1) Antibiotics don't affect viruses; they only affect bacteria.
2) The only acceptable plural of "virus" is "viruses". "Viri" (or even worse, "virii") are not valid plurals of "virus". The unfortunately-extended example is that "radius" becomes "radii", but there are numerous Latin words that end in "-us" that do not have "-i" as a plural. Reference:
It seems that the Herald Sun's article is focusing on how great the thymus is, and all the nifty things it can do -- when the real breakthrough is the fact that they GREW A FRICKIN' FUNCTIONING ORGAN FROM STEM CELLS. Jesus Christ! Move this tech over to the heart, liver, kidneys, whatever, and NOW you've got the "holy grail of immunology". Yeah, I realize it's a lot of work to do something like this, and requires specialized effort and development for different organs, but if the basic technology works... ay caramba.
Maybe I'm missing something, and this isn't as big a deal as I think it is... but if it is...
"Without a functioning immune system you get a disease called death," he said.
This sounds like one of those quotes from sensationalistic sci-fi pulp novels... "He found himself in a world of mayhem... and death!"
Not that that's a bad thing, mind you. I just hope we don't end up with giant killer thymuses (thymi? nah) rampaging through downtown Cleveland. Again.
One explanation for X-wings banking in space is that, since they bank when they're in the atmosphere, having a consistency of handling is easier for pilots, rather than having to change how they fly every time they move from vacuum to atmosphere.
Then there's the other explanation: IT LOOKS COOL! I read through all the reviews on the site too, and the guy has a lot of good points about bad physics, but he does not seem to understand that it is sometimes okay to bend or break the laws of physics in fiction for the sake of dramatic or plot effect. As long as the rules are consistent within the fictional world, what's the problem?
Certainly we can agree that calm, reasoned discourse is better than virulent flames. Besides, I never said (or even implied) that copyright infringement is perfectly acceptable; I merely said that it's not the same as theft (which, by definition, it isn't).
What agreement? I never made any agreement with any publisher. Can you show me this mythical agreement that I signed? (Yes, I know what you mean, but if you follow this through, you'll see what I mean, since you apparently haven't yet figured it out.)
And how exactly am I stealing from the author and publisher? They still have all the copies of the books they have before. So what is it, exactly, that I've taken from them?
How is it different from, say, stealing a book? Or a blender?
If I steal your book, you no longer have the book.
If I copy your book, you still have the book.
It's a pretty simple distinction. Theft means that whoever had the item, NO LONGER HAS IT. Copying means that whoever had the item, STILL HAS IT. Now, maybe you can explain why they ARE they same.
we also all know that copyright infringement is wrong
Um, no. We all know that copyright infringement is illegal, but whether it's morally wrong is up to each of us to decide. This may seem like a picky distinction, but it is very important.
On the one hand, there's the "copying is not theft" argument, which says that if I copy what you have, then you still have it, and have lost nothing (contrasting to theft, where if I steal what you have, you no longer have it). On the other hand, a large part of our economy is based on the premise of copyright (and trademark and patent) law, and it unquestionably hurts people to infringe copyright rather than paying for something legitimately... but what if you weren't going to pay for it if you couldn't get it illegitmately? And is it necessarily right to continue supporting something (the copyright economy) that you think is immoral, even if opposing it can hurt people?
Contemplate this, and when you can snatch the stone from my hand... uh... nevermind.
No, no, we'll just use clones, they're more efficient -- and hey, I hear that the Kanadians just happen to have a fully-trained clone army ready to go. Man, those Kanadians are excellent cloners.
And while I'm at it, I want a pony. One that can fly.
Then you might be interested in the military's next project, the Joint Strike Pony. It will be extremely cute, unlike the unattractive Joint Strike Fighter designs.
They thought it was unseemly and undignified for Yoda to bounce through the fight like a Superball loose in a toy store.
Yeah, I guess it would have been more dignified for Yoda to stand there and let Dooku hack him to pieces with a lightsaber.:) Come on, wise sayings and Charlie Chan grammar do not a powerful Jedi make. There has to be a reason Yoda is so respected -- and it's because he's a badass, not because he can spout aphorisms. (He's certainly not very wise, considering how badly the Jedi get blindsided by the Dark Side.)
