Tagging in Facebook, in some sense, does require a person's permission, because a person may remove a tag from any picture on which they are tagged. Further, they can not be retagged on that same picture unless they reinstate the tag themselves. This means that while FB initially assumes permission, that permission can be revoked.
It depends on you mean by the "whole play was written." Do you mean that the US had it in for Assange before the accusations came to light? That is certainly true. But exactly what they were doing about it is another matter.
It is possible that one or both of the women were CIA plants, and there have been suggestions to that effect http://www.counterpunch.org/shamir09142010.html. However, while this is a plausible story, it doesn't seem likely nor is it necessary to explain events.
Several things to remember: 1) Assange was trying to gain Swedish citizen at the time; 2) so, the US would have reason to put pressure on Sweden about the issue; 3) Sweden's interests mostly align with those of the US and they probably don't want to become known as a haven for international Robin Hoods, so they had their own reasons for not wanting to grant Assange a citizenship; 4) rape laws in Sweden have the lowest evidential bar in the entire world, essentially a woman can decide at any time after sex that she was assaulted, even if it was apparently mutual and she seemed to enjoy it; 5) there is a history in Sweden of women using these laws to their advantage, such as suing for large sums of money, that is has nothing to do with governmental pressure; 6) ultimately, it doesn't matter whether Assange is found innocent or guilty (for the US it would be a bonus, but not necessary), simply the charge of rape is enough to tarnish his image.
So, I would suggest that if we were to be able to Wikileaks the behind the scenes chatter we would probably see some diplomatic pressure from the US on Sweden to find a way to deny Assange citizenship. We would likely also see internal pressure within the Swedish establishment to deny Assange citizenship. We would probably also see that he was watched closely by the authorities. When his sexual escapades came to light, it was hard to miss since one of the women tweeted them all over the net and the other texted to all her friends, there may or may not have been some suggestions given to those women that maybe he didn't treat them as nicely as they would have liked. However, it is also quite likely that the women came to the conclusion to accuse him on their own, given that some Swedish woman have used these laws for less than upright purposes. The "coincidence" of two women charging Assange at the same time can easily be explained by the fact that they talked to each other beforehand. Regardless of whether these charges were influenced by suggestion or not, the Swedish government certainly jumped at the opportunity.
So, while it is possible that there were deep machinations involved, the events can easily be explained by conjunction of governmental business as usual (basic diplomatic pressure, and pressures internal to the Swedish system), Swedish rape laws, chance and jumping on opportunities when they arise.
While I agree that US is guilty of many human rights abuses (as are most, if not all, governments in the world), where do you get the idea that the US ran "extermination" camps in the 1940s? There were "internment" camps for citizens of Japanese descent. These camps certainly qualify as human rights abuse, since the individuals were forced to forfeit their property and were then held in detention under poor conditions for several years (which sadly did cause some deaths) for no reason except that their ancestors were from the wrong part of the world. But they hardly qualify as "extermination" camps, especially when compared to Nazi camps during the same period where 6 million people were exterminated.
Funny, I couldn't get through Snow Crash after trying several times. But the Baroque Cycle is one of favorite series (an experience much enhanced by the language).
In any case, whether you like Stephenson's earlier books or his later books, he is inarguably one of the more daring speculative fiction writers out there. If authors don't experiment then literature goes nowhere.
I am very much looking forward to this book.
I'm an evolutionary biologist, and I know Rich Lenski.
The reason they are reporting this without having all the details nailed down is because the observation itself is extremely interesting. No E. coli that has ever been observed in all the years that it has been studied (> 100 years) has been able to metabolize citrate. This is not simply evolution by working on pre-existing traits, but the evolution of an entirely novel trait. Essentially, the Lenski lab observed the evolution of a new species, and the most conclusive proof yet that micro-evolutionary processes can lead to macro-evolutionary change.
As far as the mutational details: these also are interesting, and do bare on the repeatability of evolution. The details are also important to an ongoing debate in evolutionary biology about whether genetic variation (generated by mutations and acted upon by natural selection) is primarily additive (simple) or epistatic (complex). The amount of material here is large, it may take a number of other papers to fully describe this phenomenon. Science reporting is generally based on when papers come out.
