While it's true that the initial tip-off came from two high-schoolers, their results were confirmed by Commerce Commision testing. One can safely assume that the confirmatory tests were conducted under controlled conditions in an accredited laboratory. Which is why GSK copped the fine & has been trying to limit damage ever since.
If you are going to claim that Product X contains a certain amount of substance Y, then isn't it up to you to ensure that it is so? The latest spin from GSK claims that the lack of vitamin C is limited to Australasia. That it was because their testing methods were not sensitive enough to track the rate of decay of vitamin C. I call bullshit. GSK are a PHARMACEUTICAL company. Shouldn't they be tracking the *actual* amount of Vitamin C.
It's also quite interesting that as soon as the New Zealand situation came to light, GSK voluntarily admitted to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission that's its claims about vitamin C content in Ribena may have been misleading. Was it altruism or spin-control? You be the judge.
Ribena adverts in New Zealand & Australia claim:
A. Blackcurrants contain four times more vitamin C than oranges.
DNA topology has long been a subject of study as has Knot Theory as it pertains to DNA strand topology. The idea being that more exposed DNA is more likely to be active. DNA doesn't really exist in cells in 'naked' form but attached to nucleosomes which are a sort of scaffold.
Segal et al.'s work appears say that based on DNA sequence, they can predict which bits of DNA are associated to nucleosomes. Bear in mind that their model isn't (yet) complete (emphasis mine):
"Our results demonstrate that genomes encode an intrinsic nucleosome organization and that this intrinsic organization can explain approx 50% of the in vivo nucleosome positions.
I would also add Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep.
I mentioned in an earlier comment that the poll was about as scientific as a/. one as the survey choices had already been limited to ones suggested by readers of Jack Schofield's blog. Link to actual survey here.
THE ANANSI BOYS is read by Lenny Henry who does a beautiful job voicing English characters of Carribean extraction among others. The first chapter (~17 Mb) is available from the Neil Gaiman site.
Readers of Slashdot who also enjoy Lovecraftiana should check out Charles Stross who has written a few 'Lovecraft-meets-Dilbert' stories.
The Atrocity Archives comprises The Atrocity Archive & the sequel novella, The Concrete Jungle wherein the protagonist, Bob Howard, provides IT support for a fictional British Intelligence agency charged with stopping the horrors from the next dimension from encroaching into our universe.
The stories are set in a universe where the running of certain esoteric code on your PDA can inadvertently open portals into the dimensions where the horrors wait.
Not only does Bob have to keep Cthulhu etc. from encroaching into our dimension, he also has to justify his expenses to his pointy-haired manageress. The Concrete Jungle recently won a Hugo award for Best Novella.
A previous story that is available online, A Colder War, has a similar setting but is much more grim. Stross regards it as a 'dry run' for The Atrocity Archives.
I can type quite quickly with my four fingers; never learnt to touch-type. But hunting for images and going through the recognition process will undoubtedly take longer, not to mention moving the cursor to select the right images.
Or will the images be numbered in which case, the input can be via a numberpad? It would then be more similar to a 'number as password'
The question for me is: "Will this method be both more secure and easier to use?"
How many users are going to be willing to undergo even more authentication hassles - better security at the expense of usability?
Try also http://www.pricelessware.org/ which is run by folk from alt.comp.freeware where they list their best rated several programs in various categories.
Oxford's 'A Dictionary of the Internet' has the following entry:
slashdot effect: The effect that occurs when one WEB SITE is linked via a HYPERLINK from another, very popular Web site. This often overloads the server containing the first Web site so that access to it becomes very slow. The name arose from sites being overwhelmed when they were mentioned in slashdot.org, a popular NEWS SITE read by many technical staff.
Author Charles Stross reckons his may be first but I have not been able to verify this; the entry in Oxford's 'A Dictionary of the Internet' doesn't give first recorded usage.
Anyone?
Maybe SF isn't your thing. Technology, alien cultures and languages are integral signifiers of the genre. Within that spectrum are a diverse variety of flavours of SF. If what you're after are people stories in an SF background, may I suggest:
'To Say Nothing of the Dog' by Connie Willis It's exceedingly well written, the SFnal (time travel) aspects are very minor, not to mention funny and character-driven. Willis was voted best SF/fantasy writer of the 90's by LOCUS readers. It's a book I often lend to people who are not big SF fans but like a good story.
Lois McMaster Bujold is another writer I recommend. Her Miles Vorkosigan stories are in a futuristic setting but the technological aspects are very much secondary to the story. 'The Warrior's Apprentice' is a good place to start.
IIRC, there are AI routines that operate below the conscious level to consensualise the 'sensefiltered' environments. Trust the machines; the machines are your friend.
One of the issues covered is the disadvantage of having one's perception modified like this. It's a blindspot that can be exploited. So, I could e.g take myself out of the 'sensefiltered' environment, and see things as they really are. In this case, there would be nothing to tell me what is and isn't acceptable to people around me.
