>>That's silly. What if we have data that says that our potential weapon obliterates wildlife? Should we toss the idea and move on? Let's look at what we have now: Nuclear weapons obliterate wildlife. Fair enough, nuclear weapons are grossly indiscriminate; toss 'em. Conventional explosives obliterate wildlife. Ok, toss those too. Artillery isn't very green, either. In fact, machine guns aren't particularly enviro-friendly. Get rid of 'em. And let's just forget about a whole platoon of soldiers tramping through the forest, crushing wildlife, shooting guns, and throwing grenades.
>>I guess we don't have many options left, do we?
>Sounds like a nice situation to me. A guy can dream, can't he?
"I can imagine a perfect world, a world without hate, a world without war. Then I can imagine us attacking that world because they'd never expect it."
Your privilege to download an unauthorized copy of the X-Men TV series isn't being hurt.
"These trackers have published about 50 variant torrents of only three titles, "The Wedding Crashers", "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", and the first three episodes of "The O.C." Some titles are published as "DVD-rips" while others are pushed as "XviDs". Others are presented as an English or French releases."
Hmm... The Wedding Crashers, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the OC. Yep, sounds like old and obscure stuff to me that you can't find at the theater/DVD aisle at Wal-Mart.
Net profit is the usual business term referred to when generally talking about how much money a company makes off of a sale.
Even gross profit, which is much less useful, takes into account sales and service costs, which includes packaging, shipping, and retail margin. In other words, the poster you're replying to has no clue.
From what I hear, most conservatives base their opposition to embryonic stem cell research based on their belief that life begins at conception, producing a unique organism that God grants a unique soul.
I have several questions for all of you:
1) Conception takes place before implantation in the uterus. If you don't already know, many contraceptives work by blocking implantation. Since a conceived zygote is being blocked from developing further (and will die), is this murder?
2) At the stage the cells are taken from (blastocyst), a biologist could divide the inner cell mass (any one of which is used for embryonic SCR) and what would happen is that twins or triplets would develop. If you believe each child is given a unique soul at conception, does that soul also divide into two or three? Or does God give "last-minute" souls out?
My point, if it's not clear, is that embryonic stem cells are taken at a stage when it is not individually unique. A lot of people also seem to be happy with either in vitro fertilization or birtch control pills while opposing embryonic stem cell research.
HIV virus has been shown to attack and kill CD4 lymphocytes, the helper T cells of your immune system.
Tell you what. Why don't you inject yourself with a large dose of HIV virus in a scientifically-controlled trial, and if you don't develop AIDS in 10 years, I'll pay you a million dollars.
Sounds like a pretty good deal to me... we get proof either way, and since you're so skeptical, you'll probably be a million bucks richer, right?
"The scientists hope to collect enough crocodile blood to isolate the powerful antibodies and eventually develop an antibiotic for use by humans."
Antibiotics kill living bacteria. There isn't a single antibiotic that can disable a virus (like HIV), which isn't even alive.
The scientists probably hope to use modified crocodile immunoglobulin the same way we use animal-developed immunoglobulin as a tetanus antitoxin for patients who haven't been immunized... kind of a booster shot for patients fighting an HIV infection. The problem with animal-developed antibodies is that the human body recognizes them as foreign, and soon starts to mount an immune response against them as well.
>>But for that to happen meaningfully, we've got to take the lawyers out of healthcare first.
>Legal urban legends. Most of the stories you hear are lies perpetuated by those with an interest in doing so.
Whoa! Just because legal urban legends exist doesn't mean the malpractice litigation system isn't broken.
If you're a practicing OB/GYN (a physician specializing in births and women's care) in Miami, FL, do you know how much you paid last year, just for required insurance in case something goes wrong? If you're an average doc, you paid $277,000. FOR ONE YEAR. If you lived in Chicago, you paid $230,000. In Detroit, you paid $194,000.
Now, do you suppose the physician just eats the extra cost, or do you suppose it gets passed on to the consumer (like every other business does with extra costs)?
Here's another thing. The states with the lowest malpractice premiums have the lowest rate of malpractice suits and also lower average awards in those suits. OB/GYNs in Oklahoma, for example, typically pay $17,000 a year.