Lastly, in general science by it's nature will always generate more questions as it finds answers to previous questions. In other words, the work is never done.
RIAA rarely brings cases to court in states where the defendants actually live. Convenient for RIAA. For the defendants, not so much. Also, due to any number of reasons, defendants are rarely notified of the suit with any reasonable time frame in which to respond. Thus, many cases have defendants missing court dates and having no representation. It looks bad for them, but it may not be their fault. I'm not sure if this happened here, but it is certainly a possibility.
People have been performing music from DNA for YEARS, how the hell can a couple of dudes patent what's already entered the public domain?
Douglas Hofstadter noted the idea in 1980 and Hayashi and Munakata made the first music from DNA in 1984! In exactly the same way as these lawyers propose to do so no less. Not to mention the numerous artists who have also created genetic music since then (http://whozoo.org/mac/Music/Sources.htm). Patents in the US are granted for 20 years from the date of filing (and this is recent, it used to be 17; http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article =1329&context=bejeap). 2007 - 20 years = 1987. So unless these guys were able to pull out some crazy extentions there is no way they thought of this first.
Stem cells are a hot topic, so people are willing to publish sloppy research or even fake date (remember Dr Hwang Woo-suk) just to get published fast and first. The same turns out to be true with other hot topics like flu research, where claims that the 1918 flu pandemic was of avian origin are severely overblown (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7088/f ull/nature04824.html; a free version is here: http://www.amherst.edu/~mhood/pubs.htm). Most scientifc research is solid, and most review processes work, but publications like Science and Nature often publish articles based on how sexy they are and can curtail the review process if they think the story will be a hit. Most other journals keep things steady and have very solid review proceedures.
The point that this is a Federal and not a State grand jury investigation is important. That it appears to be only nominally investigating the attack on the police officer and more interested in identifying the people at the protest in general (some of whom are Josh's sources and why he doesn't want to testify) is also important. A crime was likely commited, but given that this grand jury is part of the joint terrorism task force I doubt that it is the crime that they are really after. I'm sorry, but I don't see how an attack on a police car and a police officer after the car agressively drove into the crowd at a protest has anything to do with terrorism. It seems to me more of a heat of the moment reaction to circumstance than a consciously designed attack to strike fear into the hearts of police men everywhere. This type of crime should properly be handled at the state level. So why the joint terrorist task force Federal grand jury? They want names: they've done it before in the case of ELF and ALF- which are arguably terrorist, but unfortunately our government seems to view all people who protest much in the same way, otherwise why have FBI undercover agents and provocatuers in many peaceful anti-war groups, etc?
The point I'm trying to make is that the Federal government has a long history of using any means neccessary to determine the identity of citizens who disagree with government policies. So, it is not at all unreasonable to think that the purpose of this investigation is a little broader than what the geovernment claims it to be. On that note, the authority on which this grand jury was called in Federal court is based purely on the fact that because the police car involved in the incident MAY have been paid for by Federal funds (that is the State receives Federal funds) the Federal givernment has a vested interest in the case. Besides this being a flimsy argument in the first place, it strikes me that by this reasoning the Feds are more interested in a bit of minor damage to a police car than the skull-fracturing attack on a flesh and blood officer of the state.
I would also like to point out, that we are witnessing what amounts to the most widespread government jailing of journalists since the 1970s. While Josh Wolf's case may be the most agregious, he is not alone.
Here's the problem: It's rather easy to say, "I made it so why shouldn't I be able to extract maximum value from my product?" This is a simple argument that everyone understands, whether or not they agree.
The problem comes when you begin to realize that no invention is made out of thin air. For example, if you are a record producer who produces digital music products. Well, that music has to come from somewhere, probably created by some musician. But that musician had to learn their craft somewhere, probably from listening to a lot of music. In this day and age a portion of that music was likely copied. Musicians tend to be better the more music they listen to. It's highly likely that a musician who only listens to free music will have less music to listen to, and may be a poorer musician for that. Further, the musical forms used by said musician were most likely "invented" (I prefer to use the term discovered) by someone else. The instrument they play was likely created sometime in the past by someone else. A good musician owes his livelihood to all those who came before. So why doesn't said musician pay his predecessors or their families?
