Good point, it's just that it's hard for me to bring myself to install anything that says "unstable" to a productivity machine...
And yes, apt does make updating a snap, it's one of the best features of Debian, IMHO. But installing a more recent relase is even easier. Now, I'm not putting down Debian, I love the OS. I just wish they updated a bit more frequently than about once every two years. Debian's great, I just want more of it!
I have to second the sentiment about still being on a year old release. I recently inhereited a computer from a guy that was leaving, and I wanted to set up Linux on it. I had had many good experiences with Debian in the past, but the thought of getting 3.0 installed, then updating EVERYTHING was a little more than I wanted. That's the only reason I don't have Debian on this machine right now. Oh well, they've been averaging about 1 release every 1.5-2 years.
Granted the install is a bit lengthy, but maintaining it is a breeze, and when I was using it it was rock-solid in every way. The only thing it didn't handle too well was when the CPU fan froze up...
I have a child, an infant, born days ago. If I were to leave it alone for a day, it would surely die of hypothermia or hunger. This is a huge inconvienience to me. If I were to abandon it to its fate, that would be criminal. The question, then, becomes this: When the child is born, you are most certainly responsible for it. If you allow it to die through negligence, you have committed murder. At the instant prior to conception, it is most certainly not alive, and you can "kill" (for lack of a better word) it with a condom, nonoxynyl-9(sp?) or the rythm method, without so much as a guilty conscience.
At some time between those two points, it becomes alive and has rights. The debate, IMO, is about where that point is. Is it birth? Conception? Implantation? Morula? Embryo? When the heart beats? When there's a detectable brainwave? I have no idea. What are the criteria?
Racial characteristics are genetically determined. You really do need to read some biology texts.
Kind of, but not really. The traits themselves are genetically determined, but there is no significant difference at the DNA level between any of the human races. There is more variation within each race than there is between the races.
As an historical note, Hitler was concerned with the genetics of the time. At that time, race was considered to be a direct reflection of genetics. That has since been demonstrated to be wrong.Remember, DNA was not thought to be the genetic material at the time. We only had an abstract grasp of genetics.
By that line of reasoning, (The fetus is gathering its nourishment from the blood of the mother, itself) an exclusively nursing child also has no rights.
Granted, it is possible for the child to gather its nourishment elsewhere, but the same can be said for a fetus after a certain period of time in the womb. A two week embryo can't live outside the womb, but a 6 month fetus certainly can.
If it's done very early on, the embryo can recover (e.g., monozygotic twins) and develop normally. I'm not certain how this is done, and I don't think it's known. You can screw with the factors and DNA elements and get some freaky stuff, though. There have been experiments in flies giving them legs in the place of antennae, eyes all over their thorax, no abdomen, wings in odd places, etc. There have also been some experiments in frogs, but I'm not as familiar with them.
If you want to get some more info on it, check pubmed for oocyte polarity, vegetal and animal poles, asymmetrical distribution, and determination. My post was a gross oversimplification of the concept, as you can see pretty quickly.
I hate to break in on all the jokes with a serious comment, but...
These probably would not survive gestation. There are factors spread out in a specific manner in an egg which tell the various parts of the embryo what to become, and when. Imagine the egg as a bag of concentration gradients, going along at least three axes, several gradients per axis. As the cell divides, these become compartmentalized into individual cells. You now have scores of little bags with codes to each one, the code being the concentration of several factors (factors ABCDE having respective concentrations of 4,3,1,2,6 or 5,4,0,8,9). At certain times, these factors come together and give signals that tell that cell or group of cells to become a certain progenitor tissue type. Differentiation goes further after that, with cells "deciding" what to become based on what kind of cell is nearby.
Many of the signals would be similar between human and rabbit, but probably not enough to make a viable human, or viable anything else for that matter. The rabbit DNA control sequences targeted by the factors that are in the egg would probably be too different from the sequences with similar function in human DNA. This would permit the embryos to survive through several divisions, and probably form simple embryos (mammals are very similar until the fetus stage....even then, it's hard to tell sometimes). But it would probably never make it through gestation. Probably.
Did anybody else go to his lab webpage (link in the article)? Go about halfway down; he has a lot of the/. lead stories linked there. I gotta check back later to see if he links to his own story. Or if he posts here.
