Why would anyone want to cool things down that far?! Shouldn't zero degrees be enough? Wouldn't you have to worry about condensation (though I'm sure that could be handled?)
Also, you probably shouldn't use Google to do research searches. Have you tried PubMed? It's one of the best, and free to search. Some non-free ones (which universities generally have subscription for) are BIOSIS Previews and ISI Web of Knowledge.
As a side point, I frequently use Google to look up stuff for reports at university, and am generally surprised at just how relevant the search results are, for a non-scientific web search engine. Google on!
I don't get "paid results mixed with relevant ones" on my google!
That said, I agree with the parent - we shouldn't let our anti-M$ blinkers keep us from taking a look. Maybe particularly since it's Microsoft - these are the guys who made IBM, Apple and CP/M cry, and who got rid of Lotus 123, Wordstar, Visio, Astound and half-a-dozen other major (and good) products defunct. Just because they haven't done much other than rattle their jewellry and hire evil goons in the last coupla years doesn't mean they aren't very, very dangerous.
No way! If a good competitor comes up, they're going to push their brandname as much as possible, and out-swamp google.
Google became number one through a combination of good technology (very good search algorithm, large number of computer clusters) and brilliant marketing (simple, ad-free, no-clutter, to-the-point interface; getting their search algorithm and computer statistics into magazines like Reader's Digest, etc).
Everybody's trying to embrace-and-extend this now, which means the push is towards a simple, utilatarian search giving relevant results. If somebody can do all this and give us something better, we'll switch over. Naturally, it'll be in the new company's best interests to use even smarter marketing to make us forget all about Google and not think about going back. As long as the verb "google" is associated with searching the web, this new company won't be able to beat Them.
BTW, A Nazi sort of name would be Homelandsicherheit.
That would be a German sort of name. A Nazi sort of name would be something which points the way towards more security/territory for the Father/Motherland, while sneaking in a private agenda.
Also, we wouldn't necessarily want Digital Rights Management. I wouldn't care how well "managed" my private information is, as long as its secure.
I think this guy has a point: about getting the skill you need to interact with others more than just the goal. I know people who are brilliant at talking to people - friends who will just sit down and give someone their entire attention - and others who have tons of smart stuff to say, but never know how to get it out.
Hello, it looks like you're trying to set up a conspiracy against Linux! Would you like to: * Hire S2 * Write a letter to MS asking for money * Buy 10,000 SCO licenses
Sidepoint: if we refer to MS as M$, microserf, etc., what must they be calling us in Redmontland? Something obscene, I don't doubt...
They're going bankrupt; it's either Sue Sue Sue, innovate something new and quick that'll save their company (Yeah, right!) or fold nice and cleanly. Darl's just trying to turn a profit - however small - to boost investor confidence and get the money flowing back in. It's probably do-or-die for those guys right now.
I'd feel sorry for them if they weren't trying to take away my penguin. *Grrrr!*
The bottom line is that if you are an enemy of US and you talk on a cellphone anywhere in the world, you may well be screwed. Wow. What else are they listening for, I wonder?
SCO IP violations!!!! (so now you know where the 86 million $ went...)
Al Qaedia and its operatives have been identified as enemy combatants.
By *whom*? The Northern Alliance, sure, but who else? Unless you mean America, who's law and declarations of war don't apply to the rest of the world.
This technology, if had to be used in the US, would require a judge to approve a warrant for this type of information gathering. There'd have to be specific evidence that the individual was commiting a crime or likely to. Al Qaedia already falls under this category, IMHO.
Okay, but where's your evidence that the person is a member of AQ in the first place? Or that he specifically aims to commit a crime? Unless, of course, you can prove that he is a combatant, in which case I guess you're allowed to shoot him, forget violate his privacy.
While I fully support this sort of action against terrorists, I just hope that everybody realises that we are looking at a privacy invasion against non-combatant, possibly law abiding citizens here - but perhaps it is a necessary invasion.
