Hmmm sorry, missed that. However, it is a government contract, and the entire article (including quotes of researchers and the people defending the research in Geneva) are about defense and terrorism ramifications.
While I'm a little more at ease that this isn't yet a military project, I still think we have absolutely no business doing this kind of research. Genetic Engineering is a very young science, and I don't think we can honestly claim to understand it well enough to insure that no horrible accidents occur.
I don't think this research here is *certainly* going to wreck global havoc, but it's a possibility.
At least read the first sentence of the article before you accuse me of not knowing what I'm talking about:
"A scientist funded by the US government has deliberately created an extremely deadly form of mousepox, a relative of the smallpox virus, through genetic engineering."
This was a defense contract.
This is a growing trend in corporate business. During industrial times companies were named after their primary product or, occasionally, the name of the founder.
General Motors, International Business Machines, etc. etc.
Now that corporations are increasingly involved in the amorphous "business" of owning each other and outsourcing, they'd rather people NOT know who they are. So brands are given memorable descriptive names, but the names of the financial entities behind them are designed to slide off the memory. Altria, Worldcom, etc.
Frankly I find this all very scary. The current nightmare future of corporations replacing governments doesn't have any Gibson-like overtness to it. People won't swear allegiance to Coca-Cola or fight for the Microsoft army. Rather the entities with all the power in the world will gradually become more and more vague and more and more distant from the popular conciousness. And not as the result of some sinsiter conspiracy, but rather the natural result of market trends.
Don't worry folks, viruses never mutate. There's no chance that a non-contageous virus could become airborne or bloodborne, and there's absolutely no way it could start affecting people. The fact that the US military has created a vaccine proof superbug with a 100% kill rate shouldn't bother anyone.
$7000 TV...
Lets suppose you make $30 / hour
That's 233 hours of work you could have skipped, almost 6 weeks.
Frankly I'd take the time off, go fishing, read some books, and paint.
I love how everyone is jumping on Apple for having a numbering scheme that actually makes sense.
Much like how the Linux Kernel is still on 2.x after 13 years of work, Apple recognizes that the first digit should only be for major changes in the basic functionality of the product, and since the BSD core of X is pretty solid, don't expect OS 11 any time soon. There are a lot of apps out there that never really should have left 1.x.
Their . releases are like major windows upgrades (at least 95 to 98 scale)
However, it would be nice if there were an upgrade priced package.
"E-mail users said spam is just as annoying as telemarketing calls... The things that irked people were myriad: spam's unsolicited nature... The report is based on a randomized, national phone survey of 2,200 adults."
Perhaps not a dollar value, but certainly an acceptable utility tradeoff.
For instance, statistics clearly show that increasing speed limits causes more accidents to happen. From your perspective as a driver, you don't have to think about it this way, but from your state governments' perspective the connection is pretty clear "If we raise limits by this much, this many more people will die in our state every year"
If every human life were infinitely precious they'd never do it.
But there's a dollar value to that speed limit increase too. Business does better, and the effective radius for an urban center increases. The state stands to gain thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in taxes from new business and new suburbs.
So a balance is struck.
Second off, most things we fight wars over have a dollar value as well.
In Iraq our aims were security and the establishment of open trade (don't believe anyone's BS about it being a humanitarian war: according to every single source other than our government - on the whole we've done nothing but hurt the humanitarian cause there, and there are far more pressing humanitarian causes elsewhere) thus far the cost has been a few hundred billion dollars, 150 or so American lives and a few thousand Iraqi lives (and diplomatic capitol, hard to calculate)
I don't know the dollar value of US trade interests in Iraq (though I imagine it is quite large) and the security benefits have been somewhat ambiguous, but the loss of life was a calculated expenditure nonetheless.
It's monstrous, somehow, to think of spending a specific life for something that has a dollar value, but it is quite commonplace to spend lives in the abstract. This of course makes little difference to the very real people whose abstract lives are being spent.
I'm reminded of a Winston Churchill joke: "Madame, would you sleep with me if I could offer you a million pounds?" "Well, I have to say I probably would." "How about five pounds then?" "SIR! What kind of woman do you think I am!?!" "We already established what kind of woman you are; now we're just negotiating."
"...replace nuclear power as the main hope for renewable energy"
nuclear power, as it exists and as it will exist for some time to come is anything but renewable. it relies upon a very scarce consumable resource (uranium) and leaves a very problematic waste.
the current "main hope for renewable energy" is wind, which according to a lot of estimates could be powering the whole world, if we were set up right, and could definitely power the whole world with reasonable cuts in use and increases in efficiency.
this looks like a way to replace small batteries, which are mainly problematic due to disposal problems.
