I respectfully disagree. One way that manned space exploration will help the situation here on Earth is indirectly. Any long-term project has to be self-sufficient. While a base on Mars may not be able to support many people, it might help us develope technology which can support more people on fewer resources (soil, water, energy, oxygen) which could then be used on Earth.
I also notice that you have left out perhaps the most promising place to discover life in this solar system, Europa. It likely has a great quantity of liquid water and volcanic vents. If there is already a thriving eco-system there. It certainly might be able to support a decent number of humans.
Furthermore, the more different places that people live the longer our species' life-expectancy is. If some bad shit happened on Earth (asteroid, nuclear holocost, etc.), wouldn't it be nice if even a few hundred thousand people on Mars could propogate our species and one day maybe return to Earth.
Your parochial outlook certainly restricts the growth of and is a threat to humanity.
According to the Tree of Life Web Project, all the animals mentioned (rodents, felines, humans) belong to the infraclass Eutheria (placental mammals).
If you look closely at the tree, you will see that the Tree of Life does indeed have order Rodentia closer to the order Primates. I recall learning this in high-school biology, also.
I totally agree. The public school system is a shambles. Many universities are not much better. Fortunately, when I taught, the school let me do what I wanted as long as I completed the lesson plan.
The best thing that I did for my students was to give them one on one final exams. They all had to make appointments with me. They each had a series of different tasks to perform on a computer and time limit. The tasks were easy: creating a directory, creating various kinds of files, using a browser, etc. These were much easier than their homework, but their text (which I did not choose) led them through everything keystroke by keystroke, so most of them didn't know how to do things. Well, when I was standing over them and they were under time pressure, most of them figured things out. It was great!
If I had only had MACs to work with, I could have taught them about UNIX in a friendly environment.
I agree that Diversity in platforms at schools is important, but not for the reasons of stability and security.
Rather, I think it's extremely important that students have the opportunity to use more than one platform. It gives them the idea that the is something beyand Windows. It also makes them much more adaptable to different environments and thus makes them more marketable and trainable.
I was an adjunct faculty member at a very small University. One of the classes that I taught was How to Use MS Excel (that wasn't the actual title, but that's what the material consisted of). Anyway, I thought it was a crying shame that that was all the computer training most of them would get in their college careers, so I took some liberties (various internet based projects). There was an extra day, so I thought that I would teach them to log in to a Unix server through telnet. They were clueless. They tried to follow what I said, but they had no concept of figuring things out on their own.
If there had been Macs (with OSX) in their high schools, most would probably have been more confident using a shell and in general not so stuck in a Windows frame of mind. If anything, I think high schools should use more Macs. Now that they are BSD based, they are more compatible with real OSs while at the same time being fairly easy for a novice.
I know, I know it's hard to have much of an IT budget as a public school, and that's sad. Schools should certainly get more money. It will certainly help the future of the US more than lining oil barons' pockets or dropping bombs on brown people.
At this point in time, I'd have to agree with you, but with the advances in material science and aeronautics not to mention software that will happen in the next ten years, 2020 might be a good time for a first Mars mission.
Mars needs to be our medium term planning. How else will we propogate our species further and increase our species' survival expectancy?
This is a common technique when designing vaccines for HIV/AIDS. I've heard of several other HIV vaccines that got press as being able to suppress the disease.
IANAI (I am not an immunologist), but I think that one reason researchers are taking that path is that it's easier to do trials. One problem with preventative vaccines for HIV is that because HIV suppresses the immune system, vaccines for it can tend to do the same and several have actually caused the vaccine recipient to contract HIV. Furthermore, because there is no cure, we can't just expose people to HIV after giving them the vaccine. This would necessitate much larger trials in order to establish efficacy.
It's possible that this vaccine is a candidate to be a prentative vaccine but that testing it as a therapeutic vaccine is much easier and safer.
Sonner or later researchers will find a preventative vaccine and then we can all go back to our lives of promiscuity... oh wait... I'm posting to slashdot... never mind.
Yeah, but the Fed suit indicted Microsoft for predatory business practices while the little patent-portfolio company is using predatory business practices.
I really think that software patents are awful. Algorithm ought to be public domain. Copyright, and obfuscation ought to be good enough for code. And for christ sake, if someone reverse engineering certainly should be permitted.