He also discusses the NOMAD software he uses for the bioibformatics, talks about how it's Linux based, and how "best of all, it's open source".
Veganism won't give you deficient ammounts of creatine in your system.
Most people can make their own creatine from other amino acids in the diet; creatine is non-essential. So, it is not really possible to be creatine-deficient unless you have an absorption/anabolism deficiency in respect to creatine. If you don't consume enough creatine over a period of time, normal people will make their own.
Let's see....148 lines of IP in 168,276 lines of code is ~0.088% of the code. SCO says their contribution is worth 699 / CPU / distro. So....699/0.00088 = $79,000.
I am currently using the most valuable peice of software I have ever seen....cool. I'm rich.
The government is manipulating information in order to further its agenda? This is news? Did anyone actually NOT know this? It's been true for centuries, even melinnia. It's certainly not limited to this administration.
Today, it's actually a necessity. You can find a study to say whatever you want; depending on the model, experimental methods, statistical methods, and a dozen other variables. People who act on research must filter through what is discovered, and decide what they think is true.
There are studies that prove global warming is currently killing thousands, and others that prove that it never exsisted, is a natural process, or is being/has been reversed. DTT is a killer, and the guy that did the study did it wrong/no he didn't. There is/is not a "gay gene".
Adminstration has to filter through these reports and determine which ones are correct, because they can't all be correct. Is it surprising that they would pick the ones that best fit their agenda? Even when you take good advisors into account, these advisors must be selected by the administration. Who's best? How does the administration pick their advisors? The same way they would pick which study to believe: Based on what they already think is true, or whatever best fits into their perception of how the world works. No matter how open minded and unbiased they (the admin) tries to be, they won't be, can't be unbiased. They will still lean towards what they had previously believed. And they won't be easily swayed, because any data that comes out contradicting what they believe can be countered by some other piece of (just as accurate) data that was gathered under slightly different conditions.
I guess the only real way around it would be to have advisory panels staffed by the scientists with the opposing views. Even then, though...many, if not most, scientists are severely lacking in interpersonal skills (I say this as a scientist severely lacking in interpersonal skills), so those panels would get little done, especially when several of the people in the room have been butting heads for decades.
My sig seems even more appropriate than usual today...
I don't know if you do actually have to have a working model to get a patent, but (from the article):
To help demonstrate his invention to potential licensees, Mr. McPheters has set up his laptop so that he can give a Powerpoint presentation without touching the computer, by punching his fingers into the air.
It looks like he does have a working model, or at least a proof-of-concept widget.
That's what you get when two fields collide like this. H2O is a stoichiometric formula, it's not supposed to represent the actual molecule at all times. If the ratio for water was actually 3:2 instead of 2:1, fuel cells (like on US space missions) would wind up with an excess of hydrogen after reaction. That has not been observed. Also, if you electrolyze water, you get a 2:1 molar ratio of H to O. Not a 3:2 ratio.
If yu take pure water, you will not find a homogeneous mixture of molecules consisting of 1 oxygen bound to 2 hydrogens. You will find mostly that, plus OH, H3O, and free protons (H+). Th stoichiometry, however, still works out. There are 2 hydrogens for every oxygen.
The only significant difference is HOW the mutations are caused - that's it!
No, there are two differences. One is speed. Making a navel orange, or a hybrid rose, or a tangelo is a matter of crossing two closely related species. This is the "how" you refer to. We are taking genes from unrelated species and slapping them in. As someone who does that on a fairly regular basis, I can tell you that you get some odd results, although I have never seen it affect anything other than the organism into which the gene is inserted. Nor can I think of a way that it would, aside from allergy or some problem with digestion/absorption. For example, if you're allergic to corn, you shouldn't even think about eating GM wheat that has a corn gene or two in it. It'll probably trigger an attack.
Two, grapefruit, navel oranges, etc aren't really mutations, they are hybrids. They are no more a mutation than a mule is. Now, seedless fruit is a mutation. Even these, however, are different kind of mutations from what you see in GM foods (chromosomal abnormality, as opposed to newly introduced genes).
Now, I'm not against GM foods. There is no evidence that they are harmful. However, there is also not enough evidence that they are harmless (there is some, just not enough to justify the current rate of adoption). We just need to be a bit careful.
