It's a possibility, but I don't think so. The receptors don't use a lot of energy. The baseline cost of maintaining the neurons won't change. So the main incremental cost will be the pump costs for repolarizing after action potentials. But it doesn't seem likely that overall firing is massively increased, or they'd probably be seizing.
Kind of old news; the first report that NR2B overexpression improves rodent performance in some behavioral tests of learning and memory was was published in 1999. The nice thing here is that the investigators now have it working in the rat, which is a more difficult animal for transgenic studies, and a better one for behavioral work and electrophysiology.
Nevertheless, it raises an interesting question: if intelligence can be increased by something so simple as an increase in the expression of a single NMDA receptor subunit, why hasn't it already happened? Presumably, there is a selective advantage to improved learning and memory. Presumably, there is some kind of downside that balances that selective advantage. Are there other behaviors for which the rat is impaired?
Let's see, I pay Netflix $11 a month to see any movies I want. That's less than the cost of buying a movie. And if I buy a movie, I have to find space for it on my shelves for a movie that I might watch one more time at most.
So basically, what this means is that Redbox will get a window when they can rent their retail-purchased copies without competition form Blockbuster! Which will probably drive Redbox's profits up enough to make up for the higher cost they'll have to pay for the disks.
Blockbuster is probably doomed, though... Redbox can afford to pay retail, because red boxes are a lot cheaper than bricks and mortar. Blockbuster cannot, so they lose either way. Maybe a win for Netflix, though. They don't have Blockbuster's costs, and since most subscribers have a long queue, they aren't so concerned about the release date of particular movies, so they can afford to observe the lockout. And they aren't really in competition with Redbox, because Redbox can't match Netflix's inventory of older movies, or their ability to deliver content directly to your TV/PS3/XBox360/Bluray player.
For the film studios, the net result will be the loss of Blockbuster, a big disk purchaser. It's very unlikely that individual DVD sales will make up for that. So a big lose for the studios, too.
Even though the implementation, with the need to insert a disk, is slightly awkward, this fills in the only major weakness of the PS3 as a media station. Compared to the XBox 360, the PS3 has a (much) better user interface, better upscaling playback of conventional DVDs, built-in WiFi, more reliable UPnP client (at least in my hands), Blu-ray playback, rechargeable wireless controller, user upgradable hard drive, and now Netflix with no additional fee to Sony. What's more, the PS3 includes a web browser, so you don't even need a PC to manage your Netflix queue. At this point, I'd judge the games libraries to be about equal--although the PS3 to get (if you are a gamer) is still the older 60 GB model (CECHAxx) that included hardware PS2 emulation. So the PS3 is now the console to get. Main disadvantage is still the lack of an IR sensor, which means that an add-on is required if you want to use a universal remote instead of Sony's (extra cost) RF remote. I've registered with Netflix to receive the enabling disk. I'll be interested to see how it compares to Netflix on TiVo and 360. I wonder if it will take advantage of the PS3's superior upscaling? (my guess is no).
So it's not the health care commissioner, it's his wife. And it's not that she has investments in the company that makes vaccine, but that she has a job with an investment bank that has investments in just about everything, so there must be some pharmaceuticals in there somewhere, right? So maybe requiring health care workers to get vaccinated will increase their sales (which seems unlikely, considering that vaccine manufacturers are not close to meeting the demand, but hey, maybe, right?) which will increase her employer's profits by some tiny fraction, and maybe this will help her by, I don't know, increasing her annual bonus by some tiny fraction. So clearly this is why New York is favoring requiring vaccination for health care workers.
Of course, if you play this kind of idiotic seven-degrees-of-separation game, you can make almost anybody sound like they have a conflict of interest. But then, the kind of people who are afraid of vaccines believe things that are even crazier...
So if I happen to see a PS3 game that I think I might want to download, I have to go to a different section and search through an long list to find out if there is a demo (I don't buy games without demos; I figure that the lack of a demo means that the publisher thinks that I wouldn't want the game if I knew what it was actually like--and that they are most likely correct in their estimation). Most of them are for disk games, rather than downloadable games. Then if I do like the demo, I have to go back to the store and search again through a different list to download the game.
Do you see why I'd rather shop for XBox 360 games? There is one entry for the game and the demo. I download the demo and try it. If I like it, the game itself will link me directly to the purchase screen.
