What happens when a bio-cracker unleashes a plant virus on all the wheat in North America, and the genetic code to 'Wheat 2.0' is closed-source, patented code owned by a corporation?
People owning oat and barley futures make a small fortune.
That would seriously be a good way of making money.
In the early 1700's there was a method of smallpox innoculation which involved deliberately putting ground-up smallpox scab or pus into an open wound. It usually gave the person a mild case of small pox, resulting in better resistance to the disease. This was highly controversial at the time, and wasn't completely effective. Sometimes people still died from small pox, or they contracted a worse case of small pox from the innoculation.
The first effective innoculation was discovered in 1796 by Edward Jenner, who noticed that people infected with cowpox, a mild smallpox-related disease, became immune to small pox. His cowpox-derived vaccine was far more effective than previous treatments, guaranteeing small pox immunity.
I went and looked at his post history. His posts almost all +5, and on inspection I saw that they deserved it.
John Carmack has the "inside scoop" on a lot of issues we talk about on Slashdot, as he knows the people and technology we talk about, and is able to give a different perspective on it than a lot of us would. His posts containing his viewpoints and stories have a lot of stuff that is indeed interesting and insightful, much more so than the average Slashdot post. The posts where he is talking about his personal observations of Steve Jobs, or his rocket experiments, for example, is information that most Slashdotters would be unable to provide.
Yeah, the CSU is pretty big in conservative Bavaria, but Munich is a liberal SPD-voting island in a conservative sea.
I think it's because the countryside is populated by stodgy farmers who resist change, whereas Munich is a modern city with lots of technology-related industries. It attracts a lot of people from other parts of Germany with its large job market, which I believe is the reason why it's so politically different than the rest of Bavaria.
Actually, 83-year-old women far outnumber 83-year-old men, so unless he's only interested in younger women, he'll have to beat them off with a stick.
This is because the average life span of a man is significantly lower than a woman's (72 years compared with 78 years, I believe), so the older the age group, the greater percentage of women.
Men are apparently hot commodities in the 70+ age group, with all those widows.
When I saw the picture of it, I also immediately thought of that torture droid thingy that Darth Vader was using during interrogations, rather this one is red and missing the big needle.
Maybe they will use it to interrogate any aliens they come across.
NASA astronaut: "Tell me the coordinates to your home planet!" Alien: "Nooo! I'll never tell!" NASA astronaut: "Have it your way. Bring me the personal satellite assistant! It will relieve me of the humdrum task of "convincing" you otherwise."
I know of a movie theater chain that offers services like this, but they charge a fee of $1 or something like that. Screw that. I'm not going to pay a fee for something like that.
The most disgusting part of it all is that these type of things save the *theater* money. Automation means they don't have to pay as many cashiers, which saves a lot on cost. They make us pay extra for what is for them a money-saver.
It is convenient, but in no way is it worth the extra fee. Until I can do that for the same price as going to a cashier, I'm going to be going to the cashier.
Active lightbulb cancellation would be impossible from what I understand. With sound it works because the sound waves are compressions and expansions of air that make your eardrums wiggle. Output the exact opposite sound wave to counteract the first one, which means that the air is being expanded by one wave, but compressed by the other. The result is no *net* movement of the air, depending of course on your position in relation to the two sound waves.
Light is just photons (which have wavelike properties) hitting your eye. To counteract that, you would have to fire some kind of anti-proton, which doesn't exist. The "anti-light" source would probably have to be in the same place the light source, so that the "anti-protons" come from the same direction.
After living in two different cultures, I've noticed that shielding children by keeping them isolated from anything that could be harmful definitely has its downsides.
When I lived in Germany, I noticed that children had pretty much free access to alcohol, and underage drinking wasn't even a concern. Teenagers usually went on little drinking binges at about 14-16, still under the supervision of their parents. By the time they were out of school, going on to higher education, and ready to live on their own, they could handle alcohol responsibly, and weren't as interested in binge-drinking. So as a result, they handled life well and spent more time studying at the university.
In the United States, there were a lot of college students who had been completely shielded from alcohol and a number of other things by overprotective parents. Those students were irresponsible and simply couldn't handle suddenly being independent and having access to all this stuff. Many of them started binge-drinking, lost the discipline to study, and dropped out of school.
Someone in Germany mentioned to me they thought it strange that Americans are be allowed to drive before they learn to handle alcohol responsibly. It seemed like a recipe for disaster to them.
I'm of the opinion that parents should take it in moderation. You still need to parent and guide the kid, but at the same time you need to prepare them to deal responsibly with the real world! They're not going to be children forever, and they're going to need those skills when they become independent.
Last I heard, Austria had some tough restrictions on allowing non-EU citizens to get a work permit for their county.
I'm curious to hear your experience in that area, and how you got past all the red tape. I used to live in Germany as a student, and I'd love to go back, but I'm afraid of a bureaucratic nightmare in getting a work permit. I'm hoping my profession as a software engineer might help, but I'm not terribly optimistic.
