This could allow new kinds of wheels - I'm thinking of the smartwheels from Snow Crash. Depending on how fast the stuff moves one could even coat the entire underside of a car in it and have the car move by rippling it to the back, being in contact with the ground across the entire floor. It would essentially work like a combination between Sargeant Schlock and The Luggage.
(Three entirely different pop culture references in one post. Way to go making myself ununderstandable...)
The Sam & Max webcomic is in Flash and it makes good use of it: Speech bubbles only pop up if your mouse pointer is in the panel, thus they don't obstruct the background until needed. It's not exactly neccessary but nice.
I'm really impressed! Now we can finally replace all those pages where we use Java applets to display static images! If only HTML natively supported static images...
No this is the idle section. It's a slashdot/4chan/youtube casserole! It's separate from the main site, but stories posted here are still sent to the firehose.
It's nostalgic. It really shows off the impressive one-bit transparency of the category icons. That combined with bad usability and weird positioning everywhere really makes me feel like it's 1998.
That's true - for regular trials. But here we have trials for nebulously defined "terrorism", which you can just randomly (from your perspective) end up in with no proper charges raised against you. They're putting people to trial because they feel like it and just being the defendant in such a trial means that you'll probably be regarded a terrorism risk by many nations.
It's scary enough that they can do that. The process requires absolute and total transparency as far as possible without revealing security-relevant information. Nobody should be randomly tried without everyone knowing about it, especially not in such a potentially life-ruining way. And the people should know about it when it happens, not after the fact.
Secret above-the-law trials are just about the last thing we need. Manipulating data after the fact is easy, hence any special terrorist trials should be broadcasted live. By more then one source.
Cogress should tell them that they considered the amount and will settle on a compromise that is 20% lower than the current maximum. After the bill has been passed they add that the RIAA should try to at least make it look like their business model was somewhat modest.
In eality, though, Congress will probably say: "Yes, sir, mister retirement fund, sir. Would you like mandatory jail time with that?"
If they can synthesize it I guess they can also look what kinds of stuff the resulting DNA generates. Directly reading the code might not work because of creative use of exons etc., but I think the results can still tell a lot about whether the stuff is dangerous or not.
My signature is not supposed to give insight about the story or the post at hand. It's supposed to make me identifiable because on this site many people recognize other users by signature rather than nickname.
If what I was taught two semesters ago is still correct, synthesizing DNA strands past a certain length is problematic as the strands tend to become unstable*. Thus, DNA computing is limited in that you have a limited number of disparate computational steps because you can only have so many combinations per strand. With more bases, that number would increase, enabling more complex calculations.
Of course I have no idea whether this limit is commonly reached, but still, these new bases might be very useful for DNA computing.
* Note: It was a course on DNA computing in the context of formal languages, not about current DNA synthesis technologies. Thus this bit might be outdated.
Seeing as DNA bases are neither self-replicating nor viral, I don't think there is a big safety hazard, unless one of the researchers suddenly decides to see what happens when he puts some of them into a retrovirus.
IIRC it's still very difficult to synthesize DNA without the strands breaking after reaching a certain length. Also, I'd think that DNA synthesis companies would look closely at what it is they are synthesizing - and as the techology gets cheaper, there's going to be regulation at some point. Either you need special credentials to request anything or they are going to comb over your code and look for anything suspicious (like reverse transcriptase code or other patterns indicative of malicious DNA).
I seriously doubt that anyone is going to get vials of smallpox by downloading their genome off the 'net and sending that to a synthesis company. But yes, as an added safety mechanism, DNA batch umbers made from no-op bases are probably a good idea.
Then they'll come up with E and the EU-based DNA turns up. EU-based DNA does many things right that USA-based DNA doesn't, but for some reason it needs several thousand bases to code even the simplest amino acids.
If they were reliably ignored, they'de be useful, too - as a marker. It'd work a bit like a watermark: The resulting DNA does the same but can be identified through the marker bases.
Here it does apply, but it's stuck on pretty much any story remotely involving science...
"Scientists Create Artificial DNA Bases With Unknown Properties" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
"Ultra-Durable Ceramic Invented" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
"New Discovery Makes X-Rays Safer" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
"Groundbreaking New Image Processing Algorithm Makes Next-Gen GPUs Much Faster" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
"Scientist Discovers That Shakespeare Had Tourette's" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
"US Science Funding To Increase By 20%" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
"[FAMOUS SCIENTIST] Dead At 71" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
"Where Have Computer Linguistics Come Since The Seventies?" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
"The Ten Greatest Discoveries Of Astrophysics" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
If the software behind Slashdot automatically translated the tag "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" into "science" I'm pretty sure that the quality and applicability of the tag would not decrease in the slightest.
I fully expected to see.theprodukkt in there (even though they spelled it wrong); debris is also not unexpected, as is Lifeforce. 1995 by kewlers & mfx would have been nice, but the list does contain some very good choices. Farbrausch and ASD do make some of the best stuff out there.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, I was. I think I can even remember the title song.
Clayfighter, Clay-Clayfighter... Okay, that's about as far as I get. Still, great game.
This could allow new kinds of wheels - I'm thinking of the smartwheels from Snow Crash. Depending on how fast the stuff moves one could even coat the entire underside of a car in it and have the car move by rippling it to the back, being in contact with the ground across the entire floor. It would essentially work like a combination between Sargeant Schlock and The Luggage.
