Re:They couldn't have come up with a better name..
on
Humanity Gene Found?
·
· Score: 1
There are lots of DUFs.
Yup, there sure are! I usually sit on mine.
Re:There's a gene that confers some resistance...
on
Humanity Gene Found?
·
· Score: 1
There was an article in Discover magazine (http://www.discover.com/issues/sep-06/rd/uniquedi seases/) that discusses this.
Basically the theory goes that, at one point, humans were getting their asses kicked by a plague of some kind. Some of us had a mutation where genes that rein in the immune system were knocked out. With their immune system turned up to 11, these guys survived the plague.
The downside is that our immune systems are now turned up to 11, hence all the immune system diseases like HIV and asthma that we get, that other primates do not.
Just last year, my girlfriend was harassed by a janitor at her work, repeatedly. I'm not talking like "oh, he opened the door for her, that pig," I'm talking like "Oh, man, I sure wish I could take *you* home!" and discreetly attempting to touch unacceptable parts of the body. And she wasn't the only one! At first she was afraid to talk about it, for the Exact Reasons You Guys Are Whining About Right Now. She was afraid people were going to think she was making it up, or was being too sensitive, or somehow some poor man was going to get crucified because of a bunch of overly PC BS.
Well, yeah, we know that there are people out there who do honest-to-god sexual harassment. I haven't read any posts that say sexual harassment policies are too strict, we've been treating them as a given.
What we've been saying, is that sometimes innocent people get caught up in accusations. Now, while that may imply that the policies are too strict, that's an implication you have made in your own mind. No one has said that. People have said that they're "broken," but that's different from "too strict."
It seems to me that sexual harassment policies are broken from the male perspective and the female perspective. Your girlfriend didn't seem well-served by them, the lech bothering her didn't get what he deserved, and innocent guys aren't well-served by them either.
So they should be tossed out, but they should be replaced by something more effective and fair.
No, I've not confused them. I know very well that evolutionary theory does not cover the origin of life, hence the disclaimer in my first paragraph.
What I was really doing was using the self-organizing principle to describe how life can arise. a) Some matter removes itself from the general milling throng, b) manages to keep itself separate, c) bootstraps itself up to a point where it can perpetuate its separateness, and d) thereby becomes living, by definition. And then I pointed out that these organisms will now be subject to natural selection.
It is important to distinguish natural selection from evolution. Evolution involves genes and mutation; natural selection does not. Natural selection simply says that reproduction is likely to be carried out by things that survive long enough to reproduce -- obviously true. But even before these things could reproduce, there was still some selection principle at work, it just wasn't natural selection. It probably doesn't have a name. But regardless, no handwaving, no genetics, no Flying Spaghetti Monster, were needed to get to where we are now.
Evolution can't explain where matter comes from, or how it just happened to become oriented in just the right way to allow life (and very complex life at that) to 'happen'.
As another poster said, this isn't what evolutionary theory is concerned about. Nonetheless, I am going to use it here, propriety be damned:
According to evolution, matter is naturally combined and oriented in all sorts of ways. Some of those ways end up as something vaguely life-ish, and through chemical action, starts clumping together, forming bubbles, and attracting or repelling other chemicals. The rest ends up as dirt, crystals, oil, or whatever. The life-ish stuff continues to recombine and orient through chemical action. The non-life-ish stuff does too, but we are no longer concerned with it, it can turn into gravel or whatever but we don't care. And often the life-ish stuff recombines or orients into something simpler and more non-life-ish -- but then we don't care about it anymore.
Now, the chemically active life-ish stuff that we are interested in has come together in ways that don't come apart easily. But the stuff is still chemically active and still moves molecules around, maybe combining them or breaking them apart. Usually, nothing interesting happens. But sometimes, a particular combination of molecules is chemically active on its own, and moves other molecules around. And maybe this new molecule is trapped inside the protective life-ish stuff, and ends up working on other random molecules that find their way in. Or maybe this molecule is attached to the outside of the life-ish stuff and tends to attract other molecules, and maybe other molecules, also attached to the outside of the life-ish stuff, are able to shove the attracted molecules inside the protective barrier.
Now, I said that this life-ish thing doesn't come apart easily. But eventually, after a long time, it will get damaged enough through chemical action that it falls apart. Unless, by that time, some of the accessory molecules that the thing has accumulated happen to attract spare parts and glue them on, thereby inadvertently prolonging the life-ish thing's so-called life.
Well, this can continue a long time. We now have something that effectively eats and grows, and maybe, yes, it still falls apart and dies. It is still only life-ish.