From the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Note that the declaration of independence although highly respected is not actual law and as such can't be enforce by the judiciary.
Of course he did. In fact now he's lying about lying. The CIA warned Bush that the information was bad, but he really didn't care. But worse than lying, Bush is a collaborator (after the fact) with those who perpetrated the atrocities of 9/11/01...
Yes. That's right. You heard what I said. What were the terrorists' primary goals? No not to kill many innocent people. Their primary goal was to make America less free. They wouldn't have been successful if it hadn't been for their friend Dubya. All the patriot acts and most other measures passed by his administration to protect Americans against terrorism have had the primary effect of making Americans less free.
I'm not talking about using the reply-to: or from: addresses on the e-mail, but rather expressing interest (at least in the loan scams) via web-based forms. Obviously the link in the spam have to be legit.
Great post. Actually that was the first thing that I thought of when I read the article.
We could go one step further, though. We could write a mail filter that would statistically classify spam and then reply to it using fake information. Everyone has three or four addresses on Yahoo!, right?
I'm not exactly the best programmer, but I imagine starting with the source to spam-assassin or similar would be the way to go.
This could be huge. Of course, to really make a dent, we'd have to write a filter for Outlook Express and AOL mail and then install them on relatives computers, but it could be done. Anyone interested?
1. Send out a bunch of e-mails for Nigerian bank schemes, penis enlargements, etc.
2. Kill whoever answers.
3. Repeat.
4. Spammers market goes away.
5. ????
6. No more spam.
What a great question for SCO. I assume that you won't get a reply (as any reply might harm their suit), but if you do get a reply, please, please let us know about it.
I'm sure such a reply would be worthy of a front-page story on Slashdot.
That was the obly thing I could think of, also. The class I took was for non-majors and when I brought up the point, the prof sort of brushed the question aside.
The answer most physical laws are of a particular form, so this this one must be also really isn't very satisfactory, though.
When I took an Astronomy course, I learned that scientists have observed that the Universe expanding more rapidly than in the past and that expansion is accelerating. From this our prof drew the conclusion that Universe would expand forever in heat death.
The thing I don't understand is why we can conclude that from measuring the second derivative of the size of the Universe (acceleration). If the third derivative were negative, it wouldn't matter (to the fate of the Universe) that the first two were positive. The Universe would still end in a big crunch, right? How closely have scientists measured the function that governs the size of the Universe? And what do they know about it?
Actually, what needs to happen is for higher judgements to be doled out by juries.
What? Yes. That's right. There should be higher penalties for negligent and malicious companies who flagrantly defraud consumers and endanger employees. $200 million is nothing to Microsoft especially in vouchers. Some serious punitive damages should be doled out in such cases.
[rant] I'm not so familiar with this case. $200*10^6 might be appropriate, but in cases where children are burned because of faulty gasoline canisters or Vinyl workers develope fatal cancers because of poor safety conditions, the punitive damages should dwarf the actual damages. No it is not okay that corporations continue to behave completely irresponsibly because it benefits their bottom line. Lets make responsibilty the first priority for them.
Hmmm. Well the college that you attended has got the right idea. I noticed that you're a researcher in Sweden. Perhaps you went to school in Sweden, also? Anyway, here in America, the teaching of Math is extremely poor. Unless you are actually a mathematics major (or minor), most of your math education will be focused on learning mechanical techniques and very simple application.
My differential equations course was so large that a large portion of our grades came from MULTIPLE CHOICE tests. It really pissed me off, too. I felt that I had a very good understanding of the material, but I would make small errors and get no credit!
I do agree with you, though, about Calculus proof techniques. All those horrible epsilon/delta arguments. Yuck! I also enjoy discrete mathematical proof techniques. That's why I'm now a grad in CS.
Slashdot Mirror
I respectfully disagree. One way that manned space exploration will help the situation here on Earth is indirectly. Any long-term project has to be self-sufficient. While a base on Mars may not be able to support many people, it might help us develope technology which can support more people on fewer resources (soil, water, energy, oxygen) which could then be used on Earth.
.
