... we would have had a continuously manned space station (Manned Orbiting Laboratory or MOL) as well as a fleet of rapid turnover missile-or-aircraft launched, horizontal landing lifting body spacecraft (where do you think I got this nifty nick?) by 1975. Instead, we got von Braun's moon project. OK, so MOL and DynaSoar we to double as weapons platforms. We might have gotten to the moon later (and considering what's happened since, so what?), but we probably would have hda semi-permanent bases there now, and I'd give even money we'd have people who'd been to Mars and back.
The effect noted in the article is hypothesized to be caused by a Fenton reaction. This is the reaction of iron with other materials to form radicals. In this case it would be to form oxidizing radicals, such as hyperoxide species. These cause oxidative stress and damage if they're too concentrated. This was discussed in a recent/. article on high EM fields (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/ 09/1223246&tid=). Their hypothesis comes from the fact that they used oxidizer scrubbers, like vitamin E, to prevent the effect. Oxidative stress is blamed for causing Parkinson's and other apoptosis based disorders, arthritis and non-viral immunosuppression (chronic fatigue/immune deficiency syndrome).
As I said then, we're sadly ignorant about the effects of water in its various conditions and products due to external forces, on our systems. We're starting to find out a lot of answers, good and bad, are focused on water. In this respect, this article makes perfect sense.
Kozar_The_Malignant (738483) sez: "The article abstract states that a field strenth of 0.01 mT (millitesla) applied over 24 hours caused a significant increease in DNA strand breaks. The Earth has a magnetic field with a strength that varies between 20,000 nT and 70,000 nT (nanotesla, the unit usually used.)"
The article is about a magnetic field alternating 60 times per second. The Earth's magnetic switches polarity over hundreds of thousands of years; it is DC for the purpose of the article.
dr_canak (593415) sez: "Here is what Robert Park (author of "Voodoo Science") has to say
http://www.aps.org/WN/
[Where he quite rightly says "let's wait for replication."
-and-
http://www.aps.org/WN/WN97/wn070497.cfm
[Where he said there was no evidence, 6.5+ years ago, which there wasn't.]
Bob's a scientist. If the data says he was wrong, I expect he'll stop saying the effect doesn't exist. If the effect is replicated, it'll be good evidence for not paying attention to the likes of Bob when one is formulating testable hypotheses. Bob frequently oversteps the bounds from skeptic to critic. Even so, he's a kick ass writer.
Lord Ender (156273) sez: "This article is about magnetic fields."
The article is about alternating magnetic fields, specifically, 60 Hz.
"Your CRT shoots electrons at a screen which then emits light."
A CRT also steers the electron beam across each scan line, and up & down the screen to raster, using alternating field electromagnets.
"While moving electrons do produce a magnetic field, it is a very weak one: can you stick a metal screw to the side of your monitor and have it stick? But you could stick it to the magnet in the electric motor of your razor."
You can stick a screw to the permanent magnet in the yoke of your CRT, and that would be equivalent to sticking it to the magnet in the razor. Trying to stick it to the CRT case would be like trying to stick it to the outside of the razor's carrying case. The strength of the field from the yoke electromagnets is not trivial. It's quite strong at any given instant. But it's alternating, so gross behavior with respect to magnetic materials is negligable.
tessaiga (697968) sez: "I agree that the news release seems pretty sensationalized, though. If you read carefully, you'll note that in the study they subjected the rats to a 60Hz field for 24 hours continuously, not a few minutes at a time."
It also says the effect is cumulative. Assuming it's linearly additive (an empirical question itself, but the easiest assumption for demonstration purposes), 24 hours is 24 hours, whether all at once or in 288 five minute shaving sessions.
"We discovered that when we used the chip to stimulate the neurons, their synaptic strength was enhanced..."
Neurons firing in response to the same stimulus do that; that's what they do. All this really managed to show was that the stimulus could come from a chip holding the cell rather than cells around it or a wire shoved into it. Growing cells on a chip is neat, but increasing synaptic connectivity ain't that tough.