But, let's say that a life-ish thing randomly assembles some molecules that destroys it (a pretty common occurance), but destroys it by splitting it in two without ruining the protective qualities of the two halves (think of soap bubbles). The molecular machinery that made the destructive molecules are evenly scattered between the two halves, so that each half can still assemble these destructive molecules. Well, waitaminnit, now we've got reproduction! The life-ish thing is now, effectively, alive.
Of course, there are many similarly life-ish things that ate less, or grew less, or died faster, or never developed the reproduction trick. And again, we don't care about them. They've fallen by the wayside. They all fell apart, died out, went extinct.
The one we care about is the one that can reproduce. Since each one of these things can generally assemble its reproductive equipment before being destroyed, we have a growing population of them. Let's call it a species.
But this species (and remember that we are still just talking about a protected bunch of molecules that happen to do life things) is still chemically active, and still ends up with new molecules that either do interesting things, or causes some sort of self-destruction. The ones that self-destruct, we don't care about.
Now, these things, let's call them critters, though they don't yet approach even bacterium in complexity, are floating in a sea of matter that varies from totally non-life-like to the life-ish things that have died out along the way. Some of our critters have ended up with molecules that are really good at pulling in spare parts. Others have ended up with bette
Well, the court has granted an injunction against the secret program ("TSA," heh).
According to the Guardian, the NSA plans to appeal, but that doesn't keep the injunction from taking effect. But the NSA has asked for a stay until it has appealed, and the ACLU has agreed to that.
So, despite the injunction, the program continues, and everyone seems okay with that.
But if the NSA does not win its appeal, the injunction really takes effect, right? The injunction orders all NSA employees, and everyone else helping the NSA, to stop using the program and doing wiretaps. If they don't, they (each?) face contempt of court charges, according to Wikipedia. I'm guessing criminal contempt of court, rather than civil.
But I don't see where it is directed that the program actually be removed from the books, or that the program cease being funded. I suppose some Executive branch housekeeping function will eventually remove it?
Time Machine is nothing more than automatic nightly backups with a nice UI for restoring files/folders.
This is mostly right, but I think there is something more to it. You saw how the Address Book window was shown, and showed older versions. And the Time Machine page mentions an API that developers can use to integrate Time Machine into their app.
I'd guess that there are some special hooks you can add to your app, so that when the user activates Time Machine, a whole collection of past versions of files specific to your app are brought out into a temporary area, where your app can access them live.
"Usually" isn't good enough, not when "usually" just made you drop a video frame or overrun a sound buffer.
Yes, but not every app a user interacts with has video or sound. And, doesn't the OS run most video and sound processing? Just because your own app is garbage-collected, that does not necessarily have an impact on how the OS does what it does.
Hey, I'm just going by the statute. Some laws are wrong-headed, and this might be one, but that isn't my point. My point is, according to the article's quote of the relevant statute, the recording was illegal.
As it turns out, the article was incomplete. After checking it out for myself, I agree that the cops don't have a leg to stand on.
"1. A person is guilty of a class B felony if, except as otherwise specifically provided in this chapter or without the consent of all parties to the communication, the person: (a) Wilfully intercepts... any telecommunication or oral communication"
Now, this doesn't say jack about "reasonable expectation of privacy." But the previous section defines "oral communication" as "any oral communication uttered by a person exhibiting an expectation that such communication is not subject to interception under circumstances justifying such expectation."
So the "oral communication" being recorded ("intercepted") has to fulfill two conditions before recording it might become illegal. First, the person must clearly not expect to be recorded. Second, the person has to be justified in that belief. If these two conditions are satisfied, and his speech is recorded without his consent, then the recording is illegal.
Again, "reasonable expectation of privacy" isn't part of the statute, but even so, from what I can tell, the cops' speech does not satisfy either of the two requirements needed for the statute to even apply.
So, yeah, the cops would lose if it went to court.
Article says that the police still think he's guilty, but the case isn't worth prosecuting.
I think I have to agree with the police on that. Sure, the guy had a sticker that says he's recording things, and normally, if the police were on his property after seeing the sticker, that would count as consent to be recorded. But apparently, the sticker was too small to be reasonably noticable. Given that, I'd say the police did not implicitly agree to be recorded, and as they did not explicitly agree to be recorded, that's all she wrote.
Slashdot Mirror
Awesome!
I loved that game.
So, what, every lawsuit is "double-or-nothing"?
That doesn't sound good.
There are lots of DUFs.
Yup, there sure are! I usually sit on mine.
There was an article in Discover magazine (http://www.discover.com/issues/sep-06/rd/uniquedi seases/) that discusses this.
