That's probably chimerism. A male and female embryo fuse at an early stage and their cells end up in random places. That's known to happen in humans too. Once a bird/mammal starts out as a genetic male or female, it will develop into that (mostly, there are some hormonal imbalances possible). Not so in fish/amphibians/reptiles, that start out as genetic male/female/undetermined but develop into a temperature determined gender (a higher temperature biases the male/female mix towards one of the two, usually male).
Just make sure you don't pick those frogs that can switch genders.
They all can. Gender in amphibians and reptiles is largely determined by the ambient temperature of the eggs. This is unlike mammals and birds where mostly predetermined by genetics (sex chromosome).
That's basically the point I was making there (hence calling it a guesstimate, and saying the problem was no longer NP). I just meant that the new technique could possibly (just a hunch) speed up some of the calculations of this guessing (calculating electron cloud interactions for example), as a remark to my earlier post.
Quantum computation won't make a dent in any NP-HARD problem.
The fact that nature (basically THE quantum computer) can fold a complex protein in a fraction of a second seems to demonstrate that at least some of these problems are solvable by QC in P time. Is this because the problem wasn't NP-hard to begin with (but it sure seemed that way)? Or don't we yet have the right QC algorithms to do this (it's a growing field)? Or maybe nature cheats and doesn't solve the same problem (but finds some local minimum in the energy landscape)?
However, the fact that actual proteins manage to do it in a microsecond or less suggests there's a very easy way we just aren't aware of yet.
Nature doesn't calculate like we do, it works like a quantum computer. Meaning, all the possible outcomes of the calculation (a step in the shaping of the protein) occur at the same time (each has a certain probability of occurring). So basically nature "computes" every possibility in parallel and then picks an outcome at random, weighted by probability.
Consider: it can be the case that the development of new mathematical tools works as a kind of Moore's Law for scientific research, making thing exponentially simpler with every step.
This would basically mean that P=NP (a statement that is not yet proven nor disproven in mathematics). It's possible, but that would be a much, much bigger discovery than what they announced now.
Basically what they found now is a special geometrical construct, in which they can plug the data of a number of particles, then they calculate certain volumes in the construct, and these give the probabilities of the interactions between the particles.
Before this, they had to calculate all the possible interactions between all the particles (Feynman diagrams), and then average all probabilities. The new method gives the same numbers with much less calculations. It's a bit like calculating air pressure by calculating the forces by each molecule separately, versus applying the ideal gas laws.
The new method will undoubtedly lead to new understandings about particle interactions, but the maths are not some magic formula that can accelerate any calculation.
Then again, protein folding is now calculated as a sort of lowest energy (gu)es(s)timate, which is no longer NP hard, so maybe this new technique could help with that.
Also, computing proteins folding is probably going to get a serious performance boost too. If this proves to really work genetic engineering is going to enter a new phase.
Probably not. This just speeds up some mathematical methods used to calculate probability fields in quantum mechanical problems. So it will provide a certain linear speedup of those calculations (for example 1000 times faster). It will not however help with NP hard problems (like protein folding), because these would need real quantum computations (on a quantum computer) to reduce the exponential order of the problem into a lower order one. If a problem would take many times the age of the universe to calculate, then dividing that time by a small factor will not help much.
IANAL but I would think the Mozilla Foundation licensing department might be interested in looking into this project...
The MPL allows combining MPL code with proprietary code (as long as you provide the MPL sources under the MPL license). Since the binary is partially derived from proprietary code, they can add additional license conditions to that.
So, is this a compact fuel cell (new tech, catalyzes ethanol into energy), or just a chemical battery (old tech, converting acidic wine and metal contacts into energy)?
No, just no. I don't want some unknown person at some 3rd party company deciding which web sites are blocked or not. I wouldn't mind seeing them add a generic URL/IP blacklist which you can maintain yourself, or choose to integrate with a blacklisting service like AdBlock.
Erm, AdBlock Plus (which was created to improve Adblock) allows you to subscribe to filter lists of your choice, or you can maintain your own local filter list.
It's not the only factual error. In the first line they call it "the size of a large rat", but its body length (without tail) is actually only 150 mm (6 inch) long. That's pretty small for a rat: the common brown rat has a typical body length of 10 inch, and there are much larger species.
Slashdot Mirror
In Soviet Russia, mate over-analyzes you !
That's probably chimerism. A male and female embryo fuse at an early stage and their cells end up in random places.
That's known to happen in humans too.
Once a bird/mammal starts out as a genetic male or female, it will develop into that (mostly, there are some hormonal imbalances possible).
Not so in fish/amphibians/reptiles, that start out as genetic male/female/undetermined but develop into a temperature determined gender (a higher temperature biases the male/female mix towards one of the two, usually male).
Just make sure you don't pick those frogs that can switch genders.
They all can. Gender in amphibians and reptiles is largely determined by the ambient temperature of the eggs.
This is unlike mammals and birds where mostly predetermined by genetics (sex chromosome).
https://xkcd.com/678/
Let's look at their members list: Apple, AT&T, Facebook, Csico, [...]
