But after a couple of reads (as opposed to a couple of reds), my interpretation is that they're ripping out the entire genetic structure (RNA/DNA) and synthesizing a new set entirely from scratch
That seems unlikely. When you generate DNA "from scratch" (only viruses use RNA for their genetic structure), which is to say chemically, you are typically limited to lengths on the order of 2,000 bases (last I checked). Synthetic DNA of that length is also of low quality - it has many errors and omissions, so I'm not sure you could use it. A virus like ebola - which have about a dozen genes - tend to be on the order of 10,000 bases in length. This thing will have 235 genes.
The way I would do it would be to clone each of these 235 genes and then ligate them together. i.e. I would take the genome of the Myoplasma, and selectively copy (using PCR, which is NOT "from scratch") the 235 genes I wanted, then string them all together (ligation, this is called).
The Craig Venter working on this project IS the guy from the private human genome project / Celera. He gives nice talks, I saw him up at the medical school last year.
Bacteria do not contain much in the way of "cell structure". Organelles - such as the nucleus - are unique to eukaryotes. Mitochondria are actually symbiotic bacteria that live inside our cells. Mycoplasma do not have them. Mycoplasma do not have cell walls (most bacteria do,) either.
Proteins cannot be made from scratch by any living organism - you need proteins to make other proteins. So, the cell would have to start out with proteins that had already been made by another cell.
Your view on 'creating life' is pretty much spot-on. The membrane, and initial copies of proteins to read DNA, to make more proteins and so forth, would have to be supplied from another cell.
Our distant ancestor - the very oldest form of life - was probably RNA (not DNA) exclusively. It was RNA, and using RNA it could make anything that it needed. There are reasons to believe that cell membranes were generated naturally and that it used whatever membrane it found itself in. However, since we have no example of such an organism, we could not make one.
How is this different from an ornithopter?
on
Fanwing Planes?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
i.e. it has propellers on the wings, just like the pinion feathers on the wings of a bird. It fles like a bird, therefore.
Does that not make it an ornithopter? Do the wings flap? I can't tell from the bullettin article.
The more detailed page is slashdotted, I only read the article, so it is very posible I'm missing something.
The challenge is - can you install the mod and get on Xbox live, anyway?
Can you enable your intellectually pedestrian friends to do the same? The entire nation?
MS is doing this to *encourage* modchipping. It's like a contest; MS awards m4d pr0p5, in the form of a l4\/\/5u1t, to the first h4x0r who builds a kit that can modify the xbox in a way their servers can never, ever detect; it must be usable even if the person you give it to: 1) Has no technical training. 2) Lacks even a basic understanding of electronics. 3) Hell, they can't change a lightbulb. 4) They're blind. 5) They're a technophobe, they have alzheimers disease. 6) Hell, they're dead. Ease of use must be total.
The winner gets instant geek celebrity and free representation by the EFF.
I'll go ahead and reproduce the e-mail verbatim. Make what you will.
Five hundred thousand bushels of soybeans in Nebraska have been quarantined because the biotech company ProdiGene allowed pharmaceutical-producing corn to contaminate the soybean harvest.
This incident reinforces the need for a strong regulatory system overseeing pharm crops. Until a new system is in place, tell the USDA that it should impose at least a one-year moratorium on field tests and commercial production of engineered pharmaceutical and industrial crops and seriously consider banning the use of engineered food crops to produce drugs and chemicals.
Hit reply to send the letter below. If you'd like to edit this letter, go to the UCS Action Center, http://www.ucsaction.org/index.asp?step=2 &item=228 7
Additional information: UCS November 13, 2002 press release http://www.ucsusa.org/news.cfm?newsID=302 UCS Pharmaceutical crop report http://www.ucsusa.org/pharm/pharm_open.htm l *
William T. Hawks Undersecretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs US Department of Agriculture Whitten Building, Room 228-W 14th and Independence Ave., SW Washington, DC 20250
Dear Mr. Hawks:
I strongly urge the USDA to act on behalf of public health and halt field trials and commercial production of genetically engineered pharmaceutical and industrial crops for at least a year, until the federal government has sought advice from the scientific community and the public and has put in place a strong, transparent regulatory system for ensuring that the food supply will not be contaminated by these crops. The USDA should also seriously consider banning engineered food crops for the production of drugs and industrial chemicals.
