OK, but all of those examples are animals that live in intimate contact with each other. How do arctic flounder genes get into a tomato plant? That's a rather circuitous route.:P
This is pretty cool, but it's not actually lateral gene transfer. What's happening is that the sea slug is hosting a symbiotic colony of chloroplasts, which are cell organelles, not DNA, from algae that it consumes. And these chloroplasts are not passed down to offspring; new sea slugs must ingest their own algae to build their own colony of chloroplasts. So the sea slug DNA is not altered, nor is the germ line DNA (sperm and eggs) altered, so no traits are passed on. This is not GM.
What you describe is a symbiosis, like termites hosting a colony of cellulose-digesting bacteria in their gut, in order to eat wood. But instead of hosting microbes, the sea slugs host organelles ( and chloroplasts have their own DNA anyway, just like mitochondria. They're basically little bacteria themselves. There's a theory that nucleated cells arose as a symbioses of two cells, where a chloroplast or mitochondrial-like bacteria came to live permanently in other, nucleated cells millions of years ago ).
It was recently discovered that microbes in Japanese people's guts pick up genes from bacteria from seafood that help them digest sushi. But again, this isn't the human DNA ( nor germline ) that's picking up DNA, this is bacteria-to-bacteria lateral gene transfer.
So, until there is new data, I stand by my claim;)
If you're able to find reputable recyclers, you might think about starting a FreeGeek.
I'm involved with the Columbus FreeGeek. We take great pains to ensure our recyclers really are green. We take donations from the community, grant and adopt out computers running free software to non-profits and individuals, and make sure that *tons* of waste stay out of the waste stream. If you've already got the good recyclers lined up, you're way ahead of the game.
Anywho, thanks for doing a good turn for the environment:)
Where's the problem? If oil really is that cheap, then it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to go with "green energy".
You have the problem of external costs -- pollution. Green energy, depending on the energy, doesn't put as much crap into the atmosphere ( I'm not talking about carbon dioxide, but plain old mercury, sulfur, particulate matter, etc). Also the drilling process, oil spills, all that.
All of these costs are not figured in to the price of a barrell of oil or a gallon at the pump; instead these costs are borne by people at large, and socialized to the people when they're cleanup is paid by the government through taxes.
If you'd want a truer reckoning, you'd have to add in the cost of oil waste.
4 years after the discovery of X-rays, it was widely accepted that exposure needed to be limited.
Yeah, but that didn't stop people from dosing radiation from machines like Shoe-fitting flouroscopes until the 1960-70s, or getting a big dose of radiation to treat a routine earache.
Here's the rub: We've been genetically engineering food since the dawn of society. Society as we know it came from the ability to improve plants through breeding and mutations.
No, we haven't. Not like this. This is quantitatively different. An Aztec farmer in the year 200 wasn't introducing arctic flounder genes into his tomatoes.
Up until now, we were only semi-consciously doing what already happens in nature -- natural selection. We can call it artificial selection, because humans were consciously doing it.
I agree that we need some out of the box thinking, but I feel that proposing systems that just won't work are counter-productive to drawing people into serious discussion. The 'status-quo' defenders always have the making-a-living argument, and if new ideas don't take that into account, they seem irrelevant.
This might require a radical solution. For instance Charles Strouse in "accelerando" suggests a "reputation exchange". where there is a way to track someones reputation / cred on various topics. Reputation acts sort of like information: I can boost your reputation without losing any myself - assuming that the boost was deserved. There are of course a huge number of obstacles to this...
Yeah, like how to buy food or pay rent with reputation.
Have the GIMP team actively and explicitly asked for ideas, improvements and feature requests? I don't know; I could be in the wrong here. If he did, did he submit them in the right way? ( You can't expect everyone to drop everything and work on your thing ). Did they really tell him "Fuck off" or did they say, "These are nice good ideas, but this one right here is a deal-killer because of the fundamental structure of GIMP..."? Or did they say, "These are some nice ideas, but I don't care for them, we've got plenty on our plate already that are better and more needed"? I read some of the other comments, and it does appear that there are some anti-social people in the GIMP team. But that doesn't mean that OP's dad's ideas were worthwhile.
I mean, it's fundamentally different from a client-business relationship. A business tries to meet my needs. An open source projects meets their own needs, and I can't expect other people to cater to mine.
It's entirely possible that his ideas really weren't all that great. That's why I say put it on a blog instead of dump it in a developer's lap. If his ideas really are worthwhile, there's no reason why they won't gain currency.
