tl;dr - you can make complex machines out of simple ones. Even with biologic 'machines'. Not something anyone who has thought about molecular evolution would find surprising, but it's nice to see some reasonable experimental evidence to show that it's real.
Thorton's lab has done some interesting work in the past. Nice to see he is getting some exposure. It does bother me a bit that Nature (the journal, not the mom) is continuing to take a very politically polarized editorial stance. They're really egging on the creationists (pun intended, I guess).
In my experience most people plod their way through life and never really use their brain except to prevent their skull from collapsing in on itself. How can you miss something you never really used?
I thought we are talking about cognition, not sex.
And of course, there is the 4Chan demographic. It would be fun to see what a similar test would do with these folks. My suspicion is that it would be as close to a flat line as you could get.
That was the point of running the large number of people through a long study with lots of statistics. There is a significant correlation with age. Correlation may not imply causation, but when it's a case of senescence backed up by the second law... that's some serious eyebrow waggling.
Still doesn't solve the problem with selection bias. I would propose a stratum of middle age British civil servants may well pre select for a certain mind set - with long term implications on cognition, memory, physical prowess, etc.
Still valid for the study population, but as always with population studies, extrapolating to different populations is always fraught with hazard.
At least, I hope so, since I passed the 45 mark a while ago.
Early 747's had similar issues with cracking on the spars in the nose. Some bits of aluminum even fell off a couple of planes (was that the primary buffer coupling?).
They were fixed as the planes cycled through rehab and the rib placement redesigned. 737's had a tendency to lose roof panels because of metal fatigue from improper riveting.
This sort of thing happens. You really need more info to determine if this particular case is serious.
That's something I wondered about. This would be great in SE Alaska - faster and cheaper than my DSL line but given the tendency towards constant rain (last year I measured 97 inches at my house) it probably wouldnt be very useful.
Now it's on the Internet. That makes it different.
I originally wrote that as a snarky statement, but on reflection there is some truth to that. The case law for 'ownership' of data traversing the Internet is different from that on a POTS line or a tape recorder at home. It may well be, an a lawyers' universe, that a totally different outcome is to be expected.
Actually, as I point out, I'm not writing off Thorium (or anything else for that matter). I'm just pointing out that it's not a good idea to plan on large scale deployments of technologies that aren't out of the lab - for whatever reason.
It is a common problem in the US at least - witness pretty much every large scale military weapon system devised in the past 40 years.
Do the research. Then deploy it.
And given the fact that Thorium hasn't made many inroads, it is quite possible that there are good reasons for it.
"7. Computer storage media having embodied thereon computer-useable instructions that, when executed, perform a method, the method comprising:
collecting a request from a pedestrian that a route includes a waypoint to a general location;"...
Looks like an algorithm to me. Maybe not the most clever idea ever invented, but it . . . actually does something. I don't see how you could say they've patented the "idea of the algorithm" here.
Indeed Need I point out that intently staring at a brightly lit mobile studying how bad your surroundings are might not be such a good idea? Hell, I'd even mug you myself even if I can't fathom why I would want a Windows phone. Might as well nail your ears to your knees just to make sure you get a better view of your bum.
Ah, no wonder you folks don't need guns in the UK - you've got Windows Phones as a deterrent.
Also look into Thorium for the reaction process, which has fewer risks and more advantages compared to Uranium.
Care to show me an active, commercial scale Thorium based reactor? There aren't any. India is presumably working on one.
Personally, I would rather take my chances with a well defined, well researched, well engineered technology than one that has yet to see the light of day in real world terms. By all means, do the damned research - make and run an 10 GW Thorium reactor and get back to us.
