The truth is it's not hard to show mathematically that non-bulk mail, even of the most annoying kind, won't ever become a problem worth spending much worry on. Since we want to be sure we protect individual person to person mail from any collateral damage in the fight against spam, it seems misplaced to worry about more than bulk mail.
Well, as someone who has some pages that show up in Chinese and Taiwanese and Hong Kong and Russian search engines, I can say that when you think of only 25 million people being online, the concept of one message being spam sounds silly.
But I get spam from India, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Russia, and a bunch of other places, so the idea of 6,000,000,000 people all being able to send one message may not be spam to you, but it sure the heck is spam to ME!
It's the "it's ok so long as just I'm doing it" concept that created spam in the first place. Back when UseNet was fresh and 300 baud modems were fast, it wasn't an issue if someone posted that they wanted to sell their car for $800 or best offer, cause there weren't many of us on it.
But now that all you unwashed masses are online, it's a really big irritation, and why half of the 100 emails I get every day are spam.
The "support" services sector to "stop spam" is very lucrative, just as the "anti-piracy" services sector to "stop virii and worms" is very lucrative.
If someone did something about spam, people might not buy the planned Microsoft Anti-Spyware product that's in beta now, when they'll be made to pay for it on release.
And thus, MSFT can't support a bill that might harm their market share.
Lookit that yoyo, trying to watch content. He's got a box and hooked up his HDCP. Tries to turn it on and all he gets is static. So he throws it back in his hovercar.
refrain I want my, I want my, I want my HDCP. I want my, I want my, I want my HDCP.
He can't use it to watch his microwave oven. It won't show Showgirls in wide-screen full DPI. But he don't worry cause he's really stupid. So he shalls out another $1000 for an extra day.
refrain I want my, I want my, I want my HDCP. I want my, I want my, I want my HDCP.
Can't watch anime from Japan cause he's in North America, can't watch Italian soap operas if he's in Germany, can't even watch the Olympics in High Def, cause they won't let you see the CBC in DC...
refrainI ditched my, I ditched my, I ditched my HDCP. I ditched my, I ditched my, I ditched my HDCP.
...most people won't be able to watch protected HD content on their computers. -- And when people realize this, they simply won't BUY protected HD content, and it'll end up like DVD-RAM. They're shooting themselves in the foot -- it's that simple.
Of course, for the first while, all the HDTV-philes will want HDTV that costs more than $2000, and settle for sets that cost more than $1100, while most of us will settle for $600 sets.
He knew that he was the engineer (a brilliant one at that) and not the musician. He knew that the musician was the one with the "magical connection" to the instrument. This is what seems to be lacking in the rest of IT when thinking about the end users. He "got it" and nearly everyone else doesn't.
In the early days, there were a lot of electronic music engineers who put on shows for instruments they developed - and half the audience were electronics engineers or computer science/math grads. Then, as electronic (non-guitar/drum) music became more popular, people migrated from the general music scene into it.
and right now, if you're not an FPS fanatic, there's not much on the xBox 360 to interest you, except for the cross-platform games that won't really use it.
My friends aren't hard core gamers. They don't look up specs or read online chats
Well, some of my son's friend are hard-core gamers, and they're severely underwhelmed. My son went down to the Game Testing Expo in Seattle's Pacific Science Center this Saturday, hoping to see something from the xBox 360 or PS3 or Nintendo Revolution, but there wasn't anything there except mist (vapor is too strong a word). So he and all his teen friends seem to be leaning towards planning on buying the Nintendo Revolution when it comes out, as the game choices for the xBox were severely underwhelming.
But they did love the Dance Dance Revolution demos, even if they were single-player only - that and some kind of Crystal Edition for Sonic were tops on their fun games we must buy list.
I don't know what I'm talking about, but I'd guess from an energy standpoint it is unlikely that a manmade petroleum making life form would get out of control. The nice thing about oil is it stores a lot of energy. If we enslave this life form for efficient oil production then I'd guess it would have less than usual energy left over to reproduce and put into its survival. It will probably have to be babied to live.
Now maybe if they gave it, or it evolved, the ability to use petroleum as a sort of fat for its own energy storage, it could be a little more dangerous?
That would be a fairly radical change, and isn't something I'm particularly concerned about. But an interesting concept. Considering that we now use captured mitochondrial DNA to create our energy source, there is precedent, but would require a long string of unlikely circumstances to occur, and probably in a more hospitable environment.