The recent revelation that pharm corn contaminated a half-million bushels of soybeans heightens my concern that this industry is outpacing the government's ability to control risks. The failure of a leading biopharm company, Prodigene, to properly confine its engineered corn confirms the vulnerability of the food supply to contamination by drugs, vaccines, and industrial chemicals produced in engineered food crops.
Yes, I am in the union of concerned scientists which is why I get these e-mails.
DID I SAY IT WAS NOT A MONOPOLY? Obviously, Microsoft IS a monopoly. That is no excuse for poor or muddled thinking.
Did I say that I was a capitalist? I'm a socialist, too.
I'm not making any kind of argument about justification here; I'm not saying that MS' pricing policy is right or justified. I am saying only that is neither evidence of monopolistic behavior on MS' part (abundant other evidence exists), nor, NECESARILLY, a result of that monopoly. It may very well be that it is, but a more detailed analysis of other software firms' pricing policies would be required before you could conclude that it was.
You would do yourself a favor by reading articles more carefully rather than jumping to conclusions, comrade.
There are no offbrand vending machines here in Manhattan, so I can't go check one.
However, last I recall, the price of soda out of an off brand vending machine was a dime, or as low as a dime.
I'm not sure about the advertising, however. The Coca-Cola Company is a manufacturer, distributor and marketer of soft drink concentrates and syrups, and also markets and distributes juice and juice-drink products. For the nine months ended 9/30/02, revenues rose 11% to $14.77 billion. Net income before accounting change rose 6% to $3.25 billion. Revenues reflect a 5% increase in gallon shipments and price increases in selected countries. Net income was partially offset by higher S/G/A expenses due to structural changes.
Well, there you are, ~20% overall. I bet coca-cola is much more profitable than their other softdrinks, however.
Hold on for just a second. A can of coke costs about a nickle to make, can, ship and refrigerate and I just payed 0.75$ for it out of a vending machine.
High profit margins don't make you a monopoly. Let's put aside for a moment the fact that a significant portion of that $300 price per unit (the store purchase price) is going to various middlemen. Windows costs $80 as often as not. Not intended as an advertisement, it is just the first quote I grabbed. Also, I'm sure that MS could charge less than $45 and still make a profit - since they'd sell more copies. We'll put all of that aside.
Are their prices out of line for software, generally? Higher than the cost of Linux doesn't count. Is their profit margin out of line for successful software makers in other areas? How much could Blizzard sell Diablo II for and still make a profit? What about other business software bendors - GraphPad software, say? Has anyone examined them to see if they're making too much money on their $400/desktop prism software?
MS has priced their product (successfully, I'm sure) to maximise their profit - which is NOT the cheapest price they could charge, any more than the same is true for Coca-Cola. This is a feature of our modern "capitalist" society; competition only goes so far in the face of advertising and consumer apathy. It has nothing to do with being a monopoly.
I do bioinformatics programming. The people I work with are biologists (so am I, actually, but I also have a degree in CS.) They don't have CS degrees, but are pretty computer savvy.
However, when I say, "we should apply the extreme programming methodolgies,"
they say, "coding to the max!" or "what does this have to do with snowboarding?" or "the mountain dew commercial was not funny."
and so forth. They think I'm joking and it is impossible to convince them that Extreme Programming is not either a) a joke or b) marketspeak gibberish crap.
Now, b) may be true. However, as long as the method is called "programming.... to the extreme!" it becomes difficult to convince people on the intellectually snobbish periphery of CS that it has even potential merit.
HP Lovecraft predicted the existence of horribly betentacled monstrosities from outside the space we know long before they were first discovered lukring unspeakably behind bricked off rooms in the basement of DARPA.
Lovecraft was also an early adopter of continental drift, and it is early adoption, not invention, that we are talking about. The Big Bang did not achieve general acceptance until the 1960s, it is true, however, others besides Poe had proposed similar theories (something about a Cosmic Seed, I recall) before Poe.
In statistical terms - writers are drunken cranks. They are more likely to adopt fringe beliefs before the rest of the population. Some of those fringe beliefs will turn out to be true. The writer will seem prophetic. It's of little significance.
