would i need a doctor's note saying, for example, that i take a medication that causes similar conditions? Because there are some. ANd that, right there, would have to be verified, which runs RIGHT up against the whole healthcare privacy rights issue.
And i'm curious to know what happens to people after they get led away, and at what point this starts to make since, since after all they may have just infected an airport full of people who are still getting on their flights.
I agree that this is an issue; I don't want to die, and this is killing people. But I'm not sure that I feel good about the lack of limitations here; halfway down the slippery slope already seems like a good time to stop and ask which is more important, our right to privacy or our physical safety, and how much of each we really HAVE to give up in order for this to work...
Yes. I agree that it should have been main page. That said, i think that we're diverging into the is-it-legal department without asking the is-it-ethical question. Namely:
a.) is it appropriate to take pictures of riots
b.) is it approriate to then take away the pictures of the riots?
This raises questions because protest is frequently a crime, but the protest may be ethical in nature. Ethical as in ethically right, not just ethical in sphere-of-debate.
I'm thinking of the Vietnam protests, which frequently got silenced in the media for fear of sparking similar riots/protests. Anybody remember the song that got made of it? It got made because the media sat on the news footage. So this is a serious ethical question, as well as a legal one. I'm not a lawyer, but i'd say that if they came to the door asking for footage of the 'crime' i'd hand it over- but not until i'd sent copies to safe places with instructions to share if necessary.
just my thoughts. *sigh* long, crazy day and it's starting to show...
Didn't we discuss this in the realm of, oh, say, clothing armor just recently? about what happens if the microscopic particles designed to kill bacteria and germs come loose?? Oh, right, it was HERE, under the heading, "Clothes that Kill."
And while we're on the subject, yes. Lots of things can kill you. We live in a world where just about everything that walks, crawls, swims, breathes, slithers, or has been made by man can finish you off. However, there are known toxic limits for most of these things. At issue here is the fact that we don't know how much of what you have to take in, of the new materials, by what medium (skin, lungs, digestive tract) for it to finish you off.
We have no idea. I don't advocate stopping all production... but I can think of lots of reasons why I don't want to live next to the Lab, and i can think of lots of reasons why the people who do should be warned what's being made there. Think of what happens when a chemical lab catches fire. If they treat it as a dangerous substance, even if we don't know how dangerous we don't have to wish there had been a better containment system later. Who knew how much damage thalidomide would do? or DDT? Or how much trouble foreign species would be before introduced to a new environment? It's all tied into the same issue:
Check it out as much as possible before putting it into active use
Never test the water with both feet (i.e., introduce by degrees and with a whole heck of a lot of attention to results) and
I've got the reverse problem. We've checked my thyroid, we've checked all kinds of things, and i'm down to 48 kilos and still losing. Unfortunately, most of the blame can be put on my diet, which consists of various proteins in intense form (meat) a bit of rice, corn, and potato, plus all the vegetables and fruit i can eat (as long as it's not on the allergy list.) And lactose-converted milk. I'm sort of a forced Atkins subject... and while it works, it ain't healthy. We've discussed all of this before, by the way...
Frankly, with my relatively sedentary lifestyle, it's absolutely obvious to me that if i could manage a coke or a piece of cheesecake after physical therapy, i'd be home free. (I recommend anybody heading for a carnivore's diet to make sure that they know what gout is, because it's something that anybody making sudden changes should be aware of. )
Here is an interesting site for calculating calorie use by activity. No, it doesn't have every activity. And it's pretty general. I advise you to enter your weight- in pounds, i think, and put the counter at 1 minute. Then multiply that by how much time you spend jumping rope, walking in circles, twiddling your thumbs, whatever- it will give you an idea of the average amount of calories someone your size burns off. I don't have to remind you that averages lie- but it will still at least be a ballpark figure.
And in the meantime, i'm up to six meals a day, and down to a size 3. In women's clothing, that means that it's very, very difficult to buy things that don't have tweety bird on them... because the odds of finding clothes that fit increase the more time i spend in the kids department.
Frankly, I say again that we've been through all of this before, and if anybody from the last debate is posting again at the same-or-higher weight after telling us how much they lost, I'm amused.
Grotta's colleague Roger Strong was aware of the association between moderate use of alcohol and reduced stroke damage, "so we started fooling around with combinations of it with other things."
So they tried it with... other things. For example:
Aspirin
leftover chinese food
electric shock
tomato juice with tabasco
tabasco by itself- who knows?
tic-tacs, because that was what they found in the desk drawer
zinc, thinking maybe they could cure the common cold AND a stroke at the same time...
I'm making this list up myself, for amusement, because frankly, i'd like to see more of exactly how they got paid to do this research, and what else they tried on people to figure it out. I think that researchers should be required to publish their initial ideas along with how they came upon the idea... "so, we were sitting around one night getting hammered, and he looks at me and says, you know what? I bet this could cause cancer. "
and i said, "we aren't testing on cancer, just on strokes!"
And he hands me the bottle and sez, "so i bet this shtuff could cure stroke damage," and he passes out on the floor. I wrote it on the floor in magic marker and when we came to and got cleaned up, well, we tried it out..."
seriously, on the migraine note, a lot of pain meds now include caffeine, because it really does change how things work. Me, i go straight for imitrex, which at $20 a pill is still a bargain, because if somebody were to walk up to me and tell me they'd make my migraine vanish for $20, i'd say pretty please. The caffeine and regular NSAID approach doesn't work any more, alas... Now if they'd just find that this cure works on migraines, we'd be in business.
"Moreover, well known equations from mathematics like the Theorem of Pythagoras, the equations for conics and conics sections and the equation from Fermat's last theorem, are all special cases of this formula."
So... a guy who specialises in finding new ways to help bamboo propagate- and mind you, bamboo is pretty prolific on its own, don't let that 'lucky bamboo' (which is not actually bamboo, but a plant of another type entirely) fool you- has now found a new way to describe shapes. Yes, this is important, but it's not the next big thing. Folks have been trying to find ways to describe shapes by equations in images long before this, and while his rush to patent may cause some interesting snarls up ahead, i find it unlikely that he even understands Fermat's last theorem,
Cubem autem in duos cubos, aut quadratoquadratum in duos quadratoquadratos, et generaliter nullam in infinitum ultra quadratum potestatem in duos eiusdem nominis fas est dividere. Cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi hanc marginis exiguitas non caparet.
let alone knows the solution and has described it in shape-description formula format.
But if he does, he'd better post something more mathematical on his website, because he's just landed himself into mathematician waters- and it's sink or swim there, buddy. You don't get to try it again next growing season (Andrew Wiles' revisions notwithstanding), and contrary to what laypeople tend to believe, they still require proof when you walk in and say something crazy like 'Pi is 3.' Even mathemeticians are still arguing over the proofs available. And it's pretty cutthroat, with ten-day conferences, so i bet he's in for some entertaining phone calls.
They are the closest thing to the human race on earth that we've got in terms of relative species. And what's more, they are a relatively INNOCENT species, since they are generally non-predatorial as species go (Unlike, say, the jaguar or the wolf, both of whom take up more of the precious attention of out ecologically minded society- what little precious attention that there is.)
Without them, it can be argued that we are losing a valuable part of our environment. But Even at the most base, survivalistic level, you need them to live. why? because the diseases that can wipe these animals out are the diseases that can wipe us out. All ethical considerations of conservation and the morality of medical testing aside, we need creatures running around with something close to our DNA. And to have them wiped out by human acts in addition to general disease spread is unconscionable, and we need to be greeting this news with more interest and concern than apathy. THey die, we die, and that goes for each of the other thousands of endangered species as well. Now, before you give that snide response of, well, we can't save them all... Consider Schindler's list. Maybe we can't save them all. But we better be trying. And this is one where we really can save ONE species. Oke, i'll climb down off my soapbox, but not until i offer you this. More later as i gather more links.
Nowhere do i see the words, "in a vacuum." So that leaves, 'without friction' as an useless phrase? or maybe this is a standard term that i'm missing? Me, i'd assume that spinning in air causes friction (not to mention dizziness.)
Now if they want to measure political spin, we have to wait to see what research grants they apply for next...(sorry, couldn't help it.) Seriously- how do they do this without friction?
More questions than answers
on
Clothes That Kill
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Aside from the same concerns that others have voiced- what are we doing pushing more antibiotics on the public, and how the H??? do we know that this is harmless for US, i have other questions.
What about non-bacterial illnesses (i.e., viruses, microplasms)
Do these molecules ever come unanchored, becoming little fat-seeking molecules of death?
How fast does a person die if they swallow a scrap of it, or some of those suddenly un-anchored molecules?
How do you clean these garments?
Will dead-bacteria buildup eventually render the garment useless?
How do you dispose of these garments at that point?
this piece was woefully short on facts, and context, and i'd love to hear more if anybody's got some other perspective on this new 'fabric of doom'...
To what extent do you feel that restricting the ability of the common public to log on as 'blanks' (to borrow a Max Headroom term) will limit the possibilities for new ideas to become part of the marketplace/society, given that freedom to express, explore, and freely interact encourages both the best and worst forms of innovation? For example, hacking at its best enables a company to be informed of the latest flaw in their system, while at its worst it can down that system completely.
Wiping out the ability to enact from behind a firewall will in some cases force the individual to assume social responsibility for their actions, and in others, it could cause a perfectly harmless but useful and constructive citizen to not want to take part. (the way that i don't want to fly on an airline that checks my credit info every time i try to board a plane.) In short, do you view this as a critically restrictive measure where society's NEW ideas come into the picture? Are we in danger of alienating the very people who would be responsible for future innovation of everything around us? I'm one of those who would be alienated, because I view this as an inalienable right to privacy.
New meaning to mood rings, for starters. But what i'd like to know is can the colour of the ink be fixed, or linked through an input device (otherwise sealed off from the outside) so that you could have a document that doesn't appear until you enter the right key? could hackable newspapers be next?
And if it were possible to re-print on the same page, would this mean that newspapers would re-use/recycle themselves? Just plug it into the daily info port, and watch as it reprints itself? It wouldn't be as fun as what i use (The internet for my daily news) but it would be intriguing, and i might go for it just to have a hard copy. On the other hand, it's hard enoguh to keep records as it is- this means there could be documents which cease to exist as soon as you tell them to, no pesky burning involved... hm. I'll have to think about this. When i see colourchange makeup come out, i'm going to scream...
I can see wartime problems with this
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Synthetic Vision
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· Score: 4, Insightful
OK. Realising that it's still in development...
First, if you can't see where your fellow soldiers are, you're looking at a wireframe model of a world that you can't shoot into. How do you know where our guys are? This isn't a redundant post, because i need to add
Second, if you add GPS for all our folks into the picture, all the enemy needs to do is take one set of goggles and kaboom! there go our troops.
That said, i agree with the point that these are adding to the trivialisation of wartime 'kills' and the overlap of technology and wargames. But this has been coming for a long time, from way back in the world of 'duckhunt.' (which was pretty advanced itself, all things considered...) Hurt my spine in an accident one year, though, spent hours learnign to shoot those stupid ducks. Do i now look upon animated ducks with a dispassionate urge to blow them away? No. But that's not quite the same as human to human violence on the box. (PETA, leave me alone: it's NOT the same, and doesn't have the same effect. We can argue that one out when the US goes to war against waterfowl.)
So tell me: does anyone else think of the ad for the - what was it, navy seals, is army, that has the war game with the kids being beat to shreds by some mystery troup, and it turns out that it's real US forces playing the war game against them? Frankly, i think that the US forces are using this marketing tool badly- they are smudging that line just as far and as fast as they can. But sooner or later, the kids who sign up get to find out that it's not a game.
Realising that i've digressed from my original point: It's a catch-22. Put nobody else in the picture, all you have is a big sign saying 'you are here' on a digitised map. Good for sandstorms but won't tell you whether the guy hiding behind the wall up ahead is your buddy or your foe, and if you put in stuff that tells you this- you open the door for all those foes to know where your buddies are when they take you and your nifty goggles too. What's an army to do?
this article talks about global warming and, of all things, allergies. Does anybody have anything on weather geographical changes can also really affect this? (If an earthquake drops the rockies, do we suddenly not have to renew our clarinex scrips?) this one talks about global warming in general. You can scoff in a few years from your new beachfront property...in Wisconsin...
but seriously, i agree that it's all almost irrelevant, since we're going to find out sooner than we expect.
Because "please circulate this very important notice" sounds like scam to me.
I'm not geting any of this through any other source yet. Nothing. nothing in the business rags, nothing in the copyright activist wings, i haven't seen this ANYWHERE. I haven't seen it in the proposed legislation papers and frankly, if somebody's got a bead on this, bring it up and let's get a look, because this sounds crazy to me. Are they looking for someone to retain them to protect their feared-for copyrights? Is this an ad? Do these people exist? what happened to the fraction of a guy (almost ten)- is he the guy who submitted the story? (Oh, aquel hombre es Carlito, y el no possesse... fill in the blank with the parts that Carlito is missing...)
*sigh* oke, slashdotters. what have we got on this that's real??? Is this even a real address?
...members can trade items among each other, sell items to each other, produce goods from material. Wealth is created when someone takes items of lesser relative worth- say, raw materials- and produces something of greater relative worth- say, art, or tools, or food... This makes no mention of whether actual creation or trading capabilities are going to exist. Are we going to be able to resell our 'virtual nikes' (produced in a virtual sweatshop, no doubt) on a virtual black market?
Are retailers going to be able to set up virutal shops? Are there going to be virtual cyberprostitute rings? And just as importantly... are there going to be virtual cops?
A virtual economy is a lot more than a virtual mall. It is not a marketplace, it's an environment within which a marketplace gets built.
Virtual taxes. Virtual income. Do you earn an income in it, or is this a one-way economy, like everquest, with people pouring money in left and right? Because frankly, i can think of better ways to spend my money than on the entrance fee to a virtual playground, where i then get to buy virtual stuff with real money. (Do virtual goods have a depreciation schedule?)
Another good question would be whether a 'virtual economy' which does not permit free enterprise is an economy at all- can i set up a virtual shop, selling, say, modifications like armor, and make real money? Does money come back out for anyone other than the marketers and the owners?
In other words- how does this differ from a 'sims you can pay for' model??? In a real online virtual economy, we'd be able to sell each other game mods that let us, say, change our environment (virtual landscapers) or up our quality of life (virtual just about everything else) and it would be the geeks who made the most money. This is not likely to be permitted... this looks more like a toy than anything else. We're not there yet, put down the mouse and go back to the Gibson novels... *sigh*
...coated the electrodes with a polymer that has specially tailored pores. These maintain a neutral pH, while being small enough to trap the enzymes yet big enough to let the alcohol pass through. "The enzymes have lasted over two months now and they are still functioning," she says.
Not the power charge, but the enzymes? So here we have reached the point of being concerned over not just the charge, but the rapid breakdown of the fuel cell itself. And that's actually a good thing, so long as they keep it cheap and don't sell the darned thing in a non-recyclable plastic package. I've seen it happen a lot where products which could be really envronmentally friendly came packaged in something utterly inappropriate.
I agree that the other issue is- how expensive are these going to be able to run here in the US, wehre it's probably going to have to be made AND sold as a non-drinkable alcohol class- which isn't necessarily convenient OR cheap. Are they going to try to create a market for the fuels first by promoting the cell? It seems like they'd HAVE to make it run on things like gin first, since that's a tough push to get the fuel out there without anything to put it in... entertaining little cycle. I'd like one that can recharge from household compost- anyone remember Back to the Future movie series, with Mr. Fission?
One ring to bind them: does this mean
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Asia Opens Up to WLAN
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· Score: 2, Interesting
That the Australians will now have access to the censored chinese internet, or that the chinese will no longer be able to escape the censorship by visiting other countries?
And for that matter, how long before the idea catches on that, by working together, one ring of networks can try to encompass everyone, and WiFi pirates really WILL be the political protests of the future?
I mean this seriously. I don't know enough about this to know how much this is going to limit people's freedom of speech, and anywhere china gets involved, so does censorship. Which might, come to think of it, explain the conspicuous absence of japan from this group...
And i suppose that there's something to be said
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Baldness Be Gone?
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· Score: 1
... for a healthy volunteer base, all willing to try something risky for the sake of their vanity, thus providing enough people for broad field trials of the technology... Good point.
A great may people who are going to be using these, it would appear, fall int o the high risk i'm-getting-glaucoma-and-fail-to-use-my-eyedrops category. They may need it. But i agree that this poses serious eye risks if they're convincing people who ALREADY have eye trauma to use contacts that they are to keep in for weeks at a time.
I can see several other potential trouble areas here, beyond either the medicine wearing off in the wash, and the toxins building up behind the lens. Many people who have sensitive eyes may actually be sensitive to the compounds being used to hold the medicine- and many people who have unmapped lesions may find that this presents real risk. Obviously, this is going to take some screening procedures.
I can also see where this is going to be an issue for people who try to 'stretch' their incomes by wearing contacts too long. I've seen a couple of cases in the community around me where aging folks on limited income and limited insurance try to do stupid things, and medicated contacts just seem like a dangerous idea for people who don't realise that these need to be clean and carefully used...
On the other hand, these are also people who couldn't use eyedrops. Is anybody supervising these people? Who lets them out at recess?
and now for the other side of this: has anybody noticed that eye doctors are the anti-mum? Mum spends half your childhood trying to get you to not stick things in your eyes. You go to the eye doctor, and they right away say, here, let me show you how to stick these things in your eye...
Can they get ties in to other nonprofit organisations? Because i can think of a whole lot of nonprofits that have been LOOKING for software development buddies, especially anything working better than current speech software. It becomes particularly relevant in issues such as advanced neuromuscular diseases. What they need is free, open-source (read: adaptable) voiceware, so that people who are already on disability don't have to pay for it... And i'm thinking that the amount of publicity that they could get by tying onto something like one of the many ALS foundations out there, or the MS etc foundations.... would be good for everybody...
of course, i could be completely offbase, because i was a bad slashdotter today and didn't read all of the material, just enough to think about. On a monday morning, thinking is limited... *sigh* right. In the words of they might be giants:"More coffee for me, dear, 'cause i'm not as messes up as i'd like to be...."
And they weren't just kids. THey were people who'd taken the day off work, too. I hadn't taken the day off work. i DID write to my congressmen, among other things. And let me make another thing clear: It is not necessarily unamerican to be against war. I support our troops. That's why i want them home. I know some children who are going to be without a father if he gets hurt.... and that's gonna make ALL of our lives more difficult. But not as difficult as the lives of the children over there without fathers.
HEAR ME OUT I'm not saying that we should all just hold hands and give peace a chance. I'm saying that this time there could have been other options, and that as charter members of the UN, we've just done something stupid, glabally speaking, which will affect our shot at diplomacy for years to come. I support our troops. I do not support this war.
Formerly there was a process of online voting, but in the view of the committee it probably hadn't worked as well as it could have," said Twomey. He said the voting process was very vulnerable to "branch stacking", and pointed out that in North America and Europe the number of people who voted was in the thousands, while in South East Asia the number of votes was in the millions.
what we're talking about here is the voting for the board members, which there is to my mind no easy solution for. It's one of those difficult questions: who gets to control the Internet? Nobody wants it to be one person or one organisation- but without some form of organisation, we end up with, well... ok. so we end up with pretty much what we've got now, only without anyone making people play at least somewhere NEAR the same playing field. And how do you assure equal representation among a huge body of people? (I recommend fairvote
as a place to start thinking about this one... The internet is one place where how we, as a people overall, decide to run things is going to have long-term ramifications, and i give ICANN credit for at least being aware of that fact.
ICANN will now rely more heavily on the At-Large Advisory Committee, which is charged with talking to other Internet organisations and individual users about how ICANN interacts with them.
Which to me, translates into (i could be wrong) : ICANN learns that it needs to play well with others.
Slashdot Mirror
And i'm curious to know what happens to people after they get led away, and at what point this starts to make since, since after all they may have just infected an airport full of people who are still getting on their flights.
I agree that this is an issue; I don't want to die, and this is killing people. But I'm not sure that I feel good about the lack of limitations here; halfway down the slippery slope already seems like a good time to stop and ask which is more important, our right to privacy or our physical safety, and how much of each we really HAVE to give up in order for this to work...
a.) is it appropriate to take pictures of riots
b.) is it approriate to then take away the pictures of the riots?
This raises questions because protest is frequently a crime, but the protest may be ethical in nature. Ethical as in ethically right, not just ethical in sphere-of-debate.
I'm thinking of the Vietnam protests, which frequently got silenced in the media for fear of sparking similar riots/protests. Anybody remember the song that got made of it? It got made because the media sat on the news footage. So this is a serious ethical question, as well as a legal one. I'm not a lawyer, but i'd say that if they came to the door asking for footage of the 'crime' i'd hand it over- but not until i'd sent copies to safe places with instructions to share if necessary.
just my thoughts. *sigh* long, crazy day and it's starting to show...
And while we're on the subject, yes. Lots of things can kill you. We live in a world where just about everything that walks, crawls, swims, breathes, slithers, or has been made by man can finish you off. However, there are known toxic limits for most of these things. At issue here is the fact that we don't know how much of what you have to take in, of the new materials, by what medium (skin, lungs, digestive tract) for it to finish you off.
We have no idea. I don't advocate stopping all production... but I can think of lots of reasons why I don't want to live next to the Lab, and i can think of lots of reasons why the people who do should be warned what's being made there. Think of what happens when a chemical lab catches fire. If they treat it as a dangerous substance, even if we don't know how dangerous we don't have to wish there had been a better containment system later. Who knew how much damage thalidomide would do? or DDT? Or how much trouble foreign species would be before introduced to a new environment? It's all tied into the same issue:
Check it out as much as possible before putting it into active use
Never test the water with both feet (i.e., introduce by degrees and with a whole heck of a lot of attention to results) and
Never, ever, EVER lick the spoon.
Here, and here.
Frankly, with my relatively sedentary lifestyle, it's absolutely obvious to me that if i could manage a coke or a piece of cheesecake after physical therapy, i'd be home free. (I recommend anybody heading for a carnivore's diet to make sure that they know what gout is, because it's something that anybody making sudden changes should be aware of. )
Here is an interesting site for calculating calorie use by activity. No, it doesn't have every activity. And it's pretty general. I advise you to enter your weight- in pounds, i think, and put the counter at 1 minute. Then multiply that by how much time you spend jumping rope, walking in circles, twiddling your thumbs, whatever- it will give you an idea of the average amount of calories someone your size burns off. I don't have to remind you that averages lie- but it will still at least be a ballpark figure.
And in the meantime, i'm up to six meals a day, and down to a size 3. In women's clothing, that means that it's very, very difficult to buy things that don't have tweety bird on them... because the odds of finding clothes that fit increase the more time i spend in the kids department.
Frankly, I say again that we've been through all of this before, and if anybody from the last debate is posting again at the same-or-higher weight after telling us how much they lost, I'm amused.
So they tried it with... other things. For example:
Aspirin
leftover chinese food
electric shock
tomato juice with tabasco
tabasco by itself- who knows?
tic-tacs, because that was what they found in the desk drawer
zinc, thinking maybe they could cure the common cold AND a stroke at the same time...
I'm making this list up myself, for amusement, because frankly, i'd like to see more of exactly how they got paid to do this research, and what else they tried on people to figure it out. I think that researchers should be required to publish their initial ideas along with how they came upon the idea... "so, we were sitting around one night getting hammered, and he looks at me and says, you know what? I bet this could cause cancer. "
and i said, "we aren't testing on cancer, just on strokes!"
And he hands me the bottle and sez, "so i bet this shtuff could cure stroke damage," and he passes out on the floor. I wrote it on the floor in magic marker and when we came to and got cleaned up, well, we tried it out..."
seriously, on the migraine note, a lot of pain meds now include caffeine, because it really does change how things work. Me, i go straight for imitrex, which at $20 a pill is still a bargain, because if somebody were to walk up to me and tell me they'd make my migraine vanish for $20, i'd say pretty please. The caffeine and regular NSAID approach doesn't work any more, alas... Now if they'd just find that this cure works on migraines, we'd be in business.
But my favourite quote, from his homepage, is:
So... a guy who specialises in finding new ways to help bamboo propagate- and mind you, bamboo is pretty prolific on its own, don't let that 'lucky bamboo' (which is not actually bamboo, but a plant of another type entirely) fool you- has now found a new way to describe shapes. Yes, this is important, but it's not the next big thing. Folks have been trying to find ways to describe shapes by equations in images long before this, and while his rush to patent may cause some interesting snarls up ahead, i find it unlikely that he even understands Fermat's last theorem,
let alone knows the solution and has described it in shape-description formula format.But if he does, he'd better post something more mathematical on his website, because he's just landed himself into mathematician waters- and it's sink or swim there, buddy. You don't get to try it again next growing season (Andrew Wiles' revisions notwithstanding), and contrary to what laypeople tend to believe, they still require proof when you walk in and say something crazy like 'Pi is 3.' Even mathemeticians are still arguing over the proofs available. And it's pretty cutthroat, with ten-day conferences, so i bet he's in for some entertaining phone calls.
Without them, it can be argued that we are losing a valuable part of our environment. But Even at the most base, survivalistic level, you need them to live. why? because the diseases that can wipe these animals out are the diseases that can wipe us out. All ethical considerations of conservation and the morality of medical testing aside, we need creatures running around with something close to our DNA. And to have them wiped out by human acts in addition to general disease spread is unconscionable, and we need to be greeting this news with more interest and concern than apathy. THey die, we die, and that goes for each of the other thousands of endangered species as well. Now, before you give that snide response of, well, we can't save them all... Consider Schindler's list. Maybe we can't save them all. But we better be trying. And this is one where we really can save ONE species. Oke, i'll climb down off my soapbox, but not until i offer you this. More later as i gather more links.
Now if they want to measure political spin, we have to wait to see what research grants they apply for next...(sorry, couldn't help it.) Seriously- how do they do this without friction?
