I watched this show off and on and I kind of liked it.
But the ending definitely followed the well worn path of the Shaggy God(s) story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_God_story
towit man and woman marooned on a primitive planet
who in the last sentence of the story are named
Adam and Eve.
Wikipedia points out some notable stories with the
same motif.
---537
so the feed stream of a mature algae biodiesel production facility might be channeled to
bugs like this one.
To solve our energy problem let's engage all
the of life's kingdoms.
algae(biodiesel) --> bacteria(sugar) --> yeast(ethanol)
---537
As a working biochemist/molecular biologist
I cringe at her la-de-da attitude. Making
bacteria smell like bananas is cute, so is
making a glowing mouse (green fluorescent
protein). But abuse is a centimeter away
(cloning botulism toxin into the flu virus
anyone?)
Where I work I have to justify just about
everything I do. That's a good thing.
If you want to hack biology get into plant
breeding...
537
For fun I completely dispute this.
There is a strong human impulse to dream
of Armageddon -- all major religions
have it as a core precept -- and why
should we not fear mass death as all of us
shall surely perish.
But the belief that we will surely wipe
ourselves out -- irrevocably utterly die
from 1) The Bomb 2) a plague 3) a hot
planet 4) financial catastrophe 5) war
6) science gone bad etc... is to say the
least overstated.
Though the Romans fell, the Manchus fell,
the Hebrews fell, the Nazis fell, the
English Empire fell, the Turks fell,
the Egyptians fell etc...the truth
of it is that people actually kept
puttering along quite well -- in the
long term.
Let's imagine tomorrow the USA and
Russia decide to play toe to toe no
holds barred nuclear combat. Say
300 million of us were made ash --
and the Russians 270 million or
so dead...lets say atomic fallout
made things bad for a while. Out
of 7 billion of us 6 billion killed
-- really? Do we have any doubt
that those that survived -- and don't
give me that sci fi crap about
mutants blah blah blah -- those
that survived would be perfectly
able to continue on, just as good at
math just as good at movies computers
etc. Humans would continue maybe more
wise just as the Hutus and the Tutsies
are somehow still here. Imperfect but
human.
So if and ever we make it into the stars
I predict the opposite, long term fitful
expansion.
Now where are the aliens? I don't know,
it could well be that space is really hard
to conquer...even for robots. But I give
our species greater than a couple of
million years to get UP even if we make
the planet a desert beforehand.
537
This X-engineering student notes that adding
German to my curriculum tacked one extra semester
onto my studies. To say it was not encouraged is
understating the case: I was told not to waste my time. Years have passed and the rest of my studies are some vague blur involving plumbing; but I can still speak German.
Learn Mandarin.
---537
Unlike those plastic action figures that
emerged to commercialize the world forever,
'Star Wars' was an organically fallible
piece much more in common with
'American Graffiti' than the blockbuster
c--- that has dominated the last 30 years.
I was a kid in the seats in 1977 and what
captured my heart at the time was the gritty
broken chaotic mess of the first film. Droids break, spaceships fragment, bizzare languages permeate every scene, plans go spectacularly
awry. Even a kid could see that this was life.
Spielberg used to capture this spirit in those wonderful
scenes where everybody is talking at once;
dialog that doesn't translate to the international
export market.
We all know, the true sequel of Star Wars is 'Firefly.'
---537
...for people too lazy to read a scientific
paper.
And like other Wolfram ideas ignores existing
precedent that a lot of clever organizational science exists now cf. the H. Genome Project.
The scientific paper, in need of a little reform
about credit, will prevail.
This structural biologist offers the following insight. I looked over the papers published by the FOLDING@Home guys and I didn't see a lot of medically important results. Actually it looks like the computational equivalent of naval gazing. I wonder why the authors don't just get dirty and use crystallography and/or NMR to solve their structural questions. I looked at their recent paper trail, no (ok 1) Science/Nature papers...