A more concrete example, I have a friend who is a very talented graphic designer. He works for a company who pays for legal licenses to software like photoshop that enable my friend to do his work. They can do this, in part, because my friend helps them make money. My friend would not have been hired by his company if he couldn't use this software. My friend has the skill to use this software, because he practiced on pirated versions of this software. At the time he was unable to pay for a legal copy. If he had followed the law he wouldn't have learned his craft, the company he works for wouldn't have hired him nor would they have benifited from his creativity.
The point I'm trying to make is this: all discoveries are built on previous discoveries. So while we should give credit to those who create something valuable we should also not let those who would maintain a stranglehold on those discoveries stifle future discoveries. The money generated by intellectual property does enable the creation of more such property, but the oft forgotten second part of the equation is the process of creativity itself. The more toll gates we erect the less likely that new discoveries will be made. It all comes down to balance.
"The journal publishers are the ones who make the money."
Thanks for someone FINALLY making this point!
There are apparently a lot of people out there who don't understand that publisher's and scientists are very different entities. I would also like to point out that the scientists who do peer review for journals are ALSO not paid, neither are the scientific editors in most cases. So, journals get scientists to write articles for them for FREE, get other scientists to review them for FREE, and get still other scientists to edit these articles and construct the journal themes for FREE. Certainly there are costs associated with publishing and managing the enterprise, but beyond that journals are making money of the backs of free labor. Now, scientists do have incentives, as has been abundantly pointed out, but you begin to understand why scientists, with the goal of widely publishing their results, have decide to set up entities like PLoS in order to cut the money grubbing middle man, who doesn't make any of the important content anyway, out of the picture and cheaply deliver results to an even wider audience.
I am a University of Virginia student, but I am not associated with this movement. And I agree, I don't think the funding is as relevant as the dishonesty.
Sorry, I'm a busy person and wasn't able to check into this discussion for a day. And I see my silence has caused you to think I'm a yeller and a screamer. I am not. Pat Micheals has deliberately and under oath to congress lied about and misrepresented other scientists work, in particular James Hansen. While you may see this as another example of "suppression" there is a movement at the University of Virginia to censure Pat Micheals in some way, this is the website for those students (http://users.adelphia.net/~studenthonor/). It has a lot of relavant material to this debate. In any case, the effect the Miceals has had on Hansen's career has been severe, to the point where I would say that it is Hansen who has been the victim of supression. BTW, I posted this because have an opinion, and it is very well informed.
I say this in another post, but I'll say it here since you cite him: Pat Micheals is a fraud who misrepresents other scientists work. He has lied under oath to the US congress, and he takes payment directly from the coal industry. If you are trying to find people who have legitimate claims against Climate Change look elsewhere.
Patrick Micheals (http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/micha els.shtml), a professor at the University of Virginia, is scientist who goes against the grain. He has published in very respectable journals (Geophysical Letters and Climate Research). His main premise: that global warming is slower than predictions and that it is not human caused. Interestingly, he has not relied on his own science to propagate these views. Rather he has made a name for himself by criticizing, in print and under oath to the United States Congress, one James Hansen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen), the guy who brought global warming to the attention of the US government. While it is always better to challenge concensus views with rigorous science, criticizing others work is not, in principle, a bad thing. It turns out, however, that Micheals is not only criticizing Hansen, but doing so fraudulently. A group of students at the University of Virginia began a campaign last month to remove Micheals from the University becasue of this academic dishonesty. Their website has a number of very interesting links (http://users.adelphia.net/~studenthonor/), including a report on funding that Micheals has received from the coal industry. I don't doubt that that there are legitimate scientists out there who are skeptical of climate change, and they may be right, but the only way to truly change a scientific concesus is to do it through hard work and extreme integrity. That scientists who are willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder exist, casts doubt on others who may have legitimate claims.
If Blizzard has a clear policy/warning system etc. then I don't see any reason they can't ban you for whatever reason you may have violated said policy. There are two problems with Blizzard that I see here: 1) their policy is obviously not clear, 2) they have absolutely no communication skills and no recourse process. Both of these if they happen at a wide enough scale (i.e. happens to lots of people) may be grounds for a class action suit. Same goes for the claims made by Logitech for their programmable keyboard, if macros ARE a bannable offense by Blizzard then Logitech is guilty of false advertising. I would love to see Blizzard get some heat for this type of thing. But then, they have a lot of money and will probably continue to squash and quash users with legitimate greviences.
