I think the chili cookoff episode (El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Homer) is pretty darn good and was sadly overlooked for the list. Johnny Cash. Guatamalean Insanity Peppers. Space Coyote. Hot pants. Marge smokes. Homer dances and whines. Homer trips out. "I hope I didn't brain my damage"
Its Different. Cool. Funny. How could they overlook it?
I wanted to vent a bit about ABCNews.com's coverage of the shuttle disaster. In this story, the fourth from the last paragraph reads (note about challenger, not columbia):
Challenger's nose section, with the crew cabin inside, was blown free from the explosion and plummeted 8.7 miles from the sky. NASA learned from on-board voice recorders that the astronauts lived through much of the capsule's death plunge. The capsule shattered after hitting the ocean at 140 to 180 mph.
Now, for those of you that are aware, the second sentence refers to a weekly world news article, which as you know, is america's second finest news source. A google search quickly found a debunking article. There are no audio tapes suggesting that the pilots survived "much of the... death plunge." The correct information can be found here.
Anyway, I just wanted to vent, because ABCNews has a responsibility to print facts, and, AFAIK, they didn't even announce the correction, although subsequence stories with the same content did fix it. What's with internet news services and not announcing corrections (again AFAIK)?
If they can't get history correct, how can they fairly report on the present?
And in his words, when he was doing his investigation by going through documents and talking to people, it sounded that he felt like he was fighting a gigantic institutional bureaucracy that was being very slow, passive and reluctant to divulge information.
I think the NASA press conferences/interviews today have surprisingly frank. Very detailed reports on every little malfunction and their personal thoughts.
I love/. This is the place where I can write a joke comment made in passing critiqued for the quality of the code written within it. Perhaps you should post a follow-up complaining about the uselessness of writing a file with rand() calls?
I'm not trying to testosterone you, but OpenGL isn't really all that hard. You don't need much knowledge of linear algebra, CRT's or anything. Get the red+blue (IIRC) and maybe a tutorial. It is quite hackable for the impatient geek and code crosscompiles with an appropriate interface!
There is not a problem with support of large files in Unix system, there is a problem with incompetent people using too large files in Unix systems.
You are a troll. It is not up to administrators to decide how big a file needs to be. I do scientific research and deal regularly with datasets larger than 300GB. Single files often in the range of 2GB-10GB. For me to split up my data would create an enormous headache, and would be very slow.
I realize that this may seem silly, but I still don't get just why M$ isn't liable for at least some of these damages. They release a compromisable product, they sell said product, they quietly release a patch of said product, then worm kills said product. I'm sorry, but the costs of releasing buggy code (particularly at M$) are so high that it is more reasonable to have harsh punishments to companies that release said code than to waste energy finding kiddies who will always exploit holes.
This is the wrong question. The cost per album is really, really easy to calculate. It is the amount of money a record company spends over the number of albums they sell. The real question is what is the minimal cost to producing an album and why do they pay so much more? Well I think it is probably very much like drug companies (which I *do* know something about). Like drugs or potential drugs, there are probably things being produced that never become profitable. Albums that don't sell, but are paid for have to be included in this value. These are reasonable expenses. The, IMO, unreasonable ones are like the massive PR machine that tries to keep the status quo.
So you aren't asking the correct question. How much a single album costs is pretty much irrelevant to answering the real question you want the answer to.
All the evidence I've seen and found(and I've looked, please show me any you think is compelling), falls into two categories. DNA that looks like it has evolved over a short time within species, or junk DNA we don't yet know the purpose of and we assume similarities in this junk DNA between species is evidence of common descent.
All of your points are well taken. As to the one above, the rate at which sequences change is a PhD in itself, and looking for a good molecular clock (sequences that change on the order of time that you are trying to look) is a challenging problem. I think the work by Gary Olson and Carl Woese (at UIllinois many years ago) on ribosomal RNA sequences is the most interesting. There are databases of these sequences available here and here and many many papers discussing their implications. Including the prediction of a third cell type based on rna sequences, the archaens....
