I think Enterprise is a pretty decent series (compared the the dreck of 'reality tv' and teenage melodrama) and would hate to see it gone. I think their Tucker-clone episode was especially good and topical for a network TV show.
UPN is a bit of a misfit channel (not available in my area). They'd be better off still making it and selling it for syndication to whomever wants to broadcast it. Of maybe SciFi channel will pick it up. WOuld make a far better choice than continuing the 'battlestar glactica' kitch-remakes!
Insurance companies may even offer a discount for getting an 'auto parker' feature. Something that takes a potential safety issue (like cracking the bumper of the car you're backing into) out of human hands could be seen as a safety plus (like auto-daytime running lights, anti-lock brakes, active restraint systems, active anti-theft devices, air bags...ie anything that will work on it's own to save 1) our asses and 2)your car and those around it).
You probably won't make the cost back but I bet it would be worth a few bucks.
not only outside the US...
on
TIA Project to End
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The program still continues on non-citizens while they are in the U.S.
From the article linked (emphasis mine):
But they shifted some of the high-powered software under development to different government offices, to be used to gather intelligence from U.S. citizens abroad and foreigners in this country and abroad.
Certainly the cell phone is a conveinent place to pick up bugs. But so are doorknobs, restrooms, etc.
The real problem...and working in public health I know this hasn't changed even since the advent of germ theory...is just getting the damn workers (I *include* physicians) in hospitals to wash their hands corrrectly before working with a patient. I still see plenty of infectious disease workers more than happy to walk out of a bathroom without washing their hands.
And even if you do, when you touch just about anything (or just wait, as the stuff as you left on your hand grows) you could be putting patients...esp immunosuppresed patients (HIV/chemo/elderly) at great danger.
I always shudder seeing hospital staff walking outside on the streets in their scrubs, shoe covers and hair covers like they are some magical shield that will never pick up pathogens harmful to the patients.
When it comes to the military for finding POW's and those listed as MIA.
Ever see on your local news elderly persons who wander off and are confused due to dementia or alzheimer's? They frequently don't come back alive. Their personal rights have been signed off and a nursing home (wary of being sued when they loose one of their charges) might make it a condition upon entry.
And of course, for every geek that wants to make him/herself into the borg.:-)
But, for every good reason, there will be many more potential abuses.
As someone in public health, I can see both sides of the story.
Certainly, being able to share information quickly with others is useful. My scientific collaborations are (literally) all over the globe whereas 10 years ago I was lucky to be able to collaborate with labs within a few hundred miles.
But science works best by putting forth hypotheses, testing them, and eliminating the false ones. A downside of the net is that these hypotheses get spread as facts, are then amplified by the media, and then the truth gets ignored since a negative finding doesn't seem newsworthy as the original sensation.
SARS is bad, but it luckly hasn't been that bad so far in US (no deaths...*yet*). And I think undeserving of the sheer amount of attention it has received. But sexy new killer diseases always trump real boring old threats to your well being. SARS even managed to trump an otherwise other guaranteed reporting of the recent outbreak of Ebola in Africa. Let alone the much bigger but mundane killer of influenza (flu).
And in the age of HIPAA, you have to extrememly careful about what and how you share any kind of patient information (check out the forms the next visit to your physician or pharmacy). You cannot compromise patient confidentiality but it happens, due to ignorance or lazyiness, far too often.
The national cathedral has many unique gargoyles, that's typical of the medieval style actually. Since many of them could never be seen except (in the pre-binocular/telescope age) the carvers, they could sculpt bosses they hated, cultural figures, politicians, etc. There was an issue of Smithsonian magazine that described some of them (the artists were left to their own will, mostly, on what they could put up there). There's undoubtedly a number more of these little "easter eggs" put in those doing the construction.
And it's a nice complement to the chunk of moon rock in the 'creation' stained glass window there also.
That's a great price! They're usually a lot more ($6k for a round trip isn't bad at all). Heck, might be worth trying to score a seat on one of these last flights.
Like luxury liners, their time has run out
on
Concorde to be Grounded
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Concorde really was a status symbol for it's 30 years, just like sailing on the QE2 used to be also.
