This isn't exactly co-evolution because the toxin in the tree bark has evolved independently from the rat for reasons that benefit the tree - there is no co-dependence.
Try co-evolution is where the dependency is mutual - such as with flowers and specific pollinators evolving together.
The article says the behavior seems to be hardwired into the rat's brain; that is, it's instinctive.
Chimpanzees have to be taught to fish for termites with a stick. Chimps don't have any evolutionary adaptation specific to fishing for termites (an opposable thumb is not specific to this behavior or even to primates). My understanding is that some populations of chimps (and even individuals within a population) learn / exhibit this behavior, others don't.
The giant crested rat chews poison bark and grooms its specially adapted crest hairs instinctively. Rats don't need to be taught to chew, or to groom. While it is a little more involved (requires a specific behavior or chewing and grooming) it is very similar to a poison dart frog absorbing, concentrating and sequestering in their skin, toxins from centipedes, ants etc. that they eat. My guess is that all giant crested rats, in an environment where this tree is native, would exhibit the same chewing and grooming behavior.
Lack of glitches? Surely you jest. What are we at - the 9th major release before we have a version that is both stable AND reasonably compliant with current W3C standards? Fulfilled promises? I give you quirks mode a broken box model.
Once this civil war is over, we will be left with taxi drivers, engineers and school teachers with experience in guerrilla warfare, improvised weapons and explosives manufacturing, sabotage and military / para-military tactics. I just hope they all return to teaching, driving hack and designing pipelines once Ghadaffi is deposed.
Without "boots on the ground" NATO and the US has very little influence on the leadership and/or world view of the various factions that currently are united against their resident tyrant. But Ghadaffi is an equal opportunity tyrant who made enemies of both Muslim fundamentalists and progressive modern Muslims and secular Libyans. Currently all of these groups are united to oust Colonel Crazy, but if history is any indication, once that goal is in sight, they will start vying for who controls the future of Lybia. The Mujahideen, who were once western allies, begat the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Who told you this? Coyotes who move into urban parks and green spaces adopt to the local environment and prey. Which most often means fluffy. Coyotes take cats in my neighbourhood all the time.
I'm wondering how well they researched this. Vancouver has lots of Coyotes. You see them quite often if you go for a run in the early morning, often carrying a cat or small dog in their mouths.
Let me try that again - my keyboard is not playing fair.
We only know 2 points on the laffer curve. At a zero tax rate, tax revenues are zero. At a 100% tax rate, tax revenues are also zero. But it's anyone's guess what shape the curve takes between those 2 points.
Ah yes, the infamous laffer curve.
We only no 2 points on the at a zero tax rate, tax revenues are zero. At a 100% tax rate, tax revenues are also zero. However fitting a curve between those two points is a fools errand.
I had a similar situation in my undergrad program on a physics exam.
The school used to keep previous years' exams for certain core courses in the library. You couldn't remove them from the library, but you could use them for reference to study. My friends and I were planning on doing this, but the exam binders in the library were all being used. One friend's brother had just graduated, had taken this course and still had all his old exams. So we studied independently that night, and the next day, rather than study in the library, we met at the pub and used his brother's exam for sample questions. This was only hours before the exam.
Five of us walked into the exam, opened the exam booklet and it was the exact same exam we had just been using as a study source. We all walked out within 30 minutes. The prof had pulled that one year's exam from the library and didn't expect anyone to have access to it. He called us to his office prepared to accuse us of cheating. Knowing what was going to happen, we brought the brother's exam with us. He laughed, congratulated us on our near perfect marks (3 of us made at least one very minor error) and said he would learn from the experience. Best physics mark ever.
My wife is a professor at a very large university.
