Yes, the original pre-biotic soup of life likely contained a bunch of RNA/DNA pre-cursor nucleotides as well as amino acids, sugars and who knows what else. I'm sure many different self-replicating molecules competed for these pre-cursors but according to the RNA-World hypothesis, RNA was able to out-compete other strategies (RNA it turns out does a halfway decent job of storing genetic information as well as catalyzing reactions). The theory goes that RNA eventually became the dominate self-replicating molecule and at some point these RNA molecules shifted the responsibility of storing genetic data to DNA (which is more stable and less prone to replication errors) and shifted enzymatic activity to proteins. I find this hypothesis fairly elegant as this kind of evolution explains RNA's current function in modern cells - as an intermediary between DNA and proteins. Also, that ribosomes still use RNA (rRNA) for enzymatic assembly of proteins with the help of tRNA to fetch the amino acids and mRNA to carry the genetic information from the DNA to the ribosomes. RNA's central role in the creation of proteins seems to imply it had the initial role of genetic storage and enzymes before it outsourced it to DNA and proteins.
I am sure there are plenty of instances since modern cells became prevalent of abiotic formation of complex molecules but they serve as nothing but a snack for modern bacteria.
Remember, love in heterosexual couples is nothing more than an evolutionary solution to ensure both parents help raise offspring (homosexual love likely fills other needed species-survival rolls). I think it would be quite simple for that solution to be fooled into allowing someone to feel quite similarly for a machine.
As an example of _tricking_ (at least partially so) our evolved instincts, my wife and I are unable to have children but our two dogs seem to have somewhat relieved us of that desire.
When I was 8 and my dad brought home that Apple II, I played a few games on it but I also quickly learned Apple Basic. After some time, I could write code that was at least in the same ballpark as the comercially available software.
Today you teach a kid to program, they just don't get the same thrill from the computer printing "Hello, World!!" because look at what they are judging their programs against: Quake.
I am thinking between the ages of 6 to 10, I'm not going to let my kid know there is anything out there any better than that old C64 I've got laying around.
Well, what trait is being selected for? In the US, the most determining factor in reproduction rates seem to be social status, not anything genetic (ugly people have children too.. that's where more ugly people come from). The lower you are on the social ladder, the more children you are likely to have.
Since people can live to reproductive ages and find a mate virtually regaurdless of health, it does seem that biological evolution has stopped for us, or at least it is no longer giving us better genetic tools for survival.
You are right, we are changing but unlike before we developed empathy for other humans, those changes aren't really directing us anywhere... almost everyone is equally fit, at least in regards to being able to procrerate.
Today's doctors are little more than pushers... someone goes in and at the advice of a 30 sec commercial and asks their Doctor about $MIND_ALTERING_DRUG and the doctor just hands them some samples and offers them a prescription.
Perhaps I'm old school but I feel that the brain is far too complicated and too little is known to be messing around with in these minor cases.. the best prescription for 90% of today's problems is something we've been taking for a long, long time.. 300 mgs of Suck It the Hell Up.
I'm sure that helps but lets look at Venus, 4.9E24 Kg (slightly lighter than Earth), surface temp of almost 500 deg C and air pressure of 90 atm.
It seems to me that the reason some planets have an atmosphere and others don't is simply the availability of volitiles such as CH4, CO2, N2, O2, NH3, etc.
If Venus and Titan can both support such thick atmospheres, I don't see why the Moon can't.
It doesn't take a lot of gravity to hold an atmosphere in place. Look at Titan, it has a mass of only 1.35E23 Kg (compared to Earth's 5.98E24 Kg) and atmosphereic pressure of 1.6 bar. The moon has a mass of 7.35E22 so surely it could support a breathable atmosphere (say 0.5 bar).
I know that a lot of people believe complete bullshit, but is that really a problem? Who cares if some schmuck things that magnets will cure their athelete's foot or whatnot? It's good (if unscrupulous) business.:)
Well, in a democracy citizens are the ultimate policy makers (at least in theory) and since the government funds a great deal of scientific research, I think it is important that people understand the scientific method so that when they hear about the government funding research for something that is contradictory to what they were told by the Discovery Channel, they don't get in a hissy fit about it. I can't think of any obvious examples off the top of my head (I'm not a scientist) but I imagine Darwin would have has a hard time getting public funding for his research with the day's pseudo-science ingrained in everybody's head. ("Why would we pay for you to investigate the origin of the species when the Bible clearly states how it happened")
I could care less about what the nuts, errr true believers, think. They are a self-propigating fringe society and take the X-Files way too seriously. We will never be able to convince them they are wrong just like an atheist can't convince a Christian their wrong (not saying they are, just saying they can't be convinced).