I also notice that you have left out perhaps the most promising place to discover life in this solar system, Europa. It likely has a great quantity of liquid water and volcanic vents. If there is already a thriving eco-system there. It certainly might be able to support a decent number of humans.
Furthermore, the more different places that people live the longer our species' life-expectancy is. If some bad shit happened on Earth (asteroid, nuclear holocost, etc.), wouldn't it be nice if even a few hundred thousand people on Mars could propogate our species and one day maybe return to Earth.
Your parochial outlook certainly restricts the growth of and is a threat to humanity
According to the Tree of Life Web Project, all the animals mentioned (rodents, felines, humans) belong to the infraclass Eutheria (placental mammals).
If you look closely at the tree, you will see that the Tree of Life does indeed have order Rodentia closer to the order Primates. I recall learning this in high-school biology, also.
Yes this does seem to be a bit of old news.
I totally agree. The public school system is a shambles. Many universities are not much better. Fortunately, when I taught, the school let me do what I wanted as long as I completed the lesson plan.
The best thing that I did for my students was to give them one on one final exams. They all had to make appointments with me. They each had a series of different tasks to perform on a computer and time limit. The tasks were easy: creating a directory, creating various kinds of files, using a browser, etc. These were much easier than their homework, but their text (which I did not choose) led them through everything keystroke by keystroke, so most of them didn't know how to do things. Well, when I was standing over them and they were under time pressure, most of them figured things out. It was great!
If I had only had MACs to work with, I could have taught them about UNIX in a friendly environment.
I agree that Diversity in platforms at schools is important, but not for the reasons of stability and security.
Rather, I think it's extremely important that students have the opportunity to use more than one platform. It gives them the idea that the is something beyand Windows. It also makes them much more adaptable to different environments and thus makes them more marketable and trainable.
I was an adjunct faculty member at a very small University. One of the classes that I taught was How to Use MS Excel (that wasn't the actual title, but that's what the material consisted of). Anyway, I thought it was a crying shame that that was all the computer training most of them would get in their college careers, so I took some liberties (various internet based projects). There was an extra day, so I thought that I would teach them to log in to a Unix server through telnet. They were clueless. They tried to follow what I said, but they had no concept of figuring things out on their own.
If there had been Macs (with OSX) in their high schools, most would probably have been more confident using a shell and in general not so stuck in a Windows frame of mind. If anything, I think high schools should use more Macs. Now that they are BSD based, they are more compatible with real OSs while at the same time being fairly easy for a novice.
I know, I know it's hard to have much of an IT budget as a public school, and that's sad. Schools should certainly get more money. It will certainly help the future of the US more than lining oil barons' pockets or dropping bombs on brown people.
Thanks. My C++ has seriously languished lately. I mostly use Perl and matlab, now.
At this point in time, I'd have to agree with you, but with the advances in material science and aeronautics not to mention software that will happen in the next ten years, 2020 might be a good time for a first Mars mission.
Mars needs to be our medium term planning. How else will we propogate our species further and increase our species' survival expectancy?
Well as to budgetary numbers sound not that unlike those of the US, today. Whatever happened to the fiscally conservative Republican party?
Just a question:
In (Dollars >> Influence), is the '>>' the 'much greater than' sign or the C++ stream-in operator?
Shouldn't evil be a positive mod?
This is a common technique when designing vaccines for HIV/AIDS. I've heard of several other HIV vaccines that got press as being able to suppress the disease.
... oh wait ... I'm posting to slashdot ... never mind.
IANAI (I am not an immunologist), but I think that one reason researchers are taking that path is that it's easier to do trials. One problem with preventative vaccines for HIV is that because HIV suppresses the immune system, vaccines for it can tend to do the same and several have actually caused the vaccine recipient to contract HIV. Furthermore, because there is no cure, we can't just expose people to HIV after giving them the vaccine. This would necessitate much larger trials in order to establish efficacy.
It's possible that this vaccine is a candidate to be a prentative vaccine but that testing it as a therapeutic vaccine is much easier and safer.
Sonner or later researchers will find a preventative vaccine and then we can all go back to our lives of promiscuity
Yeah, but the Fed suit indicted Microsoft for predatory business practices while the little patent-portfolio company is using predatory business practices.
