Couple free broadband wireless with very low-cost computers and free web services like GMail, Blogger, and the like, and suddenly every American has the online capability of any other.
It certainly may be possible to do those sort of things. The tricky part is that a good number of the cells may simply die off if the injury isn't quickly repaired. Another effect of the gel is to provide a nutrient-rich solution to help growth, so time is of the essence.
The good news is that there's lots of research going into nerve regeneration and repair. Things like nerve growth factors, removing mylein-induced inhibition, and stem cells are all promising fields.
It'll be interesting when people's brains can be kept alive for long periods of time by replacing or modifying large chucks of it. When do I stop being really me?
This article is a little misleading, suggesting that we can start squirting these tiny peptides into peoples bodies and they'd suddenly get cured.
Much of the permanence of nerve damage is due to scarring, which creates a barrier that nerves can't heal across. If you cut the nerve and put this gel into the wound within 45 minutes, it apparently helps the healing process. The reason? Minimizing scarring:
Dr Ellis-Behnke believes the therapy stops scar tissue forming and protects damaged nerves, allowing them to regrow only in the damaged area of the brain.
Of course, this doesn't mean it's a useless discovery. If you have to perform surgery, say tumor removal, injecting this gel may promote growth in any nerves you may have just cut.
We have done a good job (IMHO) of keeping our nuclear power plants relatively safe, but that's mainly because the kid down the street can't build a nuclear power plant.
If you look at a temperature map of Enceladus, it's still quite cold, perhaps 100 degrees Kelvin. With virtually no pressure, it's enough to cause evaporation and the formation of water. There's a good write-up here.
So, don't expect to see exotic creatures swimming about. It might end up being a great place to mine for water, however, supporting future colonies of Saturn. The moon has virtually no gravity, so you could practically throw it off the surface (well, not really - the escape velocity is 212 m/s).
A few years back, I had a close coworker who was diagnosed with cancer. He decided that he wanted to work, be productive, and fight it as best he could, even though his chances were slim. He came to work every day he could and did his job, even when he was losing hair and using a laptop from the hospital bed.
After he died, our team was devistated. I'm not sure we accomplished more than simple maintenance activities for months afterwards. Even though he'd tried to put things in order, it was still tremendously difficult to fill where he'd been. It probably took a good year before things felt on track again.
It's strange even now, running across his name in code or tucked away in a database somewhere. I support his few remaining applications, which some day will be retired as well. The things we leave behind . . .
Our maiboxes are anywhere around 100MB to 250MB in size, upgradeable upon request. A few are multiple gigabytes in size. The main growth comes from people sending documents around, which have a 10MB size limit.
This November, we have a new rule in place where no e-mail older than a year will be saved. It'll be purged from backups and everything. Interestingly enough, this is primarily being done for legal reasons, not technical.
Of course, the thought is that all those documents will then be put on our resource servers or local hard drives. Lawyers are getting smart enough to sopena everything, not just e-mail.
It turns out that dropping things into the subduction zones doesn't work out very well. The problems are mainly due to instability, as it doesn't simply suck what's there into the earth's core, but rather spews it around as well. There's some better solutions that involve burying it in the deep clays in more geologically stable areas.
Of course, many countries have banned dumping radioactive waste into the sea under the London Convention. The United States signed it in 1998, but it hasn't been ratified yet.
There are certain laws in place that regulate how confidential patient information is passed around (HIPPA). I'm fairly certain that should an employee have such information on their desktop and it's copied up to Google, that would constitute a breach of those laws.
Because of this, our desktop folks have decided that Google Desktop is not something that can be installed. It's a shame, too, as there's lots of "benign" features that we miss out on because of it.
The bill more squarely confronts the concerns of consumer groups than a broader bill proposed last summer by Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, which would prevent Internet service providers from blocking access, but would largely leave network operators to manage their own networks, including potentially charging content providers for a premium service.
That bill has won support from 16 Republican senators.
This very much seems like a Republican/Democrat stand-off. Are you pro-business or pro-consumer?
Perhaps violent people spend their time playing violent video games, rather than wandering the streets and beating people up. Using another correlation fallacy, it would explain the all-time lows in violent crimes.
It's nice to hear that some "old media" organizations are slowly getting it. It may require all the old employees to retire or die off, but most huge cultural changes seem to require it. It was also refreshing to see that he admitted to downloading television shows via P2P, along with a "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" that it was for research purposes only.
I tried to pick something where the comparison was reasonable. Removing asbestos is often more hazardous than leaving it in. It's likely that nanotubes have the same sort of issues - they're small and can get stuck in people's lungs, causing inflammation and triggering cancer (especially for smokers).
Also, similar to asbestos, nanotubes appear to have great promise but the health risks are somewhat unknown. It may be that the paint is only risky for painters, or when it's removed. The worst case scenario is that it turns out to be far more toxic than people expect, and even the trace amounts produced by the dry paint over time causes issues.
There may be some serious health risks associated with nanotubes and other small particles. Hopefully the companies involved do thorough health risk assessments before putting it up everywhere.
