Yeah, people always think hearts, kidneys and livers when you start talking about transplants, but insulin producing cells would be HUGE. Type 1 is the most common childhood chronic illness, and types 1&2 is affect nearly 3% of the population.
OGG sufferes from a terrible name (okay, I know this is a common complaint about open software as well). But seriously, OGG? It brings to mind cavemen grunting at each other, not a worthwhile technology. "Vorbis" sounds cool though, maybe we should start referring to it like that instead.
Yes, this is an absolutely critical point that all to often seems to be overlooked. Want to success with a format? Make a tool to create content that people (especially visual types) will want to use. Flash sets the bar pretty low, actually. I hate it, as do many graphic designers.
I think this was why SVG has largely failed to take off. There's wasn't a creation tool early enough (Illustrator could create SVG files, but it wasn't obvious when you were working on something whether SVG supported it or not--very hit and miss). Inkscape has largely corrected that, but... no native mac version is kinda death in the visual world.
Oh you got me Mr. Coward, I failed to give a complete and precise definition of evolution mid-sentence in a slashdot comment, so I must be someone that gets all their information on evolution from RPGs and Spore. Feel free to reword my comment to make the same point (which is valid) without using phrases that might be construed as vaguely teleological by people who don't understand metaphor.
Yeah, I didn't mean to suggest that multi-resistance wasn't possible, or that resistance in on field couldn't be exapted.
I was making the more general point that adaptation is about spending resources. Spend it on something like UV resistance, and you're not spending it on reproduction or resource acquisition.
Great insight sparky. Now, let's tell that to all the evolutionary biologists, because they're wasting their time. "Evolution is just a bunch of stuff that happens" - job done.
If a bacteria that is resistant to heat or antibiotics was in a high UV environment, there is nothing that requires, or even suggests, that it would lose its previous resistance as part of gaining a UV resistance. I'm not even sure where you'd get that idea?
I didn't get that idea. If course it's possible to be multi-resistant, but this has to come from not doing something else. The biochemical energy put into repairing DNA or heat-stable polymerases could have been put into reproduction, for example.
The idea I am countering in this thread is the idea that this is some sort of super-bacteria that will devour us all. Finding something new thriving in an extreme environment is a lot less scary than finding something new thriving in a environment close to our own body conditions.
No, that's not what it means. It means they are resistant to UV. They are probably relatively easy to kill, because they have evolved for such a specialised environment. I bet they don't grow at very well at room or body temperature for example.
They are less likely to be able to survive those things. Evolution is a set of trade-offs. Being resistant to UV light doesn't buy you heat resistance, or antibiotic resistance. Get good at something, get worse at something else. In fact, I would think that these bacteria are cryophiles and wouldn't grow at body temperature.
Well, that depends on what definitions you are using. If by "prediction" you mean the data set your theory explains, that is directly proportional to falsifiability.
If you really enjoy music, and have the money, it can be a worthwhile pursuit. Trying to get things as close to perfect as you can.
Well... it depends on what your appreciation of music is about. If it's about a (nerdy) desire for more accurate reproduction of the source, then maybe. If it's about the artistic qualities of the music, then it's most likely a waste of money. Money that would be better spent buying more music to support the artists you like.
Further, I wonder whether artists really want super-accurate reproduction of their stuff (if they really thought about it). Do we really want when the bow scrapes the side of the violin? I don't think we do.
Further to the other response, the students of private schools have parents that have the means and desire to sent them there. That two enormous factors right there that make these kids easier to teach. The sample is hugely biased to start with, before you even consider the entry filters private schools often have in place.
Free-market education is a libertarian pipe-dream. Education is one of the best ways out of low socioeconomic status--making it difficult to obtain for the children of the poor and uneducated, will lead to a downward spiral of poverty (economically, socially, and intellectually).
Here's an argument that should make sense on libertarian grounds. Children are denied the the freedoms of adults, because we do not believe they are competent to exercise those freedoms it their best interest. To make up for this, they are granted the right to a decent quality of care. If your parents are too stupid, uninterested, or fucked-up to look after your education, you still have the right to the same opportunities everyone else has. Throwing more responsibility on the parents screws with a child's right to care, and you can't do that because you are denying them basic liberties.
Evolution is enormously falsifiable in any case. It predicts the fossil record will continue to provide more intermediates (which it has spectacularly done over the last 150 years).
Well, one thing to consider is that our senses only grasp a small part of reality, and in a rather warped way too. Augmentation might let us see more reality, or a less biased version of it.
You know what I'd pay for? Decent news that is CITED. Like a scientific paper, or even a fricken' Wikipedia article. If stories are grossly in error, they should be retracted. Smaller errors are corrected through notification.
That's all it would take, really, and I'd start paying for it.
Journalism, as it currently stands, is hopelessly unreliable. Have you ever read a piece on something you have specialist knowledge of? It's scary.
Actually, impacts the size of the Yucatan K/T event are global in scope, and do not occur on average every 60 million years. Even if every major extinction event was caused by a an impact (which is highly doubtful), they are much more widely spaced than a sixty million year average.
Maybe what we're looking at is something more like the Younger Dryas impact event hit every 60 million year on average. Which, though unlikely, would of course be a major fricken disaster for humanity if it happened within our lifetimes.
Slashdot Mirror
"If I didn't do it, somebody else would" is one of the lamest defenses invented by man.
Yeah, people always think hearts, kidneys and livers when you start talking about transplants, but insulin producing cells would be HUGE. Type 1 is the most common childhood chronic illness, and types 1&2 is affect nearly 3% of the population.