Well, ideally, the system works because the politician comes down to the constituency and tells the people what his party believes in, what they hope to achieve, and the voting public ('illertarte masses'?) develop an opinion on the guy and his policies, and choose the best one.
In reality, though, everything from armed goons taking over entire election stations to people buying votes goes. Then again, it could be - and has been - argued that democracy is a terrible system, but it is the best of the worse.
Demon in the Freezer and The Bioweaponeers, both by Richard Preston. The bioweaponeers - which talks about bioweapons research in the former USSR - is particularly terrifying.
Superflu is being brewed in the lab 17:42 26 February 04
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
After the worldwide alarm triggered by 2003's SARS outbreak, it might seem reckless to set about creating a potentially far more devastating virus in the lab. But that is what is being attempted by some researchers, who argue that the dangers of doing nothing are even greater.
We already know that the H5N1 bird flu virus ravaging poultry farms in Asia can be lethal on the rare occasions when it infects people. Now a team is tinkering with its genes to see if it can turn into a strain capable of spreading from human to human. If they manage this, they will have created a virus that could kill tens of millions if it got out of the lab.
Many researchers say experiments like this are needed to answer crucial questions. Why can a few animal flu viruses infect humans? What makes the viruses deadly? And what changes, if any, would enable them to spread from person to person and cause pandemics that might prove far worse than that of 1918? Once we know this, they argue, we will be better prepared for whatever nature throws at us.
Others disagree. It is not clear how much we can learn from such work, they argue. And they point out that it is already possible to create a vaccine by other means. The work is simply too dangerous, they say.
"I'm getting bombarded from both sides," says Ronald Atlas, head of the Center for Deterrence of Biowarfare and Bioterrorism at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. "Some say that this sort of research is dangerous because of the risk of the virus escaping or being using in bioterrorism, and others that it's good science."
Rodents and monkeys
Some researchers refuse to discuss their plans. But Jacqueline Katz at the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, told New Scientist her team is already tweaking the genes of the H5N1 bird flu virus that killed several people in Hong Kong in 1997, and those of the human flu virus H3N2.
She is testing the ability of the new viruses to spread by air and cause disease in ferrets, whose susceptibility to flu appears to be remarkably similar to ours.
Albert Osterhaus of Erasmus University in Rotterdam in the Netherlands plans to test altered viruses on rodents and macaque monkeys. Other groups are also considering similar experiments, he says.
If such work were to show that H5N1 could cause a human pandemic, everything that is happening in Asia would be even more alarming, Osterhaus argues. If, on the other hand, it failed to transform H5N1 into a highly contagious human virus, we could relax. "It becomes a veterinary health problem, not a public health problem. That would be an enormous relief."
Cell cultures
But Wendy Barclay of the University of Reading in the UK, who "thought long and hard" about trying to create a pandemic flu virus before abandoning the idea, disagrees. "If you get a negative, how can you be sure that you have tested every option?" she says. Health authorities would still have to take the precaution of creating H5N1 vaccines.
Barclay concedes, however, that creating a virus that spreads in people might tell us how real the threat is. For instance, do you need one mutation for H5N1 to adapt to humans, or dozens?
Osterhaus is more optimistic. "Within the next decade, the whole thing will be solved," he says. "We will know the rules." In other words, once experts understand what the genetic sequence of any flu virus means, they could predict which animals it can infect, how severe it will be, and how easily it will spread.
Yet any new viruses could only be tested in human cell cultures or in animals, not on people. None of these methods exactly reflects how flu behaves in humans. This has led some flu experts to argue that attempts to create a pandemic virus should be put on hold until there is agreement on the best way of testing it.
Slashdot Mirror
What do the backs of the Windows(tm) windows say?
"Use this side - it [almost possibly] won't crash!"
Why would anyone want to cool things down that far?! Shouldn't zero degrees be enough? Wouldn't you have to worry about condensation (though I'm sure that could be handled?)
. --- this big
and even then, they could store files, which you retrieve by bluetooth. think about the espionage value!
