$24 million sounds like a lot, but it is just a fraction of what was lost to hackers. Tor is an easy target, though, it will have little impact. It lets the country think something is being done, but it will have little impact. It's kind of like going after college kids for downloading songs and movies when in SE Asia, they are being duplicated by the truck load for resale.
Tor just makes it hard to track who did it. Banks and financial institutions need to beef up their security regardless of tor or not.
> [Researchers found] through computer simulations
Simulations are not science. I could produce my own simulation that would show exactly the opposite of what his simulation showed. It's all a matter of your assumptions. No simulation can sufficiently mimic the complexity of the real world. This is guessing and nothing more. That simulations have somehow become 'science' is just sad. Simulations, if anything, are the opposite of science.
Simulations have always been part of science. They are called mathematical models and they usually exist until a better, more refined model comes about.
Even an outer planet of a class M star that had an atmosphere at some point and drifted into what would be the goldilocks zone for water would not retain its atmosphere (and water) for long. As other posters have mentioned, class M stars are relatively low mass and there for have huge solar flares that would bombard said planet, thus blowing away the atmosphere. Even if such a planet was lucky enough to survive that, by the time that activity has declined, the star has cooled significantly and said planet would be too cold for liquid water. That is assuming, of course, that such a star would have enough mass for there to even be outer planets that could form and then fall inward.
What do the schools that the elite attend do? Do the current 1% still teach cursive? If the future business and world leaders are still being taught cursive, shouldn't the other 99%? Or, is it that in the future, only some will be taught how to read and write and the rest will have menial jobs?
You have lesser trained individuals using more interesting medical equipment.
What could possibly go wrong?
Usually the staff of ALS ambulances have more training than regular ambulances. Obviously, they have less than an emergency room physician. What needs to be studied is locality and transit time. Does an ALS make sense in rural areas, where the nearest hospital is 30 minutes away? Does it provide a better mortality rate than a helicopter (which costs significantly more)? Or maybe, it's just the opposite where ALS is more effective in metropolitan areas where heavy traffic congestion can make a relatively short trip take a long time.
Even the article itself stated that more research needs to be performed before determining that ALS is better or worse. Limited data often limits the validity of the results. The known facts are that only 10% of people who have a cardiac arrest outside the hospital survive it, regardless of how they were transported there. There appears to be a higher mortality rate associated with ALS than not. However, it is not clear whether that is a causation or a correlation. To understand that, there are many additional factors that need to be taken into account.
For instance mortality rates are higher on helicopter ambulances, too. Does that mean they shouldn't be used? No, of course not. They have higher mortality rates because they tend to be used for more severe injuries to start with. Until a proper study is conducted, anyone's guess is as good as anyone else's.
I have personally been billed $485 for an ambulance ride that was literally 6 blocks down streets with no traffic. And, though I was unconscious, I'm fairly certain that fee did *not* include hookers and blow.
Would you have preferred waiting to regain consciousness and walking their yourself? Yes, ambulances can be expensive, but you are paying for depreciation, salaries, benefits and ongoing training of the staff, fuel, maintenance, liability and malpractice insurance and various other costs.
While the methodology used for the original inquiry (I hesitate to use the word study) is non-statistical and therefore impossible to validly extrapolate from, so is the methodology used to debunk the original. At best, both reports provide anecdotal evidence, but without a statistically valid approach, either could be correct or both could be wrong.
So did the oxygen simply appear out of nowhere (he asks rhetorically)? Of course not. If it was somehow trapped in the oceans or underground, and then released as postulated by these papers, then one must explain the mechanism that would have dissolved and/or trapped the O2 to start with. What was different about Pre-Cambrian oceans that allowed for more oxygen to be dissolved in it than modern oceans? What caused the release and the change to what we have now? Likewise, what mechanisms in tectonic plates shifting would account for a massive release of oxygen and from where?
I am not saying these hypothesis being presented are incorrect, but they need to be able to explain the before as well as the after.
But you must still defend your mark and Gnome the open source project desktop environment and also GnomeOS the operating system are pretty similar sounding to the GNOME point of sale system which includes the GNOME operating system per the article. While most of us could see that Apple Records and Apple Computer were two unrelated things, the courts found Apple Records to infringe on Apple Computer's mark. Likewise, McDonalds has fought very hard to protect its mark and also to expand it. Or, when Starwars first came out, it was a book and a movie. Now, it includes all sorts of merchandise that is anything but the book and movie. Ford could not come out and advertize a Darth Vader F-150 without getting into trouble, even though a pickup has nothing to do with the franchise.