I guarantee that if SETI@home finds a signal in the static the authors will get the cover of science/nature (and a trip to Sweden). Maybe beyond: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118884/
I do not know the costs/scale/maintenance/lifetime issues involved that differentiate the technologies.
Where is a meta-analysis of these issues to permit a definitive assessment of the 'best' technologies to permit commercial entities to enter the market?
Comrades,
I am a mac/ubuntu user who sort of tunes out Microsoft OS. So I don't really
know this:
In terms of practical security, is Vista a success? In other words as a haven
for: the zombie army of spambots, viral/worm propagation, malicious spyware
has Vista fixed the problem compared to XP? Forget theoretical exploits, has
the tide turned? (Or does user ignorance negate any advances?)
---537
Re:If you can't store it, you can't count on it
on
Google Goes Green
·
· Score: 1
Not to be ignored in this debate is that simultaneous to the advancement of renewable power will be a need to upgrade/make smarter our delivery infrastructure. An energy portfolio of cleaner sources -- solar/wind/nuclear could always be augmented with combustible systems to deal with 'spikes'. However the argument that solar electric is somehow intrinsically less capable doesn't sound right. The late august rush to turn the air conditioner on in Los Angeles coincides nicely with the solar maxima. ---537
Re:"Never once did I find an album to be more expensive on the Amazon store in comparison to the iTunes store."
Medeski Martin and Wood "End of the World Party..."
iTunes $5.99
Amazon $9.99
---537
Management of the environment is constant compromise since
nothing is perfect.
However.
Since burning coal is the major SOURCE of Cd in the environment...a quick web search reveals a sense of the tonnage:
http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/80841e/80841E0c.htm
a balanced view considers the following.
Which is cleaner?
a) a highly controlled manufacturing process
b) under-regulated coal bonfires belching Cd in the air and
disgorging Cd in the ash.
Bonus question: for extra credit what other nasty stuff comes
out of a smokestack?
---537
One argument I've not seen against Cometary Transspermia is based on recent biochemical findings. Despite what Star Trek tells you, our common genetic 'software' (DNA, RNA [4 bases] and proteins [the common 20 amino acids]) is an accident of maintaining 'legacy code'. Although no evidence exists that the 'kernel' of life has ever changed -- on earth or above -- all creatures use the same chemical language -- in the lab creatures using alternative chemical 'bits' (nucleotide or amino acid) have been created readily. If cometary life-rain
is the source of life then where is the 'alternative' life ecosystem possessing different chemical 'software'? It is really unlikely given the vast potential of chemistry to come up with the same biopolymer DNA/RNA/amino acid code -- why Ala Asp Cys...etc anyway. Should not every single life giving comet have its own unique storage polymer (something like DNA) its own repertoire of unique amino acids (why should they be L -- why not D) Quick answer, transspermia physicist types do not know a thing about chemistry or biochemistry much less the conditions on the early earth. Wickramasinghe has begat good deal of cock and bull. ---537
Solar energy --> Algae --> oil
Here's a company working on this very thing helped along
by the clean living Fat Tire Beer company in CO.
http://www.solixbiofuels.com/
Trouble is, like everything in this world, it's a pain...
---537
Last time I read up on this the true alternative genres (Jazz/Classical) managed only 2-3% of albums sold. A loyal following keeps the old ways going but to the marketplace this music matters as much as Apple.
So has the classical/jazz idiom felt as much pain from the modern breakdown (file trading etc)
or has the growth of the gangsta listena not had much effect?
I run two curious little game emulators. The first
is called Mame and it permits me run a bunch
of antique games once written for public coin-fed
consoles. The second is called Boot camp and
it permits me to run games on a kooky antique
dollar-fed operating system.