But with a few accidents, a lack of cache and the fact that it has *always* been a money looser, it's an environmental mess, and BA and AirFrance not wanting to get dragged deeper into debt, the time to retire them has come.
The fabulously wealthy who could easily plunk down the $15k per ticket are now buying or renting Gulfstreams. It's more a thing for tourists and the CEO's.
Still, it's a beautiful plane. Still remember looking out at the AirFrance Concordes at JFK airport with the view of lower Manhattan behind them across the river (now when you see both like that, it's more poignant that exhilerating).
On the lighter side, on the UK show "Absolutely Fabulous" when Edina is ticked off that there is only 1 class of service on Concorde, "I'll pay extra for that curtain!"
VNS wasn't off in predicting Florida for Gore based on exit polling.
It certainly appears that most voters in FL *meant* to vote for Gore but goofy ballets (not unique to FL) and Democrats blowing the recount (there weren't enough votes for Gore in the recount of the few counties they asked for but there *were* if the whole state had been recounted.
That said, it's probably a good thing that VNS is gone. In this last election, it was less stressful and not as annoying watching the network coverage that night.
Just had to throw in that there *are* non-coding intergeneic sequences (akin to introns) and bunches of other non-coding goodies in prokaryotes including bacteriophages such as T4 (look back to the mid-80's).
And if you consider RNA editing (where the wacking out or modification of nucleotides prior to translation), you gain a tremendous amount of flexibility in the smaller genomes of these bugs.
Of course, the long term storage they're looking at is best done by the spores of gram positive bugs, like Bacillus subtilis. When they're in this non-replicative stage, there is little chance of sequence alteration. And by having, some 10^8 spores around, even if there were a few mucking things up, the majority would maintin the original sequence.
But engineering a bug to not alter sequences is much more difficult than knocking out RecA.:-)
The correct spelling is 'subtilis' A non-pathogenic (except for a few odd-ball cases) gram-positive, sporulating prokaryote. So it acts as a model system for all sorts of nasties including anthrax.
The B. subtilis spores are *extremely* hardy and were very close (genetically) to the bugs that the one group claimed to have extracted from amber.
And the japanese eat a fermented soy product made by this guy (natto).
I worked on that damn bug for my PhD so it's a love/hate relationship.:-)
Does anyone think that this is unusual or unexpected? Many new businesses (whether drug dealers to that toothpicked chicken pushed in your face at the mall) include giving away samples (in yahoo's case email or other net service) and then making a premium version, weaning off the nonpaying, and incrementally trying to add on additional services for more money.
The problem of going from completely free to charging for the exact same thing is that is ticks off your potential customer base. Therefore the extra's (like Salon or Slashdot's elminating some ads) try to present a 'value added' aspect that makes the rubes reach for their Discover cards.;-)
I'd only be really surprised if that wasn't a "Plan B" from day 1 or if there aren't more of these new billing plans in the future.
Sounds like the Ad agency's fault from the article
on
Microsoft Vandalizes NYC
·
· Score: 3, Informative
From the article, the PR firm's lackey said they had a permit, but..
After a brief huddle with two people whom she identified as being from McCann-Erickson, the advertising firm handling the account, Ms. Lacter said: "There's nothing else to say. They didn't want to get into a discussion about the details."
So it might not be MS's directive, but the PR/Ad agency screwing it up. Though *that's* a bit difficult to swallow that they didn't know you could get away with that. Probably more of a 'hey this will get *great* pr, be on the news for shaking up NYC, and we'll pay some crappy little fine at best (or offer MS XP to schools at a discount and thereby intrenching themselves more:-).
According to the recent New Yorker article on Willie Nelson, he loves satellite radio which lets him listen to a few of his musical inspirations (in cluding Frank Sinatra). But how many of us really are on long drives in tour buses with drivers?
I'd like to see them offer programming from other countries. Give me a feed from the Australian Broadcast Company, or the BBC, even plug in the Voice of America stations (if they allow that now) to hear what we're telling other nations about ourselves. Let Grandma listen to radio from the 'old country'. I love listening to radio stations on the net now and I think to have *that* in your car to listen to would be more a great selling point.
If you don't mind the smaller size, the 5 GB iPod is on Amazon's Friday Sale today for $279...The 20 GB is $499 so if you're gonna for gor the 10, you might as well tack on the extra money to double the size.