Are the situations you described better or worse than using software that you don't have the source code to, and thus can't tell yourself whether it might be violating laws? With GPL (or other open source) software, you HAVE THE SOURCE CODE, so YOU can look at it and see whether you want to use it. Proprietary software requires you to trust the vendor.
The traditional interpretation of Occam's Razor is that if you have two equally useful explanations for something, the simpler one is more likely to be correct.
The problem with your statement is that there isn't another theory that's equally useful to superstring theory. Even though superstring theory is a lot more complicated than other theories, it also explains things a lot better. Occam's Razor doesn't really apply.
The way I see you looking at it, it appears that you're saying, "Well, superstring theory seems really complicated... too complicated for my tastes. Hence, I'll reject it." This is generally a bad idea when it comes to scientific hypotheses or theories.
What are the most expensive pieces of information that you have heard of, in dollars per byte?
No offense to the submitter, but this is a generally hazardous way to describe these kinds of things. Someone who didn't understand the reality of the situation might actually think that the data itself is where the value lies, rather in the secure data stored on Verant's servers.
It's interesting to think about the value that such things have. Essentially, the value lies, as I said, in the particular formation of data on Verant's servers, in San Diego (or wherever the actual machines happen to be, due to colocation). If you had actual physical access to those machines, you could simply create the data to be whatever you want -- a level 60 Barbarian Warrior with the best gear in the game, for example.
However, physical access to the data substrate is not feasible, for a variety of reasons. Only trusted employees are allowed physical access to that areas. Brute force may give you temporary physical access, but the variety of law enforcement agencies blanketing our society would (on average) put the kibosh on that fairly quickly. As a result, the only plausible way to create the data the way you want, is to use the relatively public interface mechanisms Verant provides -- namely, the game interface itself.
The amount of time and effort it takes, using that interface, to get the data into the form you want, is why the data has that value. A bad Verant employee with legitimate access to the data might also be able to create such value by quickly creating characters with such data, but they are unlikely to go long without getting caught.
Yeah, this all may seem fairly obvious, but did you ever actually sit down and think it through before? I didn't think so;)
Um, there's a problem with that. First, there is no newsgroup called netscape.mozilla.user.general -- the closest is netscape.public.mozilla.user. Second, if you submit a post to that NG, you will get an email back telling you that it does not accept posts from anyone not on their email whitelist, and that you should contact the administrator to get on the whitelist.
Except that it NEGLECTS TO GIVE YOU THE ADMINISTRATOR'S EMAIL ADDRESS. Jesus. Are they TRYING to make it hard to access?
I downloaded the Mozilla CVS Release Tag 1.0 yesterday... previously I'd been using 1.0-rc1. They fixed the last few bugs I'd noticed (yay), but the major difference I noticed is that with RT1.0, I can no longer start multiple instances of Mozilla (I'm running Mandrake 7.2 on a P3-800). Well, I CAN, except it won't let me use the same profile for separate instances -- it says "that profile is already in use".
Why does it do this? Can I disable this behavior? Why does Mozilla suddenly need to not allow multiple instances to access the same profile data, after never having done this for any previous version? I had to go back to using 1.0-rc2 (I would have tried rc3, except the.tar.gz from mozilla.org appears to be corrupted -- all four times I downloaded it), and unless there's some way to let multiple instances of 1.0 access the same profile... I guess I'll stick with rc2.
I haven't tried the full 1.0 release yet, but I doubt it's any different than RT1.0. Even if it is, actually being able to download it will take a while, due to server overload.
That's because I like the final sound to be as faithful to the original as possible.
Maybe this is a silly question (about half of what you wrote is gibberish to me), but without actually having been in the studio and having heard the original recording, how do you know when your reproduction of a recording is faithful to the original? I mean, obviously we can assume that if you hear an A-flat on the record, the guitarist played an A-flat in the studio, but when it comes to subtle harmonics and exact timbre and whatnot, how do you know that you've got it right?
