Nice article!! Does that mean that nuclear weapons are safe after all? Sincerelly yours,
Kim Jong-il
Yes. Safe enough to keep and detonate under your bed (Nothing enhances male function like a nuke under your bed. It's better than kilotons of Viagra.).
I have always wondered what sort of chance there was of a nuclear detonation when it impacted the ocean bottom
Pretty slim, I'd say. The fission reaction will only be started correctly if everything is working right inside the bomb, i.e. it is armed and detonated intentionally. Otherwise, you'll just wind up with an imprompty dirty bomb.
and what effect it would have had... a tsunami perhaps?
Not likely. The energy required to power this event dwarfs even the most powerful nuclear weapon. Maybe if you stick the bomb inside a fault line. But that's a big maybe.
In the context of military operations, chemical weapons are considered harrassing devices,
I think the exact term is "area denial weapons" - the same term as for other similarly harmless devices like land mines and delayed-fuse cluster bombs.
The thing is that ADWs and civilians usually don't mix.
Except that I don't want to live in HIGH DENSITY URBAN area. I want a yard where my kids can play, unmolested by child preditors, gangs, drug addicts.
Hm, I dunno. It works in most civilized countries. America must be doing something wrong. Sometimes, I feel lucky that I don't live in the greatest country of this world, and that I only have to worry about high taxes and social security costs, and not about whether my kid will be shot by some gang member after it has been robbed by a drug addict and raped by some pervert.
How will we explain to our children that back in the day we had this sweet airplane shaped orbiter to take us into space, and now all they have is this cone-shaped hunk of a "spaceship".
It's easy to explain, you just have to slip it in between "There's no air friction in space." and "Hey, the Borg really kick ass.".
....for flash storage in notebooks. I for one would LOVE a notebook with "only" 16 GB of storage...provided that 16 GB was flash. No spinning motors and platters means a more useful, portable device.
You do know that you can attach CF cards to an IDE port with a simple adapter ? They are ATA compatible devices. Just swap out your notebook HD for a CF card.
However, don't write too much on them (and especially don't use them as swap). They're only good for about 100000 write cycles.
The graphics card can be used for computation - something we're not doing currently, but are planning to test. As for several dual-cores, it wouldn't do much good as the computations are sequential and can't easily be parallelized.
Multiplying matrices is a prime candidate for parallelization.
And no, before you ask me, the rig is not intended for gaming, but is a heavy duty computation workstation whose work will to 90% consist of mulitplying very large matrices (while training neural networks). And most importantly, no I didn't pay for it, my company did;)
Either you're using that graphics card for the computation, or someone in your company is clueless. If all the work is done by the processor, they should have bought you a real workstation (two or more dual-core processors, no fancy graphics card) instead of something that is essentially a fancy desktop computer.
Another question might be why is horticulture accepted while GE is not? Both selectively breed crops based on desired traits. GE is just a faster, more direct approach.
It's like in programming. The more of a program you change without testing, the more likely you're going to end up with crap instead of an improved version.
Rewrite and test a function at a time, and you'll make steps towards a better program.
Rewrite a quarter of the program at a time and you'll most likely end up with digital manure.p
Either way, I wonder if people will ever stop being scared of new things. It seems like every new concept is something to fear, from the earth's orbit around the sun to the creation of antibiotics.
Because, usually, the bad effects of the "new things" rear their ugly heads a while after the initial hype has blown over. And usually, the bad effects could have been prevented by slightly more thorough research.
Would you still like to have you shoes sized with an X-Ray machine ? Why not ? It's the new thing, everybody does it, it's fast, accurate and convenient.
Like it or not, there are about a billion starving people NOW that can be helped by science.
Science won't help them a single bit, I'm afraid. Can science make the wars go away that drove these people to the brink of starvation, or the stupid fsckup governments that seem to be hell-bent on making every single administrative mistake you can find in textbooks ?
Starvation isn't a problem of making crops more tolerant to herbicides. It's a problem of making sure farmers actually get to plant and harvest instead of being kept from their job by wars and nutjob dictators.
If a next-door neighbor's crop is wiped out (or reduced significantly), he will sue the adjacent farmer - and have a very solid case as he would have very hard evidence in the form of thousands of ungerminated seeds with the same DNA snippet.
1. He's got no case. The GE industry will make sure of that. Don't you think that they have a very vital interest in a ruling in their favor, and lots and lots of money to spend (on things like lawyers and worse) ?
I imagine there would also be a huge class-action settlement against a crop like this.
I wouldn't bet on that.
Or are you worried that our legal system won't protect the non-terminator farmer?
2. You assume that this will happen in the USA only. What about countries where "our" legal system counts jack shit because it's not the legal system of that country ? What about countries where farmers are too poor to take a case to court, _especially_ when they're out of seeds for the next year and their main worry will be avoiding starvation, huh ?
* Monsanto and friends aren't making 'nutritious food', they're making crops that can resist higher doses of their insecticides. Most people (rather wisely) don't want more roundup sprayed on their food, because some of it is bound to end up in their bodies.
*nitpick*
RoundUp is a herbicide, not an insecticide.
Yes, they can make plants resistant to a broad-spectrum herbicide. One that's also used, for example, in attempts to destroy Coca fields.
Wouldn't, you know, the "terminator" crops all die... leaving us with just the good ones?
No, the "terminator" gene is usually dominant, in order to, you know, completely stop the spreading of the GE plants.
If you're a farmer with regular crops, and they get pollinated with the terminator-enabled pollen from the guy next door, you can kiss the idea of using your harvest as seeds for next year goodbye.
...what the problem is with technology that can produce vast amounts of nutritious food that can feed people who may otherwise not have access to such a resoruce?