Logically, evidence for the first case is not evidence for the second. It's a bit like any inductive proof, proving for n still leaves the proof for n+1. In evolution, we know micro-evolutionary changes through DNA mutations are possible. But that the process of mutations can be extended indefinitely back to a common ancestor is a seperate issue.
Like I said, I'm not an expert on evidence for the common ancestor theories. That said, while microchanges and adaptions through mutation may not by itself be evidence enough to satisfy, when combined with the DNA/RNA/Protein sequence evidence , it becomes rather compelling, IMO. (once again, I'm a bit out of my area)
It comes down to two options, an intelligent agent (god, aliens, etc) could have created the species' with DNA sequences that fit a mutational model quite well, or every organism could have a common ancestor and these sequences evolved naturally through mutation. If an intelligent agent created the species, why would it engineer the DNA/RNA/Protein sequences such that they looked exactly like they would if they got that way by eons of mutation? Occam's razor would tell you that natural evolution of those sequences is a far, far simpler and more likely explanation, especially in light of the fact that microchanges happen spontaneously and are commonly observed in the laboratory.
Evolution is just as much a religion as Creationism.
To you, perhaps. Unfortunately, both sides sometimes overlook the details of evolutionary theory. Evolution is best described, IMO, as two different things and they often get lumped together. First there is the phenomena of evolution, that offsprint inherit the traits of their parents (or parent in the case of asexual reproduction), and these traits have the ability to change over time, for better or worse. Secondly, there is the theory of evolution, which is the entire lump of theories/hypotheses that describe the path by which we came to be over 5 billion or so years.
The idea that organisms can "evolve", as described in the first case is well understood and generally taken as fact, since we now have a pretty good understanding for the molecular basis of this macroscopic observation (DNA->Protein, central dogma, etc). If creationists insist on condemning this as not fact (even the vatican has accepted it), they will only further hurt their arguments.
I'm not an expert on the second case, but I believe quite strongly that knowledge of the first case is compelling evidence for the second, especially in light of all the other piles of observational evidence and the historical record that is available.
Actually this is not quite correct. As I understaand it, Telomerase shortening is a system engineered in the cells. Turn the system off, and telomerases don't shorten anym more. Mutations, on the other hand are difficult to prevent. This is because DNA damage happens spontaneously and often. This DNA damage makes fidelity very, very difficult. Our cells spend a lot of time preventing this.
(one of the modified bacteria can tolerate 1000X more radiation than a human being).
I haven't read the article (don't have access to where I am) nor have I thought about this subject much, but one question I have is how the authors keep the sequences under selective pressure. DNA sequences are only conserved over many years if evolution needs them. Non-coding regions (So called "junk-DNA", poor choice of words, btw) would easily mutate into other sequences. One could imagine sequencing many cells, and infer the original sequence, but this gets more expensive as time goes on (as the number of sequences you need to sequence goes up).
You are correct, actually. I may have been mistaken, in my non-US centric views. perhaps,.nz should be up to the new zealand gov't (as another poster pointed out).
Agreed. Call your credit card company. That should do the trick. If that doesn't work call the head office of the chain. Be polite, civil and firm. They misprinted tickets you should get your money back. Period. Also I can't believe the theater chain in question wasn't posted here. POST THE CHAIN HERE!!!! The/. community will certainly get a response, if you don't.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahh. Good beer and smelly clothes. That is the life.
-Sean (fp?)
I don't know. Phone numbers are much easier to trace. Enforcement would be nearly impossible.
-Sean
I think the chili cookoff episode (El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Homer) is pretty darn good and was sadly overlooked for the list. Johnny Cash. Guatamalean Insanity Peppers. Space Coyote. Hot pants. Marge smokes. Homer dances and whines. Homer trips out. "I hope I didn't brain my damage"
Its Different. Cool. Funny. How could they overlook it?