From her experience, it is much more work for a prof to fail a student than to pass a student. There are usually numerous avenues for appeals and reviews. There is one particular case in which she spent god knows how many hours defending her decision to fail a student who was determined to exhaust every avenue of appeal. The student in question had done extremely poorly on the project component of his final mark (which was marked by the co-teacher) and needed a solid final exam to pass. When he failed the final, he accused her of bias (racism actually). She had to have 2 other profs independently re-mark the exam and average the 3 scores (which resulted in his mark actually being lowered). You would think that would be the end of it right? No, the faculty had to caucus and debate failing him. As it was a core course in a cohort based program, he could not progress without completing it, and as it would have been his 3rd failing mark, the school's policy was to expel him. In the process of the investigation, it was determined that he had employed a ghost writer for his admissions entrance essays; English was not his first language and his skills were rudimentary at best, so it was quite obvious that he hadn't written these essays. So now it's easy right? Toss him!
Nope. They failed him, but re-admitted him for the following term. The program has a limited enrollment with a large pool of applicants. So in order to re-admit this loser, they had to deny admission to someone who was actually qualified for admission.
The truly scary part is that It's a school of nursing. This loser is going to be responsible for patient care when he graduates as an RN.
Do you mean to say that MS optimized their JS compiler to "not do pointless loops that have no use in the rest of the code" only when the "pointless loop" is contained in a function that matches a very specific code signature?
I fail to see how that would be of any use to anyone using their browser to execute real code. The likelihood of taking advantage of this particular optimization is effectively zero.
I once owned a VW Karmen Ghia (yes it was a POS) and it needed a new clutch. I took it to an independent VW shop and the mechanic initially had a hard time sourcing a clutch for it. Finally he cross referenced and found a Porsche clutch that was identical. I asked if it would cost more and he told me "only if I install it in a Porsche".
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't exactly co-evolution because the toxin in the tree bark has evolved independently from the rat for reasons that benefit the tree - there is no co-dependence. Try co-evolution is where the dependency is mutual - such as with flowers and specific pollinators evolving together.
The article says the behavior seems to be hardwired into the rat's brain; that is, it's instinctive.
Chimpanzees have to be taught to fish for termites with a stick. Chimps don't have any evolutionary adaptation specific to fishing for termites (an opposable thumb is not specific to this behavior or even to primates). My understanding is that some populations of chimps (and even individuals within a population) learn / exhibit this behavior, others don't.
The giant crested rat chews poison bark and grooms its specially adapted crest hairs instinctively. Rats don't need to be taught to chew, or to groom. While it is a little more involved (requires a specific behavior or chewing and grooming) it is very similar to a poison dart frog absorbing, concentrating and sequestering in their skin, toxins from centipedes, ants etc. that they eat. My guess is that all giant crested rats, in an environment where this tree is native, would exhibit the same chewing and grooming behavior.
Judging by the 10,000 words before he got to Null terminated strings, the author or TFA doesn't seem to have too many problems with wasted bytes.
You went for the worst of breed?
Lack of glitches? Surely you jest. What are we at - the 9th major release before we have a version that is both stable AND reasonably compliant with current W3C standards? Fulfilled promises? I give you quirks mode a broken box model.
But does eating sushi wearing a turtleneck make you a ninja turtle?
But some of the Libyans speak English.
Once this civil war is over, we will be left with taxi drivers, engineers and school teachers with experience in guerrilla warfare, improvised weapons and explosives manufacturing, sabotage and military / para-military tactics. I just hope they all return to teaching, driving hack and designing pipelines once Ghadaffi is deposed. Without "boots on the ground" NATO and the US has very little influence on the leadership and/or world view of the various factions that currently are united against their resident tyrant. But Ghadaffi is an equal opportunity tyrant who made enemies of both Muslim fundamentalists and progressive modern Muslims and secular Libyans. Currently all of these groups are united to oust Colonel Crazy, but if history is any indication, once that goal is in sight, they will start vying for who controls the future of Lybia. The Mujahideen, who were once western allies, begat the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
It's kind of like jumping from the Titanic to the Lusitania.
And what did that do for Novell?
Damn. I just used up my mod points on the Android Mind Control article.
Who told you this? Coyotes who move into urban parks and green spaces adopt to the local environment and prey. Which most often means fluffy. Coyotes take cats in my neighbourhood all the time.
I'm wondering how well they researched this. Vancouver has lots of Coyotes. You see them quite often if you go for a run in the early morning, often carrying a cat or small dog in their mouths.
Vancouver also has lots of rats.
Just Larry, Darrell and Da ... oh wait. Just make that Larry.
Let me try that again - my keyboard is not playing fair.
We only know 2 points on the laffer curve. At a zero tax rate, tax revenues are zero. At a 100% tax rate, tax revenues are also zero. But it's anyone's guess what shape the curve takes between those 2 points.
Ah yes, the infamous laffer curve. We only no 2 points on the at a zero tax rate, tax revenues are zero. At a 100% tax rate, tax revenues are also zero. However fitting a curve between those two points is a fools errand.
Don't be evil.
Can't imagine there will be any flaming in this thread.
I had a similar situation in my undergrad program on a physics exam.
The school used to keep previous years' exams for certain core courses in the library. You couldn't remove them from the library, but you could use them for reference to study. My friends and I were planning on doing this, but the exam binders in the library were all being used. One friend's brother had just graduated, had taken this course and still had all his old exams. So we studied independently that night, and the next day, rather than study in the library, we met at the pub and used his brother's exam for sample questions. This was only hours before the exam.
Five of us walked into the exam, opened the exam booklet and it was the exact same exam we had just been using as a study source. We all walked out within 30 minutes. The prof had pulled that one year's exam from the library and didn't expect anyone to have access to it. He called us to his office prepared to accuse us of cheating. Knowing what was going to happen, we brought the brother's exam with us. He laughed, congratulated us on our near perfect marks (3 of us made at least one very minor error) and said he would learn from the experience. Best physics mark ever.
The only thing I ever cheated on was the ethics exam ;)
My wife is a professor at a very large university.
From her experience, it is much more work for a prof to fail a student than to pass a student. There are usually numerous avenues for appeals and reviews. There is one particular case in which she spent god knows how many hours defending her decision to fail a student who was determined to exhaust every avenue of appeal. The student in question had done extremely poorly on the project component of his final mark (which was marked by the co-teacher) and needed a solid final exam to pass. When he failed the final, he accused her of bias (racism actually). She had to have 2 other profs independently re-mark the exam and average the 3 scores (which resulted in his mark actually being lowered). You would think that would be the end of it right? No, the faculty had to caucus and debate failing him. As it was a core course in a cohort based program, he could not progress without completing it, and as it would have been his 3rd failing mark, the school's policy was to expel him. In the process of the investigation, it was determined that he had employed a ghost writer for his admissions entrance essays; English was not his first language and his skills were rudimentary at best, so it was quite obvious that he hadn't written these essays. So now it's easy right? Toss him!
Nope. They failed him, but re-admitted him for the following term. The program has a limited enrollment with a large pool of applicants. So in order to re-admit this loser, they had to deny admission to someone who was actually qualified for admission.
The truly scary part is that It's a school of nursing. This loser is going to be responsible for patient care when he graduates as an RN.
Neither explanation looks very good on Microsoft.
In scenario 1 MS is devious and cynical. In scenario 2 MS is incompetent. Choose your poison.
Do you mean to say that MS optimized their JS compiler to "not do pointless loops that have no use in the rest of the code" only when the "pointless loop" is contained in a function that matches a very specific code signature?
I fail to see how that would be of any use to anyone using their browser to execute real code. The likelihood of taking advantage of this particular optimization is effectively zero.
Who says it's not dead?
I once owned a VW Karmen Ghia (yes it was a POS) and it needed a new clutch. I took it to an independent VW shop and the mechanic initially had a hard time sourcing a clutch for it. Finally he cross referenced and found a Porsche clutch that was identical. I asked if it would cost more and he told me "only if I install it in a Porsche".
Finally an honest mechanic.