Groupon is advertising an open source software project called GNOME that is an operating system for a point of sale system, that runs on a tablet. It is conceivable that Gnome Foundation will also wave a version of their Desktop environment that runs on a tablet or could be the foundation for somebody else's point of sale system. As such, Gnome Foundation is well within their rights to protect their mark and actually if they failed to do so, could lose their mark.
I'm pretty sure if Groupon named their POS system WINDOWS, nobody would bat an eye at Microsoft defending their mark, even though Microsoft's desktop environment is not the same thing as a point of sale system.
With trademarks, one must defend them or lose them.
One must protect their trademark or risk losing it. That is why we now have Jello brand gelatin and Band-Aids brand bandages. Apple Computer successfully defended it's trademark against Apple Records which was founded by the Beatles and those two categories were a lot further apart than Gnome the desktop environment, GnomeOS (put out by the Gnome foundation) and Gnome the point of sale operating system.
They are heritable just like heritability of, say, home or fortune. Home the children live in is not influenced by genes, but is still heritable.
That explanation fails as a home is only passed on to one child, if at all. The microbes are passed on to all offspring. I do not doubt that the microbes are passed on, just that they are considered heritable. On the other hand, if there is a condition or environment in the gut of the offspring that allows some microbes to flourish over other microbes, then that would be heritable. But, the microbes, themselves are not heritable.
They are transferable, but not heritable. For instance, if in vitro fertilization is used and the embryo implanted in a surrogate mother, the microbes that are transferred are from the surrogate, not the biological mother. The offspring inherits the gut environment that might allow one type of microbe to flourish over another, but not the microbes themselves.
This is further evidenced by the fact that identical twins end up with the same microbes, but fraternal twins do not. The mother, as do we all, have most of the microbes in question. It is a matter of which ones can thrive. Identical twins end up with identical guts, fraternal twins do not. As such, identical twins end up with the same flora, but not necessarily for fraternal twins (they may end up with similar gut environments).
In short, it is the gut environment that allows for certain microbes to flourish over others that is heritable, not the microbes themselves.
Workers are responsible for half of cyber incidents? Well, if opening an email or clicking a link as described in the article makes the worker responsible, then so be it. But, in the days before the internet, when corporate (or government) espionage was the issue, it wasn't the worker who created the report that was responsible for it being stolen, but the actual thief. So, other than another attempt to denigrate government workers, why if somebody sends a malicious link is it not the person who sent the link responsible versus the unknowing end user?
Saying the government workers are the cause of the problem is like saying the woman wearing a short skirt was the cause of the rape. Blaming the victim just diverts attention from the real problem.
St. Nicholas was a real person. He was the Bishop of Myra. What has become the commercialized Christmas began relatively recently. Traditionally, December 25th was celebrated as the Nativity of the Lord and was not a big consumer celebration. That began in the Victorian Age, but was pretty mild compared to today. As for occurring at or near the winter solstice, that made sense because the Christ was supposed to bring light to the darkness. For things like evergreens being co-opted by from the pagans, well, yes people did that, but the Christmas Tree is not an official symbol of any Christian religion. Again, that really began in the Victorian Age, so blame the English, not religion.
The old dogma that the body is sterile (with respect to microbes) if it is healthy seems more and more likely to be just an old dogma, not to be confused with truth. Here's a recent article in Nature about the unexpected discovery that a healthy placenta has an associated microbial population: http://www.nature.com/news/bac...
While there can be microbes in a placenta, usually they are not the types found in the intestinal tract, which is what this article is about. So, yes, flora from the mouth can travel through the blood stream to the placenta, but those are not the flora which ultimately colonize the intestinal tract.
The external source is the mother, hence the moniker: "heritable"
But, no. If that were true than in vitro fertilization with implantation into another woman's womb would mean the baby would inherit the biological mother's microbes. That is not the case. The transmission of the microbes is an environmental transfer, not a genetic one.
It is not forbidden to discover fossils or gold. It is forbidden to excavate them or mine it without a license. That's quite a difference.