He DID bring his own ingredients: He contributed by spending a week describing and structuring suggestions, based on his over 35 years of doing photography. Unfortunately, that's something the GIMP people were at the time at least unable to comprehend the worth of.
He brought his own ingredients, which was right of him to do. Dumping them on someone else and expecting them to "make it so" was wrong.
Suppose the tables were turned. Suppose a GIMP developer had an idea of a photo shoot of some 100 images that they wanted your father to shoot, really great images. They spend a lot of time creating the documents describing the set, the models, the ideas, sketching it out, everything. How much time would your father spend looking over these documents? What would he tell them -- "Pick up a camera and shoot them yourself" or "I'll start shooting tomorrow!"
Suppose the shoe was on the other foot. Say I spend a week putting together documents describing a set of photographs that I really want to see, and I think would be really good. I send a letter to OPs' dad, and he either ignores me or treats me more gruffly.
Is it fair of me to expect him to use his time to meet *my* needs? What would he tell me? He'd probably tell me to pick up a camera and shoot the photos myself -- just like the GIMP developers told him. Or maybe I could hire him to shoot these photos. But hey! These photo ideas are really great! I want to see them, and a lot of other people would want to see them also! If he shot them, that would make *his* portfolio look better. In fact, I'm doing *him* a favor by giving him my great ideas. And I put a lot of effort into compiling them!
It sounds like he did exactly what you suggest. I didn't see anything in the GP post that suggest that he was making demands, but rather, offering suggestions.
It's good that he wrote those documents. It's not good that he sent them to the GIMP devs and expected them to say, "Yes, sir! We'll jump right on it!"
The proper thing to do is to put those documents ( or the information therein ) on his blog, or promote them generally on the internet. This is what I suggest he do -- we've already established that he's made such documents.
It sucks to be treated so brusquely, but he really did go about it the wrong way. GIMP developers are not at his beck and call. They're doing what they want to do, not meeting client or audience demands.
Your father is not a programmer and cannot contribute to the GIMP project in terms of code. But he *can* contribute his well-thought-out documents by just posting them on a blog or forum or discussion board -- basically open source them. If people like his ideas, they will talk about them, link them, etc. etc. If they're good enough, they might get some traction. And then maybe a coder would be inspired to implement them.
FOSS is not about expecting someone else do what you want them to. It's about making a contribution and inspiring others to bring *their* vegetables to the pot of stone soup:D
"Thought is language, language is thought" is what your trying to say... if you lack the words to think with, you lack the very thought.
Can't be true.
If it were, we'd never have any new ideas. Even if you have a new thought, there's no word for it, so you can't think it. If you have a new word, you can't know what it means, because the word is the thought itself, and you don't know what it is!
Thoughts must be other than language. If not, dictionaries would not exist, because no definitions would be possible.
If it were true that language was thought, there would be no need for dictionaries, because I could just tell you a word, and you would have the thought. Say you had never heard the word 'hallitus' before. I need only utter the word to you, and now you have the thought. No need for definition, because thought is language, and language is thought right?
This seems like some anti-drug histeria in the vein of Reefer Madness.
First off, they weren't giving the kid illegal drugs. This is something a medical professional gave him for a dental procedure. This is a good use of drugs. Using drugs properly promotes good health and reduces pain and suffering.
Second, would you have any problem with a video of a kid, say, being fooled by a game of peekaboo, or startled by another kid in a mask? These are both normal parts of life. If you have problems with people making money off their young kids in general, congratulations; you're not a hypocrite. Getting doped up on drugs for routine medical procedures is not a bad thing.
And I thought it was accepted that no significantly powerful mathematical system can be both complete and consistent. It seems to me that a physics laws would be subject to that same limitation.
I guess I don't see a problem? If we came up with a set of physical laws that pretty accurately described all observable phenomena, who cares if they are not both complete and consistent as logical rules or whatever Goedel was showing? We just want to know how the universe behaves; we don't need to calculate anything fancier.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, but all of those examples are animals that live in intimate contact with each other. How do arctic flounder genes get into a tomato plant? That's a rather circuitous route. :P
Well, I eat my hat.
This is pretty cool, but it's not actually lateral gene transfer. What's happening is that the sea slug is hosting a symbiotic colony of chloroplasts, which are cell organelles, not DNA, from algae that it consumes. And these chloroplasts are not passed down to offspring; new sea slugs must ingest their own algae to build their own colony of chloroplasts. So the sea slug DNA is not altered, nor is the germ line DNA (sperm and eggs) altered, so no traits are passed on. This is not GM.