Here's a good article to start reading up on how much insurance costs and lawsuits really are driving up the costs of medicine.
"How about when Florida seacoast becomes Atlantic and Gulf shallows?"
Thank God! Let me go out and start my car, just to speed things up! No more bitching about the 2000 elections, inane GTA: Vice City games, superficial celebrities spending millions on their quest for the perfect tan, bad Don Johnson television shows, or stupid pro-Cuba/anti-Cuba debates.
For that matter, take New York, too. We can move the financial markets to Chicago. But keep the UN underwater.
"clean-burning hydrogen/LOX fuel" reminds me of the energy industry salivating over the New Hydrogen Economy. Because the easiest, cheapest way to mass-produce hydrogen is through, yep, fossil fuels...
So is the hydrogen/LOX fuel commercially produced in an environmentally friendly manner? How about the new insulation?
While I agree with you on the parts of the PATRIOT Act referring to secret trials and the unmentioned removal of judicial oversight of law enforcement activities, I don't see a problem with seizure of library and medical records, with a proper court order and the accompanying judicial oversight, or with roving wiretaps.
I mean, c'mon, it's pretty ridiculous that wiretaps requests wouldn't be for a person instead of a specific line. When the police ask a judge for a search warrant, do they have to obtain separate warrants for every room and dresser? No, they ask to search the premises of the person being investigated. Criminal investigations are aimed at people, and it only makes sense to have wiretap requests aimed at the people being investigated.
There has to be a balance between individual freedoms and societal needs. Screaming and hollering about every little step taken in the opposite direction from individual freedoms, no matter if it's justified or not, doesn't help you or the cause of protecting freedom. It just marginalizes you and people with similar views in the eyes of the mainstream, instead of convincing them with rational, thoughtful discussion. Look at the "gun nuts", like the NRA. Even though they have a good overall point in protecting the 2nd Amendment, the fact that they will not even discuss or consider even intelligent or rational gun control steps makes the mainstream look at all 2nd Amendment defenders as fanatics and gun-crazy sociopathic idiots.
>Erm, what else would you carjack? Zimmer frames maybe?
Motorcycles, trucks, vans, SUVs, boats, helicopters (I'm pretty sure the last two fall under carjacking laws as well)... dude, you need to quit "getting hot coffee" in the game and start playing the rest of it...;)
I still don't udnerstand why cars capable of over 100 miles an hour are available for sale.
Because some of us take the above-mentioned cars to open track, road racing, and dragstrip events where traveling more than 100 mph can be fun and completely legal, all without endangering anyone other than the driver.
Most of us live with really crappy security... in our place of residence.
Now, if you're like me, you've got a generic commercial alarm system and generic deadbolts on the front and rear doors, which is the extent of our "security", otherwise known as "just a little harder to rob than the house next door".
I know a determined thief could break in and steal everything I have in the house, thank you very much. If I have the option of choosing,
A) some kids actually breaking into my house during my vacation, stealing my stuff, then returning all of it when I get back with a postcard saying, "Hey! Your house is insecure!", or...
B) some kids pointing out in good faith that my home security model isn't all that secure, and ten ways a thief could bypass it,
I know which option I'd be pressing charges and which option I wouldn't.
Has anyone liquid cooled the G5 and the Opteron driven them to 6 GHz? I bet that the G5 could crush the Pentium in performance since the G5 has a powerful floating point unit.
Your geek license has just been revoked.
The overall design idea behind the P4 was to stretch out the pipeline to an insane level in order to ramp up clockspeeds to an insane level.
No one's liquid cooled a G5 or an Opteron and overclocked it to 6 GHz. Why? Because their design matched with current chip fabbing technology can't handle it.
The good news for AMD and PowerPC fanboys is that they won't need to get it to 6 GHz. If someone overclocks an Athlon 64 to, oh, 4 GHz or so (which would be impressive enough), the Athlon, which is designed to accomplish more clock for clock than the P4, should shred the 6 GHz P4 in performance.
Like any good religious folk, Sunday is the day to go worship, in this case at the Church of Commercialism. Make our tithes, bow to our idols, and so forth... The other six days we can go back to our normal selves, and unlike Baptists, we'll never meet in the liqour store...