They're the ones that will make a GUI interface in Visual Basic to give you DRM support.
Instead they will complain about the haptics sucking the life out of their batteries...
If only we had a way to go back and keep this happening, by using some sort of "time machine"...
Oh but maybe we will go back and cause(d) it to happen...
An EU company says you only need to brush for six seconds....
Yeah, but those are metric seconds instead of US imperial seconds...
There's as much advertising space running down the sides as there is content running down the middle.
FTFY
And everyone ingests tiny arachnids all the time...
That's basically the point I was making there (hence calling it a guesstimate, and saying the problem was no longer NP).
I just meant that the new technique could possibly (just a hunch) speed up some of the calculations of this guessing (calculating electron cloud interactions for example), as a remark to my earlier post.
Quantum computation won't make a dent in any NP-HARD problem.
The fact that nature (basically THE quantum computer) can fold a complex protein in a fraction of a second seems to demonstrate that at least some of these problems are solvable by QC in P time.
Is this because the problem wasn't NP-hard to begin with (but it sure seemed that way)?
Or don't we yet have the right QC algorithms to do this (it's a growing field)?
Or maybe nature cheats and doesn't solve the same problem (but finds some local minimum in the energy landscape)?
However, the fact that actual proteins manage to do it in a microsecond or less suggests there's a very easy way we just aren't aware of yet.
Nature doesn't calculate like we do, it works like a quantum computer. Meaning, all the possible outcomes of the calculation (a step in the shaping of the protein) occur at the same time (each has a certain probability of occurring). So basically nature "computes" every possibility in parallel and then picks an outcome at random, weighted by probability.
Consider: it can be the case that the development of new mathematical tools works as a kind of Moore's Law for scientific research, making thing exponentially simpler with every step.
This would basically mean that P=NP (a statement that is not yet proven nor disproven in mathematics). It's possible, but that would be a much, much bigger discovery than what they announced now.
Basically what they found now is a special geometrical construct, in which they can plug the data of a number of particles, then they calculate certain volumes in the construct, and these give the probabilities of the interactions between the particles.
Before this, they had to calculate all the possible interactions between all the particles (Feynman diagrams), and then average all probabilities. The new method gives the same numbers with much less calculations. It's a bit like calculating air pressure by calculating the forces by each molecule separately, versus applying the ideal gas laws.
The new method will undoubtedly lead to new understandings about particle interactions, but the maths are not some magic formula that can accelerate any calculation.
Then again, protein folding is now calculated as a sort of lowest energy (gu)es(s)timate, which is no longer NP hard, so maybe this new technique could help with that.
Also, computing proteins folding is probably going to get a serious performance boost too. If this proves to really work genetic engineering is going to enter a new phase.
Probably not.
This just speeds up some mathematical methods used to calculate probability fields in quantum mechanical problems. So it will provide a certain linear speedup of those calculations (for example 1000 times faster).
It will not however help with NP hard problems (like protein folding), because these would need real quantum computations (on a quantum computer) to reduce the exponential order of the problem into a lower order one.
If a problem would take many times the age of the universe to calculate, then dividing that time by a small factor will not help much.
Although my phone is unlocked, if it weren't, and it got unlocked, my choice of a wireless carrier will increase by exactly one carrier.
A 100% increase, that's huge!
Pale Moon claims to be open source software but appears to be distributing as binary-only
You should really do your homework better...
Source code here:
http://www.palemoon.org/archived.shtml
IANAL but I would think the Mozilla Foundation licensing department might be interested in looking into this project...
The MPL allows combining MPL code with proprietary code (as long as you provide the MPL sources under the MPL license). Since the binary is partially derived from proprietary code, they can add additional license conditions to that.
So, is this a compact fuel cell (new tech, catalyzes ethanol into energy), or just a chemical battery (old tech, converting acidic wine and metal contacts into energy)?
If the LHC did get sucked up by a mini black hole we would not run from the building in fear, we would run towards it with notebooks at hand".
Only the experimental physicists. The theoretical physicists would ignore the black hole until their equations proved it exists.
No, just no. I don't want some unknown person at some 3rd party company deciding which web sites are blocked or not. I wouldn't mind seeing them add a generic URL/IP blacklist which you can maintain yourself, or choose to integrate with a blacklisting service like AdBlock.
Erm, AdBlock Plus (which was created to improve Adblock) allows you to subscribe to filter lists of your choice, or you can maintain your own local filter list.
All the /. experts come out of their caves
I'm not coming out of my cave. It's the only place with decent WiFi coverage...
Can these tubes also be used to carry the innernet?
Sure, just back it up on tape, and send it on its way...
A banner is annoying if it's drawing your attention by flashing, but you shrug it off.
Nope. I have one simple rule: if it moves, kill it with fire.
It's not the only factual error.
In the first line they call it "the size of a large rat", but its body length (without tail) is actually only 150 mm (6 inch) long.
That's pretty small for a rat: the common brown rat has a typical body length of 10 inch, and there are much larger species.
Except for the small fact that current AIs have no emotions whatsoever.