Yahknow, I tried to figure this one out myself when I was writing the submission. Physorg doesn't elaborate, but their article has since been updated with the release of an official press release by JCVI Curiously, E. coli doesn't appear to be mentioned anywhere on their release. Nor is it on the project's site, at least at casual glance. Perhaps additional information on the process may be found in one of their fact sheets (PDF WARNING!)
Personally, I would prefer to wait until we produce a novel self-replicating "machine" (biological or otherwise) before we call it artificial life. Synthetic life, however, yes I would qualify this as. At least, in the sense that it is the artificial construction of a known quantity/concept through synthesis between related assets. That is to say, this and its project, like much of genetic engineering, is a cut and paste job. This achievement is the latest in a reduction of the cut and paste; the latest in a process of producing successively more fine grained reassembly jobs towards any of the goals of a the development of a novel mechanism (directed evolution or generative engineering which I like to call "gengineering"), a synthesis of of existing mechanisms in a singular form (recombinant and splicing GM), or imitation of an existing form. We're not to artificial life yet, but somewhere down the row of increasing granularity lies an invisible line which, when crossed, will I be satisfied in calling it such.
As an aside, I really was conflicted whether to state my opinion here or mod you up to increase the chances of getting more opinions. Ultimately, I decided yours is strong enough to stand on its own. Good luck in getting to 5!
I can remember a time when I could sleep with my computer on. Then, I got a new fan, with a blue LED. This one wasn't like the blue LEDs on the other fans, this one was bright. Really bright! Somewhere along the line, these blue LEDs became some sort defacto choice for any electronic manufacturer I have bought from recently. My laptop's LED indicators are so bright, I cover them with a keyboard at night. Strangely, the red LED on it isn't anywhere near as bright as the blue one (though that might be a power saver feature.)
Finally, I got new speakers, and of course the green LED indicator from my old set had been replaced by another bright blue LED. At night, the room was bathed in faint blue. Even facing away from the light, I couldn't get to sleep. I finally put a piece of ductape over the LED indicator. Although the Blue LED still shines through the thick grey tape, it's dimmed enough for my sleep.
Is it just me? Was there some breakthrough in bright blue LEDs?
Such a system could possibly be implemented here as well. The Library of Congress's project Thomas (as well as the GPO) publishes all the public law information, including the various drafts taken into consideration during the process of developing them in the house/senate. Most of them are already available as an (example here) XML file, though perhaps not quite in the same format we'd need. This includes some of the more important pieces written before the project was started.
There's are couple features from SupCom that appear to be missing in SupCom2 that kind of disappointed me. In SupCom you could order factories to assist other factories, and it would essentially take on the next item in its queue. This was great because it eliminated a lot of individual adjustments that and let me control all (or a portion) of my same-type factories from one interface. Supcom2 does not seem to have that ability. The grid placement of buildings feels much the same in SupCom2, but I haven't seen any mention of the benefits of placing energy/mass extractors next to buildings to improve the resource efficiency of that building. However, I haven't really looked into whether this is actually missing or just not mentioned. I kind of miss the discrete tech levels of units as well. Overall, I can't tell if SupCom2 is more streamlined (good) or simplified (bad.)
No, it won't cover the costs. But, to be the company behind the first (even second or third) private moon landing? That's the sort of reputation that sticks with a company for a long time. Not everything in business is about profit. Or atleast it didn't use to be...
Prestige. If you had a choice of LEO capable companies, wouldn't you be more apt to choose one that's gone to the moon? Sure, LEO and the moon are wildly different, but that's the point: To stick out and say "Hey, look what we can do!" There's no way that wouldn't impress potential clients.
But, then that's beside the point either of you are trying to make...
The real news here doesn't appear to be that endogenization has occured through our past (OK, maybe the 8% number is news; I don't know about the numbers...) but instead that a virus, bornavirus, is displaying this property. This is news because bornaviruses are not retroviruses (previously the only know virus-types to produce endogenous copies.) Furthermore, the article seems to suspect that this virus may have ties to the schizophrenia and mood disorders...
I feel just a twinge of pride knowing that I help contribute a tiny handful of those stories. Here's too you, Slashdot, and all the editors, contributors, moderators, users, and cowards that helped make you what you are!
Yeah, like I said: "Don't read too much into this yammering post";) But seriously, certainly not one of my best (or even close to my most coherent) posts.
My basic idea was "PETA is endorsing a product that leads to the slaughter of certain groups without breeding replacements and therefore reducing their population." I dunno, I guess I was thinking "Better to have lived and been slaughtered for food than to have never lived at all." Terribly flawed (as you and others have illustrated.)
This Artifical Meat is going to backfire on PETA. If, in 5-10 years, this Artificial Meat market becomes big enough to surpass traditional meat harvesting techniques, what does PETA think will happen to all that cattle and other like animals? What are we just going to give them up and let them live free? No, we'll slaughter the livestock we have as we transition to the new method. Then, we expand over the previous land we used to graze and keep the animals; replacing (more or less) open land with whatever vats, structures, and buildings we need to develope SyntheSteak. Domesticated populations will plummet and wild populations will be no better off, the net result will be fewer animals in the world (but more meat!)
Don't read too much into this yammering post; I'm all for this idea.
I simply wonder why PETA still thinks being stuck in the farm is worse than what we've (historically) done to animals that don't serve as useful a purpose. If the cow or pig isn't being used, I would expect us to (intentionally or not) create conditions in their environment which pushes them out and dwindles their population, not unlike we've done to wolves or such.
I can agree to that; security is everybody's concern.