Honestly, people, I know karma whoring is a virtual sport now, but if you don't have anything new or interesting to say that couldn't be cut and pasted from the LAST Star Wars/. commentary (or the last fifty, for that matter), then please, shut the barn door. The collective IQ is dropping.
For everyone else that's been reading this site for more than, oh, a week, every post that's simply rehashing (A) "Lucas is a money grubbing hack!", (B) "Lucas raped my childhood!" or even (C) "Lucas owns the movies, not you!" grates the nerves until I just want to proverbially shoot every last one of you, just to end your supposed misery.
No, making long-winded stream-of-consciousness variants of (A), (B), or (C) that you have to "Click to read the rest of the comment..." does not count as interesting or new.
No, using Boston Brahmin to expound and elaborate on (A), (B), or (C) does not count as being interesting or new.
And no, relating your latest pet analogy that you ripped off from a poster in another story to George Lucas and (A), (B), or (C) is not interesting or new, either.
...and in other news, the USSR surpassed the US in aerospace science and technology in the 1950s with the launch of Sputnik. Experts predict that the Soviet emphasis on technical education and its outstanding ability to centrally marshal resources to a purpose mean grave times ahead for the US.
Five decades later, where would you rather be living? The former Soviet Union, or the US?
A) Overstretched air traffic controllers B) Greenhouse gas emissions C) Homeland security
among other things.
Is it economically viable? Not until the fossil fuels used to run the jet engines becomes cheap enough to waste on unnecessarily launching heavy objects into the air.
"As quite a few people have started realising, the web is the platform of the future. There will always be room for locally run 3d graphics apps/games, but the web just makes sense for business apps."
Okay, honestly, have you even thought through this comment? Why in the world does a WORD PROCESSOR or a SPREADSHEET need internet integration? Do you routinely type out reports by committee? Or do you do the intelligent thing, and delegate out sections?
There are plenty of small businesses that don't need an internet connection, but need a computer with an application to type out letters and balance the books. From a user standpoint, web integration will be useless to the vast majority of us...
BUT, from Microsoft's standpoint, it'll be incredibly useful, because instead of paying once for software you own, web service will let them continually charge you for essentially the same software, over and over ad nauseum. Come to think of it, I wonder why they didn't integrate it years ago?
One more reason for people to switch to OpenOffice. Hopefully more businesses will start to switch, too, as the blackmail, er, SUBSCRIPTION FEES, for keeping their Microsoft software functioning starts to pile up.
Slashdot Mirror
>>I guess we don't have many options left, do we?
>Sounds like a nice situation to me. A guy can dream, can't he?
"I can imagine a perfect world, a world without hate, a world without war. Then I can imagine us attacking that world because they'd never expect it."
Ford and GM announced today that unless Exxon and Shell start sharing gasoline revenues, future SUVs will run on ethanol.
Your privilege to download an unauthorized copy of the X-Men TV series isn't being hurt.
"These trackers have published about 50 variant torrents of only three titles, "The Wedding Crashers", "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", and the first three episodes of "The O.C." Some titles are published as "DVD-rips" while others are pushed as "XviDs". Others are presented as an English or French releases."
Hmm... The Wedding Crashers, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the OC. Yep, sounds like old and obscure stuff to me that you can't find at the theater/DVD aisle at Wal-Mart.
In most cases, yes.
Net profit is the usual business term referred to when generally talking about how much money a company makes off of a sale.
Even gross profit, which is much less useful, takes into account sales and service costs, which includes packaging, shipping, and retail margin. In other words, the poster you're replying to has no clue.
It's been known for decades what the most likely closest relative of pterosaurs are.
From what I hear, most conservatives base their opposition to embryonic stem cell research based on their belief that life begins at conception, producing a unique organism that God grants a unique soul.
I have several questions for all of you:
1) Conception takes place before implantation in the uterus. If you don't already know, many contraceptives work by blocking implantation. Since a conceived zygote is being blocked from developing further (and will die), is this murder?
2) At the stage the cells are taken from (blastocyst), a biologist could divide the inner cell mass (any one of which is used for embryonic SCR) and what would happen is that twins or triplets would develop. If you believe each child is given a unique soul at conception, does that soul also divide into two or three? Or does God give "last-minute" souls out?