The Playstation store is the one area where the PS3 falls far short of the XBox 360, but the article misses the major issues. When I look for things in the PS3 store, it is just a jumble, and there is no really useful sorting. I often end up downloading a game for XBox 360 that I might have downloaded for PS3 if the store were not so disorganized. For example, on the XBox360, all games available online have demos, and the full game can be purchased from the demo. On the PS3 demos are separate things, and there is no differentiation between demos for disk games and demos for online available games. What the PS3 store really needs is:
A way to sort games into categories. -Demos of PS3 games available on disks (subsorted by name, release date, genre, or popularity) -Demos of *all* PS3 games available online with option to buy full game (subsorted by name, release date, genre, or popularity) -PSP games (subsorted by name, release date, genre, or popularity)
Once upon a time, this was the way almost all phone services were charged. You paid a per-minute fee, graduated on your usage of the system--more for long-distance and local. Yet more and more, phone companies have moved in the direction of flat-rate plans. Why? Because consumers don't like to have to keep track of their usage--they see value in having an expected no-surprises charge on their bill, and they are willing to pay a premium in order not to have to worry about it.
So yes, AT&T could do this, if they wanted to lose money--and customers, who will gravitate to companies that offer flat-rate plans.
It's a decent UPnP server, so you can use it to stream video from almost any computer, and it is a good NetFlix streaming server, although you need to shell out for XBox Live in addition to Netflix, which may not be worth it to you.
Perhaps you can get somebody to trade you a used PS3 for it, which is a better media server (but no Netflix!), better support for other operating systems (except for the new Slim) and has a built in web browser.
The flu shot, on the other hand, can be extremely dangerous. My aunt was a nurse, and thus was required by her job to take the flu shot every year. She had been taking them for nearly a decade when, in her mid-thirties, she was paralyzed from the waist down by the side-effects of the flu shot. Had she not taken the shot, the worst that would have happened to her would have been simply getting the flu. She got a large settlement from the vaccine manufacturer and her employer.
And if she'd had the flu shot every year, and then one year gotten hit by a car, would that be the fault of the vaccine, too?
Canada doesn't have much seasonal flu yet, and the swine flu vaccine will be available soon. So just in case this study turns out to be correct, some provinces are planning to play it safe and give the swine flu vaccine first.
It's also interesting that (according to the story I linked above) there has not been a placebo-controlled trial of the flu vaccine.
Of course, if you bothered to check Pubmed, you would have found dozens and dozens of placebo controlled trials of flu vaccines. Which should tell you something about getting your scientific knowledge from some guy quoted in the New York Times (journalism tip: when a newspaper quotes somebody else as saying something, they are not responsible for the accuracy of that statement).
The seasonal updates of the flu vaccines can't be individually tested in placebo trials of course, because by the time the trial was over, it would be too late for the vaccine to save any lives--the flu would have come and gone. However, statistical evidence shows that seasonal flu vaccines (when vaccine developers correctly predict what flu strain will go world-wide) are highly safe and effective, just as expected from the results of placebo studies.
Games cost $60 because some of them are worth it to the consumer. What makes a game worth $60? It can be any number of things: Many hours of interesting gameplay; unique game design; impressive graphics; a chance to revisit a favorite movie universe or play a favorite comic book character; a social experience with friends; a perfect progression of challenge.
Of course, plenty of games aren't worth $60 (or at least aren't worth that much to very many people). They get introduced at that price point, because every developer hopes that their game will turn out to be worth 60 bucks to a lot of people, and experience has shown that that is about as much as a consumer is willing to pay for a really good game. The ones that aren't worth that much to many people don't stay at $60 for long, because before long the retailer starts cutting the price to get them off the shelves and make room for new games that might actually sell for $60.
How much games cost to make is pretty much irrelevant here. The publisher is going to scale a games budget to what he sees as its sales potential, and there may be some games that don't get made because the developer doesn't see how they could possibly make money. But a really popular game will more than pay back its development costs.
If you make round plugs and round holes, and somebody complains that their square plug doesn't quite fit correctly, tell them it's not your problem. If they're not a complete retard, they'll take their problem where it belongs.
If they bought some "round" plugs from someone else that are supposedly compatible with your round holes and it turns out they're slightly flattened so the fit isn't perfect, it's still not your problem.