What scares me is the people out there who don't understand how science works seing these *documentaries* on big foot, loch ness, aliens or whatever (This is why I boycott the Discovery Channel).
I has a conversation a few months ago with one my wife's friends. I would consider her an intelligent person but then she warned me that when Galileo crashes into Jupiter, there is a slight chance that the radioactive fuel will turn Jupiter into a second sun. I didn't know what to say, I was at a complete loss of words. I tried to explain that the energy from the impact would be miniscule compare to other impacts in Jupiter's history but she was convinced that it had something to due with the nuclear fuel. I was too drunk at the time to explain fusion to her.
I believe she said she saw this on some mainstream television show.
We either need more emphasis on the scientific method in schools or we need to enforece these documentaries to have a disclaimer that all content is considered BS by the mainstream scientific community.
As I understand it, any peice of hardware that doesn't recognize the broadcast flag will receive a down-res'ed signal. I am sure this will make for a market in line filters that you place between the source and the recorder that tells the source that the recorder supports the broadcast flag... and then come the FBI raids.
I'm NAUI master diver certified. I'm taking cavern and intro to cave now through TDI/NSS-CDS. Off to Florida next week to do my cave dives.
I considered doing the SDI DM program back in November but my wife told me I couldn't do both DM and the cave classes.
Once I finish intro, I'm really going to be spending the $$$. I just got a DUI a few months ago and now I'm going to have to build a set of doubles and get an HID canister light - ouch!!
Right now I'm a programmer but I am also an avid scuba diver. I wish I had the courage to quit my job and open up a dive operation in Akumal or somewhere similar.
"...would add as much as seven years to prison sentences handed out to anyone committing fraud through a Web site registered under a false name or contact in formation. And it would permit copyright owners to seek larger monetary damages from people who falsify their registration information to run Web sites that distribute copyrighted material without permission."
In other words, you can fake your WHOIS information as long is your website isn't used to commit fraud or distribute copyrighted material. As long as it's being used for legal purposes, use any name or e-mail you want.
Now, here is the absurdity: do we have a law that requires poeple holding up 7-11's not to wear masks or leave their driver's license with the clerk?
It would be nice if there was some measure of consistency in legislation and punishment between online crimes and offline crimes.
I've been very happy with DirecTV over Comcast cable. We have very few outtages (I can only recall 1 or 2 in the past year) and the picture doesn't break up as much as it seems to with digital cable. The DirecTV Tivo though is the deciding factor. For $100 + $5/mo you can get a 35 hour Tivo with 2 recievers from Hughes. This allows you to record 2 channels at the same time. Now, there are limitations to the DirecTV Tivo - it will not work with anything but DirecTV and it seems to be stuck at version 3.x (no Home Media Option).
Also, a DirecTV HDTV Tivo is about to be released (for about $1000).
If my PGP key has a hundred signatures, that doesn't make me a nice guy and it doesn't mean that I don't write software with Comet Cursor like features. All it means is that I am who I say I am. If Osama bin Laden or John Ashcroft came into my house and asked me to sign their key, I would but that doesn't mean I would trust software written by either of them.
Not quite well-formed XML, every time I messed with an Excel 2000 document in HTML form, I had to run it though HTML Tidy to clean it up so that it could be parsed by an XML parser.
Mars would never have a blue sky regardless of the dust content! Earth's blue sky is due to the thickness and composition of the atmosphere (different gasses at different pressures scatter light in different ways). Since Mars' extremely thin atmosphere is primarily CO2, it will not appear blue as ours does.
He did not count the startup time of the JVM (or IL, etc)!! He used timming statements around the benchmarks to get the run time so the startup penalty of the server switch was ignored. Running it without the -server option would have slowed down the non-startup time of the program significantly.
Science has always been trimming away at the domains of philosophy and religon (Zeus isn't throwing lightning bolts anymore). It seems likely that we will have a Theory of Everything within the next few hundred years and the bulk of questions religon and philosophy try to asnwer will be hammered down to a single equation. Much of our perception of our place in the world comes from our personal understanding of the mysical universe. If the NY Times printed the TOE tomorrow, how do you feel this will effect the common man's view of [Gg]od, the universe and his place within it?
I use a box of Crayola water-based markers and a 6 year old for all of my color printing needs but I still have the same problem that many of my ink-jet friends have: when a popular color runs out (usually red or blue), I'm forced to run to the drug store and but a whole 'nother set.