Personally, I think we will see a demise of GM foods, as markets reject them out of fear. The scientific community doesn't know enough about GM foods to reach a consensus. The public is even worse off. Seeing that ignorance breeds fear, the market will fear them, right or wrong, and the crops will not sell. Subsequently, farmers won't grow them, because there is no market for them. Then, good luck to SeedCorp pushing GM crops to farmers in 20 years, after they have been proven harmless (which is probably the case).
EU requires a food be labeled as having contact with GM crops, if that is the case. It is then up to the individual to decide if he wants to buy it or not. That is a market force; the consumer makes a decision based on information given. The only problem comes in if the information given is too vague.
I am uninformed on this, so those of you in Europe (or just in the know), please enlighten me...Do the labeling requirements differentiate between GM foods and foods that may have had contact with other GM foods? For instance, If you have "normal" wheat that happened to be grown a couple of miles from some GM wheat (or corn, or barley), would it be labeled the same way as GM wheat? Would they differentiate between "normal" wheat grown near GM wheat (same species), GM barley (related species), or GM corn (unrelated species)?
You can probably see the problem here; If the law is written so that normal wheat grown a few miles from GM corn is labeled in exactly the same way as GM wheat, that is FUD. In that case, the EU would be misleading the population, skewing them away from foodstuffs imported from nations that use any GM crops. But, like I said....I don't know if that is the case. It probably isn't, that would be kind of absurd.
Actually, a lone mouse is more stressed than a mouse put with other mice. I'm one of the "fucking assholes" that work with mice, and have for about 7 years. You have obviously never been in an animal facility, and have never even glanced at the guidelines for rodent housing. The only time you have a dozen animals in a small area is when 11 of them are less than weaning age (and it's uncommon for a litter to get that big).
If you have just 5 mice in one cage, you get nasty notes from the care staff. If you leave unweaned animals in there too long, you not only adversely affect your research and hurt the animals you work so hard on, you also get fined.
and need some private space
Don't be so antropomorhic (sp?). Mice hate being alone, they dislike privacy. Look at them in the wild; they live in concentracted packs. In the cages, they get stressed when alone.
As for the behaviours, yes, the mice do act wierd. They overgroom each other to the point of massive hair loss. The males can get very aggressive, seriously hurting or killing each other. They run around the cage for no apparent reason. They dig in the bedding. They chew on the cage bars. They spend a large portion of their day doing this. This contrasts sharply with what they do in the wild, where they groom each other in large groups, males fight for breeding rights, run from predators and to food sources, dig burrows, and chew on things to keep their teeth filed down.
If the DOJ has a server unpatched, can I hax0r it and say "no it's entrapment"?
IANAL, but....
I would say no, you couldn't. The intent of the unpatched server would not be to lure people into hacking it. Even if it was, it could be easily argued that that was not the purpose.
On the other hand, the propsed RIAA server would be more likely to be interpreted as entrapment, because they couldn't easily argue there is any other purpose for hosting those files, other than to entrap people.
Re:Don't always need an intact DNA
on
Cloning Mammoths
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· Score: 1
That's why I said "It takes a lot of work to figure it out" instead of saying "It's impossible to do".
HGP took thousands of people dedicating years of their lives.
Re:Don't always need an intact DNA
on
Cloning Mammoths
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· Score: 1
Good idea, but PCR doesn't work on things that big. I heard a guy that PCR'd a 10kb fragment once, but I didn't believe him until I saw it. Chromosomes are on the order of megabases.
Also, you won't know what part goes where. It would be like piecing together a shredded picture of a page of random dots. You don't know what a certain peice "says" until you have it in the context of the sequence around it. Even then, it takes a lot of work to figure it out.
Re:Code rot probably not the best analogy
on
Cloning Mammoths
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· Score: 3, Informative
Getting intact full DNA from a living cell, prepared freshly is a challenge. And it does "rot", just like living cells. It's a molecule, and anything that will decay a cell will take the DNA in that cell along with it.
There is also molecular decay, independent of decomposition from microorganisms. DNA is subject to autocatalytic acidic hydrolysis; that is, in any solution with a pH lower that about 6 or 7, it will break itself up into little chunks. Most tissues become quite acidic after death. The DNA is still there, kinda, but it's broken up into little bits.
