What's the boiling point of one molecule of water?
if not for the hydrogen bonds between adjacent H2O molecules, water would have a much lower boiling point than is observed. A single molecule of H2O would have no hydrogen bonding. Perhaps it's boiling point would be in line with the rest of the H2_ series (The BP of H2S is about -60C, for example). Thus, because it does not have all the physical properties, an H2O molecule is not the same as a water molecule. In fact, we don't get the behaviour of water until we take into account what comes into play when multiple H2O molecules collide. And that's just totally ignoring the whole issue about observers interacting with the systems they observe.
BUT, experimentally determining the boiling point of a single molecules of H2O (heating a fluorocarbon emulsion?) and determining that the boiling point of one molecule of H2O is -83C doesn't change the bulk properties of the water we all know and love. Likewise, determining under very specific experiental conditions that water gives the appearance of being H1.5O is just as uninteresting.
Oh, and for all the people scoffing at the image of half a proton... What, exactly, does a whole proton look like? Perhaps this will help give you some ideas.
I personally read it as two thirds thatdon't give the issue any thought and another third that has some strong opinions on the subject. The other third either try to trade unencumbered media, or think copyright is a distorted shadow of it's original intent, and trade copyrighted files as a form of civil disobediance
I suppose I should go read the article.
Re:Who writes these articles? Or am I iggernint?
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Non-Spherical Stars
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· Score: 4, Informative
How is a plasma not a fluid?
because it's plasma!
This exchange is about on par with "How is a liquid not a fluid?" "Because it's a liquid."
"Fluid" is not a state of matter, no one's claiming it's a state of matter, saying plasma can't be a fluid because plasma is the 4th state of matter is a category error. Liquid is the second state of matter. Gas is the third state of matter. Both are fluids.
A fluid is any substance which undergoes continuous deformation when subjected to a shear stress. The problem we're probably having is that the obvious sources for the shear stresses in the couse of, say, water being poured from a cup (normal force of the side of the cup vs gravity) are paralleled for the case of plasma by electromagnetic feilds. It just don't grok intuitively but, plasma behaves like a fluid... ergo, it is a fluid.
I'm now over 40 and still have to think about how to write those checks out - where you have to -write- the amount of the check in cursive;-) weird to think that's the only reason for me to still know cursive.
Actually, you can fill in that block using whatever style of script you like, you just have to write out the names of the numbers. It makes it harder for someone to add a couple zeros or change that 1 into a 7 or what have you. You can type it in Russian (both language and cyrillic script) if you like.
That said, bank tellers usually don't look at it. If there's a mistake made, you're supposed to catch it (that's why they send you the checks back, so you can balance your checkbook.) and what's written out is the final word on the value of the check.
Gasoline that you buy at the pump is a mixture of hydrocarbons from pentanes to dodecanes and is not mostly n-octane.
The Octane Rating of gasoline refers to how the fuel behaves when it combusts as compared to a reference mixture of n-pentane (straight chain) and iso-octane (2,2,4-trimethylpentane, see drawing below). In short, n-pentane burns easily and iso-octane doesn't, and by varying the ratios of each one can get a relatively smooth set of burning behaviours between the two extremes. Gasoline with an octane rating of 93 means it burns like a reference mixture of 93:7::isooctane:n-pentane under given conditions. It also means that the actual content in gasoline changes throughout the course of the year (and for different altitudes) because the way the fuel burns is affected by temperature and pressure. Gasoline that's 93 in winter conditions might be 87 in summer conditions.
Darwin sounds like a blatant racist, which wouldn't really be particularly surprising considering when and where he was living. Of course, Darwinism has very little to do with Darwin, though, so this wouldn't be a problem, even if you hadn't taken these quotes out of context.
It's not a typo. You might be thinking about ribosomes, though, the RNA/enzyme assemblies that translate mRNA into proteins. Ribozymes are catalytic bits of RNA (incidentally, the part of the ribosome that's responsible for forming the peptide bond between the growing protein and the next amino acid is a ribozyme).
Base pairing will cause single stranded RNA to fold back on itself and take a specific conformation, much the same as the properties of different amino acids will give a protein it's ultimate shape and function.
please do not use anti-biotic soap or any of those kinds of products.
Not to imply that the AC made this mistake, but don't confuse "Anti-Bacterial" with "Anti-Biotic". Soap is naturally antibacterial, so having this on the label is right up there with selling water by trumping up the fact that it's wet. BUT, one manufacturer does it, so they all do it... Oh, the best part is that the mechanical action of washing your hands is what does most of the work in sanitizing your hands, soap can actually make you MORE susceptible to illness by removing a variety of products your skin exudes onto its surface to combat infection (membrane lysing ribozymes and the like) and drying the skin.
The main abusers of antibiotics are livestock industries, though, not poorly informed doctors and irresponsible patients. Just about every animal is given astounding amounts of antibiotics but not so much for their disease fighting effects (in fact, certain antibiotic classes have been so abused that there are bacterial strains that can use them as FOOD). Someone noticed that animals given antibiotics gained weight more rapidly and reached a higher average weight overall than similarly treated animals that were not given the antibiotics. At first it was thought "oh, it's just because they're more healthy" but, in fact, the antibiotics themselves were causing the animals to bulk up, as proven by the fact that many of the antibiotics still given to livestock are no longer effective as antibiotics (go go evolution) yet the animals still bring more meat to market in less time.
So, why get upset about argindustrialists overusing admittedly ineffective antibiotics? Because they also do still give the animals doses of currently effective antibiotics... and I don't expect Frank the Farmhand to draw the distinction between the two, so we find abuses of the newer, still effective, antibiotics simply because of the conditioning to overdose the animals.
The thing that bothers me most about the general availability of antibiotics is that, while Carla the Crackwhore is only destroying her life, Henry the Hypochondriac is busily breeding the new strains of this, that, and/or the other that may just spread around the world one day and kill us all. Tuberculosis is already a growing problem. Post operative infection (by antibiotic/antiviral resistant strains, of course) is a major player in hospital deaths these days. It is my opinion that antibiotics should be controlled with handling restrictions silimar to Schedule I, Class A drugs... as they pose a greater threat to more people than heroin ever has.
20 two to three minute shorts... Bet you those will be all over the P2P networks soon enough. Bet you that's exactly what was intended, too.
It's nice to see someone finally tapping into a viral distribution model. Let's hope that they don't suck and the mocking spoofs don't become more popular than the originals.
biological system's don't have free gasses floating around
Exactly. Biological systems have a lot of dissolved gases floating around, thus (if we take the result on face value) we would not expect our bodies to emusify into pinkish goo.
Anyone feel like buying the PhysChemB article for $25 and telling us some of the more useful details (like what the oil was) New Scientist has decided to leave out?
Like... say... Effect of Degassing on the Formation and Stability of Surfactant-Free Emulsions and Fine Teflon Dispersions (Journal of Physical Chemistry B, vol 107, #7, p 1714).
Re:Don't piss in their wheaties!
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NARAS vs. the RIAA
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· Score: 2, Informative
I think the artists (and no I don't mean britney) should take a stand... and forget their old stuff and the souls they sold... and move on and make some great new music they own the rights to... I think the music industry needs to follow the book industry and be publishers, ONLY.
Unfortunately you contracted with your label to deliever 3 albums. So far you've only delivered 2 and thanks to the studio bills from those two (and the dragging of feet in getting you your royalty checks, assuming there's anything left after the double billing) you're too deeply in debt to afford to produce the third in the label approved studios.
Since you haven't produced your third album yet, you can't pick up and produce your own music... you're still under contract, it's still the label's music. If you should do something so improbable as actually turn a profit, they'll probably sue you for breach of contract and take your masters.
In short: signing with a big-name recording label is the end of your music career.
How DRM affects the content of Gnutella or FastTrack depends on how content gets onto those networks in the first place
If a lot of people rip their own content and post it on the networks then making it difficult for the average user to do this could have a significant impact on the content offered on these networks.
If, OTOH, most of the files on the networks have their origins in a small handfull of cracking groups DRM will have no effect. These groups can crack the DRM and post the free versions of the media.
Eventually the media industry groups will realize they will make money and market share by offering a superior user experience and data mining the shit out of their userbase.
If there was a single website/network with the entire RIAA back catalogue available in acceptable quality, clearly labled, easy to find, and easy to use formats (I.E. not proprietary) you could see people flocking to it just for the guarantee that they could find what they were looking for without the hassle of lengthy searches yeilding mislabled mangled tracks and dropped downloads.
They will not be ale to compete by offering inconvenient, limited use, overpriced, restrictive media when someone else is offering the equivalent content in a free format and for a free price. A free format and a low price and a much higher quality user experience and content of a guaranteed level of quality is the only way they will win against the P2P market
they could charge actual cost for the downloads and have the system pay for itself. They could charge the cost of people's conscience (I.E. how much can you charge before the free/illegal option looks more attractive?) and turn a profit on the system alone. But this isn't where you make the money... you make the money on processing all the information about user habits to produce music that you know will be popular.
%PopTart releases an album but only tracks 2 and 5 are being downloaded? Cool, slash your Listening Group budget, and fire your image consultants- you already know what your singles are going to be.
For some strange reason that unpromoted band you signed gets people downloading their tracks in every city they play a concert. Maybe you should put them into heavier rotation nationally?
For some other strange reason this other semi-promoted band is heavily downloaded in Splatsville, IL and Goatshed, WY... maybe we should add those spots to the tour they're planning?
You can sell the service of working the data to the artists and albums. THAT is where the real money comes from... direct 1 of seperation from the buying public and the high quality of trending information possible.
Not that the *AAs will understand any of this. They think of DRM as a way to keep people buying CDs and DVDs.
That's why you have the Player2Player trade/sale abilities
Every time I've gotten a set item I take it to the channel they've got set up for trading set items and say "Hey, I've got a $SET_ITEM, who wants it?"
Better yet, don't even identify it. Sure, you may not be able to get as high a price, but you're guaranteed to have more people interested in buying/trading it.
The P2P trading has resulted in some pretty odd things. I've seen people running "Eastern Imports" and bringing back high quality weapons/armor to resell to newbies in the earlier episodes. Most of the commerce is conducted in gems, though. Waypoint tradings was pretty popular the last time I played (generally either for free or for Town Portal scrolls)
Anyway, there are thousands of people playing D2 and if they didn't do something stupid like sell set items to the NPCs you'd see a lot of folks with full sets.
I seriously doubt the guy has looked at this from all angles or considered how it would be implemented digitally. Some ideas that seem really good on paper break down when you get to the nuts and bolts of how to do it with bits and bytes. Considering the guy's tendency to throw around OTP and, gag, "many-time pad," I don't see a lot of familarity with the way these terms are percieved by the lay crypto.
Still, if he's got that much faith in it, patent it, or write it up and copyright the description (not really ironclad, but it could get a settlement if OmniCorp steals the idea). I think the only reason the guy is asking about rather than just doing it is because he fully expects it to be broken shortly after going public and all the costs of filing a patent going to waste.
Considering he says it's invulnerable to known plaintext attack he could post some plaintext and ciphertext for people to whack at for a while. It might just be security through obscurity if no one breaks it, but it could also illustrate that while he's so busy looking at ways to break the algorithm he's too close to see he's taking the long route around a much more straightforward (and trivial) transform.
Posting ciphertext and plaintext and inviting people to attack it should keep the encryption method safe if it's as secure as he thinks it is. If some reverse engineers the algorithm (or an equivalent) it will show it wasn't worth patenting in the first place (or that it's already been patented).
Re:I want to grow up a Blogger just like you!
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The Weblog Handbook
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· Score: 1
Actually, I would love it if all the grandmas and grandpas out there read this book and start putting their history on the web.
The first webpage I put together in '96 or so was a collection of short stories some friends and I put together. Unfortunately, the stories turned out to be shorter than we expected and after about 5 pages no one had much to add. It sat there for about two years and then I razed the whole site
Then I replaced it with what I suppose would be termed a "notebook" according to this author.
I find the concept of "blogging software" to be abhorrent. I would like it if people actually had to learn HTML before they started burying us all in mindless pap and animated GIFs. Maybe then they wouldn't ever actually do it and the content of the average website would actually be, well, content.
The fact that by random chance I selected a format four years ago that has apparently become popular is interesting. While I find people using software to update every couple of *hour* with pointless entries such as "wow, I just took the biggest shit in my life, here are some pictures" to be as annoying and as sad as the next person, I do find the return to common journaling to be a worthwhile reanimation of a lost literary form.
Blogging is the outlet for the history and culture of the common man. Go find a diary of a civil war soldier or someone living in London during the 1600s or a collection of letters home from kids fighting in Vietnam. It's the same idea in a different medium... and on a massive scale.
I would rather the internet be flooded with mediocre producers (and the few good ones) than have it be turned into just another consumer entertainment outlet dominated by the same members-only ogliarchy that has crushed television, radio, and print down to focus group engineered propaganda.
If we're going to keep the interent free from being dominated by corporate content we will need to accept all the noise that comes with the signal.
Next time you see a blogger, thank them for keeping the 'net that much further from being nothing but a commercial delivery system for preapproved content.
...that Elwyn Berlekamp, 1993 winner of the Shannon Award for advancing information theory and communications science, mumbles so badly that you can barely understand what he's saying half the time.
Re:It's called Punctuated Equilibirum...
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Ready, Steady, Evolve
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I have no real idea when PunkEek got all sexied up and people got the idea that it's evolution occurring in some fundamentally different way from the methods we already know. The "mechanism" that produces punctuated equilibrium is population size.
In a nutshell:
If Organism A has 5 offspring in a population of 100 those offspring represent 5% of the population.
If Organism A has 5 offspring in a population of 1000000 those offspring represent 0.0005% of the population.
Thus, evolution occurs faster in smaller populations.
Not very exciting, is it?
The controversial bit comes from pointing out that the fossil record, while it has great temporal coverage, is rather poor geographically. So, unless we devote ourselves to systematically strip-mining the planet looking for fossils, we will probably never find the small areas where the speciating populations did their thing. We only see the old species, then the appearance of the new species as they migrate in and displace the old. If the small population we'd be interested in had a perverse disregard for future paleontologists and were callous enough to die in areas with conditions that don't produce fossils or inconsiderately chose a site that would be destroyed by erosion before humans could evolve and dig them up, it's quite possible there actually are no "missing link" fossils to be found.
Kinda hard to get grant money for digs when you talk crazy like that, though...
I'm doing the traditional/. thing and not actually reading the article, but I assume it's the old news on heat-shock and chaperone proteins being shown to be a general case.
This isn't "saving up" mutations. This is a system for supressing aberrant mutations breaking down in stressful environments. The True Believers out there would like to phrase this to illustrate the cleverness of natural selection, but this is the failure of a beneficial system leading to a honking buttload of mutants appearing. Nothing more. Yes, throwing a bunch of random solutions at the problem may find an answer and allow a population to continue living in a stressful environment, but it's a bit assuming to try to say the system has evolved to break down in this manner (though it is a rather elegant failure mode).
As for the bombardier beetle...
Hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide, when mixed, turn brown over the course of a couple minutes and won't taste very good. Various beetles besides the Bombardier Beetle use the chemicals, uncatalyzed, merely for the foul taste. Evolution can work in as many steps as it likes increasing the foulness of the taste without any delightful imagery of exploding beetles occurring to anyone.
Of course the page linked to is slow to abandon such delightful imagery so, while it is kind enough to mention that nothing very exciting happens unless you add a catalyst, it likes to give the impression that without that catalyst (or "anti-inhibitor", if you please) the beetles would die a horrible death in the manner of a piece of popcorn, though not quite as tasty.
Let me let you in on another "secret". There can be huge ranges of activity in classes of closely related proteins. This is especially true of the enzymes responsible for catalyzing naturally occuring reactions between simple chemicals. This is a bit of a problem for the Creationist because their idea of the beetles stumbling across a highly efficient enzyme and blowing themselves to bits for generations is very useful. Having them stumble across a weak version that merely made them taste a little worse than their competitors when an attacker mixed the chemicals together is hardly an exciting idea. Nor is it exciting for this weak enzyme to follow the same path of increasing the foulness of the taste that the parahydroxybenzene glands went through.
Of course, once this enzyme reaches a certain level it does get to be dangerous to the beetles. Chance encounters with learning predators that may have only have caused injury become fatal due to the beetles' own defense mechanism (though, because the added foulness of taste deters predation, this is still beneficial to the species, though not to the individual). Any solution is beneficial, as the alternative is death. The apparent winner is to excrete the chemicals, which isn't surprising as some of the other Brachinus species do this without the fun of superheating. Coevolution of improvements to the catalyst and to the ejection system gives us what we have today.
Unfortunately, answering one set of Creationists' call to provide an explanation is met with catcalls of "just-so-story!" from another set. It's really best to ignore them as a group... which, hey, is what I'll be doing.
Previously, as I understood, there were small primordial black holes formed very early on in the universe (supernovae concussion wave resonnance and all that fun stuff) and then there were large black holes formed by stars above the Chandrasekhar limit (I.E. there's a lower limit on how small the black holes can be.).
The reason these are exciting is because they're too small to be formed by the normal gravitational collapse of a supermassive star, yet larger than we'd expect primordial black holes to be... and it's a bit flippant to just say they're primordial holes that have eaten a lot.
That's just my semi-educated guess on the matter... the article seems to assume the readers already know why we hadn't previously found any black holes of this size.
Usually when you see DNA evidence presented in a case they'll run the samples collected at the scene, the suspect's samples, and a variety of samples from other folks. Then they pick the one that most closely matches (I.E. the suspect's). It's the same basic idea of the line-up only using genetics.
However, this isn't how the database will be used. Some random crime occurs, they "fingerprint" every biological sample they can find at the scene, run it through the database, and go "okay, these people came up, go bring 'em in." Depending on the "fingerprinting" method they're using they're basically flirting with "Bible Code" style false positives. Why should you be harrassed just because some other guys DNA fragments into similar sized chunks as yours? Should the police have to do some, y'know, police work before they come knocking on your door?
DNA evidence used as a pointer to guilt is basically in the same position testing the alloy composition of bullets was in. Everyone assumes it's a good indicator, but it's never been tested for accuracy. When someone finally got around to doing a large scale survey of bulley alloys guess what? It was shown to be absolutely worthless at either indicating or eliminating a given pair of bullets as coming from the same pouring lot.
That is one difference, though. Genetic evidence is very effective at eliminating suspects provided you have good samples. But this databse is to be used to FIND suspects... the effacy of which has never been demonstrated.
Since the unnatural contortions and stresses that lead to carpal tunnel seem to stem from typing while resting your wrists in front of the keyboard the absurdly simple solution would be, hey, don't do that.
I've often pondered how it happened that I've managed to use a computer continuously for the past decade without developing CTS while I've had friends have to quit after three years in similar jobs.
The answer? I had shitty computer furniture early on. It was too small. I hated the fucking thing. But, because the keyboard was forced right up to the edge of the desk, I got in the habit of hovering over the keyboard rather than resting my wrists in front of it.
Now, even though I could get a good four inches of desk in front of the keyboard, I still have my hands floating above the table top as I type. Plus, I suppose I get some small amount of exercise by supporting the weight of my arms... heh.
I am not a doctor, o' course, so don' go tryin' this jus' cuz I sez it works fer me.
I play my MP3s on an old computer.
It's not unusual for the thing to slog along at 30-35% CPU capacity doing nothing but running Winamp.
Vorbis jumps that load up to 70%.
Xiph took issues with the monitoring software and asked that I re-run the test using Winamp's diskwriter and gauging processing overhead by how long it took to write the files.
The MP3 took 18 seconds.
The Vorbis took 45 seconds.
Granted, on a faster processor these differences are less significant.
Granted, on new processors with extended command sets these differences might not exist at all.
Granted, newer, streamlined versions of the Ogg Vorbis decoder will improve their standing.
Despite the fact that I agree that Vorbis sounds better than MP3 at a comparative bitrate, I will not be re-encoding or encoding future rips to Ogg Vorbis. At least not until it doesn't try to eat my computer.
The track was Deep Forest - Second Twilight, 1m24s in length. The file was encoding using the default drop-in settings of LAMEv3.92 and OggDropXPd V1.1(20020719). The MP3 was 1.332MB the Ogg was 1.157MB. The computer has 128MBpc133, 200MHz AMD K6, and runs WinXP Pro (and runs it quite well, if you're curious). Winamp v2.81 with the default MP3 and Ogg decoders was used. The disk writing test was run three times with no uneccessary tasks running (I.E. just Winamp, folks).
Slashdot Mirror
What's the boiling point of one molecule of water?
if not for the hydrogen bonds between adjacent H2O molecules, water would have a much lower boiling point than is observed. A single molecule of H2O would have no hydrogen bonding. Perhaps it's boiling point would be in line with the rest of the H2_ series (The BP of H2S is about -60C, for example). Thus, because it does not have all the physical properties, an H2O molecule is not the same as a water molecule. In fact, we don't get the behaviour of water until we take into account what comes into play when multiple H2O molecules collide. And that's just totally ignoring the whole issue about observers interacting with the systems they observe.
BUT, experimentally determining the boiling point of a single molecules of H2O (heating a fluorocarbon emulsion?) and determining that the boiling point of one molecule of H2O is -83C doesn't change the bulk properties of the water we all know and love. Likewise, determining under very specific experiental conditions that water gives the appearance of being H1.5O is just as uninteresting.
Oh, and for all the people scoffing at the image of half a proton... What, exactly, does a whole proton look like? Perhaps this will help give you some ideas.
I personally read it as two thirds thatdon't give the issue any thought and another third that has some strong opinions on the subject. The other third either try to trade unencumbered media, or think copyright is a distorted shadow of it's original intent, and trade copyrighted files as a form of civil disobediance
I suppose I should go read the article.
This exchange is about on par with "How is a liquid not a fluid?" "Because it's a liquid."
"Fluid" is not a state of matter, no one's claiming it's a state of matter, saying plasma can't be a fluid because plasma is the 4th state of matter is a category error. Liquid is the second state of matter. Gas is the third state of matter. Both are fluids.
A fluid is any substance which undergoes continuous deformation when subjected to a shear stress. The problem we're probably having is that the obvious sources for the shear stresses in the couse of, say, water being poured from a cup (normal force of the side of the cup vs gravity) are paralleled for the case of plasma by electromagnetic feilds. It just don't grok intuitively but, plasma behaves like a fluid... ergo, it is a fluid.
Actually, you can fill in that block using whatever style of script you like, you just have to write out the names of the numbers. It makes it harder for someone to add a couple zeros or change that 1 into a 7 or what have you. You can type it in Russian (both language and cyrillic script) if you like.
That said, bank tellers usually don't look at it. If there's a mistake made, you're supposed to catch it (that's why they send you the checks back, so you can balance your checkbook.) and what's written out is the final word on the value of the check.
Gasoline that you buy at the pump is a mixture of hydrocarbons from pentanes to dodecanes and is not mostly n-octane.
The Octane Rating of gasoline refers to how the fuel behaves when it combusts as compared to a reference mixture of n-pentane (straight chain) and iso-octane (2,2,4-trimethylpentane, see drawing below). In short, n-pentane burns easily and iso-octane doesn't, and by varying the ratios of each one can get a relatively smooth set of burning behaviours between the two extremes. Gasoline with an octane rating of 93 means it burns like a reference mixture of 93:7::isooctane:n-pentane under given conditions. It also means that the actual content in gasoline changes throughout the course of the year (and for different altitudes) because the way the fuel burns is affected by temperature and pressure. Gasoline that's 93 in winter conditions might be 87 in summer conditions.
Darwin sounds like a blatant racist, which wouldn't really be particularly surprising considering when and where he was living. Of course, Darwinism has very little to do with Darwin, though, so this wouldn't be a problem, even if you hadn't taken these quotes out of context.
It's not a typo. You might be thinking about ribosomes, though, the RNA/enzyme assemblies that translate mRNA into proteins. Ribozymes are catalytic bits of RNA (incidentally, the part of the ribosome that's responsible for forming the peptide bond between the growing protein and the next amino acid is a ribozyme).
Base pairing will cause single stranded RNA to fold back on itself and take a specific conformation, much the same as the properties of different amino acids will give a protein it's ultimate shape and function.
Fun Fact: An aircraft carrier has the 7th largest air force in the world.
Not to imply that the AC made this mistake, but don't confuse "Anti-Bacterial" with "Anti-Biotic". Soap is naturally antibacterial, so having this on the label is right up there with selling water by trumping up the fact that it's wet. BUT, one manufacturer does it, so they all do it...
Oh, the best part is that the mechanical action of washing your hands is what does most of the work in sanitizing your hands, soap can actually make you MORE susceptible to illness by removing a variety of products your skin exudes onto its surface to combat infection (membrane lysing ribozymes and the like) and drying the skin.
The main abusers of antibiotics are livestock industries, though, not poorly informed doctors and irresponsible patients. Just about every animal is given astounding amounts of antibiotics but not so much for their disease fighting effects (in fact, certain antibiotic classes have been so abused that there are bacterial strains that can use them as FOOD). Someone noticed that animals given antibiotics gained weight more rapidly and reached a higher average weight overall than similarly treated animals that were not given the antibiotics. At first it was thought "oh, it's just because they're more healthy" but, in fact, the antibiotics themselves were causing the animals to bulk up, as proven by the fact that many of the antibiotics still given to livestock are no longer effective as antibiotics (go go evolution) yet the animals still bring more meat to market in less time.
