Yes, they are responsible for releasing carbon dioxide in their trips to get to the conference - just as we're responsible for releasing tons of CO2 every day. My response is: so what?
This group of scientists is working together to effect global change, which will hopefully result in millions of tonnes of CO2 less, and will prevent catastrophic ecological consequences in the long run. If releasing a few tonnes now ultimately leads to major changes in our society, I say go for it. The long term benefits clearly outweigh the short term damage.
This "crossing" seems somewhat unlikely, since virus genomes do not do any sort of recombination that allows them to exchange genetic material. (unlike mammals, birds, and other things that reproduce sexually). The accumulation of random mutations is much more likely, especially considering that viruses have very few defenses agains mutation, and little, if any, DNA (or RNA) repair mechanisms.
We'll have progressed from playing single player tetris through Zshell to playing multiplayer doom over a WiFi nwetwork. (in the back of Algebra class, of course).
Binoculars or other low-power, large-field devices can give a really spectacular view, though. You'll see less meteors this way, but will gain an appreciably better view of the ones you do spot.
I have my doubts that this sort of bio-battery will ever be useful on a widespread, large scale.
Even anaerobic resiration by the most efficient organisms yields under 50% of the potential energy in their food. Secondary reactions like this typically occur at a much slower rate than life-sustaining reactions. What this means is that a fairly high amount of nutrients will have to be supplied, and that the resulting current generated will be relatively small compared to the potential energy sent in.
I guess what I'm saying here is "don't expect a miracle bio-powered car from this."
These bacteria will no doubt be useful in cleanup of contaminated sites, though. Perhaps soil could be placed into large decontamination devices, and the resulting electricity could be used for low-output pumps that drip nutrients into the chamber. Then you'd have a useful, self-powered detox device.
The federal legislation imposes criminal and civil penalties for faking the "from" line.
I run a online forum/bulletin board, and I periodically sed out informative emails to all of my members. The "from" line on those emails is typically donotreply@domainname.com. Would this make me criminally punishable under this law?
The legislation, as written now, is full of loopholes, backdoors, and is woefully indequate. I'm begining to think that Yahoo's new scheme might be a good idea.
Is a maglev train an impractical fantasy like the personal flying car?
Absolutely not. Maglev trains have been successfully deployed in Japan, and as more municipal areas show interest, the technology will become less expensive.
Flying cars were a pipe-dream to begin with. The issue there isn't really technology - that could be developed. The issue with flying cars is feasibility. Creating an infrastructure of landing strips and air traffic controls would create logistical problems. The inability of most individuals to afford flying cars has hindered their development as well. With maglev trains, an entire city collectively finances the project, and the entire city then uses the trains.
Client: "We want a website that can play DVD quality video, but we don't want to use streaming video and the load time must be zero."
Designer: "That's impossible. Everything has a load time. DVD quality runs about 100 megs a minute."
Client: "We'll take our business elsewhere..."
Designer: so who will go to this site and for what reason will they go there?
Client: i don't know
Designer: well what is the purpose of this site!?!?
client: i don't know
client - I don't care if it doesn't work in netscape - I want it!
Designer - umm.. okay...
client (2 weeks later) -It looks all broken!
designer - Huh? Nothing looks wrong on my end...blah blah blah... What version of IE are you using?
client - Netscape.
Client: Could you use a different font for every name, you know make it cool.
Designer: Uh, that's probably not going to look so good, it'll be all cluttered and ugly
Client: No, it'll look cool, so let's do it. (after doing what they want...) Client: Now it looks all cluttered.
Designer: Aarrrgghhh
Pointing a loaded gun at a bulletproof vest?! I'm pretty sure that there was a Darwin Award about that one...
Yup! Here it is!
http://darwinawards.com/personal/personal1999-19.h tml
And here's another similar one:
http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2001-15.html
This is the vaporware of the transportation industry. They don't have the technology, the financial backing, or the infrastructure to make this happen.
Oh yeah, but they do have a cool CGI animation! That'll make everything better!
Well, while they're not exactly making the jump to XHTML 1.0 strict with these guidelines, it's a good start. Yes, many of them seem obvious (important links go higher on the page), there are a wealth of sites on the internet that violate these kinds of common-sense web design conventions.
The real trick will be convincing the thousands of bureaucratic departments to adopt these standards, and I just don't see that happening.
