One might be able to come up with a "TOE" in physics, But it should be recognized that this is highly limited. It does not for example explain why aging occurs, something which also effects each of us. Aging is a simple formula: biological makeup + time. Biological makeup, genetics, et cetera, is very complex and impossible to completely understand, but it is very easy to find a host of operational characteristics of organisms which render them susceptible to damage as they are affected by entropy over time, in both general and specific cases. This is well-understood.
Time, and the universal increase in entropy over time, is a lot more simple, but the actual reasons for time are not well-understood. This theory might eventually, in some later forms when it is more fully-understood, provide understanding for time.
Now, if you want to do something to reverse or halt either, that's another matter entirely- and since it comes down to a bevy of engineering optimizations that Life has made over time through evolutionary processes, it's not trivial to reduce or reverse at all. In general, Life is not eternal because there tends to be a trade-off between long lifespans and reproductive prowess, and pursuing the latter at the expense of the former has proven fairly successful in many cases (witness insects, for instance). There are notable exceptions in Trees, but these are hardly the norm.
Now, if you're talking metaphysical Reasons for aging (or life), please consult with your local priest, minister, rabbi, imam, guru or other religious leader as appropriate.
Better idea, for most people: Don't bother day-trading. Don't even buy individual stocks like Google. Drop your money in a few good index funds and sit around 20-40 years while you wait for retirement. Anything else is borderline gambling.
(Not that you can't make money gambling, borderline or otherwise, mind you...)
Yes, of course it's George W Bush's fault and bad policies over the past 7 years that have kept us from our flying cars, and it has nothing to do with the tens of thousands of years of human history before that which have mysteriously failed to produce the necessary technology to make it practical.
Seriously though, for the record: Batteries killed the electric car, cold fusion is a lie (like the cake, and the 300mpg magic carburetor), and as for growing body parts.... well, heck, one of my classmates at college in the pre-med program had a summer internship at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and it's plenty neat stuff.
It wasn't the magic market that fixed those problems, it was regulation Let's not be bickering idiots in front of all Slashdot: both regulation and market forces contributed to this.
Exactly how much of each deserves credit is the study of economists. You are obviously
not an economist; at a guess, you seem to be more interested in political rhetoric and
pushing your socialist-leaning agenda, judging from your simplistic, highly partisan
response and snarky comments about "magic markets".
Disclaimer and admission of imperfection: My original post was simplistic too.
Well, ya know, it really doesn't seem *hard* to me to make an IDS which understands protocols and detects when a particular communication fails to conform to it.
Snooping all your outbound SMTP (+etc) traffic to validate that it's conforming to a certain protocol is somewhat resource-intensive. The protocol validation would need to be very, very, very good, or it would be liable to catch all sorts of garbage: there's no shortage of slightly-wrong products out there. (It's not just Microsoft either). Not all communications that you expect to be a certain protocol actually are - and they may be some extended version of the protocol. (Watch WebDAV over HTTP.) Not all protocols are trivial to validate in this manner. Not all exploits require a breach of a certain protocol. (Watch for some of the PHP exploits that you can send in a perfectly valid HTTP POST). Not all exploits are synchronous like this one. And, finally, privacy can be an issue.
It's not impossible, but it is hard, doubly so if you intend your product to be a good one... and the utility may be rather marginal.
The chinese replaced the original glue with another, why? The chinese for some reason seem unable to follow specifications. All the recalls I seen from China are because they changed a part of the design for no good reason.
It's funny; back around the 1900s or so when the US was just getting ramped up with lots of production and exports and world trade, there were all sorts of abominations just like this - well, really, fewer polymers, and more sawdust-in-your-flour, fingers-in-your-sausage, and stuff like that.
Then manufacturers sprung up who could make a profit off their reputation for quality, and Industry generally cleaned up their act quite a bit.
So, you seem to be complaining that the (evil) biopharmaceutical companies are greedy and want money and this is wrong... unless you can have a slice of it too? I think you need some sort of levee around your moral high ground, buddy.
No, what I am saying is that developing a new drug from scratch is likely going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and for each 1 drug that successfully makes it to market, there are likely hundreds if not thousands of failures. That means to innovation is extremely risky. Where as, taking an existing pattented medication, and tweeking it's formula just enough to get a new patent (as well as an extension on the original) is a relatively cheap investment and can be brought to market much more quickly. Do you have any empircal data suggesting that this is what pharmaceutical companies are doing? Or is this a story you pulled out of your as^Wfavorite conspiracy theory^W^Wpolitical website?
His argument is not without merit though. There is no financial interest in developing new drugs when old drugs are still protected under obscenely long lasting patents. So, ah, you're saying that the Greedy Pharmaceuticals are happy enough with just the money they have, and have no interest in making any more? Sounds to me like if that were the case, someone with a bunch of money who wants more would go set up a new pharmaceutical company, and make some new drug that works better, and make a bundle off it. It wouldn't even need to be an American company...
