"I was using systems that did this 10 years ago. Granted, back then it was disk+tape not different speed disks, but it's the exact same thing."
Got you beat there. I was using a similar system nearly 30 years ago at university - again disk and tapes. The O/S was GEORGE III running on a ICL xxxx (can't remember). Very usful in the days when your disk quota was measured in kilobytes but totally automatic migration to tape tended to keep your disk usage down.
One problem, though. After the summer break, all your data had been moved to tape. So, you access the data and it starts a restore... trouble is *everyone* else is doing the same thing. Two day restore time, anyone?
"Something just wasn't right about the way he talked about child porn, almost as if it took effort to disparage it and I got the sneaking suspicion that he had been compromised by it in some way"
Compromised? Not in the way you mean.
Unfortunately, I have some experience of this from about 10 years ago. While I was working for a large corporation as a sysadmin I came across a stash of this stuff. To cut a long story short it went from that to helping the police gather evidence against three individuals and from there to helping them to crack a much larger ring of paedophiles.*
A normal adult wants to love and protect kids. I can tell you these people (I use the term advisedly) are *really* not normal and some of the images made me physically sick - literally. We are not talking about kids in the nude - you don't want to know. There is NO way a NORMAL adult will be compromised... really! What that police officer was probably feeling was... nothing. You have to be like that to be able to take it at all and even then it does damage. It's so bad that you *must* stop after a couple of years.
"One wonders why cops are allowed to work on this on their own, seems to me it would make much more sense to allow people access to the material only in teams, perhaps mixed-gender."
Well, you are in a team. Part of the reason of trawling through the material on your own is logistics (manpower, etc) and the other is; why expose people to more than necessary? And, as I mention above, the dangers aren't that you'll turn into a paedophile yourself.
* Yes we got them - it was on the front page of the papers - especially the bit about most of them getting 15 months. We spent two years taking them down. Go figure!
Does anyone know how this might affect people in the rest of the world?
Just point me (us) in the direction of an information source.
I have to say that I have worked in the US*; I *like* the USA and its people, and it saddens me to see even your basic freedoms being eroded. In the theatre of human affairs, this is trivial, I suppose. But still.
*In the 1980's when you were still free - and more free than anyone in Europe. (No, I'm not trolling, I really feel that)
Interesting. But if you use this approach to handle cooling problems, don't you lose processing power due to the effect of inter processor communications?
We use a large(ish) cluster - admittedly not even remotely in your league, but our main limitation has always been node connection bandwidth/lag.
"To be fair, string theory can claim some success. A 1985 paper showed that if you compactify extra dimensions in a certain way, the number of quarks and leptons you get is exactly the number found in nature. "This is the only idea out there for why the number of quarks and leptons is what it is," says Prof. Peskin. Still, that is less a prediction of string theory than a consequence."
As I understand it the major problems with ST is that it works for a huge number of possible universes, so it can't be disproved. Well, the idea of a multiverse is hardly new and, if I read the above passage correctly, we know which "compactification" gives the right number of quarks and leptons. So, doesn't this mean that we know *which* instance of the theory works for *our* universe? Therefore, using this instance, can't we then make other predictions to see if the theory is right?
If it's the security of offsite storage you want, there is a better solution.
Join up with a friend and each get a hard drive with a caddy (a slide in tray which holds the drive, making for easy removal). Make them the same type of HD (and caddy, of course). Now you can each backup up your critical data onto the caddy drive and swap them. Next day/week/month backup onto the drive and swap again etc, etc. If you don't meet at work or very regularly, look at it as a good excuse to get together for a beer! ("But, darling I *have* to meet up with Joe. It's the offsite backups.")
Of course, you have to encrypt your data - not that you don't trust your friend (ahem!) but he might be burgled.
The beauty is that you can each back up any way you want and HD can store a *lot* - you can even use multiple disks.
I've done this with a 120GB disk and it works quite well. Now all I have to do is figure out the logistics of many participants and we can all have a weekly piss-up:-)
An article about SCO wanting to recruit developers appeared and was heavily commented on. No surprise there, except...