This sort of thing confirms my suspicions about piracy of "professional" software. Companies like Adobe and Macromedia seem to barely care that their software is widely pirated, and that the free trial versions they give out get cracked on or before the first day of release.
Most of their sales come from companies, who buy dozens or hundreds of on-sight licenses, piracy amounts to free training and advertising for them, since every amateur graphic designer teaches him or herself photoshop and director, they demand the software when they start work for a firm.
Speaking of physics research, I have a 1950s era Eico Oscilloscope (model 460) hooked up to the stereo that's hooked up to my computer.
Soooo much cooler than winamp pluggins.
I agree, I'll quote one of my all time favorite philosophers, Calvin's Dad (from Calvin & Hobbes)
"If we wanted more free time, we'd make devices that did things more slowly"
Frankly, the prospect of leading a lifestyle that requires this level of access to information terrifies me. It pisses me off enough that I can't get any of my friends to write me a letter, even more that, because everyone I know now relies on cell phones, I have to have one too.
I find technology to be expensive, time-consuming, and impersonal. I try to only use what I actually need.
PCs are still a bit better... if you go top-of-the-line. Though at that point, you're paying more for your graphics card alone than you would for an X Box & game, which is pretty darn silly if you think about it.
The biggest problem with hydrogen is that it has to be produced. There isn't a whole lot of hydrogen gas floating around in easily-harvestable form, it has to be created, typically from water by electrolysis. Creating hydrogen this way requires energy, and that means you need some other form of energy.
Hydrogen makes sense for cars. Since Hydrogen can be much more efficiently burned on the small scale than gasoline, it is economical to produce hydrogen with more efficient large-scale coal or oil reactors and then burn that locally. This is more efficient than most battery solutions, which have the same problem.
However, the idea of hydrogen being used as an electricity generation method is a little silly.
In my humble opinion digital "film" looks like crap. If you want to go cheap use 8mm. Digital film looks like video, oddly flat and the motion seems to be happening at a slightly wrong pace. It isn't an issue of resolution. It's probably an issue of color depth, and I don't really know anything about shutter speeds and aperatures or whatever else might be having an effect. All I know is that watching movies shot on digital is a distinctly uncomfortable experience.
It does, but pictures need captions, videos typically have stories.
For instance video one (seen in USA: tons of peasants tearing down statue of Saddam)
video two (seen elsewhere, about 50 peasants in the middle of an empty square, blocked off by US tanks, being supervised by US military, using US equipment ot tear down statue of Saddam)
two videos of the same event telling dramatically different stories. it's a shame that the major media outlets in the US are doing such a terrible job, but I don't think a better alternative is to let the COPS watching public do our newscoverage.
I read the article, and I don't think that informal aggregates can gain the safeguards of structured systems just by imposing an afterthought of regulation.
Slashdot is a good example. It's a fun and interesting alternative source, but if I had to chose between it and the Washington Post as my only source of info (and thank god I don't) I wouldn't keep Slashdot.
Peer-reviewal only works when I trust my peers' integrity. On the internet, I really don't.
So Journalism becomes aggregated rumor and mobthought? Thanks but no thanks.
While there are certainly problems with current Journalism (see New York Times, and the rush for all networks to become like Fox News in the wake of Iraq) I still like knowing where my news comes from and having some entity to hold responsible for the coverage.
Individual testimonials and stories have their place too, but the people on the street have their own axes to grind as much as the media does and do not as frequently distinguish between fact and rumor. (How many idiots on the internet will scream "Bush is a Coke-Head" or "Clinton had people murdered!" like it's gospel)
Journalism is in enough trouble with corporate consolidation and deregulation, but this is too much.
I'll tell you who doesn't love the Model-M...
my college roommate, poor bastard has the head of his bed right next to my desk. i'm not an ass about it, but sometimes he tries to sleep until 2:00 and i've got work to do.
click click click click... last i checked they were $5 on ebay. I love this beast.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm sorry, missed that. However, it is a government contract, and the entire article (including quotes of researchers and the people defending the research in Geneva) are about defense and terrorism ramifications.
While I'm a little more at ease that this isn't yet a military project, I still think we have absolutely no business doing this kind of research. Genetic Engineering is a very young science, and I don't think we can honestly claim to understand it well enough to insure that no horrible accidents occur.
I don't think this research here is *certainly* going to wreck global havoc, but it's a possibility.