(Three entirely different pop culture references in one post. Way to go making myself ununderstandable...)
Now I can finally punch people in the face over the phone!
What? You mean Florida has more than one router?
Has anyonw sniffed that traffic? Did the cables transport many HIM or Linkin Park MP3s lately?
The Sam & Max webcomic is in Flash and it makes good use of it: Speech bubbles only pop up if your mouse pointer is in the panel, thus they don't obstruct the background until needed. It's not exactly neccessary but nice.
I'm really impressed! Now we can finally replace all those pages where we use Java applets to display static images! If only HTML natively supported static images...
It's nostalgic. It really shows off the impressive one-bit transparency of the category icons. That combined with bad usability and weird positioning everywhere really makes me feel like it's 1998.
That's true - for regular trials. But here we have trials for nebulously defined "terrorism", which you can just randomly (from your perspective) end up in with no proper charges raised against you. They're putting people to trial because they feel like it and just being the defendant in such a trial means that you'll probably be regarded a terrorism risk by many nations.
It's scary enough that they can do that. The process requires absolute and total transparency as far as possible without revealing security-relevant information. Nobody should be randomly tried without everyone knowing about it, especially not in such a potentially life-ruining way. And the people should know about it when it happens, not after the fact.
Secret above-the-law trials are just about the last thing we need. Manipulating data after the fact is easy, hence any special terrorist trials should be broadcasted live. By more then one source.
1.500.000 USD amount to about 7.53 EUR. Apparently the RIAA is modelling the damages after the European market.
Cogress should tell them that they considered the amount and will settle on a compromise that is 20% lower than the current maximum. After the bill has been passed they add that the RIAA should try to at least make it look like their business model was somewhat modest.
In eality, though, Congress will probably say: "Yes, sir, mister retirement fund, sir. Would you like mandatory jail time with that?"
Microsoft: Taking the "ter" out of "interoperability".
If they can synthesize it I guess they can also look what kinds of stuff the resulting DNA generates. Directly reading the code might not work because of creative use of exons etc., but I think the results can still tell a lot about whether the stuff is dangerous or not.
My signature is not supposed to give insight about the story or the post at hand. It's supposed to make me identifiable because on this site many people recognize other users by signature rather than nickname.
I always make that mistake. Every single time.
I really need to get a Windows system up, so my "greatest demos ever" folder gets some traffic again.
Q and Z, probably.
If what I was taught two semesters ago is still correct, synthesizing DNA strands past a certain length is problematic as the strands tend to become unstable*. Thus, DNA computing is limited in that you have a limited number of disparate computational steps because you can only have so many combinations per strand. With more bases, that number would increase, enabling more complex calculations.
Of course I have no idea whether this limit is commonly reached, but still, these new bases might be very useful for DNA computing.
* Note: It was a course on DNA computing in the context of formal languages, not about current DNA synthesis technologies. Thus this bit might be outdated.
Seeing as DNA bases are neither self-replicating nor viral, I don't think there is a big safety hazard, unless one of the researchers suddenly decides to see what happens when he puts some of them into a retrovirus.
IIRC it's still very difficult to synthesize DNA without the strands breaking after reaching a certain length. Also, I'd think that DNA synthesis companies would look closely at what it is they are synthesizing - and as the techology gets cheaper, there's going to be regulation at some point. Either you need special credentials to request anything or they are going to comb over your code and look for anything suspicious (like reverse transcriptase code or other patterns indicative of malicious DNA).
I seriously doubt that anyone is going to get vials of smallpox by downloading their genome off the 'net and sending that to a synthesis company. But yes, as an added safety mechanism, DNA batch umbers made from no-op bases are probably a good idea.
Then they'll come up with E and the EU-based DNA turns up. EU-based DNA does many things right that USA-based DNA doesn't, but for some reason it needs several thousand bases to code even the simplest amino acids.
If they were reliably ignored, they'de be useful, too - as a marker. It'd work a bit like a watermark: The resulting DNA does the same but can be identified through the marker bases.
Here it does apply, but it's stuck on pretty much any story remotely involving science...
"Scientists Create Artificial DNA Bases With Unknown Properties" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
"Ultra-Durable Ceramic Invented" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
"New Discovery Makes X-Rays Safer" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
"Groundbreaking New Image Processing Algorithm Makes Next-Gen GPUs Much Faster" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
"Scientist Discovers That Shakespeare Had Tourette's" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
"US Science Funding To Increase By 20%" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
"[FAMOUS SCIENTIST] Dead At 71" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
"Where Have Computer Linguistics Come Since The Seventies?" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
"The Ten Greatest Discoveries Of Astrophysics" - whatcouldpossiblygowrong
If the software behind Slashdot automatically translated the tag "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" into "science" I'm pretty sure that the quality and applicability of the tag would not decrease in the slightest.
Of course. That's also why World of Warcraft should be illegal, being the piracy toolkit that it is.
I fully expected to see .theprodukkt in there (even though they spelled it wrong); debris is also not unexpected, as is Lifeforce. 1995 by kewlers & mfx would have been nice, but the list does contain some very good choices. Farbrausch and ASD do make some of the best stuff out there.