However, if the other guy's plugs fit perfectly in your round hole, and you install a camera so that theirs wont work anymore (theirs are red and yours are blue, and the hole won't open for blue plugs), claiming "someone else made them, they might not fit" doesn't counter my claim "they did fit just fine, until you modified your round hole to not accept them".
However, having somebody take the time to tell them "it's not my problem" over the phone or at the Apple store will still cost Apple money--and probably a certain amount of customer goodwill.
Your last point actually probably illustrates exactly what Apple is thinking: "What if we let Palm go on doing this, and then we make a change for another reason, and it accidentally breaks Pre synchronization? The longer we let it go so that the Pre seems to be compatible, the more people will feel entitled to compatibility and the more they will be upset if it breaks. We'll end up having to check every update for Pre compatibility. It would be better for it to break at every iTunes update, so that everybody will be on notice that it is Palm that must make the Pre work with each iTunes update, not Apple that must maintain Pre compatibility. And it will encourage Palm to write their own sync software like everybody else does, instead of trying to co-opt ours."
You want to know what cost Apple money? Paying someone to re-write the iTunes sync so it wouldn't work with other vendors' products. If they'd done nothing, Palm's device would have continued to work fine with no effort from Apple.
Probably very little effort and cost involved on Apple's part. On the other hand, if Apple permits Palm to make use of Apple's software to sync the Palm with the Mac (even though Apple supports other ways of doing this without hijacking iTunes, people are obviously turn to Apple for support if iTunes doesn't sync right with their Palm. That will cost Apple money. After all, iTunes is an Apple product. Telling people, "It's the other guy's problem" never goes over well. If Apple does not at least try to keep Palm out, it could be perceived as implicit agreement to support Pre.
If Pre really wants to sync with users' iTunes libraries, they can do it; it will just take a bit more work. Apple provides the tools required, and other manufacturers already do it. They just don't get to piggyback on Apple's iTunes software.
Cursive was faster to write, but sacrificed readibility, being slower to read than print until one adapts to the individuals style.
An good cursive hand is quite readable. Unfortunately, it is very hard to learn to write a readable cursive if you start out learning the unreadable Palmer script they teach in school, in which all of the letters look very similar.
Anybody with an ounce of esthetics will rebel at the horrible "Palmer" cursive that they crammed down the throats of children. It's hard to read, hard to write, and downright ugly. I abandoned it by the time I got to high school. I could print faster and more legibly. And over time, my printing gradually evolved naturally into a personal cursive that is both easier to read and easier on the eyes. Everybody I know with an attractive hand did the same thing.
Teaching cursive in school was never a good idea. Good riddance.
Calligraphy, on the other hand, has its proper place--in art classes. A few weeks practicing a classical italic like Chancery will improve your handwriting far more than years of laboriously scrawling out illegible Palmer.
It's sad, but the smart thing to do. In my opinion, it was in deciding to prosecute her that the state strayed into abuse of power. Up until that point, it was all a regrettable, but not unreasonable, misunderstanding. The clerk who panicked and raised the alarm was not a security expert, and could not necessarily be expected to be know that real bombs don't have blinking lights like the ones in the movies, or that terrorists with bombs are usually trying very hard not to do things that would attract attention, like wearing flashing lights. And the police, acting on a possible bomb threat called in by an airline employee, were pretty much obliged to take it seriously. But once they searched her and confirmed that she was not carrying anything that could reasonably pose a threat to anybody or that even looked like a real bomb, they should have apologized and released her. But the police didn't want to risk looking stupid, or chance being the target of a civil suit, so they ended up filing charges of making a hoax threat, a serious crime and a charge which by that time they surely knew to be false. Her lawyer probably explained to her that the police and prosecution at this point had their reputations riding on finding her guilty of something, and that she could not necessarily expect a fair trial. Of course, the prosecution did not want to go to court either, since there was a good chance that she would be found innocent, leaving the police, the prosecution, and the state with egg on their faces, so they offered very favorable plea bargain terms. Given the potential downside, she had no real choice but to accept the terms.