Re:Don't panic - and there is no conspiricy
on
Root Zone Changed
·
· Score: 5, Funny
If there's no conspiracy, why are we all crouching around a table in a smoke filled room going over printed transcripts of your VoIP conversations for the past week, huh, smart guy?
Just because we at Verisign have no sinister motives in moving a god damned computer does NOT mean that we're not involved in any conspiracies!
As another example, our co-conspirators at the NSA just closed a loophole that let members of their alien autopsy division take extra paid sickdays even if they've never been exposed to any alien tissue (and thus, to the space virus). This was a totally inoccuous cost cutting measure, and not part of their conspiracy to conceal the existence the aliens. Does this mean the conspiracy doesn't exist? Absolutely not!
1) Lock all the air and space engineers and astrophysicists together in a big building (with lab equipment, and access to journals and suchnot.) That building at MIT with the mile long hallways would do nicely. 2) Don't let them out until they have a prototype design for FTL.
Physics has become boring and I think we, as a species, have to put our collective foot down as regards this whole no FTL business. You can worry about whether or not black holes emit radiation later, I want a warp drive and I want one yesterday!
How can the Vatican Library exert copyright over a document written by, of all people, Martin Luther. I suppose he was a Monk at the time he wrote it....
Are they simply exerting copyright over the photograph of the document, and not on the contents of the document itself? Is that okay, even?
Re:Google: no registration
on
One of Many
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· Score: 2
The one on Google appeared in the times weeks ago - remember the Slasdot discussion on Branes? In spite of the URL assigned by google (which includes todays date,) the free (as in privacy) story is not current.
A decade ago, Chairman Bill was minor league, but decidedly democratic, by a 3:1 margin. This was back when Big Blue was the great enemy, and Microsoft wrote cool Mac software (oh, yeah, and DOS.)
As his power base has grown, and as he has become more entrenched and established, he has increasingly favored the Republicans. Of course, the decision of the Clinton white house to trustbust him can't have helped.
So, what might cause Asthma (Which may be leveling off as we speak), childhood Diabetes, increased incidence of autoimmune disorders and cancer, and increased incidence of autism?
It isn't vaccines! The science doesn't stand up. If you think it's vaccines, we'll agree to disagree, okay?
I blame the chlorinated carbon molecule.
Organochlorines have been absent from the earth, in any appreciable amounts, since before the appearance of multicelled life. They are immensely stable, but nothing natural creates them - for energetic reasons, they are purely synthetic. They have unique (powerful, TOXIC) chemistry that we can "exploit but never control", in the words of Pandora's Poison author Shalini Ramanathan. This is an excellent book if you're interested in which feature of our 20th century lifestyle is raising disease incidences.
mandated by the WTO, to prevent spammers from breeding.
Yeah, we need an unaccountable, basically secret organisation of corrupt career beurecrats to have the power to fine people for sending messages out that someone doesn't want to recieve. What a wonderful plan! I'm sure their abuses of authority will be central to any calls to overthrow all world government via armed struggle over the course of the next century - since peaceful progress is for pussies, I support this plan wholeheartedly. Also, we should give the WTO the authority to try and execute journalists and peace corps volunteers.
How's about this - everyone sign an anti-spam treaty, and then make it enforceable in the courts with local jurisdiction over the spammer, regardless of were the spam went. The WTO would be guaranteed to clamp down on any spammer that wasn't part of their clique, so you miss something in enforcement, but at the very least you have a direct guarantee (which ought to be explicit in the treaty) that this power won't be used to stifle public participation or the like.
The US has NEVER had a serious conflict close enough to home to neccesatate major rebuilding. This means that our stuff is old compared to theirs.
I hate to nitpick, and I agree that it has little impact on your infrastructure-rebuilding argument, but are you familiar with a little tiff we like to call our civil war? Certainly, it didn't destroy any outdated telephone lines, but, NEVER is a STRONG word.