In any case, I for one welcome our new wires-in-the-head ma..... oh wait, I am one.
... is alive and well. The iSmell bombed before its horrible name ever got used outside of media. It takes a special (as in little school bus special) sort of mentality to think that since someone else failed horribly we can do the same thing and succeed. The iSmell failed so badly that one of their scientists has been reduced to spamming in order to try and sell a novelty pseudo-science book.
I mean, I'm all for maximum gizmoid activity, but this isn't a gizmo, it's just st00pid.
irokitt (663593)sez: "It's been a while since we've had public hangings in the Western World, and I can't think of a better way to bring them back."
You're not the only one to hold that opinion.
"What we need is a good old fashioned hanging." FTC Commissioner Orson Swindell, at the 2003 FTC Spam Conference, Washington, DC, on the subject of stopping spammers.
sbszine (633428) sez: "Yah, you're just old and fear the new."
Fear? That's laughable. Disgust and distaste for someone claiming a mix is their own work is not "fear", or is that work "new".
I've done multiple source mixing live on air, my favorite being electronica drum & bass mized with Tuvan throat singers, with some quick cuts of pieces of commercials and evangelical preach rants. It's hypnotizing and hilarious, but it's not "mine" beyond being my engineering, and it's not new.
"Here's the process I go through to create a typical track:...It may surprise you to hear that this is somewhat more difficult than writing a derivative three chord guitar part for your garage band."
I've constructed plenty of new works myself, using both electronic assistance and from scratch on paper, including one orchestrated mutlipart choir piece. The techical tedium isn't difficult, just time consuming. Creating an original work, that's difficult, and original is precisely what the work in question is not.
Library Computer Access and Retrieval System. The Star Trek computer interface. I've seen several, Linux and Windoze. It feeds the geek in me. There'a a KDE version and screenshot on freshmeat (http://themes.freshmeat.net/projects/lcarsaccess4 41/).
OK, I'm going to have to face that fact that I'm officially getting old. I just don't get this.
"...Downhill Battle, who insists that the major record labels are stifling creativity."
Precisely how is it creative to take other peoples' music, mix it together, and call it new, much less yours? It's hardly even creative to remix your own work. Remixing your own is either an admission you could have done better the first time, or a lazy way to create more tracks to sell for more money with less work, and isn't THAT the sort of thing people accuse the RIAAists of doing?
"Yeah, man, I'm in a band." "What do you play?" "The record player."
This used to be a JOKE. I saw a "music" video tonight with one guy scratching a record and four others with microphones, and nobody sang a note. That's not a song. Last week I heard a mixture of the Monkee's "I'm a Believer" and the Beatles' "Paperback Writer". It was artfully mixed in that it fit together well. But the only thing artful was engineering, there was no musical creativity involved. Yes, I think engineers can be artful and even creative with engineering. I've done it myself. But I've also created original music, and there's a difference.
If this Grey Album wants to dodge the kopyright kops, stop calling it an original work and call it a parody. That's protected under the law, and it's something I could agree with.
Anti-music is a fine old musical worship tradition of the Church of the SubGenius (being and anti-art artform, similar to their anti-science science in this anti-church church). First defined by the Doktors for "Bob", it consisted of people with instruments they didn't know how to play, "trance-spouting" (similar to channeling, but at top volume) songs that nobody had written yet. A precurser to anti-music is "tootling", defined in the chapter "Tootling the Multitudes" in Tom Wolfe's "Electric Koolaid Acid Test, about Rev. Ken Kesey (yes, he was one too) and the Merry Pranksters. Anti-music can be heard at www.subgenius.com, as can the Hour of Slack weekly radio show, a regular source of anti-music and other anti-things.
It's a joke. I'm serious. We are VERY serious about this joke.
The process produces hydrogen and carbon dioxide, which we know is a greehouse gas.
The CNN article does NOT say the process doesn't produce greenhouse gasses. It says "Hydrogen does not emit any pollution or greenhouse gases. But unlike oil or coal, hydrogen must be produced..." That production produces, in this case, CO2.