You don't need intact cells to get DNA, that is true. But to clone, you need a full genome, intact. Each chromosome needs to be a full sequence. For other applications, busted up DNA is fine. You can sequence, look for similarities, etc. But to clone, you need the whole thing, all in it's correct pieces.
Nutrient flux to the bottom plays a huge role in the deep water ecosystem. With no light, there is no photosynthesis, so the bottom of the food chain difffers from what we are used to. If there is a vent nearby, the creatures that feed off it's heat & chemicals form the base of the food chain. If there is no vent, the only source of food is the manna from above. Animals that die and sink, feces, solid runoff from shores, etc form the bottom of the food chain. Detritus fills the place of plants, scavengers take the place of herbivores, and predators, well, they're still predators.
It is conceivable that at times of massive kills at the surface (comet/asteroid strikes, climate change) the flux of food increased rapidly. This would give rise to a brief period of intense growth, coupled with an increase in the diversity in each species. Once the feast is over, there will be a massive die-off (i.e., selection event) as the scavengers, then predators starve.
For beer bottles try hitting them with dilute bleach the same day you make the wort. Soak overnight or so and then pour out the bleach solution. Put a little aluminum foil over the top of each bottle to keep dust out and let them sit a while (if you do it later than your wort boil, wait at least a few days).
When you're ready to bottle, one quick rinse with tap water and it's ready to use. Most of the bleach evaporates away, then ClO just diffuses out as gas. The foil over the top really does keep them sterile enough. I tried it on a few bottles in one batch several years ago. I've done dozens of batches since then and I've never had a bleached beer nor a contaminated one. It's a heckuva lot easier, and you can have bottles ready the instant your SG hits the right point.
Slashdot Mirror
And yes, apt does make updating a snap, it's one of the best features of Debian, IMHO. But installing a more recent relase is even easier. Now, I'm not putting down Debian, I love the OS. I just wish they updated a bit more frequently than about once every two years. Debian's great, I just want more of it!
Granted the install is a bit lengthy, but maintaining it is a breeze, and when I was using it it was rock-solid in every way. The only thing it didn't handle too well was when the CPU fan froze up...
ARRGGGAHHHHHAAGGHHH!
STOP it with the grammar lesson, PLEASE!
I used to fall asleep in elementary school English daydreaming about space, but I still learned what irony is.
PS this isn't just addressed to you, Yama. It's just that you're post was the last in the thread.
I have a child, an infant, born days ago. If I were to leave it alone for a day, it would surely die of hypothermia or hunger. This is a huge inconvienience to me. If I were to abandon it to its fate, that would be criminal. The question, then, becomes this: When the child is born, you are most certainly responsible for it. If you allow it to die through negligence, you have committed murder. At the instant prior to conception, it is most certainly not alive, and you can "kill" (for lack of a better word) it with a condom, nonoxynyl-9(sp?) or the rythm method, without so much as a guilty conscience.
At some time between those two points, it becomes alive and has rights. The debate, IMO, is about where that point is. Is it birth? Conception? Implantation? Morula? Embryo? When the heart beats? When there's a detectable brainwave? I have no idea. What are the criteria?
Kind of, but not really. The traits themselves are genetically determined, but there is no significant difference at the DNA level between any of the human races. There is more variation within each race than there is between the races.
As an historical note, Hitler was concerned with the genetics of the time. At that time, race was considered to be a direct reflection of genetics. That has since been demonstrated to be wrong.Remember, DNA was not thought to be the genetic material at the time. We only had an abstract grasp of genetics.
Granted, it is possible for the child to gather its nourishment elsewhere, but the same can be said for a fetus after a certain period of time in the womb. A two week embryo can't live outside the womb, but a 6 month fetus certainly can.
If you want to get some more info on it, check pubmed for oocyte polarity, vegetal and animal poles, asymmetrical distribution, and determination. My post was a gross oversimplification of the concept, as you can see pretty quickly.
These probably would not survive gestation. There are factors spread out in a specific manner in an egg which tell the various parts of the embryo what to become, and when. Imagine the egg as a bag of concentration gradients, going along at least three axes, several gradients per axis. As the cell divides, these become compartmentalized into individual cells. You now have scores of little bags with codes to each one, the code being the concentration of several factors (factors ABCDE having respective concentrations of 4,3,1,2,6 or 5,4,0,8,9). At certain times, these factors come together and give signals that tell that cell or group of cells to become a certain progenitor tissue type. Differentiation goes further after that, with cells "deciding" what to become based on what kind of cell is nearby.