This completely different from some hypothetical 'general' parasite which can happly munch through a large variety of plants. Having very specific organisms for different parts of a lifecycle does not mean that a parasite is non-specific - just that the specificity changes. Having one or two backup species does not make a parasite 'general'.
Ah, but you're not allowing for species drift, hybridization - which has occurred in supposedly inactive non-reproducing species, or point mutations. Solar radiation alone can have interesting effects, especially in areas where the ozone layer is not available - for example much of Australia and Argentina and South Africa.
until we build the beasties, we won't know exactly what they do. even bioengineering luminescence can act differently if it escapes.
You mean like Ebola mutating into another species... um, sure, that worked really well...
Oh? Did we give up and all die off already?
My point is the mutations did occur. Just like antiobiotic and treatment resistant strains of various things, which are a major and increasing problem today, especially Tuberculosis.
For an easier understanding of that last one, I just saw a new movie with the director present last night, based on a John le Carre novel The Constant Gardener, but which was a fairly decent moral and ethical discussion [behind the story] of the issues involved. Plus the actress is hot...
This is extremely unlikely to happen. Different plant species have different proteins and biochemicals, and an organism tailored to deal with the product of one plant is not going to be effective at dealing with those of others. This is why parasitic organisms and infective bacteria, viruses and fungi are so specific to particular species.
No, that's not true. For example, we find Leishmania using canines (dogs) as a reservoir for infection, and then infecting humans.
Cross-species parasitic organisms are fairly common, as a recent work by some European scientists in France and the UK said, with a publication date of 2005, and unpredicatable results can happen even by removing quail from a parasitic ecosystem, as many parasites have multiple hosts in their life cycles, including backup or reserve (temporary/seasonal) hosts.
So, I disagree. It only needs to utilize the other plants and metabolize enough to survive until it gets to its desired or sufficiently optimal source, but that won't stop it's behavior, especially if it's a primitive organism.
Now, virii or bacteria, those tend to be more specific, but the literature shows that they are much more adaptable than you may think on surface inspection, especially with mutations due to unexpected cross-breeding (including the original non-bioengineered organism).
a more reasonable plan might be the a hybrid between the Euro model of lower consumption and increased non-fossil fuel usage - where they are moving to 20 percent wind/solar/biofuel usage by 2012 (and half way there) and expanding use of lower energy cost high speed trains instead of planes and better transit - and the US model of expanding energy supply.
We could easily migrate to expanding wind farms and solar farms and biofuel usage - storing stored energy via catalysis (H20 to H2 and O2) in fuel cells for some vehicle usage, maybe thru a farm electrification process where they put up wind turbines or solar arrays and use that to fill up fuel cells, with existing hydro and fission nuclear as well [note coal to fuel cell transfer ratios are much worse than the ones i mentioned so i skipped them - use coal for direct electricity or heat instead]. Then phase in hybrids and fuel cell trucks/SUVs/etc over time, removing current inefficient tax credits for inefficient vehicles - allowing the market to shape demand by not subsidizing dead-end technology that gets lousy mpg too.
But that would be smart.
Fusion is underway in France. But it's always 10-20 years in the future for commercial usage - and has been since I was born in 1960.
in fact, my job is to record all the data from hundreds, well tens of thousands, of such mutations, sometimes only in one small section of the exact same original organism or protein.
and then we crank out thousands of colonies for each of these, or at least we hope we do.
So, from my viewpoint, the concept of manufacturing an organism to crank out oil needs to be thought thru quite a bit - what if it harvests not just the biowaste of corn husks but starts eating grasses and other plant life? what if it hybridizes or mutates (there is solar radiation and chemical interference and ingestion) and loses its species-specific behavior - as bioengineered rice did in China and India when it hybridized with nearby "wild" rice crops due to their farming practices and this thing called nature (wind, storms, excessive rainfall, seeds falling out during transport....).
Be careful what you wish for - sure you may be able to make a plant that creates oil, but it may end up turning your front yard from grass into sludge, or attack your food crops.
It's happened before, and that's one of the joys of biochemistry - biological processes change and adapt and mutate and it's always fascinating in this multiply interdependent bio system we live in.