SCO should be reading/. and realising they're on a hiding to nothing. WE are the people they are targeting and the overwhelming response is "You must be kidding!"
Could this be the first time that/. actually affects a corporate* initiative directly?
* I use the term "corporate" loosely - actually I should have said "^**!!@" (no, not rot13)
A template letter (change numbers/epithets as necessary):
Dear Mr SCO,
I heard that you are looking for UNIX developers. I have 25 years of experience in this field and I am currently looking for a job. I enclose mv CV.
This is just to let you know that I will NEVER work for your nasty, dishonest, corrupt, stupid... etc etc excuse for a company. And noone else like me will, either because having your company name on a CV would be professional suicide.
"While I agree that this is promising technology, it seems as though it could only replace a traditional pacemaker in the case of AV node block (which is only one of the many heart problems that traditional pacemaker devices can treat)."
True. Reading from a (semi) professional point of view I was more excited about the use of myoblasts to construct the framework rather than its application per se. Though the change in function is pretty neat - essentially an artificial AV node! I was also happy to see a lack of the hype that often comes with this sort of announcement (FTFA "preliminary steps")
"I wish the scientists and doctors working on this project the best of luck. Hopefully if they can grow conductive tissue, they could also use it to repair dead tissue found in hearts that have suffered from a heart attack."
Sorry, not this way. This technique is really only for the generation of conductive tissue - not the heart muscle itself which is very different from skeletal muscle. Stem cells, anyone?
One of the basic rules of the Universe is that you can't understand the answer unless you understand the question and *most* of the answer to start with. Without underlying knowledge, it won't work. For example, the ancient greeks had the idea that matter was made up of individual items called atoms. Very nearly right, but it took a couple of thousand years before the idea came up again.
Example 1 (silly): An AMD64 drops through a wormhole/ST rift/whatever and lands on the desk of the foremost electronics engineer in the early 20th century. What does he see? A strange flat thing with lots of pins and a strangely regular irregularity in the blob of sand on top. And *nothing* else.
Example 2 (less silly and more comprehensible): Edison (or Swan) discover that if you pass a certain amount of *electricity* with the right *current* across a certain *material* in a near *vacuum* or *inert gas* within a *glass blown* container you have a working light bulb.
Until you have the underlying technology to make a discovery, you won't discover anything. The last example could go further to include metallurgy (OK, how to make a carbon filament), fire, agriculture (so someone has time to look into these things), etc, etc. And, no - my argument doesn't fall down with the earliest humans because they started with pure observation. (And, no - I wasn't there though I feel that old, sometimes)
My point is that *all* discoveries depend on the discoveries that came before. As Isaac Newton said "If I have seen a bit further, it's because I have stood on the shoulders of giants" (Yes, I know about the Hooke Insult - I think it's rubbish)
Human progress has always been dictated by necessity (even now) but the important thing to remember is that true progress is always built on the efforts of others.
So, we dream of (for example) a faster than light drive (at least on/.) But we're not going to get it until some off-the-rails guy comes up with some weird inconsistency with what we *think* we know and what *actually* happens.
Take it away you rebels (Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Pascal, Poincarre, Laplace, Einstein... xE6...)
"The code without the people is worth nothing," according to Phillipe Cases, partner at VC firm Partech International. "A million lines of code is like a million problems that you have to solve. So the risk on any open source investment project is that the 2-3 guys that created it and maintain it could leave. The commitment of the developers is often the IP -- not the code itself."