I got these Korea at a glance, 15 Fun Facts! Let me tell you, there are a lot of reasons to move there aside from the high bandwidth penetration:
1) Korean women are hot. 2) Don't look at me like that. Seriously, they are muy en fuega. 3) I'm not chauvenistic. The female anatomy is a thing of beauty. Especially in Korea. 4) It's not a fetish thing. Sheesh. 5) They have lots of technology and stuff, unlike Thailand. Also, Thai women (while hot) have AIDS. Seriously, man, you're risking your life. 6) Government less fascist than Singapore or China, and getting less fascist every day (unless it's more, I forget). Although, there's this one Singapore chick who does this really funny webcomic. I would totally do her. 7) No, it's the Japanese who are into the cartoon porn. 8) Whoah! Evidently, Koreans also like the cartoon porn. 9) Korean cartoon porn is totally nasty. 10) Anyway, Korea doesn't look like a giant mall. Japan creeps me out - stainless steel fucking everywhere. 11) All Koreans are nerds, and totally bad ass at the same time. Swear to god, I knew this one guy in my engineering class who could do a backflip and kick out ceiling fixtures - he was 27 and he'd never kissed a girl. They won't even notice how much of a nerd you are. Swear to god. 12) No, he was totally not gay. His parents had arranged a marriage for him with... holy shit, he was so gay. How could I not have seen it? God damn, we were like in the locker room together all the time. 13) I don't have a problem with it! He's a cool guy. Leaves more Korean women for me, heh? 14) What? 15) In Korea, you can pick up chicks by playing video games and drinking soda that's been laced with speed. I swear, that's what pickup joins are like in Korea. Dude, I read it in the nytimes.
Not only have I heard of retroviruses, I have studied them. A retrovirus to be used as a vector for cloning into humans would have to be engineered to avoid tripping any immune system alarms. That's playing with fire.
HIV is generally agreed to have hopped from a monkey as a result of a bite. An animal organ - particularly when placed in an individual taking immunosuppressent drugs - might pose the same threat.
I am talking about suppressing evolution. The human race going extinct would be evolution. I am talking about making sure that the resources (genetic resources) are available to make sure that the human race can undergo another sort of evolution if our survival depends on it. The population of the Andean Condor fell to, what, a dozen individuals IIRC? Even if the alleles among the rest of the species really made them less fit for the present circumstance (which I doubt,) the genetic homogeneity among the survivors makes the long term survival of the species very doubtful. This is a genetic bottleneck. Having it happen to our species is very, very bad.
Someone else raised the possibility that I want to keep suffering people around as a genetic bank for the human race - that was not my intent. What I mean is that we should eliminate an allele from the population only after serious thought, and only if therapeutics fail, since we simply do not know (and cannot predict) which genes may be helpful to our descendents.
When those who are vulnerable to AIDS have died, there will be many alleles - which have nothing to do with AIDS - lost to the human race as a whole. Those alleles might have saved the human race - or some population of humans on some distant planet we colonised - from dying out under some other circumstance, or might have been linked to some other trait, important for some reason of which we have no inkling.
It is true that in order for the alleles in africa to be helpful to my descendents, I would need shared offspring, somewhere along the line, with a present day African. Since I am talking about a rather long timescale - millennia, at least - I view that as entirely likely. This reveals my multicultural social bias, I am sure; I am mixed Ashkinasi (Jew) and Cherokhee (American Indian.) If you asked my ancestors 1,000 years ago in the Baltics and the present-day SE US if they thought they'd share a great^40 grandchild, I think it would have looked pretty unlikely.
Slashdot Mirror
But after a couple of reads (as opposed to a couple of reds), my interpretation is that they're ripping out the entire genetic structure (RNA/DNA) and synthesizing a new set entirely from scratch
That seems unlikely. When you generate DNA "from scratch" (only viruses use RNA for their genetic structure), which is to say chemically, you are typically limited to lengths on the order of 2,000 bases (last I checked). Synthetic DNA of that length is also of low quality - it has many errors and omissions, so I'm not sure you could use it. A virus like ebola - which have about a dozen genes - tend to be on the order of 10,000 bases in length. This thing will have 235 genes.
The way I would do it would be to clone each of these 235 genes and then ligate them together. i.e. I would take the genome of the Myoplasma, and selectively copy (using PCR, which is NOT "from scratch") the 235 genes I wanted, then string them all together (ligation, this is called).
The Craig Venter working on this project IS the guy from the private human genome project / Celera. He gives nice talks, I saw him up at the medical school last year.
