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User: quark101

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  1. Re:Awesome on Alzheimer's Transmission Pathway Discovered · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Alzheimer's is a terrible disease, not just for the person who has it, but especially so for those who are close to the afflicted. The slow, degenerative, wasting of the mind is horrifying to watch, as the person that was once bright and lively gets turned into a shell of their former self. Not able to grasp what's going on around them, or who they're talking to, the person can easily become terrified, lost, and confused, made all the more painful by the fact that they don't know who their children are or why they're here.

    I know that identifying the underlying cause and developing a treatment are often worlds apart, but I'm glad nonetheless to see this advancement, if merely for the fact that one day others won't have to experience the pain I did as I watched people I love succumb to Alzheimer's.

  2. Dreaming is a Private Thing on Manufacturing Dreams · · Score: 2

    This reminds me of the Isaac Asimov story Dreaming is a Private Thing where dreams are manufactured and sold as one of the ultimate forms of entertainment. Instead of looking at some of the obvious implications that might spring to mind, Asimov (as he often did) looks instead at the lives of the people who produce the dreams that are then recorded for others to view, and what life might be like for such a person.

    What the article talks about is, of course, very different then the story, but with advances in brain imaging and research it may one day be a possibility.

  3. What about Silent Video? on Cop Seeks Wiretapping Charges For Woman Who Videotaped Beating · · Score: 1

    As the legal definition of a wiretap seems to hinge on covertly recording communications, I wonder how a silent video would fare. As the law seems to permit taking pictures in public places, and taking video without sound is essentially just taking a bunch of pictures very rapidly, it would be reasonable to assume that such a device doesn't fall under the definition of a wiretap.

    This would, of course, side step the real issue, but it could be an interesting case nonetheless for bringing about a ruling one way or another.

  4. Why Spanish? on US Intelligence Agency to Compile Mountain of Metaphors · · Score: 1

    I can understand the desire to have metaphors for Iranian Farsi and Russian, to help keep a better watch on the governments in those two countries, but why Mexican Spanish? The only thing that comes to mind is the massive amount of drug trafficking in that country. It seems like Chinese would be a better language to focus on, given the worries that many people have about that country.

  5. Look at your controller... Now back to me on PC Gamers Too Good For Consoles Gamers? · · Score: 3, Funny

    The Old Spice guy agrees with this article.

  6. There Is No Optimal Solution on Strict Order Boarding Would Get Planes in the Sky Faster · · Score: 1

    This is one of those problems, that while it sounds deceptively simple to solve, and is, given a perfect world, becomes horribly unmanageable to solve once you factor in real life. Having done a significant amount of research on this problem for the Mathematical Contest in Modeling last year, there are many more things that need to be considered then would first appear.

    Some of the things that need to be considered with this problem:

    To board in any sort of weird order, you have to spend time beforehand ordering people into the groups that you want them to be in. I'll let you think about this for a second. You're trying to get about 100-300 people, who are tired, irritated, with scawling babies, and rather disinterested to organize into some sort of coherent and well planned out structure... WITHOUT using a loudspeaker. Those of you that have been in marching band can contest to how difficult this is.

    Most airplanes only have a single aisle, and generally, it is narrow enough that only one person can stand in it at a time. If you try to board one row at a time, maybe, if you're lucky, two people will be taking their seat at a time, while everyone else in the plane queues up behind them. Add in the fact that if the window seat arrives after the aisle and middle seats, they both generally have to get out of their seats to let the window sit down, creating even more delays.

    Luggage. If you've ever flown, you've probably seen people trying to cram all of their bags into the overhead bins. If your bin is full, the most natural thing to do is to go and look for one that isn't. Once again though, due to the narrowness of the aisles, this means that you will be holding up many more people while you stuff your things above everyone's heads.

