"P.S. Does anyone have a small army I can borrow?"
No, but if your just invading France I'm free during lunch. I'm sure we could knock it out and still have time to grab a burger and some "Freedom Fries".
"I just flat-out don't understand why it's a big deal when the US of A does it, but it's OK for anyone else."
I agree with you in principle, that always bugs me as well. In this case, however, I'd make an exception.
If we (the US) have the facilities and funding for research and they have the talent and desire to travel here (usually for very little pay) and perform research for the benefit of us all then let them. They're not coming all the way to the US just to live off the public dole or to take jobs away from the average workiing Joe. This is one special case where there is a clear benefit in not denying the visas.
"And have you ever considered that the most dangerous kind of research is not the manipulation of known dangerous organisms (and the associated containment precautions), but of supposedly "innocuous" or "harmless" organisms, organisms where there is no need for increased security or containment protocols?"
Let me start out by saying quickly that I'm posting this after imbuing quite a bit of wine, but: Having done some actual work with manipulating "innocuous" organisms, the hardest part of creating anything that could possibly be used as an effective biological weapon is the delivery system. Unless you've actually done some work in a micro bio lab you probably won't appreciate how hard it is to create *anything* useful when you start with crap to begin with. Creating a bacteria or virus that can cripple or kill us useless if you have to infect every single person one at a time. The cost involved is so prohibitive it's almost laughable. Not to mention the lack of control once such an agent is released. If you put in an easy mechanism (read cure) to protect yourself the weapon will be almost useless. To build in something...creative... will only increase the time and cost of the weapon. BSL4 (biosaftey level) labs don't grow on trees, which is what you need to make something truely devistating. For the cost of creating one good biological weapon from "harmless" organisms you could easily buy enough conventional weapons to blow up half a country. The most valuable asset terrorist have is "martyrs" willing to die for their cause. As long as they have people like that they don't need anything else.
"It's really cool and all, but don't you think this would be a slight waste of CPU or GPU power?"
Remember that the next time people are bitching on slashdot about how the next AMD/Pentium super 2.7 zillion teraherz processors are a waste becuase nobody really *needs* that much power.
"...I think that this will really screw the music companies in the long run."
No it won't. By next week everyone outside of the music or geek community will have forgotten about the whole damn thing. Most Americans don't know anything about what's going on or don't care.
Instead of setting up a collection fund for every Joe that gets sued, why don't you support efforts that can actually affect the situation at hand? With enough money you can: buy anti-RIAA ads, organize protest for free publicity, buy congressmen, etc...
You need to make people understand and *care* about something like this before you can expect change. Billion dollar industries don't roll over unless they have to.
"So, in other words, a human life to you is worth less than your property? What a humanitarian."
You damn well better believe it. The only thing that would make me hesitate before shooting someone who broke into my home would be to have them walk off the carpet so the mess would be easier to clean up. They knew the risks of their line of work. If dying to the sound of their own screams didn't sit well with them they should have gotten a regular job like everyone else.
"Please please enlighten me on how reducing loudness = no sonic boom?"
A "sonic boom" is what is produced when the sound waves from the jet interfere constructively, adding their energy together. By changing the shape of the plane the sound waves do not combine into a "super wave-o-death". Technically, this means no sonic boom. There is still some noise, not much you can do about that unless you can get all the sound waves to interfere in a perfectly destructive manner. The point is that the sonic boom effect is why you don't already see supersonic jets flying all over the place. Shattered windows and bleeding ears aren't to popular with the great unwashed masses.
"So, in order to buy amnesty from the RIAA, I have to sell them my identity? Sounds fair... "
That's because you didn't read the part where you sign with your blood and mail the document back in an envelope made of the flesh of your first born. Remember, always read the fine print!
I couldn't agree more. The most important thing you have to consider before you market *anything* is who your audience is. Game support is irrelevent for "Linux for Business", however if you want to make headway into the consumer desktop market you MUST have game support. Put out a blockbuster game for Linux only (yeah, I know) and see how fast people can catch on to using linux. As long as Windows is "good enough" you can't get the average joe to switch just because linux is "just as easy to use". They need a reason that is relevent to them.
"Frankly if I were making decisions for Apple, I would seriously cosider *not* making a Windoze version of the Music Store. How long could it possibly take for M$ and the RIAA to agree to somethng obvious."
Funny, that's the exact reason I'd make sure I had a Windoze version out ASAP. MS *will* be showing up eventually, and if I was Apple I'd want to make sure I had the largest piece of the pie when they do.
Very shortsighted, IMHO. If your going to change one critical element of a system, you will probably have to change others as well. Your assuming the economy will be functioning under the same principles once this technology matures. I agree society needs a driving factor to push it along, but I don't always think money will be that factor. At least I hope not.