Now if the CO2 is trapped, fine, it's not vented to atmosphere and causing greenhouse problems. But it has to go somewhere and how much soda can we drink? It could be recombined as:
2 CO2 --> 2 C + O2
but then you've got a lot of carbon to dispose of, and the process would probably require so much energy that you'd lose the energy benefit you'd gained by making H2 out of C2H5OH in the first place.
[businesses must] supply you with a product or a service even if you refuse consent for the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information unless the information is essential to the transaction'.
I don't know whether we have a law like this or not, but we can certainly do this, and some corporations make it easier than others.
When I found out that the buttload of junk mail and telemarketers contacting me at my previous address were using the same misspelled first name that the phone company had registered me by, I looked into things. I found out that you can demand they keep your information private, that is, not sell or share it whether or not you have an unlisted number. And I found the same with all the other services I looked into.
Some people have tried to do this, and had back talk from the phone company (both voice and via web page) claiming "Are you sure you want to withhold your registration from all services? We can't promise you'll receive all the services you desire if you do this." It's all smoke. The "services" are marketing contacts. If you stick to it and refuse, they aren't supposed to share anything.
I moved 4 months ago. This time I made sure all of them knew when we started out that I wanted my information kept private. None of them complained. In fact the phone company here, SBC, replied that asking that question was part of THEIR registration procedure, and we'd get to it soon. And we did -- they'd instituted it themselves. They also had a technical fix available, a filter that prevented any calls coming in with "Unknown Caller" in the caller ID. They're just not allowed.
Just to make sure that if it did happen, I knew who it came from, all of my services got a slightly differently misspelled name. I haven't got a single junk mail (other than previous tenants or "occupant"), telemaketer call, or spam in the whole time.
Doesn't do you much good as long as you are where you are, but if you move, keep these in mind.
stratjakt (596332) sez: "And the guy said "Sir we cant sell anything without this information."
He lied. The bypass is built into the register software. Complain to RS Corporate is this happens.
From http://corpinfo.radioshack.com/CompanyInfo/Ethics/ index.html
[Getting off their mailing list]: "Customers who prefer not to receive offers, promotions and other information, may call 800-415-3200, e-mail at www.radioshack.com or write at RadioShack Circulation, 100 Throckmorton, Suite 300, Fort Worth, Texas 76102."
[Not giving personal data]: "Rest assured RadioShack values its customers regardless of whether or not they choose to provide us with their name and address."
[From elsewhere on the site]: Ethics Team at RadioShack
Phone: RadioShack Hotline: (800) 826-3915
Email: ethics@radioshack.com
Fax: (817) 415-3922
Mail: RadioShack Ethics Team 100 Throckmorton Street, Suite 813 Fort Worth, Texas 76102
I've never had any such problem myself. Anytime they or anyone else asks me for such things I look them straight in the eye and give them a clear and firm "No.", loud enough to make sure it's understood that I could have said it louder.
Because I don't see anything on the AnonX site that says anything specifically about Kazaa or any other file sharing system. It says it's for security for any online activity.
I think it's a damn shame that the first thing that comes to mind is file sharing, when far worse things like human rights violations are far more worth protecting. Yes, this proxy system is for that too.
An aside first: I signed up with SANS, and got several mailings from them regarding classes at a particular university in Virginia. IIRC they were building a program. Consider seeing who the pros are working with.
There are two parts to computer forensics.
The first is the technical; decrypting drives and files, etc. It's for finding out what someone did.
Then there's behavioral forensics. This is the human side, similar to criminal forensics or criminal psychology.
In my opinion the latter is more useful. It not only helps when trying to perform the technical part (did he use l33t sp3@|? Then try passwords like that), but it helps you to figure out not just what they did, but what they're doing and what they're likely to do. I think that's more valuable and useful. I think it's far more interesting myself. And it's probably a very open field, because the nature of communication via the net is different, and so different rules would apply.
Some have noted the incongruous ionizer ad on the page with the article. Others made statements regarding their own (apparently harmless) ionizer, or other relevant facts that seem to refute a basic point in the article. Well, they don't.