The combined government offices have one of the largest and most inaccessible stores of information on the planet. Maybe one of these years, that will change.
That's pretty much how Google operates now in DMCA cases. The disturbing thing is that they usually honor the corporations' requests without verifying the facts. In essence, the RIAA could write bots, that search out mp3s, and then automatically flood google with requests for removal of the pages they find.
If google continues their policy of appeasement, things could get ugly.
There are two potentially disasterous legal precedents that coud be set by this case:
They are both found in this quote from the second article:
"The Federal Court action seeks declarations that both Mr Cooper and his ISP have infringed the copyrights of the music labels by making and/or distributing copies of copyrighted music, and seeks permanent injunctions and damages against them both."
It's going be be impossible to prove that he made copies of the music, because he didn't. They're relying on nailing him on distribution charges. So the key element in this case is the definition that the court adopts for "distribution". In my opinion, distribution is the act of actually transmitting the file.
However, if the creation of a link is acknowledged as being considered distribution (and thus copyright infringement), the results for search engines like Google could be disasterous.
The other major point is that they're trying to hold ISP's responsible for the actions of people they host. This, also, could have far-reaching ramifications for the internet community.
"Gee Willikers, looks like Bugs is up to something again. What? He's hacking the Pentagon? No need to call the authorities - us kid detectives have it under control! What? He just launched nukes at Russia? Maybe i'll leave this one to the cops..."
But the weak nature of gravity means these disturbances are unimaginably small. . . One of the major tasks for engineers has been to insulate the installations from vibrations - from passing lorries and earthquakes - that might swamp the real data
As a physics student, I know of many who question the reliablility of such instruments, especially when they're on the surface of the Earth. The earth's crust is composed of constantly moving, shifting layers of rock that create almost constant imperceptible geologic disturbances. It's nearly impossible to completely negate these.
The scientists responsible for the experiments claim that the non-proximity of the two locations will negate any interference, but there is plenty of seismic data that shows that even the smallest tremors can be picked up by delicate equipment on the other side of the globe!
Hell, yes - cables are where the money is at - as any good geek knows. Those 30 printer cables that they sell to people at Best Buy cost around 3 bucks...
The media giants have their scheme down pat. They reveal new technology, tout it's benefits with heavy advertising, then slowly withdraw the old technology to force consumers to buy the new hardware product.
How often do you see VHS advertised anymore? Yes, DVD is better quality, but except for videophiles, people don't care much about the negligible difference. I don't see that HDTV is in anyway different.
It's no coincidence that manufacturers like Sony, that also make hardware, are the ones who push new technologies the most.
Slashdot Mirror
Wired News also covered this story, and has a great interview with Byrne. You can read it here.
Yes, they are responsible for releasing carbon dioxide in their trips to get to the conference - just as we're responsible for releasing tons of CO2 every day. My response is: so what? This group of scientists is working together to effect global change, which will hopefully result in millions of tonnes of CO2 less, and will prevent catastrophic ecological consequences in the long run. If releasing a few tonnes now ultimately leads to major changes in our society, I say go for it. The long term benefits clearly outweigh the short term damage.
This "crossing" seems somewhat unlikely, since virus genomes do not do any sort of recombination that allows them to exchange genetic material. (unlike mammals, birds, and other things that reproduce sexually). The accumulation of random mutations is much more likely, especially considering that viruses have very few defenses agains mutation, and little, if any, DNA (or RNA) repair mechanisms.
correction: Aerobic resiration by the most efficient organisms yields under 50% of the potential energy in their food.
Anaerobic yields are typically much lower.
It means that math class will never be the same.
We'll have progressed from playing single player tetris through Zshell to playing multiplayer doom over a WiFi nwetwork. (in the back of Algebra class, of course).
Binoculars or other low-power, large-field devices can give a really spectacular view, though. You'll see less meteors this way, but will gain an appreciably better view of the ones you do spot.
I have my doubts that this sort of bio-battery will ever be useful on a widespread, large scale.
Even anaerobic resiration by the most efficient organisms yields under 50% of the potential energy in their food. Secondary reactions like this typically occur at a much slower rate than life-sustaining reactions. What this means is that a fairly high amount of nutrients will have to be supplied, and that the resulting current generated will be relatively small compared to the potential energy sent in.
I guess what I'm saying here is "don't expect a miracle bio-powered car from this."