I don't think this is unique to open source... or software development in general. Of course, once VC is involved we're not talking about FOSS in the *strictest* sense - these guys want to make money. Ok, it may be that the revenue stems from support, but that's the same for nearly *all* software projects. (No, I don't mean just fixing bugs - that's a flawed business model to start with... Oh, wait)
Just to give an example - and to prove the quote above from TFA is wrong (sometimes, anyway):
Back in the early 80's I was asked to look at a program which required some adjustments. It was written in FORTRAN and it was a *mess*! "Spaghetti code" didn't even begin to describe it - it had GOTOs to GOTOs, looped out code, redundant variables by the dozen - you name it, it had it. It didn't have anything in the way of provenance. It took me two days to trace out how to implement a trivial change. The weirdest thing was there was no way I could really document what I'd done because that would need a framework - and there wasn't one. And, you know what? The company didn't care. They had paid a junior programmer for two days to implement something they needed RIGHT NOW. They didn't need to keep on the original developers (and God knows how many preceded me), nor did they need to insist on adequate documentation. If they needed to make a change in the future, they would just do the same (albeit with a younger and cheaper programmer). They wouldn't employ me to look at it - I'm too expensive.
My point is that it isn't the software that gets too expensive - it's the developers themselves. Who among us hasn't used a project to enhance their Kudos and desirability in the market?
So VC's are looking at FOSS in the wrong way. We don't really do it for money (though that's nice), we do it for the satisfaction of getting it right and being able to point to something and say "I did/helped_with that".
"Because IANAMB (I Am Not A Molecular Biologist), some of the possibilities I have suggested above are either not possible or not practical. But I suspect that more than one of those approaches is."
IAAMB (Usually describe myself as just biochemist - people have a clearer idea what that is). This isn't actually my area of expertise but it's close to the periphery of what I do (Immunology).
The simple answer is that some of these technologies are being investigated - not least because of the ethical concerns of ESCR. For the time being, however, ESC is the only usable technology for these kinds of experiments. All is not lost because when some of the other technologies advance to the practical stage, we can use them as the starting point and *these* techniques to follow on. ESC tech is probably doomed in the end, because of the immune rejection problems mentioned. For now, it's all we have.
"I do doubt very much that they are taking fertilized eggs from a viable womb to clone their embryonic progenitor cells."
Sorry - effectively, that's exactly what they do.
At this point I feel I should point out that I am *very* unhappy about ESCR for personal reasons. My wife had a hydatiform molar pregnancy.. with twins. One was hydatiform - the other wasn't. We had to abort both to save my wife's life. Not logical, true. But I'm not Mr Spock or a computer. Anyway, I would still have grave moral reservations about using embryos.
"Please research exactly what it is that this company is doing before you leap forward to oppose it."
Please research exactly what it is that this company is doing before you leap forward to defend it.
The parent is quite correct; but to clarify for those who *aren't* neuroscientists (and clear up a potential misunderstanding from TFA):
Myelin is rather like the insulation on a normal household electric cable. It doesn't actually carry the current, but stops the currrent from grounding out before it gets to its destination. So, to translate (and my apologies to the parent for any loss in translation):
"Myelination from oligodendrocytes just increases the ability of an already generated action potential to reach the end of the axon and cause synaptic activity"
Translation: Myelin sheaths just insulate the nerve signal from the surrounding tissue.
"the effect of alcohol is more like decreasing the chance that water will actually enter the pipe in the first place"
Translation: The effect of alcohol is more like making a dodgy connection at the wall socket.
"Have you ever noticed that programming jobs often ask for "well-rounded" applicants? This isn't (only) because they want you to be interesting when they talk to you in the hall. Most companies understand that this rounding contributes to more capable job skills."
What? You mean I put on all this weight for nothing?
How on earth did this turn into a Redhat vs. Unbutu willy-waving contest?
Anyway...
We run a cluster, too. A Linux one and an experimental Sun/Solaris one.*
Of course, cost is a big consideration so $50 for a SUSE DVD for the whole thing rather than $100 (?) for each node (128 nodes), is a BIG difference. And I agree with the parent's point about porting// applications as well. In our case it wouldn't be *that* huge a task because we only use a few programs - though it would still be hassle we could do without.
No, the real reason we wouldn't serious consider a MS solution is simply because it wouldn't really be designed with that sort of application in mind. In the same way that Windows advocates point out that Linux is a server system which is migrating towards desktop (OK, you know what I mean), I argue that Windows is a desktop system which is trying to be a server. Now it wants to be a cluster as well?