What about non-bacterial illnesses (i.e., viruses, microplasms)
Do these molecules ever come unanchored, becoming little fat-seeking molecules of death?
How fast does a person die if they swallow a scrap of it, or some of those suddenly un-anchored molecules?
How do you clean these garments?
Will dead-bacteria buildup eventually render the garment useless?
How do you dispose of these garments at that point?
this piece was woefully short on facts, and context, and i'd love to hear more if anybody's got some other perspective on this new 'fabric of doom'...
Wiping out the ability to enact from behind a firewall will in some cases force the individual to assume social responsibility for their actions, and in others, it could cause a perfectly harmless but useful and constructive citizen to not want to take part. (the way that i don't want to fly on an airline that checks my credit info every time i try to board a plane.) In short, do you view this as a critically restrictive measure where society's NEW ideas come into the picture? Are we in danger of alienating the very people who would be responsible for future innovation of everything around us? I'm one of those who would be alienated, because I view this as an inalienable right to privacy.
because i'd sure like to see my boss's face if i told him i couldn't come to work because i'd almost been hit with a...
me: i almost got hit with a...
work: Almost? So not really? Get in here!!!!
now, if i worked on a space station.... look, folks, if we can't even predict a little bitty rock, we're going out fast.
and I STILL want to know why atheists can't be exempt from 'acts of god' insurance exclusions...
And if it were possible to re-print on the same page, would this mean that newspapers would re-use/recycle themselves? Just plug it into the daily info port, and watch as it reprints itself? It wouldn't be as fun as what i use (The internet for my daily news) but it would be intriguing, and i might go for it just to have a hard copy. On the other hand, it's hard enoguh to keep records as it is- this means there could be documents which cease to exist as soon as you tell them to, no pesky burning involved... hm. I'll have to think about this. When i see colourchange makeup come out, i'm going to scream...
First, if you can't see where your fellow soldiers are, you're looking at a wireframe model of a world that you can't shoot into. How do you know where our guys are? This isn't a redundant post, because i need to add
Second, if you add GPS for all our folks into the picture, all the enemy needs to do is take one set of goggles and kaboom! there go our troops.
That said, i agree with the point that these are adding to the trivialisation of wartime 'kills' and the overlap of technology and wargames. But this has been coming for a long time, from way back in the world of 'duckhunt.' (which was pretty advanced itself, all things considered...) Hurt my spine in an accident one year, though, spent hours learnign to shoot those stupid ducks. Do i now look upon animated ducks with a dispassionate urge to blow them away? No. But that's not quite the same as human to human violence on the box. (PETA, leave me alone: it's NOT the same, and doesn't have the same effect. We can argue that one out when the US goes to war against waterfowl.)
So tell me: does anyone else think of the ad for the - what was it, navy seals, is army, that has the war game with the kids being beat to shreds by some mystery troup, and it turns out that it's real US forces playing the war game against them? Frankly, i think that the US forces are using this marketing tool badly- they are smudging that line just as far and as fast as they can. But sooner or later, the kids who sign up get to find out that it's not a game.
Realising that i've digressed from my original point: It's a catch-22. Put nobody else in the picture, all you have is a big sign saying 'you are here' on a digitised map. Good for sandstorms but won't tell you whether the guy hiding behind the wall up ahead is your buddy or your foe, and if you put in stuff that tells you this- you open the door for all those foes to know where your buddies are when they take you and your nifty goggles too. What's an army to do?
what happens to bacteria already in your system?
what happens when the antibody now in your digestive tract gets noticed by your OWN immune system?
What happens if you're allergic to eggs? Is it possible to develop this in a different medium?
but seriously, i agree that it's all almost irrelevant, since we're going to find out sooner than we expect.
I'm not geting any of this through any other source yet. Nothing. nothing in the business rags, nothing in the copyright activist wings, i haven't seen this ANYWHERE. I haven't seen it in the proposed legislation papers and frankly, if somebody's got a bead on this, bring it up and let's get a look, because this sounds crazy to me. Are they looking for someone to retain them to protect their feared-for copyrights? Is this an ad? Do these people exist? what happened to the fraction of a guy (almost ten)- is he the guy who submitted the story? (Oh, aquel hombre es Carlito, y el no possesse ... fill in the blank with the parts that Carlito is missing...)
*sigh* oke, slashdotters. what have we got on this that's real??? Is this even a real address?