537
This scientist considers the problem a bit more carefully. World Power consumption tallies 12 TW annually. Recoverable Uranium deposits tally 3.4-17 million metric tons with a total energy content of from 60-300 TW. So after 6-30 years and all of the U is used up the world will be left with the same quandary it had before (assuming that WMD proliferation and/or an acute waste problem have not forced the issue sooner). Nature (2002) v 298 p 981 The trouble with coal is it is very cheap. The trouble with 'just' type answers is that somebody has probably not done their arithmetic. 537
...or maybe it is when Walmart gives its permission...
trouble is the industry created all this competition
when they got us all to buy the burners and such.
Mine still works.
---537
Here's Apple's strategy. When I poll my PC user
friends why they really have to have the latest/
greatest hardware the answer is not that they
want to fire up MS Word (TM) faster. Rather it
is to frag their on-line buddies on a Sat night.
An Apple/Intel machine capable of living in
both worlds (reliable and modern by day;
whiz/bang/pow by night) would be a big
seller. The consumer product I envision is
a devoted iPod/movie platform that can
play games.
537
This article touches on the malaise of the post cold war USA but is missing the larger point. Despite the bravado of free-marketers to the contrary, big projects that do not offer immediate financial windfall simply wither and die in our global capitalistic system. Where is IGY 'cheap and clean' energy? Why a heath system that lines pockets and forgets kids?
Space exploration and space colonization are akin to cathedrals in the sky. While important in terms of mass pride they make poor investments (Zubrin's economic case for Mars is laughable). Bush's repurposing of NASA is an obvious good idea but is ultimately doomed unless monies appear (even if private contractors do the work). Space will ultimately be colonized by creative imitators, political radicals or religious dissidents. The USA and Europe no longer look to the sky.
The first Mars colony will belong to the Scientologists for the Mormons have taken Utah.
Question for the/.'rs
The cost of a computer can be dwarfed by the cost
of the software to run on it. I am argueing with a friend
about Apple's potential to capture PC customers.
What are the top 10 software programs SOLD for
a PC (including games)? Which not available on
a Mac?
Thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
I watched this show off and on and I kind of liked it. But the ending definitely followed the well worn path of the Shaggy God(s) story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_God_story towit man and woman marooned on a primitive planet who in the last sentence of the story are named Adam and Eve. Wikipedia points out some notable stories with the same motif. ---537
so the feed stream of a mature algae biodiesel production facility might be channeled to bugs like this one. To solve our energy problem let's engage all the of life's kingdoms. algae(biodiesel) --> bacteria(sugar) --> yeast(ethanol) ---537
As a working biochemist/molecular biologist I cringe at her la-de-da attitude. Making bacteria smell like bananas is cute, so is making a glowing mouse (green fluorescent protein). But abuse is a centimeter away (cloning botulism toxin into the flu virus anyone?) Where I work I have to justify just about everything I do. That's a good thing. If you want to hack biology get into plant breeding... 537
For fun I completely dispute this. There is a strong human impulse to dream of Armageddon -- all major religions have it as a core precept -- and why should we not fear mass death as all of us shall surely perish. But the belief that we will surely wipe ourselves out -- irrevocably utterly die from 1) The Bomb 2) a plague 3) a hot planet 4) financial catastrophe 5) war 6) science gone bad etc... is to say the least overstated. Though the Romans fell, the Manchus fell, the Hebrews fell, the Nazis fell, the English Empire fell, the Turks fell, the Egyptians fell etc...the truth of it is that people actually kept puttering along quite well -- in the long term. Let's imagine tomorrow the USA and Russia decide to play toe to toe no holds barred nuclear combat. Say 300 million of us were made ash -- and the Russians 270 million or so dead...lets say atomic fallout made things bad for a while. Out of 7 billion of us 6 billion killed -- really? Do we have any doubt that those that survived -- and don't give me that sci fi crap about mutants blah blah blah -- those that survived would be perfectly able to continue on, just as good at math just as good at movies computers etc. Humans would continue maybe more wise just as the Hutus and the Tutsies are somehow still here. Imperfect but human. So if and ever we make it into the stars I predict the opposite, long term fitful expansion. Now where are the aliens? I don't know, it could well be that space is really hard to conquer...even for robots. But I give our species greater than a couple of million years to get UP even if we make the planet a desert beforehand. 537