    Families, especially those with multiple small children, really don't want to be broken into individual members just to be seated. They all have seats together, generally, so they want to get to those seats together, the boarding order of the airline be damned. And really, can you blame them? What 7 year old wants to have to wait in line, alone, with a bunch of really tall adults, and then have to find a chair in an unfamiliar environment?

    First class can generally be ignored in the problem. Because the number of first class fliers compared to the number of coach fliers is very small, they have minimal issues boarding and the time it takes to board them is likewise minimal.

    The end results that we came up with is that on average, letting people board randomly, in whatever order they please, beat out every other model that we simulated. On average. Although we didn't have the time and/or resources to come up and run a model, it would be very interesting to model the way Southwest boards their flights, where they have no preassigned seating. But because that factors in the decision making capabilities of people, it would be a far more difficult task to model then simply what order they line up in. That being said though, Southwest does generally have boarding times that are better then other major airlines.

    Anyways, stuff to think about.

  7. Brilliant! on Chinese Pirates Copy iPhone, Make Improvements · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "The typical cloner either uses off-the-shelf code, writes something entirely new, or modifies a publicly available Linux-based system"

    Doesn't that describe just about every single software project that anyone here has ever done? We either use something we already have, hack some other code into doing what we want, and then write new code as a last resort.

    Sometimes I am astounded by the brilliance of the observations that are posted on the front page.

  8. Myst... on Can Nintendo Save the Adventure Game Genre? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Granted, I'm not old enough to remember any of the adventure games from the 80s, but Myst essentially defined video games for me, and I've played through the 4 sequels and abolustely loved them. Point and Click will always have a fond place in my heart, and I've been really sad to see it go.

    Games like Final Fantasy and Oblivion, while they are really, really nice, just aren't the same. The basic concept of the game is different. There are puzzles yes, but they are a secondary element, instead of being an integral part of the story and experience.

  9. Re:Is it just me, or is this a waste? on Big Blue Designing Chip to Decode the Big Bang · · Score: 1

    That's a very short sighted view of things. This is the same sort of "Blue Sky" research that places like Bell Labs did tremendous amounts of. Just because there isn't a potential application now doesn't mean there won't be one in 5, 50, or 500 years. What about quantum mechanics? why do we really need to know what happens at those scales? Who really cares about it? How is it going to impact me? Oh, yeah, that's right, this same kind of 'pointless' research that underlies all of modern semi conductors and almost the entire technology industry. Who knows? Maybe big bang research will be the underpinnings of the next major technological revolution. Maybe it won't. The only way to know is to do the research and to see where it leads.

  10. Re:Kill disk on What Live CDs Do You Carry Around? · · Score: 1

    I've done a bunch of medium scale imaging, and based on the lessons that I learned from that, something like what you suggested is easily doable, or at least I think it would be. I'm not sure about what kind of unattended and imaging utitilites are available for 98, but XP can be installed completely unatteded. The way I would do it is to wipe, then boot into Ghost or a similiar program, and then push the image onto the freshly wiped harddrve. From what I understand, Vista would be perfect for this type of thing.

    However, I have never done any kind of foresnsic analysis of harddrives, nor do I know anything about it, so I'm not sure if this would look believable. Touches you suggested like having deleted files will (I believe) carry over to the new disk, and the internet history certainly does, but the dates on all those files will still be from when you make the disk, which may look suspicious under the close scrutiny of a forensic analysis.

    Interesting idea, now I want to see if I can get it to work, because you never know when something like this is going to be useful.

  11. Surprised? on Unbox Too Restricted and Too Expensive? · · Score: 1

    Is anyone honesty surprised at this? I for one am not.

  12. Article Text on ThePirateBay.org Raided and Shut Down · · Score: 0, Redundant

    ThePirateBay.org Raided - Servers Seized
    May 31, 2006
    Thomas Mennecke


    In their native Sweden, ThePirateBay.org enjoyed a level of immunity from copyright prosecution rarely seen in the file-sharing world. Often defiant in the face of those wishing to enforce their intellectual property rights, ThePirateBay.org would go on to become one of the premier BitTorrent indexing and tracking sites.