I remember the hoopla last America's Cup when the CEO of Progressive Insurance, Peter Lewis, got caught with pot and hash coming into NZ. A wonderful example of how the rich get treated differently than regular schmooes, he was able to buy his way out with a clean record and reporting his name was censored in NZ by the judge at the time.
As BBC reported yesterday, in 2012 or so, Voyager 1 is predicted to cross the heliopause, the boundry at which time it *really* will leave our solar system.
No government decisions are made in a vacuum with respect to politics...
Is this a true interest in science by John Howard's gov't (which has spent too much time cutting back science spending) or an attempt to raise the Liberal party's dwindling popularity to Labour? I don't see OZ coming up with the bucks on a sustained basis. The GST has had a misearble effect on the aussie dollar (nearly 2:1 to the US buck) so effectively, it will be MORE expensive than in a dollar with a strong currency, to undertake this boondoggle.
The culture of Russian science, at least from what I've experienced first hand, has little respect for "details" and a lot to do with making data fit theories.
Anyway, my vote would be to send Steve "croc hunter" Irwin. But I bet it'll be Murdoch instead.:-)
If you want to read the antipodes of reviews on "Shrek", they are best presented by the New Yorker (which, I admit, they tend to rip every movie a new hole, but that's what I find so endearing about them).
Honestly, I find Mike Myers pretty annoying in that he's too scared to use his own voice in *anything* and is still stuck in that improv schtick.
And the other, by Roger Ebert who gave it 4 stars.
As a molecular genteticist, I am familiar with the markup languages that *already* exist for annotating genome sequences. Free software from NCBI even helped you format your sequences for submission to databases.
Perhaps rather than writing a trendy article trying to get buzzwords like genomics and bioinformatics together with geek speak, he should have done a tad more research.
Not to say there can't be huge improvements and trying to show the interplay (temporally AND physically) between genes. But don't do a half-assed job by ignoring what has already been used for decades.
Salon magazine has an article article about the announcement and their take on this...it's not even *predicted* by MS to be out by 2002 so don't hold your breath:
Slashdot Mirror
I think Enterprise is a pretty decent series (compared the the dreck of 'reality tv' and teenage melodrama) and would hate to see it gone. I think their Tucker-clone episode was especially good and topical for a network TV show.
UPN is a bit of a misfit channel (not available in my area). They'd be better off still making it and selling it for syndication to whomever wants to broadcast it. Of maybe SciFi channel will pick it up. WOuld make a far better choice than continuing the 'battlestar glactica' kitch-remakes!
Insurance companies may even offer a discount for getting an 'auto parker' feature. Something that takes a potential safety issue (like cracking the bumper of the car you're backing into) out of human hands could be seen as a safety plus (like auto-daytime running lights, anti-lock brakes, active restraint systems, active anti-theft devices, air bags...ie anything that will work on it's own to save 1) our asses and 2)your car and those around it).
You probably won't make the cost back but I bet it would be worth a few bucks.
The program still continues on non-citizens while they are in the U.S.
From the article linked (emphasis mine):
But they shifted some of the high-powered software under development to different government offices, to be used to gather intelligence from U.S. citizens abroad and foreigners in this country and abroad.
Certainly the cell phone is a conveinent place to pick up bugs. But so are doorknobs, restrooms, etc.
The real problem...and working in public health I know this hasn't changed even since the advent of germ theory...is just getting the damn workers (I *include* physicians) in hospitals to wash their hands corrrectly before working with a patient. I still see plenty of infectious disease workers more than happy to walk out of a bathroom without washing their hands.
And even if you do, when you touch just about anything (or just wait, as the stuff as you left on your hand grows) you could be putting patients...esp immunosuppresed patients (HIV/chemo/elderly) at great danger.
I always shudder seeing hospital staff walking outside on the streets in their scrubs, shoe covers and hair covers like they are some magical shield that will never pick up pathogens harmful to the patients.
When it comes to the military for finding POW's and those listed as MIA.
:-)
Ever see on your local news elderly persons who wander off and are confused due to dementia or alzheimer's? They frequently don't come back alive. Their personal rights have been signed off and a nursing home (wary of being sued when they loose one of their charges) might make it a condition upon entry.