The problem isn't engineering - it's politics and economics. Politics in that companies running nuclear plants had managed big time regulatory capture (especially in Japan). That blew up in their face when both TEPCO and the Japanese government remained asleep at the wheel for over a decade. Recall that there were numerous geologic studies that indicated that Fukashima wasn't safe as originally built. TEPCO didn't want to put the money into the plant and the government didn't want to bother TEPCO. Just a couple of million dollars of sea wall and spare generators might have saved countless billions of dollars. Economics in the fact that the US government, at least, is basically insuring the nuclear power industry because private insurers think the risks too large. That makes non nuclear "alternative" energy less competitive that it should be. To really solve the problem for the long term, the playing field needs to be as flat as possible. For long term survival of nuclear power, the industry really needs to figure out a way to make the plants less expensive because they're really pricier than it looks. And solve the waste problem, but that, again, is more political than anything else.
And yes, smokers die slowly (at least most of them). Most smokers don't get lung cancer - most lung cancer patients, however, are smokers or former smokers. The most prevalent health problem from smoking is vascular disease. That includes small artery disease which is extremely common, likely universal and creates all manner of slow problems. Massive heart attacks and strokes certainly happen with more frequency in smokers than non, but again, most smokers don't just keel over and get their Final Bill.
Further, smokers are at risk for many more cancers than just small cell adenocarcinoma of the lung. They live for variable amounts of time and tend to run up large bills.
And yes, death certificates are really really bad ways of determining how people die. I have to put "something' in and it can't be cardirespiratory arrest. So unless I really know what happened (unusual) or manage to get an autopsy (really unusual) it's just a guess. One that historically has been shown to be more often wrong than right.
The actual endgame for the USA is a long decline into a has-been, with ever decreasing standard of living as we are more and more unable to compete in the modern world.
You say that like it's a bad thing. It's actually the best of the possible outcomes - that the US slowly declines in influence / avarice / resource hogging and learns to live with the rest of the planet.
Much worse (and, IMHO, more likely) outcomes go downhill from there. Look at all of the nonsense in the Iowa primaries - the ONLY demographic the "Republicans" have been courting are the evangelical Christians. Don't know about you but I don't think they're the most stable (nor the sharpest) of pencils in the drawer.
I actually did that, dumb luck more than anything. NewEgg was running a sale and one of my projects was going to be to cycle through the drives on my MacPro.
Saved about $700 on the whole deal, even if one of the drives was DOA. At least Seagate was kind enough to send me a refurb for free - the 30 day window for NewEgg to replace the drive having expired.
At this point I suspect it would be more cost-effective for the rest of the world to pay a one-time contribute to relocate the entirety of Thailand somewhere less affected by natural disasters.
I suggest they move it all to Alaska. We don't have any good Thai food here (yet).
Quite a lot of places do exactly that - have you looked up a cigarette quit line? Wandered over to a local ER? It's pretty much standards in my neck of the woods anyway.
because it's not at all clear that smokers increase public health care costs. They tend to die 10 years earlier than non smokers which keeps them out of tax payer funded nursing homes.
But very slowly and very messily. They get heart attacks and strokes more often than non smokers. We're pretty good at treating the former, not so much the latter but we're really good at running up the bill for said afflictions, along with COPD, asthma and the panoply of other illnesses worsened by smoking.
Smoking ain't cheap.
(Neither is drinking - probably costs more than tobacco if you factor in health care costs and police / courts / rehab / social services related to alcohol abuse)
I find it rather ironic that it's UC Berkely (Berzerkly) that is hosting SETI. The most out-of-planet experience this side of Boulder, CO looking for 'extraterrestrials'. Pot, meet kettle.
Slashdot Mirror
But back to reality ...
tl;dr - you can make complex machines out of simple ones. Even with biologic 'machines'. Not something anyone who has thought about molecular evolution would find surprising, but it's nice to see some reasonable experimental evidence to show that it's real.
Thorton's lab has done some interesting work in the past. Nice to see he is getting some exposure. It does bother me a bit that Nature (the journal, not the mom) is continuing to take a very politically polarized editorial stance. They're really egging on the creationists (pun intended, I guess).