Basically the theory goes that, at one point, humans were getting their asses kicked by a plague of some kind. Some of us had a mutation where genes that rein in the immune system were knocked out. With their immune system turned up to 11, these guys survived the plague.
The downside is that our immune systems are now turned up to 11, hence all the immune system diseases like HIV and asthma that we get, that other primates do not.
Well, yeah, we know that there are people out there who do honest-to-god sexual harassment. I haven't read any posts that say sexual harassment policies are too strict, we've been treating them as a given.
What we've been saying, is that sometimes innocent people get caught up in accusations. Now, while that may imply that the policies are too strict, that's an implication you have made in your own mind. No one has said that. People have said that they're "broken," but that's different from "too strict."
It seems to me that sexual harassment policies are broken from the male perspective and the female perspective. Your girlfriend didn't seem well-served by them, the lech bothering her didn't get what he deserved, and innocent guys aren't well-served by them either.
So they should be tossed out, but they should be replaced by something more effective and fair.
Overheat an' die. You?
Exactly!
Naw, but they could have.
Mac OS X comes with Grapher.
"Hello, I'm a Mac."
"And I'm a TV."
No, I've not confused them. I know very well that evolutionary theory does not cover the origin of life, hence the disclaimer in my first paragraph.
What I was really doing was using the self-organizing principle to describe how life can arise. a) Some matter removes itself from the general milling throng, b) manages to keep itself separate, c) bootstraps itself up to a point where it can perpetuate its separateness, and d) thereby becomes living, by definition. And then I pointed out that these organisms will now be subject to natural selection.
It is important to distinguish natural selection from evolution. Evolution involves genes and mutation; natural selection does not. Natural selection simply says that reproduction is likely to be carried out by things that survive long enough to reproduce -- obviously true. But even before these things could reproduce, there was still some selection principle at work, it just wasn't natural selection. It probably doesn't have a name. But regardless, no handwaving, no genetics, no Flying Spaghetti Monster, were needed to get to where we are now.
As another poster said, this isn't what evolutionary theory is concerned about. Nonetheless, I am going to use it here, propriety be damned:
According to evolution, matter is naturally combined and oriented in all sorts of ways. Some of those ways end up as something vaguely life-ish, and through chemical action, starts clumping together, forming bubbles, and attracting or repelling other chemicals. The rest ends up as dirt, crystals, oil, or whatever. The life-ish stuff continues to recombine and orient through chemical action. The non-life-ish stuff does too, but we are no longer concerned with it, it can turn into gravel or whatever but we don't care. And often the life-ish stuff recombines or orients into something simpler and more non-life-ish -- but then we don't care about it anymore.
Now, the chemically active life-ish stuff that we are interested in has come together in ways that don't come apart easily. But the stuff is still chemically active and still moves molecules around, maybe combining them or breaking them apart. Usually, nothing interesting happens. But sometimes, a particular combination of molecules is chemically active on its own, and moves other molecules around. And maybe this new molecule is trapped inside the protective life-ish stuff, and ends up working on other random molecules that find their way in. Or maybe this molecule is attached to the outside of the life-ish stuff and tends to attract other molecules, and maybe other molecules, also attached to the outside of the life-ish stuff, are able to shove the attracted molecules inside the protective barrier.
Now, I said that this life-ish thing doesn't come apart easily. But eventually, after a long time, it will get damaged enough through chemical action that it falls apart. Unless, by that time, some of the accessory molecules that the thing has accumulated happen to attract spare parts and glue them on, thereby inadvertently prolonging the life-ish thing's so-called life.
Well, this can continue a long time. We now have something that effectively eats and grows, and maybe, yes, it still falls apart and dies. It is still only life-ish.
But, let's say that a life-ish thing randomly assembles some molecules that destroys it (a pretty common occurance), but destroys it by splitting it in two without ruining the protective qualities of the two halves (think of soap bubbles). The molecular machinery that made the destructive molecules are evenly scattered between the two halves, so that each half can still assemble these destructive molecules. Well, waitaminnit, now we've got reproduction! The life-ish thing is now, effectively, alive.
Of course, there are many similarly life-ish things that ate less, or grew less, or died faster, or never developed the reproduction trick. And again, we don't care about them. They've fallen by the wayside. They all fell apart, died out, went extinct.
The one we care about is the one that can reproduce. Since each one of these things can generally assemble its reproductive equipment before being destroyed, we have a growing population of them. Let's call it a species.
But this species (and remember that we are still just talking about a protected bunch of molecules that happen to do life things) is still chemically active, and still ends up with new molecules that either do interesting things, or causes some sort of self-destruction. The ones that self-destruct, we don't care about.