There is an optimum level of hyperoxides in the mammilian system. Too much and you get toxic damage and cell death. Too little and you get infections. This is the chemical portion of your immune system. You have an endocrine process for keeping it at the proper level. Your cells produce superoxide dismutase to rid themselves of excess hyperoxides (primarily hydrogen peroxide, H2O2). Things that suppress superoxide dismutase riase the amount of superoxides in your body and help fight infections. Up to a point.
Now, are anti-oxidants good for you? Only if you don't take too much, otherwise you weaken your immune system. Are hyperoxides (ozone, H202) good for you? Only up to a point, otherwise you fry your cells with oxidative stress. Then again, in some cases this isn't a bad thing. Cancer, which is cell reproduction and metabolism run wild, lives on anaerobic processes. Excess oxygen, particularly as hyperoxides, can kill it.
All of this is based on the work of Otto Warburg. He won the Nobel in medicine twice for this stuff. Its usefullness as well as its theoretical implications (which bear directly on the lack of understanding as to why this experiment would be significant if it holds up) are pretty much ignored these days, and that's a damn shame.
We're mostly equally ignorant of the finer implications of water in biological systems, ushc as the role of polymerized water at cell membranes. Two of the most important factors in life and we're terribly ignorant about both, making work such as this article fairly impossible for us to understand.
Not to be too down on the slashdotters in particular, it's pretty obvious if the researchers knew of Warburg's work, they were ignoring it. The government usually does. They'd prefer people not be too aware that air or water treated by exposure to UV rays can prevent or cure some illnesses. Up to a point. But up to that point, that's some other medicines people wouldn't have to buy.
Barlo Mung 42 (411228) sez: "I always like this question and I think Descartes' answer is a cop out. In truth I can't. He said "I think therefore I am" but when you read his whole argument you see that it goes in a circle."
Good eye. It does go in a circle, and it was a cop out. He came up with much of that portion of his work and phrased it the way he did, so as not to piss off the Church and end up like Galileo (ostracized and threatened) or Bruno (toasted).
The organism excretes it as a waste product. That pretty much fulfills the definition.
"Do you call CO2 a human excrement?"
Actually, yes. Primarily through skin and lungs. Happily that, as well as our more commonly considered gasseous export, methane, is vented to the atmosphere and escapes our vicinity. Pretty much everything that comes out of yeasties gets stuck in solution. Of course, that's where we want it. We call it "the good stuff". You can't get to the top of the food chain by being too picky. Not knowing too much about it might help too. But it's too late for that now, isn't it?
At least now you have a come back next time someone quotes W.C. Fields about why he disliked drinking water (and so prefered booze).
Consider the fact that all alcohol is yeast excrement. That means that when you drink beer, you're participating in the "circle of life" at a very fundamental level.
Anonycow sez: "Questionaires and Surveys are tools used by Social Scientists in order to gain credibility for what essentially a totally qualitative inquiry..." etc.
You're quite correct. I on the other hand, am a quantitative scientist. I have set standard measures to use (mostly, microvolts). There are no set standard variables for human behavior. No one can even imagine how many there should be, or if that number should be the same among different people. The question probably doesn't even make sense. And if someone did try to develop this, it would probably fail due to removing components of human behavior from each other, and therefore from their context. So, to quote an old Star Trek line, they're working with stone knives and bear claws. It's all they've got. What's amazing is that they've managed to accomplish so much with what they have. They generate far more noise, in the guise of support for theories argued from logic and literature rather than hypothesis testing, but they do a lot of good work.
Slashdot Mirror
... we would have had a continuously manned space station (Manned Orbiting Laboratory or MOL) as well as a fleet of rapid turnover missile-or-aircraft launched, horizontal landing lifting body spacecraft (where do you think I got this nifty nick?) by 1975. Instead, we got von Braun's moon project. OK, so MOL and DynaSoar we to double as weapons platforms. We might have gotten to the moon later (and considering what's happened since, so what?), but we probably would have hda semi-permanent bases there now, and I'd give even money we'd have people who'd been to Mars and back.