At least read the first sentence of the article before you accuse me of not knowing what I'm talking about: "A scientist funded by the US government has deliberately created an extremely deadly form of mousepox, a relative of the smallpox virus, through genetic engineering." This was a defense contract.
This is a growing trend in corporate business. During industrial times companies were named after their primary product or, occasionally, the name of the founder.
General Motors, International Business Machines, etc. etc.
Now that corporations are increasingly involved in the amorphous "business" of owning each other and outsourcing, they'd rather people NOT know who they are. So brands are given memorable descriptive names, but the names of the financial entities behind them are designed to slide off the memory. Altria, Worldcom, etc.
Frankly I find this all very scary. The current nightmare future of corporations replacing governments doesn't have any Gibson-like overtness to it. People won't swear allegiance to Coca-Cola or fight for the Microsoft army. Rather the entities with all the power in the world will gradually become more and more vague and more and more distant from the popular conciousness. And not as the result of some sinsiter conspiracy, but rather the natural result of market trends.
Don't worry folks, viruses never mutate. There's no chance that a non-contageous virus could become airborne or bloodborne, and there's absolutely no way it could start affecting people. The fact that the US military has created a vaccine proof superbug with a 100% kill rate shouldn't bother anyone.
upgrade from X.2 to X.3 should be cheaper than from 9 to X.3 or for an X.3 license with a new computer. i paid full price for X.2 a year ago.
$7000 TV... Lets suppose you make $30 / hour That's 233 hours of work you could have skipped, almost 6 weeks. Frankly I'd take the time off, go fishing, read some books, and paint.
I love how everyone is jumping on Apple for having a numbering scheme that actually makes sense. Much like how the Linux Kernel is still on 2.x after 13 years of work, Apple recognizes that the first digit should only be for major changes in the basic functionality of the product, and since the BSD core of X is pretty solid, don't expect OS 11 any time soon. There are a lot of apps out there that never really should have left 1.x. Their . releases are like major windows upgrades (at least 95 to 98 scale) However, it would be nice if there were an upgrade priced package.
Also in regards to the sampling method:
"E-mail users said spam is just as annoying as telemarketing calls... The things that irked people were myriad: spam's unsolicited nature... The report is based on a randomized, national phone survey of 2,200 adults."
This is the funniest thing I've read in ages.
If these things do get used in an election, and somone DOES hack them to demonstrate weakness, please do so in an unambiguous way.
Give a nonexistant candidate more votes than the state has citizens.
Perhaps not a dollar value, but certainly an acceptable utility tradeoff.
For instance, statistics clearly show that increasing speed limits causes more accidents to happen. From your perspective as a driver, you don't have to think about it this way, but from your state governments' perspective the connection is pretty clear "If we raise limits by this much, this many more people will die in our state every year"
If every human life were infinitely precious they'd never do it.
But there's a dollar value to that speed limit increase too. Business does better, and the effective radius for an urban center increases. The state stands to gain thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in taxes from new business and new suburbs.
So a balance is struck.
Second off, most things we fight wars over have a dollar value as well.
In Iraq our aims were security and the establishment of open trade (don't believe anyone's BS about it being a humanitarian war: according to every single source other than our government - on the whole we've done nothing but hurt the humanitarian cause there, and there are far more pressing humanitarian causes elsewhere) thus far the cost has been a few hundred billion dollars, 150 or so American lives and a few thousand Iraqi lives (and diplomatic capitol, hard to calculate)
I don't know the dollar value of US trade interests in Iraq (though I imagine it is quite large) and the security benefits have been somewhat ambiguous, but the loss of life was a calculated expenditure nonetheless.
It's monstrous, somehow, to think of spending a specific life for something that has a dollar value, but it is quite commonplace to spend lives in the abstract. This of course makes little difference to the very real people whose abstract lives are being spent.
I'm reminded of a Winston Churchill joke:
"Madame, would you sleep with me if I could offer you a million pounds?"
"Well, I have to say I probably would."
"How about five pounds then?"
"SIR! What kind of woman do you think I am!?!"
"We already established what kind of woman you are; now we're just negotiating."
Everyone and everything has their price.
Yeah, MAME boxes are a proud tradition, and there's a lot of interesting ones out there.
Too bad, really. Since this is apparently the "ultimate" MAME cabinet, there won't be any more.
"...replace nuclear power as the main hope for renewable energy"
nuclear power, as it exists and as it will exist for some time to come is anything but renewable. it relies upon a very scarce consumable resource (uranium) and leaves a very problematic waste.
the current "main hope for renewable energy" is wind, which according to a lot of estimates could be powering the whole world, if we were set up right, and could definitely power the whole world with reasonable cuts in use and increases in efficiency.
this looks like a way to replace small batteries, which are mainly problematic due to disposal problems.