My point, if it's not clear, is that embryonic stem cells are taken at a stage when it is not individually unique. A lot of people also seem to be happy with either in vitro fertilization or birtch control pills while opposing embryonic stem cell research.
Or at the Home Depot/Tool Time Conference For Better Floor Finishes - but maybe for different reasons. ;)
HIV virus has been shown to attack and kill CD4 lymphocytes, the helper T cells of your immune system.
Tell you what. Why don't you inject yourself with a large dose of HIV virus in a scientifically-controlled trial, and if you don't develop AIDS in 10 years, I'll pay you a million dollars.
Sounds like a pretty good deal to me... we get proof either way, and since you're so skeptical, you'll probably be a million bucks richer, right?
Antibiotics kill living bacteria. There isn't a single antibiotic that can disable a virus (like HIV), which isn't even alive.
The scientists probably hope to use modified crocodile immunoglobulin the same way we use animal-developed immunoglobulin as a tetanus antitoxin for patients who haven't been immunized... kind of a booster shot for patients fighting an HIV infection. The problem with animal-developed antibodies is that the human body recognizes them as foreign, and soon starts to mount an immune response against them as well.
>Legal urban legends. Most of the stories you hear are lies perpetuated by those with an interest in doing so.
Whoa! Just because legal urban legends exist doesn't mean the malpractice litigation system isn't broken.
If you're a practicing OB/GYN (a physician specializing in births and women's care) in Miami, FL, do you know how much you paid last year, just for required insurance in case something goes wrong? If you're an average doc, you paid $277,000. FOR ONE YEAR. If you lived in Chicago, you paid $230,000. In Detroit, you paid $194,000.
Now, do you suppose the physician just eats the extra cost, or do you suppose it gets passed on to the consumer (like every other business does with extra costs)?
Here's another thing. The states with the lowest malpractice premiums have the lowest rate of malpractice suits and also lower average awards in those suits. OB/GYNs in Oklahoma, for example, typically pay $17,000 a year.
Here's a good article to start reading up on how much insurance costs and lawsuits really are driving up the costs of medicine.
"How about when Florida seacoast becomes Atlantic and Gulf shallows?"
Thank God! Let me go out and start my car, just to speed things up! No more bitching about the 2000 elections, inane GTA: Vice City games, superficial celebrities spending millions on their quest for the perfect tan, bad Don Johnson television shows, or stupid pro-Cuba/anti-Cuba debates.
For that matter, take New York, too. We can move the financial markets to Chicago. But keep the UN underwater.
>And they write great software too!!!
So that's where the US is outsourcing to these days...
"clean-burning hydrogen/LOX fuel" reminds me of the energy industry salivating over the New Hydrogen Economy. Because the easiest, cheapest way to mass-produce hydrogen is through, yep, fossil fuels...
So is the hydrogen/LOX fuel commercially produced in an environmentally friendly manner? How about the new insulation?
I mean, c'mon, it's pretty ridiculous that wiretaps requests wouldn't be for a person instead of a specific line. When the police ask a judge for a search warrant, do they have to obtain separate warrants for every room and dresser? No, they ask to search the premises of the person being investigated. Criminal investigations are aimed at people, and it only makes sense to have wiretap requests aimed at the people being investigated.
There has to be a balance between individual freedoms and societal needs. Screaming and hollering about every little step taken in the opposite direction from individual freedoms, no matter if it's justified or not, doesn't help you or the cause of protecting freedom. It just marginalizes you and people with similar views in the eyes of the mainstream, instead of convincing them with rational, thoughtful discussion. Look at the "gun nuts", like the NRA. Even though they have a good overall point in protecting the 2nd Amendment, the fact that they will not even discuss or consider even intelligent or rational gun control steps makes the mainstream look at all 2nd Amendment defenders as fanatics and gun-crazy sociopathic idiots.
>Erm, what else would you carjack? Zimmer frames maybe?
Motorcycles, trucks, vans, SUVs, boats, helicopters (I'm pretty sure the last two fall under carjacking laws as well)... dude, you need to quit "getting hot coffee" in the game and start playing the rest of it... ;)
Because some of us take the above-mentioned cars to open track, road racing, and dragstrip events where traveling more than 100 mph can be fun and completely legal, all without endangering anyone other than the driver.