It's a distinction without a difference. You should be permitted to dig them up and do as you like with them provided you're not causing environmental damage.
You can, if you are on your own property. The problem occurs when you are taking something of value from property that you do not own.
"Diet rapidly and reproducibly alters the human gut microbiome", Nature 505, 559–563 (23 January 2014) doi:10.1038/nature12820 http://www.nature.com/nature/j...
"Here we show that the short-term consumption of diets composed entirely of animal or plant products alters microbial community structure and overwhelms inter-individual differences in microbial gene expression. "
Yes, but low carb diets, at least described by the OP are not "entirely" animal products (or plant products). It would make sense that microbes that are needed to break down plants, would cease to exist in the gut if there were no plant material to break down. Likewise, for animal protein. We don't really need a new study for this, anybody who has changed a dirty diaper has experienced it. When babies go from breast milk, alone, to other foods, there is a distinct change in the stool. The gut flora needed to break down the new food source is picked up from the environment and begins to do its work. The old gut flora can't compete in the new environment and is replaced.
But, when going from a normal diet to a relatively low carb diet (using the term diet to describe what is consumed, versus weight loss), there still are ample plant sources, so the flora is not replaced, at least not in the dramatic fashion as going to an all animal or all plant diet.
The microbs thrive in different environments. I went from a standard american diet to something more high fat low simple carbs diet with lots of fermented foods. Not only did I lose a bunch of weight but most digestive, allergy, and skin problems went away as well. I think there was something about the microbial environment that a high sugar diet caused that was giving me trouble.
Diet doesn't really change the microbes. Location may have an impact on it, though (which is why there is the old adage of not drinking the local water). Going to a low carb diet works by the body, after about three days of not having enough carbs to convert to energy switches to burning fat reserves. The improved health effects you experience are not because of the microbial change but instead the diet change. Chances are, the same microbes that were there before the diet switch are still there.
If the fetus is in a sterile sack, how do these heritable "gut" microbes get in there? For instance, e.coli isn't in there, but comes from the environment. Wouldn't these microbes follow the same path, in which case they aren't actually heritable, but instead environmental?
Actually I have taken calculus, however, but there is a difference between "as x approaches 0" is not the same as 0/0 = x. It is only an approximation of x. 0/0 is undefined because anything times 0 is 0, so 0 divided by 0 is anything. 3*0=0, so 3=0/0 4*0=0 so 4=0/0, 5*0=0, so 5=0/0 etc.
But, if your definition of nothing is something that is really close to nothing, but actually isn't nothing, well, yes, we have different definitions and will continue to disagree. For 99.99999% of people and things almost nothing is close enough to nothing. However, when talking about the universe springing from nothing, it isn't close enough because if something that is almost nothing exists, then the universe already exists at the point in space/time. It is simply a closer point to the beginning of the universe than we had before.
Put differently, the universe doesn't have to exist, so there must be a reason it does exist. If that reason is because something almost nothing exist, then it begs the question of does it have to exist and if the answer is no, then there, too, must be a reason. If the answer is yes, it must exist, then the universe must exist at that point and the quantum vacuum could not, therefore, cause the universe to come into existence, because it is required to exist for there to be a quantum vacuum.
Something had to create the nothing that created the something (the last something we call Universe)? That's an interesting theory. Why don't you try to prove it?
I don't have to prove it. Even Stephen Hawking accepts it and relies on it in "A Brief History of Time" It isn't new, what is new, for this research is that they have re-defined what nothing is. No longer is it the absence of everything, but now is a quantum vacuum. It ignores though, that for there to be a quantum vacuum, by definition there already has to be quantum particles, somewhere. And if quantum particles already exist, then so does the universe. Therefore, if nothing requires something, then it isn't really nothing. Put differently, if nothing really is something, then division by nothing (zero) is possible and we can prove that 0 = 1.
Slashdot Mirror
$24 million sounds like a lot, but it is just a fraction of what was lost to hackers. Tor is an easy target, though, it will have little impact. It lets the country think something is being done, but it will have little impact. It's kind of like going after college kids for downloading songs and movies when in SE Asia, they are being duplicated by the truck load for resale.
Tor just makes it hard to track who did it. Banks and financial institutions need to beef up their security regardless of tor or not.