Many of the signals would be similar between human and rabbit, but probably not enough to make a viable human, or viable anything else for that matter. The rabbit DNA control sequences targeted by the factors that are in the egg would probably be too different from the sequences with similar function in human DNA. This would permit the embryos to survive through several divisions, and probably form simple embryos (mammals are very similar until the fetus stage....even then, it's hard to tell sometimes). But it would probably never make it through gestation. Probably.
He also discusses the NOMAD software he uses for the bioibformatics, talks about how it's Linux based, and how "best of all, it's open source".
Most people can make their own creatine from other amino acids in the diet; creatine is non-essential. So, it is not really possible to be creatine-deficient unless you have an absorption/anabolism deficiency in respect to creatine. If you don't consume enough creatine over a period of time, normal people will make their own.
Ah, who am I kidding. This is slashdot.
I am currently using the most valuable peice of software I have ever seen....cool. I'm rich.
Today, it's actually a necessity. You can find a study to say whatever you want; depending on the model, experimental methods, statistical methods, and a dozen other variables. People who act on research must filter through what is discovered, and decide what they think is true.
There are studies that prove global warming is currently killing thousands, and others that prove that it never exsisted, is a natural process, or is being/has been reversed. DTT is a killer, and the guy that did the study did it wrong/no he didn't. There is/is not a "gay gene".
Adminstration has to filter through these reports and determine which ones are correct, because they can't all be correct. Is it surprising that they would pick the ones that best fit their agenda? Even when you take good advisors into account, these advisors must be selected by the administration. Who's best? How does the administration pick their advisors? The same way they would pick which study to believe: Based on what they already think is true, or whatever best fits into their perception of how the world works. No matter how open minded and unbiased they (the admin) tries to be, they won't be, can't be unbiased. They will still lean towards what they had previously believed. And they won't be easily swayed, because any data that comes out contradicting what they believe can be countered by some other piece of (just as accurate) data that was gathered under slightly different conditions.
I guess the only real way around it would be to have advisory panels staffed by the scientists with the opposing views. Even then, though...many, if not most, scientists are severely lacking in interpersonal skills (I say this as a scientist severely lacking in interpersonal skills), so those panels would get little done, especially when several of the people in the room have been butting heads for decades.
My sig seems even more appropriate than usual today...
To help demonstrate his invention to potential licensees, Mr. McPheters has set up his laptop so that he can give a Powerpoint presentation without touching the computer, by punching his fingers into the air.
It looks like he does have a working model, or at least a proof-of-concept widget.
That's what you get when two fields collide like this. H2O is a stoichiometric formula, it's not supposed to represent the actual molecule at all times. If the ratio for water was actually 3:2 instead of 2:1, fuel cells (like on US space missions) would wind up with an excess of hydrogen after reaction. That has not been observed. Also, if you electrolyze water, you get a 2:1 molar ratio of H to O. Not a 3:2 ratio.
If yu take pure water, you will not find a homogeneous mixture of molecules consisting of 1 oxygen bound to 2 hydrogens. You will find mostly that, plus OH, H3O, and free protons (H+). Th stoichiometry, however, still works out. There are 2 hydrogens for every oxygen.
No, there are two differences. One is speed. Making a navel orange, or a hybrid rose, or a tangelo is a matter of crossing two closely related species. This is the "how" you refer to. We are taking genes from unrelated species and slapping them in. As someone who does that on a fairly regular basis, I can tell you that you get some odd results, although I have never seen it affect anything other than the organism into which the gene is inserted. Nor can I think of a way that it would, aside from allergy or some problem with digestion/absorption. For example, if you're allergic to corn, you shouldn't even think about eating GM wheat that has a corn gene or two in it. It'll probably trigger an attack.
Two, grapefruit, navel oranges, etc aren't really mutations, they are hybrids. They are no more a mutation than a mule is. Now, seedless fruit is a mutation. Even these, however, are different kind of mutations from what you see in GM foods (chromosomal abnormality, as opposed to newly introduced genes).