Will engineering occur? Yes that's likely.
The problem is that we still do not have a comprehensive view of gene action. That is, while we understand something about how a few genes are transcribed and translated into phenotypes, we have no idea what many genes actually do. We also still have little understanding of how genes work in combination with one another to produce an effect. With certain types of bioinformatics, basically just high powered Bayesian statistics, we can associate gene regions and possibly specific sequences with certain traits. This is useful in breeding, and is very much in use in crop and animal breeding. However, many of these breeding programs still fall short. To do human breeding would require massive government intervention into the lives of people, we would have to treat humans like cattle.
Further, breeding programs for crops and domestic animals work because we have very simple goals, which basically boil down to increasing food production. What would we even select for with humans? Physical characteristics might be relatively easy. Such as lung capacity, or skeletal and muscle structure. But, something like intelligence is very hard to pinpoint. Intelligence is really an emergent property of neuronal structure interacting with an organisms environment. There are so many genes that underlay intelligence, and the environment can cause so much noise, that it would take a VERY large scale breeding program to search for it. Also, would a governmental system that would undergo such a process actually want intelligent individuals? Intelligent individuals may disrupt the system. A government of this sort would probably rather want obedient individuals. Think of it, soldiers who are perfectly built physical specimens who are perfectly obedient to the authorities that control them. I find this to be the direction of highest likelihood.
These soldiers would then keep down the masses, who are not engineered. It is my belief that stressful environmental conditions, where individuals have to juggle many pressures to survive are probably the best breeding grounds for intelligence. This means that very poor areas of the world where survival is difficult may in fact be the generating grounds of "higher" intelligence. If we go back to the soldier example, we have highly obedient soldiers working for authoritative governments to oppress enormous poor populations, which will have to evolve very high levels of intelligence to survive.
Anyway, this is just one scenario. It would probably make a good sci-fi novel.
One major reason for upgradeitis is that many programs will flash "upgrade now" boxes so often that it interferes with program function and annoys the heck out of you. Sometimes you have to upgrade just to get the darn things to GO AWAY.
Cases in point:
Windows Media Player (newest version is the worst ever BTW)
Adobe Acrobat
Uh, it's not very easy to genetically modify a tomato to produce extra vitamins (something people very much want to do), let alone giing a toad a self-destruct button. If you do manage to engineer something of the sort your likely to A) have a defective toad that won't get out of the starting gate, or B) the that trait will be lost due to selective forces in the wild. Part of the reason genetic engineering works is that we do it for crop plants or domestic animals for which we control the environment. Further, it's just a bad idea to introduce anything into nature, especially genetically modified organisms (we are having enough problem with resistance gene spill over from crop plants as it is), because the consequences are completely unpredictable. Lastly, our ability to genetically modify organisms is extremely overblown by the media, the process is both much harder and mush cruder than most people imagine.
Yup, very bad title, since Cane Toads have been around for so long... but you all knew that already.
I'm a PhD student studying evolutionary biology so I'd like to comment on the evolutionary aspects of the story. Specifically, the claim the that the long-leggedness of the toads on the forefront of the migration demonstrates evolution.
This idea, of course, makes sense because legs are likely to help with dispersal. But, whether this will cause evolution or not depends on at least two factors:
1) Is leg length genetically controlled? If it's environmental, in that toads with better luck (i.e. found lots of juicy worms as a youngin') then leg length cannot be passed on so there's no evoution. I'll have to read the nature paper to find out what the authors said about this.
2) The long legged toads must have a disproportionate contribution to the gene pool of future generations. However, this story notes that the short legged toads start to arrive eventually. Interestingly, we actaully have some evidence to suggest that the long legged toads could have this advantage. In Estoup et al's 2004 paper in Evolution (Vol 58, Iss 9) it is shown that founders of new toad populations (possibly long legged toads?) actually have a very large contribution to the gene pool in comparison to later arrivals (the short legged toads?). This would make sense given that these early founders will be able to arrive early and breed often. Thus, they would gain a fitness advantage for being long legged.
But, as far as the story goes we have none of this information.