And of course, for every geek that wants to make him/herself into the borg.
But, for every good reason, there will be many more potential abuses.
As someone in public health, I can see both sides of the story.
Certainly, being able to share information quickly with others is useful. My scientific collaborations are (literally) all over the globe whereas 10 years ago I was lucky to be able to collaborate with labs within a few hundred miles.
But science works best by putting forth hypotheses, testing them, and eliminating the false ones. A downside of the net is that these hypotheses get spread as facts, are then amplified by the media, and then the truth gets ignored since a negative finding doesn't seem newsworthy as the original sensation.
SARS is bad, but it luckly hasn't been that bad so far in US (no deaths...*yet*). And I think undeserving of the sheer amount of attention it has received. But sexy new killer diseases always trump real boring old threats to your well being. SARS even managed to trump an otherwise other guaranteed reporting of the recent outbreak of Ebola in Africa. Let alone the much bigger but mundane killer of influenza (flu).
And in the age of HIPAA, you have to extrememly careful about what and how you share any kind of patient information (check out the forms the next visit to your physician or pharmacy). You cannot compromise patient confidentiality but it happens, due to ignorance or lazyiness, far too often.
The national cathedral has many unique gargoyles, that's typical of the medieval style actually. Since many of them could never be seen except (in the pre-binocular/telescope age) the carvers, they could sculpt bosses they hated, cultural figures, politicians, etc. There was an issue of Smithsonian magazine that described some of them (the artists were left to their own will, mostly, on what they could put up there). There's undoubtedly a number more of these little "easter eggs" put in those doing the construction.
And it's a nice complement to the chunk of moon rock in the 'creation' stained glass window there also.
That's a great price! They're usually a lot more ($6k for a round trip isn't bad at all). Heck, might be worth trying to score a seat on one of these last flights.
Concorde really was a status symbol for it's 30 years, just like sailing on the QE2 used to be also.
But with a few accidents, a lack of cache and the fact that it has *always* been a money looser, it's an environmental mess, and BA and AirFrance not wanting to get dragged deeper into debt, the time to retire them has come.
The fabulously wealthy who could easily plunk down the $15k per ticket are now buying or renting Gulfstreams. It's more a thing for tourists and the CEO's.
Still, it's a beautiful plane. Still remember looking out at the AirFrance Concordes at JFK airport with the view of lower Manhattan behind them across the river (now when you see both like that, it's more poignant that exhilerating).
On the lighter side, on the UK show "Absolutely Fabulous" when Edina is ticked off that there is only 1 class of service on Concorde, "I'll pay extra for that curtain!"
VNS wasn't off in predicting Florida for Gore based on exit polling.
It certainly appears that most voters in FL *meant* to vote for Gore but goofy ballets (not unique to FL) and Democrats blowing the recount (there weren't enough votes for Gore in the recount of the few counties they asked for but there *were* if the whole state had been recounted.
That said, it's probably a good thing that VNS is gone. In this last election, it was less stressful and not as annoying watching the network coverage that night.
Just had to throw in that there *are* non-coding intergeneic sequences (akin to introns) and bunches of other non-coding goodies in prokaryotes including bacteriophages such as T4 (look back to the mid-80's).
:-)
And if you consider RNA editing (where the wacking out or modification of nucleotides prior to translation), you gain a tremendous amount of flexibility in the smaller genomes of these bugs.
Of course, the long term storage they're looking at is best done by the spores of gram positive bugs, like Bacillus subtilis. When they're in this non-replicative stage, there is little chance of sequence alteration. And by having, some 10^8 spores around, even if there were a few mucking things up, the majority would maintin the original sequence.
But engineering a bug to not alter sequences is much more difficult than knocking out RecA.
Forbes lists their top 85 *business* breakthroughs...which slants things so that sheetrock is listed whereas the theory of relativity is not.
The correct spelling is 'subtilis' A non-pathogenic (except for a few odd-ball cases) gram-positive, sporulating prokaryote. So it acts as a model system for all sorts of nasties including anthrax.
:-)
The B. subtilis spores are *extremely* hardy and were very close (genetically) to the bugs that the one group claimed to have extracted from amber.
