There is no need at all to prove "mutations are good". All it takes is a single dominant mutation that benefits the species and causes members of that species to be more succesfull *in their habitat*. Even if 10000000000 mutations are bad, none of them matter if one is beneficial because *that* mutation will be the one that will carry forward. If you want to dispute this, *you* have to prove that *no* mutation can *ever* be good in *any* environment. And that hypothesis has been falsified for a long time now.
Case in point: white people are carriers of a mutation, that caused them to be more sensitive to the sun. A harmful mutation *in Africa* but beneficial in different circumstances where you don't get much sun and thus vitamine D - such as in Europe during the Ice Ages.
And I'm not even taking into account that a lot of evolutionary paths were minor adaptations in already existing functionality, basically within the normal genetic variation you could expect, with the environment exerting strong pressure on survival of one end of the range. Example: if your food is found at 2 meters, your average max reach is 1.80m and the normal variation in height is +/- 20 cm., I can guarantee you that either the species will start building platforms, or only the tall ones will eat.
Up until now, it was easy to spot fish that was loaded to the gills with toxic chemicals, because they had weird growths. Now they have evolved resistances, you can't spot them by visual inspection anymore so it will be easier to insert toxic fish into the foodchain. We then return to the times were, if you had a dinner, the host was required to take a bite to show that nothing was poisonous. But for people who are genetically linked to people with a famous resistance to poison, like Rasputin, this may not even cause them to blink - so you also need to check whether your host is a descendant from Rasputin or other likely resistant folk (Borgia family would be candidates:)).
So basically, we had early warning signals from fish but now *we* have become the early warning signals (canaries in the coalmine) - and if we live, the food may be safe. Hurray for dumping chemicals in the water.
Ofcourse, the OP phrased this much nicer than my translation.
A Vietnamese friend of mine was 24 years old, with a great job at a luxury brand car import company, and he drove a very sleek mercedes. After he sold it, he stuck with less visible cars because he couldn't drive anywhere without being pulled over at least once, in that mercedes:) (24 year old vietnamese guy, dressed in very current fashion, sunglasses, driving a new mercedes with tinted glass windows - even I thought he looked like a pimp or a drugsdealer and I'm not even a cop:))
Much of the reason Diginotar is out of business is precisely because they weren't timely, upfront and open about the issue. They delayed any notification until after it was known by other means. They understated the extent of the issue, and AFAIK, never did admit to the full scale of the compromise. Quite simply, their own actions showed they could not be trusted.
That's why other CAs should have learned from that event, and should quickly be public and open about any compromises they may discover.
Also, the resulting investigation uncovered a gigantic mess. They built a castle, locked the gates, had it certified, then made huge holes in the walls because the gates were delaying the traffic... they didn't understand security at all and that was the final straw, IMO.
I live in such a town (national biking town in 2008 or so, +/- 50K humanoid inhabitants). It's quite a pleasant place to live in. Kids go to school and everywhere else on their bikes, most people go shopping etc. on their bikes. I can get out to the highway in 5 minutes so my commutes are painless too. The onliest thing you CANNOT do is moving directly with the car from my house to another address in this town in a straight line: you always have to go around the town then back into the area you need to visit. Still, that's a very small price to pay since most of my destinations are outside town and the city center has good parking. And I have a railway station nearby with a direct train into the center every 15 minutes. Net result: almost noone takes the car to get around the city, unless you have to do a lot of shopping.
If only more cities would be designed as smart as this one, we'd have less accidents and less pollution. But the designers are very smart (wrote books, won prizes) and also live in the city. I guess that helps a lot.
When reading about this subject, I have the feeling that we've been visiting a house (DNA) and recently discovered a hole in the ground. With stairs. We ignored it a bit, thinking it was just a small cellar. But then we looked at it a bit more and it turned out there's an entire freakin' labyrinth underneath our nice, ordered house. With monsters.
DNA already was quite complex (one human genome sequence is a lot of data, approx 1.5 TB when cleaned up) but with epigenetics in the mix and other influences as well, it looks like the computer field is left in the dust right now, overwhelmed by data. The Exadata machine and other appliances will help but oh boy... Information Science has a lot of work just from this field alone. And I'm not even going into the field of astronomy or the data from the Large Hadron Collider.
Medical Information Science (or Medical CS) will be a big field in the near future. I can see a lot of hard problems showing up there, and throwing more hardware at the problem will help, but not as much as smarter algorithms. If I had to go to the university again, I'd specialize in this field.
Son of a friend was in the same position except at 6 weeks old. They tried medicine first as well but it didn't work (problems were too big). So he had surgery. This is the Netherlands btw so you get surgery when you need it (but mandatory insurance here). Anyway they had licensed surgeons (academic hospital) and still they tried medication first, because that was what would be the best for the child.