You know, I started reading the article summary on/.'s front page... it sounded interesting... my hand was moving the mouse toward the "Read More" link... suddenly I got to the bit about "...surprisingly powerful..." and a horrible thought occurred to me.
I hadn't looked at the byline.
My eyes slowly traveled up and to the left... could it be... no... it couldn't... Jon Katz!
Suddenly everything was thrown into slow motion -- an extended "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" echoed in my head as my other hand swiftly flew across the keyboard and slapped my mouse hand away from the mouse, just in time to prevent me from reading the article. It was just like in a movie. Well, a boring movie about a guy reading/., but still...
Don't even ask me how I got into the article so I could reply to it -- it involves ninjas, monkeys, and a nuclear submarine.
As an addendum to the above post, here's a quote from the Star Wars FAQ on the official Star Wars website:
# Episode VII and Beyond
1. Wasn't Star Wars going to be nine or more parts? Will sequels be made set after Return of the Jedi?
Early on in the saga's development, some thought was given to have a trilogy set after Return of the Jedi. George Lucas has long since changed his mind, and the entire Star Wars saga will now encompass six episodes, starting with The Phantom Menace, and ending with Return of the Jedi. There will be no future Star Wars films set after Return of the Jedi.
Back in 1977, right after Star Wars became a huge hit, Lucas had said that he did indeed have the rest of the story more or less sketched out, and that he thought it would take 9 movies to do it. Heck, originally he wanted to put the entire Anakin cycle in ONE movie, but it was way too long. He wasn't expecting Star Wars to succeed, he just wanted to make a fun movie. Then it hit it big and he said, "Hmm..." Anyway, originally he thought it would take 9 movies, but a short while later he realized that he didn't have enough story for 9 -- 6 movies would do. Ever since then is the oft-repeated myth that there's going to be 3 more movies after Episode III finishes. If there are, it's not going to be part of the Anakin cycle (well, naturally, since Anakin dies in ROTJ).
I don't discount the possibility that there could be more Star Wars movies after Episode III, but I personally don't think Lucas will want to put out the effort. Remember, he's going to be 61 years old when Episode 3 comes out, and productions of this magnitude take a huge amount of effort. I suppose he could act in more of a supervisory role and let someone else handle more of the day-to-day duties, but, the question of Lucas' talent aside, would such movies FEEL like "Star Wars"? Hard to see, the future is. Not to mention the fact that the story arc would be more or less unrelated to Eps. 1-6, and we probably wouldn't have the same emotional attachments we've formed with the characters we already know.
It has occurred to me that an "interim" movie would be possible, something that takes place between episodes 3 and 4 (call it "Star Wars: Rise of the Empire" with no "Episode N" part) that bridges the 20-year gap... maybe giving some details of the Empire's atrocities, Luke and Leia's upbringings, maybe Han's background, etc. Just a thought of my own.
I dunno. I think she's pretty enough -- and hey, let's be honest, I certainly wouldn't kick her out of bed -- but I too have never quite understood the hot grits obsession on/. Maybe that's the joke -- it's a (self-?) parody of fanboy obsessiveness over someone who really isn't THAT outstanding.
Slashdot Mirror
Not a flame, just FYI:
1) Antibiotics don't affect viruses; they only affect bacteria.
2) The only acceptable plural of "virus" is "viruses". "Viri" (or even worse, "virii") are not valid plurals of "virus". The unfortunately-extended example is that "radius" becomes "radii", but there are numerous Latin words that end in "-us" that do not have "-i" as a plural. Reference:
http://www.perl.com/language/misc/virus.html
It seems that the Herald Sun's article is focusing on how great the thymus is, and all the nifty things it can do -- when the real breakthrough is the fact that they GREW A FRICKIN' FUNCTIONING ORGAN FROM STEM CELLS. Jesus Christ! Move this tech over to the heart, liver, kidneys, whatever, and NOW you've got the "holy grail of immunology". Yeah, I realize it's a lot of work to do something like this, and requires specialized effort and development for different organs, but if the basic technology works... ay caramba.