> [Researchers found] through computer simulations
Simulations are not science. I could produce my own simulation that would show exactly the opposite of what his simulation showed. It's all a matter of your assumptions. No simulation can sufficiently mimic the complexity of the real world. This is guessing and nothing more. That simulations have somehow become 'science' is just sad. Simulations, if anything, are the opposite of science.
Simulations have always been part of science. They are called mathematical models and they usually exist until a better, more refined model comes about.
Even an outer planet of a class M star that had an atmosphere at some point and drifted into what would be the goldilocks zone for water would not retain its atmosphere (and water) for long. As other posters have mentioned, class M stars are relatively low mass and there for have huge solar flares that would bombard said planet, thus blowing away the atmosphere. Even if such a planet was lucky enough to survive that, by the time that activity has declined, the star has cooled significantly and said planet would be too cold for liquid water. That is assuming, of course, that such a star would have enough mass for there to even be outer planets that could form and then fall inward.
What do the schools that the elite attend do? Do the current 1% still teach cursive? If the future business and world leaders are still being taught cursive, shouldn't the other 99%? Or, is it that in the future, only some will be taught how to read and write and the rest will have menial jobs?
Literacy is the ability to read and write.
You have lesser trained individuals using more interesting medical equipment.
What could possibly go wrong?
Usually the staff of ALS ambulances have more training than regular ambulances. Obviously, they have less than an emergency room physician. What needs to be studied is locality and transit time. Does an ALS make sense in rural areas, where the nearest hospital is 30 minutes away? Does it provide a better mortality rate than a helicopter (which costs significantly more)? Or maybe, it's just the opposite where ALS is more effective in metropolitan areas where heavy traffic congestion can make a relatively short trip take a long time.
Even the article itself stated that more research needs to be performed before determining that ALS is better or worse. Limited data often limits the validity of the results. The known facts are that only 10% of people who have a cardiac arrest outside the hospital survive it, regardless of how they were transported there. There appears to be a higher mortality rate associated with ALS than not. However, it is not clear whether that is a causation or a correlation. To understand that, there are many additional factors that need to be taken into account.
For instance mortality rates are higher on helicopter ambulances, too. Does that mean they shouldn't be used? No, of course not. They have higher mortality rates because they tend to be used for more severe injuries to start with. Until a proper study is conducted, anyone's guess is as good as anyone else's.
I have personally been billed $485 for an ambulance ride that was literally 6 blocks down streets with no traffic. And, though I was unconscious, I'm fairly certain that fee did *not* include hookers and blow.
Would you have preferred waiting to regain consciousness and walking their yourself? Yes, ambulances can be expensive, but you are paying for depreciation, salaries, benefits and ongoing training of the staff, fuel, maintenance, liability and malpractice insurance and various other costs.
While the methodology used for the original inquiry (I hesitate to use the word study) is non-statistical and therefore impossible to validly extrapolate from, so is the methodology used to debunk the original. At best, both reports provide anecdotal evidence, but without a statistically valid approach, either could be correct or both could be wrong.
>the courts found Apple Records to infringe on Apple Computer's mark
You have that backwards. It was Apple Corps (the Beatles) who sued. Apple Corp was never found to be the infringing party.
You are correct, that's what happens when you don't actually review after hitting the preview button! :)
So did the oxygen simply appear out of nowhere (he asks rhetorically)? Of course not. If it was somehow trapped in the oceans or underground, and then released as postulated by these papers, then one must explain the mechanism that would have dissolved and/or trapped the O2 to start with. What was different about Pre-Cambrian oceans that allowed for more oxygen to be dissolved in it than modern oceans? What caused the release and the change to what we have now? Likewise, what mechanisms in tectonic plates shifting would account for a massive release of oxygen and from where?
I am not saying these hypothesis being presented are incorrect, but they need to be able to explain the before as well as the after.
But you must still defend your mark and Gnome the open source project desktop environment and also GnomeOS the operating system are pretty similar sounding to the GNOME point of sale system which includes the GNOME operating system per the article. While most of us could see that Apple Records and Apple Computer were two unrelated things, the courts found Apple Records to infringe on Apple Computer's mark. Likewise, McDonalds has fought very hard to protect its mark and also to expand it. Or, when Starwars first came out, it was a book and a movie. Now, it includes all sorts of merchandise that is anything but the book and movie. Ford could not come out and advertize a Darth Vader F-150 without getting into trouble, even though a pickup has nothing to do with the franchise.