Slashdot Mirror
Tagging in Facebook, in some sense, does require a person's permission, because a person may remove a tag from any picture on which they are tagged. Further, they can not be retagged on that same picture unless they reinstate the tag themselves. This means that while FB initially assumes permission, that permission can be revoked.
It depends on you mean by the "whole play was written." Do you mean that the US had it in for Assange before the accusations came to light? That is certainly true. But exactly what they were doing about it is another matter. It is possible that one or both of the women were CIA plants, and there have been suggestions to that effect http://www.counterpunch.org/shamir09142010.html. However, while this is a plausible story, it doesn't seem likely nor is it necessary to explain events. Several things to remember: 1) Assange was trying to gain Swedish citizen at the time; 2) so, the US would have reason to put pressure on Sweden about the issue; 3) Sweden's interests mostly align with those of the US and they probably don't want to become known as a haven for international Robin Hoods, so they had their own reasons for not wanting to grant Assange a citizenship; 4) rape laws in Sweden have the lowest evidential bar in the entire world, essentially a woman can decide at any time after sex that she was assaulted, even if it was apparently mutual and she seemed to enjoy it; 5) there is a history in Sweden of women using these laws to their advantage, such as suing for large sums of money, that is has nothing to do with governmental pressure; 6) ultimately, it doesn't matter whether Assange is found innocent or guilty (for the US it would be a bonus, but not necessary), simply the charge of rape is enough to tarnish his image. So, I would suggest that if we were to be able to Wikileaks the behind the scenes chatter we would probably see some diplomatic pressure from the US on Sweden to find a way to deny Assange citizenship. We would likely also see internal pressure within the Swedish establishment to deny Assange citizenship. We would probably also see that he was watched closely by the authorities. When his sexual escapades came to light, it was hard to miss since one of the women tweeted them all over the net and the other texted to all her friends, there may or may not have been some suggestions given to those women that maybe he didn't treat them as nicely as they would have liked. However, it is also quite likely that the women came to the conclusion to accuse him on their own, given that some Swedish woman have used these laws for less than upright purposes. The "coincidence" of two women charging Assange at the same time can easily be explained by the fact that they talked to each other beforehand. Regardless of whether these charges were influenced by suggestion or not, the Swedish government certainly jumped at the opportunity. So, while it is possible that there were deep machinations involved, the events can easily be explained by conjunction of governmental business as usual (basic diplomatic pressure, and pressures internal to the Swedish system), Swedish rape laws, chance and jumping on opportunities when they arise.
Certainly. I was only making the point the American camps were nothing at all like the Nazi camps where people definitely were exterminated.
While I agree that US is guilty of many human rights abuses (as are most, if not all, governments in the world), where do you get the idea that the US ran "extermination" camps in the 1940s? There were "internment" camps for citizens of Japanese descent. These camps certainly qualify as human rights abuse, since the individuals were forced to forfeit their property and were then held in detention under poor conditions for several years (which sadly did cause some deaths) for no reason except that their ancestors were from the wrong part of the world. But they hardly qualify as "extermination" camps, especially when compared to Nazi camps during the same period where 6 million people were exterminated.
Funny, I couldn't get through Snow Crash after trying several times. But the Baroque Cycle is one of favorite series (an experience much enhanced by the language). In any case, whether you like Stephenson's earlier books or his later books, he is inarguably one of the more daring speculative fiction writers out there. If authors don't experiment then literature goes nowhere. I am very much looking forward to this book.
I'm an evolutionary biologist, and I know Rich Lenski. The reason they are reporting this without having all the details nailed down is because the observation itself is extremely interesting. No E. coli that has ever been observed in all the years that it has been studied (> 100 years) has been able to metabolize citrate. This is not simply evolution by working on pre-existing traits, but the evolution of an entirely novel trait. Essentially, the Lenski lab observed the evolution of a new species, and the most conclusive proof yet that micro-evolutionary processes can lead to macro-evolutionary change. As far as the mutational details: these also are interesting, and do bare on the repeatability of evolution. The details are also important to an ongoing debate in evolutionary biology about whether genetic variation (generated by mutations and acted upon by natural selection) is primarily additive (simple) or epistatic (complex). The amount of material here is large, it may take a number of other papers to fully describe this phenomenon. Science reporting is generally based on when papers come out. Lastly, in general science by it's nature will always generate more questions as it finds answers to previous questions. In other words, the work is never done.