As a professional scientist I can answer some of these for you:
> "Were they wearing white coats?"
Embarrasingly - probably.
> "Were they dignified? ("Indeed, Dr. Fussman, you must write up this notable phenomenon for the Transactions of the Royal Philosophical Society.")"
No!
>"Or did they behave like Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) in "Back to the Future?" > Did they shout "Eureka!" Or "Holy s---!" or "What the f---?" Or the German equivalents thereof?"
The standard phrase/word is "WOW!" but sometimes we are driven to "Holy s---!" and, in extreme cases (sometimes involving the destruction of a lot of expensive lab gear), "WTF!" (Oh, and sometimes "OW!" or even "AAAAAAAAAAARGH!")
> DId they run out into the hallway and say, "Hey everyone, this is cool, some see what we just did?"
Please! This is standard operating procedure.
> Did they invite their wives and kids to come in and see it the next day?
No. They'd just roll their eyes and, in the case of my kids, just say "Daaaad!"
> Were they expecting it or did it surprise them?
Usually, we hope to anticipate the results of an experiment. However, sometimes the unexpected is informative/exciting/interesting/deadly.
> Did they get a harsh scolding from the lab safety officer?
What's a "lab safety officer"? Come to that, what does "safety" mean?
> Do they plan to aim the next one out the window and launch them into the courtyard?
Again, this is SOP.
> Or was their first action to file for a patent so they can sell through ThinkGeek?
This sort of stuff really interests me so I took a look at the site. There I saw the career page - "Cool", I thought, "This is the kind of stuff I'd work on for free!"
But I can't - 'cos I'm not American. You'd have thought that these guys would have tapped into the FOSS workforce. Also, non-Americans can forget going after the $50 M prize.
It rather puts the rhetoric on the home page into perspective. Ah, well. Back to ESA.
"But which people are the bad guys is subject to continuous change. Yesterday it was the rapists and murderers. Today it is the filesharers. Tomorrow it is the occasional book reader."
A *very* good point. But it's worse than that.
A couple of decades ago, the UK was having a serious debate about whether we should restore the death penalty. Originally, I was for it, but then I read an essay by a politician (Roy Hattersley) which argued that no matter what - the state should *never* have that sort of power over it's citizens. It changed my mind.
My point is that, although being able to kill it's citizens is an extreme case, the government can do other nasty things. If they had access to my DNA, they would have much, much more than the ability to connect me to a crime scene. Would you trust them with that information? I wouldn't!
A simple (and, yes, *very* paranoid, example):
I offend the "authorities" (I, dunno - leaked one of their scams to the press). They decide to take me out with "plausible deniability". They check my DNA and find that I'm prone to, say, bipolar depression. OK! Interfere with the medication, throw a couple of nasty personal experiences my way and.. BINGO! Troublesome citizen self destructs in a spectacular way.
"Globalization has one real goal, to commoditize the work force. We are just part of a balance sheet."
You only just noticed? You think this is new?
Read your history and look up "workhouses". Since the very start of the Industrial Revolution workers have been regarded as assets - nothing more. Even today it's "human resources".
Still, if anything it's improved over the last 200 years.
Slashdot Mirror
"I was using systems that did this 10 years ago. Granted, back then it was disk+tape not different speed disks, but it's the exact same thing."
Got you beat there. I was using a similar system nearly 30 years ago at university - again disk and tapes. The O/S was GEORGE III running on a ICL xxxx (can't remember). Very usful in the days when your disk quota was measured in kilobytes but totally automatic migration to tape tended to keep your disk usage down.
One problem, though. After the summer break, all your data had been moved to tape. So, you access the data and it starts a restore... trouble is *everyone* else is doing the same thing. Two day restore time, anyone?
"Something just wasn't right about the way he talked about child porn, almost as if it took effort to disparage it and I got the sneaking suspicion that he had been compromised by it in some way"
Compromised? Not in the way you mean.