Our organization currently has a headache when non-developers make an Access database, get their department relying on it, and then leaving the organization. When things break, the developers get sucked into having to maintain this monstrosity.
We're trying hard to disavow them completely, but it's hard to say no when the customer insists its part of a vital healthcare function. For those, we've sometimes rewritten them using a real SQL back-end, web browser client, and code we can support and maintain.
Making tools to let non-developers do things isn't necessarily bad, it's just that there has to be clear expectations as to support. Writing web applications isn't the same as typing up a Word document or making an Excel spreadsheet with a couple macros. It's easy for non-developers to quickly get in over their heads.
Great, more space junk
on
Golf in Space
·
· Score: 1
It'll be like that Seinfeld episode where the technician reaches deep into the innards of a downed satellite, only to pull out a golf ball with a tiny antenna.
This probably reflects the massive number of smaller servers that are out there, which often have Windows installed. In our organization, Windows servers tend to have a single application on them (typically by request of the vendor), while our Unix and AS/400 servers tend to have dozens of applications on them.
The irony is that Windows applications often "don't play well together", making it almost a requirement that they get a dedicated piece of hardware. As a reward for this problem, their rankings are boosted.
It's a good thing they picked such a quiet part of the world. I suppose it's so they can ditch over Iran, which is right across the Gulf, well within missle range.
Well, the grass itself likely may not metabolize the contents of the cow dung, but there's an awful lot of other things that will. For example, the nitrogen-fixing bacteria that lives in the roots of the grass.
I think the point that I'm making is that the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen bound up in the dung isn't simply wasted, but rather returned into the soil's ecosystem rather quickly.
Man, I never imagined how much I'd be talking about cow dung this afternoon.
Well, you still have to worry about CO2 production. The "ideal" from a CO2 perspective is to pull it out of the atmosphere and bury it. Normally, the CO2 in cow dung would be left to sit there and get quickly turned into new plant material (since it has all that juicy energy locked up in it still). Once burned, it's less accessible to new plants. They have to use sunlight to fix it from the atmosphere, so it's a bit slower.
Let me give an "economies of scale" example. Let's say I have a gizmo that takes some pollutant from the exhaust from a power plant. It costs $10,000. There's no way you can put it on a small power plant, but a large one can likely afford it. That's one of the big advantages of centralized power generation. That's one of the reasons why things like leaf blowers and woodstoves are so polluting per watt compared to coal power plants.
The electric generator is powered by an easily-obtained local fuel: cow dung. Each machine continuously outputs a kilowatt of electricity.
The main advantage of cow dung is that it's considered "carbon neutral". Plus it's a relatively abundant resource in the communities they're talking about. I worry a little about pollution issues, as you likely get a lot of particulates in the air. Small power plants tend to pollute more per power generated than large, centralized ones. Economics of scale and all that.
Slashdot Mirror
Couple free broadband wireless with very low-cost computers and free web services like GMail, Blogger, and the like, and suddenly every American has the online capability of any other.
That's revolutionary.
. . . a place where Asimov's Laws, like the US Constitution or the Geneva conventions, don't really apply.
Zeroth Law:
A robot must obey any order given to it by the commander-in-chief or his appointee.
First Law:
A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, unless it conflicts with the Zeroth Law.
Second Law:
A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the previous laws.
Third Law:
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the previous laws.
It certainly may be possible to do those sort of things. The tricky part is that a good number of the cells may simply die off if the injury isn't quickly repaired. Another effect of the gel is to provide a nutrient-rich solution to help growth, so time is of the essence.
The good news is that there's lots of research going into nerve regeneration and repair. Things like nerve growth factors, removing mylein-induced inhibition, and stem cells are all promising fields.
It'll be interesting when people's brains can be kept alive for long periods of time by replacing or modifying large chucks of it. When do I stop being really me?
Much of the permanence of nerve damage is due to scarring, which creates a barrier that nerves can't heal across. If you cut the nerve and put this gel into the wound within 45 minutes, it apparently helps the healing process. The reason? Minimizing scarring: Of course, this doesn't mean it's a useless discovery. If you have to perform surgery, say tumor removal, injecting this gel may promote growth in any nerves you may have just cut.
We have done a good job (IMHO) of keeping our nuclear power plants relatively safe, but that's mainly because the kid down the street can't build a nuclear power plant.
Tell it to this kid.
If you look at a temperature map of Enceladus, it's still quite cold, perhaps 100 degrees Kelvin. With virtually no pressure, it's enough to cause evaporation and the formation of water. There's a good write-up here.
So, don't expect to see exotic creatures swimming about. It might end up being a great place to mine for water, however, supporting future colonies of Saturn. The moon has virtually no gravity, so you could practically throw it off the surface (well, not really - the escape velocity is 212 m/s).
A few years back, I had a close coworker who was diagnosed with cancer. He decided that he wanted to work, be productive, and fight it as best he could, even though his chances were slim. He came to work every day he could and did his job, even when he was losing hair and using a laptop from the hospital bed.