So this is not about cell phone networks?
Nope, it's biology. Biology manages to make lemonade out of lemons. Cell phone networks make vinegar out of cider.
How do like them apples for a mixed metaphor?
In my experience most people plod their way through life and never really use their brain except to prevent their skull from collapsing in on itself. How can you miss something you never really used?
I thought we are talking about cognition, not sex.
And of course, there is the 4Chan demographic. It would be fun to see what a similar test would do with these folks. My suspicion is that it would be as close to a flat line as you could get.
That was the point of running the large number of people through a long study with lots of statistics. There is a significant correlation with age. Correlation may not imply causation, but when it's a case of senescence backed up by the second law... that's some serious eyebrow waggling.
Still doesn't solve the problem with selection bias. I would propose a stratum of middle age British civil servants may well pre select for a certain mind set - with long term implications on cognition, memory, physical prowess, etc.
Still valid for the study population, but as always with population studies, extrapolating to different populations is always fraught with hazard.
At least, I hope so, since I passed the 45 mark a while ago.
Hell, you can even use duct tape in a pinch.
Early 747's had similar issues with cracking on the spars in the nose. Some bits of aluminum even fell off a couple of planes (was that the primary buffer coupling?).
They were fixed as the planes cycled through rehab and the rib placement redesigned. 737's had a tendency to lose roof panels because of metal fatigue from improper riveting.
This sort of thing happens. You really need more info to determine if this particular case is serious.
That's something I wondered about. This would be great in SE Alaska - faster and cheaper than my DSL line but given the tendency towards constant rain (last year I measured 97 inches at my house) it probably wouldnt be very useful.
Oh well.
Now it's on the Internet. That makes it different.
I originally wrote that as a snarky statement, but on reflection there is some truth to that. The case law for 'ownership' of data traversing the Internet is different from that on a POTS line or a tape recorder at home. It may well be, an a lawyers' universe, that a totally different outcome is to be expected.
Or at least argued.
Actually, as I point out, I'm not writing off Thorium (or anything else for that matter). I'm just pointing out that it's not a good idea to plan on large scale deployments of technologies that aren't out of the lab - for whatever reason.
It is a common problem in the US at least - witness pretty much every large scale military weapon system devised in the past 40 years.
Do the research. Then deploy it.
And given the fact that Thorium hasn't made many inroads, it is quite possible that there are good reasons for it.
... various broad based silly statements ... eg..
"7. Computer storage media having embodied thereon computer-useable instructions that, when executed, perform a method, the method comprising:
collecting a request from a pedestrian that a route includes a waypoint to a general location;" ...
Looks like an algorithm to me. Maybe not the most clever idea ever invented, but it . . . actually does something. I don't see how you could say they've patented the "idea of the algorithm" here.
Looks like pseudo-code.
I say we award them a pseudo patent.
Indeed
Need I point out that intently staring at a brightly lit mobile studying how bad your surroundings are might not be such a good idea? Hell, I'd even mug you myself even if I can't fathom why I would want a Windows phone. Might as well nail your ears to your knees just to make sure you get a better view of your bum.
Ah, no wonder you folks don't need guns in the UK - you've got Windows Phones as a deterrent.
I bow to your superior defenses.
What happened to phones that Just Work? I don't want to update my phone. It must be reliable, just like an analogue wire line phone used to be.
"used to be"? (checks dial tone and breathes sigh of relief).
Also look into Thorium for the reaction process, which has fewer risks and more advantages compared to Uranium.
Care to show me an active, commercial scale Thorium based reactor? There aren't any. India is presumably working on one.
Personally, I would rather take my chances with a well defined, well researched, well engineered technology than one that has yet to see the light of day in real world terms. By all means, do the damned research - make and run an 10 GW Thorium reactor and get back to us.
