(Note that the debate against focused on the logistical causes for food shortages, arguments that ignore current population and climate trends and focus on socio-political conflicts at specific geographic regions)
If trends continue, populations will grow, fresh water supplies will decrease, and deserts will take over a greater percentage of our landmass. While GM won't be the key to solving every problem, I have seen nothing that refutes its worth as a tool. Furthermore, if you look at traditional means of genetic modification, what some refer to as "organic methods", the net result is the same: the genetic code of an organism is altered to achieve specific properties. Current GM techniques simply allow much greater latitude. I suggest that the debate focus not on the means of alteration, but on the risk-reward profile of a given product. Introducing a pesticide into the very structure of a plant may not have been in the best interests of humanity. Engineering drought resistance, on the other hand, will have a much greater benefit with perhaps much less risk.
Monsanto needs to rethink their business model. While some may have emotionally based reactions toward GM in general, the consensus is that it's an essential tool in the effort to feed the world's growing population. In order to continue, Monsanto needs to stop thinking in terms of genetics as intellectual property, and being paid for wherever their genomes spread. Instead, they need to focus on their relationship with the farmer, and making that relationship essential enough to pay for on a yearly basis. Aside from the product of seed, there are a wide number of services that Monsanto can and should be providing to farmers to help ensure that yields remain high as well as managing business and ecological concerns. Instead of alienating, they should be making themselves as useful as possible.
We have a healthy run of innovation ahead of us for solar. If the historical rates continue (as they have for the last 30 years) solar will become the power source of choice not because of subsidies or green concerns. It will simply be the cheapest, most profitable option, by far -- cheaper than oil, coal, natural gas, or nuclear. Add portable, scalable from the individual up to entire regions, reliable, and clean, and you have an easy choice.
I know the historical association is difficult to shake, but for billions of people on this planet, a cell phone will be their primary, and perhaps only computing resource. It's enough, however. With them, they can access the internet, send and receive text messages, and even in some classes of sub-smartphone devices, run applications. More than laptops, desktops, or any other computing factor, cell phones have lifted the standard of living for billions. With text messaging, literacy is promoted. With access to the internet, commerce, education, and knowledge of the world become available. Cell phones have changed the world, and IMHO, are one of the most powerful and transformative computing resources created to date.
He explained that in that figure, the Keck telescope in the Northern Hemisphere seemed to predominantly measure the variation of alpha in one direction while Chile’s VLT in the Southern Hemisphere measured it in going the other way. “It looks a lot like what they’re seeing is coming from a difference between the two telescopes.”
Until these findings can be verified by multiple instruments per hemisphere, this looks more like a desperate attempt to save face than present credible data.
Perhaps we might start demanding that every Chinese company wanting access to American markets must locate offices here, staff them with US workers, and share their technology in turn.
We did that with the Japanese...
Caching is an important consideration for content providers, but it doesn't figure into net neutrality.
When ISPs complain about the small percentage of their users that actually take their contract at face value and utilize all the bandwidth they've purchased on a 24/7 basis, they're actually complaining that they've sold something that they don't own, and now they're having problems. They've sold Y bandwidth to the consumer, but they've only bought X from their parent provider.
This is criminal.
Caching, OTOH, is an arrangement where a content provider such as Hulu will arrange to have content requested by customers of an ISP cached on the ISP's domain such that future requests for that content will be serviced from the cache instead of additional requests to the content provider's network. First and foremost, this saves the content provider money by reducing requests to their local network. It may also result in greater scalability for popular events, as content providers have bandwidth limits. But for normal operations, caching will have little effect on the QoS for end users.
In the end, if ISPs continue to oversell their available bandwidth, they have no one to blame but themselves.
After witnessing two very important classes of users, I can honestly say that the iPad offers what no other platform has done to date.
First, K - 12 users. The iPad is the best learning tool ever invented, bar none. Doubt me, then put one of an iPad in the hands of a 2 year old with spelling software and you'll have a child reading at the age of three.
Second, and this is the big one: Baby Boomers. By now, they all wear reading glasses, want to surf the web, read books, participate in social networking with their children and grand children, look at photos, etc... But, with big fonts, and a simple touch interface. There has literally been nothing to date that can touch it, and it is slowly becoming a revolution in how those with sight impairment can consume media.