I've heard about some marker refills but they'll probably be shut down as soon as Crayola starts putting chips in the markers.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, the original pre-biotic soup of life likely contained a bunch of RNA/DNA pre-cursor nucleotides as well as amino acids, sugars and who knows what else. I'm sure many different self-replicating molecules competed for these pre-cursors but according to the RNA-World hypothesis, RNA was able to out-compete other strategies (RNA it turns out does a halfway decent job of storing genetic information as well as catalyzing reactions). The theory goes that RNA eventually became the dominate self-replicating molecule and at some point these RNA molecules shifted the responsibility of storing genetic data to DNA (which is more stable and less prone to replication errors) and shifted enzymatic activity to proteins. I find this hypothesis fairly elegant as this kind of evolution explains RNA's current function in modern cells - as an intermediary between DNA and proteins. Also, that ribosomes still use RNA (rRNA) for enzymatic assembly of proteins with the help of tRNA to fetch the amino acids and mRNA to carry the genetic information from the DNA to the ribosomes. RNA's central role in the creation of proteins seems to imply it had the initial role of genetic storage and enzymes before it outsourced it to DNA and proteins.
I am sure there are plenty of instances since modern cells became prevalent of abiotic formation of complex molecules but they serve as nothing but a snack for modern bacteria.
Remember, love in heterosexual couples is nothing more than an evolutionary solution to ensure both parents help raise offspring (homosexual love likely fills other needed species-survival rolls). I think it would be quite simple for that solution to be fooled into allowing someone to feel quite similarly for a machine.
As an example of _tricking_ (at least partially so) our evolved instincts, my wife and I are unable to have children but our two dogs seem to have somewhat relieved us of that desire.
When I was 8 and my dad brought home that Apple II, I played a few games on it but I also quickly learned Apple Basic. After some time, I could write code that was at least in the same ballpark as the comercially available software.
Today you teach a kid to program, they just don't get the same thrill from the computer printing "Hello, World!!" because look at what they are judging their programs against: Quake.
I am thinking between the ages of 6 to 10, I'm not going to let my kid know there is anything out there any better than that old C64 I've got laying around.
I don't think anyone is currently infringing on that.
Well, what trait is being selected for? In the US, the most determining factor in reproduction rates seem to be social status, not anything genetic (ugly people have children too.. that's where more ugly people come from). The lower you are on the social ladder, the more children you are likely to have.
Since people can live to reproductive ages and find a mate virtually regaurdless of health, it does seem that biological evolution has stopped for us, or at least it is no longer giving us better genetic tools for survival.
You are right, we are changing but unlike before we developed empathy for other humans, those changes aren't really directing us anywhere... almost everyone is equally fit, at least in regards to being able to procrerate.
Today's doctors are little more than pushers... someone goes in and at the advice of a 30 sec commercial and asks their Doctor about $MIND_ALTERING_DRUG and the doctor just hands them some samples and offers them a prescription.
Perhaps I'm old school but I feel that the brain is far too complicated and too little is known to be messing around with in these minor cases.. the best prescription for 90% of today's problems is something we've been taking for a long, long time.. 300 mgs of Suck It the Hell Up.
Does anyone have a mirror for dealsite.net, it seems to be slashdotted?
I'm sure that helps but lets look at Venus, 4.9E24 Kg (slightly lighter than Earth), surface temp of almost 500 deg C and air pressure of 90 atm.
It seems to me that the reason some planets have an atmosphere and others don't is simply the availability of volitiles such as CH4, CO2, N2, O2, NH3, etc.
If Venus and Titan can both support such thick atmospheres, I don't see why the Moon can't.
It doesn't take a lot of gravity to hold an atmosphere in place. Look at Titan, it has a mass of only 1.35E23 Kg (compared to Earth's 5.98E24 Kg) and atmosphereic pressure of 1.6 bar. The moon has a mass of 7.35E22 so surely it could support a breathable atmosphere (say 0.5 bar).
Well, in a democracy citizens are the ultimate policy makers (at least in theory) and since the government funds a great deal of scientific research, I think it is important that people understand the scientific method so that when they hear about the government funding research for something that is contradictory to what they were told by the Discovery Channel, they don't get in a hissy fit about it. I can't think of any obvious examples off the top of my head (I'm not a scientist) but I imagine Darwin would have has a hard time getting public funding for his research with the day's pseudo-science ingrained in everybody's head. ("Why would we pay for you to investigate the origin of the species when the Bible clearly states how it happened")
I could care less about what the nuts, errr true believers, think. They are a self-propigating fringe society and take the X-Files way too seriously. We will never be able to convince them they are wrong just like an atheist can't convince a Christian their wrong (not saying they are, just saying they can't be convinced).
What scares me is the people out there who don't understand how science works seing these *documentaries* on big foot, loch ness, aliens or whatever (This is why I boycott the Discovery Channel).