Maybe I'm missing something, and this isn't as big a deal as I think it is... but if it is...
Not that that's a bad thing, mind you. I just hope we don't end up with giant killer thymuses (thymi? nah) rampaging through downtown Cleveland. Again.
One explanation for X-wings banking in space is that, since they bank when they're in the atmosphere, having a consistency of handling is easier for pilots, rather than having to change how they fly every time they move from vacuum to atmosphere.
Then there's the other explanation: IT LOOKS COOL! I read through all the reviews on the site too, and the guy has a lot of good points about bad physics, but he does not seem to understand that it is sometimes okay to bend or break the laws of physics in fiction for the sake of dramatic or plot effect. As long as the rules are consistent within the fictional world, what's the problem?
Certainly we can agree that calm, reasoned discourse is better than virulent flames. Besides, I never said (or even implied) that copyright infringement is perfectly acceptable; I merely said that it's not the same as theft (which, by definition, it isn't).
What agreement? I never made any agreement with any publisher. Can you show me this mythical agreement that I signed? (Yes, I know what you mean, but if you follow this through, you'll see what I mean, since you apparently haven't yet figured it out.)
And how exactly am I stealing from the author and publisher? They still have all the copies of the books they have before. So what is it, exactly, that I've taken from them?
If I copy your book, you still have the book.
It's a pretty simple distinction. Theft means that whoever had the item, NO LONGER HAS IT. Copying means that whoever had the item, STILL HAS IT. Now, maybe you can explain why they ARE they same.
On the one hand, there's the "copying is not theft" argument, which says that if I copy what you have, then you still have it, and have lost nothing (contrasting to theft, where if I steal what you have, you no longer have it). On the other hand, a large part of our economy is based on the premise of copyright (and trademark and patent) law, and it unquestionably hurts people to infringe copyright rather than paying for something legitimately... but what if you weren't going to pay for it if you couldn't get it illegitmately? And is it necessarily right to continue supporting something (the copyright economy) that you think is immoral, even if opposing it can hurt people?
Contemplate this, and when you can snatch the stone from my hand... uh... nevermind.
No, no, we'll just use clones, they're more efficient -- and hey, I hear that the Kanadians just happen to have a fully-trained clone army ready to go. Man, those Kanadians are excellent cloners.
What? I've only seen it three times, why?
That's insensitive clod to you, buddy!
Are the situations you described better or worse than using software that you don't have the source code to, and thus can't tell yourself whether it might be violating laws? With GPL (or other open source) software, you HAVE THE SOURCE CODE, so YOU can look at it and see whether you want to use it. Proprietary software requires you to trust the vendor.
The traditional interpretation of Occam's Razor is that if you have two equally useful explanations for something, the simpler one is more likely to be correct.
The problem with your statement is that there isn't another theory that's equally useful to superstring theory. Even though superstring theory is a lot more complicated than other theories, it also explains things a lot better. Occam's Razor doesn't really apply.
The way I see you looking at it, it appears that you're saying, "Well, superstring theory seems really complicated... too complicated for my tastes. Hence, I'll reject it." This is generally a bad idea when it comes to scientific hypotheses or theories.
It's interesting to think about the value that such things have. Essentially, the value lies, as I said, in the particular formation of data on Verant's servers, in San Diego (or wherever the actual machines happen to be, due to colocation). If you had actual physical access to those machines, you could simply create the data to be whatever you want -- a level 60 Barbarian Warrior with the best gear in the game, for example.
However, physical access to the data substrate is not feasible, for a variety of reasons. Only trusted employees are allowed physical access to that areas. Brute force may give you temporary physical access, but the variety of law enforcement agencies blanketing our society would (on average) put the kibosh on that fairly quickly. As a result, the only plausible way to create the data the way you want, is to use the relatively public interface mechanisms Verant provides -- namely, the game interface itself.
The amount of time and effort it takes, using that interface, to get the data into the form you want, is why the data has that value. A bad Verant employee with legitimate access to the data might also be able to create such value by quickly creating characters with such data, but they are unlikely to go long without getting caught.