Now, if you want to experiment on Mars or in space colonies inside large asteroids, be my guest. But we live here. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you need to do something right now...
well, I lived in Texas for a bit too, and in fact I've seen more snow in Seattle, but if we annualize it, you're right - it more frequently snows in Texas than it does in Seattle - but it has been colder in winter on average than on average in Texas.
if I make $58K and put $4.5K in retirement with a 100 percent match 403b (like a 401k) then I am only taxed on $53.5K and have untaxed $9K total investment for $4.5K pretax cost. So I get 100 percent total return, although it is taxable on distribution, so that's a wash.
If I spend $4.5K on my credit card, which is post-tax (good catch there), I get somewhere between 7 and 30 percent return max.
However, in both cases tax eventually comes out.
Your return on the match at 100 percent is still taxed later - the credit card is at 7 to 30 percent (usually 15 to 21 percent) and is post-tax as well.
Or, you'd be way better off refinancing your house/condo and taking the credit card debt at 28 percent and paying it off at 6 percent instead, provided this allows you to refi at a lower or equal rate to your prior mortgage and you don't build up the debt again.
I do heat my seattle apartment with my computer during the winter. Well not the whole apartment since 500 watts is quite insufficient to heat that large of space, but when I close my door my room stays quite comfortable.
And, quite frankly, I use my laptop to keep warm - turn the temperature down, wear a long sleeve shirt and the warmth of the laptop is enough that I don't need to keep the heat cranked up.
When I switched to compact flourescent lightbulbs it cut the heat in my kitchen dramatically - which has meant it doens't get quite so hot in the summer.
Plus, I pay extra for green energy, so a lot of my electric is hydro and wind energy. Bonus.
Slashdot Mirror
Be the first on your block to BUY COLGATE get one!
Can I have a cookie?
No.
Please?
No.
OK.
How about now?
The truth is it's not hard to show mathematically that non-bulk mail, even of the most annoying kind, won't ever become a problem worth spending much worry on. Since we want to be sure we protect individual person to person mail from any collateral damage in the fight against spam, it seems misplaced to worry about more than bulk mail.
Well, as someone who has some pages that show up in Chinese and Taiwanese and Hong Kong and Russian search engines, I can say that when you think of only 25 million people being online, the concept of one message being spam sounds silly.
But I get spam from India, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Russia, and a bunch of other places, so the idea of 6,000,000,000 people all being able to send one message may not be spam to you, but it sure the heck is spam to ME!
It's the "it's ok so long as just I'm doing it" concept that created spam in the first place. Back when UseNet was fresh and 300 baud modems were fast, it wasn't an issue if someone posted that they wanted to sell their car for $800 or best offer, cause there weren't many of us on it.
But now that all you unwashed masses are online, it's a really big irritation, and why half of the 100 emails I get every day are spam.
We won't support it.
The "support" services sector to "stop spam" is very lucrative, just as the "anti-piracy" services sector to "stop virii and worms" is very lucrative.
If someone did something about spam, people might not buy the planned Microsoft Anti-Spyware product that's in beta now, when they'll be made to pay for it on release.
And thus, MSFT can't support a bill that might harm their market share.
Sigh.
Anyways, your $600 figure exists for 27 inch Samsung HD set. Actually, according to Sears the tv is $449.
I meant when it was $300, not $449. Then most people will buy $600 sets.
President's Day sales, next year.
nothing left to lose ... [copy completed]
good thing we have plug-in flash cards with recording capabilities nowadays ...
Lookit that yoyo, trying to watch content.
...
He's got a box and hooked up his HDCP.
Tries to turn it on and all he gets is static.
So he throws it back in his hovercar.
refrain I want my, I want my, I want my HDCP.
I want my, I want my, I want my HDCP.
He can't use it to watch his microwave oven.
It won't show Showgirls in wide-screen full DPI.
But he don't worry cause he's really stupid.
So he shalls out another $1000 for an extra day.
refrain I want my, I want my, I want my HDCP.
I want my, I want my, I want my HDCP.
Can't watch anime from Japan cause he's in North America, can't watch Italian soap operas if he's in Germany, can't even watch the Olympics in High Def, cause they won't let you see the CBC in DC
refrainI ditched my, I ditched my, I ditched my HDCP.
I ditched my, I ditched my, I ditched my HDCP.
.
.
.
can you say refund?
...most people won't be able to watch protected HD content on their computers.
--
And when people realize this, they simply won't BUY protected HD content, and it'll end up like DVD-RAM. They're shooting themselves in the foot -- it's that simple.
What's DVD-RAM? Is that like a Frisbee?
it's not worth bothering with.