RIAA rarely brings cases to court in states where the defendants actually live. Convenient for RIAA. For the defendants, not so much. Also, due to any number of reasons, defendants are rarely notified of the suit with any reasonable time frame in which to respond. Thus, many cases have defendants missing court dates and having no representation. It looks bad for them, but it may not be their fault. I'm not sure if this happened here, but it is certainly a possibility.
People have been performing music from DNA for YEARS, how the hell can a couple of dudes patent what's already entered the public domain?
e =1329&context=bejeap). 2007 - 20 years = 1987. So unless these guys were able to pull out some crazy extentions there is no way they thought of this first.
Douglas Hofstadter noted the idea in 1980 and Hayashi and Munakata made the first music from DNA in 1984! In exactly the same way as these lawyers propose to do so no less. Not to mention the numerous artists who have also created genetic music since then (http://whozoo.org/mac/Music/Sources.htm). Patents in the US are granted for 20 years from the date of filing (and this is recent, it used to be 17; http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl
Too true. There is an intersection between culture and science that can make for very persitant bad ideas.
Stem cells are a hot topic, so people are willing to publish sloppy research or even fake date (remember Dr Hwang Woo-suk) just to get published fast and first. The same turns out to be true with other hot topics like flu research, where claims that the 1918 flu pandemic was of avian origin are severely overblown (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7088/f ull/nature04824.html; a free version is here: http://www.amherst.edu/~mhood/pubs.htm). Most scientifc research is solid, and most review processes work, but publications like Science and Nature often publish articles based on how sexy they are and can curtail the review process if they think the story will be a hit. Most other journals keep things steady and have very solid review proceedures.
The point that this is a Federal and not a State grand jury investigation is important. That it appears to be only nominally investigating the attack on the police officer and more interested in identifying the people at the protest in general (some of whom are Josh's sources and why he doesn't want to testify) is also important. A crime was likely commited, but given that this grand jury is part of the joint terrorism task force I doubt that it is the crime that they are really after. I'm sorry, but I don't see how an attack on a police car and a police officer after the car agressively drove into the crowd at a protest has anything to do with terrorism. It seems to me more of a heat of the moment reaction to circumstance than a consciously designed attack to strike fear into the hearts of police men everywhere. This type of crime should properly be handled at the state level. So why the joint terrorist task force Federal grand jury? They want names: they've done it before in the case of ELF and ALF- which are arguably terrorist, but unfortunately our government seems to view all people who protest much in the same way, otherwise why have FBI undercover agents and provocatuers in many peaceful anti-war groups, etc?
The point I'm trying to make is that the Federal government has a long history of using any means neccessary to determine the identity of citizens who disagree with government policies. So, it is not at all unreasonable to think that the purpose of this investigation is a little broader than what the geovernment claims it to be. On that note, the authority on which this grand jury was called in Federal court is based purely on the fact that because the police car involved in the incident MAY have been paid for by Federal funds (that is the State receives Federal funds) the Federal givernment has a vested interest in the case. Besides this being a flimsy argument in the first place, it strikes me that by this reasoning the Feds are more interested in a bit of minor damage to a police car than the skull-fracturing attack on a flesh and blood officer of the state.
I would also like to point out, that we are witnessing what amounts to the most widespread government jailing of journalists since the 1970s. While Josh Wolf's case may be the most agregious, he is not alone.
Here's the problem: It's rather easy to say, "I made it so why shouldn't I be able to extract maximum value from my product?" This is a simple argument that everyone understands, whether or not they agree.
The problem comes when you begin to realize that no invention is made out of thin air. For example, if you are a record producer who produces digital music products. Well, that music has to come from somewhere, probably created by some musician. But that musician had to learn their craft somewhere, probably from listening to a lot of music. In this day and age a portion of that music was likely copied. Musicians tend to be better the more music they listen to. It's highly likely that a musician who only listens to free music will have less music to listen to, and may be a poorer musician for that. Further, the musical forms used by said musician were most likely "invented" (I prefer to use the term discovered) by someone else. The instrument they play was likely created sometime in the past by someone else. A good musician owes his livelihood to all those who came before. So why doesn't said musician pay his predecessors or their families?