Lots of people wear red hats. Lots of people have leather jackets. Very few people have red blinky lights, and VERY FEW REFUSE TO ANSWER A SIMPLE QUESTION FROM AIRPORT EMPLOYEES ABOUT THAT LIGHT. Yes, you seem to think that "she says" should be all it takes, but it isn't./blockquote
I see. So it would be OK to call the police if she were wearing a bright orange jacket with purple polka-dots, because very few people have those, and anybody wearing anything unusual must be a terrorist (because we all know that terrorists strive for distinctive dress to stand out in the crowd, just as they decorate their bombs with blinking lights)
Here's a clue--the terrorist isn't the guy who dresses oddly; he's the one who's trying to look ordinary.
She walked into an airport with a blinking electronic device AND DELIBERATELY IGNORED A SIMPLE QUESTION ASKED TO HER BY AN AIRPORT EMPLOYEE. That is either stupid ("I don't have to deal with airport employees") or arrogant ("Airport employees are beneath my level of acknowledgement") or both.
Actually, that is in dispute. She says that she responded to the clerk, turned the lights off and tried to calm down the clerk who was freaking out. The "clay" was a baked sculpture of a flower that she was carrying to give to the friend that she was meeting.
That employee reported the situation, which is hardly "fly[ing] into a panic".
I'd say that calling the police over somebody with flashing lights, or a red hat, or a leather jacket (all of which have equal relevance to terrorism or bombs) constitutes flying into a panic.
It is rarely smart to act like a nitwit when dealing with security issues, but enough people do that they have to put up signs that warn that jokes about bombs are not funny at TSA checkpoints.
Just to be clear, this was not a TSA checkpoint, or a secure area--it was a counter in the outer atrium, full of people with uninspected suitcases, any one of which could hold enough explosive to kill everybody in the room.
re: shirt with LEDs on it: yeah, the reaction to this event was probably a little over the top as well, although I think it is fair to say that Star Simpson didn't exactly display good judgment either. Considering the culture of fear that the government has cultivated, you don't have to be a genius to think that waltzing into an airport with a homemade circuit on a breadboard with a wad of putty in your hand, then walking away when the ticket counter agent asks about the device might raise concern about what you are doing. I don't condone all the paranoia, but given that such fear exists (and, groan, is encouraged), what she did was simply stupid. Furthermore, I have seen lots of t-shirts (and tennis shoes) with LEDs integrated into them that wouldn't raise an eyebrow, so again, what you are implying ("you can't wear shirts with LEDs!!!") is not really true.
The problem is that an MIT student who spends most of her time with other MIT students may not comprehend the way really stupid people think. I can easily understand how it might never occur to an intelligent person, walking through the ticketing area of an airport next to people hauling large, completely un-inspected suitcases capable of holding enough high explosive to kill everybody in the room, that somebody could fly into a panic over a few blinking lights (which have nothing at all to do with terrorist bombs, except maybe in the movies).
You scoff at the above poster, but there are (non-lethal) mutations possible that could make these particular bacteria more dangerous to people.
The question is not whether there are conceivable mutations that could make these bacteria more dangerous, but rather whether the mutation rate is rate-limiting in bacterial evolution. About 1 in 1,000 bacterial cell divisions results in a new mutation. But there are a lot of bacteria; in just one human body, there are about 10,000,000,000,000 E. coli. If they are all dividing with a cycle time of about an hour, that is about 10 billion mutations per hour. So probably just about every possible bacterial mutation pops up somewhere with fairly high frequency. If it doesn't spread and take over the population, it is probably because it is not selectively favorable. If that is the case, then increasing the mutation rate will have little effect on danger to people.
Actually, I'm very impressed by the way iTunes 9 will automatically create a dozen distinctly different Genius mixes from your library. The mixes seem really good. I expect that I'll be using this feature quite a lot.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a possibility, but I don't think so. The receptors don't use a lot of energy. The baseline cost of maintaining the neurons won't change. So the main incremental cost will be the pump costs for repolarizing after action potentials. But it doesn't seem likely that overall firing is massively increased, or they'd probably be seizing.
Kind of old news; the first report that NR2B overexpression improves rodent performance in some behavioral tests of learning and memory was was published in 1999. The nice thing here is that the investigators now have it working in the rat, which is a more difficult animal for transgenic studies, and a better one for behavioral work and electrophysiology.
Nevertheless, it raises an interesting question: if intelligence can be increased by something so simple as an increase in the expression of a single NMDA receptor subunit, why hasn't it already happened? Presumably, there is a selective advantage to improved learning and memory. Presumably, there is some kind of downside that balances that selective advantage. Are there other behaviors for which the rat is impaired?