...and I'm afraid that my estate will go to a certain Ngabe Mbambo in Nigeria.
But look on the bright side! If you send him a transfer of money (he needs to pay the proper fees), as steward of my vast fortune, he will declare you to be the rightful heir transfer my estate to you.
I assure you that he is trustworthy and that this is not a scam.
Before I lived in Germany, I had only seen "A4" mentioned in the printer dialog on my computer. I had no idea what it was or where it was used.
When I went to Germany to study, I naively brought some binders with me. Those binders were completely useless when I realized that not only was the standard paper different (A4 is a bit narrower and longer than letter-sized paper), but they punched the holes in it diffently. U.S. binders have 3 evenly spaced holes, but German binders usually have 4 evenly spaced holes. Sometimes I would see German binders and paper that ignored the two outer holes, and had just the two center holes.
Then I got used to it, and found U.S. paper rather bizarre when I moved back to the U.S.
Back in the summer of 2002, I went on a cross-country road trip (I live in California), I saw a number of election posters for politicians I had never heard of.
When I was passing through Virginia (I think it was southern Virginia) I saw election posters for Rick Boucher, and I instantly recognized his name. "Hey, that's that really cool tech-friendly congressman that gets mentioned on Slashdot!"
I thought it quite amazing that I recognized a local congressman on the other side of the country. He's getting some definite name-recognition throughout the country due to Slashdot.
...having something of the flavor that Slashdot had in the late nineties.
I'm afraid I wasn't aware of Slashdot in the late 90s; I started reading in 2001.
How was Slashdot different in the late nineties? Would anyone care to compare the differences between then and now? I'm wondering if there were even any significant differences, or if this is just someone's misguided nostalgia.
Slashdot Mirror
I couldn't find an Onion link to this story, but it is on a number of other sites.
Here's a link to one.
Everyone knows not to eat wheat 1.0, but wait for a later version.
It's too buggy.
What happens when a bio-cracker unleashes a plant virus on all the wheat in North America, and the genetic code to 'Wheat 2.0' is closed-source, patented code owned by a corporation?
People owning oat and barley futures make a small fortune.
That would seriously be a good way of making money.
Step 1: Make nasty wheat virus
Step 2: Buy barley and oat futures
Step 3: Release nasty wheat virus
Step 4: Profit!
In the early 1700's there was a method of smallpox innoculation which involved deliberately putting ground-up smallpox scab or pus into an open wound. It usually gave the person a mild case of small pox, resulting in better resistance to the disease. This was highly controversial at the time, and wasn't completely effective. Sometimes people still died from small pox, or they contracted a worse case of small pox from the innoculation.
The first effective innoculation was discovered in 1796 by Edward Jenner, who noticed that people infected with cowpox, a mild smallpox-related disease, became immune to small pox. His cowpox-derived vaccine was far more effective than previous treatments, guaranteeing small pox immunity.
I went and looked at his post history. His posts almost all +5, and on inspection I saw that they deserved it.
John Carmack has the "inside scoop" on a lot of issues we talk about on Slashdot, as he knows the people and technology we talk about, and is able to give a different perspective on it than a lot of us would. His posts containing his viewpoints and stories have a lot of stuff that is indeed interesting and insightful, much more so than the average Slashdot post. The posts where he is talking about his personal observations of Steve Jobs, or his rocket experiments, for example, is information that most Slashdotters would be unable to provide.
That, and it's $600 cheaper with XP instaled. So much for the Microsoft tax.
They have to pay SCO their $699. :)
This makes this laptop even a better deal, because you're getting linux for $99 cheaper!
Yeah, the CSU is pretty big in conservative Bavaria, but Munich is a liberal SPD-voting island in a conservative sea.
I think it's because the countryside is populated by stodgy farmers who resist change, whereas Munich is a modern city with lots of technology-related industries. It attracts a lot of people from other parts of Germany with its large job market, which I believe is the reason why it's so politically different than the rest of Bavaria.
Actually, 83-year-old women far outnumber 83-year-old men, so unless he's only interested in younger women, he'll have to beat them off with a stick.
This is because the average life span of a man is significantly lower than a woman's (72 years compared with 78 years, I believe), so the older the age group, the greater percentage of women.
Men are apparently hot commodities in the 70+ age group, with all those widows.
When I saw the picture of it, I also immediately thought of that torture droid thingy that Darth Vader was using during interrogations, rather this one is red and missing the big needle.
Maybe they will use it to interrogate any aliens they come across.
NASA astronaut: "Tell me the coordinates to your home planet!"
Alien: "Nooo! I'll never tell!"
NASA astronaut: "Have it your way. Bring me the personal satellite assistant! It will relieve me of the humdrum task of "convincing" you otherwise."
I'm curious. How do you remap the caps lock to switch to a different keyboard? That would be incredibly useful when I'm typing in another language.
I know of a movie theater chain that offers services like this, but they charge a fee of $1 or something like that. Screw that. I'm not going to pay a fee for something like that.