I haven't touched Second Life in around a year and change (and was never really into it except as it was a curiosity) but, in that and other games, I found it preferable to stand back from other avatars to get a better overall view. In fact, if anything, I stood further back, to compensate for the laggy control scheme. (My video card was too weak to really be running that thing.)
Here's the thing about chaotic orbits. Sure, they're sensitive to initial conditions. Sure, the entire solar system's orbital setup is chaotic. So, at the orbital level, moving the entire mass of the Earth to the Moon could potentially - eventually after billions of years if the Sun doesn't blow up first - produce a significant change on the final state of the Solar System and all the bodies therein.
But from what, to what? We can't tell! We'd need to be able to model the entire Solar System to tell the difference and, guess what - that's a chaotic system. No one could tell if we'd be "better" or "worse". I think you're just assigning some sort of intrinsic moral value to the "untouched" state of things. It sounds like some case of the trolley problem to me.
In the meantime, the slight change in the layout of the mass wouldn't make any difference to anything not already floating very, very close to the planet. From a few million miles away, it makes no difference whether 1.0123 Earth-masses are all in one lump or in two.
This discovery in fuel cell research may ease reliance on gasoline.
I don't see how this will do anything to ease the reliance on gasoline. A fuel cell isn't a power source per se - the power still comes from whatever you're feeding it. Whatever you're using as a fuel still requires a power input. This won't do a damn thing for energy independence unless it's coupled with a massive nuclear power plant construction program.
How about a coal power plant program? I mean,
I realize your agenda is clearly "clean power", but you've slipped into another sometimes-overlapping agenda (really the "foreign oil dependence" one), and this really would make a change in that one. I think you'll find that if you can surpress the need to sound off on your personal set of agendas, you might find yourself able to better engage in thoughtful sociopolitical discourse.
Can we please de-fund NASA and start spending that money on something with real immediate benefits to the folks here on Earth?
Oh, wait... Here's a thought.
Can we please de-fund NASA's Mars-mission nonsense and start spending that money on something with real immediate benefits to the folks here on Earth?
He wrote:
I think this device has massive child-raising concerns, but your suggestion that parents cannot keep track of their children--whom they are ultimately responsible for--is silly. You wrote:
Wow, man, just wow. According to you, I should have been dead, as should all my extended family. Now, as a random Slashdotter who just stumbled into TFCommentPage, I must say that this is a very impressive non sequitor. (And there's a lot of other stuff I could say about the exchange, but I'll refrain.)
I work with SNMP every day.:) While the protocol for throwing around OIDs and values is standard enough, the actual meaning of said OIDs and the values assigned to them is not; nor is it trivial to massage data pulled from arbitrary devices and alerts into a useful format (or to take it in the other direction to configure the devices, where applicable). That's why my company makes the big bucks.
I recall the story of the robotic parking garage in Japan which I/think/ was something like this.... they got into a dispute with their software maker and everyone's cars got stuck in there while they fought over license issues in court. Fun times.
If you're frustrated with the airlines, I invite you to try Amtrak! Cake, and grief counseling, will be available after your trip.
Seriously, there are one or two decent corridors where it's not abysmal, abominable service, and then there's the rest of the country where you get stuck behind some freight train and you're 3 hours late.
Apparently my mother's high school had a fun incident where the chemistry class accidentally manufactured a highly unstable and dangerous compound and then painted a lot of the lockers with it (it glowed). They shut down the school for a week? or two? while hazmat teams flew in from across the country. There wasn't any more mixing of actual chemicals... I seem to recall hearing that they also lost a chemistry prof who spilled acid on his lap, and he had to be hospitalized... anyway, there was some craaaazy stuff back then. Nowadays they're practically afraid to mix salt with water.
Not the least of which is, with current artificial intelligence, they're laughably unenforcable. In Asimov's books, you had this neat little "positronic brain" which was capable of resolving sensory inputs and determining things like "that is a human -->" (to say nothing of "I am harming it", especially through indirect causality.) They were even capable of coming up with ideas to avoid the "through inaction" clauses.
Really, the stories weren't about robots, they were about people just like us, with a certain set of "must-follow" rules. Modern AI does not resemble this in the slightest.
I think that the US should make the drivers license exam (the practical part) a lot harder. I read an article once in The Wall Street Journal about how the driving exam in Britain is notoriously difficult. Ironically, this doesn't do all it could to keep the roads safe... a decent number of people just go unlicensed.
FYI, if you didn't know, there are... what, at least 51? different drivers license agencies each with their own set of tests and eligibility rules and such (50 states + DC) which may differ substantially. This does have its upsides, but precludes the US as a single, unified entity from making the tests harder.
Slashdot Mirror
Aging is a simple formula: biological makeup + time. Biological makeup, genetics, et cetera, is very complex and impossible to completely understand, but it is very easy to find a host of operational characteristics of organisms which render them susceptible to damage as they are affected by entropy over time, in both general and specific cases. This is well-understood.
Time, and the universal increase in entropy over time, is a lot more simple, but the actual reasons for time are not well-understood. This theory might eventually, in some later forms when it is more fully-understood, provide understanding for time.
