. Imagine the improvement from processing the human waste from all these places instead of the whole purification and decomposition process currently used. The fact that we already process it, and we would get usable materials out of the new process should have made it something that any city would want to test. If they did a pilot project in a bigger city, it wouldn't have to cripple the city's waste processing capability, and if it succeeded they could create new plants and other cities could jump on board.
It would also make sense for big farms. They could ship to a central plant for processing rather than all the hassle of disposing of their sewage the regular way. It might even cost them less, but if it was break-even it would still save space.
I really hope this takes off. Reduced waste, net-zero carbon emissions, local oil, what's not to love?
The second two examples deal with people instead of objects so it obviously doesn't make for an easy expendable test case.
This is easily resolved. Don't test in a country with a constitution similar to the U.S. Or use terrorists, since they're obviously not the people mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, as defined by the current administration. Either way.
How can we safely develop/test viruses? Simple. Two networks with no physical link to each other or any other network, one for development, one for testing. Absolutely no wireless networks! Transfers by physical media only, on specially marked media, and only from the dev network to the test network. The biggest risk to the rest of the world is in handling the physical media (making sure it isn't loaded into outside machines) and dismantling the computers for a different use after testing. It might be easiest to just throw away all the hard drives after the test.
This is the form-factor I've looked forward to most in the phone/PDA market. Easy enough to handle as a phone, and a screen that's wide enough to actually fit 80 characters on. I have some issues with the computer UI, but hopefully someone makes better use of the screen space. I don't need to waste one line of text to show me what else I'm running when I only get half a screen in the first place (I'd prefer a hidden menu-type listing). If I could pick my next cell phone, this is the form factor, if not the actual phone, that I would go for. Sadly, my work supplies Blackberries with their small screen, wide form-factor, and sub-chiclet buttons.
:)
P.S. Of course, it's also the form-factor that Val Kilmer used in The Saint.
From the link...
Then of course there is the question of people smuggling explosives on
board in their body cavities, so in addition to nudity, you need body
cavity searches. That will, I'm sure, provide additional airport
entertainment. By the way, if you really don't think a terrorist could
smuggle enough explosives on board in their rectum to make a
difference, you haven't been following how people in prison store
their shivs and heroin.
Puts a whole new spin on "blow it out your ass"...
The problem is that, if Heathrow Airport has about 70,000,000 passengers per year (1,000,000 flights × 70 passengers per flight [just guessing on this!]), that we'll have 70,000 suspected terrorists a year. That's about 2000 searches a day.
Well, your math is off, based on the numbers provided. You have 99.9% accuracy (1 in 1 000 false positives), rather than 99.99% accuracy (1 in 10 000 false positives). Something tells me 200 searches per day isn't too much more than is already happening in many airports. Even if it isn't, it's not an overly large number. This may actually be viable.
Crap, that comment is going to be my second homepage. Hey, why can't I have a second home?
and for the love of money, think of all the FrontPage sites...
Dammit, don't do that! You made shivers run up and down my spine.
Thanks for the interesting information. It does resolve some issues I had with evolutionary theory. Looks like I'll have to do some more reading.
As stated on wikipedia (I'll let you look for other sources to confirm or refute) XXY males are almost always sterile. XXX females don't pass the condition along to their children, again not a viable condition although less problematic than XXY is. Turner syndrome is often the result of a missing or deformed X chromosome, and results in sterility.
So of the 3 shown here, 2 of which you mentioned, one almost never gets passed to offspring, the other two never do. I'd be curious to see what happens if a XXX and a XXY bred, but I doubt it's anything we'll hear about soon.
Until they're actually shown to be viable, and not correcting back to the norm, I wouldn't consider these to be new species. It could be a step in that direction, though.
I'm still looking for an example where speciation lead to one group having a different number of chromosomes than another group.
We already know that some dogs of different species can't interbreed, even though they all have the same number of chromosomes, IIRC.
There is a species of cat, the Manx, which by definition is a crossbreed - the genetic defects are so severe that a purebred won't survive birth.
There have been examples of humans where one individual can't breed with another with very high viability, or no viability at all. The European royal families are a good example of this (Princess Margaret is just one example of the results of a risky genetic coupling).
The odd thing is, we insist that cats have different species, dogs have different species, and that humans don't. Even though each group has a common number of chromosomes. Obviously genetic drift could do to humans what has happened in other species. But what I'm still unclear on is, have we seen a successfully derived species with a different number of chromosomes than its forebears? I wouldn't count people with Downs Syndrome, although they may be a step in this direction.
Life is just coming up roses for me...
Well, it won't exactly be roses for the security staff, either....
Why wouldn't they want to embrace safety technology like this?
In a litigious society, the answer is obvious. Who gets sued if the safety feature fails?
And just what criteria are they using to make the claim that it is the "worlds fastest kayak"?
The only "they" that claimed it was the world's fastest was the submitter, bart_scriv, and I'm guessing the criteria was what would most likely get it accepted on slashdot. The article only mentions "one of the fastest in its class", a much more plausible and defensible statement.
You're late. There was a sci-fi story written like this, which I read in the last few years.
The gist of the story was a Muslim scientist created a retrovirus that would encode someone's DNA with the Koran. Some other group decimated the many Muslims that got the treatment by creating another virus that targeted the code created by the Koran retrovirus. The daughter of one of first people to get the treatment advanced the idea by doing away with the code to translate letters into DNA. Basically, anything added to your DNA by her was encoded with a one-time pad. It makes decryption a bitch, but it also makes targeted viruses impossible.
Cool story, and I would link to it if I could remember the name.
You raise a good point. There are those who have doubts of anything they personally haven't experienced. The only flaw with this is that it has been proven that peoples' experiences are subjective, sometimes to the point of having no bearing on reality (even without the use of drugs). So this leads to the question of what do you believe, if even your own senses can't be trusted completely. So now you have two choices with equal weight: believe what there is a preponderance of evidence to support, or believe nothing at all.
We generally call those who fall into the second group, or those who don't maintain any sort of internal consistency, "crazy".