    As one of the largest trackers, ThePirateBay.org largely replaced the search engine SuprNova.org. SuprNova.org met its demise in late 2004, when it was under pressure from the entertainment industry to shut it operation down. Conversely, such pressure has been ineffective against ThePiratebay.org.

    When such political pressure fails, the use of force is typically the next course of action. In a move that many thought would never come, Slyck.com learned this morning that ThePirateBay.org was raided by Swedish police.

    "...The police right now is taking all of our servers, to check if there is a crime there or not (they are actually not sure)," ThePirateBay.org spokesperson "brokep" told Slyck.com.

    The seizure of ThePirateBay.org's entire server farm will guarantee this BitTorrent tracker will remain offline until the police complete their investigation. The uncertainty on the part of the police may stem from the fact ThePirateBay.org's servers only host .torrent files, not actual copyrighted material. As a tracker, ThePirateBay.org's function is to index .torrent files and to direct BitTorrent traffic and maintain the swarm (uploads and downloads.) The downloaded .torrent file contains all the necessary information to locate and download the queried file. The legality of indirectly linking to copyrighted material has yet to be tested by Swedish courts.

    Whether this will keep ThePirateBay.org offline indefinitely is another matter.

    "We are not sure when it will return, but we are moving it to another country if necessary," brokep said.

    According to The Pirate Party, a Swedish copyright reform organization, the raid also seized Piratbyrån's (the Pirate Bureau) servers. Piratbyrån is a educational and quasi-political organization which performs a public servic role similar to The Pirate Party. In addition, The Pirate Party reports "...the servers where located in a protected area, to which the police had no legal right to enter..." Approximately 50 police participated in the raid, which placed into custody two PirateBay.org personnel.

    The premature departure of ThePirateBay.org marks a significant turning point in the BitTorrent community. Although it's not currently known what, if any, entertainment entity is behind this raid, failure to secure ThePirateBay.org's permanent removal will only bolster this tracker's position of defiance.

  13. Re:Materialisation on The World According to Google · · Score: 4, Funny

    You are obviously mistaken my friend. Things like this don't evolve. A "higher intelligence" or "intelligent designer," as it may be, directs and leads their growth into new patterns and directions that would be too complex to arise on their own otherwise.

  14. Re:Well then, is it or isn't it? on Symantec Competing Unfairly Against Spybot? · · Score: 5, Informative

    I routinely pull computer images (Ghost 8.0 Corporate Suite), but that I've seen, there has never been a problem with spybot corrupting the image files. Of the several hundred gigs of images that we have stored, only one has ever gotten corrupted, that I can recall. That one image was of a computer that was most certainly not running Spybot though.

  15. Athletes? on Scientists Grow Blood Vessels Using Skin Cells · · Score: 2, Interesting

    With athletes always looking for a competitive edge, what could this kind of technology do to professional sports? It seems to me, if you can increase the blood flow to your vital muscles (sport dependent), then you would gain an enormous advantage over your opponents.

    Will this be the next big sports controversy? And what could be done about it, if it doesn't use drugs, and is grown from the patient itself?

  16. My Temper Out the Window... on Join IT Support For Abuse and Despair · · Score: 1

    But really... Who hasn't experienced this over and over and over? The sad truth though, is that it probably won't get much better.

    What incentive do people have to learn more about computers when someone will hold their hand everytime something goes wrong? From my own experience, the reason I can do so much is because I've been forced to learn how, because I don't have a go-to person, and because I use computers all the time.

    How have others gained their skills?

  17. Re:That's sad... on Overclocked Radeon Card Breaks 1 GHz · · Score: 1

    You make a jest out of it...

    It's true for me...

  18. So... on End User License Gems · · Score: 1

    Are you sure you don't want to change your answer to the poll? I read the EULA... Maybe?