"I'm wondering when cash transactions over a certain value would be outlawed altogether. "
In the US, all cash transactions over 10K require a social security number. All electronic transfers over a specific amount are flagged too, but that number escapes me at the moment....
Hasn't been taught in a while, at least not where I went to college. One gene has six reading frames (six different proteins). Some genes code for several proteins in the same reading frame. Many RNA strands undergo modification after transcription (more protein variety). And some proteins get modified after production as well.
Producing 100,000+ proteins with only 40K genes is fairly easy.
What about cultures that have a different view of beauty. The "Thin is sexy" motto we seem to ascribe to here in the US doesn't hold up in all areas of the world. Hell, do a quick google search for fetish. Even here in the US different people seem to get off on a very wide array of physical traits.
Of course, if I wake up tomorrow surrounded by supermodels I may not be posting on Slashdot very much in the forseeable future...
Exactly, that is the first piece needed to "freeze" someone and be able to bring them back. Now the hard part is flash thawing them when you want to revive them. This will be much harder IMHO, but not impossible. Energy (i.e heat) can already be distributed to specific areas of the body without affecting the areas around it. Some surgeries to remove tumors are performed in this way. Several weak energy sources (rf, microwave, etc..) can be aimed at the target area from perpendicular angles in such a way that they interfere constructively (their energy is added), thus allowing surgeons to destroy a tumor in the brain without frying the surrounding neurons. When this tech is improved enough to allow variable amounts of heat to instantly heat each cell in the body at the same time (different types of cells will require different amounts) then reviving cryogenically frozen people to be revived safely...in theory at least. Your mileage my vary.
"Why bombard him with soundless music when we can bombard him with tasteless music. 24/7 of N-Sync should pound him into submission"
And land you in front of a war crimes tribunal. There are laws against torture.
Slashdot Mirror
You must be new here. Guns don't kill people, video games do. Duh.
"P.S. Does anyone have a small army I can borrow?"
No, but if your just invading France I'm free during lunch. I'm sure we could knock it out and still have time to grab a burger and some "Freedom Fries".
"I just flat-out don't understand why it's a big deal when the US of A does it, but it's OK for anyone else."
I agree with you in principle, that always bugs me as well. In this case, however, I'd make an exception.
If we (the US) have the facilities and funding for research and they have the talent and desire to travel here (usually for very little pay) and perform research for the benefit of us all then let them. They're not coming all the way to the US just to live off the public dole or to take jobs away from the average workiing Joe. This is one special case where there is a clear benefit in not denying the visas.
"And have you ever considered that the most dangerous kind of research is not the manipulation of known dangerous organisms (and the associated containment precautions), but of supposedly "innocuous" or "harmless" organisms, organisms where there is no need for increased security or containment protocols?"
Let me start out by saying quickly that I'm posting this after imbuing quite a bit of wine, but: Having done some actual work with manipulating "innocuous" organisms, the hardest part of creating anything that could possibly be used as an effective biological weapon is the delivery system. Unless you've actually done some work in a micro bio lab you probably won't appreciate how hard it is to create *anything* useful when you start with crap to begin with. Creating a bacteria or virus that can cripple or kill us useless if you have to infect every single person one at a time. The cost involved is so prohibitive it's almost laughable. Not to mention the lack of control once such an agent is released. If you put in an easy mechanism (read cure) to protect yourself the weapon will be almost useless. To build in something...creative... will only increase the time and cost of the weapon. BSL4 (biosaftey level) labs don't grow on trees, which is what you need to make something truely devistating. For the cost of creating one good biological weapon from "harmless" organisms you could easily buy enough conventional weapons to blow up half a country. The most valuable asset terrorist have is "martyrs" willing to die for their cause. As long as they have people like that they don't need anything else.
"It's really cool and all, but don't you think this would be a slight waste of CPU or GPU power?"
Remember that the next time people are bitching on slashdot about how the next AMD/Pentium super 2.7 zillion teraherz processors are a waste becuase nobody really *needs* that much power.
"...I think that this will really screw the music companies in the long run."
No it won't. By next week everyone outside of the music or geek community will have forgotten about the whole damn thing. Most Americans don't know anything about what's going on or don't care.
Instead of setting up a collection fund for every Joe that gets sued, why don't you support efforts that can actually affect the situation at hand?
With enough money you can: buy anti-RIAA ads, organize protest for free publicity, buy congressmen, etc...
You need to make people understand and *care* about something like this before you can expect change. Billion dollar industries don't roll over unless they have to.
"So, in other words, a human life to you is worth less than your property? What a humanitarian."
You damn well better believe it. The only thing that would make me hesitate before shooting someone who broke into my home would be to have them walk off the carpet so the mess would be easier to clean up. They knew the risks of their line of work. If dying to the sound of their own screams didn't sit well with them they should have gotten a regular job like everyone else.