I really think that software patents are awful. Algorithm ought to be public domain. Copyright, and obfuscation ought to be good enough for code. And for christ sake, if someone reverse engineering certainly should be permitted.
From the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Note that the declaration of independence although highly respected is not actual law and as such can't be enforce by the judiciary.
Of course he did. In fact now he's lying about lying. The CIA warned Bush that the information was bad, but he really didn't care. But worse than lying, Bush is a collaborator (after the fact) with those who perpetrated the atrocities of 9/11/01...
Yes. That's right. You heard what I said. What were the terrorists' primary goals? No not to kill many innocent people. Their primary goal was to make America less free. They wouldn't have been successful if it hadn't been for their friend Dubya. All the patriot acts and most other measures passed by his administration to protect Americans against terrorism have had the primary effect of making Americans less free.
I'm not talking about using the reply-to: or from: addresses on the e-mail, but rather expressing interest (at least in the loan scams) via web-based forms. Obviously the link in the spam have to be legit.
Great post. Actually that was the first thing that I thought of when I read the article.
We could go one step further, though. We could write a mail filter that would statistically classify spam and then reply to it using fake information. Everyone has three or four addresses on Yahoo!, right?
I'm not exactly the best programmer, but I imagine starting with the source to spam-assassin or similar would be the way to go.
This could be huge. Of course, to really make a dent, we'd have to write a filter for Outlook Express and AOL mail and then install them on relatives computers, but it could be done. Anyone interested?
Surely there must be some prior art here. I vaguely remember some /.ers bringing up some in the original story.
Anybody got anything?
1. Send out a bunch of e-mails for Nigerian bank schemes, penis enlargements, etc.
2. Kill whoever answers.
3. Repeat.
4. Spammers market goes away.
5. ????
6. No more spam.
What a great question for SCO. I assume that you won't get a reply (as any reply might harm their suit), but if you do get a reply, please, please let us know about it.
I'm sure such a reply would be worthy of a front-page story on Slashdot.
What a poor choice of acronym. How confusing.
That was the obly thing I could think of, also. The class I took was for non-majors and when I brought up the point, the prof sort of brushed the question aside.
The answer most physical laws are of a particular form, so this this one must be also really isn't very satisfactory, though.
When I took an Astronomy course, I learned that scientists have observed that the Universe expanding more rapidly than in the past and that expansion is accelerating. From this our prof drew the conclusion that Universe would expand forever in heat death.
The thing I don't understand is why we can conclude that from measuring the second derivative of the size of the Universe (acceleration). If the third derivative were negative, it wouldn't matter (to the fate of the Universe) that the first two were positive. The Universe would still end in a big crunch, right? How closely have scientists measured the function that governs the size of the Universe? And what do they know about it?
Actually, what needs to happen is for higher judgements to be doled out by juries.
What? Yes. That's right. There should be higher penalties for negligent and malicious companies who flagrantly defraud consumers and endanger employees. $200 million is nothing to Microsoft especially in vouchers. Some serious punitive damages should be doled out in such cases.
[rant]
I'm not so familiar with this case. $200*10^6 might be appropriate, but in cases where children are burned because of faulty gasoline canisters or Vinyl workers develope fatal cancers because of poor safety conditions, the punitive damages should dwarf the actual damages. No it is not okay that corporations continue to behave completely irresponsibly because it benefits their bottom line. Lets make responsibilty the first priority for them.
Actually, I think that the problem lies in their greed.
The feedback mechanism may not solve problems more affectively, but it can help to better approximate a pure democracy through a democratic republic.
Hmmm. Well the college that you attended has got the right idea. I noticed that you're a researcher in Sweden. Perhaps you went to school in Sweden, also? Anyway, here in America, the teaching of Math is extremely poor. Unless you are actually a mathematics major (or minor), most of your math education will be focused on learning mechanical techniques and very simple application.
My differential equations course was so large that a large portion of our grades came from MULTIPLE CHOICE tests. It really pissed me off, too. I felt that I had a very good understanding of the material, but I would make small errors and get no credit!
I do agree with you, though, about Calculus proof techniques. All those horrible epsilon/delta arguments. Yuck! I also enjoy discrete mathematical proof techniques. That's why I'm now a grad in CS.