Unfortunately, I have some experience of this from about 10 years ago. While I was working for a large corporation as a sysadmin I came across a stash of this stuff. To cut a long story short it went from that to helping the police gather evidence against three individuals and from there to helping them to crack a much larger ring of paedophiles.*
A normal adult wants to love and protect kids. I can tell you these people (I use the term advisedly) are *really* not normal and some of the images made me physically sick - literally. We are not talking about kids in the nude - you don't want to know. There is NO way a NORMAL adult will be compromised... really! What that police officer was probably feeling was... nothing. You have to be like that to be able to take it at all and even then it does damage. It's so bad that you *must* stop after a couple of years.
"One wonders why cops are allowed to work on this on their own, seems to me it would make much more sense to allow people access to the material only in teams, perhaps mixed-gender."
Well, you are in a team. Part of the reason of trawling through the material on your own is logistics (manpower, etc) and the other is; why expose people to more than necessary? And, as I mention above, the dangers aren't that you'll turn into a paedophile yourself.
* Yes we got them - it was on the front page of the papers - especially the bit about most of them getting 15 months. We spent two years taking them down. Go figure!
...is he talking about us?
Errr...
I haven't even read TFA, but doesn't it say the MS is in a position to buy Yahoo, not Google?
Does anyone know how this might affect people in the rest of the world?
Just point me (us) in the direction of an information source.
I have to say that I have worked in the US*; I *like* the USA and its people, and it saddens me to see even your basic freedoms being eroded. In the theatre of human affairs, this is trivial, I suppose. But still.
*In the 1980's when you were still free - and more free than anyone in Europe. (No, I'm not trolling, I really feel that)
Interesting. But if you use this approach to handle cooling problems, don't you lose processing power due to the effect of inter processor communications?
We use a large(ish) cluster - admittedly not even remotely in your league, but our main limitation has always been node connection bandwidth/lag.
From TFA:
"To be fair, string theory can claim some success. A 1985 paper showed that if you compactify extra dimensions in a certain way, the number of quarks and leptons you get is exactly the number found in nature. "This is the only idea out there for why the number of quarks and leptons is what it is," says Prof. Peskin. Still, that is less a prediction of string theory than a consequence."
As I understand it the major problems with ST is that it works for a huge number of possible universes, so it can't be disproved. Well, the idea of a multiverse is hardly new and, if I read the above passage correctly, we know which "compactification" gives the right number of quarks and leptons. So, doesn't this mean that we know *which* instance of the theory works for *our* universe? Therefore, using this instance, can't we then make other predictions to see if the theory is right?
Or... Am I missing something?
If it's the security of offsite storage you want, there is a better solution.
:-)
Join up with a friend and each get a hard drive with a caddy (a slide in tray which holds the drive, making for easy removal). Make them the same type of HD (and caddy, of course). Now you can each backup up your critical data onto the caddy drive and swap them. Next day/week/month backup onto the drive and swap again etc, etc. If you don't meet at work or very regularly, look at it as a good excuse to get together for a beer! ("But, darling I *have* to meet up with Joe. It's the offsite backups.")
Of course, you have to encrypt your data - not that you don't trust your friend (ahem!) but he might be burgled.
The beauty is that you can each back up any way you want and HD can store a *lot* - you can even use multiple disks.
I've done this with a 120GB disk and it works quite well. Now all I have to do is figure out the logistics of many participants and we can all have a weekly piss-up
"I still have SCO on 5 1/4" disks. Now if I can only find my 5 1/4" drive..."
I've got one. That'll be $699 please.
(Oops!)
An article about SCO wanting to recruit developers appeared and was heavily commented on. No surprise there, except...
/. and realising they're on a hiding to nothing. WE are the people they are targeting and the overwhelming response is "You must be kidding!"
/. actually affects a corporate* initiative directly?