After he died, our team was devistated. I'm not sure we accomplished more than simple maintenance activities for months afterwards. Even though he'd tried to put things in order, it was still tremendously difficult to fill where he'd been. It probably took a good year before things felt on track again.
It's strange even now, running across his name in code or tucked away in a database somewhere. I support his few remaining applications, which some day will be retired as well. The things we leave behind . . .
Our maiboxes are anywhere around 100MB to 250MB in size, upgradeable upon request. A few are multiple gigabytes in size. The main growth comes from people sending documents around, which have a 10MB size limit.
This November, we have a new rule in place where no e-mail older than a year will be saved. It'll be purged from backups and everything. Interestingly enough, this is primarily being done for legal reasons, not technical.
Of course, the thought is that all those documents will then be put on our resource servers or local hard drives. Lawyers are getting smart enough to sopena everything, not just e-mail.
It turns out that dropping things into the subduction zones doesn't work out very well. The problems are mainly due to instability, as it doesn't simply suck what's there into the earth's core, but rather spews it around as well. There's some better solutions that involve burying it in the deep clays in more geologically stable areas.
Of course, many countries have banned dumping radioactive waste into the sea under the London Convention. The United States signed it in 1998, but it hasn't been ratified yet.
There are certain laws in place that regulate how confidential patient information is passed around (HIPPA). I'm fairly certain that should an employee have such information on their desktop and it's copied up to Google, that would constitute a breach of those laws.
Because of this, our desktop folks have decided that Google Desktop is not something that can be installed. It's a shame, too, as there's lots of "benign" features that we miss out on because of it.
Perhaps violent people spend their time playing violent video games, rather than wandering the streets and beating people up. Using another correlation fallacy, it would explain the all-time lows in violent crimes.
It's nice to hear that some "old media" organizations are slowly getting it. It may require all the old employees to retire or die off, but most huge cultural changes seem to require it. It was also refreshing to see that he admitted to downloading television shows via P2P, along with a "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" that it was for research purposes only.
It's interesting times we live in.
I tried to pick something where the comparison was reasonable. Removing asbestos is often more hazardous than leaving it in. It's likely that nanotubes have the same sort of issues - they're small and can get stuck in people's lungs, causing inflammation and triggering cancer (especially for smokers).
Also, similar to asbestos, nanotubes appear to have great promise but the health risks are somewhat unknown. It may be that the paint is only risky for painters, or when it's removed. The worst case scenario is that it turns out to be far more toxic than people expect, and even the trace amounts produced by the dry paint over time causes issues.
There may be some serious health risks associated with nanotubes and other small particles. Hopefully the companies involved do thorough health risk assessments before putting it up everywhere.
Our organization currently has a headache when non-developers make an Access database, get their department relying on it, and then leaving the organization. When things break, the developers get sucked into having to maintain this monstrosity.
We're trying hard to disavow them completely, but it's hard to say no when the customer insists its part of a vital healthcare function. For those, we've sometimes rewritten them using a real SQL back-end, web browser client, and code we can support and maintain.
Making tools to let non-developers do things isn't necessarily bad, it's just that there has to be clear expectations as to support. Writing web applications isn't the same as typing up a Word document or making an Excel spreadsheet with a couple macros. It's easy for non-developers to quickly get in over their heads.
It'll be like that Seinfeld episode where the technician reaches deep into the innards of a downed satellite, only to pull out a golf ball with a tiny antenna.
After watching this movie, I have to say that the government crackdown can't come fast enough.
This probably reflects the massive number of smaller servers that are out there, which often have Windows installed. In our organization, Windows servers tend to have a single application on them (typically by request of the vendor), while our Unix and AS/400 servers tend to have dozens of applications on them.
The irony is that Windows applications often "don't play well together", making it almost a requirement that they get a dedicated piece of hardware. As a reward for this problem, their rankings are boosted.
Hey, I was busy putting off my project work and came across this funny page: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/21/175222 6
You guys all get the irony, right?
It's a good thing they picked such a quiet part of the world. I suppose it's so they can ditch over Iran, which is right across the Gulf, well within missle range.
Well, the grass itself likely may not metabolize the contents of the cow dung, but there's an awful lot of other things that will. For example, the nitrogen-fixing bacteria that lives in the roots of the grass.
I think the point that I'm making is that the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen bound up in the dung isn't simply wasted, but rather returned into the soil's ecosystem rather quickly.
Man, I never imagined how much I'd be talking about cow dung this afternoon.
Well, you still have to worry about CO2 production. The "ideal" from a CO2 perspective is to pull it out of the atmosphere and bury it. Normally, the CO2 in cow dung would be left to sit there and get quickly turned into new plant material (since it has all that juicy energy locked up in it still). Once burned, it's less accessible to new plants. They have to use sunlight to fix it from the atmosphere, so it's a bit slower.
Let me give an "economies of scale" example. Let's say I have a gizmo that takes some pollutant from the exhaust from a power plant. It costs $10,000. There's no way you can put it on a small power plant, but a large one can likely afford it. That's one of the big advantages of centralized power generation. That's one of the reasons why things like leaf blowers and woodstoves are so polluting per watt compared to coal power plants.