We have seen only the tip of the iceberg with this device. And though there will be many, many competitors in this arena, if the past history with the iPhone is any indication, Apple's competitive advantage in UX will prove to be unbeatable in the marketplace.
When it comes to the largest demographic in the history of the planet, and children... I think Apple has nailed the most lucrative markets available.
The commercial providers that decided to capitalize on a standard that was developed by DARPA using taxpayer funds are now complaining that they can't make it work.
The internet is *the* killer app. People buy computers for the sole reason of accessing resources on the net. The amount of commerce facilitated worldwide is staggering. And these jokers are telling us they can't make a successful business model out of it.
The ideal system relies on multiple tiers of providers, each one leasing bandwidth from their parent and redistributing it to their clients. This happens down to the end user, who should be expected to pay for all the bandwidth that they use. Simple. As the end user, they pay only for the bandwidth of received data, not for the total distance the data was required to travel.
This allows a level playing field for new media enterprises, personal publishing, and an ever evolving means of communication. It has revolutionized the world in a very short time, vaulting third-world nations into emerging powerhouses, and connecting people in ways that previous generations could not have imagined.
So, to put this in jeopardy for the reasons given is patently criminal.
The only reason that ISPs have run into problems is that they've criminally oversold their bandwidth. They truly have been selling something they don't already own. If you purchase a contract for a 50Mb connection, they should expect that connection to be saturated 100% of the time. If it's unlimited, they should bill according to their costs. If that doesn't make sense to the consumer, sell bandwidth by the MB. Instead, they've built a business model on the presumption that end users would only utilize a fraction of what what sold.
In reality, this is greed on several levels, since it not only reveals unfair trade practices (they're selling something they don't have), but they're also trying to kill competition when verticals are in question. They were more than happy to jump on the bandwagon when they were in high growth mode, but now the fight has taken to the trenches some have decided to get ugly.
This is bigger than any one company or one country. Long term, few issues will have an impact quite as powerful as net neutrality on how our civilization evolves.
First of all, Alex St John was hardly a primary DirectX Architect. He was, however, the first official DirectX Evangelist. That's like comparing Spock to Uhura.
I can't believe this sailed over people's heads without a compliment.
I think you may be making a critical error in the assumption that the density of C02 is going to be the same in the atmosphere (as a gas) as it will be when sequestered (as part of a crystalline matrix).
Tools help. Several people have mentioned DOxygen. I've used it in the past on commercial projects. New developers coming in found its output to be of great help in understanding the general structure of the code, the hierarchies (they were C++ projects), and as a reference to quickly identify candidate classes for modifications or the likely source of bugs.
Mod parent down for being arrogant and patronizing.
By posting this story to Slashdot, the victim and his friends are serving the community by alerting us that, what we feared could happen, is happening. If every person that had a horrible experience with a consumer product or service simply remained silent, then how would the general public come to learn about this?
I'm surprised the parent's post is modded a '5'. That smacks of an elitist attitude: "Everyone should know this stuff!". Instead, we should be consoling the victim, and perhaps writing to the corporations that are behind this that we do not approve.
I was tempted to mod down, but then why not just respond:
That said, do we really need to hold on to all material forevermore?
That's simply narrow-minded. Yes, we should hold on to everything we possibly can. In the late 60's and early 70's, the BBC regularly re-used tapes on a regular basis. Tape was "expensive", and so to cut costs early BBC recording sessions of the Beatles and Rolling Stones were wiped out of existence. Now, while you may not care one whit about either band, they hold a special place in my heart (having been raised on them). The loss of these recordings is a really a loss of moments that defined a generation.
Bottom line, who is *anyone* to decide what is disposable in the historical record of a civilization. We have the means, save it all...
Perhaps that's a good reminder for those in the field (as well as any related) to brush up on Boolean Algebra. Though I hesitate to fault Wolfram for overlooking an important step in reducing his assertions to their most minimal, efficient statements, I can't help but consider how important BA has been in shaping digital technology.