Duh! The answer is obviously No. It runs GNU/Linux...
Most of us live with really crappy security... in our place of residence.
Now, if you're like me, you've got a generic commercial alarm system and generic deadbolts on the front and rear doors, which is the extent of our "security", otherwise known as "just a little harder to rob than the house next door".
I know a determined thief could break in and steal everything I have in the house, thank you very much. If I have the option of choosing,
A) some kids actually breaking into my house during my vacation, stealing my stuff, then returning all of it when I get back with a postcard saying, "Hey! Your house is insecure!", or...
B) some kids pointing out in good faith that my home security model isn't all that secure, and ten ways a thief could bypass it,
I know which option I'd be pressing charges and which option I wouldn't.
Hey, don't steal my dissertation ideas! Some of us have put a lot of thought into that.
Your geek license has just been revoked.
The overall design idea behind the P4 was to stretch out the pipeline to an insane level in order to ramp up clockspeeds to an insane level.
No one's liquid cooled a G5 or an Opteron and overclocked it to 6 GHz. Why? Because their design matched with current chip fabbing technology can't handle it.
The good news for AMD and PowerPC fanboys is that they won't need to get it to 6 GHz. If someone overclocks an Athlon 64 to, oh, 4 GHz or so (which would be impressive enough), the Athlon, which is designed to accomplish more clock for clock than the P4, should shred the 6 GHz P4 in performance.
Damn straight!
Like any good religious folk, Sunday is the day to go worship, in this case at the Church of Commercialism. Make our tithes, bow to our idols, and so forth... The other six days we can go back to our normal selves, and unlike Baptists, we'll never meet in the liqour store...
(/facetiousness)
/. commentary (or the last fifty, for that matter), then please, shut the barn door. The collective IQ is dropping.
Honestly, people, I know karma whoring is a virtual sport now, but if you don't have anything new or interesting to say that couldn't be cut and pasted from the LAST Star Wars
For everyone else that's been reading this site for more than, oh, a week, every post that's simply rehashing (A) "Lucas is a money grubbing hack!", (B) "Lucas raped my childhood!" or even (C) "Lucas owns the movies, not you!" grates the nerves until I just want to proverbially shoot every last one of you, just to end your supposed misery.
No, making long-winded stream-of-consciousness variants of (A), (B), or (C) that you have to "Click to read the rest of the comment..." does not count as interesting or new.
No, using Boston Brahmin to expound and elaborate on (A), (B), or (C) does not count as being interesting or new.
And no, relating your latest pet analogy that you ripped off from a poster in another story to George Lucas and (A), (B), or (C) is not interesting or new, either.
(/soapbox)
...and in other news, the USSR surpassed the US in aerospace science and technology in the 1950s with the launch of Sputnik. Experts predict that the Soviet emphasis on technical education and its outstanding ability to centrally marshal resources to a purpose mean grave times ahead for the US.
Five decades later, where would you rather be living? The former Soviet Union, or the US?
Flying cars.
That'll do wonders for
A) Overstretched air traffic controllers
B) Greenhouse gas emissions
C) Homeland security
among other things.
Is it economically viable? Not until the fossil fuels used to run the jet engines becomes cheap enough to waste on unnecessarily launching heavy objects into the air.
Okay, honestly, have you even thought through this comment? Why in the world does a WORD PROCESSOR or a SPREADSHEET need internet integration? Do you routinely type out reports by committee? Or do you do the intelligent thing, and delegate out sections?
There are plenty of small businesses that don't need an internet connection, but need a computer with an application to type out letters and balance the books. From a user standpoint, web integration will be useless to the vast majority of us...
BUT, from Microsoft's standpoint, it'll be incredibly useful, because instead of paying once for software you own, web service will let them continually charge you for essentially the same software, over and over ad nauseum. Come to think of it, I wonder why they didn't integrate it years ago?
One more reason for people to switch to OpenOffice. Hopefully more businesses will start to switch, too, as the blackmail, er, SUBSCRIPTION FEES, for keeping their Microsoft software functioning starts to pile up.