Oh. I take it you've never heard of things like "traitor technology" or "terminator technology" ?
Companies that make GE crops have ways of keeping the farmers from re-using their harvest as seed for the next year. Either they do it legally and sue them to kingdom come, or they have altered their inventions in a way that the seeds do not germinate at all, or only if presented with certain "activators" (to be bought from the GE company). Of course, if non-GE-crops get contaminated with GE pollen, then the farmer next door won't be able to use his harvest as seed either.
If you think companies that make GE crops care about feeding the world, you might as well believe in pink unicorns.
Slashdot Mirror
Sincerelly yours,
Kim Jong-il
Yes. Safe enough to keep and detonate under your bed (Nothing enhances male function like a nuke under your bed. It's better than kilotons of Viagra.).
Pretty slim, I'd say. The fission reaction will only be started correctly if everything is working right inside the bomb, i.e. it is armed and detonated intentionally. Otherwise, you'll just wind up with an imprompty dirty bomb.
and what effect it would have had... a tsunami perhaps?
Not likely. The energy required to power this event dwarfs even the most powerful nuclear weapon. Maybe if you stick the bomb inside a fault line. But that's a big maybe.
Any attempts of using magnetoencephalography for this purpose ?
I think the exact term is "area denial weapons" - the same term as for other similarly harmless devices like land mines and delayed-fuse cluster bombs.
The thing is that ADWs and civilians usually don't mix.
Yeah. Too bad they didn't think coast-to-coast, which is what the Koreans certainly do.
"Portable" usually means "can be carried by one person", and I'd still say that even "mobile" PET or CT scanners don't qualify here.
Hm, I dunno. It works in most civilized countries. America must be doing something wrong. Sometimes, I feel lucky that I don't live in the greatest country of this world, and that I only have to worry about high taxes and social security costs, and not about whether my kid will be shot by some gang member after it has been robbed by a drug addict and raped by some pervert.
What are you talking about ? Two countries ? Nonsense. Country doesn't have a plural, man.
1972. September. Munich. Olympic Games.
Ring a bell ?
It's easy to explain, you just have to slip it in between "There's no air friction in space." and "Hey, the Borg really kick ass.".
You do know that you can attach CF cards to an IDE port with a simple adapter ? They are ATA compatible devices. Just swap out your notebook HD for a CF card.
However, don't write too much on them (and especially don't use them as swap). They're only good for about 100000 write cycles.
No no no. It's got to be a USB peripheral.
If that happens, we're toast.
Multiplying matrices is a prime candidate for parallelization.
How ironic. Literally, this would mean they "re-stock" a defective product to sell it to the next clueless customer that comes along.
Are they serious ?
One core to find them
One core to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them
You must be talking about the one core that's part of the TPM.
Either you're using that graphics card for the computation, or someone in your company is clueless. If all the work is done by the processor, they should have bought you a real workstation (two or more dual-core processors, no fancy graphics card) instead of something that is essentially a fancy desktop computer.
Sperm and egg are, technically and genetically, still part of the appropriate individual (just like blood, skin, etc).
A fetus is not.
It's like in programming. The more of a program you change without testing, the more likely you're going to end up with crap instead of an improved version.
Rewrite and test a function at a time, and you'll make steps towards a better program.
Rewrite a quarter of the program at a time and you'll most likely end up with digital manure.p
Because, usually, the bad effects of the "new things" rear their ugly heads a while after the initial hype has blown over. And usually, the bad effects could have been prevented by slightly more thorough research.
Would you still like to have you shoes sized with an X-Ray machine ? Why not ? It's the new thing, everybody does it, it's fast, accurate and convenient.
Science won't help them a single bit, I'm afraid. Can science make the wars go away that drove these people to the brink of starvation, or the stupid fsckup governments that seem to be hell-bent on making every single administrative mistake you can find in textbooks ?
Starvation isn't a problem of making crops more tolerant to herbicides. It's a problem of making sure farmers actually get to plant and harvest instead of being kept from their job by wars and nutjob dictators.
1. He's got no case. The GE industry will make sure of that. Don't you think that they have a very vital interest in a ruling in their favor, and lots and lots of money to spend (on things like lawyers and worse) ?
I imagine there would also be a huge class-action settlement against a crop like this.
I wouldn't bet on that.
Or are you worried that our legal system won't protect the non-terminator farmer?
2. You assume that this will happen in the USA only. What about countries where "our" legal system counts jack shit because it's not the legal system of that country ? What about countries where farmers are too poor to take a case to court, _especially_ when they're out of seeds for the next year and their main worry will be avoiding starvation, huh ?
*nitpick*
RoundUp is a herbicide, not an insecticide.
Yes, they can make plants resistant to a broad-spectrum herbicide. One that's also used, for example, in attempts to destroy Coca fields.
No, the "terminator" gene is usually dominant, in order to, you know, completely stop the spreading of the GE plants.
If you're a farmer with regular crops, and they get pollinated with the terminator-enabled pollen from the guy next door, you can kiss the idea of using your harvest as seeds for next year goodbye.
Oh. I take it you've never heard of things like "traitor technology" or "terminator technology" ?
Companies that make GE crops have ways of keeping the farmers from re-using their harvest as seed for the next year. Either they do it legally and sue them to kingdom come, or they have altered their inventions in a way that the seeds do not germinate at all, or only if presented with certain "activators" (to be bought from the GE company). Of course, if non-GE-crops get contaminated with GE pollen, then the farmer next door won't be able to use his harvest as seed either.
If you think companies that make GE crops care about feeding the world, you might as well believe in pink unicorns.