Are retailers going to be able to set up virutal shops? Are there going to be virtual cyberprostitute rings? And just as importantly... are there going to be virtual cops?
A virtual economy is a lot more than a virtual mall. It is not a marketplace, it's an environment within which a marketplace gets built.
Virtual taxes. Virtual income. Do you earn an income in it, or is this a one-way economy, like everquest, with people pouring money in left and right? Because frankly, i can think of better ways to spend my money than on the entrance fee to a virtual playground, where i then get to buy virtual stuff with real money. (Do virtual goods have a depreciation schedule?)
Another good question would be whether a 'virtual economy' which does not permit free enterprise is an economy at all- can i set up a virtual shop, selling, say, modifications like armor, and make real money? Does money come back out for anyone other than the marketers and the owners?
In other words- how does this differ from a 'sims you can pay for' model??? In a real online virtual economy, we'd be able to sell each other game mods that let us, say, change our environment (virtual landscapers) or up our quality of life (virtual just about everything else) and it would be the geeks who made the most money. This is not likely to be permitted... this looks more like a toy than anything else. We're not there yet, put down the mouse and go back to the Gibson novels... *sigh*
Not the power charge, but the enzymes? So here we have reached the point of being concerned over not just the charge, but the rapid breakdown of the fuel cell itself. And that's actually a good thing, so long as they keep it cheap and don't sell the darned thing in a non-recyclable plastic package. I've seen it happen a lot where products which could be really envronmentally friendly came packaged in something utterly inappropriate.
I agree that the other issue is- how expensive are these going to be able to run here in the US, wehre it's probably going to have to be made AND sold as a non-drinkable alcohol class- which isn't necessarily convenient OR cheap. Are they going to try to create a market for the fuels first by promoting the cell? It seems like they'd HAVE to make it run on things like gin first, since that's a tough push to get the fuel out there without anything to put it in... entertaining little cycle. I'd like one that can recharge from household compost- anyone remember Back to the Future movie series, with Mr. Fission?
And for that matter, how long before the idea catches on that, by working together, one ring of networks can try to encompass everyone, and WiFi pirates really WILL be the political protests of the future?
I mean this seriously. I don't know enough about this to know how much this is going to limit people's freedom of speech, and anywhere china gets involved, so does censorship. Which might, come to think of it, explain the conspicuous absence of japan from this group...
Thanks.
Sol
I can see several other potential trouble areas here, beyond either the medicine wearing off in the wash, and the toxins building up behind the lens. Many people who have sensitive eyes may actually be sensitive to the compounds being used to hold the medicine- and many people who have unmapped lesions may find that this presents real risk. Obviously, this is going to take some screening procedures.
I can also see where this is going to be an issue for people who try to 'stretch' their incomes by wearing contacts too long. I've seen a couple of cases in the community around me where aging folks on limited income and limited insurance try to do stupid things, and medicated contacts just seem like a dangerous idea for people who don't realise that these need to be clean and carefully used...
On the other hand, these are also people who couldn't use eyedrops. Is anybody supervising these people? Who lets them out at recess?
and now for the other side of this: has anybody noticed that eye doctors are the anti-mum? Mum spends half your childhood trying to get you to not stick things in your eyes. You go to the eye doctor, and they right away say, here, let me show you how to stick these things in your eye...
a bad slashdotter today....
of course, i could be completely offbase, because i was a bad slashdotter today and didn't read all of the material, just enough to think about. On a monday morning, thinking is limited... *sigh* right. In the words of they might be giants: "More coffee for me, dear, 'cause i'm not as messes up as i'd like to be...."
HEAR ME OUT I'm not saying that we should all just hold hands and give peace a chance. I'm saying that this time there could have been other options, and that as charter members of the UN, we've just done something stupid, glabally speaking, which will affect our shot at diplomacy for years to come. I support our troops. I do not support this war.
what we're talking about here is the voting for the board members, which there is to my mind no easy solution for. It's one of those difficult questions: who gets to control the Internet? Nobody wants it to be one person or one organisation- but without some form of organisation, we end up with, well... ok. so we end up with pretty much what we've got now, only without anyone making people play at least somewhere NEAR the same playing field. And how do you assure equal representation among a huge body of people? (I recommend fairvote as a place to start thinking about this one... The internet is one place where how we, as a people overall, decide to run things is going to have long-term ramifications, and i give ICANN credit for at least being aware of that fact.
Which to me, translates into (i could be wrong) : ICANN learns that it needs to play well with others.It's a start.