Let's see, I pay Netflix $11 a month to see any movies I want. That's less than the cost of buying a movie. And if I buy a movie, I have to find space for it on my shelves for a movie that I might watch one more time at most.
So basically, what this means is that Redbox will get a window when they can rent their retail-purchased copies without competition form Blockbuster! Which will probably drive Redbox's profits up enough to make up for the higher cost they'll have to pay for the disks.
Blockbuster is probably doomed, though...
Redbox can afford to pay retail, because red boxes are a lot cheaper than bricks and mortar. Blockbuster cannot, so they lose either way.
Maybe a win for Netflix, though. They don't have Blockbuster's costs, and since most subscribers have a long queue, they aren't so concerned about the release date of particular movies, so they can afford to observe the lockout. And they aren't really in competition with Redbox, because Redbox can't match Netflix's inventory of older movies, or their ability to deliver content directly to your TV/PS3/XBox360/Bluray player.
For the film studios, the net result will be the loss of Blockbuster, a big disk purchaser. It's very unlikely that individual DVD sales will make up for that. So a big lose for the studios, too.
Even though the implementation, with the need to insert a disk, is slightly awkward, this fills in the only major weakness of the PS3 as a media station. Compared to the XBox 360, the PS3 has a (much) better user interface, better upscaling playback of conventional DVDs, built-in WiFi, more reliable UPnP client (at least in my hands), Blu-ray playback, rechargeable wireless controller, user upgradable hard drive, and now Netflix with no additional fee to Sony. What's more, the PS3 includes a web browser, so you don't even need a PC to manage your Netflix queue. At this point, I'd judge the games libraries to be about equal--although the PS3 to get (if you are a gamer) is still the older 60 GB model (CECHAxx) that included hardware PS2 emulation. So the PS3 is now the console to get. Main disadvantage is still the lack of an IR sensor, which means that an add-on is required if you want to use a universal remote instead of Sony's (extra cost) RF remote. I've registered with Netflix to receive the enabling disk. I'll be interested to see how it compares to Netflix on TiVo and 360. I wonder if it will take advantage of the PS3's superior upscaling? (my guess is no).
So it's not the health care commissioner, it's his wife. And it's not that she has investments in the company that makes vaccine, but that she has a job with an investment bank that has investments in just about everything, so there must be some pharmaceuticals in there somewhere, right? So maybe requiring health care workers to get vaccinated will increase their sales (which seems unlikely, considering that vaccine manufacturers are not close to meeting the demand, but hey, maybe, right?) which will increase her employer's profits by some tiny fraction, and maybe this will help her by, I don't know, increasing her annual bonus by some tiny fraction. So clearly this is why New York is favoring requiring vaccination for health care workers.
Of course, if you play this kind of idiotic seven-degrees-of-separation game, you can make almost anybody sound like they have a conflict of interest. But then, the kind of people who are afraid of vaccines believe things that are even crazier...
So if I happen to see a PS3 game that I think I might want to download, I have to go to a different section and search through an long list to find out if there is a demo (I don't buy games without demos; I figure that the lack of a demo means that the publisher thinks that I wouldn't want the game if I knew what it was actually like--and that they are most likely correct in their estimation). Most of them are for disk games, rather than downloadable games. Then if I do like the demo, I have to go back to the store and search again through a different list to download the game.
Do you see why I'd rather shop for XBox 360 games? There is one entry for the game and the demo. I download the demo and try it. If I like it, the game itself will link me directly to the purchase screen.
The Playstation store is the one area where the PS3 falls far short of the XBox 360, but the article misses the major issues. When I look for things in the PS3 store, it is just a jumble, and there is no really useful sorting. I often end up downloading a game for XBox 360 that I might have downloaded for PS3 if the store were not so disorganized. For example, on the XBox360, all games available online have demos, and the full game can be purchased from the demo. On the PS3 demos are separate things, and there is no differentiation between demos for disk games and demos for online available games. What the PS3 store really needs is:
A way to sort games into categories.