Yeah, this all may seem fairly obvious, but did you ever actually sit down and think it through before? I didn't think so ;)
...And every time someone watches one of those commercials, an angel bursts into flames.
It's going to be fun watching Jon Katz's brain melt when he reads this article.
Um, there's a problem with that. First, there is no newsgroup called netscape.mozilla.user.general -- the closest is netscape.public.mozilla.user. Second, if you submit a post to that NG, you will get an email back telling you that it does not accept posts from anyone not on their email whitelist, and that you should contact the administrator to get on the whitelist.
Except that it NEGLECTS TO GIVE YOU THE ADMINISTRATOR'S EMAIL ADDRESS. Jesus. Are they TRYING to make it hard to access?
I downloaded the Mozilla CVS Release Tag 1.0 yesterday... previously I'd been using 1.0-rc1. They fixed the last few bugs I'd noticed (yay), but the major difference I noticed is that with RT1.0, I can no longer start multiple instances of Mozilla (I'm running Mandrake 7.2 on a P3-800). Well, I CAN, except it won't let me use the same profile for separate instances -- it says "that profile is already in use".
.tar.gz from mozilla.org appears to be corrupted -- all four times I downloaded it), and unless there's some way to let multiple instances of 1.0 access the same profile... I guess I'll stick with rc2.
Why does it do this? Can I disable this behavior? Why does Mozilla suddenly need to not allow multiple instances to access the same profile data, after never having done this for any previous version? I had to go back to using 1.0-rc2 (I would have tried rc3, except the
I haven't tried the full 1.0 release yet, but I doubt it's any different than RT1.0. Even if it is, actually being able to download it will take a while, due to server overload.
I hadn't looked at the byline.
My eyes slowly traveled up and to the left... could it be... no... it couldn't... Jon Katz!
Suddenly everything was thrown into slow motion -- an extended "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" echoed in my head as my other hand swiftly flew across the keyboard and slapped my mouse hand away from the mouse, just in time to prevent me from reading the article. It was just like in a movie. Well, a boring movie about a guy reading /., but still...
Don't even ask me how I got into the article so I could reply to it -- it involves ninjas, monkeys, and a nuclear submarine.
Back in 1977, right after Star Wars became a huge hit, Lucas had said that he did indeed have the rest of the story more or less sketched out, and that he thought it would take 9 movies to do it. Heck, originally he wanted to put the entire Anakin cycle in ONE movie, but it was way too long. He wasn't expecting Star Wars to succeed, he just wanted to make a fun movie. Then it hit it big and he said, "Hmm..." Anyway, originally he thought it would take 9 movies, but a short while later he realized that he didn't have enough story for 9 -- 6 movies would do. Ever since then is the oft-repeated myth that there's going to be 3 more movies after Episode III finishes. If there are, it's not going to be part of the Anakin cycle (well, naturally, since Anakin dies in ROTJ).
I don't discount the possibility that there could be more Star Wars movies after Episode III, but I personally don't think Lucas will want to put out the effort. Remember, he's going to be 61 years old when Episode 3 comes out, and productions of this magnitude take a huge amount of effort. I suppose he could act in more of a supervisory role and let someone else handle more of the day-to-day duties, but, the question of Lucas' talent aside, would such movies FEEL like "Star Wars"? Hard to see, the future is. Not to mention the fact that the story arc would be more or less unrelated to Eps. 1-6, and we probably wouldn't have the same emotional attachments we've formed with the characters we already know.
It has occurred to me that an "interim" movie would be possible, something that takes place between episodes 3 and 4 (call it "Star Wars: Rise of the Empire" with no "Episode N" part) that bridges the 20-year gap... maybe giving some details of the Empire's atrocities, Luke and Leia's upbringings, maybe Han's background, etc. Just a thought of my own.
I dunno. I think she's pretty enough -- and hey, let's be honest, I certainly wouldn't kick her out of bed -- but I too have never quite understood the hot grits obsession on /. Maybe that's the joke -- it's a (self-?) parody of fanboy obsessiveness over someone who really isn't THAT outstanding.