Now, if you want to do something to reverse or halt either, that's another matter entirely- and since it comes down to a bevy of engineering optimizations that Life has made over time through evolutionary processes, it's not trivial to reduce or reverse at all. In general, Life is not eternal because there tends to be a trade-off between long lifespans and reproductive prowess, and pursuing the latter at the expense of the former has proven fairly successful in many cases (witness insects, for instance). There are notable exceptions in Trees, but these are hardly the norm.
Now, if you're talking metaphysical Reasons for aging (or life), please consult with your local priest, minister, rabbi, imam, guru or other religious leader as appropriate.
Maybe they are. Maybe there's a flying spaghetti monster. Or an invisible pink unicorn. Or an honest politician. Wait, no, that's going too far.
129775, 80123133, 5580012. 6740091, 6558, 42!
(Not that you can't make money gambling, borderline or otherwise, mind you...)
-2 nobody here gets it? =(
Seriously though, for the record: Batteries killed the electric car, cold fusion is a lie (like the cake, and the 300mpg magic carburetor), and as for growing body parts.... well, heck, one of my classmates at college in the pre-med program had a summer internship at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and it's plenty neat stuff.
George W Bush my foot.
Disclaimer and admission of imperfection: My original post was simplistic too.
It's not impossible, but it is hard, doubly so if you intend your product to be a good one... and the utility may be rather marginal.
The chinese replaced the original glue with another, why? The chinese for some reason seem unable to follow specifications. All the recalls I seen from China are because they changed a part of the design for no good reason.
It's funny; back around the 1900s or so when the US was just getting ramped up with lots of production and exports and world trade, there were all sorts of abominations just like this - well, really, fewer polymers, and more sawdust-in-your-flour, fingers-in-your-sausage, and stuff like that.Then manufacturers sprung up who could make a profit off their reputation for quality, and Industry generally cleaned up their act quite a bit.
This stuff is typical of developing economies.
So, you seem to be complaining that the (evil) biopharmaceutical companies are greedy and want money and this is wrong... unless you can have a slice of it too? I think you need some sort of levee around your moral high ground, buddy.
Do you have any empircal data suggesting that this is what pharmaceutical companies are doing? Or is this a story you pulled out of your as^Wfavorite conspiracy theory^W^Wpolitical website?
I haven't touched Second Life in around a year and change (and was never really into it except as it was a curiosity) but, in that and other games, I found it preferable to stand back from other avatars to get a better overall view. In fact, if anything, I stood further back, to compensate for the laggy control scheme. (My video card was too weak to really be running that thing.)
But from what, to what? We can't tell! We'd need to be able to model the entire Solar System to tell the difference and, guess what - that's a chaotic system. No one could tell if we'd be "better" or "worse". I think you're just assigning some sort of intrinsic moral value to the "untouched" state of things. It sounds like some case of the trolley problem to me.
In the meantime, the slight change in the layout of the mass wouldn't make any difference to anything not already floating very, very close to the planet. From a few million miles away, it makes no difference whether 1.0123 Earth-masses are all in one lump or in two.
Size of a robot mining plant: I'd guess acres, potentially hundreds or thousands of them.
Not that you don't have a grand telescope, but mines tend to be bigger than the lunar excursion module. If they're any good.
I don't see how this will do anything to ease the reliance on gasoline. A fuel cell isn't a power source per se - the power still comes from whatever you're feeding it. Whatever you're using as a fuel still requires a power input. This won't do a damn thing for energy independence unless it's coupled with a massive nuclear power plant construction program.
How about a coal power plant program? I mean, I realize your agenda is clearly "clean power", but you've slipped into another sometimes-overlapping agenda (really the "foreign oil dependence" one), and this really would make a change in that one. I think you'll find that if you can surpress the need to sound off on your personal set of agendas, you might find yourself able to better engage in thoughtful sociopolitical discourse.($50? whatever happened to the $30 game? Blah!)
Oh, wait...
Here's a thought. Can we please de-fund NASA's Mars-mission nonsense and start spending that money on something with real immediate benefits to the folks here on Earth?
I work with SNMP every day. :) While the protocol for throwing around OIDs and values is standard enough, the actual meaning of said OIDs and the values assigned to them is not; nor is it trivial to massage data pulled from arbitrary devices and alerts into a useful format (or to take it in the other direction to configure the devices, where applicable). That's why my company makes the big bucks.
I recall the story of the robotic parking garage in Japan which I /think/ was something like this.... they got into a dispute with their software maker and everyone's cars got stuck in there while they fought over license issues in court. Fun times.
Seriously, there are one or two decent corridors where it's not abysmal, abominable service, and then there's the rest of the country where you get stuck behind some freight train and you're 3 hours late.
(insert your-mom or genetic-mutant joke here)
Really, the stories weren't about robots, they were about people just like us, with a certain set of "must-follow" rules. Modern AI does not resemble this in the slightest.
FYI, if you didn't know, there are... what, at least 51? different drivers license agencies each with their own set of tests and eligibility rules and such (50 states + DC) which may differ substantially. This does have its upsides, but precludes the US as a single, unified entity from making the tests harder.