;)
What you describe is a symbiosis, like termites hosting a colony of cellulose-digesting bacteria in their gut, in order to eat wood. But instead of hosting microbes, the sea slugs host organelles ( and chloroplasts have their own DNA anyway, just like mitochondria. They're basically little bacteria themselves. There's a theory that nucleated cells arose as a symbioses of two cells, where a chloroplast or mitochondrial-like bacteria came to live permanently in other, nucleated cells millions of years ago ).
It was recently discovered that microbes in Japanese people's guts pick up genes from bacteria from seafood that help them digest sushi. But again, this isn't the human DNA ( nor germline ) that's picking up DNA, this is bacteria-to-bacteria lateral gene transfer.
So, until there is new data, I stand by my claim
If you have a FreeGeek near you, take it there. The Columbus one charge a fee of $10 per monitor.
If you're able to find reputable recyclers, you might think about starting a FreeGeek.
:)
I'm involved with the Columbus FreeGeek. We take great pains to ensure our recyclers really are green. We take donations from the community, grant and adopt out computers running free software to non-profits and individuals, and make sure that *tons* of waste stay out of the waste stream. If you've already got the good recyclers lined up, you're way ahead of the game.
Anywho, thanks for doing a good turn for the environment
Where's the problem? If oil really is that cheap, then it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to go with "green energy".
You have the problem of external costs -- pollution. Green energy, depending on the energy, doesn't put as much crap into the atmosphere ( I'm not talking about carbon dioxide, but plain old mercury, sulfur, particulate matter, etc). Also the drilling process, oil spills, all that.
All of these costs are not figured in to the price of a barrell of oil or a gallon at the pump; instead these costs are borne by people at large, and socialized to the people when they're cleanup is paid by the government through taxes.
If you'd want a truer reckoning, you'd have to add in the cost of oil waste.
4 years after the discovery of X-rays, it was widely accepted that exposure needed to be limited.
Yeah, but that didn't stop people from dosing radiation from machines like Shoe-fitting flouroscopes until the 1960-70s, or getting a big dose of radiation to treat a routine earache.
Here's the rub: We've been genetically engineering food since the dawn of society. Society as we know it came from the ability to improve plants through breeding and mutations.
No, we haven't. Not like this. This is quantitatively different. An Aztec farmer in the year 200 wasn't introducing arctic flounder genes into his tomatoes.
Up until now, we were only semi-consciously doing what already happens in nature -- natural selection. We can call it artificial selection, because humans were consciously doing it.
There is no way in nature, without the intervention of human beings, that an antifreeze gene from an arctic flounder can find its way into the germline of an tomato plant. Likewise with glow-in-the-dark genes from jellyfish into bunnies. That kind of lateral gene transfer between complex multi-cellular organisms just doesn't happen.
I agree that we need some out of the box thinking, but I feel that proposing systems that just won't work are counter-productive to drawing people into serious discussion. The 'status-quo' defenders always have the making-a-living argument, and if new ideas don't take that into account, they seem irrelevant.
This might require a radical solution. For instance Charles Strouse in "accelerando" suggests a "reputation exchange". where there is a way to track someones reputation / cred on various topics. Reputation acts sort of like information: I can boost your reputation without losing any myself - assuming that the boost was deserved. There are of course a huge number of obstacles to this...
Yeah, like how to buy food or pay rent with reputation.
Have the GIMP team actively and explicitly asked for ideas, improvements and feature requests? I don't know; I could be in the wrong here. If he did, did he submit them in the right way? ( You can't expect everyone to drop everything and work on your thing ). Did they really tell him "Fuck off" or did they say, "These are nice good ideas, but this one right here is a deal-killer because of the fundamental structure of GIMP..."? Or did they say, "These are some nice ideas, but I don't care for them, we've got plenty on our plate already that are better and more needed"? I read some of the other comments, and it does appear that there are some anti-social people in the GIMP team. But that doesn't mean that OP's dad's ideas were worthwhile.
I mean, it's fundamentally different from a client-business relationship. A business tries to meet my needs. An open source projects meets their own needs, and I can't expect other people to cater to mine.
It's entirely possible that his ideas really weren't all that great. That's why I say put it on a blog instead of dump it in a developer's lap. If his ideas really are worthwhile, there's no reason why they won't gain currency.