The effect noted in the article is hypothesized to be caused by a Fenton reaction. This is the reaction of iron with other materials to form radicals. In this case it would be to form oxidizing radicals, such as hyperoxide species. These cause oxidative stress and damage if they're too concentrated. This was discussed in a recent /. article on high EM fields (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/ 09/1223246&tid=). Their hypothesis comes from the fact that they used oxidizer scrubbers, like vitamin E, to prevent the effect. Oxidative stress is blamed for causing Parkinson's and other apoptosis based disorders, arthritis and non-viral immunosuppression (chronic fatigue/immune deficiency syndrome).
As I said then, we're sadly ignorant about the effects of water in its various conditions and products due to external forces, on our systems. We're starting to find out a lot of answers, good and bad, are focused on water. In this respect, this article makes perfect sense.
Kozar_The_Malignant (738483) sez: "The article abstract states that a field strenth of 0.01 mT (millitesla) applied over 24 hours caused a significant increease in DNA strand breaks. The Earth has a magnetic field with a strength that varies between 20,000 nT and 70,000 nT (nanotesla, the unit usually used.)"
The article is about a magnetic field alternating 60 times per second. The Earth's magnetic switches polarity over hundreds of thousands of years; it is DC for the purpose of the article.
dr_canak (593415) sez: "Here is what Robert Park (author of "Voodoo Science") has to say
http://www.aps.org/WN/
[Where he quite rightly says "let's wait for replication."
-and-
http://www.aps.org/WN/WN97/wn070497.cfm
[Where he said there was no evidence, 6.5+ years ago, which there wasn't.]
Bob's a scientist. If the data says he was wrong, I expect he'll stop saying the effect doesn't exist. If the effect is replicated, it'll be good evidence for not paying attention to the likes of Bob when one is formulating testable hypotheses. Bob frequently oversteps the bounds from skeptic to critic. Even so, he's a kick ass writer.
Lord Ender (156273) sez: "This article is about magnetic fields."
The article is about alternating magnetic fields, specifically, 60 Hz.
"Your CRT shoots electrons at a screen which then emits light."
A CRT also steers the electron beam across each scan line, and up & down the screen to raster, using alternating field electromagnets.
"While moving electrons do produce a magnetic field, it is a very weak one: can you stick a metal screw to the side of your monitor and have it stick? But you could stick it to the magnet in the electric motor of your razor."
You can stick a screw to the permanent magnet in the yoke of your CRT, and that would be equivalent to sticking it to the magnet in the razor. Trying to stick it to the CRT case would be like trying to stick it to the outside of the razor's carrying case. The strength of the field from the yoke electromagnets is not trivial. It's quite strong at any given instant. But it's alternating, so gross behavior with respect to magnetic materials is negligable.
American AC in Paris (230456) sez: "I'd say that apoptosis is better characterized as "natural cell death"."
That's not correct. Apoptosis is cell death before pre-programmed cessation of function.
"In fact, we have a word for cells that don't undergo apoptosis: Cancer."
The word for cells that don't undergo apoptosis is either "dead due to natural causes" or "living". Cancer is a special case of the latter.
tessaiga (697968) sez: "I agree that the news release seems pretty sensationalized, though. If you read carefully, you'll note that in the study they subjected the rats to a 60Hz field for 24 hours continuously, not a few minutes at a time."
It also says the effect is cumulative. Assuming it's linearly additive (an empirical question itself, but the easiest assumption for demonstration purposes), 24 hours is 24 hours, whether all at once or in 288 five minute shaving sessions.
"We discovered that when we used the chip to stimulate the neurons, their synaptic strength was enhanced..."
Neurons firing in response to the same stimulus do that; that's what they do. All this really managed to show was that the stimulus could come from a chip holding the cell rather than cells around it or a wire shoved into it. Growing cells on a chip is neat, but increasing synaptic connectivity ain't that tough.
In any case, I for one welcome our new wires-in-the-head ma..... oh wait, I am one.