And the japanese eat a fermented soy product made by this guy (natto).
I worked on that damn bug for my PhD so it's a love/hate relationship.
Does anyone think that this is unusual or unexpected? Many new businesses (whether drug dealers to that toothpicked chicken pushed in your face at the mall) include giving away samples (in yahoo's case email or other net service) and then making a premium version, weaning off the nonpaying, and incrementally trying to add on additional services for more money.
;-)
The problem of going from completely free to charging for the exact same thing is that is ticks off your potential customer base. Therefore the extra's (like Salon or Slashdot's elminating some ads) try to present a 'value added' aspect that makes the rubes reach for their Discover cards.
I'd only be really surprised if that wasn't a "Plan B" from day 1 or if there aren't more of these new billing plans in the future.
After a brief huddle with two people whom she identified as being from McCann-Erickson, the advertising firm handling the account, Ms. Lacter said: "There's nothing else to say. They didn't want to get into a discussion about the details."
So it might not be MS's directive, but the PR/Ad agency screwing it up. Though *that's* a bit difficult to swallow that they didn't know you could get away with that. Probably more of a 'hey this will get *great* pr, be on the news for shaking up NYC, and we'll pay some crappy little fine at best (or offer MS XP to schools at a discount and thereby intrenching themselves more
According to the recent New Yorker article on Willie Nelson, he loves satellite radio which lets him listen to a few of his musical inspirations (in cluding Frank Sinatra). But how many of us really are on long drives in tour buses with drivers?
I'd like to see them offer programming from other countries. Give me a feed from the Australian Broadcast Company, or the BBC, even plug in the Voice of America stations (if they allow that now) to hear what we're telling other nations about ourselves. Let Grandma listen to radio from the 'old country'. I love listening to radio stations on the net now and I think to have *that* in your car to listen to would be more a great selling point.
If you don't mind the smaller size, the 5 GB iPod is on Amazon's Friday Sale today for $279...The 20 GB is $499 so if you're gonna for gor the 10, you might as well tack on the extra money to double the size.
I remember the hoopla last America's Cup when the CEO of Progressive Insurance, Peter Lewis, got caught with pot and hash coming into NZ. A wonderful example of how the rich get treated differently than regular schmooes, he was able to buy his way out with a clean record and reporting his name was censored in NZ by the judge at the time.
m
Oh those rich with nothing better to do!
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0008/S00166.ht
As BBC reported yesterday, in 2012 or so, Voyager 1 is predicted to cross the heliopause, the boundry at which time it *really* will leave our solar system.
Pretty neat for a piece of 1970's technology.
It makes sense to quarantine the samples to prevent them from getting contaminated by *us* and confusing any results.
Is this a true interest in science by John Howard's gov't (which has spent too much time cutting back science spending) or an attempt to raise the Liberal party's dwindling popularity to Labour? I don't see OZ coming up with the bucks on a sustained basis. The GST has had a misearble effect on the aussie dollar (nearly 2:1 to the US buck) so effectively, it will be MORE expensive than in a dollar with a strong currency, to undertake this boondoggle.
The culture of Russian science, at least from what I've experienced first hand, has little respect for "details" and a lot to do with making data fit theories.
Anyway, my vote would be to send Steve "croc hunter" Irwin. But I bet it'll be Murdoch instead. :-)
Dude...you married a fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster)! At least that's according to the BLAST search at NCBI...
Honestly, I find Mike Myers pretty annoying in that he's too scared to use his own voice in *anything* and is still stuck in that improv schtick.
And the other, by Roger Ebert who gave it 4 stars.
I'll wait for the video.
Sorry, I'm too lasy to annotate this myself :-):
Link to NCBI
FASTA looks remarkably like the example given in the article.
Quicky description of FASTA (just one of many schemes but one of the most popular and oldest.
Perhaps rather than writing a trendy article trying to get buzzwords like genomics and bioinformatics together with geek speak, he should have done a tad more research.
Not to say there can't be huge improvements and trying to show the interplay (temporally AND physically) between genes. But don't do a half-assed job by ignoring what has already been used for decades.
Salon magazine has an article article about the announcement and their take on this...it's not even *predicted* by MS to be out by 2002 so don't hold your breath: