Didn't mean to come down too hard on you, I just thought it was quite a funny misspelling given the context. But for me, bad spelling sticks out like a sore thumb.
At least some people (fewer than we'd all like) can put it down to the fact that they think faster than they can type.
This was a real quote from Dave Fester, the AC just changed all references of Apple and iTunes to Linux. Try searching google for "you get faster starts"...
Use the right frequency of laser or microwave, and clouds needn't be much of a problem. Come to think of it, if the thing (or part of it) were tunable, it could probably be used to make clouds disappear... And birds... And airplanes... And ICBMs...:)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but does this probe not have to reach the moon by spiralling out from the earth? If this is the case, then the actual distance that it will have travelled would be hugely greater than the "as the crow flies" distance. It's not as if you can just point the probe at the moon and give it a push, these orbit changes are pretty awkward.
...what if there was a big software vote, and everybody had to use the winners system. Then would you vote beos, or would you vote for the only candidate at the time that stands a chance
No, I would still vote with my conscience and vote for the candidate which I most agreed with, regardless of the likelihood of winning. When I vote for an MP whom I know has no chance of winning, it makes it easier to think of the MP who will get in and know that at least I put some thought into it and voted for a decent candidate.
I felt the looters were JUSTIFIED in taking from the government buildings and Ba'ath party members. That government STOLE from the people
That's not true, the looters were only stealing from themselves. In most cases, they were only knocking off the civic infrastructure (stealing computers from banks, medicine and machines from hospitals). They decimated the entire country in a way the coalition (read: America) could only dream about. So, now they are left with a country that has not got a hope in hell of functioning on it's own now.
The sad part is: who do you think they are going to have to buy all the replacements from?
If AMD plans to bring it's desktop hammer chip out later this year, I assume that it also plans a mobile version. Does it have a timeframe for this yet?
I have been entertaining the idea of replacing my desktop with a laptop for a while now but have also been lusting after the advance reports of the hammer line. As my current desktop is a non-DDR 1 Gig Athlon, just about any laptop around today could probably knock my socks off; However the battery times on the current generation counts against them.
I appeal to anyone with knowledge in this department: would the mobile hammer suck up even more power than the current gen? (I also have a reluctance to try explaining third degree burns on my balls to the doctors in casualty)
Virii are typically species specific. Each virus works by targetting specific cells (HIV targets certain cells in the human immune system). Like a key in a lock, a virus will have no effect on a different cell type in the same body or in a different species.
Without a potential cell type, the virus will be harmless. Thus, in the case of this DNA computer, as it does not use cells only the DNA, any virus will have no effect.
As our technological prowess advances, so does capitalism. Just look at western society. As technology has progressed, capitalism has become more powerful and damaging (the current business with the RIAA or Enron for instance)
According to Karl Marx though, once this reached a certain point, then people would revold and impose a new social model. This new model would, by definition, be more mature and grown-up and brought about to some extent by the progress in technology. It would not be unreasonable to assume that this same rule might apply to alien civilisations. This would pretty much mean that by the time an alien race made contact with us, they would be a lot more mature, peaceful and above all, less motivated by the greed typical of capitalism.
While it may not be possible - at least for a while - to dump a load of new neurones into the brain; to extend working memory or to enhance cognitive processing abilities for instance. It may be easier - again for the moment - to use the new neurones to join silicon chips to regions of the brain. This could be a simpler - if cruder - way around the problem. It would also probably be on a much finer scale than the current generation of cachlear implants, which are relatively clunky and cumbersome.
It would be nice to think that we could be directly plugged into a phone or a tv or a computer without the (sometimes) inconvenience of our eyes and ears. Or that we could, a la the matrix have information downloaded into our personal cranial RAM available for instant access.
I seem to remember a story about a newly discovered plastic-like material which was not unlike cotton wool. It's remarkable property was that, when a stem-cell/nutrient solution was added, the new cells would grow around the outside of the fibres. In one demonstration, the material was pressed into the shape of a human ear, and cartilage cells were added. In a few days, the cells had grown into a new ear, and the fibre scaffold had dissolved. I think many people remember the image of a mouse with an ear growing out of it's back.
This is probably not new news to most people, but I wonder how many people knew that the same thing had been done with nerve cells. An experiment (sorry, no names or other pertinant details spring to mind at the moment) with mice showed that nerve cells can be regrown in-situ, and that further more, the new nerve cells actually connect themselves to existing cells.
In the experiment, the took some mice and severed their spinal cords by removing 1cm of nerve cells. Then, they filled the gap with this fiber soaked in the nerve cell solution. Several days later, the mice had a rudimentary spinal cord and limited use of their hind legs. I don't know about anyone else, but this sort of thing makes me really optimistic about the future of medical science.
I guess that the debris in earth's ring(s) would have orbited the planet for a while. Then most of it would have either fallen back to earth, some maybe headed off to the moon and some would have shot off into space.
I remember reading an article about this aeroplane a few months ago, and I seem to remember it saying that the plane would not be expected to fly commercially for at least another ten years or so. I think that the designers of this plane expected such setbacks; And that is why they are saying it will be ten years before it will be ready. With such a complicated and (excluding the not-very-similar Concorde) unprecedented peice of technology, there is a little more to it than just building the damn thing and watching it fly.
Is it just me, or can anyone else see us turning into the aliens in Independence Day? Going from planet to planet, using up all the natural resources before moving on.
The problem with research into cloning and other related subjects is, I think, that people have some sort of difficulty with the concept of "what nature intended". An example: genetically altering an embryo to be resistant to smallpox is "playing god" and we have "no right to interfere with nature in such a way". However, virtually NOBODY complained when we vaccinated people against smallpox. Exactly the same result (people stopped catching smallpox), but different methods. Nature intended nothing more or less than survival of the fittest. In that respect, vaccinating someone is just as unnatural as altering a few genes. We started "interfering" with nature the day we started trying to treat the sick and wounded, which was thousands of years ago when we still lived in caves, so I think the genie is well and truly out of the bottle.
I never really understood the American attitude to communism. I mean, I can sort of get that american society is founded on the deeply ingrained belief in individualism and the pursuit-of-wealth thing. And I can see that they would think any ideology which would try to take their hard earned money away from them and give it to the "less fortunate" (the workshy bastards) would be evil. But I find it hard to understand how americans seem to come to this, obviously well considered, conclusion despite having virtually no experience or first-hand knowledge of any other system apart from capitalism.
No, it means that you should do your best not to be influenced by other people's second, third or fourth hand opinions and actually try and form your own opinions based on facts. I think you comparison between China and Nazi Germany underlines your misunderstanding of Chinese culture and politics.
Granted, China is not perfect, but critisizing China for being overly harsh in dealing with anti-government protesters is not as easy as a lot of people would like to think. I think that even in "free and enlightened" countries (America for instance), if the government felt threatened by someone, it would be pretty effective in dealing with them. The process might be different that is all, but the ultimate result would be similar (no more dissenting voice), don't underestimate capitalist societies' ability for survival.
Forgive me, I must have fallen asleep during sociology at university, but how exactly are communism and democracy mutually exclusive? Surely communism (Marxism) is the highest form of democracy, ie. the rule of the people by the people, without the need for a "state".
Launching it into space is a good idea, you just need to put the uranium, or whatever, in some kind of protective capsule. That way, if the shuttle blows up, the capsule will simply fall to earth intact. Then someone just needs to go and fetch it and launch it again.
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't mean to come down too hard on you, I just thought it was quite a funny misspelling given the context. But for me, bad spelling sticks out like a sore thumb.
At least some people (fewer than we'd all like) can put it down to the fact that they think faster than they can type.
This spelling thing on slashdot is getting beyond a joke. Now we can't even spell geek for god's sake.
Bonus points for correct use of apostrophe though.
*Jaw drops at ceaseless wonders*
This was a real quote from Dave Fester, the AC just changed all references of Apple and iTunes to Linux. Try searching google for "you get faster starts"...
Use the right frequency of laser or microwave, and clouds needn't be much of a problem. Come to think of it, if the thing (or part of it) were tunable, it could probably be used to make clouds disappear... And birds... And airplanes... And ICBMs... :)
... and countries who don't pay their "taxes".
Correct me if I'm wrong, but does this probe not have to reach the moon by spiralling out from the earth? If this is the case, then the actual distance that it will have travelled would be hugely greater than the "as the crow flies" distance. It's not as if you can just point the probe at the moon and give it a push, these orbit changes are pretty awkward.
No, I would still vote with my conscience and vote for the candidate which I most agreed with, regardless of the likelihood of winning. When I vote for an MP whom I know has no chance of winning, it makes it easier to think of the MP who will get in and know that at least I put some thought into it and voted for a decent candidate.
freedom fighter == terrorist
I felt the looters were JUSTIFIED in taking from the government buildings and Ba'ath party members. That government STOLE from the people
That's not true, the looters were only stealing from themselves. In most cases, they were only knocking off the civic infrastructure (stealing computers from banks, medicine and machines from hospitals). They decimated the entire country in a way the coalition (read: America) could only dream about. So, now they are left with a country that has not got a hope in hell of functioning on it's own now.
The sad part is: who do you think they are going to have to buy all the replacements from?
It's a big deal, yes, but not one that we can do much about right now
Just because you cant "solve" the problem by invading, does not, for one moment, mean that there is nothing you can do.
You wouldn't be saying that if you were sitting at the top of mount everest right now.
If AMD plans to bring it's desktop hammer chip out later this year, I assume that it also plans a mobile version. Does it have a timeframe for this yet?