"Please please enlighten me on how reducing loudness = no sonic boom?"
A "sonic boom" is what is produced when the sound waves from the jet interfere constructively, adding their energy together. By changing the shape of the plane the sound waves do not combine into a "super wave-o-death". Technically, this means no sonic boom. There is still some noise, not much you can do about that unless you can get all the sound waves to interfere in a perfectly destructive manner. The point is that the sonic boom effect is why you don't already see supersonic jets flying all over the place. Shattered windows and bleeding ears aren't to popular with the great unwashed masses.
"Gay. Gay. Gay."
Not interested in your sex life. Sorry.
"So, in order to buy amnesty from the RIAA, I have to sell them my identity? Sounds fair... "
That's because you didn't read the part where you sign with your blood and mail the document back in an envelope made of the flesh of your first born. Remember, always read the fine print!
I couldn't agree more. The most important thing you have to consider before you market *anything* is who your audience is. Game support is irrelevent for "Linux for Business", however if you want to make headway into the consumer desktop market you MUST have game support. Put out a blockbuster game for Linux only (yeah, I know) and see how fast people can catch on to using linux. As long as Windows is "good enough" you can't get the average joe to switch just because linux is "just as easy to use". They need a reason that is relevent to them.
"Frankly if I were making decisions for Apple, I would seriously cosider *not* making a Windoze version of the Music Store. How long could it possibly take for M$ and the RIAA to agree to somethng obvious."
Funny, that's the exact reason I'd make sure I had a Windoze version out ASAP. MS *will* be showing up eventually, and if I was Apple I'd want to make sure I had the largest piece of the pie when they do.
"RIAA exec: blah blah blah"
"Farmer: You're an ijit. *BLAM* *BLAM*"
Who said the old ways don't work best.
Very shortsighted, IMHO. If your going to change one critical element of a system, you will probably have to change others as well. Your assuming the economy will be functioning under the same principles once this technology matures. I agree society needs a driving factor to push it along, but I don't always think money will be that factor. At least I hope not.
>upon hearing this, my first thought was the >chatter-box prostitute from Bruce-Willis's "Last >Man Standing."
> Somebody drag my mind out of the gutter please!
Then it would probably be better if you didn't read the previous thread about "What to do when penetrated".
"Should be out around the same time as Duke Nukem Forever and the Diablo II 1.10."
Damn, and I was hoping to be alive when the shower area "wallhack" was enabled!
"I'm wondering when cash transactions over a certain value would be outlawed altogether. "
In the US, all cash transactions over 10K require a social security number. All electronic transfers over a specific amount are flagged too, but that number escapes me at the moment....
"they are often pointless mental exercises without much factual backing."
Sorta like Slashdot post, right?
"With 1 Teraflop of processing power, I hope it'll come with more than 32MB RAM this time."
Yeah, but it'll still use eight meg memory cards for saved games.
"one gene => one protein => one function"
Hasn't been taught in a while, at least not where I went to college. One gene has six reading frames (six different proteins). Some genes code for several proteins in the same reading frame. Many RNA strands undergo modification after transcription (more protein variety). And some proteins get modified after production as well.
Producing 100,000+ proteins with only 40K genes is fairly easy.
"I'm not American, but as I understand your legal system, the correct thing to do is sue the scientists, right?"
See! Our legal system isn't complicated after all!
Here is your link, picture included. I hope you like green.....
Yeah, but the "Super Internet Boy 2.0" can play Everquest for week on end before falling over dead instead of days like the current version.
What about cultures that have a different view of beauty. The "Thin is sexy" motto we seem to ascribe to here in the US doesn't hold up in all areas of the world. Hell, do a quick google search for fetish. Even here in the US different people seem to get off on a very wide array of physical traits. Of course, if I wake up tomorrow surrounded by supermodels I may not be posting on Slashdot very much in the forseeable future...
Exactly, that is the first piece needed to "freeze" someone and be able to bring them back. Now the hard part is flash thawing them when you want to revive them. This will be much harder IMHO, but not impossible. Energy (i.e heat) can already be distributed to specific areas of the body without affecting the areas around it. Some surgeries to remove tumors are performed in this way. Several weak energy sources (rf, microwave, etc..) can be aimed at the target area from perpendicular angles in such a way that they interfere constructively (their energy is added), thus allowing surgeons to destroy a tumor in the brain without frying the surrounding neurons. When this tech is improved enough to allow variable amounts of heat to instantly heat each cell in the body at the same time (different types of cells will require different amounts) then reviving cryogenically frozen people to be revived safely...in theory at least. Your mileage my vary.
"Why bombard him with soundless music when we can bombard him with tasteless music. 24/7 of N-Sync should pound him into submission" And land you in front of a war crimes tribunal. There are laws against torture.