A more concrete example, I have a friend who is a very talented graphic designer. He works for a company who pays for legal licenses to software like photoshop that enable my friend to do his work. They can do this, in part, because my friend helps them make money. My friend would not have been hired by his company if he couldn't use this software. My friend has the skill to use this software, because he practiced on pirated versions of this software. At the time he was unable to pay for a legal copy. If he had followed the law he wouldn't have learned his craft, the company he works for wouldn't have hired him nor would they have benifited from his creativity.
The point I'm trying to make is this: all discoveries are built on previous discoveries. So while we should give credit to those who create something valuable we should also not let those who would maintain a stranglehold on those discoveries stifle future discoveries. The money generated by intellectual property does enable the creation of more such property, but the oft forgotten second part of the equation is the process of creativity itself. The more toll gates we erect the less likely that new discoveries will be made. It all comes down to balance.
"The journal publishers are the ones who make the money."
Thanks for someone FINALLY making this point!
There are apparently a lot of people out there who don't understand that publisher's and scientists are very different entities. I would also like to point out that the scientists who do peer review for journals are ALSO not paid, neither are the scientific editors in most cases. So, journals get scientists to write articles for them for FREE, get other scientists to review them for FREE, and get still other scientists to edit these articles and construct the journal themes for FREE. Certainly there are costs associated with publishing and managing the enterprise, but beyond that journals are making money of the backs of free labor. Now, scientists do have incentives, as has been abundantly pointed out, but you begin to understand why scientists, with the goal of widely publishing their results, have decide to set up entities like PLoS in order to cut the money grubbing middle man, who doesn't make any of the important content anyway, out of the picture and cheaply deliver results to an even wider audience.
I am a University of Virginia student, but I am not associated with this movement. And I agree, I don't think the funding is as relevant as the dishonesty.
Sorry, I'm a busy person and wasn't able to check into this discussion for a day. And I see my silence has caused you to think I'm a yeller and a screamer. I am not. Pat Micheals has deliberately and under oath to congress lied about and misrepresented other scientists work, in particular James Hansen. While you may see this as another example of "suppression" there is a movement at the University of Virginia to censure Pat Micheals in some way, this is the website for those students (http://users.adelphia.net/~studenthonor/). It has a lot of relavant material to this debate. In any case, the effect the Miceals has had on Hansen's career has been severe, to the point where I would say that it is Hansen who has been the victim of supression. BTW, I posted this because have an opinion, and it is very well informed.
I say this in another post, but I'll say it here since you cite him: Pat Micheals is a fraud who misrepresents other scientists work. He has lied under oath to the US congress, and he takes payment directly from the coal industry. If you are trying to find people who have legitimate claims against Climate Change look elsewhere.
Patrick Micheals (http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/micha els.shtml), a professor at the University of Virginia, is scientist who goes against the grain. He has published in very respectable journals (Geophysical Letters and Climate Research). His main premise: that global warming is slower than predictions and that it is not human caused. Interestingly, he has not relied on his own science to propagate these views. Rather he has made a name for himself by criticizing, in print and under oath to the United States Congress, one James Hansen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen), the guy who brought global warming to the attention of the US government. While it is always better to challenge concensus views with rigorous science, criticizing others work is not, in principle, a bad thing. It turns out, however, that Micheals is not only criticizing Hansen, but doing so fraudulently. A group of students at the University of Virginia began a campaign last month to remove Micheals from the University becasue of this academic dishonesty. Their website has a number of very interesting links (http://users.adelphia.net/~studenthonor/), including a report on funding that Micheals has received from the coal industry. I don't doubt that that there are legitimate scientists out there who are skeptical of climate change, and they may be right, but the only way to truly change a scientific concesus is to do it through hard work and extreme integrity. That scientists who are willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder exist, casts doubt on others who may have legitimate claims.
If Blizzard has a clear policy/warning system etc. then I don't see any reason they can't ban you for whatever reason you may have violated said policy. There are two problems with Blizzard that I see here: 1) their policy is obviously not clear, 2) they have absolutely no communication skills and no recourse process. Both of these if they happen at a wide enough scale (i.e. happens to lots of people) may be grounds for a class action suit. Same goes for the claims made by Logitech for their programmable keyboard, if macros ARE a bannable offense by Blizzard then Logitech is guilty of false advertising. I would love to see Blizzard get some heat for this type of thing. But then, they have a lot of money and will probably continue to squash and quash users with legitimate greviences.