Of course, for the first while, all the HDTV-philes will want HDTV that costs more than $2000, and settle for sets that cost more than $1100, while most of us will settle for $600 sets.
He knew that he was the engineer (a brilliant one at that) and not the musician. He knew that the musician was the one with the "magical connection" to the instrument. This is what seems to be lacking in the rest of IT when thinking about the end users. He "got it" and nearly everyone else doesn't.
In the early days, there were a lot of electronic music engineers who put on shows for instruments they developed - and half the audience were electronics engineers or computer science/math grads. Then, as electronic (non-guitar/drum) music became more popular, people migrated from the general music scene into it.
But without Moog, all would have been for naught.
I do not care for the new style jap-rpg's, so I play old school on my psx if I want that (no, I don't have a ps2, nor do I want one).
Strange that, most of us here in Seattle love the new style japanese rpg's.
I preffer shrubberies myself...
...
Ah, yes, but are they African shrubberies, or North American shrubberies?
Personally, I'm kind of partial to South American shrubberies
and right now, if you're not an FPS fanatic, there's not much on the xBox 360 to interest you, except for the cross-platform games that won't really use it.
My friends aren't hard core gamers. They don't look up specs or read online chats
Well, some of my son's friend are hard-core gamers, and they're severely underwhelmed. My son went down to the Game Testing Expo in Seattle's Pacific Science Center this Saturday, hoping to see something from the xBox 360 or PS3 or Nintendo Revolution, but there wasn't anything there except mist (vapor is too strong a word). So he and all his teen friends seem to be leaning towards planning on buying the Nintendo Revolution when it comes out, as the game choices for the xBox were severely underwhelming.
But they did love the Dance Dance Revolution demos, even if they were single-player only - that and some kind of Crystal Edition for Sonic were tops on their fun games we must buy list.
I don't know what I'm talking about, but I'd guess from an energy standpoint it is unlikely that a manmade petroleum making life form would get out of control. The nice thing about oil is it stores a lot of energy. If we enslave this life form for efficient oil production then I'd guess it would have less than usual energy left over to reproduce and put into its survival. It will probably have to be babied to live.
Now maybe if they gave it, or it evolved, the ability to use petroleum as a sort of fat for its own energy storage, it could be a little more dangerous?
That would be a fairly radical change, and isn't something I'm particularly concerned about. But an interesting concept. Considering that we now use captured mitochondrial DNA to create our energy source, there is precedent, but would require a long string of unlikely circumstances to occur, and probably in a more hospitable environment.
This completely different from some hypothetical 'general' parasite which can happly munch through a large variety of plants. Having very specific organisms for different parts of a lifecycle does not mean that a parasite is non-specific - just that the specificity changes. Having one or two backup species does not make a parasite 'general'.
Ah, but you're not allowing for species drift, hybridization - which has occurred in supposedly inactive non-reproducing species, or point mutations. Solar radiation alone can have interesting effects, especially in areas where the ozone layer is not available - for example much of Australia and Argentina and South Africa.
until we build the beasties, we won't know exactly what they do. even bioengineering luminescence can act differently if it escapes.
so... i see we can patent life now?
perhaps we should attempt the founding of a free(speech+beer)/open genetic library...
I think MSFT already patented it. Especially the bugs which are now referred to as "features".
You mean like Ebola mutating into another species ... um, sure, that worked really well ...
...
Oh? Did we give up and all die off already?
My point is the mutations did occur. Just like antiobiotic and treatment resistant strains of various things, which are a major and increasing problem today, especially Tuberculosis.
For an easier understanding of that last one, I just saw a new movie with the director present last night, based on a John le Carre novel The Constant Gardener, but which was a fairly decent moral and ethical discussion [behind the story] of the issues involved. Plus the actress is hot
This is extremely unlikely to happen. Different plant species have different proteins and biochemicals, and an organism tailored to deal with the product of one plant is not going to be effective at dealing with those of others. This is why parasitic organisms and infective bacteria, viruses and fungi are so specific to particular species.
No, that's not true. For example, we find Leishmania using canines (dogs) as a reservoir for infection, and then infecting humans.
Cross-species parasitic organisms are fairly common, as a recent work by some European scientists in France and the UK said, with a publication date of 2005, and unpredicatable results can happen even by removing quail from a parasitic ecosystem, as many parasites have multiple hosts in their life cycles, including backup or reserve (temporary/seasonal) hosts.