There are numerous cases of Comcast subscribers receiving emails directly threatening their contract. They also stagger internet traffic, thus the focus of the topic. Perhaps "criminal" is a bit harsh, but so is the vilification of BT.
I, personally, said goodbye to Comcast recently for the several reasons. First and foremost, their interference with BT. But there was also (at least in our case) a general lack of stability with their connection. I went from ~10Mbps to Verizon's FiOS service at 20Mbps. While the speed increase has been nice, as has been the ability to use bittorrent, what I've appreciated the most is the stability I've found with FiOS. Not having to reset my VPN connection every hour almost seems like a luxury. Who knows how many protocols they were interfering with? BT was probably one among many.
Show us the statistics, research, or other documentation you used to support this statement. Otherwise, any assumptions are simply FUD, and are working against the best interests of the consumer.
As a consumer paying a flat fee for bandwidth, I should be able to consume 100% of that bandwidth for the entire length of my contract without reprisal.
What seems to be slipping past you is the large number of Democrat politicians that did support going after Saddam's regime...
Remember the lies about WMD? Thanks to the Browning Street Memo, we know now that our politicians were lied to by the Whitehouse to get us into the war.
and which today - right now - if asked about yanking troops out of a country that is being actively destabilized by Iran, would confess that they know that's a really bad idea. The ones proclaiming that they'd "end the war" the moment they had the authority to remove troops are either lying (most likely), or are mistaken (in that they'd change their minds the moment the responsibility was actually in their laps).
I know of a few candidates for president that would end the war immediately, and I don't think it's fair to categorize them as mistaken. But the I'll agree that the Democratic leadership has taken leave of their senses and the will of the American public when it comes to stopping this war and getting out. What's slipping past you is that they could defund the war immediately by preventing any spending bill from hitting the floor.
Over 70% of the American population supports immediate withdrawal from Iraq. We can neither afford this war, nor can we affect any kind of lasting stability with a military. In fact, from what I've seen and heard, the military and mercenary forces are one of the most destabilizing elements in Iraq at present. And if the factions in Iraq are truly intent on civil war, they'll wait as long as needed to have one.
I don't think it can be stressed enough that our greatest strength will come from our greatest perceived weakness. How do you think we can possibly compete in an international market where most competing economies are pennies to our dollar in terms of relative scale? Certainly not making textiles or steel, or even automobiles. Our strategic strength is our sense of individuality and freedom. With the current attack on civil liberties, one might get the idea that the current administration would have you believe otherwise. But a review of the history of invention and discovery that has originated from our country, just over the last 100 years, should put things back into perspective. We have produced the airplane, the telephone, the computer, walked on the moon, the internet, and on and on. What I'm getting at is that our self expression, freedom of thought, and innovation are our greatest strengths. When applied to energy, our capacity for innovation promises to remake our economy from one of the greatest energy dependents to a leader in energy production. This should be our target for the future. The best way to spur this on in a short time table is to encourage innovation through economics.
Besides, if you think modest increases in energy costs will be "cutting off the nose of every regular guy", imagine what the complete annihilation of every major coastal city will do for our economy if glacial meltdown occurs within 100 years as projected from global climate change studies. In fact, I don't even think we have 100 years...
Re:Most important thing
on
GIMP 2.4 Released
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I don't know about Paintshop, but there's a Photoshop-esque makeover for GIMP called Gimpshop. It has a couple of rough edges, but it's a testament to the modularity of design that a self-declared novice developer could take the existing GIMP framework and remake it in PS's image.
They're due credit for much more than just getting the rovers out of many a tight squeeze. The Martian day is 37 minutes longer than a Terran day. This might not seem like much, but every day, their daily schedule is offset by 37 minutes. Over the course of a year, this can lead to a constant sense of "jet lag", with all the associated psychological effects. And their schedules not only impact their own lives, but that of their family and friends.