Heart surgery for kids under 2 years of ages is a high-risk game. We were told the kid had an 80% survival chance *this year* because 10 years earlier it was just 25%. They are making VERY fast progress and every year you don't have to have surgery, survival chances increase. The kid is older, the heart bigger, the condition (hopefully) better, etc. So Kaiser may actually be doing the best thing possible: he *will* need surgery, but if he doesn't need it *now* chances are that the delay increases his odds of survival. And without details it will be hard to tell, especially for non-heart surgeons.
I'm not factoring in the damage he will suffer from his condition, though: you will need a second opinion for that.
They block facebook and twitter, denying those companies access to advertising revenue (well, facebook at least) and game income (facebook again - i haven't a clue what twitters revenue model is). Since they are thereby protecting the Chinese companies that are doing the same thing (weibo, most notably) its a trade issue.
A ban on imports from certain (or all) countries is a WTO violation, normally.
They won't find bombs, but they may find drugs. IIRC, it wasn't the original purpose of the TSA to be another DEA. A few good busts and you may be stuck with them, violating more liberties every day, all in the name of fighting "terrorism".
I just read an article by a scientist who specializes in stuff that "suddenly" changes. He's getting pretty scared right now because we don't really need all that much continued fossil fuel-burning to enter a period where the balance can suddenly tilt towards releasing the greenhouse gases in the arctic oceans and tundra.
After the Cold War ended, I thought Earth was getting safer. But it's not, it's way more out of control than the Cold War ever was. Because ultimately, noone would win a nuclear war. But here, individually, everyone who does NOT stop burning fossil fuel will get ahead of others. Until they all reach the end of the road at the same time. I fear tremendous damage will be done by the time some measures actually get implemented.
He was probably referring to the US customs... they've been known to impound laptops from foreign travellers and not return them. They're not even required to do so in a reasonable timespan (AFAIK).
... And I forgot to post a link from 27-sep-2011, with the title "Stock traders are worse than psychopaths", citing research showing even higher levels of egoism, narcissism and a great willingness to damage the competition in order to get ahead, no matter what.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no need at all to prove "mutations are good". All it takes is a single dominant mutation that benefits the species and causes members of that species to be more succesfull *in their habitat*. Even if 10000000000 mutations are bad, none of them matter if one is beneficial because *that* mutation will be the one that will carry forward. If you want to dispute this, *you* have to prove that *no* mutation can *ever* be good in *any* environment. And that hypothesis has been falsified for a long time now.
Case in point: white people are carriers of a mutation, that caused them to be more sensitive to the sun. A harmful mutation *in Africa* but beneficial in different circumstances where you don't get much sun and thus vitamine D - such as in Europe during the Ice Ages.
And I'm not even taking into account that a lot of evolutionary paths were minor adaptations in already existing functionality, basically within the normal genetic variation you could expect, with the environment exerting strong pressure on survival of one end of the range. Example: if your food is found at 2 meters, your average max reach is 1.80m and the normal variation in height is +/- 20 cm., I can guarantee you that either the species will start building platforms, or only the tall ones will eat.
I'll try a translation:
Up until now, it was easy to spot fish that was loaded to the gills with toxic chemicals, because they had weird growths. Now they have evolved resistances, you can't spot them by visual inspection anymore so it will be easier to insert toxic fish into the foodchain. We then return to the times were, if you had a dinner, the host was required to take a bite to show that nothing was poisonous. But for people who are genetically linked to people with a famous resistance to poison, like Rasputin, this may not even cause them to blink - so you also need to check whether your host is a descendant from Rasputin or other likely resistant folk (Borgia family would be candidates :)).
So basically, we had early warning signals from fish but now *we* have become the early warning signals (canaries in the coalmine) - and if we live, the food may be safe. Hurray for dumping chemicals in the water.
Ofcourse, the OP phrased this much nicer than my translation.
Houston isn't any where near the border.
But who knows what the future brings, right? :)
A Vietnamese friend of mine was 24 years old, with a great job at a luxury brand car import company, and he drove a very sleek mercedes. After he sold it, he stuck with less visible cars because he couldn't drive anywhere without being pulled over at least once, in that mercedes :) (24 year old vietnamese guy, dressed in very current fashion, sunglasses, driving a new mercedes with tinted glass windows - even I thought he looked like a pimp or a drugsdealer and I'm not even a cop :))
I must remember that insult - it's quite good :)
Much of the reason Diginotar is out of business is precisely because they weren't timely, upfront and open about the issue. They delayed any notification until after it was known by other means. They understated the extent of the issue, and AFAIK, never did admit to the full scale of the compromise. Quite simply, their own actions showed they could not be trusted.
That's why other CAs should have learned from that event, and should quickly be public and open about any compromises they may discover.
Also, the resulting investigation uncovered a gigantic mess. They built a castle, locked the gates, had it certified, then made huge holes in the walls because the gates were delaying the traffic... they didn't understand security at all and that was the final straw, IMO.
Houten (Utrecht)
Nope, there are more candidates than Groningen :) It's in the middle of the country and it's not filled with students. It's Houten.
It is Houten (Utrecht).
