I dont think the argument is over whether it should be studied or not. After a little digging, the argument seems to be over the fact that they are studying it in Biosafety Level 3 facilities, instead of BSL4. As my post below states, BSL3 is for treatable diseases, and BSL4 is for untreatable ones. This one isn't, and should be in BSL4 according to those rules.
"Biosafety level 3 This level is applicable to clinical, diagnostic, teaching, research, or production facilities in which work is done with indigenous or exotic agents which may cause serious or potentially lethal disease after inhalation.[7] It includes various bacteria, parasites and viruses that can cause severe to fatal disease in humans but for which treatments exist, such as"... blah blah blah. Key words, "treatments exist."
'But he thinks that the duration of the pause is too short. “The 60 days will likely not be adequate in terms of getting a truly workable international policy and applying that. I just don't think that's realistic,” he says. '
Is it really too short, or are the parties involved not interested enough to put their time into resolving it quickly? Because if they aren't really interested in coming to a resolution, the scientists have just wasted 60 days of their lives for people who don't actually care.
And I admit I don't know the difference between level 3 and level 4 facilities, but if it really could cause a pandemic, why is it not under the highest security? That's my life you're taking a chance on and claiming you're being cautious enough. I think anything you could learn from it is not worth the risk of my life.
I'm all for science and progress, but scientists are known for forgetting the stakes of what they're doing and claiming that progress is necessary, no matter the risk. It sounds to me like they need some oversight, and that's what this is.
You know what bothers me about that? It's not that people died there. It's that they're profit from those deaths.
Actually, though, cruise ships don't have many luxury rooms. Most of them are barely good enough to sleep in. Most of the time you spend on a ship is not in the room. So as a hotel, it's a loss.
And as a vacation getaway, it's missing the 2 things a cruise ship is really good for: Gambling and shore excursions.
I find this to be a common issue these days. People are held without trial or rights because they aren't citizens. They aren't enemy combatants either, so they aren't covered by any war treaties. The government then claims these people have no rights...
And that's exactly the opposite of what this country was founded on. The Declaration specifically says the rights are inalienable. It says nothing about nationality when it says so.
"an editorial in Australia's leading broadsheet newspapers pointed out that although the laws ostensibly applied to US interests they could overreach to impact those in other countries."
The laws were written specifically for that purpose. They have clauses that (supposedly) prevent them being used on US sites and site owners. What's left? The rest of the world!
That's why it disgusted me every time I saw someone overseas saying to get this junk off their news sites because it didn't apply to them.
Actually, the filament is colored. That's how it 'prints in color' and why it takes 2 heads to print in 2 colors.
I was asking for more details because the last time I looked into 3D printing, the ABS filament seemed to cost enough that printing things for fun, but screwing up, seemed to be a very costly mistake. The video, however, says it's cheap enough that you won't care.
Obviously, some of my data is wrong, but I don't know which yet.
And you're right, I do care how many bowls of cereal I get from a milk carton. I may not know the exact amount in my head, but I have an estimate since I've been eating cereal since I was young. I have never printed anything in 3D, though, so I have no idea what kind of volume something would have, or how much that would cost.
Yes, but how many Stephen Colbert heads do you get per spool?
My problem with these 3d techs online is that there's no good way to know exactly how much you can DO with a given amount of raw material. At some point, i'm going to have to break down and purchase things, just to get a baseline on cost.
He claims in the video that the material is so cheap you can just give things to friends and print more, but... Somehow, I doubt it's that cheap.
I've heard that before and find it funny, but Pair Programming is actually a step beyond. It includes automatic peer review as part of it's process, but goes further.
I've personally found PP to be of use in certain circumstances, but generally prefer not to use it. Peer review, however, remains valuable all the time.
Or simply don't accept code that isn't up to snuff. That includes documentation and testing. Peer review will help make this happen automatically. Here's how it goes:
"I can't tell what this code is supposed to do." "It toggles the widget's status." "Is that documented somewhere?" "No." "Let's get that done."
You don't have to have this happen too many times before you just do it to avoid that. Same as all the other good code practices.
If you aren't doing peer review, you aren't getting the best code you could. It seems painful at first, but good developers actually like getting feedback on their code, and improving it. It isn't long before any good developer comes to desire it, instead of dread it.
I'm going to agree with Narc. If you self-taught to code, you CAN become an excellent coder. Right now, you're a bundle of raw talent just waiting to be shaped. With a job and a good mentor, you'd be a great programmer in a year. With just the job, it'd take years, but you'd get there.
The job is necessary as an external motivator. You need someone telling you what they -must- have, even if you currently think it's impossible or ridiculous. You'll eventually get over that, and that's part of the process, too.
I have a feeling there are many more people out there just like you that just need the right push, and that's why this is a good initiative. Get them started on the path and they can take it from there. But with no push to get started... Well, they may never find out.
Maybe he's smart enough to know how to check for them manually? When I worked at a PC shop, I had to do that constantly as there were always new threats that weren't caught by the anti-malware programs yet.
This has the potential for some serious griefing. Since they'll keep blocking IPs and such, obviously TPB needs new IPs constantly. Cloud time! How many of Amazon's IPs do you think they'll have to block before realizing that they're blocking legit sites, too?
Lack of good content is the real problem. I'm an absolutely 3d fanatic, and even I admit there just isn't anything out there. A few cartoons, 1 heavy cg movie about blue people, and a bunch of schlock that looks like garbage because the 3d was faked in.
It's just like HD content that was upscaled from SD content... It's not actually any better.
It's a technical thing. The theatre is actually using 2 projectors with opposite polarization, and the glasses each filter out half of it.
At home, there's no projector. There's just an LED/pixel/whatever there and it has to do double duty and the glasses turn off each eye to match.
There -are- actually home systems that can do passive 3d, but they require 2 projectors, or a tv with 2 projectors in it. Since those are huge and expensive, it's not very popular.
"Results? Nichols found free customers are higher maintenance and more demanding than the paying customers. 20 or so paying customers asked questions while "hundreds" of free ones did. And when following up, paying customers never flagged his emails as spam, while many free customers did, and complained."
The numbers mean nothing if we don't know how many paid and how many didn't. I think 20 to "hundreds" is probably a good ratio for paid-to-free in the first place.
As for the spam, if you didn't ask for an email from a free service, and it appears to be advertising something (like his premium services), I think spam is a good label for it. I personally wouldn't flag it as such, but I understand those who would. Without seeing the exact email, it's hard to know why they might do it, though. And the paying customers... Were they annoyed by the email, too? Did they get the same email? How did he know which of the 2 flagged it spam or not? Merely the complaint emails?
In my experience, it's all fine and good to have free customers, so long as you keep them away from your paying customers and don't let it affect them negatively. Free customers really are more demanding. For some reason, they seem to feel you owe them something. It seems to be a bell curve with each end being more entitled, and the middle less so, approximately centering on the market value of the product.
It's probably a wash, actually. Credit card charges will probably cost them as much as mailing that paper, which would be paid by check instead of credit card, usually.
I think it's wrong and anti-customer, but there are actually reasons and it's not just a money-grab.
Slashdot Mirror
I dont think the argument is over whether it should be studied or not. After a little digging, the argument seems to be over the fact that they are studying it in Biosafety Level 3 facilities, instead of BSL4. As my post below states, BSL3 is for treatable diseases, and BSL4 is for untreatable ones. This one isn't, and should be in BSL4 according to those rules.
lol If that's even remotely true, then I definitely want any pandemic-capable viruses worked on in level 4 labs.
You inspired me to look it up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level
"Biosafety level 3 ... blah blah blah. Key words, "treatments exist."
This level is applicable to clinical, diagnostic, teaching, research, or production facilities in which work is done with indigenous or exotic agents which may cause serious or potentially lethal disease after inhalation.[7] It includes various bacteria, parasites and viruses that can cause severe to fatal disease in humans but for which treatments exist, such as"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H5N1
60% fatal, vaccine being developed. In other words, no treatments exist, and it's highly deadly.
Yeah, let's go with BSL4, please.
'But he thinks that the duration of the pause is too short. “The 60 days will likely not be adequate in terms of getting a truly workable international policy and applying that. I just don't think that's realistic,” he says. '
Is it really too short, or are the parties involved not interested enough to put their time into resolving it quickly? Because if they aren't really interested in coming to a resolution, the scientists have just wasted 60 days of their lives for people who don't actually care.
And I admit I don't know the difference between level 3 and level 4 facilities, but if it really could cause a pandemic, why is it not under the highest security? That's my life you're taking a chance on and claiming you're being cautious enough. I think anything you could learn from it is not worth the risk of my life.
I'm all for science and progress, but scientists are known for forgetting the stakes of what they're doing and claiming that progress is necessary, no matter the risk. It sounds to me like they need some oversight, and that's what this is.
If the funeral home caused the deaths and then profited from them, I'd be just as disconcerted about that.
You know what bothers me about that? It's not that people died there. It's that they're profit from those deaths.
Actually, though, cruise ships don't have many luxury rooms. Most of them are barely good enough to sleep in. Most of the time you spend on a ship is not in the room. So as a hotel, it's a loss.
And as a vacation getaway, it's missing the 2 things a cruise ship is really good for: Gambling and shore excursions.
I find this to be a common issue these days. People are held without trial or rights because they aren't citizens. They aren't enemy combatants either, so they aren't covered by any war treaties. The government then claims these people have no rights...
And that's exactly the opposite of what this country was founded on. The Declaration specifically says the rights are inalienable. It says nothing about nationality when it says so.
"an editorial in Australia's leading broadsheet newspapers pointed out that although the laws ostensibly applied to US interests they could overreach to impact those in other countries."
The laws were written specifically for that purpose. They have clauses that (supposedly) prevent them being used on US sites and site owners. What's left? The rest of the world!
That's why it disgusted me every time I saw someone overseas saying to get this junk off their news sites because it didn't apply to them.
That's nice, but aren't the lights on for safety reasons? I mean, if they weren't serving any use, people wouldn't have them in the first place.
Is there some software I can use without owning a machine, so I can design a few things and find out what they'd cost?
Actually, the filament is colored. That's how it 'prints in color' and why it takes 2 heads to print in 2 colors.
I was asking for more details because the last time I looked into 3D printing, the ABS filament seemed to cost enough that printing things for fun, but screwing up, seemed to be a very costly mistake. The video, however, says it's cheap enough that you won't care.
Obviously, some of my data is wrong, but I don't know which yet.
And you're right, I do care how many bowls of cereal I get from a milk carton. I may not know the exact amount in my head, but I have an estimate since I've been eating cereal since I was young. I have never printed anything in 3D, though, so I have no idea what kind of volume something would have, or how much that would cost.
Yes, but how many Stephen Colbert heads do you get per spool?
My problem with these 3d techs online is that there's no good way to know exactly how much you can DO with a given amount of raw material. At some point, i'm going to have to break down and purchase things, just to get a baseline on cost.
He claims in the video that the material is so cheap you can just give things to friends and print more, but... Somehow, I doubt it's that cheap.
It's a replicator, not a self-replicator.
I've heard that before and find it funny, but Pair Programming is actually a step beyond. It includes automatic peer review as part of it's process, but goes further.
I've personally found PP to be of use in certain circumstances, but generally prefer not to use it. Peer review, however, remains valuable all the time.
Or simply don't accept code that isn't up to snuff. That includes documentation and testing. Peer review will help make this happen automatically. Here's how it goes:
"I can't tell what this code is supposed to do."
"It toggles the widget's status."
"Is that documented somewhere?"
"No."
"Let's get that done."
You don't have to have this happen too many times before you just do it to avoid that. Same as all the other good code practices.
If you aren't doing peer review, you aren't getting the best code you could. It seems painful at first, but good developers actually like getting feedback on their code, and improving it. It isn't long before any good developer comes to desire it, instead of dread it.
I'm going to agree with Narc. If you self-taught to code, you CAN become an excellent coder. Right now, you're a bundle of raw talent just waiting to be shaped. With a job and a good mentor, you'd be a great programmer in a year. With just the job, it'd take years, but you'd get there.
The job is necessary as an external motivator. You need someone telling you what they -must- have, even if you currently think it's impossible or ridiculous. You'll eventually get over that, and that's part of the process, too.
I have a feeling there are many more people out there just like you that just need the right push, and that's why this is a good initiative. Get them started on the path and they can take it from there. But with no push to get started... Well, they may never find out.
There's no need to tell us what's neat or not. We're capable of making up our own minds about that.
Maybe he's smart enough to know how to check for them manually? When I worked at a PC shop, I had to do that constantly as there were always new threats that weren't caught by the anti-malware programs yet.
This has the potential for some serious griefing. Since they'll keep blocking IPs and such, obviously TPB needs new IPs constantly. Cloud time! How many of Amazon's IPs do you think they'll have to block before realizing that they're blocking legit sites, too?
On the other hand, you can put that flash drive in the safe and not have to pull it out every day... Only when you forget your password.
Lack of good content is the real problem. I'm an absolutely 3d fanatic, and even I admit there just isn't anything out there. A few cartoons, 1 heavy cg movie about blue people, and a bunch of schlock that looks like garbage because the 3d was faked in.
It's just like HD content that was upscaled from SD content... It's not actually any better.
It's a technical thing. The theatre is actually using 2 projectors with opposite polarization, and the glasses each filter out half of it.
At home, there's no projector. There's just an LED/pixel/whatever there and it has to do double duty and the glasses turn off each eye to match.
There -are- actually home systems that can do passive 3d, but they require 2 projectors, or a tv with 2 projectors in it. Since those are huge and expensive, it's not very popular.
"Results? Nichols found free customers are higher maintenance and more demanding than the paying customers. 20 or so paying customers asked questions while "hundreds" of free ones did. And when following up, paying customers never flagged his emails as spam, while many free customers did, and complained."
The numbers mean nothing if we don't know how many paid and how many didn't. I think 20 to "hundreds" is probably a good ratio for paid-to-free in the first place.
As for the spam, if you didn't ask for an email from a free service, and it appears to be advertising something (like his premium services), I think spam is a good label for it. I personally wouldn't flag it as such, but I understand those who would. Without seeing the exact email, it's hard to know why they might do it, though. And the paying customers... Were they annoyed by the email, too? Did they get the same email? How did he know which of the 2 flagged it spam or not? Merely the complaint emails?
In my experience, it's all fine and good to have free customers, so long as you keep them away from your paying customers and don't let it affect them negatively. Free customers really are more demanding. For some reason, they seem to feel you owe them something. It seems to be a bell curve with each end being more entitled, and the middle less so, approximately centering on the market value of the product.
The Pirate Party doesn't care about the GPL. What made you think they do?
It's probably a wash, actually. Credit card charges will probably cost them as much as mailing that paper, which would be paid by check instead of credit card, usually.
I think it's wrong and anti-customer, but there are actually reasons and it's not just a money-grab.
That's exactly what it is.