-Demos of PS3 games available on disks (subsorted by name, release date, genre, or popularity)
-Demos of *all* PS3 games available online with option to buy full game (subsorted by name, release date, genre, or popularity)
-PSP games (subsorted by name, release date, genre, or popularity)
Once upon a time, this was the way almost all phone services were charged. You paid a per-minute fee, graduated on your usage of the system--more for long-distance and local. Yet more and more, phone companies have moved in the direction of flat-rate plans. Why? Because consumers don't like to have to keep track of their usage--they see value in having an expected no-surprises charge on their bill, and they are willing to pay a premium in order not to have to worry about it.
So yes, AT&T could do this, if they wanted to lose money--and customers, who will gravitate to companies that offer flat-rate plans.
You are correct, I meant to write "client"
It's a decent UPnP server, so you can use it to stream video from almost any computer, and it is a good NetFlix streaming server, although you need to shell out for XBox Live in addition to Netflix, which may not be worth it to you.
Perhaps you can get somebody to trade you a used PS3 for it, which is a better media server (but no Netflix!), better support for other operating systems (except for the new Slim) and has a built in web browser.
And if she'd had the flu shot every year, and then one year gotten hit by a car, would that be the fault of the vaccine, too?
People get this kind of paralysis all the time without being vaccinated. It can be triggered by a cold or an infection. So it is certainly plausible that it could have been triggered by a flu shot. The vaccine compensation program gives the benefit of the doubt to people who may have been injured, which is reasonable, because people who get vaccinated are performing a public service by protecting their neighbors. But except for 1976 year when there was a spike in Guillain-Barré Syndrome paralysis (and the flu vaccinations were discontinued), there has been no clear evidence of increased rates of paralysis. It is even possible that some other infection going around in '76 was actually at fault. The risk, if it exists, is probably on the order of 1 in a million, less than the risk of dying from flu.
Here is the CDC info page on the subject.
Canada doesn't have much seasonal flu yet, and the swine flu vaccine will be available soon. So just in case this study turns out to be correct, some provinces are planning to play it safe and give the swine flu vaccine first.
Of course, if you bothered to check Pubmed, you would have found dozens and dozens of placebo controlled trials of flu vaccines. Which should tell you something about getting your scientific knowledge from some guy quoted in the New York Times (journalism tip: when a newspaper quotes somebody else as saying something, they are not responsible for the accuracy of that statement).
The seasonal updates of the flu vaccines can't be individually tested in placebo trials of course, because by the time the trial was over, it would be too late for the vaccine to save any lives--the flu would have come and gone. However, statistical evidence shows that seasonal flu vaccines (when vaccine developers correctly predict what flu strain will go world-wide) are highly safe and effective, just as expected from the results of placebo studies.
Games cost $60 because some of them are worth it to the consumer. What makes a game worth $60? It can be any number of things: Many hours of interesting gameplay; unique game design; impressive graphics; a chance to revisit a favorite movie universe or play a favorite comic book character; a social experience with friends; a perfect progression of challenge.
Of course, plenty of games aren't worth $60 (or at least aren't worth that much to very many people). They get introduced at that price point, because every developer hopes that their game will turn out to be worth 60 bucks to a lot of people, and experience has shown that that is about as much as a consumer is willing to pay for a really good game. The ones that aren't worth that much to many people don't stay at $60 for long, because before long the retailer starts cutting the price to get them off the shelves and make room for new games that might actually sell for $60.
How much games cost to make is pretty much irrelevant here. The publisher is going to scale a games budget to what he sees as its sales potential, and there may be some games that don't get made because the developer doesn't see how they could possibly make money. But a really popular game will more than pay back its development costs.
However, having somebody take the time to tell them "it's not my problem" over the phone or at the Apple store will still cost Apple money--and probably a certain amount of customer goodwill.
Your last point actually probably illustrates exactly what Apple is thinking: "What if we let Palm go on doing this, and then we make a change for another reason, and it accidentally breaks Pre synchronization? The longer we let it go so that the Pre seems to be compatible, the more people will feel entitled to compatibility and the more they will be upset if it breaks. We'll end up having to check every update for Pre compatibility. It would be better for it to break at every iTunes update, so that everybody will be on notice that it is Palm that must make the Pre work with each iTunes update, not Apple that must maintain Pre compatibility. And it will encourage Palm to write their own sync software like everybody else does, instead of trying to co-opt ours."