Oh please, if this was a just law, they shouldn't have to resort to such trickery to get it passed.
Err, for precisely that reason? If it's not new, is it news?
OGG sufferes from a terrible name (okay, I know this is a common complaint about open software as well). But seriously, OGG? It brings to mind cavemen grunting at each other, not a worthwhile technology. "Vorbis" sounds cool though, maybe we should start referring to it like that instead.
Slashdot is not one person (!).
Firefox is going to switch the tab ordering (which I agree seems to be a better way to do it).
Yes, this is an absolutely critical point that all to often seems to be overlooked. Want to success with a format? Make a tool to create content that people (especially visual types) will want to use. Flash sets the bar pretty low, actually. I hate it, as do many graphic designers.
I think this was why SVG has largely failed to take off. There's wasn't a creation tool early enough (Illustrator could create SVG files, but it wasn't obvious when you were working on something whether SVG supported it or not--very hit and miss). Inkscape has largely corrected that, but... no native mac version is kinda death in the visual world.
Oh you got me Mr. Coward, I failed to give a complete and precise definition of evolution mid-sentence in a slashdot comment, so I must be someone that gets all their information on evolution from RPGs and Spore. Feel free to reword my comment to make the same point (which is valid) without using phrases that might be construed as vaguely teleological by people who don't understand metaphor.
They weigh less than a duck.
Yeah, I didn't mean to suggest that multi-resistance wasn't possible, or that resistance in on field couldn't be exapted.
I was making the more general point that adaptation is about spending resources. Spend it on something like UV resistance, and you're not spending it on reproduction or resource acquisition.
Great insight sparky. Now, let's tell that to all the evolutionary biologists, because they're wasting their time. "Evolution is just a bunch of stuff that happens" - job done.
If a bacteria that is resistant to heat or antibiotics was in a high UV environment, there is nothing that requires, or even suggests, that it would lose its previous resistance as part of gaining a UV resistance. I'm not even sure where you'd get that idea?
I didn't get that idea. If course it's possible to be multi-resistant, but this has to come from not doing something else. The biochemical energy put into repairing DNA or heat-stable polymerases could have been put into reproduction, for example.
The idea I am countering in this thread is the idea that this is some sort of super-bacteria that will devour us all. Finding something new thriving in an extreme environment is a lot less scary than finding something new thriving in a environment close to our own body conditions.
They are lighter than very small rocks.
No, that's not what it means. It means they are resistant to UV. They are probably relatively easy to kill, because they have evolved for such a specialised environment. I bet they don't grow at very well at room or body temperature for example.
They are less likely to be able to survive those things. Evolution is a set of trade-offs. Being resistant to UV light doesn't buy you heat resistance, or antibiotic resistance. Get good at something, get worse at something else. In fact, I would think that these bacteria are cryophiles and wouldn't grow at body temperature.
Well, that depends on what definitions you are using. If by "prediction" you mean the data set your theory explains, that is directly proportional to falsifiability.
Exactly, starving children in Africa have very poor dynamic range and accuracy.
If you really enjoy music, and have the money, it can be a worthwhile pursuit. Trying to get things as close to perfect as you can.
Well... it depends on what your appreciation of music is about. If it's about a (nerdy) desire for more accurate reproduction of the source, then maybe. If it's about the artistic qualities of the music, then it's most likely a waste of money. Money that would be better spent buying more music to support the artists you like.
Further, I wonder whether artists really want super-accurate reproduction of their stuff (if they really thought about it). Do we really want when the bow scrapes the side of the violin? I don't think we do.
Mac users might. I certainly would.
Further to the other response, the students of private schools have parents that have the means and desire to sent them there. That two enormous factors right there that make these kids easier to teach. The sample is hugely biased to start with, before you even consider the entry filters private schools often have in place.
Free-market education is a libertarian pipe-dream. Education is one of the best ways out of low socioeconomic status--making it difficult to obtain for the children of the poor and uneducated, will lead to a downward spiral of poverty (economically, socially, and intellectually).
Here's an argument that should make sense on libertarian grounds. Children are denied the the freedoms of adults, because we do not believe they are competent to exercise those freedoms it their best interest. To make up for this, they are granted the right to a decent quality of care. If your parents are too stupid, uninterested, or fucked-up to look after your education, you still have the right to the same opportunities everyone else has. Throwing more responsibility on the parents screws with a child's right to care, and you can't do that because you are denying them basic liberties.
Evolution is enormously falsifiable in any case. It predicts the fossil record will continue to provide more intermediates (which it has spectacularly done over the last 150 years).
Well, one thing to consider is that our senses only grasp a small part of reality, and in a rather warped way too. Augmentation might let us see more reality, or a less biased version of it.
You know what I'd pay for? Decent news that is CITED. Like a scientific paper, or even a fricken' Wikipedia article. If stories are grossly in error, they should be retracted. Smaller errors are corrected through notification.
That's all it would take, really, and I'd start paying for it.
Journalism, as it currently stands, is hopelessly unreliable. Have you ever read a piece on something you have specialist knowledge of? It's scary.
Actually, impacts the size of the Yucatan K/T event are global in scope, and do not occur on average every 60 million years. Even if every major extinction event was caused by a an impact (which is highly doubtful), they are much more widely spaced than a sixty million year average.
Maybe what we're looking at is something more like the Younger Dryas impact event hit every 60 million year on average. Which, though unlikely, would of course be a major fricken disaster for humanity if it happened within our lifetimes.