... is alive and well. The iSmell bombed before its horrible name ever got used outside of media. It takes a special (as in little school bus special) sort of mentality to think that since someone else failed horribly we can do the same thing and succeed. The iSmell failed so badly that one of their scientists has been reduced to spamming in order to try and sell a novelty pseudo-science book.
I mean, I'm all for maximum gizmoid activity, but this isn't a gizmo, it's just st00pid.
irokitt (663593)sez: "It's been a while since we've had public hangings in the Western World, and I can't think of a better way to bring them back."
You're not the only one to hold that opinion.
"What we need is a good old fashioned hanging." FTC Commissioner Orson Swindell, at the 2003 FTC Spam Conference, Washington, DC, on the subject of stopping spammers.
sbszine (633428) sez: "Yah, you're just old and fear the new."
Fear? That's laughable. Disgust and distaste for someone claiming a mix is their own work is not "fear", or is that work "new".
I've done multiple source mixing live on air, my favorite being electronica drum & bass mized with Tuvan throat singers, with some quick cuts of pieces of commercials and evangelical preach rants. It's hypnotizing and hilarious, but it's not "mine" beyond being my engineering, and it's not new.
"Here's the process I go through to create a typical track:...It may surprise you to hear that this is somewhat more difficult than writing a derivative three chord guitar part for your garage band."
I've constructed plenty of new works myself, using both electronic assistance and from scratch on paper, including one orchestrated mutlipart choir piece. The techical tedium isn't difficult, just time consuming. Creating an original work, that's difficult, and original is precisely what the work in question is not.
Library Computer Access and Retrieval System. The Star Trek computer interface. I've seen several, Linux and Windoze. It feeds the geek in me. There'a a KDE version and screenshot on freshmeat (http://themes.freshmeat.net/projects/lcarsaccess4 41/).
Unusual Gift: I bought her a membership in AARP (http://www.aarp.org/).
Unusual person: She loves it, mostly due to the acknowledgement of her eligibility (age > 50).
May you all be so lucky as to have an SO who wears the years proudly.
OK, I'm going to have to face that fact that I'm officially getting old. I just don't get this.
"...Downhill Battle, who insists that the major record labels are stifling creativity."
Precisely how is it creative to take other peoples' music, mix it together, and call it new, much less yours? It's hardly even creative to remix your own work. Remixing your own is either an admission you could have done better the first time, or a lazy way to create more tracks to sell for more money with less work, and isn't THAT the sort of thing people accuse the RIAAists of doing?
"Yeah, man, I'm in a band."
"What do you play?"
"The record player."
This used to be a JOKE. I saw a "music" video tonight with one guy scratching a record and four others with microphones, and nobody sang a note. That's not a song. Last week I heard a mixture of the Monkee's "I'm a Believer" and the Beatles' "Paperback Writer". It was artfully mixed in that it fit together well. But the only thing artful was engineering, there was no musical creativity involved. Yes, I think engineers can be artful and even creative with engineering. I've done it myself. But I've also created original music, and there's a difference.
If this Grey Album wants to dodge the kopyright kops, stop calling it an original work and call it a parody. That's protected under the law, and it's something I could agree with.
Anti-music is a fine old musical worship tradition of the Church of the SubGenius (being and anti-art artform, similar to their anti-science science in this anti-church church). First defined by the Doktors for "Bob", it consisted of people with instruments they didn't know how to play, "trance-spouting" (similar to channeling, but at top volume) songs that nobody had written yet. A precurser to anti-music is "tootling", defined in the chapter "Tootling the Multitudes" in Tom Wolfe's "Electric Koolaid Acid Test, about Rev. Ken Kesey (yes, he was one too) and the Merry Pranksters. Anti-music can be heard at www.subgenius.com, as can the Hour of Slack weekly radio show, a regular source of anti-music and other anti-things.
It's a joke. I'm serious. We are VERY serious about this joke.