iWant1
This X-engineering student notes that adding German to my curriculum tacked one extra semester onto my studies. To say it was not encouraged is understating the case: I was told not to waste my time. Years have passed and the rest of my studies are some vague blur involving plumbing; but I can still speak German. Learn Mandarin. ---537
I am a biochemist and work with E. coli every day. Let me tell you about Phages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage Those holes you see below are dead e. coli. http://www.microbelibrary.org/asmonly/details.asp?id=2321 E. coli are pretty weak outside their habitat (inside you and me). How will these business-types remove phage from the feedstock? ---537
Unlike those plastic action figures that emerged to commercialize the world forever, 'Star Wars' was an organically fallible piece much more in common with 'American Graffiti' than the blockbuster c--- that has dominated the last 30 years. I was a kid in the seats in 1977 and what captured my heart at the time was the gritty broken chaotic mess of the first film. Droids break, spaceships fragment, bizzare languages permeate every scene, plans go spectacularly awry. Even a kid could see that this was life. Spielberg used to capture this spirit in those wonderful scenes where everybody is talking at once; dialog that doesn't translate to the international export market. We all know, the true sequel of Star Wars is 'Firefly.' ---537
...for people too lazy to read a scientific paper. And like other Wolfram ideas ignores existing precedent that a lot of clever organizational science exists now cf. the H. Genome Project. The scientific paper, in need of a little reform about credit, will prevail.
This structural biologist offers the following insight. I looked
over the papers published by the FOLDING@Home guys and I didn't
see a lot of medically important results. Actually it looks like
the computational equivalent of naval gazing. I wonder why
the authors don't just get dirty and use crystallography
and/or NMR to solve their structural questions. I looked at their
recent paper trail, no (ok 1) Science/Nature papers...
I guarantee that if SETI@home finds a signal in the static the
authors will get the cover of science/nature (and a trip to Sweden).
Maybe beyond:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118884/
Save my job -- don't do FOLDING@Home
---537
You are referring to this technology:
http://www.stirlingenergy.com/
I do not know the costs/scale/maintenance/lifetime
issues involved that differentiate the technologies.
Where is a meta-analysis of these issues to permit
a definitive assessment of the 'best' technologies
to permit commercial entities to enter the market?
---537
Comrades, I am a mac/ubuntu user who sort of tunes out Microsoft OS. So I don't really know this: In terms of practical security, is Vista a success? In other words as a haven for: the zombie army of spambots, viral/worm propagation, malicious spyware has Vista fixed the problem compared to XP? Forget theoretical exploits, has the tide turned? (Or does user ignorance negate any advances?) ---537
Not to be ignored in this debate is that simultaneous to
the advancement of renewable power will be a need to
upgrade/make smarter our delivery infrastructure. An energy
portfolio of cleaner sources -- solar/wind/nuclear
could always be augmented with combustible systems to deal with
'spikes'. However the argument that solar electric is somehow
intrinsically less capable doesn't sound right. The late august
rush to turn the air conditioner on in Los Angeles coincides nicely
with the solar maxima.
---537
Re:"Never once did I find an album to be more expensive on the Amazon store in comparison to the iTunes store." Medeski Martin and Wood "End of the World Party..." iTunes $5.99 Amazon $9.99 ---537
Management of the environment is constant compromise since nothing is perfect. However. Since burning coal is the major SOURCE of Cd in the environment ...a quick web search reveals a sense of the tonnage:
http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/80841e/80841E0c.htm
a balanced view considers the following.
Which is cleaner?
a) a highly controlled manufacturing process
b) under-regulated coal bonfires belching Cd in the air and
disgorging Cd in the ash.
Bonus question: for extra credit what other nasty stuff comes
out of a smokestack?