Bacteria do not contain much in the way of "cell structure". Organelles - such as the nucleus - are unique to eukaryotes. Mitochondria are actually symbiotic bacteria that live inside our cells. Mycoplasma do not have them. Mycoplasma do not have cell walls (most bacteria do,) either.
Proteins cannot be made from scratch by any living organism - you need proteins to make other proteins. So, the cell would have to start out with proteins that had already been made by another cell.
Your view on 'creating life' is pretty much spot-on. The membrane, and initial copies of proteins to read DNA, to make more proteins and so forth, would have to be supplied from another cell.
Our distant ancestor - the very oldest form of life - was probably RNA (not DNA) exclusively. It was RNA, and using RNA it could make anything that it needed. There are reasons to believe that cell membranes were generated naturally and that it used whatever membrane it found itself in. However, since we have no example of such an organism, we could not make one.
i.e. it has propellers on the wings, just like the pinion feathers on the wings of a bird. It fles like a bird, therefore.
Does that not make it an ornithopter? Do the wings flap? I can't tell from the bullettin article.
The more detailed page is slashdotted, I only read the article, so it is very posible I'm missing something.
The challenge is - can you install the mod and get on Xbox live, anyway?
Can you enable your intellectually pedestrian friends to do the same? The entire nation?
MS is doing this to *encourage* modchipping. It's like a contest; MS awards m4d pr0p5, in the form of a l4\/\/5u1t, to the first h4x0r who builds a kit that can modify the xbox in a way their servers can never, ever detect; it must be usable even if the person you give it to:
1) Has no technical training.
2) Lacks even a basic understanding of electronics.
3) Hell, they can't change a lightbulb.
4) They're blind.
5) They're a technophobe, they have alzheimers disease.
6) Hell, they're dead. Ease of use must be total.
The winner gets instant geek celebrity and free representation by the EFF.
I'll go ahead and reproduce the e-mail verbatim. Make what you will.
2 &item=228 7
2 m l
Five hundred thousand bushels of soybeans in Nebraska have been
quarantined because the biotech company ProdiGene allowed
pharmaceutical-producing corn to contaminate the soybean harvest.
This incident reinforces the need for a strong regulatory system
overseeing pharm crops. Until a new system is in place, tell the USDA
that it should impose at least a one-year moratorium on field tests
and commercial production of engineered pharmaceutical and industrial
crops and seriously consider banning the use of engineered food crops
to produce drugs and chemicals.
Hit reply to send the letter below. If you'd like to edit this
letter, go to the UCS Action Center,
http://www.ucsaction.org/index.asp?step=
Additional information:
UCS November 13, 2002 press release
http://www.ucsusa.org/news.cfm?newsID=30
UCS Pharmaceutical crop report
http://www.ucsusa.org/pharm/pharm_open.ht
*
William T. Hawks
Undersecretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs
US Department of Agriculture
Whitten Building, Room 228-W
14th and Independence Ave., SW
Washington, DC 20250
Dear Mr. Hawks:
I strongly urge the USDA to act on behalf of public health and halt
field trials and commercial production of genetically engineered
pharmaceutical and industrial crops for at least a year, until the
federal government has sought advice from the scientific community
and the public and has put in place a strong, transparent regulatory
system for ensuring that the food supply will not be contaminated by
these crops. The USDA should also seriously consider banning
engineered food crops for the production of drugs and industrial chemicals.
The recent revelation that pharm corn contaminated a half-million
bushels of soybeans heightens my concern that this industry is
outpacing the government's ability to control risks. The failure of a
leading biopharm company, Prodigene, to properly confine its
engineered corn confirms the vulnerability of the food supply to
contamination by drugs, vaccines, and industrial chemicals produced
in engineered food crops.
Yes, I am in the union of concerned scientists which is why I get these e-mails.
Did I say it was socially justifiable?
DID I SAY IT WAS NOT A MONOPOLY? Obviously, Microsoft IS a monopoly. That is no excuse for poor or muddled thinking.
Did I say that I was a capitalist? I'm a socialist, too.
I'm not making any kind of argument about justification here; I'm not saying that MS' pricing policy is right or justified. I am saying only that is neither evidence of monopolistic behavior on MS' part (abundant other evidence exists), nor, NECESARILLY, a result of that monopoly. It may very well be that it is, but a more detailed analysis of other software firms' pricing policies would be required before you could conclude that it was.