Is tempted to say "enough with the NO CARRIER jokes already", but figures all slashdotians have their weaknesses. =)
... and you wonder why.
Good thing the Cold War is over, huh? Painful imagery ...
What on earth is the "purpose of the web"???
Also, you probably shouldn't use Google to do research searches. Have you tried PubMed? It's one of the best, and free to search. Some non-free ones (which universities generally have subscription for) are BIOSIS Previews and ISI Web of Knowledge.
As a side point, I frequently use Google to look up stuff for reports at university, and am generally surprised at just how relevant the search results are, for a non-scientific web search engine. Google on!
I don't know, it's been ages since I've seen somebody search using IE's toolbar search. Most people I know use Google.
Altavista? I thought it beat Yahoo!
(What happened to all those search engines anyways? You know, the ones that don't let you google?)
I don't get "paid results mixed with relevant ones" on my google!
That said, I agree with the parent - we shouldn't let our anti-M$ blinkers keep us from taking a look. Maybe particularly since it's Microsoft - these are the guys who made IBM, Apple and CP/M cry, and who got rid of Lotus 123, Wordstar, Visio, Astound and half-a-dozen other major (and good) products defunct. Just because they haven't done much other than rattle their jewellry and hire evil goons in the last coupla years doesn't mean they aren't very, very dangerous.
No way! If a good competitor comes up, they're going to push their brandname as much as possible, and out-swamp google.
Google became number one through a combination of good technology (very good search algorithm, large number of computer clusters) and brilliant marketing (simple, ad-free, no-clutter, to-the-point interface; getting their search algorithm and computer statistics into magazines like Reader's Digest, etc).
Everybody's trying to embrace-and-extend this now, which means the push is towards a simple, utilatarian search giving relevant results. If somebody can do all this and give us something better, we'll switch over. Naturally, it'll be in the new company's best interests to use even smarter marketing to make us forget all about Google and not think about going back. As long as the verb "google" is associated with searching the web, this new company won't be able to beat Them.
Perhaps you mean IndLinux?
ENOUGH with the "foo is dead" posts already!!!
That would be a German sort of name. A Nazi sort of name would be something which points the way towards more security/territory for the Father/Motherland, while sneaking in a private agenda.
Also, we wouldn't necessarily want Digital Rights Management. I wouldn't care how well "managed" my private information is, as long as its secure.
> Most of the time, I just don't think it's worth it :)
:) Thanks. Will try to take your advice.
Explain?
Nice post, btw
I think this guy has a point: about getting the skill you need to interact with others more than just the goal. I know people who are brilliant at talking to people - friends who will just sit down and give someone their entire attention - and others who have tons of smart stuff to say, but never know how to get it out.
Of course, YMMV :).
Hello, it looks like you're trying to set up a conspiracy against Linux! Would you like to:
...
* Hire S2
* Write a letter to MS asking for money
* Buy 10,000 SCO licenses
Sidepoint: if we refer to MS as M$, microserf, etc., what must they be calling us in Redmontland? Something obscene, I don't doubt
They're going bankrupt; it's either Sue Sue Sue, innovate something new and quick that'll save their company (Yeah, right!) or fold nice and cleanly. Darl's just trying to turn a profit - however small - to boost investor confidence and get the money flowing back in. It's probably do-or-die for those guys right now.
I'd feel sorry for them if they weren't trying to take away my penguin. *Grrrr!*
The bottom line is that if you are an enemy of US and you talk on a cellphone anywhere in the world, you may well be screwed. Wow. What else are they listening for, I wonder?
SCO IP violations!!!! (so now you know where the 86 million $ went ...)
By *whom*? The Northern Alliance, sure, but who else? Unless you mean America, who's law and declarations of war don't apply to the rest of the world.
Okay, but where's your evidence that the person is a member of AQ in the first place? Or that he specifically aims to commit a crime? Unless, of course, you can prove that he is a combatant, in which case I guess you're allowed to shoot him, forget violate his privacy.