SCO should be reading
Could this be the first time that
* I use the term "corporate" loosely - actually I should have said "^**!!@" (no, not rot13)
A template letter (change numbers/epithets as necessary):
... etc etc excuse for a company. And noone else like me will, either because having your company name on a CV would be professional suicide.
Dear Mr SCO,
I heard that you are looking for UNIX developers. I have 25 years of experience in this field and I am currently looking for a job. I enclose mv CV.
This is just to let you know that I will NEVER work for your nasty, dishonest, corrupt, stupid
Mwahahahahaha!
Yours Sincerely,
A Highly Experienced UNIX Guru.
PS. Fuck you!
"While I agree that this is promising technology, it seems as though it could only replace a traditional pacemaker in the case of AV node block (which is only one of the many heart problems that traditional pacemaker devices can treat)."
True. Reading from a (semi) professional point of view I was more excited about the use of myoblasts to construct the framework rather than its application per se. Though the change in function is pretty neat - essentially an artificial AV node! I was also happy to see a lack of the hype that often comes with this sort of announcement (FTFA "preliminary steps")
"I wish the scientists and doctors working on this project the best of luck. Hopefully if they can grow conductive tissue, they could also use it to repair dead tissue found in hearts that have suffered from a heart attack."
Sorry, not this way. This technique is really only for the generation of conductive tissue - not the heart muscle itself which is very different from skeletal muscle. Stem cells, anyone?
...or they wouldn't see it for what it is.
/.) But we're not going to get it until some off-the-rails guy comes up with some weird inconsistency with what we *think* we know and what *actually* happens.
...)
One of the basic rules of the Universe is that you can't understand the answer unless you understand the question and *most* of the answer to start with. Without underlying knowledge, it won't work. For example, the ancient greeks had the idea that matter was made up of individual items called atoms. Very nearly right, but it took a couple of thousand years before the idea came up again.
Example 1 (silly): An AMD64 drops through a wormhole/ST rift/whatever and lands on the desk of the foremost electronics engineer in the early 20th century. What does he see? A strange flat thing with lots of pins and a strangely regular irregularity in the blob of sand on top. And *nothing* else.
Example 2 (less silly and more comprehensible): Edison (or Swan) discover that if you pass a certain amount of *electricity* with the right *current* across a certain *material* in a near *vacuum* or *inert gas* within a *glass blown* container you have a working light bulb.
Until you have the underlying technology to make a discovery, you won't discover anything. The last example could go further to include metallurgy (OK, how to make a carbon filament), fire, agriculture (so someone has time to look into these things), etc, etc. And, no - my argument doesn't fall down with the earliest humans because they started with pure observation. (And, no - I wasn't there though I feel that old, sometimes)
My point is that *all* discoveries depend on the discoveries that came before. As Isaac Newton said "If I have seen a bit further, it's because I have stood on the shoulders of giants" (Yes, I know about the Hooke Insult - I think it's rubbish)
Human progress has always been dictated by necessity (even now) but the important thing to remember is that true progress is always built on the efforts of others.
So, we dream of (for example) a faster than light drive (at least on
Take it away you rebels (Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Pascal, Poincarre, Laplace, Einstein... xE6
"The code without the people is worth nothing," according to Phillipe Cases, partner at VC firm Partech International. "A million lines of code is like a million problems that you have to solve. So the risk on any open source investment project is that the 2-3 guys that created it and maintain it could leave. The commitment of the developers is often the IP -- not the code itself."
I don't think this is unique to open source... or software development in general. Of course, once VC is involved we're not talking about FOSS in the *strictest* sense - these guys want to make money. Ok, it may be that the revenue stems from support, but that's the same for nearly *all* software projects. (No, I don't mean just fixing bugs - that's a flawed business model to start with... Oh, wait)
Just to give an example - and to prove the quote above from TFA is wrong (sometimes, anyway):
Back in the early 80's I was asked to look at a program which required some adjustments. It was written in FORTRAN and it was a *mess*! "Spaghetti code" didn't even begin to describe it - it had GOTOs to GOTOs, looped out code, redundant variables by the dozen - you name it, it had it. It didn't have anything in the way of provenance. It took me two days to trace out how to implement a trivial change. The weirdest thing was there was no way I could really document what I'd done because that would need a framework - and there wasn't one. And, you know what? The company didn't care. They had paid a junior programmer for two days to implement something they needed RIGHT NOW. They didn't need to keep on the original developers (and God knows how many preceded me), nor did they need to insist on adequate documentation. If they needed to make a change in the future, they would just do the same (albeit with a younger and cheaper programmer). They wouldn't employ me to look at it - I'm too expensive.