So, why get upset about argindustrialists overusing admittedly ineffective antibiotics? Because they also do still give the animals doses of currently effective antibiotics... and I don't expect Frank the Farmhand to draw the distinction between the two, so we find abuses of the newer, still effective, antibiotics simply because of the conditioning to overdose the animals.
The thing that bothers me most about the general availability of antibiotics is that, while Carla the Crackwhore is only destroying her life, Henry the Hypochondriac is busily breeding the new strains of this, that, and/or the other that may just spread around the world one day and kill us all. Tuberculosis is already a growing problem. Post operative infection (by antibiotic/antiviral resistant strains, of course) is a major player in hospital deaths these days. It is my opinion that antibiotics should be controlled with handling restrictions silimar to Schedule I, Class A drugs... as they pose a greater threat to more people than heroin ever has.
I'm sure they could make a really good version of Pong...
20 two to three minute shorts...
Bet you those will be all over the P2P networks soon enough.
Bet you that's exactly what was intended, too.
It's nice to see someone finally tapping into a viral distribution model. Let's hope that they don't suck and the mocking spoofs don't become more popular than the originals.
Exactly. Biological systems have a lot of dissolved gases floating around, thus (if we take the result on face value) we would not expect our bodies to emusify into pinkish goo.
Anyone feel like buying the PhysChemB article for $25 and telling us some of the more useful details (like what the oil was) New Scientist has decided to leave out?
Like... say...
Effect of Degassing on the Formation and Stability of Surfactant-Free Emulsions and Fine Teflon Dispersions
(Journal of Physical Chemistry B, vol 107, #7, p 1714).
Unfortunately you contracted with your label to deliever 3 albums. So far you've only delivered 2 and thanks to the studio bills from those two (and the dragging of feet in getting you your royalty checks, assuming there's anything left after the double billing) you're too deeply in debt to afford to produce the third in the label approved studios.
Since you haven't produced your third album yet, you can't pick up and produce your own music... you're still under contract, it's still the label's music. If you should do something so improbable as actually turn a profit, they'll probably sue you for breach of contract and take your masters.
In short: signing with a big-name recording label is the end of your music career.
How DRM affects the content of Gnutella or FastTrack depends on how content gets onto those networks in the first place
If a lot of people rip their own content and post it on the networks then making it difficult for the average user to do this could have a significant impact on the content offered on these networks.
If, OTOH, most of the files on the networks have their origins in a small handfull of cracking groups DRM will have no effect. These groups can crack the DRM and post the free versions of the media.
Eventually the media industry groups will realize they will make money and market share by offering a superior user experience and data mining the shit out of their userbase.
If there was a single website/network with the entire RIAA back catalogue available in acceptable quality, clearly labled, easy to find, and easy to use formats (I.E. not proprietary) you could see people flocking to it just for the guarantee that they could find what they were looking for without the hassle of lengthy searches yeilding mislabled mangled tracks and dropped downloads.
They will not be ale to compete by offering inconvenient, limited use, overpriced, restrictive media when someone else is offering the equivalent content in a free format and for a free price. A free format and a low price and a much higher quality user experience and content of a guaranteed level of quality is the only way they will win against the P2P market
they could charge actual cost for the downloads and have the system pay for itself. They could charge the cost of people's conscience (I.E. how much can you charge before the free/illegal option looks more attractive?) and turn a profit on the system alone. But this isn't where you make the money... you make the money on processing all the information about user habits to produce music that you know will be popular.
%PopTart releases an album but only tracks 2 and 5 are being downloaded? Cool, slash your Listening Group budget, and fire your image consultants- you already know what your singles are going to be.
For some strange reason that unpromoted band you signed gets people downloading their tracks in every city they play a concert. Maybe you should put them into heavier rotation nationally?
For some other strange reason this other semi-promoted band is heavily downloaded in Splatsville, IL and Goatshed, WY... maybe we should add those spots to the tour they're planning?
You can sell the service of working the data to the artists and albums. THAT is where the real money comes from... direct 1 of seperation from the buying public and the high quality of trending information possible.
Not that the *AAs will understand any of this. They think of DRM as a way to keep people buying CDs and DVDs.
That's why you have the Player2Player trade/sale abilities
Every time I've gotten a set item I take it to the channel they've got set up for trading set items and say "Hey, I've got a $SET_ITEM, who wants it?"
Better yet, don't even identify it. Sure, you may not be able to get as high a price, but you're guaranteed to have more people interested in buying/trading it.
The P2P trading has resulted in some pretty odd things. I've seen people running "Eastern Imports" and bringing back high quality weapons/armor to resell to newbies in the earlier episodes. Most of the commerce is conducted in gems, though. Waypoint tradings was pretty popular the last time I played (generally either for free or for Town Portal scrolls)
Anyway, there are thousands of people playing D2 and if they didn't do something stupid like sell set items to the NPCs you'd see a lot of folks with full sets.
Indeed.