-Sean
I wanted to vent a bit about ABCNews.com's coverage of the shuttle disaster. In this story, the fourth from the last paragraph reads (note about challenger, not columbia):
... death plunge." The correct information can be found here.
Challenger's nose section, with the crew cabin inside, was blown free from the explosion and plummeted 8.7 miles from the sky. NASA learned from on-board voice recorders that the astronauts lived through much of the capsule's death plunge. The capsule shattered after hitting the ocean at 140 to 180 mph.
Now, for those of you that are aware, the second sentence refers to a weekly world news article, which as you know, is america's second finest news source. A google search quickly found a debunking article. There are no audio tapes suggesting that the pilots survived "much of the
Anyway, I just wanted to vent, because ABCNews has a responsibility to print facts, and, AFAIK, they didn't even announce the correction, although subsequence stories with the same content did fix it. What's with internet news services and not announcing corrections (again AFAIK)?
If they can't get history correct, how can they fairly report on the present?
-Sean
Lets hope that interview is in print, and *not* on the radio or, god forbid, the tv.
-Sean
And Iraq and Iran are appointed to chair the UN disarmament panel. Oh wait....
-Sean
And in his words, when he was doing his investigation by going through documents and talking to people, it sounded that he felt like he was fighting a gigantic institutional bureaucracy that was being very slow, passive and reluctant to divulge information.
I think the NASA press conferences/interviews today have surprisingly frank. Very detailed reports on every little malfunction and their personal thoughts.
-Sean
Anyway, I can write a new version so you could pass in the seed for srand() as an argument. :)
-Sean
I love /. This is the place where I can write a joke comment made in passing critiqued for the quality of the code written within it. Perhaps you should post a follow-up complaining about the uselessness of writing a file with rand() calls?
-Sean
a.out >
That should fill it up pretty fast.
-Sean (fp?)
One word: Aquanet. If you look at can, it says clearly, propellent==propane. That potato gun was so much fun..
-Sean
I'm not trying to testosterone you, but OpenGL isn't really all that hard. You don't need much knowledge of linear algebra, CRT's or anything. Get the red+blue (IIRC) and maybe a tutorial. It is quite hackable for the impatient geek and code crosscompiles with an appropriate interface!
-Sean
There is not a problem with support of large files in Unix system, there is a problem with incompetent people using too large files in Unix systems.
You are a troll. It is not up to administrators to decide how big a file needs to be. I do scientific research and deal regularly with datasets larger than 300GB. Single files often in the range of 2GB-10GB. For me to split up my data would create an enormous headache, and would be very slow.
-Sean
I realize that this may seem silly, but I still don't get just why M$ isn't liable for at least some of these damages. They release a compromisable product, they sell said product, they quietly release a patch of said product, then worm kills said product. I'm sorry, but the costs of releasing buggy code (particularly at M$) are so high that it is more reasonable to have harsh punishments to companies that release said code than to waste energy finding kiddies who will always exploit holes.
-Sean
Ok, so this is ot. This must be slashdot math. My previous (the parent) post:
/. can't (besides spell).
Moderations: 70% Insightful, 40% Interesting
I guess there are other things that
-Sean
This is the wrong question. The cost per album is really, really easy to calculate. It is the amount of money a record company spends over the number of albums they sell. The real question is what is the minimal cost to producing an album and why do they pay so much more? Well I think it is probably very much like drug companies (which I *do* know something about). Like drugs or potential drugs, there are probably things being produced that never become profitable. Albums that don't sell, but are paid for have to be included in this value. These are reasonable expenses. The, IMO, unreasonable ones are like the massive PR machine that tries to keep the status quo.
So you aren't asking the correct question. How much a single album costs is pretty much irrelevant to answering the real question you want the answer to.
-Sean
All the evidence I've seen and found(and I've looked, please show me any you think is compelling), falls into two categories. DNA that looks like it has evolved over a short time within species, or junk DNA we don't yet know the purpose of and we assume similarities in this junk DNA between species is evidence of common descent.