My point is that it isn't the software that gets too expensive - it's the developers themselves. Who among us hasn't used a project to enhance their Kudos and desirability in the market?
So VC's are looking at FOSS in the wrong way. We don't really do it for money (though that's nice), we do it for the satisfaction of getting it right and being able to point to something and say "I did/helped_with that".
Anyone disagree?
(Ducks)
"Because IANAMB (I Am Not A Molecular Biologist), some of the possibilities I have suggested above are either not possible or not practical. But I suspect that more than one of those approaches is."
IAAMB (Usually describe myself as just biochemist - people have a clearer idea what that is). This isn't actually my area of expertise but it's close to the periphery of what I do (Immunology).
The simple answer is that some of these technologies are being investigated - not least because of the ethical concerns of ESCR. For the time being, however, ESC is the only usable technology for these kinds of experiments. All is not lost because when some of the other technologies advance to the practical stage, we can use them as the starting point and *these* techniques to follow on. ESC tech is probably doomed in the end, because of the immune rejection problems mentioned. For now, it's all we have.
"I do doubt very much that they are taking fertilized eggs from a viable womb to clone their embryonic progenitor cells."
Sorry - effectively, that's exactly what they do.
At this point I feel I should point out that I am *very* unhappy about ESCR for personal reasons. My wife had a hydatiform molar pregnancy.. with twins. One was hydatiform - the other wasn't. We had to abort both to save my wife's life. Not logical, true. But I'm not Mr Spock or a computer. Anyway, I would still have grave moral reservations about using embryos.
"Please research exactly what it is that this company is doing before you leap forward to oppose it."
Please research exactly what it is that this company is doing before you leap forward to defend it.
The parent is quite correct; but to clarify for those who *aren't* neuroscientists (and clear up a potential misunderstanding from TFA):
Myelin is rather like the insulation on a normal household electric cable. It doesn't actually carry the current, but stops the currrent from grounding out before it gets to its destination. So, to translate (and my apologies to the parent for any loss in translation):
"Myelination from oligodendrocytes just increases the ability of an already generated action potential to reach the end of the axon and cause synaptic activity"
Translation: Myelin sheaths just insulate the nerve signal from the surrounding tissue.
"the effect of alcohol is more like decreasing the chance that water will actually enter the pipe in the first place"
Translation: The effect of alcohol is more like making a dodgy connection at the wall socket.
Disclaimer: IANA neuroscientist (But IAA biochemist).
"Have you ever noticed that programming jobs often ask for "well-rounded" applicants? This isn't (only) because they want you to be interesting when they talk to you in the hall. Most companies understand that this rounding contributes to more capable job skills."
What? You mean I put on all this weight for nothing?
How on earth did this turn into a Redhat vs. Unbutu willy-waving contest?
// applications as well. In our case it wouldn't be *that* huge a task because we only use a few programs - though it would still be hassle we could do without.
Anyway...
We run a cluster, too. A Linux one and an experimental Sun/Solaris one.*
Of course, cost is a big consideration so $50 for a SUSE DVD for the whole thing rather than $100 (?) for each node (128 nodes), is a BIG difference. And I agree with the parent's point about porting
No, the real reason we wouldn't serious consider a MS solution is simply because it wouldn't really be designed with that sort of application in mind. In the same way that Windows advocates point out that Linux is a server system which is migrating towards desktop (OK, you know what I mean), I argue that Windows is a desktop system which is trying to be a server. Now it wants to be a cluster as well?