Now, I'm not against GM foods. There is no evidence that they are harmful. However, there is also not enough evidence that they are harmless (there is some, just not enough to justify the current rate of adoption). We just need to be a bit careful.
Personally, I think we will see a demise of GM foods, as markets reject them out of fear. The scientific community doesn't know enough about GM foods to reach a consensus. The public is even worse off. Seeing that ignorance breeds fear, the market will fear them, right or wrong, and the crops will not sell. Subsequently, farmers won't grow them, because there is no market for them. Then, good luck to SeedCorp pushing GM crops to farmers in 20 years, after they have been proven harmless (which is probably the case).
EU requires a food be labeled as having contact with GM crops, if that is the case. It is then up to the individual to decide if he wants to buy it or not. That is a market force; the consumer makes a decision based on information given. The only problem comes in if the information given is too vague.
I am uninformed on this, so those of you in Europe (or just in the know), please enlighten me...Do the labeling requirements differentiate between GM foods and foods that may have had contact with other GM foods? For instance, If you have "normal" wheat that happened to be grown a couple of miles from some GM wheat (or corn, or barley), would it be labeled the same way as GM wheat? Would they differentiate between "normal" wheat grown near GM wheat (same species), GM barley (related species), or GM corn (unrelated species)?
You can probably see the problem here; If the law is written so that normal wheat grown a few miles from GM corn is labeled in exactly the same way as GM wheat, that is FUD. In that case, the EU would be misleading the population, skewing them away from foodstuffs imported from nations that use any GM crops. But, like I said....I don't know if that is the case. It probably isn't, that would be kind of absurd.
Talk about typical of Slashdot.....
If you have just 5 mice in one cage, you get nasty notes from the care staff. If you leave unweaned animals in there too long, you not only adversely affect your research and hurt the animals you work so hard on, you also get fined.
and need some private space
Don't be so antropomorhic (sp?). Mice hate being alone, they dislike privacy. Look at them in the wild; they live in concentracted packs. In the cages, they get stressed when alone.
As for the behaviours, yes, the mice do act wierd. They overgroom each other to the point of massive hair loss. The males can get very aggressive, seriously hurting or killing each other. They run around the cage for no apparent reason. They dig in the bedding. They chew on the cage bars. They spend a large portion of their day doing this. This contrasts sharply with what they do in the wild, where they groom each other in large groups, males fight for breeding rights, run from predators and to food sources, dig burrows, and chew on things to keep their teeth filed down.
Oh yeah...forgot the sarcasm tags....
IANAL, but....
I would say no, you couldn't. The intent of the unpatched server would not be to lure people into hacking it. Even if it was, it could be easily argued that that was not the purpose.
On the other hand, the propsed RIAA server would be more likely to be interpreted as entrapment, because they couldn't easily argue there is any other purpose for hosting those files, other than to entrap people.
HGP took thousands of people dedicating years of their lives.
Also, you won't know what part goes where. It would be like piecing together a shredded picture of a page of random dots. You don't know what a certain peice "says" until you have it in the context of the sequence around it. Even then, it takes a lot of work to figure it out.
There is also molecular decay, independent of decomposition from microorganisms. DNA is subject to autocatalytic acidic hydrolysis; that is, in any solution with a pH lower that about 6 or 7, it will break itself up into little chunks. Most tissues become quite acidic after death. The DNA is still there, kinda, but it's broken up into little bits.
You don't need intact cells to get DNA, that is true. But to clone, you need a full genome, intact. Each chromosome needs to be a full sequence. For other applications, busted up DNA is fine. You can sequence, look for similarities, etc. But to clone, you need the whole thing, all in it's correct pieces.
It is conceivable that at times of massive kills at the surface (comet/asteroid strikes, climate change) the flux of food increased rapidly. This would give rise to a brief period of intense growth, coupled with an increase in the diversity in each species. Once the feast is over, there will be a massive die-off (i.e., selection event) as the scavengers, then predators starve.
When you're ready to bottle, one quick rinse with tap water and it's ready to use. Most of the bleach evaporates away, then ClO just diffuses out as gas. The foil over the top really does keep them sterile enough. I tried it on a few bottles in one batch several years ago. I've done dozens of batches since then and I've never had a bleached beer nor a contaminated one. It's a heckuva lot easier, and you can have bottles ready the instant your SG hits the right point.