In the book, 'sensefilters' can be used by both 'persons' with meat bodies as well as completely incorporeal uploaded 'persons'.
In the latter case, for the person involved, both the 'visual' and 'physical' are filterable. It is only for 'persons' with meat bodies that one could be slapped and kicked invisibly. One of the taboos in the Golden Oecumene is acting contrary to the sense-filtered worldview of others.
"The Golden Age" was very much worth the effort and for me is a stand-out book of recent vintage. I was however very frustrated when nearing the end of the first book, realising that there was no way Wright could tie up all the loose ends in the few pages remaining. I didn't know it was a trilogy. Nothing on the blurb suggested that it wasn't a stand-alone. Only on the last page of the first book was there a line about the story continuing in 'Phoenix Exultant'.
Now I don't mind reading long series if they're good, but I thought it misleading of the publishers not to inform the reader. I expected (perhaps naively) that it was a stand-alone novel. That it wasn't was frustrating; "You mean I'll have to wait another few years to read the end of the story!"
As another left-hander, pencils and silver coloured hands are far far preferrable to liquid-ink fountain pens.
Calligraphy class was a nightmare - even with left-handed nibs - as you write, your hand would pass over the the still-wet writing smudging it into an unreadable mess. If you've ever wondered why lefthanders crook their wrist/hand over the page this is why.
Re:I still don't get cryptomoncomonmon
on
Quicksilver
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· Score: 1
I don't deny that Stephenson digresses, that he goes off on tangents that don't propel the main story. But those segments are well-written and he certainly feels the need to include them. I enjoyed the digressions.
It's like Melville's "Moby Dick"; if you take out all the bits that aren't directly concerned with Ahab and the whale, would the resulting thinner book be an improvement?
It's not the destination but the journey.
Re:stephenson endings...
on
Quicksilver
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· Score: 1
Neal Stephenson's endings are more like real life than the classical intro-buildup-climax-denouement structure commonly found in 'literature'.
They are different, defy expectation and I like them. The protagonists in his books do not 'live happily ever after'. He's taken us along for a portion of their lives but when the book stops, their lives go on.
Slashdot Mirror
"Tech ex machina", surely?
Yes, it was dumb. But the protest has resulted in the law change getting dropped. So ultimately, sanity prevails.
While it's true that the initial tip-off came from two high-schoolers, their results were confirmed by Commerce Commision testing. One can safely assume that the confirmatory tests were conducted under controlled conditions in an accredited laboratory. Which is why GSK copped the fine & has been trying to limit damage ever since.
RTFA.
No wait. This is slashdot...
If you are going to claim that Product X contains a certain amount of substance Y, then isn't it up to you to ensure that it is so? The latest spin from GSK claims that the lack of vitamin C is limited to Australasia. That it was because their testing methods were not sensitive enough to track the rate of decay of vitamin C. I call bullshit. GSK are a PHARMACEUTICAL company. Shouldn't they be tracking the *actual* amount of Vitamin C.
And further, as pointed out by a scientist, "If they're properly sealed ... the vitamin C should be fairly stable. I'm not convinced by that argument at all. Anyhow, there's use-by dates on those things. If that is really the reason, and I seriously doubt that it is, then there's something wrong with the use-by date." This is a company that manufactures drugs for fsck's sake! Surely ensuring that at least the minimal stated amount of vitamin C is present, up to the 'use by' date is a no-brainer?
It's also quite interesting that as soon as the New Zealand situation came to light, GSK voluntarily admitted to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission that's its claims about vitamin C content in Ribena may have been misleading. Was it altruism or spin-control? You be the judge.
Ribena adverts in New Zealand & Australia claim:
A. Blackcurrants contain four times more vitamin C than oranges.
B. Ribena is made from blackcurrants.
Technically, both statements are true. This from Ribena New Zealand's website
"Our results demonstrate that genomes encode an intrinsic nucleosome organization and that this intrinsic organization can explain approx 50% of the in vivo nucleosome positions.
And if you actually managed to get to the end, Hamilton invokes a deus ex machina to get himself out of the corner he managed to paint himself into.
Don't get me wrong, I liked it well enough, but I wouldn't rate it *that* highly
Agreed.
I would also add Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep.
I mentioned in an earlier comment that the poll was about as scientific as a /. one as the survey choices had already been limited to ones suggested by readers of Jack Schofield's blog. Link to actual survey here.
I failed to mention in the submission that the poll was as scientific as a /. one.
In the ballot, you were limited to a pre-selected list.
I suspect it's a nod to the Times 100 best English language novels from 1923 to the present list that inspired it.
THE ANANSI BOYS is read by Lenny Henry who does a beautiful job voicing English characters of Carribean extraction among others. The first chapter (~17 Mb) is available from the Neil Gaiman site.