From the (Science, not CNN) article:
The formula of the process is:
C2H5OH + 2 H2O + 1/2 O2 -->
2 CO2 + 5 H2
The process produces hydrogen and carbon dioxide, which we know is a greehouse gas.
The CNN article does NOT say the process doesn't produce greenhouse gasses. It says "Hydrogen does not emit any pollution or greenhouse gases. But unlike oil or coal, hydrogen must be produced..." That production produces, in this case, CO2.
Now if the CO2 is trapped, fine, it's not vented to atmosphere and causing greenhouse problems. But it has to go somewhere and how much soda can we drink? It could be recombined as:
2 CO2 --> 2 C + O2
but then you've got a lot of carbon to dispose of, and the process would probably require so much energy that you'd lose the energy benefit you'd gained by making H2 out of C2H5OH in the first place.
[businesses must] supply you with a product or a service even if you refuse consent for the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information unless the information is essential to the transaction'.
I don't know whether we have a law like this or not, but we can certainly do this, and some corporations make it easier than others.
When I found out that the buttload of junk mail and telemarketers contacting me at my previous address were using the same misspelled first name that the phone company had registered me by, I looked into things. I found out that you can demand they keep your information private, that is, not sell or share it whether or not you have an unlisted number. And I found the same with all the other services I looked into.
Some people have tried to do this, and had back talk from the phone company (both voice and via web page) claiming "Are you sure you want to withhold your registration from all services? We can't promise you'll receive all the services you desire if you do this." It's all smoke. The "services" are marketing contacts. If you stick to it and refuse, they aren't supposed to share anything.
I moved 4 months ago. This time I made sure all of them knew when we started out that I wanted my information kept private. None of them complained. In fact the phone company here, SBC, replied that asking that question was part of THEIR registration procedure, and we'd get to it soon. And we did -- they'd instituted it themselves. They also had a technical fix available, a filter that prevented any calls coming in with "Unknown Caller" in the caller ID. They're just not allowed.
Just to make sure that if it did happen, I knew who it came from, all of my services got a slightly differently misspelled name. I haven't got a single junk mail (other than previous tenants or "occupant"), telemaketer call, or spam in the whole time.
Doesn't do you much good as long as you are where you are, but if you move, keep these in mind.
stratjakt (596332) sez: "And the guy said "Sir we cant sell anything without this information."
/ index.html
He lied. The bypass is built into the register software. Complain to RS Corporate is this happens.
From http://corpinfo.radioshack.com/CompanyInfo/Ethics
[Getting off their mailing list]:
"Customers who prefer not to receive offers, promotions and other information, may call 800-415-3200, e-mail at www.radioshack.com or write at RadioShack Circulation, 100 Throckmorton, Suite 300, Fort Worth, Texas 76102."
[Not giving personal data]:
"Rest assured RadioShack values its customers regardless of whether or not they choose to provide us with their name and address."
[From elsewhere on the site]:
Ethics Team at RadioShack
Phone: RadioShack Hotline: (800) 826-3915
Email: ethics@radioshack.com
Fax: (817) 415-3922
Mail: RadioShack Ethics Team
100 Throckmorton Street, Suite 813
Fort Worth, Texas 76102
I've never had any such problem myself. Anytime they or anyone else asks me for such things I look them straight in the eye and give them a clear and firm "No.", loud enough to make sure it's understood that I could have said it louder.
Because I don't see anything on the AnonX site that says anything specifically about Kazaa or any other file sharing system. It says it's for security for any online activity.
I think it's a damn shame that the first thing that comes to mind is file sharing, when far worse things like human rights violations are far more worth protecting. Yes, this proxy system is for that too.
An aside first: I signed up with SANS, and got several mailings from them regarding classes at a particular university in Virginia. IIRC they were building a program. Consider seeing who the pros are working with.
There are two parts to computer forensics.
The first is the technical; decrypting drives and files, etc. It's for finding out what someone did.
Then there's behavioral forensics. This is the human side, similar to criminal forensics or criminal psychology.