Nah!
*'cos we were paid to - that's why.
As a professional scientist I can answer some of these for you:
> "Were they wearing white coats?"
Embarrasingly - probably.
> "Were they dignified? ("Indeed, Dr. Fussman, you must write up this notable phenomenon for the Transactions of the Royal Philosophical Society.")"
No!
>"Or did they behave like Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) in "Back to the Future?"
> Did they shout "Eureka!" Or "Holy s---!" or "What the f---?" Or the German equivalents thereof?"
The standard phrase/word is "WOW!" but sometimes we are driven to "Holy s---!" and, in extreme cases (sometimes involving the destruction of a lot of expensive lab gear), "WTF!" (Oh, and sometimes "OW!" or even "AAAAAAAAAAARGH!")
> DId they run out into the hallway and say, "Hey everyone, this is cool, some see what we just did?"
Please! This is standard operating procedure.
> Did they invite their wives and kids to come in and see it the next day?
No. They'd just roll their eyes and, in the case of my kids, just say "Daaaad!"
> Were they expecting it or did it surprise them?
Usually, we hope to anticipate the results of an experiment. However, sometimes the unexpected is informative/exciting/interesting/deadly.
> Did they get a harsh scolding from the lab safety officer?
What's a "lab safety officer"? Come to that, what does "safety" mean?
> Do they plan to aim the next one out the window and launch them into the courtyard?
Again, this is SOP.
> Or was their first action to file for a patent so they can sell through ThinkGeek?
Damn! Why didn't I think of that?
--
Dr J. Clancy - Head of Research CLAN BioTech.
This sort of stuff really interests me so I took a look at the site. There I saw the career page - "Cool", I thought, "This is the kind of stuff I'd work on for free!"
But I can't - 'cos I'm not American. You'd have thought that these guys would have tapped into the FOSS workforce. Also, non-Americans can forget going after the $50 M prize.
It rather puts the rhetoric on the home page into perspective. Ah, well. Back to ESA.
"I'll call in the Trading Standards people" is the magic spell that converts "Sorrimate, not our problem" into "Here is your money back, sir."
Believe it or not I've done this when I wanted to return a copy of Windows XP. It wouldn't load on my system (some sort of motherboard problem).
Anyone else had such luck?
"But which people are the bad guys is subject to continuous change. Yesterday it was the rapists and murderers. Today it is the filesharers. Tomorrow it is the occasional book reader."
A *very* good point. But it's worse than that.
A couple of decades ago, the UK was having a serious debate about whether we should restore the death penalty. Originally, I was for it, but then I read an essay by a politician (Roy Hattersley) which argued that no matter what - the state should *never* have that sort of power over it's citizens. It changed my mind.
My point is that, although being able to kill it's citizens is an extreme case, the government can do other nasty things. If they had access to my DNA, they would have much, much more than the ability to connect me to a crime scene. Would you trust them with that information? I wouldn't!
A simple (and, yes, *very* paranoid, example):
I offend the "authorities" (I, dunno - leaked one of their scams to the press).
They decide to take me out with "plausible deniability".
They check my DNA and find that I'm prone to, say, bipolar depression.
OK! Interfere with the medication, throw a couple of nasty personal experiences my way and..
BINGO! Troublesome citizen self destructs in a spectacular way.
OR heart problems, or a love child, or...
Sigh! Back to the tin-foil helmet.
Remember the saying "The devil makes work for idle hands"?
It often seems to me that the reason politicians come up with these madcap ideas is that they have nothing better to do.
It's depressing.
"Globalization has one real goal, to commoditize the work force. We are just part of a balance sheet."
You only just noticed? You think this is new?
Read your history and look up "workhouses". Since the very start of the Industrial Revolution workers have been regarded as assets - nothing more. Even today it's "human resources".
Still, if anything it's improved over the last 200 years.
HERETICS!
The FSM will strike you down!
(I, too have been touched by his noodley appendage)