I live in such a town (national biking town in 2008 or so, +/- 50K humanoid inhabitants). It's quite a pleasant place to live in. Kids go to school and everywhere else on their bikes, most people go shopping etc. on their bikes. I can get out to the highway in 5 minutes so my commutes are painless too. The onliest thing you CANNOT do is moving directly with the car from my house to another address in this town in a straight line: you always have to go around the town then back into the area you need to visit. Still, that's a very small price to pay since most of my destinations are outside town and the city center has good parking. And I have a railway station nearby with a direct train into the center every 15 minutes. Net result: almost noone takes the car to get around the city, unless you have to do a lot of shopping.
If only more cities would be designed as smart as this one, we'd have less accidents and less pollution. But the designers are very smart (wrote books, won prizes) and also live in the city. I guess that helps a lot.
Perhaps we could offset the nuclear winter by putting out more greenhouse gasses? :)
When reading about this subject, I have the feeling that we've been visiting a house (DNA) and recently discovered a hole in the ground. With stairs. We ignored it a bit, thinking it was just a small cellar. But then we looked at it a bit more and it turned out there's an entire freakin' labyrinth underneath our nice, ordered house. With monsters.
DNA already was quite complex (one human genome sequence is a lot of data, approx 1.5 TB when cleaned up) but with epigenetics in the mix and other influences as well, it looks like the computer field is left in the dust right now, overwhelmed by data. The Exadata machine and other appliances will help but oh boy... Information Science has a lot of work just from this field alone. And I'm not even going into the field of astronomy or the data from the Large Hadron Collider.
Medical Information Science (or Medical CS) will be a big field in the near future. I can see a lot of hard problems showing up there, and throwing more hardware at the problem will help, but not as much as smarter algorithms. If I had to go to the university again, I'd specialize in this field.
You're confusing "wicked" with "radical!" :)
That accountability worked real good with houses. Let's go for another round...
Son of a friend was in the same position except at 6 weeks old. They tried medicine first as well but it didn't work (problems were too big). So he had surgery. This is the Netherlands btw so you get surgery when you need it (but mandatory insurance here). Anyway they had licensed surgeons (academic hospital) and still they tried medication first, because that was what would be the best for the child.
Heart surgery for kids under 2 years of ages is a high-risk game. We were told the kid had an 80% survival chance *this year* because 10 years earlier it was just 25%. They are making VERY fast progress and every year you don't have to have surgery, survival chances increase. The kid is older, the heart bigger, the condition (hopefully) better, etc. So Kaiser may actually be doing the best thing possible: he *will* need surgery, but if he doesn't need it *now* chances are that the delay increases his odds of survival. And without details it will be hard to tell, especially for non-heart surgeons.
I'm not factoring in the damage he will suffer from his condition, though: you will need a second opinion for that.
They block facebook and twitter, denying those companies access to advertising revenue (well, facebook at least) and game income (facebook again - i haven't a clue what twitters revenue model is). Since they are thereby protecting the Chinese companies that are doing the same thing (weibo, most notably) its a trade issue.
A ban on imports from certain (or all) countries is a WTO violation, normally.
I've seen a bit too many of his type and I fear it was a completely serious remark.
They won't find bombs, but they may find drugs. IIRC, it wasn't the original purpose of the TSA to be another DEA. A few good busts and you may be stuck with them, violating more liberties every day, all in the name of fighting "terrorism".
If you re-read your comment while sober, you'll find out why it wasn't such a hot idea to post while being drunk AND stoned at the same time.
A win-win situation all along :)
I just read an article by a scientist who specializes in stuff that "suddenly" changes. He's getting pretty scared right now because we don't really need all that much continued fossil fuel-burning to enter a period where the balance can suddenly tilt towards releasing the greenhouse gases in the arctic oceans and tundra.
After the Cold War ended, I thought Earth was getting safer. But it's not, it's way more out of control than the Cold War ever was. Because ultimately, noone would win a nuclear war. But here, individually, everyone who does NOT stop burning fossil fuel will get ahead of others. Until they all reach the end of the road at the same time. I fear tremendous damage will be done by the time some measures actually get implemented.
There are literally thousands of companies who have created time-zone databases in order to deal with the complexities that exists with all of this.
Do you have any evidence to back up this claim?
You must be new here...
I agree.
It totally should have been a car analogy, like BMW versus Mercedes.
He was probably referring to the US customs... they've been known to impound laptops from foreign travellers and not return them. They're not even required to do so in a reasonable timespan (AFAIK).
... And I forgot to post a link from 27-sep-2011, with the title "Stock traders are worse than psychopaths", citing research showing even higher levels of egoism, narcissism and a great willingness to damage the competition in order to get ahead, no matter what.
See http://www.nuzakelijk.nl/de-koffiecorner/2626372/handelaren-erger-dan-psychopaten.html (Dutch article, use Google Translate).
In what way does western culture promote psychopathic behaviour?
By rewarding bankers and lawyers with way to much money :P