Will engineering occur? Yes that's likely. The problem is that we still do not have a comprehensive view of gene action. That is, while we understand something about how a few genes are transcribed and translated into phenotypes, we have no idea what many genes actually do. We also still have little understanding of how genes work in combination with one another to produce an effect. With certain types of bioinformatics, basically just high powered Bayesian statistics, we can associate gene regions and possibly specific sequences with certain traits. This is useful in breeding, and is very much in use in crop and animal breeding. However, many of these breeding programs still fall short. To do human breeding would require massive government intervention into the lives of people, we would have to treat humans like cattle. Further, breeding programs for crops and domestic animals work because we have very simple goals, which basically boil down to increasing food production. What would we even select for with humans? Physical characteristics might be relatively easy. Such as lung capacity, or skeletal and muscle structure. But, something like intelligence is very hard to pinpoint. Intelligence is really an emergent property of neuronal structure interacting with an organisms environment. There are so many genes that underlay intelligence, and the environment can cause so much noise, that it would take a VERY large scale breeding program to search for it. Also, would a governmental system that would undergo such a process actually want intelligent individuals? Intelligent individuals may disrupt the system. A government of this sort would probably rather want obedient individuals. Think of it, soldiers who are perfectly built physical specimens who are perfectly obedient to the authorities that control them. I find this to be the direction of highest likelihood. These soldiers would then keep down the masses, who are not engineered. It is my belief that stressful environmental conditions, where individuals have to juggle many pressures to survive are probably the best breeding grounds for intelligence. This means that very poor areas of the world where survival is difficult may in fact be the generating grounds of "higher" intelligence. If we go back to the soldier example, we have highly obedient soldiers working for authoritative governments to oppress enormous poor populations, which will have to evolve very high levels of intelligence to survive. Anyway, this is just one scenario. It would probably make a good sci-fi novel.
One major reason for upgradeitis is that many programs will flash "upgrade now" boxes so often that it interferes with program function and annoys the heck out of you. Sometimes you have to upgrade just to get the darn things to GO AWAY. Cases in point: Windows Media Player (newest version is the worst ever BTW) Adobe Acrobat
Uh, it's not very easy to genetically modify a tomato to produce extra vitamins (something people very much want to do), let alone giing a toad a self-destruct button. If you do manage to engineer something of the sort your likely to A) have a defective toad that won't get out of the starting gate, or B) the that trait will be lost due to selective forces in the wild. Part of the reason genetic engineering works is that we do it for crop plants or domestic animals for which we control the environment. Further, it's just a bad idea to introduce anything into nature, especially genetically modified organisms (we are having enough problem with resistance gene spill over from crop plants as it is), because the consequences are completely unpredictable. Lastly, our ability to genetically modify organisms is extremely overblown by the media, the process is both much harder and mush cruder than most people imagine.
Yup, very bad title, since Cane Toads have been around for so long... but you all knew that already. I'm a PhD student studying evolutionary biology so I'd like to comment on the evolutionary aspects of the story. Specifically, the claim the that the long-leggedness of the toads on the forefront of the migration demonstrates evolution. This idea, of course, makes sense because legs are likely to help with dispersal. But, whether this will cause evolution or not depends on at least two factors: 1) Is leg length genetically controlled? If it's environmental, in that toads with better luck (i.e. found lots of juicy worms as a youngin') then leg length cannot be passed on so there's no evoution. I'll have to read the nature paper to find out what the authors said about this. 2) The long legged toads must have a disproportionate contribution to the gene pool of future generations. However, this story notes that the short legged toads start to arrive eventually. Interestingly, we actaully have some evidence to suggest that the long legged toads could have this advantage. In Estoup et al's 2004 paper in Evolution (Vol 58, Iss 9) it is shown that founders of new toad populations (possibly long legged toads?) actually have a very large contribution to the gene pool in comparison to later arrivals (the short legged toads?). This would make sense given that these early founders will be able to arrive early and breed often. Thus, they would gain a fitness advantage for being long legged. But, as far as the story goes we have none of this information.