I has a conversation a few months ago with one my wife's friends. I would consider her an intelligent person but then she warned me that when Galileo crashes into Jupiter, there is a slight chance that the radioactive fuel will turn Jupiter into a second sun. I didn't know what to say, I was at a complete loss of words. I tried to explain that the energy from the impact would be miniscule compare to other impacts in Jupiter's history but she was convinced that it had something to due with the nuclear fuel. I was too drunk at the time to explain fusion to her.
I believe she said she saw this on some mainstream television show.
We either need more emphasis on the scientific method in schools or we need to enforece these documentaries to have a disclaimer that all content is considered BS by the mainstream scientific community.
As I understand it, any peice of hardware that doesn't recognize the broadcast flag will receive a down-res'ed signal. I am sure this will make for a market in line filters that you place between the source and the recorder that tells the source that the recorder supports the broadcast flag... and then come the FBI raids.
I'm NAUI master diver certified. I'm taking cavern and intro to cave now through TDI/NSS-CDS. Off to Florida next week to do my cave dives.
I considered doing the SDI DM program back in November but my wife told me I couldn't do both DM and the cave classes.
Once I finish intro, I'm really going to be spending the $$$. I just got a DUI a few months ago and now I'm going to have to build a set of doubles and get an HID canister light - ouch!!
Right now I'm a programmer but I am also an avid scuba diver. I wish I had the courage to quit my job and open up a dive operation in Akumal or somewhere similar.
Do they have broadband in Akumal?
"...would add as much as seven years to prison sentences handed out to anyone committing fraud through a Web site registered under a false name or contact in formation. And it would permit copyright owners to seek larger monetary damages from people who falsify their registration information to run Web sites that distribute copyrighted material without permission."
In other words, you can fake your WHOIS information as long is your website isn't used to commit fraud or distribute copyrighted material. As long as it's being used for legal purposes, use any name or e-mail you want.
Now, here is the absurdity: do we have a law that requires poeple holding up 7-11's not to wear masks or leave their driver's license with the clerk?
It would be nice if there was some measure of consistency in legislation and punishment between online crimes and offline crimes.
I've been very happy with DirecTV over Comcast cable. We have very few outtages (I can only recall 1 or 2 in the past year) and the picture doesn't break up as much as it seems to with digital cable. The DirecTV Tivo though is the deciding factor. For $100 + $5/mo you can get a 35 hour Tivo with 2 recievers from Hughes. This allows you to record 2 channels at the same time. Now, there are limitations to the DirecTV Tivo - it will not work with anything but DirecTV and it seems to be stuck at version 3.x (no Home Media Option).
Also, a DirecTV HDTV Tivo is about to be released (for about $1000).
If my PGP key has a hundred signatures, that doesn't make me a nice guy and it doesn't mean that I don't write software with Comet Cursor like features. All it means is that I am who I say I am. If Osama bin Laden or John Ashcroft came into my house and asked me to sign their key, I would but that doesn't mean I would trust software written by either of them.
Not quite well-formed XML, every time I messed with an Excel 2000 document in HTML form, I had to run it though HTML Tidy to clean it up so that it could be parsed by an XML parser.
Mars would never have a blue sky regardless of the dust content! Earth's blue sky is due to the thickness and composition of the atmosphere (different gasses at different pressures scatter light in different ways). Since Mars' extremely thin atmosphere is primarily CO2, it will not appear blue as ours does.
He did not count the startup time of the JVM (or IL, etc)!! He used timming statements around the benchmarks to get the run time so the startup penalty of the server switch was ignored. Running it without the -server option would have slowed down the non-startup time of the program significantly.
Science has always been trimming away at the domains of philosophy and religon (Zeus isn't throwing lightning bolts anymore). It seems likely that we will have a Theory of Everything within the next few hundred years and the bulk of questions religon and philosophy try to asnwer will be hammered down to a single equation. Much of our perception of our place in the world comes from our personal understanding of the mysical universe. If the NY Times printed the TOE tomorrow, how do you feel this will effect the common man's view of [Gg]od, the universe and his place within it?
In conclusion, basically every art form corprate America touches turns to widely available shit.
Wow, that was obscure but no, I didn't read my comics :)
I use a box of Crayola water-based markers and a 6 year old for all of my color printing needs but I still have the same problem that many of my ink-jet friends have: when a popular color runs out (usually red or blue), I'm forced to run to the drug store and but a whole 'nother set.
I've heard about some marker refills but they'll probably be shut down as soon as Crayola starts putting chips in the markers.
Wouldn't it be simpler if humans only had 2 fingers instead of 10. Hell, that's how many I type with anyway.