Readers of Slashdot who also enjoy Lovecraftiana should check out Charles Stross who has written a few 'Lovecraft-meets-Dilbert' stories.
The Atrocity Archives comprises The Atrocity Archive & the sequel novella, The Concrete Jungle wherein the protagonist, Bob Howard, provides IT support for a fictional British Intelligence agency charged with stopping the horrors from the next dimension from encroaching into our universe.
The stories are set in a universe where the running of certain esoteric code on your PDA can inadvertently open portals into the dimensions where the horrors wait.
Not only does Bob have to keep Cthulhu etc. from encroaching into our dimension, he also has to justify his expenses to his pointy-haired manageress. The Concrete Jungle recently won a Hugo award for Best Novella.
A previous story that is available online, A Colder War, has a similar setting but is much more grim. Stross regards it as a 'dry run' for The Atrocity Archives.
No, it's *two syllables*: "DUB-YAH".
"What's scary is that the second paragraph was written by humans."
That's an interesting assumption you're making.
But will it be as fast/easy as a password?
I can type quite quickly with my four fingers; never learnt to touch-type. But hunting for images and going through the recognition process will undoubtedly take longer, not to mention moving the cursor to select the right images.
Or will the images be numbered in which case, the input can be via a numberpad? It would then be more similar to a 'number as password'
The question for me is: "Will this method be both more secure and easier to use?"
How many users are going to be willing to undergo even more authentication hassles - better security at the expense of usability?
Try also http://www.pricelessware.org/ which is run by folk from alt.comp.freeware where they list their best rated several programs in various categories.
I use it a lot.
Actually, he's a gamer too. Just doesn't fit the stereotypical geek cliche.
Read about it yourself here: "Chronicles of Riddick" Interview
1. You insensitive clod!!!
2. If you had a Beowulf cluster of these joke evolutions...
3. All your base are belong to us.
4. ???
5. Profit!!!
Maybe SF isn't your thing. Technology, alien cultures and languages are integral signifiers of the genre. Within that spectrum are a diverse variety of flavours of SF. If what you're after are people stories in an SF background, may I suggest:
'To Say Nothing of the Dog' by Connie Willis
It's exceedingly well written, the SFnal (time travel) aspects are very minor, not to mention funny and character-driven. Willis was voted best SF/fantasy writer of the 90's by LOCUS readers. It's a book I often lend to people who are not big SF fans but like a good story.
Lois McMaster Bujold is another writer I recommend. Her Miles Vorkosigan stories are in a futuristic setting but the technological aspects are very much secondary to the story. 'The Warrior's Apprentice' is a good place to start.
IIRC, there are AI routines that operate below the conscious level to consensualise the 'sensefiltered' environments. Trust the machines; the machines are your friend.
One of the issues covered is the disadvantage of having one's perception modified like this. It's a blindspot that can be exploited. So, I could e.g take myself out of the 'sensefiltered' environment, and see things as they really are. In this case, there would be nothing to tell me what is and isn't acceptable to people around me.
In the book, 'sensefilters' can be used by both 'persons' with meat bodies as well as completely incorporeal uploaded 'persons'.
In the latter case, for the person involved, both the 'visual' and 'physical' are filterable. It is only for 'persons' with meat bodies that one could be slapped and kicked invisibly. One of the taboos in the Golden Oecumene is acting contrary to the sense-filtered worldview of others.
"The Golden Age" was very much worth the effort and for me is a stand-out book of recent vintage. I was however very frustrated when nearing the end of the first book, realising that there was no way Wright could tie up all the loose ends in the few pages remaining. I didn't know it was a trilogy. Nothing on the blurb suggested that it wasn't a stand-alone. Only on the last page of the first book was there a line about the story continuing in 'Phoenix Exultant'.
Now I don't mind reading long series if they're good, but I thought it misleading of the publishers not to inform the reader. I expected (perhaps naively) that it was a stand-alone novel. That it wasn't was frustrating; "You mean I'll have to wait another few years to read the end of the story!"
As another left-hander, pencils and silver coloured hands are far far preferrable to liquid-ink fountain pens.
Calligraphy class was a nightmare - even with left-handed nibs - as you write, your hand would pass over the the still-wet writing smudging it into an unreadable mess. If you've ever wondered why lefthanders crook their wrist/hand over the page this is why.
I don't deny that Stephenson digresses, that he goes off on tangents that don't propel the main story. But those segments are well-written and he certainly feels the need to include them. I enjoyed the digressions.
It's like Melville's "Moby Dick"; if you take out all the bits that aren't directly concerned with Ahab and the whale, would the resulting thinner book be an improvement?
It's not the destination but the journey.
Neal Stephenson's endings are more like real life than the classical intro-buildup-climax-denouement structure commonly found in 'literature'.
They are different, defy expectation and I like them. The protagonists in his books do not 'live happily ever after'. He's taken us along for a portion of their lives but when the book stops, their lives go on.