You would do yourself a favor by reading articles more carefully rather than jumping to conclusions, comrade.
There are no offbrand vending machines here in Manhattan, so I can't go check one.
However, last I recall, the price of soda out of an off brand vending machine was a dime, or as low as a dime.
I'm not sure about the advertising, however.
The Coca-Cola Company is a manufacturer, distributor and marketer of soft drink concentrates and syrups, and also markets and distributes juice and juice-drink products. For the nine months ended 9/30/02, revenues rose 11% to $14.77 billion. Net income before accounting change rose 6% to $3.25 billion. Revenues reflect a 5% increase in gallon shipments and price increases in selected countries. Net income was partially offset by higher S/G/A expenses due to structural changes.
Well, there you are, ~20% overall. I bet coca-cola is much more profitable than their other softdrinks, however.
Hold on for just a second. A can of coke costs about a nickle to make, can, ship and refrigerate and I just payed 0.75$ for it out of a vending machine.
High profit margins don't make you a monopoly. Let's put aside for a moment the fact that a significant portion of that $300 price per unit (the store purchase price) is going to various middlemen. Windows costs $80 as often as not. Not intended as an advertisement, it is just the first quote I grabbed. Also, I'm sure that MS could charge less than $45 and still make a profit - since they'd sell more copies. We'll put all of that aside.
Are their prices out of line for software, generally? Higher than the cost of Linux doesn't count. Is their profit margin out of line for successful software makers in other areas? How much could Blizzard sell Diablo II for and still make a profit? What about other business software bendors - GraphPad software, say? Has anyone examined them to see if they're making too much money on their $400/desktop prism software?
MS has priced their product (successfully, I'm sure) to maximise their profit - which is NOT the cheapest price they could charge, any more than the same is true for Coca-Cola. This is a feature of our modern "capitalist" society; competition only goes so far in the face of advertising and consumer apathy. It has nothing to do with being a monopoly.
1) World Domination
2) ?
3) Profit
I do bioinformatics programming. The people I work with are biologists (so am I, actually, but I also have a degree in CS.) They don't have CS degrees, but are pretty computer savvy.
However, when I say, "we should apply the extreme programming methodolgies,"
they say,
"coding to the max!" or
"what does this have to do with snowboarding?" or
"the mountain dew commercial was not funny."
and so forth. They think I'm joking and it is impossible to convince them that Extreme Programming is not either a) a joke or b) marketspeak gibberish crap.
Now, b) may be true. However, as long as the method is called "programming.... to the extreme!" it becomes difficult to convince people on the intellectually snobbish periphery of CS that it has even potential merit.
I feel new sympathy for furriners who don't understand why there are two senators from Montana but only one representative.
E-Crime Law Reform Working Party,
What, like a political party?
State Opposition Justice spokesman Lawrence Springborg
So.... he's, like, the justice minister in the opposition's shadow cabinet?
A police ministers meeting in Darwin
WTF is a police minister? You have more than one? Is that like a District Attorney, like a chief of police, or something? It's a cabinet post?
Senator Ellison's decision to give the new Australian Crime Commission the power to investigate cyber crime.
I thought you had a parliament? Why is a Senator handing out new police powers, anyway?
I assume that the ACC is your shiny new sinister agency in charge of government repression.
HP Lovecraft predicted the existence of horribly betentacled monstrosities from outside the space we know long before they were first discovered lukring unspeakably behind bricked off rooms in the basement of DARPA.
Lovecraft was also an early adopter of continental drift, and it is early adoption, not invention, that we are talking about. The Big Bang did not achieve general acceptance until the 1960s, it is true, however, others besides Poe had proposed similar theories (something about a Cosmic Seed, I recall) before Poe.
In statistical terms - writers are drunken cranks. They are more likely to adopt fringe beliefs before the rest of the population. Some of those fringe beliefs will turn out to be true. The writer will seem prophetic. It's of little significance.
If there's no conspiracy, why are we all crouching around a table in a smoke filled room going over printed transcripts of your VoIP conversations for the past week, huh, smart guy?
Just because we at Verisign have no sinister motives in moving a god damned computer does NOT mean that we're not involved in any conspiracies!