These bacteria will no doubt be useful in cleanup of contaminated sites, though. Perhaps soil could be placed into large decontamination devices, and the resulting electricity could be used for low-output pumps that drip nutrients into the chamber. Then you'd have a useful, self-powered detox device.
The federal legislation imposes criminal and civil penalties for faking the "from" line.
I run a online forum/bulletin board, and I periodically sed out informative emails to all of my members. The "from" line on those emails is typically donotreply@domainname.com. Would this make me criminally punishable under this law?
The legislation, as written now, is full of loopholes, backdoors, and is woefully indequate. I'm begining to think that Yahoo's new scheme might be a good idea.
Is a maglev train an impractical fantasy like the personal flying car?
Absolutely not. Maglev trains have been successfully deployed in Japan, and as more municipal areas show interest, the technology will become less expensive.
Flying cars were a pipe-dream to begin with. The issue there isn't really technology - that could be developed. The issue with flying cars is feasibility. Creating an infrastructure of landing strips and air traffic controls would create logistical problems. The inability of most individuals to afford flying cars has hindered their development as well. With maglev trains, an entire city collectively finances the project, and the entire city then uses the trains.
Pointing a loaded gun at a bulletproof vest?! I'm pretty sure that there was a Darwin Award about that one... Yup! Here it is! http://darwinawards.com/personal/personal1999-19.h tml
And here's another similar one:
http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2001-15.html
Oh yeah, but they do have a cool CGI animation! That'll make everything better!
The real trick will be convincing the thousands of bureaucratic departments to adopt these standards, and I just don't see that happening.
The combined government offices have one of the largest and most inaccessible stores of information on the planet. Maybe one of these years, that will change.
That's pretty much how Google operates now in DMCA cases. The disturbing thing is that they usually honor the corporations' requests without verifying the facts. In essence, the RIAA could write bots, that search out mp3s, and then automatically flood google with requests for removal of the pages they find. If google continues their policy of appeasement, things could get ugly.
There are two potentially disasterous legal precedents that coud be set by this case:
They are both found in this quote from the second article:
It's going be be impossible to prove that he made copies of the music, because he didn't. They're relying on nailing him on distribution charges. So the key element in this case is the definition that the court adopts for "distribution". In my opinion, distribution is the act of actually transmitting the file.
However, if the creation of a link is acknowledged as being considered distribution (and thus copyright infringement), the results for search engines like Google could be disasterous.
The other major point is that they're trying to hold ISP's responsible for the actions of people they host. This, also, could have far-reaching ramifications for the internet community.
This is the first ever computer bug
(It's a moth that was found between relays in a Mark II computer).
The term "bug" should only be rightfully applied to hardware defects or anomalies.
Any mistake in software code should be called what it is - an error, made by the developers.
Remind anyone else of an Encyclopedia Brown book?
"Gee Willikers, looks like Bugs is up to something again. What? He's hacking the Pentagon? No need to call the authorities - us kid detectives have it under control! What? He just launched nukes at Russia? Maybe i'll leave this one to the cops..."
Also check out Encyclopedia Brown and the case of the Pirated MP3s.
But the weak nature of gravity means these disturbances are unimaginably small. . . One of the major tasks for engineers has been to insulate the installations from vibrations - from passing lorries and earthquakes - that might swamp the real data
As a physics student, I know of many who question the reliablility of such instruments, especially when they're on the surface of the Earth. The earth's crust is composed of constantly moving, shifting layers of rock that create almost constant imperceptible geologic disturbances. It's nearly impossible to completely negate these.
The scientists responsible for the experiments claim that the non-proximity of the two locations will negate any interference, but there is plenty of seismic data that shows that even the smallest tremors can be picked up by delicate equipment on the other side of the globe!
Hell, yes - cables are where the money is at - as any good geek knows. Those 30 printer cables that they sell to people at Best Buy cost around 3 bucks...
The media giants have their scheme down pat. They reveal new technology, tout it's benefits with heavy advertising, then slowly withdraw the old technology to force consumers to buy the new hardware product.
How often do you see VHS advertised anymore? Yes, DVD is better quality, but except for videophiles, people don't care much about the negligible difference. I don't see that HDTV is in anyway different.
It's no coincidence that manufacturers like Sony, that also make hardware, are the ones who push new technologies the most.
--spin2cool