Groupon is advertising an open source software project called GNOME that is an operating system for a point of sale system, that runs on a tablet. It is conceivable that Gnome Foundation will also wave a version of their Desktop environment that runs on a tablet or could be the foundation for somebody else's point of sale system. As such, Gnome Foundation is well within their rights to protect their mark and actually if they failed to do so, could lose their mark.
I'm pretty sure if Groupon named their POS system WINDOWS, nobody would bat an eye at Microsoft defending their mark, even though Microsoft's desktop environment is not the same thing as a point of sale system.
With trademarks, one must defend them or lose them.
One must protect their trademark or risk losing it. That is why we now have Jello brand gelatin and Band-Aids brand bandages. Apple Computer successfully defended it's trademark against Apple Records which was founded by the Beatles and those two categories were a lot further apart than Gnome the desktop environment, GnomeOS (put out by the Gnome foundation) and Gnome the point of sale operating system.
They are heritable just like heritability of, say, home or fortune. Home the children live in is not influenced by genes, but is still heritable.
That explanation fails as a home is only passed on to one child, if at all. The microbes are passed on to all offspring. I do not doubt that the microbes are passed on, just that they are considered heritable. On the other hand, if there is a condition or environment in the gut of the offspring that allows some microbes to flourish over other microbes, then that would be heritable. But, the microbes, themselves are not heritable.
They are transferable, but not heritable. For instance, if in vitro fertilization is used and the embryo implanted in a surrogate mother, the microbes that are transferred are from the surrogate, not the biological mother. The offspring inherits the gut environment that might allow one type of microbe to flourish over another, but not the microbes themselves.
This is further evidenced by the fact that identical twins end up with the same microbes, but fraternal twins do not. The mother, as do we all, have most of the microbes in question. It is a matter of which ones can thrive. Identical twins end up with identical guts, fraternal twins do not. As such, identical twins end up with the same flora, but not necessarily for fraternal twins (they may end up with similar gut environments).
In short, it is the gut environment that allows for certain microbes to flourish over others that is heritable, not the microbes themselves.
Workers are responsible for half of cyber incidents? Well, if opening an email or clicking a link as described in the article makes the worker responsible, then so be it. But, in the days before the internet, when corporate (or government) espionage was the issue, it wasn't the worker who created the report that was responsible for it being stolen, but the actual thief. So, other than another attempt to denigrate government workers, why if somebody sends a malicious link is it not the person who sent the link responsible versus the unknowing end user?
Saying the government workers are the cause of the problem is like saying the woman wearing a short skirt was the cause of the rape. Blaming the victim just diverts attention from the real problem.
St. Nicholas was a real person. He was the Bishop of Myra. What has become the commercialized Christmas began relatively recently. Traditionally, December 25th was celebrated as the Nativity of the Lord and was not a big consumer celebration. That began in the Victorian Age, but was pretty mild compared to today. As for occurring at or near the winter solstice, that made sense because the Christ was supposed to bring light to the darkness. For things like evergreens being co-opted by from the pagans, well, yes people did that, but the Christmas Tree is not an official symbol of any Christian religion. Again, that really began in the Victorian Age, so blame the English, not religion.
Given that the source is the mother (since it is rare for strangers to visit the fetus in the womb...) it is reasonably described as heritable.
So, if there is a surrogate involved, whose flora will the fetus inherit, the surrogate's or the biological mother's?
The old dogma that the body is sterile (with respect to microbes) if it is healthy seems more and more likely to be just an old dogma, not to be confused with truth. Here's a recent article in Nature about the unexpected discovery that a healthy placenta has an associated microbial population: http://www.nature.com/news/bac...
While there can be microbes in a placenta, usually they are not the types found in the intestinal tract, which is what this article is about. So, yes, flora from the mouth can travel through the blood stream to the placenta, but those are not the flora which ultimately colonize the intestinal tract.
The external source is the mother, hence the moniker: "heritable"
But, no. If that were true than in vitro fertilization with implantation into another woman's womb would mean the baby would inherit the biological mother's microbes. That is not the case. The transmission of the microbes is an environmental transfer, not a genetic one.
Fishes aren't dinosaurs!