As another example, our co-conspirators at the NSA just closed a loophole that let members of their alien autopsy division take extra paid sickdays even if they've never been exposed to any alien tissue (and thus, to the space virus). This was a totally inoccuous cost cutting measure, and not part of their conspiracy to conceal the existence the aliens. Does this mean the conspiracy doesn't exist? Absolutely not!
1) Lock all the air and space engineers and astrophysicists together in a big building (with lab equipment, and access to journals and suchnot.) That building at MIT with the mile long hallways would do nicely.
2) Don't let them out until they have a prototype design for FTL.
Physics has become boring and I think we, as a species, have to put our collective foot down as regards this whole no FTL business. You can worry about whether or not black holes emit radiation later, I want a warp drive and I want one yesterday!
There are 65534 other ports wich can be used for VoIP, they must block them too!
The idea is that only the most skilled, black hat hacker can open the preferences for his VoIP software and change the port number.
And instead of moderating you up I had to crack a lame joke! Damn.
Kaboom is quite right.
The earth has a radius of 6,300 km (roughly.)
The ISS is a measly 361 km up.
Since gravity falls off as the square of the distance from the center of mass (which is the center of the earth) gravity in the ISS is
(6,300 / 6,660) squared = about 0.89.
89% of gravity at sea level.
It could very well weigh 200,000 lbs, although, in a sense, I suspect the original poster is right and that it actually weighs 180,000 lbs.
If you're tempted to mod me up mod up my immediate parent.
Station: World peace?
Astronaut David A. Wolf: Heh. Yeah, right.
Station: Well.... how about understanding between all peoples and religions?
Wolf: Damn programmers. Filthy hippies.
Station: An end to social injustice?
Wolf: Those pinko bastards programmed you for that! Disregard it!
Station: Could you tell everyone that a sentient computer in orbit has found aliens and carries a message of peace and love from the cosmos?
Wolf: We'd be a laughing stock! Look, why don't you ask for something that we can give you up here, right now?
Station: I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Wolf: Uh-oh.
How can the Vatican Library exert copyright over a document written by, of all people, Martin Luther. I suppose he was a Monk at the time he wrote it....
Are they simply exerting copyright over the photograph of the document, and not on the contents of the document itself? Is that okay, even?
These are not the same story!
Google story "Many Universes, Several Theories."
Times story which I posted. "A New View of Our Universe: Only One of Many."
The one on Google appeared in the times weeks ago - remember the Slasdot discussion on Branes? In spite of the URL assigned by google (which includes todays date,) the free (as in privacy) story is not current.
A decade ago, Chairman Bill was minor league, but decidedly democratic, by a 3:1 margin. This was back when Big Blue was the great enemy, and Microsoft wrote cool Mac software (oh, yeah, and DOS.)
As his power base has grown, and as he has become more entrenched and established, he has increasingly favored the Republicans. Of course, the decision of the Clinton white house to trustbust him can't have helped.
So, what might cause Asthma (Which may be leveling off as we speak), childhood Diabetes, increased incidence of autoimmune disorders and cancer, and increased incidence of autism?
It isn't vaccines! The science doesn't stand up. If you think it's vaccines, we'll agree to disagree, okay?
I blame the chlorinated carbon molecule.
Organochlorines have been absent from the earth, in any appreciable amounts, since before the appearance of multicelled life. They are immensely stable, but nothing natural creates them - for energetic reasons, they are purely synthetic. They have unique (powerful, TOXIC) chemistry that we can "exploit but never control", in the words of Pandora's Poison author Shalini Ramanathan. This is an excellent book if you're interested in which feature of our 20th century lifestyle is raising disease incidences.
mandated by the WTO, to prevent spammers from breeding.
Yeah, we need an unaccountable, basically secret organisation of corrupt career beurecrats to have the power to fine people for sending messages out that someone doesn't want to recieve. What a wonderful plan! I'm sure their abuses of authority will be central to any calls to overthrow all world government via armed struggle over the course of the next century - since peaceful progress is for pussies, I support this plan wholeheartedly. Also, we should give the WTO the authority to try and execute journalists and peace corps volunteers.