---537
One argument I've not seen against Cometary Transspermia is
based on recent biochemical findings. Despite what Star Trek
tells you, our common genetic 'software' (DNA, RNA [4 bases]
and proteins [the common 20 amino acids]) is an accident of
maintaining 'legacy code'. Although no evidence exists that
the 'kernel' of life has ever changed -- on earth or above
-- all creatures use the same chemical language -- in the lab
creatures using alternative chemical 'bits' (nucleotide or
amino acid) have been created readily. If cometary life-rain
is the source of life then where is the 'alternative' life
ecosystem possessing different chemical 'software'? It is
really unlikely given the vast potential of chemistry to
come up with the same biopolymer DNA/RNA/amino acid code
-- why Ala Asp Cys...etc anyway.
Should not every single life giving comet have its own unique
storage polymer (something like DNA) its own repertoire of
unique amino acids (why should they be L -- why not D)
Quick answer, transspermia physicist types do not know a thing
about chemistry or biochemistry much less the conditions on the
early earth. Wickramasinghe has begat good deal of cock and bull.
---537
Solar energy --> Algae --> oil Here's a company working on this very thing helped along by the clean living Fat Tire Beer company in CO. http://www.solixbiofuels.com/ Trouble is, like everything in this world, it's a pain... ---537
Last time I read up on this the true
alternative genres (Jazz/Classical) managed
only 2-3% of albums sold. A loyal following
keeps the old ways going but to the marketplace
this music matters as much as Apple.
So has the classical/jazz idiom felt as much
pain from the modern breakdown (file trading etc)
or has the growth of the gangsta listena not
had much effect?
Microsoft point/counterpoint http://www.apple.com/getamac/ ---537
I run two curious little game emulators. The first is called Mame and it permits me run a bunch of antique games once written for public coin-fed consoles. The second is called Boot camp and it permits me to run games on a kooky antique dollar-fed operating system. 537
'Just go Nuclear OK'
This scientist considers the problem a bit more carefully.
World Power consumption tallies 12 TW annually.
Recoverable Uranium deposits tally 3.4-17 million metric
tons with a total energy content of from 60-300 TW.
So after 6-30 years and all of the U is used up the world
will be left with the same quandary it had before (assuming
that WMD proliferation and/or an acute waste problem have
not forced the issue sooner).
Nature (2002) v 298 p 981
The trouble with coal is it is very cheap.
The trouble with 'just' type answers is that somebody
has probably not done their arithmetic.
537
Here's Apple's strategy. When I poll my PC user friends why they really have to have the latest/ greatest hardware the answer is not that they want to fire up MS Word (TM) faster. Rather it is to frag their on-line buddies on a Sat night. An Apple/Intel machine capable of living in both worlds (reliable and modern by day; whiz/bang/pow by night) would be a big seller. The consumer product I envision is a devoted iPod/movie platform that can play games. 537
This article touches on the malaise of the post cold war
USA but is missing the larger point. Despite the bravado
of free-marketers to the contrary, big projects that
do not offer immediate financial windfall simply
wither and die in our global capitalistic system. Where
is IGY 'cheap and clean' energy? Why a heath system
that lines pockets and forgets kids?
Space exploration and space colonization are akin
to cathedrals in the sky. While important in terms of
mass pride they make poor investments (Zubrin's
economic case for Mars is laughable). Bush's
repurposing of NASA is an obvious good idea but is
ultimately doomed unless monies appear (even if
private contractors do the work). Space will ultimately
be colonized by creative imitators, political radicals
or religious dissidents. The USA and Europe no longer
look to the sky.
The first Mars colony will belong to the Scientologists
for the Mormons have taken Utah.
---537
Question for the /.'rs
The cost of a computer can be dwarfed by the cost
of the software to run on it. I am argueing with a friend
about Apple's potential to capture PC customers.
What are the top 10 software programs SOLD for
a PC (including games)? Which not available on
a Mac?
Thanks.