This sort of thing confirms my suspicions about piracy of "professional" software. Companies like Adobe and Macromedia seem to barely care that their software is widely pirated, and that the free trial versions they give out get cracked on or before the first day of release. Most of their sales come from companies, who buy dozens or hundreds of on-sight licenses, piracy amounts to free training and advertising for them, since every amateur graphic designer teaches him or herself photoshop and director, they demand the software when they start work for a firm.
Speaking of physics research, I have a 1950s era Eico Oscilloscope (model 460) hooked up to the stereo that's hooked up to my computer. Soooo much cooler than winamp pluggins.
I agree, I'll quote one of my all time favorite philosophers, Calvin's Dad (from Calvin & Hobbes)
"If we wanted more free time, we'd make devices that did things more slowly"
Frankly, the prospect of leading a lifestyle that requires this level of access to information terrifies me. It pisses me off enough that I can't get any of my friends to write me a letter, even more that, because everyone I know now relies on cell phones, I have to have one too.
I find technology to be expensive, time-consuming, and impersonal. I try to only use what I actually need.
Maybe you don't generate a lot of macademia nut shells, but the macademia nut industry (who is providing the shells, if you read the article) does.
Or maybe you really like macademia nuts, I don't know.
PCs are still a bit better... if you go top-of-the-line. Though at that point, you're paying more for your graphics card alone than you would for an X Box & game, which is pretty darn silly if you think about it.
The biggest problem with hydrogen is that it has to be produced. There isn't a whole lot of hydrogen gas floating around in easily-harvestable form, it has to be created, typically from water by electrolysis. Creating hydrogen this way requires energy, and that means you need some other form of energy.
Hydrogen makes sense for cars. Since Hydrogen can be much more efficiently burned on the small scale than gasoline, it is economical to produce hydrogen with more efficient large-scale coal or oil reactors and then burn that locally. This is more efficient than most battery solutions, which have the same problem.
However, the idea of hydrogen being used as an electricity generation method is a little silly.
In my humble opinion digital "film" looks like crap. If you want to go cheap use 8mm. Digital film looks like video, oddly flat and the motion seems to be happening at a slightly wrong pace. It isn't an issue of resolution. It's probably an issue of color depth, and I don't really know anything about shutter speeds and aperatures or whatever else might be having an effect. All I know is that watching movies shot on digital is a distinctly uncomfortable experience.
Well see, this time the PalmPilot is sent by the good guys from the future and he's trying to SAVE Sarah Conner, but yeah, it's basically the same.
It does, but pictures need captions, videos typically have stories. For instance video one (seen in USA: tons of peasants tearing down statue of Saddam) video two (seen elsewhere, about 50 peasants in the middle of an empty square, blocked off by US tanks, being supervised by US military, using US equipment ot tear down statue of Saddam) two videos of the same event telling dramatically different stories. it's a shame that the major media outlets in the US are doing such a terrible job, but I don't think a better alternative is to let the COPS watching public do our newscoverage.
I read the article, and I don't think that informal aggregates can gain the safeguards of structured systems just by imposing an afterthought of regulation. Slashdot is a good example. It's a fun and interesting alternative source, but if I had to chose between it and the Washington Post as my only source of info (and thank god I don't) I wouldn't keep Slashdot. Peer-reviewal only works when I trust my peers' integrity. On the internet, I really don't.
So Journalism becomes aggregated rumor and mobthought? Thanks but no thanks.
While there are certainly problems with current Journalism (see New York Times, and the rush for all networks to become like Fox News in the wake of Iraq) I still like knowing where my news comes from and having some entity to hold responsible for the coverage.
Individual testimonials and stories have their place too, but the people on the street have their own axes to grind as much as the media does and do not as frequently distinguish between fact and rumor. (How many idiots on the internet will scream "Bush is a Coke-Head" or "Clinton had people murdered!" like it's gospel)
Journalism is in enough trouble with corporate consolidation and deregulation, but this is too much.
Writing messages?
Back in *my* day, we sang our messages in heroic epic, down through the generations. Kids today have no memory...
I'll tell you who doesn't love the Model-M... my college roommate, poor bastard has the head of his bed right next to my desk. i'm not an ass about it, but sometimes he tries to sleep until 2:00 and i've got work to do. click click click click... last i checked they were $5 on ebay. I love this beast.