Probably very little effort and cost involved on Apple's part. On the other hand, if Apple permits Palm to make use of Apple's software to sync the Palm with the Mac (even though Apple supports other ways of doing this without hijacking iTunes, people are obviously turn to Apple for support if iTunes doesn't sync right with their Palm. That will cost Apple money. After all, iTunes is an Apple product. Telling people, "It's the other guy's problem" never goes over well. If Apple does not at least try to keep Palm out, it could be perceived as implicit agreement to support Pre.
If Pre really wants to sync with users' iTunes libraries, they can do it; it will just take a bit more work. Apple provides the tools required, and other manufacturers already do it. They just don't get to piggyback on Apple's iTunes software.
An good cursive hand is quite readable. Unfortunately, it is very hard to learn to write a readable cursive if you start out learning the unreadable Palmer script they teach in school, in which all of the letters look very similar.
Anybody with an ounce of esthetics will rebel at the horrible "Palmer" cursive that they crammed down the throats of children. It's hard to read, hard to write, and downright ugly. I abandoned it by the time I got to high school. I could print faster and more legibly. And over time, my printing gradually evolved naturally into a personal cursive that is both easier to read and easier on the eyes. Everybody I know with an attractive hand did the same thing.
Teaching cursive in school was never a good idea. Good riddance.
Calligraphy, on the other hand, has its proper place--in art classes. A few weeks practicing a classical italic like Chancery will improve your handwriting far more than years of laboriously scrawling out illegible Palmer.
It's sad, but the smart thing to do. In my opinion, it was in deciding to prosecute her that the state strayed into abuse of power. Up until that point, it was all a regrettable, but not unreasonable, misunderstanding. The clerk who panicked and raised the alarm was not a security expert, and could not necessarily be expected to be know that real bombs don't have blinking lights like the ones in the movies, or that terrorists with bombs are usually trying very hard not to do things that would attract attention, like wearing flashing lights. And the police, acting on a possible bomb threat called in by an airline employee, were pretty much obliged to take it seriously. But once they searched her and confirmed that she was not carrying anything that could reasonably pose a threat to anybody or that even looked like a real bomb, they should have apologized and released her. But the police didn't want to risk looking stupid, or chance being the target of a civil suit, so they ended up filing charges of making a hoax threat, a serious crime and a charge which by that time they surely knew to be false. Her lawyer probably explained to her that the police and prosecution at this point had their reputations riding on finding her guilty of something, and that she could not necessarily expect a fair trial. Of course, the prosecution did not want to go to court either, since there was a good chance that she would be found innocent, leaving the police, the prosecution, and the state with egg on their faces, so they offered very favorable plea bargain terms. Given the potential downside, she had no real choice but to accept the terms.
Actually, that is in dispute. She says that she responded to the clerk, turned the lights off and tried to calm down the clerk who was freaking out. The "clay" was a baked sculpture of a flower that she was carrying to give to the friend that she was meeting.
I'd say that calling the police over somebody with flashing lights, or a red hat, or a leather jacket (all of which have equal relevance to terrorism or bombs) constitutes flying into a panic.
Just to be clear, this was not a TSA checkpoint, or a secure area--it was a counter in the outer atrium, full of people with uninspected suitcases, any one of which could hold enough explosive to kill everybody in the room.
The problem is that an MIT student who spends most of her time with other MIT students may not comprehend the way really stupid people think. I can easily understand how it might never occur to an intelligent person, walking through the ticketing area of an airport next to people hauling large, completely un-inspected suitcases capable of holding enough high explosive to kill everybody in the room, that somebody could fly into a panic over a few blinking lights (which have nothing at all to do with terrorist bombs, except maybe in the movies).
The question is not whether there are conceivable mutations that could make these bacteria more dangerous, but rather whether the mutation rate is rate-limiting in bacterial evolution. About 1 in 1,000 bacterial cell divisions results in a new mutation. But there are a lot of bacteria; in just one human body, there are about 10,000,000,000,000 E. coli. If they are all dividing with a cycle time of about an hour, that is about 10 billion mutations per hour. So probably just about every possible bacterial mutation pops up somewhere with fairly high frequency. If it doesn't spread and take over the population, it is probably because it is not selectively favorable. If that is the case, then increasing the mutation rate will have little effect on danger to people.
Actually, I'm very impressed by the way iTunes 9 will automatically create a dozen distinctly different Genius mixes from your library. The mixes seem really good. I expect that I'll be using this feature quite a lot.