In my opinion the latter is more useful. It not only helps when trying to perform the technical part (did he use l33t sp3@|? Then try passwords like that), but it helps you to figure out not just what they did, but what they're doing and what they're likely to do. I think that's more valuable and useful. I think it's far more interesting myself. And it's probably a very open field, because the nature of communication via the net is different, and so different rules would apply.
Some have noted the incongruous ionizer ad on the page with the article. Others made statements regarding their own (apparently harmless) ionizer, or other relevant facts that seem to refute a basic point in the article. Well, they don't.
There is an optimum level of hyperoxides in the mammilian system. Too much and you get toxic damage and cell death. Too little and you get infections. This is the chemical portion of your immune system. You have an endocrine process for keeping it at the proper level. Your cells produce superoxide dismutase to rid themselves of excess hyperoxides (primarily hydrogen peroxide, H2O2). Things that suppress superoxide dismutase riase the amount of superoxides in your body and help fight infections. Up to a point.
Now, are anti-oxidants good for you? Only if you don't take too much, otherwise you weaken your immune system. Are hyperoxides (ozone, H202) good for you? Only up to a point, otherwise you fry your cells with oxidative stress. Then again, in some cases this isn't a bad thing. Cancer, which is cell reproduction and metabolism run wild, lives on anaerobic processes. Excess oxygen, particularly as hyperoxides, can kill it.
All of this is based on the work of Otto Warburg. He won the Nobel in medicine twice for this stuff. Its usefullness as well as its theoretical implications (which bear directly on the lack of understanding as to why this experiment would be significant if it holds up) are pretty much ignored these days, and that's a damn shame.
We're mostly equally ignorant of the finer implications of water in biological systems, ushc as the role of polymerized water at cell membranes. Two of the most important factors in life and we're terribly ignorant about both, making work such as this article fairly impossible for us to understand.
Not to be too down on the slashdotters in particular, it's pretty obvious if the researchers knew of Warburg's work, they were ignoring it. The government usually does. They'd prefer people not be too aware that air or water treated by exposure to UV rays can prevent or cure some illnesses. Up to a point. But up to that point, that's some other medicines people wouldn't have to buy.
Barlo Mung 42 (411228) sez: "I always like this question and I think Descartes' answer is a cop out. In truth I can't. He said "I think therefore I am" but when you read his whole argument you see that it goes in a circle."
Good eye. It does go in a circle, and it was a cop out. He came up with much of that portion of his work and phrased it the way he did, so as not to piss off the Church and end up like Galileo (ostracized and threatened) or Bruno (toasted).
Anonycow sez: "How can you call it an excrement?"
The organism excretes it as a waste product. That pretty much fulfills the definition.
"Do you call CO2 a human excrement?"
Actually, yes. Primarily through skin and lungs. Happily that, as well as our more commonly considered gasseous export, methane, is vented to the atmosphere and escapes our vicinity. Pretty much everything that comes out of yeasties gets stuck in solution. Of course, that's where we want it. We call it "the good stuff". You can't get to the top of the food chain by being too picky. Not knowing too much about it might help too. But it's too late for that now, isn't it?
At least now you have a come back next time someone quotes W.C. Fields about why he disliked drinking water (and so prefered booze).
...but what IS it?
Consider the fact that all alcohol is yeast excrement. That means that when you drink beer, you're participating in the "circle of life" at a very fundamental level.
Anonycow sez: "Questionaires and Surveys are tools used by Social Scientists in order to gain credibility for what essentially a totally qualitative inquiry..." etc.
You're quite correct. I on the other hand, am a quantitative scientist. I have set standard measures to use (mostly, microvolts). There are no set standard variables for human behavior. No one can even imagine how many there should be, or if that number should be the same among different people. The question probably doesn't even make sense. And if someone did try to develop this, it would probably fail due to removing components of human behavior from each other, and therefore from their context. So, to quote an old Star Trek line, they're working with stone knives and bear claws. It's all they've got. What's amazing is that they've managed to accomplish so much with what they have. They generate far more noise, in the guise of support for theories argued from logic and literature rather than hypothesis testing, but they do a lot of good work.