So, I disagree. It only needs to utilize the other plants and metabolize enough to survive until it gets to its desired or sufficiently optimal source, but that won't stop it's behavior, especially if it's a primitive organism.
Now, virii or bacteria, those tend to be more specific, but the literature shows that they are much more adaptable than you may think on surface inspection, especially with mutations due to unexpected cross-breeding (including the original non-bioengineered organism).
a more reasonable plan might be the a hybrid between the Euro model of lower consumption and increased non-fossil fuel usage - where they are moving to 20 percent wind/solar/biofuel usage by 2012 (and half way there) and expanding use of lower energy cost high speed trains instead of planes and better transit - and the US model of expanding energy supply.
We could easily migrate to expanding wind farms and solar farms and biofuel usage - storing stored energy via catalysis (H20 to H2 and O2) in fuel cells for some vehicle usage, maybe thru a farm electrification process where they put up wind turbines or solar arrays and use that to fill up fuel cells, with existing hydro and fission nuclear as well [note coal to fuel cell transfer ratios are much worse than the ones i mentioned so i skipped them - use coal for direct electricity or heat instead]. Then phase in hybrids and fuel cell trucks/SUVs/etc over time, removing current inefficient tax credits for inefficient vehicles - allowing the market to shape demand by not subsidizing dead-end technology that gets lousy mpg too.
But that would be smart.
Fusion is underway in France. But it's always 10-20 years in the future for commercial usage - and has been since I was born in 1960.
I dunno, what if such a mutation cropped up on its own without any help from us? I imagine we'd figure it out and handle it either way.
... um, sure, that worked really well ...
You mean like Ebola mutating into another species
in fact, my job is to record all the data from hundreds, well tens of thousands, of such mutations, sometimes only in one small section of the exact same original organism or protein.
....).
and then we crank out thousands of colonies for each of these, or at least we hope we do.
So, from my viewpoint, the concept of manufacturing an organism to crank out oil needs to be thought thru quite a bit - what if it harvests not just the biowaste of corn husks but starts eating grasses and other plant life? what if it hybridizes or mutates (there is solar radiation and chemical interference and ingestion) and loses its species-specific behavior - as bioengineered rice did in China and India when it hybridized with nearby "wild" rice crops due to their farming practices and this thing called nature (wind, storms, excessive rainfall, seeds falling out during transport
Be careful what you wish for - sure you may be able to make a plant that creates oil, but it may end up turning your front yard from grass into sludge, or attack your food crops.
It's happened before, and that's one of the joys of biochemistry - biological processes change and adapt and mutate and it's always fascinating in this multiply interdependent bio system we live in.
Now, if you want to experiment on Mars or in space colonies inside large asteroids, be my guest. But we live here. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you need to do something right now...
well, I lived in Texas for a bit too, and in fact I've seen more snow in Seattle, but if we annualize it, you're right - it more frequently snows in Texas than it does in Seattle - but it has been colder in winter on average than on average in Texas.
woah. hold on.
if I make $58K and put $4.5K in retirement with a 100 percent match 403b (like a 401k) then I am only taxed on $53.5K and have untaxed $9K total investment for $4.5K pretax cost. So I get 100 percent total return, although it is taxable on distribution, so that's a wash.
If I spend $4.5K on my credit card, which is post-tax (good catch there), I get somewhere between 7 and 30 percent return max.
However, in both cases tax eventually comes out.
Your return on the match at 100 percent is still taxed later - the credit card is at 7 to 30 percent (usually 15 to 21 percent) and is post-tax as well.
Or, you'd be way better off refinancing your house/condo and taking the credit card debt at 28 percent and paying it off at 6 percent instead, provided this allows you to refi at a lower or equal rate to your prior mortgage and you don't build up the debt again.
On a serious note...
I do heat my seattle apartment with my computer during the winter. Well not the whole apartment since 500 watts is quite insufficient to heat that large of space, but when I close my door my room stays quite comfortable.
And, quite frankly, I use my laptop to keep warm - turn the temperature down, wear a long sleeve shirt and the warmth of the laptop is enough that I don't need to keep the heat cranked up.
When I switched to compact flourescent lightbulbs it cut the heat in my kitchen dramatically - which has meant it doens't get quite so hot in the summer.
Plus, I pay extra for green energy, so a lot of my electric is hydro and wind energy. Bonus.