  19. *Crystal Ball* on Gizmondo Tilts At Windmills · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm seeing... It's coming... A repeat of the NGage... That's it... Yes, it is.

  20. Re:Today's Nuclear Power on Floating Nuclear Power Station · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You really want an answer? Ok. I won't use the excuse that coal plants generate way more waste than the nuclear ones do. You've heard of Yucca Mountain, right? A big huge mountain, out in the middle of Nowhere, Nevada? As it stands right now, Yucca Mountain can safely contain the nuclear waste for ~10,000 years. Personally, I think that that is more than adequate. If we aren't off this planet in 10,000 years, than we all deserve to die a slow, painful death of radiation poisoning. Look how far we have come in the last 2,000 years. Now, just try to imagine where we will be in the next 5,000 alone. And besides, there is only a finite amount of resources in the world. We will eventually have to get more from somewhere else.

    You ask if I would be willing to have a nuclear waste repository in my backyard? Actually, it wouldn't bother me a bit. Unlike some people, I geneally try not to be unreasonably afraid of things that aren't going to harm me. The new reactors are safe, and the way that they are planning on storing the material is safe.

    Have you ever looked at the plans for Yucca Mountain? It isn't just a shoddy, half-assed government project like many people have come to expect. The material is buried almost literally in the heart of the mountain, in living stone? Do you know what that means? The rock is still growing and chaning. The tunnels in the Yucca Mountain complex are slowly sinking down, to eventually seal off the material even more than we will have already done so. The containers are made to be highly corrosion resistant, and did I mention that it is in the middle of nowhere?

    It is one thing to fear something. It is quite another to have a baseless, irrational fear of the same thing.

  21. Today's Nuclear Power on Floating Nuclear Power Station · · Score: 4, Insightful

    is actually very safe. Because of tremendous advances in both safety and efficiency, nuclear power is actually a very viable alternative to fossil fuels for power generation. However, due to very high profile disasters (ala 3-Mile Island and Chernobyl), the American public is deathly afraid of just the idea. In contrast, I know that France supplies a large part of the power through the use of these more modern generators, and to my knoweledge, there have been no problems.

  22. Re:Perhaps the price will not increase on Blu Ray Drive Will Cost $100 Per PlayStation 3 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But what you are forgetting is that Microsoft DIDN'T make up the loss. They only made a profit on the Xbox division one quarter out of the Xbox's entire lifespan. And that one quarter was when Halo2 was released.

  23. Re:Water City on 9 Weeks to Pump Out New Orleans? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The reason that they can't just build over the water is a more complicated than you make it seem. First, completely building over everything would cost significatnly more in both time and money than just pumping out the city. Secondly, If you just build over the water, then you will have a city built upon an inherintly unstable foundation i.e. A large cavern underground. Would you want to be in an office building that is built over a city sized hole in the ground? Finally, I think that many of the people in the city itself would highly object, simply because of all the history that would be destroyed by doing that to the city.

    As for the Dutch, they also build levees and dikes, but they have a little bit more experience with this problem than does New Orleans. And yes, the Dutch have been flooded multiple times in the past, many times from big storms, just like this one.

  24. Re:Just "Being Google" not enough. on Google Instant Messenger Coming Really (or Not?) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Part of the allure though is that it will be by Google. Their name alone is enough to make some people switch. In the eyes of many, Google can do no wrong, especially since it has been releasing so many cool programs for free, ala Google Earth, the Sidebar, Gmail, etc.

  25. Public Interest in NASA... on Animated View from the Mars Rover · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It is good to be reminded that despite the many setbacks that (unfortunately) plague the agency, NASA still does a lot of good research. Unfortunately, the public is often too short-sighted and ignorant to realize this, which has resulted in NASA's budget being slowly subjected to Congress's Axe, as the public objects less and less.

    Whatever happened to research for research's sake? Don't people realize that this is often the research that yeilds the most amazing commerical rewards in the long run?