I seriously doubt the guy has looked at this from all angles or considered how it would be implemented digitally. Some ideas that seem really good on paper break down when you get to the nuts and bolts of how to do it with bits and bytes. Considering the guy's tendency to throw around OTP and, gag, "many-time pad," I don't see a lot of familarity with the way these terms are percieved by the lay crypto.
Still, if he's got that much faith in it, patent it, or write it up and copyright the description (not really ironclad, but it could get a settlement if OmniCorp steals the idea). I think the only reason the guy is asking about rather than just doing it is because he fully expects it to be broken shortly after going public and all the costs of filing a patent going to waste.
Considering he says it's invulnerable to known plaintext attack he could post some plaintext and ciphertext for people to whack at for a while. It might just be security through obscurity if no one breaks it, but it could also illustrate that while he's so busy looking at ways to break the algorithm he's too close to see he's taking the long route around a much more straightforward (and trivial) transform.
Posting ciphertext and plaintext and inviting people to attack it should keep the encryption method safe if it's as secure as he thinks it is. If some reverse engineers the algorithm (or an equivalent) it will show it wasn't worth patenting in the first place (or that it's already been patented).
Actually, I would love it if all the grandmas and grandpas out there read this book and start putting their history on the web.
The first webpage I put together in '96 or so was a collection of short stories some friends and I put together. Unfortunately, the stories turned out to be shorter than we expected and after about 5 pages no one had much to add. It sat there for about two years and then I razed the whole site
Then I replaced it with what I suppose would be termed a "notebook" according to this author.
I find the concept of "blogging software" to be abhorrent. I would like it if people actually had to learn HTML before they started burying us all in mindless pap and animated GIFs. Maybe then they wouldn't ever actually do it and the content of the average website would actually be, well, content.
The fact that by random chance I selected a format four years ago that has apparently become popular is interesting. While I find people using software to update every couple of *hour* with pointless entries such as "wow, I just took the biggest shit in my life, here are some pictures" to be as annoying and as sad as the next person, I do find the return to common journaling to be a worthwhile reanimation of a lost literary form.
Blogging is the outlet for the history and culture of the common man. Go find a diary of a civil war soldier or someone living in London during the 1600s or a collection of letters home from kids fighting in Vietnam. It's the same idea in a different medium... and on a massive scale.
I would rather the internet be flooded with mediocre producers (and the few good ones) than have it be turned into just another consumer entertainment outlet dominated by the same members-only ogliarchy that has crushed television, radio, and print down to focus group engineered propaganda.
If we're going to keep the interent free from being dominated by corporate content we will need to accept all the noise that comes with the signal.
Next time you see a blogger, thank them for keeping the 'net that much further from being nothing but a commercial delivery system for preapproved content.
Then break their fingers.
...that Elwyn Berlekamp, 1993 winner of the Shannon Award for advancing information theory and communications science, mumbles so badly that you can barely understand what he's saying half the time.
I have no real idea when PunkEek got all sexied up and people got the idea that it's evolution occurring in some fundamentally different way from the methods we already know. The "mechanism" that produces punctuated equilibrium is population size.
In a nutshell:
If Organism A has 5 offspring in a population of 100 those offspring represent 5% of the population.
If Organism A has 5 offspring in a population of 1000000 those offspring represent 0.0005% of the population.
Thus, evolution occurs faster in smaller populations.
Not very exciting, is it?
The controversial bit comes from pointing out that the fossil record, while it has great temporal coverage, is rather poor geographically. So, unless we devote ourselves to systematically strip-mining the planet looking for fossils, we will probably never find the small areas where the speciating populations did their thing. We only see the old species, then the appearance of the new species as they migrate in and displace the old. If the small population we'd be interested in had a perverse disregard for future paleontologists and were callous enough to die in areas with conditions that don't produce fossils or inconsiderately chose a site that would be destroyed by erosion before humans could evolve and dig them up, it's quite possible there actually are no "missing link" fossils to be found.
Kinda hard to get grant money for digs when you talk crazy like that, though...
I'm doing the traditional /. thing and not actually reading the article, but I assume it's the old news on heat-shock and chaperone proteins being shown to be a general case.
This isn't "saving up" mutations. This is a system for supressing aberrant mutations breaking down in stressful environments. The True Believers out there would like to phrase this to illustrate the cleverness of natural selection, but this is the failure of a beneficial system leading to a honking buttload of mutants appearing. Nothing more. Yes, throwing a bunch of random solutions at the problem may find an answer and allow a population to continue living in a stressful environment, but it's a bit assuming to try to say the system has evolved to break down in this manner (though it is a rather elegant failure mode).
As for the bombardier beetle...
Hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide, when mixed, turn brown over the course of a couple minutes and won't taste very good. Various beetles besides the Bombardier Beetle use the chemicals, uncatalyzed, merely for the foul taste. Evolution can work in as many steps as it likes increasing the foulness of the taste without any delightful imagery of exploding beetles occurring to anyone.
Of course the page linked to is slow to abandon such delightful imagery so, while it is kind enough to mention that nothing very exciting happens unless you add a catalyst, it likes to give the impression that without that catalyst (or "anti-inhibitor", if you please) the beetles would die a horrible death in the manner of a piece of popcorn, though not quite as tasty.