The problem isn't engineering - it's politics and economics. Politics in that companies running nuclear plants had managed big time regulatory capture (especially in Japan). That blew up in their face when both TEPCO and the Japanese government remained asleep at the wheel for over a decade. Recall that there were numerous geologic studies that indicated that Fukashima wasn't safe as originally built. TEPCO didn't want to put the money into the plant and the government didn't want to bother TEPCO. Just a couple of million dollars of sea wall and spare generators might have saved countless billions of dollars. Economics in the fact that the US government, at least, is basically insuring the nuclear power industry because private insurers think the risks too large. That makes non nuclear "alternative" energy less competitive that it should be. To really solve the problem for the long term, the playing field needs to be as flat as possible. For long term survival of nuclear power, the industry really needs to figure out a way to make the plants less expensive because they're really pricier than it looks. And solve the waste problem, but that, again, is more political than anything else.
I'd like my Unicorn now......
Tel Aviv is basically a borough in New York City, so, yes.
In fact, IAAMD
And yes, smokers die slowly (at least most of them). Most smokers don't get lung cancer - most lung cancer patients, however, are smokers or former smokers. The most prevalent health problem from smoking is vascular disease. That includes small artery disease which is extremely common, likely universal and creates all manner of slow problems. Massive heart attacks and strokes certainly happen with more frequency in smokers than non, but again, most smokers don't just keel over and get their Final Bill.
Further, smokers are at risk for many more cancers than just small cell adenocarcinoma of the lung. They live for variable amounts of time and tend to run up large bills.
And yes, death certificates are really really bad ways of determining how people die. I have to put "something' in and it can't be cardirespiratory arrest. So unless I really know what happened (unusual) or manage to get an autopsy (really unusual) it's just a guess. One that historically has been shown to be more often wrong than right.
The actual endgame for the USA is a long decline into a has-been, with ever decreasing standard of living as we are more and more unable to compete in the modern world.
You say that like it's a bad thing. It's actually the best of the possible outcomes - that the US slowly declines in influence / avarice / resource hogging and learns to live with the rest of the planet.
Much worse (and, IMHO, more likely) outcomes go downhill from there. Look at all of the nonsense in the Iowa primaries - the ONLY demographic the "Republicans" have been courting are the evangelical Christians. Don't know about you but I don't think they're the most stable (nor the sharpest) of pencils in the drawer.
Hold on to your butts.
I actually did that, dumb luck more than anything. NewEgg was running a sale and one of my projects was going to be to cycle through the drives on my MacPro.
Saved about $700 on the whole deal, even if one of the drives was DOA. At least Seagate was kind enough to send me a refurb for free - the 30 day window for NewEgg to replace the drive having expired.
At this point I suspect it would be more cost-effective for the rest of the world to pay a one-time contribute to relocate the entirety of Thailand somewhere less affected by natural disasters.
I suggest they move it all to Alaska. We don't have any good Thai food here (yet).
Quite a lot of places do exactly that - have you looked up a cigarette quit line? Wandered over to a local ER? It's pretty much standards in my neck of the woods anyway.
because it's not at all clear that smokers increase public health care costs. They tend to die 10 years earlier than non smokers which keeps them out of tax payer funded nursing homes.
But very slowly and very messily. They get heart attacks and strokes more often than non smokers. We're pretty good at treating the former, not so much the latter but we're really good at running up the bill for said afflictions, along with COPD, asthma and the panoply of other illnesses worsened by smoking.
Smoking ain't cheap.
(Neither is drinking - probably costs more than tobacco if you factor in health care costs and police / courts / rehab / social services related to alcohol abuse)
Actually it looks like an old Tote Goat. (I can't believe there is a Wikipedia entry for those things....)
Somebody, somewhere spends hours coming up with these "names"
CICADA = Close-In Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft
I find it rather ironic that it's UC Berkely (Berzerkly) that is hosting SETI. The most out-of-planet experience this side of Boulder, CO looking for 'extraterrestrials'. Pot, meet kettle.
They are out there.
No you are out there.