Slashdot Mirror
Nature
National Academies
And to be balanced:
Guardian UK
(Note that the debate against focused on the logistical causes for food shortages, arguments that ignore current population and climate trends and focus on socio-political conflicts at specific geographic regions)
If trends continue, populations will grow, fresh water supplies will decrease, and deserts will take over a greater percentage of our landmass. While GM won't be the key to solving every problem, I have seen nothing that refutes its worth as a tool. Furthermore, if you look at traditional means of genetic modification, what some refer to as "organic methods", the net result is the same: the genetic code of an organism is altered to achieve specific properties. Current GM techniques simply allow much greater latitude. I suggest that the debate focus not on the means of alteration, but on the risk-reward profile of a given product. Introducing a pesticide into the very structure of a plant may not have been in the best interests of humanity. Engineering drought resistance, on the other hand, will have a much greater benefit with perhaps much less risk.
Monsanto needs to rethink their business model. While some may have emotionally based reactions toward GM in general, the consensus is that it's an essential tool in the effort to feed the world's growing population. In order to continue, Monsanto needs to stop thinking in terms of genetics as intellectual property, and being paid for wherever their genomes spread. Instead, they need to focus on their relationship with the farmer, and making that relationship essential enough to pay for on a yearly basis. Aside from the product of seed, there are a wide number of services that Monsanto can and should be providing to farmers to help ensure that yields remain high as well as managing business and ecological concerns. Instead of alienating, they should be making themselves as useful as possible.
How ever could the parent post rate a 4?
We have a healthy run of innovation ahead of us for solar. If the historical rates continue (as they have for the last 30 years) solar will become the power source of choice not because of subsidies or green concerns. It will simply be the cheapest, most profitable option, by far -- cheaper than oil, coal, natural gas, or nuclear. Add portable, scalable from the individual up to entire regions, reliable, and clean, and you have an easy choice.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/03/16/smaller-cheaper-faster-does-moores-law-apply-to-solar-cells/
It really does pay to do your research.
A comment forum commenting on comments about comments.
I know the historical association is difficult to shake, but for billions of people on this planet, a cell phone will be their primary, and perhaps only computing resource. It's enough, however. With them, they can access the internet, send and receive text messages, and even in some classes of sub-smartphone devices, run applications. More than laptops, desktops, or any other computing factor, cell phones have lifted the standard of living for billions. With text messaging, literacy is promoted. With access to the internet, commerce, education, and knowledge of the world become available. Cell phones have changed the world, and IMHO, are one of the most powerful and transformative computing resources created to date.
From TFA:
He explained that in that figure, the Keck telescope in the Northern Hemisphere seemed to predominantly measure the variation of alpha in one direction while Chile’s VLT in the Southern Hemisphere measured it in going the other way. “It looks a lot like what they’re seeing is coming from a difference between the two telescopes.”
Until these findings can be verified by multiple instruments per hemisphere, this looks more like a desperate attempt to save face than present credible data.
Perhaps we might start demanding that every Chinese company wanting access to American markets must locate offices here, staff them with US workers, and share their technology in turn. We did that with the Japanese...
Simple, use the following as your search expression: "[ITEM] -'Be the first person to review'" Adjust the filter as needed, or add additional terms.
Ummm... Christianity is from the Middle East. Just sayin'.
Caching is an important consideration for content providers, but it doesn't figure into net neutrality.
When ISPs complain about the small percentage of their users that actually take their contract at face value and utilize all the bandwidth they've purchased on a 24/7 basis, they're actually complaining that they've sold something that they don't own, and now they're having problems. They've sold Y bandwidth to the consumer, but they've only bought X from their parent provider.
This is criminal.
Caching, OTOH, is an arrangement where a content provider such as Hulu will arrange to have content requested by customers of an ISP cached on the ISP's domain such that future requests for that content will be serviced from the cache instead of additional requests to the content provider's network. First and foremost, this saves the content provider money by reducing requests to their local network. It may also result in greater scalability for popular events, as content providers have bandwidth limits. But for normal operations, caching will have little effect on the QoS for end users.
In the end, if ISPs continue to oversell their available bandwidth, they have no one to blame but themselves.
After witnessing two very important classes of users, I can honestly say that the iPad offers what no other platform has done to date.
First, K - 12 users. The iPad is the best learning tool ever invented, bar none. Doubt me, then put one of an iPad in the hands of a 2 year old with spelling software and you'll have a child reading at the age of three.