While I fully support this sort of action against terrorists, I just hope that everybody realises that we are looking at a privacy invasion against non-combatant, possibly law abiding citizens here - but perhaps it is a necessary invasion.
That's not the bully - that's the nerd!!
;) Huzzah!
Funny ... on my Linux partition, I don't have - or need - either defragging or anti-virus tools. Suddenly this car doesn't sound so bad after all :P
That he can't spell 'illiterate'?
Well, ideally, the system works because the politician comes down to the constituency and tells the people what his party believes in, what they hope to achieve, and the voting public ('illertarte masses'?) develop an opinion on the guy and his policies, and choose the best one.
In reality, though, everything from armed goons taking over entire election stations to people buying votes goes. Then again, it could be - and has been - argued that democracy is a terrible system, but it is the best of the worse.
Demon in the Freezer and The Bioweaponeers, both by Richard Preston. The bioweaponeers - which talks about bioweapons research in the former USSR - is particularly terrifying.
Superflu is being brewed in the lab
17:42 26 February 04
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
After the worldwide alarm triggered by 2003's SARS outbreak, it might seem reckless to set about creating a potentially far more devastating virus in the lab. But that is what is being attempted by some researchers, who argue that the dangers of doing nothing are even greater.
We already know that the H5N1 bird flu virus ravaging poultry farms in Asia can be lethal on the rare occasions when it infects people. Now a team is tinkering with its genes to see if it can turn into a strain capable of spreading from human to human. If they manage this, they will have created a virus that could kill tens of millions if it got out of the lab.
Many researchers say experiments like this are needed to answer crucial questions. Why can a few animal flu viruses infect humans? What makes the viruses deadly? And what changes, if any, would enable them to spread from person to person and cause pandemics that might prove far worse than that of 1918? Once we know this, they argue, we will be better prepared for whatever nature throws at us.
Others disagree. It is not clear how much we can learn from such work, they argue. And they point out that it is already possible to create a vaccine by other means. The work is simply too dangerous, they say.
"I'm getting bombarded from both sides," says Ronald Atlas, head of the Center for Deterrence of Biowarfare and Bioterrorism at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. "Some say that this sort of research is dangerous because of the risk of the virus escaping or being using in bioterrorism, and others that it's good science."
Rodents and monkeys
Some researchers refuse to discuss their plans. But Jacqueline Katz at the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, told New Scientist her team is already tweaking the genes of the H5N1 bird flu virus that killed several people in Hong Kong in 1997, and those of the human flu virus H3N2.
She is testing the ability of the new viruses to spread by air and cause disease in ferrets, whose susceptibility to flu appears to be remarkably similar to ours.
Albert Osterhaus of Erasmus University in Rotterdam in the Netherlands plans to test altered viruses on rodents and macaque monkeys. Other groups are also considering similar experiments, he says.
If such work were to show that H5N1 could cause a human pandemic, everything that is happening in Asia would be even more alarming, Osterhaus argues. If, on the other hand, it failed to transform H5N1 into a highly contagious human virus, we could relax. "It becomes a veterinary health problem, not a public health problem. That would be an enormous relief."
Cell cultures
But Wendy Barclay of the University of Reading in the UK, who "thought long and hard" about trying to create a pandemic flu virus before abandoning the idea, disagrees. "If you get a negative, how can you be sure that you have tested every option?" she says. Health authorities would still have to take the precaution of creating H5N1 vaccines.
Barclay concedes, however, that creating a virus that spreads in people might tell us how real the threat is. For instance, do you need one mutation for H5N1 to adapt to humans, or dozens?
Osterhaus is more optimistic. "Within the next decade, the whole thing will be solved," he says. "We will know the rules." In other words, once experts understand what the genetic sequence of any flu virus means, they could predict which animals it can infect, how severe it will be, and how easily it will spread.
Yet any new viruses could only be tested in human cell cultures or in animals, not on people. None of these methods exactly reflects how flu behaves in humans. This has led some flu experts to argue that attempts to create a pandemic virus should be put on hold until there is agreement on the best way of testing it.
Mix flu genes