No buy dinosaurs are fish. A small, obscure branch of lobe finned fishes t o be precise.
I thought dinosaurs were birds?
It is not forbidden to discover fossils or gold. It is forbidden to excavate them or mine it without a license. That's quite a difference.
It's a distinction without a difference. You should be permitted to dig them up and do as you like with them provided you're not causing environmental damage.
You can, if you are on your own property. The problem occurs when you are taking something of value from property that you do not own.
Diet doesn't really change the microbes.
That is not what recent science indicates at all.
"Diet rapidly and reproducibly alters the human gut microbiome", Nature 505, 559–563 (23 January 2014) doi:10.1038/nature12820
http://www.nature.com/nature/j...
"Here we show that the short-term consumption of diets composed entirely of animal or plant products alters microbial community structure and overwhelms inter-individual differences in microbial gene expression. "
Yes, but low carb diets, at least described by the OP are not "entirely" animal products (or plant products). It would make sense that microbes that are needed to break down plants, would cease to exist in the gut if there were no plant material to break down. Likewise, for animal protein. We don't really need a new study for this, anybody who has changed a dirty diaper has experienced it. When babies go from breast milk, alone, to other foods, there is a distinct change in the stool. The gut flora needed to break down the new food source is picked up from the environment and begins to do its work. The old gut flora can't compete in the new environment and is replaced.
But, when going from a normal diet to a relatively low carb diet (using the term diet to describe what is consumed, versus weight loss), there still are ample plant sources, so the flora is not replaced, at least not in the dramatic fashion as going to an all animal or all plant diet.
The baby picks a lot of it up "on the way out". It's one of the effects of a C-section - this drive by infection doesn't occur.
But that is my point, if the microbes are from an external source, they are not heritable.
The microbs thrive in different environments. I went from a standard american diet to something more high fat low simple carbs diet with lots of fermented foods. Not only did I lose a bunch of weight but most digestive, allergy, and skin problems went away as well. I think there was something about the microbial environment that a high sugar diet caused that was giving me trouble.
Diet doesn't really change the microbes. Location may have an impact on it, though (which is why there is the old adage of not drinking the local water). Going to a low carb diet works by the body, after about three days of not having enough carbs to convert to energy switches to burning fat reserves. The improved health effects you experience are not because of the microbial change but instead the diet change. Chances are, the same microbes that were there before the diet switch are still there.
If the fetus is in a sterile sack, how do these heritable "gut" microbes get in there? For instance, e.coli isn't in there, but comes from the environment. Wouldn't these microbes follow the same path, in which case they aren't actually heritable, but instead environmental?
Actually I have taken calculus, however, but there is a difference between "as x approaches 0" is not the same as 0/0 = x. It is only an approximation of x. 0/0 is undefined because anything times 0 is 0, so 0 divided by 0 is anything. 3*0=0, so 3=0/0 4*0=0 so 4=0/0, 5*0=0, so 5=0/0 etc.
But, if your definition of nothing is something that is really close to nothing, but actually isn't nothing, well, yes, we have different definitions and will continue to disagree. For 99.99999% of people and things almost nothing is close enough to nothing. However, when talking about the universe springing from nothing, it isn't close enough because if something that is almost nothing exists, then the universe already exists at the point in space/time. It is simply a closer point to the beginning of the universe than we had before.
Put differently, the universe doesn't have to exist, so there must be a reason it does exist. If that reason is because something almost nothing exist, then it begs the question of does it have to exist and if the answer is no, then there, too, must be a reason. If the answer is yes, it must exist, then the universe must exist at that point and the quantum vacuum could not, therefore, cause the universe to come into existence, because it is required to exist for there to be a quantum vacuum.
Something had to create the nothing that created the something (the last something we call Universe)? That's an interesting theory. Why don't you try to prove it?
I don't have to prove it. Even Stephen Hawking accepts it and relies on it in "A Brief History of Time" It isn't new, what is new, for this research is that they have re-defined what nothing is. No longer is it the absence of everything, but now is a quantum vacuum. It ignores though, that for there to be a quantum vacuum, by definition there already has to be quantum particles, somewhere. And if quantum particles already exist, then so does the universe. Therefore, if nothing requires something, then it isn't really nothing. Put differently, if nothing really is something, then division by nothing (zero) is possible and we can prove that 0 = 1.