Second, and this is the big one: Baby Boomers. By now, they all wear reading glasses, want to surf the web, read books, participate in social networking with their children and grand children, look at photos, etc... But, with big fonts, and a simple touch interface. There has literally been nothing to date that can touch it, and it is slowly becoming a revolution in how those with sight impairment can consume media.
We have seen only the tip of the iceberg with this device. And though there will be many, many competitors in this arena, if the past history with the iPhone is any indication, Apple's competitive advantage in UX will prove to be unbeatable in the marketplace.
When it comes to the largest demographic in the history of the planet, and children... I think Apple has nailed the most lucrative markets available.
The internet is *the* killer app. People buy computers for the sole reason of accessing resources on the net. The amount of commerce facilitated worldwide is staggering. And these jokers are telling us they can't make a successful business model out of it.
The ideal system relies on multiple tiers of providers, each one leasing bandwidth from their parent and redistributing it to their clients. This happens down to the end user, who should be expected to pay for all the bandwidth that they use. Simple. As the end user, they pay only for the bandwidth of received data, not for the total distance the data was required to travel.
This allows a level playing field for new media enterprises, personal publishing, and an ever evolving means of communication. It has revolutionized the world in a very short time, vaulting third-world nations into emerging powerhouses, and connecting people in ways that previous generations could not have imagined.
So, to put this in jeopardy for the reasons given is patently criminal.
The only reason that ISPs have run into problems is that they've criminally oversold their bandwidth. They truly have been selling something they don't already own. If you purchase a contract for a 50Mb connection, they should expect that connection to be saturated 100% of the time. If it's unlimited, they should bill according to their costs. If that doesn't make sense to the consumer, sell bandwidth by the MB. Instead, they've built a business model on the presumption that end users would only utilize a fraction of what what sold.
In reality, this is greed on several levels, since it not only reveals unfair trade practices (they're selling something they don't have), but they're also trying to kill competition when verticals are in question. They were more than happy to jump on the bandwagon when they were in high growth mode, but now the fight has taken to the trenches some have decided to get ugly.
This is bigger than any one company or one country. Long term, few issues will have an impact quite as powerful as net neutrality on how our civilization evolves.
If I could mod this to (6), I would.
First of all, Alex St John was hardly a primary DirectX Architect. He was, however, the first official DirectX Evangelist. That's like comparing Spock to Uhura.
I can't believe this sailed over people's heads without a compliment.
That's got to be the quote of the month for me.
The density of C02 is 1.799 kg/m3
I think you may be making a critical error in the assumption that the density of C02 is going to be the same in the atmosphere (as a gas) as it will be when sequestered (as part of a crystalline matrix).
Tools help. Several people have mentioned DOxygen. I've used it in the past on commercial projects. New developers coming in found its output to be of great help in understanding the general structure of the code, the hierarchies (they were C++ projects), and as a reference to quickly identify candidate classes for modifications or the likely source of bugs.
Mod parent down for being arrogant and patronizing.
-jjk
By posting this story to Slashdot, the victim and his friends are serving the community by alerting us that, what we feared could happen, is happening. If every person that had a horrible experience with a consumer product or service simply remained silent, then how would the general public come to learn about this?
I'm surprised the parent's post is modded a '5'. That smacks of an elitist attitude: "Everyone should know this stuff!". Instead, we should be consoling the victim, and perhaps writing to the corporations that are behind this that we do not approve.
I was tempted to mod down, but then why not just respond:
That said, do we really need to hold on to all material forevermore?
That's simply narrow-minded. Yes, we should hold on to everything we possibly can. In the late 60's and early 70's, the BBC regularly re-used tapes on a regular basis. Tape was "expensive", and so to cut costs early BBC recording sessions of the Beatles and Rolling Stones were wiped out of existence. Now, while you may not care one whit about either band, they hold a special place in my heart (having been raised on them). The loss of these recordings is a really a loss of moments that defined a generation.
Bottom line, who is *anyone* to decide what is disposable in the historical record of a civilization. We have the means, save it all...