All of your points are well taken. As to the one above, the rate at which sequences change is a PhD in itself, and looking for a good molecular clock (sequences that change on the order of time that you are trying to look) is a challenging problem. I think the work by Gary Olson and Carl Woese (at UIllinois many years ago) on ribosomal RNA sequences is the most interesting. There are databases of these sequences available here and here and many many papers discussing their implications. Including the prediction of a third cell type based on rna sequences, the archaens....
Cheers,
-Sean
Logically, evidence for the first case is not evidence for the second. It's a bit like any inductive proof, proving for n still leaves the proof for n+1. In evolution, we know micro-evolutionary changes through DNA mutations are possible. But that the process of mutations can be extended indefinitely back to a common ancestor is a seperate issue.
Like I said, I'm not an expert on evidence for the common ancestor theories. That said, while microchanges and adaptions through mutation may not by itself be evidence enough to satisfy, when combined with the DNA/RNA/Protein sequence evidence , it becomes rather compelling, IMO. (once again, I'm a bit out of my area)
It comes down to two options, an intelligent agent (god, aliens, etc) could have created the species' with DNA sequences that fit a mutational model quite well, or every organism could have a common ancestor and these sequences evolved naturally through mutation. If an intelligent agent created the species, why would it engineer the DNA/RNA/Protein sequences such that they looked exactly like they would if they got that way by eons of mutation? Occam's razor would tell you that natural evolution of those sequences is a far, far simpler and more likely explanation, especially in light of the fact that microchanges happen spontaneously and are commonly observed in the laboratory.
-Sean
Evolution is just as much a religion as Creationism.
To you, perhaps. Unfortunately, both sides sometimes overlook the details of evolutionary theory. Evolution is best described, IMO, as two different things and they often get lumped together. First there is the phenomena of evolution, that offsprint inherit the traits of their parents (or parent in the case of asexual reproduction), and these traits have the ability to change over time, for better or worse. Secondly, there is the theory of evolution, which is the entire lump of theories/hypotheses that describe the path by which we came to be over 5 billion or so years.
The idea that organisms can "evolve", as described in the first case is well understood and generally taken as fact, since we now have a pretty good understanding for the molecular basis of this macroscopic observation (DNA->Protein, central dogma, etc). If creationists insist on condemning this as not fact (even the vatican has accepted it), they will only further hurt their arguments.
I'm not an expert on the second case, but I believe quite strongly that knowledge of the first case is compelling evidence for the second, especially in light of all the other piles of observational evidence and the historical record that is available.
-Sean
Actually this is not quite correct. As I understaand it, Telomerase shortening is a system engineered in the cells. Turn the system off, and telomerases don't shorten anym more. Mutations, on the other hand are difficult to prevent. This is because DNA damage happens spontaneously and often. This DNA damage makes fidelity very, very difficult. Our cells spend a lot of time preventing this.
-Sean
(one of the modified bacteria can tolerate 1000X more radiation than a human being).
I haven't read the article (don't have access to where I am) nor have I thought about this subject much, but one question I have is how the authors keep the sequences under selective pressure. DNA sequences are only conserved over many years if evolution needs them. Non-coding regions (So called "junk-DNA", poor choice of words, btw) would easily mutate into other sequences. One could imagine sequencing many cells, and infer the original sequence, but this gets more expensive as time goes on (as the number of sequences you need to sequence goes up).
-Sean
You are correct, actually. I may have been mistaken, in my non-US centric views. perhaps, .nz should be up to the new zealand gov't (as another poster pointed out).
-Sean
New Zealand should have access to newzealand.gov, but newzealand.com is open to anyone. fp?
-Sean
Agreed. Call your credit card company. That should do the trick. If that doesn't work call the head office of the chain. Be polite, civil and firm. They misprinted tickets you should get your money back. Period. Also I can't believe the theater chain in question wasn't posted here. POST THE CHAIN HERE!!!! The /. community will certainly get a response, if you don't.
-Sean
lol! Haven't seem this one. Try "George Bush"!
-Sean