As much as I've enjoyed COH/COV over the past several years, there's real truth in this. Thinking back on some of the most memorable stuff in the game, what comes to mind are the very few instances with unique mission art. Even then, they're usually still the same basic map, but with different textures, objects and furniture - and that's enough to make them really stand out from the overall sameness of the rest of the game. (I'm thinking of things like Mother Mayhem's Asylum, some of the Freakshow-specific maps, and even Frostfire if I hadn't done it so many times.)
No. If it was a localized field, that only affected the side that you are holding the phone on, you would expect risk in the other half to be unchanged, not decreased. The fact that net change in risk is zero (increased on one side, decreased approx. equally on the other), suggests that the phone is not having a direct effect. More research would be necessary to determine what is causing this effect, or whether it is in fact an artifact of biased reporting or other sampling issues.
So you recommend doing pseudo-code to functions that don't exist... How hard would it be to write the basic stubs for those functions: definition, a comment describing what the function will do when you write it, and a return statement so the thing compiles? That's all it takes. Forces you to actually think about what you want the function to do, what values it might need, and what it will return rather than just making it up as you go - IMO a Good Thing.
When you coast or brake lightly, a small amount of braking power is used to recharge the batteries. If you brake hard and need to stop quickly, a secondary brake comes into effect - a conventional one that works well for stopping, but the energy goes to heat, not the batteries.
While I don't know of anyone offering software trade-in, many vendors (notably Adobe, off the top of my head) do offer cross-platform upgrades. From Photoshop 6, you could upgrade to 7 PC or Mac for the same price. Which is why I'm trying to hold off purchasing new versions of my major apps until I get my new Mac.
Newsflash! CNN today IS actually running a tech piece which is a cross between an ad for Apple laptops and the iPod and a bit of speculation about what might be announced at MacWorld tomorrow.
Nature is providing most or all of the 'mouse edition' of their journal freely on their website, www.nature.com Some of the editorials read easily, but are a bit more meaty than little newsbites.
I'm surprised this story didn't make the main page - do people not realize how important this data is? Having a mammalian genome available for comparative analyses with the human genome is a major landmark. The articles I've seen mostly talk about locating genes, but its locating other things - regulatory regions, non-coding RNA genes, and other functional non-protein-coding DNA - that's more difficult, but now possible, and, IMNSHO, much more exciting. Then again, I'm rather biased.
There are huges issues in the feasibility and "is-this-a-good-idea" departments that have been discussed, but I'd like to touch on one (large) caution that I haven't seen mentioned.
Pigs, like many species, have a large number of resident viruses, particularly retroviruses. They and the pigs are well-adapted for each other, and the pigs show little to no ill effect. Some of them are likely so benign to the pigs that we have no idea that they're there. (Indeed, many of these are revealed only by genetic analysis.)
But then what do we want to do? Stick a pig organ in Grandma to save her life, or at least prolong it for a while? So, we've got a person who was unhealthy to begin with, we introduce dozens of foreign viruses directly into the body, and, to top it all off, we completely suppress the immune system so that the organ isn't rejected. I'm not sure that I can even imagine a a scenario more favorable for a virus to make the species jump. And if one did, you can bet that we wouldn't have much natural resistance to it...
Which is why Peter Jackson has been adamant that this is not a "Director's Cut", but a special 'Extended Edition'. The theatrical cut was the director's cut. The extended edition is what the director's cut would have been if he had thought that general audiences would sit through an additional 30 min. of material. That, and a (rather effective) ploy to get us to spend more money.
As for who's interested in the 'making of' stuff, well, I am. I'm an amateur costumer, and I would probably buy this just for the 12 min. segment on the costumes for the film. But I was getting it anyway:)
Manga International is a known and fairly infamous bootlegger - the region-free discs are definitely bootlegs. I believe the region 3 is an authentic, official product, but at the moment I am not sure. More information sure to be available at nausicaa.net and/or animeondvd.com
That said, there is an official region 2 Japanese release that came out a few months back. (Have you tried searching for "Sen to Chihiro"?) But there's a problem with it: the color balance is awful, awful, awful - very red. As in, those gorgeous whites the reviewer mentioned look pink. Very pink.
Also, I think you have been misled about additional dialog for the US version. There have been no official announcements about the R1 DVDs yet, but I think you can probably rest assured that they have done no such thing, at least in the subtitled version. I wouldn't be surprised if the dub added extra lines to fill in the "empty space" in the audio, it's an all-too-common phenomenon, but the Japanese language track won't have been changed.
How does it tell the difference between good cells and bad cells? I read that cancer cells may differ by one or two genes from good ones. That is rarely enuf for a virus to lock onto, isn't it?
Although cancer can be triggered by changes in only one or two genes, it doesn't stop there. Fundamentally, cancers accumulate mutations. That's what makes them cancerous: building up enough mutations that they no longer behave like ordinary cells. In reality, by the time a tumour has become malignant, it has lots and lots of mutations. Frequently, the genome will be hugely rearranged, with missing or duplicated chromosomes, and pieces repeatedly broken and then stuck back together in different places. Many of the mutations aren't important, and don't affect the cell's cancer-causing nature one way or the other. But a handful of mutations are important for causing cancer, and cells that happen to get those mutations are the ones that become cancerous.
And we see many of the same mutations over and over again in many different types of cancers. (Look up 'p53' on PubMed if you don't believe me.) Some of these 'characteristic' mutations are ones that affect which molecules are present on the outside surface of the cell. If, for example, you know that a certain type of tumour expresses something on its surface that it normally wouldn't, that makes a great target for selection with a virus. Alternatively, have a virus that enters all cells, but only becomes active in those that contain a certain product that is indicative of cancer. All this is pretty theoretical, since it's not my area of research, and there are huge technical and logistical difficulties in getting a system that works well and reliably. But that it is a huge field of research, and is showing promise.
Slashdot Mirror
As much as I've enjoyed COH/COV over the past several years, there's real truth in this. Thinking back on some of the most memorable stuff in the game, what comes to mind are the very few instances with unique mission art. Even then, they're usually still the same basic map, but with different textures, objects and furniture - and that's enough to make them really stand out from the overall sameness of the rest of the game. (I'm thinking of things like Mother Mayhem's Asylum, some of the Freakshow-specific maps, and even Frostfire if I hadn't done it so many times.)
No. If it was a localized field, that only affected the side that you are holding the phone on, you would expect risk in the other half to be unchanged, not decreased. The fact that net change in risk is zero (increased on one side, decreased approx. equally on the other), suggests that the phone is not having a direct effect. More research would be necessary to determine what is causing this effect, or whether it is in fact an artifact of biased reporting or other sampling issues.
So you recommend doing pseudo-code to functions that don't exist... How hard would it be to write the basic stubs for those functions: definition, a comment describing what the function will do when you write it, and a return statement so the thing compiles? That's all it takes. Forces you to actually think about what you want the function to do, what values it might need, and what it will return rather than just making it up as you go - IMO a Good Thing.
When you coast or brake lightly, a small amount of braking power is used to recharge the batteries. If you brake hard and need to stop quickly, a secondary brake comes into effect - a conventional one that works well for stopping, but the energy goes to heat, not the batteries.
While I don't know of anyone offering software trade-in, many vendors (notably Adobe, off the top of my head) do offer cross-platform upgrades. From Photoshop 6, you could upgrade to 7 PC or Mac for the same price. Which is why I'm trying to hold off purchasing new versions of my major apps until I get my new Mac.
17" Powerbook... drool.
Newsflash! CNN today IS actually running a tech piece which is a cross between an ad for Apple laptops and the iPod and a bit of speculation about what might be announced at MacWorld tomorrow.
Nature is providing most or all of the 'mouse edition' of their journal freely on their website, www.nature.com
Some of the editorials read easily, but are a bit more meaty than little newsbites.
I'm surprised this story didn't make the main page - do people not realize how important this data is? Having a mammalian genome available for comparative analyses with the human genome is a major landmark. The articles I've seen mostly talk about locating genes, but its locating other things - regulatory regions, non-coding RNA genes, and other functional non-protein-coding DNA - that's more difficult, but now possible, and, IMNSHO, much more exciting. Then again, I'm rather biased.
Pigs, like many species, have a large number of resident viruses, particularly retroviruses. They and the pigs are well-adapted for each other, and the pigs show little to no ill effect. Some of them are likely so benign to the pigs that we have no idea that they're there. (Indeed, many of these are revealed only by genetic analysis.)
But then what do we want to do? Stick a pig organ in Grandma to save her life, or at least prolong it for a while? So, we've got a person who was unhealthy to begin with, we introduce dozens of foreign viruses directly into the body, and, to top it all off, we completely suppress the immune system so that the organ isn't rejected. I'm not sure that I can even imagine a a scenario more favorable for a virus to make the species jump. And if one did, you can bet that we wouldn't have much natural resistance to it...
Which is why Peter Jackson has been adamant that this is not a "Director's Cut", but a special 'Extended Edition'. The theatrical cut was the director's cut. The extended edition is what the director's cut would have been if he had thought that general audiences would sit through an additional 30 min. of material. That, and a (rather effective) ploy to get us to spend more money. As for who's interested in the 'making of' stuff, well, I am. I'm an amateur costumer, and I would probably buy this just for the 12 min. segment on the costumes for the film. But I was getting it anyway :)
Manga International is a known and fairly infamous bootlegger - the region-free discs are definitely bootlegs. I believe the region 3 is an authentic, official product, but at the moment I am not sure. More information sure to be available at nausicaa.net and/or animeondvd.com
That said, there is an official region 2 Japanese release that came out a few months back. (Have you tried searching for "Sen to Chihiro"?) But there's a problem with it: the color balance is awful, awful, awful - very red. As in, those gorgeous whites the reviewer mentioned look pink. Very pink.
Also, I think you have been misled about additional dialog for the US version. There have been no official announcements about the R1 DVDs yet, but I think you can probably rest assured that they have done no such thing, at least in the subtitled version. I wouldn't be surprised if the dub added extra lines to fill in the "empty space" in the audio, it's an all-too-common phenomenon, but the Japanese language track won't have been changed.