Let me let you in on another "secret". There can be huge ranges of activity in classes of closely related proteins. This is especially true of the enzymes responsible for catalyzing naturally occuring reactions between simple chemicals. This is a bit of a problem for the Creationist because their idea of the beetles stumbling across a highly efficient enzyme and blowing themselves to bits for generations is very useful. Having them stumble across a weak version that merely made them taste a little worse than their competitors when an attacker mixed the chemicals together is hardly an exciting idea. Nor is it exciting for this weak enzyme to follow the same path of increasing the foulness of the taste that the parahydroxybenzene glands went through.
Of course, once this enzyme reaches a certain level it does get to be dangerous to the beetles. Chance encounters with learning predators that may have only have caused injury become fatal due to the beetles' own defense mechanism (though, because the added foulness of taste deters predation, this is still beneficial to the species, though not to the individual). Any solution is beneficial, as the alternative is death. The apparent winner is to excrete the chemicals, which isn't surprising as some of the other Brachinus species do this without the fun of superheating. Coevolution of improvements to the catalyst and to the ejection system gives us what we have today.
Unfortunately, answering one set of Creationists' call to provide an explanation is met with catcalls of "just-so-story!" from another set. It's really best to ignore them as a group... which, hey, is what I'll be doing.
Granted my physics is a tad rusty..
Previously, as I understood, there were small primordial black holes formed very early on in the universe (supernovae concussion wave resonnance and all that fun stuff) and then there were large black holes formed by stars above the Chandrasekhar limit (I.E. there's a lower limit on how small the black holes can be.).
The reason these are exciting is because they're too small to be formed by the normal gravitational collapse of a supermassive star, yet larger than we'd expect primordial black holes to be... and it's a bit flippant to just say they're primordial holes that have eaten a lot.
That's just my semi-educated guess on the matter... the article seems to assume the readers already know why we hadn't previously found any black holes of this size.
...is fishing.
Usually when you see DNA evidence presented in a case they'll run the samples collected at the scene, the suspect's samples, and a variety of samples from other folks. Then they pick the one that most closely matches (I.E. the suspect's). It's the same basic idea of the line-up only using genetics.
However, this isn't how the database will be used. Some random crime occurs, they "fingerprint" every biological sample they can find at the scene, run it through the database, and go "okay, these people came up, go bring 'em in." Depending on the "fingerprinting" method they're using they're basically flirting with "Bible Code" style false positives. Why should you be harrassed just because some other guys DNA fragments into similar sized chunks as yours? Should the police have to do some, y'know, police work before they come knocking on your door?
DNA evidence used as a pointer to guilt is basically in the same position testing the alloy composition of bullets was in. Everyone assumes it's a good indicator, but it's never been tested for accuracy. When someone finally got around to doing a large scale survey of bulley alloys guess what? It was shown to be absolutely worthless at either indicating or eliminating a given pair of bullets as coming from the same pouring lot.
That is one difference, though. Genetic evidence is very effective at eliminating suspects provided you have good samples. But this databse is to be used to FIND suspects... the effacy of which has never been demonstrated.
Since the unnatural contortions and stresses that lead to carpal tunnel seem to stem from typing while resting your wrists in front of the keyboard the absurdly simple solution would be, hey, don't do that.
I've often pondered how it happened that I've managed to use a computer continuously for the past decade without developing CTS while I've had friends have to quit after three years in similar jobs.
The answer? I had shitty computer furniture early on. It was too small. I hated the fucking thing. But, because the keyboard was forced right up to the edge of the desk, I got in the habit of hovering over the keyboard rather than resting my wrists in front of it.
Now, even though I could get a good four inches of desk in front of the keyboard, I still have my hands floating above the table top as I type. Plus, I suppose I get some small amount of exercise by supporting the weight of my arms... heh.
I am not a doctor, o' course, so don' go tryin' this jus' cuz I sez it works fer me.
I play my MP3s on an old computer.
It's not unusual for the thing to slog along at 30-35% CPU capacity doing nothing but running Winamp.
Vorbis jumps that load up to 70%.
Xiph took issues with the monitoring software and asked that I re-run the test using Winamp's diskwriter and gauging processing overhead by how long it took to write the files.
The MP3 took 18 seconds.
The Vorbis took 45 seconds.
Granted, on a faster processor these differences are less significant.
Granted, on new processors with extended command sets these differences might not exist at all.
Granted, newer, streamlined versions of the Ogg Vorbis decoder will improve their standing.
Despite the fact that I agree that Vorbis sounds better than MP3 at a comparative bitrate, I will not be re-encoding or encoding future rips to Ogg Vorbis. At least not until it doesn't try to eat my computer.
The track was Deep Forest - Second Twilight, 1m24s in length. The file was encoding using the default drop-in settings of LAMEv3.92 and OggDropXPd V1.1(20020719). The MP3 was 1.332MB the Ogg was 1.157MB. The computer has 128MBpc133, 200MHz AMD K6, and runs WinXP Pro (and runs it quite well, if you're curious). Winamp v2.81 with the default MP3 and Ogg decoders was used. The disk writing test was run three times with no uneccessary tasks running (I.E. just Winamp, folks).