How's about this - everyone sign an anti-spam treaty, and then make it enforceable in the courts with local jurisdiction over the spammer, regardless of were the spam went. The WTO would be guaranteed to clamp down on any spammer that wasn't part of their clique, so you miss something in enforcement, but at the very least you have a direct guarantee (which ought to be explicit in the treaty) that this power won't be used to stifle public participation or the like.
The US has NEVER had a serious conflict close enough to home to neccesatate major rebuilding. This means that our stuff is old compared to theirs.
I hate to nitpick, and I agree that it has little impact on your infrastructure-rebuilding argument, but are you familiar with a little tiff we like to call our civil war? Certainly, it didn't destroy any outdated telephone lines, but, NEVER is a STRONG word.
He means South Korea.
I got these Korea at a glance, 15 Fun Facts! Let me tell you, there are a lot of reasons to move there aside from the high bandwidth penetration:
1) Korean women are hot.
2) Don't look at me like that. Seriously, they are muy en fuega.
3) I'm not chauvenistic. The female anatomy is a thing of beauty. Especially in Korea.
4) It's not a fetish thing. Sheesh.
5) They have lots of technology and stuff, unlike Thailand. Also, Thai women (while hot) have AIDS. Seriously, man, you're risking your life.
6) Government less fascist than Singapore or China, and getting less fascist every day (unless it's more, I forget). Although, there's this one Singapore chick who does this really funny webcomic. I would totally do her.
7) No, it's the Japanese who are into the cartoon porn.
8) Whoah! Evidently, Koreans also like the cartoon porn.
9) Korean cartoon porn is totally nasty.
10) Anyway, Korea doesn't look like a giant mall. Japan creeps me out - stainless steel fucking everywhere.
11) All Koreans are nerds, and totally bad ass at the same time. Swear to god, I knew this one guy in my engineering class who could do a backflip and kick out ceiling fixtures - he was 27 and he'd never kissed a girl. They won't even notice how much of a nerd you are. Swear to god.
12) No, he was totally not gay. His parents had arranged a marriage for him with... holy shit, he was so gay. How could I not have seen it? God damn, we were like in the locker room together all the time.
13) I don't have a problem with it! He's a cool guy. Leaves more Korean women for me, heh?
14) What?
15) In Korea, you can pick up chicks by playing video games and drinking soda that's been laced with speed. I swear, that's what pickup joins are like in Korea. Dude, I read it in the nytimes.
Not only have I heard of retroviruses, I have studied them. A retrovirus to be used as a vector for cloning into humans would have to be engineered to avoid tripping any immune system alarms. That's playing with fire.
HIV is generally agreed to have hopped from a monkey as a result of a bite. An animal organ - particularly when placed in an individual taking immunosuppressent drugs - might pose the same threat.
I am talking about suppressing evolution. The human race going extinct would be evolution. I am talking about making sure that the resources (genetic resources) are available to make sure that the human race can undergo another sort of evolution if our survival depends on it. The population of the Andean Condor fell to, what, a dozen individuals IIRC? Even if the alleles among the rest of the species really made them less fit for the present circumstance (which I doubt,) the genetic homogeneity among the survivors makes the long term survival of the species very doubtful. This is a genetic bottleneck. Having it happen to our species is very, very bad.
Someone else raised the possibility that I want to keep suffering people around as a genetic bank for the human race - that was not my intent. What I mean is that we should eliminate an allele from the population only after serious thought, and only if therapeutics fail, since we simply do not know (and cannot predict) which genes may be helpful to our descendents.
When those who are vulnerable to AIDS have died, there will be many alleles - which have nothing to do with AIDS - lost to the human race as a whole. Those alleles might have saved the human race - or some population of humans on some distant planet we colonised - from dying out under some other circumstance, or might have been linked to some other trait, important for some reason of which we have no inkling.
It is true that in order for the alleles in africa to be helpful to my descendents, I would need shared offspring, somewhere along the line, with a present day African. Since I am talking about a rather long timescale - millennia, at least - I view that as entirely likely. This reveals my multicultural social bias, I am sure; I am mixed Ashkinasi (Jew) and Cherokhee (American Indian.) If you asked my ancestors 1,000 years ago in the Baltics and the present-day SE US if they thought they'd share a great^40 grandchild, I think it would have looked pretty unlikely.