I have been entertaining the idea of replacing my desktop with a laptop for a while now but have also been lusting after the advance reports of the hammer line. As my current desktop is a non-DDR 1 Gig Athlon, just about any laptop around today could probably knock my socks off; However the battery times on the current generation counts against them.
I appeal to anyone with knowledge in this department: would the mobile hammer suck up even more power than the current gen? (I also have a reluctance to try explaining third degree burns on my balls to the doctors in casualty)
Virii are typically species specific. Each virus works by targetting specific cells (HIV targets certain cells in the human immune system). Like a key in a lock, a virus will have no effect on a different cell type in the same body or in a different species.
Without a potential cell type, the virus will be harmless. Thus, in the case of this DNA computer, as it does not use cells only the DNA, any virus will have no effect.
So obviously, I is not a collage gradiate.
;)
No shit!
According to Karl Marx though, once this reached a certain point, then people would revold and impose a new social model. This new model would, by definition, be more mature and grown-up and brought about to some extent by the progress in technology. It would not be unreasonable to assume that this same rule might apply to alien civilisations. This would pretty much mean that by the time an alien race made contact with us, they would be a lot more mature, peaceful and above all, less motivated by the greed typical of capitalism.
It would be nice to think that we could be directly plugged into a phone or a tv or a computer without the (sometimes) inconvenience of our eyes and ears. Or that we could, a la the matrix have information downloaded into our personal cranial RAM available for instant access.
This is probably not new news to most people, but I wonder how many people knew that the same thing had been done with nerve cells. An experiment (sorry, no names or other pertinant details spring to mind at the moment) with mice showed that nerve cells can be regrown in-situ, and that further more, the new nerve cells actually connect themselves to existing cells.
In the experiment, the took some mice and severed their spinal cords by removing 1cm of nerve cells. Then, they filled the gap with this fiber soaked in the nerve cell solution. Several days later, the mice had a rudimentary spinal cord and limited use of their hind legs. I don't know about anyone else, but this sort of thing makes me really optimistic about the future of medical science.
I guess that the debris in earth's ring(s) would have orbited the planet for a while. Then most of it would have either fallen back to earth, some maybe headed off to the moon and some would have shot off into space.
I remember reading an article about this aeroplane a few months ago, and I seem to remember it saying that the plane would not be expected to fly commercially for at least another ten years or so. I think that the designers of this plane expected such setbacks; And that is why they are saying it will be ten years before it will be ready. With such a complicated and (excluding the not-very-similar Concorde) unprecedented peice of technology, there is a little more to it than just building the damn thing and watching it fly.
Is it just me, or can anyone else see us turning into the aliens in Independence Day? Going from planet to planet, using up all the natural resources before moving on.
The problem with research into cloning and other related subjects is, I think, that people have some sort of difficulty with the concept of "what nature intended". An example: genetically altering an embryo to be resistant to smallpox is "playing god" and we have "no right to interfere with nature in such a way". However, virtually NOBODY complained when we vaccinated people against smallpox. Exactly the same result (people stopped catching smallpox), but different methods. Nature intended nothing more or less than survival of the fittest. In that respect, vaccinating someone is just as unnatural as altering a few genes. We started "interfering" with nature the day we started trying to treat the sick and wounded, which was thousands of years ago when we still lived in caves, so I think the genie is well and truly out of the bottle.
I never really understood the American attitude to communism. I mean, I can sort of get that american society is founded on the deeply ingrained belief in individualism and the pursuit-of-wealth thing. And I can see that they would think any ideology which would try to take their hard earned money away from them and give it to the "less fortunate" (the workshy bastards) would be evil. But I find it hard to understand how americans seem to come to this, obviously well considered, conclusion despite having virtually no experience or first-hand knowledge of any other system apart from capitalism.
No, it means that you should do your best not to be influenced by other people's second, third or fourth hand opinions and actually try and form your own opinions based on facts. I think you comparison between China and Nazi Germany underlines your misunderstanding of Chinese culture and politics.
Granted, China is not perfect, but critisizing China for being overly harsh in dealing with anti-government protesters is not as easy as a lot of people would like to think. I think that even in "free and enlightened" countries (America for instance), if the government felt threatened by someone, it would be pretty effective in dealing with them. The process might be different that is all, but the ultimate result would be similar (no more dissenting voice), don't underestimate capitalist societies' ability for survival.
Forgive me, I must have fallen asleep during sociology at university, but how exactly are communism and democracy mutually exclusive? Surely communism (Marxism) is the highest form of democracy, ie. the rule of the people by the people, without the need for a "state".
Launching it into space is a good idea, you just need to put the uranium, or whatever, in some kind of protective capsule. That way, if the shuttle blows up, the capsule will simply fall to earth intact. Then someone just needs to go and fetch it and launch it again.