Now, these things, let's call them critters, though they don't yet approach even bacterium in complexity, are floating in a sea of matter that varies from totally non-life-like to the life-ish things that have died out along the way. Some of our critters have ended up with molecules that are really good at pulling in spare parts. Others have ended up with bette
A similarly designed system, managed and documented differently, would probably be less problematic.
Possibly true, but irrelevant, since we're stuck with the Microsoft way of doing things, and it's too late for them to change.
Could these viruses effect the bacteria that exist in our digestive tracts?
You mean affect. The verb effect means "to bring about," which is opposite of what you want it to mean here.
Well, the court has granted an injunction against the secret program ("TSA," heh).
According to the Guardian, the NSA plans to appeal, but that doesn't keep the injunction from taking effect. But the NSA has asked for a stay until it has appealed, and the ACLU has agreed to that.
So, despite the injunction, the program continues, and everyone seems okay with that.
But if the NSA does not win its appeal, the injunction really takes effect, right? The injunction orders all NSA employees, and everyone else helping the NSA, to stop using the program and doing wiretaps. If they don't, they (each?) face contempt of court charges, according to Wikipedia. I'm guessing criminal contempt of court, rather than civil.
But I don't see where it is directed that the program actually be removed from the books, or that the program cease being funded. I suppose some Executive branch housekeeping function will eventually remove it?
Sometimes it is. Depends on jurisdiction.
Raiding, rep farming, and honor grinding = sums up all of WoW endgame.
Interestingly, the article says they're getting rid of big raiding, rep farming, and honor grinding.
<aladdin>It's a whole new world...</aladdin>
Mod parent up, he knows whereof he speaks.
Time Machine is nothing more than automatic nightly backups with a nice UI for restoring files/folders.
This is mostly right, but I think there is something more to it. You saw how the Address Book window was shown, and showed older versions. And the Time Machine page mentions an API that developers can use to integrate Time Machine into their app.
I'd guess that there are some special hooks you can add to your app, so that when the user activates Time Machine, a whole collection of past versions of files specific to your app are brought out into a temporary area, where your app can access them live.
Objective C has one of the most elegant reference counting implementations on the planet. Virtually no thinking at all is required to manage memory.
Oh, is that why the Cocoa-Dev mailing list has a brand-new reference counting question every damn day? It is clearly not as simple as you think.
"Usually" isn't good enough, not when "usually" just made you drop a video frame or overrun a sound buffer.
Yes, but not every app a user interacts with has video or sound. And, doesn't the OS run most video and sound processing? Just because your own app is garbage-collected, that does not necessarily have an impact on how the OS does what it does.
Hey, I'm just going by the statute. Some laws are wrong-headed, and this might be one, but that isn't my point. My point is, according to the article's quote of the relevant statute, the recording was illegal.
0 -A/570-A-2.htm ):
... any telecommunication or oral communication"
As it turns out, the article was incomplete. After checking it out for myself, I agree that the cops don't have a leg to stand on.
Here's what the statute says ( http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/LVIII/57
"1. A person is guilty of a class B felony if, except as otherwise specifically provided in this chapter or without the consent of all parties to the communication, the person: (a) Wilfully intercepts
Now, this doesn't say jack about "reasonable expectation of privacy." But the previous section defines "oral communication" as "any oral communication uttered by a person exhibiting an expectation that such communication is not subject to interception under circumstances justifying such expectation."
So the "oral communication" being recorded ("intercepted") has to fulfill two conditions before recording it might become illegal. First, the person must clearly not expect to be recorded. Second, the person has to be justified in that belief. If these two conditions are satisfied, and his speech is recorded without his consent, then the recording is illegal.
Again, "reasonable expectation of privacy" isn't part of the statute, but even so, from what I can tell, the cops' speech does not satisfy either of the two requirements needed for the statute to even apply.
So, yeah, the cops would lose if it went to court.
"If we can hit that bulls-eye then all the dominoes will fall like a house of cards...checkmate!"
I believe you are referring to this.
Why, oh why, did I search out and watch the video, when I knew that I was going to regret it?!? And I do. Oh, I do.
Article says that the police still think he's guilty, but the case isn't worth prosecuting.
I think I have to agree with the police on that. Sure, the guy had a sticker that says he's recording things, and normally, if the police were on his property after seeing the sticker, that would count as consent to be recorded. But apparently, the sticker was too small to be reasonably noticable. Given that, I'd say the police did not implicitly agree to be recorded, and as they did not explicitly agree to be recorded, that's all she wrote.
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
That chart doesn't show that movies have gotten better, it just shows that standards have gotten worse.