He DID bring his own ingredients: He contributed by spending a week describing and structuring suggestions, based on his over 35 years of doing photography. Unfortunately, that's something the GIMP people were at the time at least unable to comprehend the worth of.
He brought his own ingredients, which was right of him to do. Dumping them on someone else and expecting them to "make it so" was wrong.
Suppose the tables were turned. Suppose a GIMP developer had an idea of a photo shoot of some 100 images that they wanted your father to shoot, really great images. They spend a lot of time creating the documents describing the set, the models, the ideas, sketching it out, everything. How much time would your father spend looking over these documents? What would he tell them -- "Pick up a camera and shoot them yourself" or "I'll start shooting tomorrow!"
Suppose the shoe was on the other foot. Say I spend a week putting together documents describing a set of photographs that I really want to see, and I think would be really good. I send a letter to OPs' dad, and he either ignores me or treats me more gruffly.
Is it fair of me to expect him to use his time to meet *my* needs? What would he tell me? He'd probably tell me to pick up a camera and shoot the photos myself -- just like the GIMP developers told him. Or maybe I could hire him to shoot these photos. But hey! These photo ideas are really great! I want to see them, and a lot of other people would want to see them also! If he shot them, that would make *his* portfolio look better. In fact, I'm doing *him* a favor by giving him my great ideas. And I put a lot of effort into compiling them!
It sounds like he did exactly what you suggest. I didn't see anything in the GP post that suggest that he was making demands, but rather, offering suggestions.
It's good that he wrote those documents. It's not good that he sent them to the GIMP devs and expected them to say, "Yes, sir! We'll jump right on it!"
The proper thing to do is to put those documents ( or the information therein ) on his blog, or promote them generally on the internet. This is what I suggest he do -- we've already established that he's made such documents.
It sucks to be treated so brusquely, but he really did go about it the wrong way. GIMP developers are not at his beck and call. They're doing what they want to do, not meeting client or audience demands.
:D
Your father is not a programmer and cannot contribute to the GIMP project in terms of code. But he *can* contribute his well-thought-out documents by just posting them on a blog or forum or discussion board -- basically open source them. If people like his ideas, they will talk about them, link them, etc. etc. If they're good enough, they might get some traction. And then maybe a coder would be inspired to implement them.
FOSS is not about expecting someone else do what you want them to. It's about making a contribution and inspiring others to bring *their* vegetables to the pot of stone soup
I'm glad you're keeping alive the tradition of epic poetry :D
"Thought is language, language is thought" is what your trying to say... if you lack the words to think with, you lack the very thought.
Can't be true.
If it were, we'd never have any new ideas. Even if you have a new thought, there's no word for it, so you can't think it. If you have a new word, you can't know what it means, because the word is the thought itself, and you don't know what it is!
Thoughts must be other than language. If not, dictionaries would not exist, because no definitions would be possible.
If it were true that language was thought, there would be no need for dictionaries, because I could just tell you a word, and you would have the thought. Say you had never heard the word 'hallitus' before. I need only utter the word to you, and now you have the thought. No need for definition, because thought is language, and language is thought right?
Okay, I'll try not to get too excited about A PHOTOGRAPH OF ANoTHER FRICKIN' PLaNET OUT IN SPACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
This seems like some anti-drug histeria in the vein of Reefer Madness.
First off, they weren't giving the kid illegal drugs. This is something a medical professional gave him for a dental procedure. This is a good use of drugs. Using drugs properly promotes good health and reduces pain and suffering.
Second, would you have any problem with a video of a kid, say, being fooled by a game of peekaboo, or startled by another kid in a mask? These are both normal parts of life. If you have problems with people making money off their young kids in general, congratulations; you're not a hypocrite. Getting doped up on drugs for routine medical procedures is not a bad thing.
The scope for scientists is unlimited, the scope for engineers depends on the product.
A quibble: the scope for scientists is observable, quantifiable reality; the scope for mathematicians is unlimited.
And I thought it was accepted that no significantly powerful mathematical system can be both complete and consistent. It seems to me that a physics laws would be subject to that same limitation.
I guess I don't see a problem? If we came up with a set of physical laws that pretty accurately described all observable phenomena, who cares if they are not both complete and consistent as logical rules or whatever Goedel was showing? We just want to know how the universe behaves; we don't need to calculate anything fancier.
Those are some might big words there, "Courageous"...
Using big words is not an act of intellect.
Not to nitpick, but in American English, it's called evidence. Thanks for your insightful comments, sorry to be pedantic!
I give $20 a month to EFF. How about you?