The most disgusting part of it all is that these type of things save the *theater* money. Automation means they don't have to pay as many cashiers, which saves a lot on cost. They make us pay extra for what is for them a money-saver.
It is convenient, but in no way is it worth the extra fee. Until I can do that for the same price as going to a cashier, I'm going to be going to the cashier.
Active lightbulb cancellation would be impossible from what I understand. With sound it works because the sound waves are compressions and expansions of air that make your eardrums wiggle. Output the exact opposite sound wave to counteract the first one, which means that the air is being expanded by one wave, but compressed by the other. The result is no *net* movement of the air, depending of course on your position in relation to the two sound waves.
Light is just photons (which have wavelike properties) hitting your eye. To counteract that, you would have to fire some kind of anti-proton, which doesn't exist. The "anti-light" source would probably have to be in the same place the light source, so that the "anti-protons" come from the same direction.
After living in two different cultures, I've noticed that shielding children by keeping them isolated from anything that could be harmful definitely has its downsides.
When I lived in Germany, I noticed that children had pretty much free access to alcohol, and underage drinking wasn't even a concern. Teenagers usually went on little drinking binges at about 14-16, still under the supervision of their parents. By the time they were out of school, going on to higher education, and ready to live on their own, they could handle alcohol responsibly, and weren't as interested in binge-drinking. So as a result, they handled life well and spent more time studying at the university.
In the United States, there were a lot of college students who had been completely shielded from alcohol and a number of other things by overprotective parents. Those students were irresponsible and simply couldn't handle suddenly being independent and having access to all this stuff. Many of them started binge-drinking, lost the discipline to study, and dropped out of school.
Someone in Germany mentioned to me they thought it strange that Americans are be allowed to drive before they learn to handle alcohol responsibly. It seemed like a recipe for disaster to them.
I'm of the opinion that parents should take it in moderation. You still need to parent and guide the kid, but at the same time you need to prepare them to deal responsibly with the real world! They're not going to be children forever, and they're going to need those skills when they become independent.
Please clean up your porn films, and use your porn powers for 'good'!
Take into account the fact that children are watching your porn films, no matter that they shouldn't be!
Won't you please think of the children!
Last I heard, Austria had some tough restrictions on allowing non-EU citizens to get a work permit for their county.
I'm curious to hear your experience in that area, and how you got past all the red tape. I used to live in Germany as a student, and I'd love to go back, but I'm afraid of a bureaucratic nightmare in getting a work permit. I'm hoping my profession as a software engineer might help, but I'm not terribly optimistic.
...and I'm afraid that my estate will go to a certain Ngabe Mbambo in Nigeria.
But look on the bright side! If you send him a transfer of money (he needs to pay the proper fees), as steward of my vast fortune, he will declare you to be the rightful heir transfer my estate to you.
I assure you that he is trustworthy and that this is not a scam.
Such paint might also be nastily poisonous and an environmental no-no.
Before I lived in Germany, I had only seen "A4" mentioned in the printer dialog on my computer. I had no idea what it was or where it was used.
When I went to Germany to study, I naively brought some binders with me. Those binders were completely useless when I realized that not only was the standard paper different (A4 is a bit narrower and longer than letter-sized paper), but they punched the holes in it diffently. U.S. binders have 3 evenly spaced holes, but German binders usually have 4 evenly spaced holes. Sometimes I would see German binders and paper that ignored the two outer holes, and had just the two center holes.
Then I got used to it, and found U.S. paper rather bizarre when I moved back to the U.S.
I wonder if the Ministry of Silly Walks is under the supervision of the Ministry of Mobile Affairs.
I'll bet the grad student did 90% of the work too.
I hear it happens a lot where the grad students do the work, and the professors take the credit for it.
I remember the John Katz articles when I first started reading.
All the comments for them were seething with loathing for John Katz. I remember thinking, "Who is this guy, and why does everyone hate him so much?"
I have to admit that his articles weren't terribly interesting.
Back in the summer of 2002, I went on a cross-country road trip (I live in California), I saw a number of election posters for politicians I had never heard of.
When I was passing through Virginia (I think it was southern Virginia) I saw election posters for Rick Boucher, and I instantly recognized his name. "Hey, that's that really cool tech-friendly congressman that gets mentioned on Slashdot!"
I thought it quite amazing that I recognized a local congressman on the other side of the country. He's getting some definite name-recognition throughout the country due to Slashdot.
I'm afraid I wasn't aware of Slashdot in the late 90s; I started reading in 2001.
How was Slashdot different in the late nineties? Would anyone care to compare the differences between then and now? I'm wondering if there were even any significant differences, or if this is just someone's misguided nostalgia.
I makes me think of Monty Python's "The Quest for the Holy Grail" where that nobleman with the singing son kept building castles in a swamp.
:)
They kept collapsing, so he kept building on the ruins of the previous ones until he succeeded.
Then he wanted his son to marry the woman with huge......tracts of land.
LOL. Good point :)
It is my experience though that IIS-hosted sites tend to buckle faster under a heavy pounding than Apache-hosted sites.