-jjk
Perhaps that's a good reminder for those in the field (as well as any related) to brush up on Boolean Algebra. Though I hesitate to fault Wolfram for overlooking an important step in reducing his assertions to their most minimal, efficient statements, I can't help but consider how important BA has been in shaping digital technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_algebra_(logic)
-jjk
This was flamebait? If I only had mod points...
There are numerous cases of Comcast subscribers receiving emails directly threatening their contract. They also stagger internet traffic, thus the focus of the topic. Perhaps "criminal" is a bit harsh, but so is the vilification of BT.
I, personally, said goodbye to Comcast recently for the several reasons. First and foremost, their interference with BT. But there was also (at least in our case) a general lack of stability with their connection. I went from ~10Mbps to Verizon's FiOS service at 20Mbps. While the speed increase has been nice, as has been the ability to use bittorrent, what I've appreciated the most is the stability I've found with FiOS. Not having to reset my VPN connection every hour almost seems like a luxury. Who knows how many protocols they were interfering with? BT was probably one among many.
Show us the statistics, research, or other documentation you used to support this statement. Otherwise, any assumptions are simply FUD, and are working against the best interests of the consumer.
As a consumer paying a flat fee for bandwidth, I should be able to consume 100% of that bandwidth for the entire length of my contract without reprisal.
What seems to be slipping past you is the large number of Democrat politicians that did support going after Saddam's regime...
Remember the lies about WMD? Thanks to the Browning Street Memo, we know now that our politicians were lied to by the Whitehouse to get us into the war.
and which today - right now - if asked about yanking troops out of a country that is being actively destabilized by Iran, would confess that they know that's a really bad idea. The ones proclaiming that they'd "end the war" the moment they had the authority to remove troops are either lying (most likely), or are mistaken (in that they'd change their minds the moment the responsibility was actually in their laps).
I know of a few candidates for president that would end the war immediately, and I don't think it's fair to categorize them as mistaken. But the I'll agree that the Democratic leadership has taken leave of their senses and the will of the American public when it comes to stopping this war and getting out. What's slipping past you is that they could defund the war immediately by preventing any spending bill from hitting the floor.
Over 70% of the American population supports immediate withdrawal from Iraq. We can neither afford this war, nor can we affect any kind of lasting stability with a military. In fact, from what I've seen and heard, the military and mercenary forces are one of the most destabilizing elements in Iraq at present. And if the factions in Iraq are truly intent on civil war, they'll wait as long as needed to have one.
I don't think it can be stressed enough that our greatest strength will come from our greatest perceived weakness. How do you think we can possibly compete in an international market where most competing economies are pennies to our dollar in terms of relative scale? Certainly not making textiles or steel, or even automobiles. Our strategic strength is our sense of individuality and freedom. With the current attack on civil liberties, one might get the idea that the current administration would have you believe otherwise. But a review of the history of invention and discovery that has originated from our country, just over the last 100 years, should put things back into perspective. We have produced the airplane, the telephone, the computer, walked on the moon, the internet, and on and on. What I'm getting at is that our self expression, freedom of thought, and innovation are our greatest strengths. When applied to energy, our capacity for innovation promises to remake our economy from one of the greatest energy dependents to a leader in energy production. This should be our target for the future. The best way to spur this on in a short time table is to encourage innovation through economics.
Besides, if you think modest increases in energy costs will be "cutting off the nose of every regular guy", imagine what the complete annihilation of every major coastal city will do for our economy if glacial meltdown occurs within 100 years as projected from global climate change studies. In fact, I don't even think we have 100 years...
I don't know about Paintshop, but there's a Photoshop-esque makeover for GIMP called Gimpshop. It has a couple of rough edges, but it's a testament to the modularity of design that a self-declared novice developer could take the existing GIMP framework and remake it in PS's image.
The download link can be found here.
http://www.gimpshop.com/download.shtml
They're due credit for much more than just getting the rovers out of many a tight squeeze. The Martian day is 37 minutes longer than a Terran day. This might not seem like much, but every day, their daily schedule is offset by 37 minutes. Over the course of a year, this can lead to a constant sense of "jet lag", with all the associated psychological effects. And their schedules not only impact their own lives, but that of their family and friends.
Way to go, team!