The developer can (and should) empower the user to control their data and metadata, and the user must be cautious enough to exercise that power appropriately.
When dealing with data and situations this complex? Good luck.
Just look at the example given in the article summary. There's no concievable way a developer could protect against that situation, short of not developing the technology to begin with. Sometimes, security/privacy falls to personal responsibility. Sure, that's where all the best systems go to hell, but it's just not something we can (currently) just work around. We can warn users, tell them the dangers, but when it comes right down to it: it's all about the nature of the user. If the user's nature is (right or wrong) paranoid/cautious, then we're going see less abuse than if their nature is wide open.
So to, is there nothing wrong with deciding that uploading a bit metadata may be used violate one's sense of privacy.
Paranoia's just a state, it's neither bad nor good. Acting on that paranoia to hurt ones self or others, that's bad. I see nothing harmful about not uploading these bits of information and therefore, paranoia or not, it's not a bad idea.
Now, I may not agree it's common sense as the GP does, but I don't think it's paranoia either.
For that matter, how can we even be certain they're even being used for critical applications? Maybe they had some piddling alt system or prototype to develop and they just wanted to save some money? I mean, if the other (known) purchaser of these electronics is a vacuum cleaner manufacturer, We couldn't exactly be talking high-performance electronics to start with...
...Unless the reason the vacuum cleaner manufacturer is unnamed is they were working on some sort of super powerful "Stealth" Vacuum cleaner. Or maybe an Unmanned Vacuum Cleaner (a "UVC" as it were.)
Nah, they're just the only two who fell for it (why else would the fakers keep needing new aliases?) In truth, the vacuum-cleaner manufacturer probably did know they were fake and didn't care.
Or how about just 'G'? I mean it's not already taken, it rhymes with the the incredibly successful 'C' and it is still easily associated with Google (or Good.)
A Law has no place making a judgement on the past (defined as the period prior to the law's acceptance.) Historical injustices of religions, cults, or other groups are irrelevant to modern law. Furthermore, an event like The Crusades should not affect the outcome of some hypothetical trial accusing Christianity of fraud, as the The Crusades are not an event related to the fraud accusation. OK, yes so you could claim certain figures gathered funds for the crusades, but again, the Law shall not pass judgement on actions taken prior to the establishment of the law. If one wants to take on modern religion on these same grounds, they should go ahead; it's their right. But, they should know that the outcome of such trail should (and must) be based soley on the letter of the law. The Law makes special provisions for religion. Religion is defined by the Law. The Law says Scientology is not a religion (in France) but accepts Christianity as a religion. Therefore, Scientology is rightfully (in the eyes of the Law) held accordingly.
Your categorization of these groups are different from that of the Law. If you don't like it, then you must change the Law.
Slashdot Mirror
Burma-Shave
Yahknow, I tried to figure this one out myself when I was writing the submission. Physorg doesn't elaborate, but their article has since been updated with the release of an official press release by JCVI Curiously, E. coli doesn't appear to be mentioned anywhere on their release. Nor is it on the project's site, at least at casual glance. Perhaps additional information on the process may be found in one of their fact sheets (PDF WARNING!)
Personally, I would prefer to wait until we produce a novel self-replicating "machine" (biological or otherwise) before we call it artificial life. Synthetic life, however, yes I would qualify this as. At least, in the sense that it is the artificial construction of a known quantity/concept through synthesis between related assets. That is to say, this and its project, like much of genetic engineering, is a cut and paste job. This achievement is the latest in a reduction of the cut and paste; the latest in a process of producing successively more fine grained reassembly jobs towards any of the goals of a the development of a novel mechanism (directed evolution or generative engineering which I like to call "gengineering"), a synthesis of of existing mechanisms in a singular form (recombinant and splicing GM), or imitation of an existing form. We're not to artificial life yet, but somewhere down the row of increasing granularity lies an invisible line which, when crossed, will I be satisfied in calling it such.
As an aside, I really was conflicted whether to state my opinion here or mod you up to increase the chances of getting more opinions. Ultimately, I decided yours is strong enough to stand on its own. Good luck in getting to 5!
I can remember a time when I could sleep with my computer on. Then, I got a new fan, with a blue LED. This one wasn't like the blue LEDs on the other fans, this one was bright. Really bright! Somewhere along the line, these blue LEDs became some sort defacto choice for any electronic manufacturer I have bought from recently. My laptop's LED indicators are so bright, I cover them with a keyboard at night. Strangely, the red LED on it isn't anywhere near as bright as the blue one (though that might be a power saver feature.)
Finally, I got new speakers, and of course the green LED indicator from my old set had been replaced by another bright blue LED. At night, the room was bathed in faint blue. Even facing away from the light, I couldn't get to sleep. I finally put a piece of ductape over the LED indicator. Although the Blue LED still shines through the thick grey tape, it's dimmed enough for my sleep.
Is it just me? Was there some breakthrough in bright blue LEDs?
Such a system could possibly be implemented here as well. The Library of Congress's project Thomas (as well as the GPO) publishes all the public law information, including the various drafts taken into consideration during the process of developing them in the house/senate. Most of them are already available as an (example here) XML file, though perhaps not quite in the same format we'd need. This includes some of the more important pieces written before the project was started.
$45 new? Mine cost $100 ($75 for the passport, $25 Execution fee) see for yourself.
There's are couple features from SupCom that appear to be missing in SupCom2 that kind of disappointed me. In SupCom you could order factories to assist other factories, and it would essentially take on the next item in its queue. This was great because it eliminated a lot of individual adjustments that and let me control all (or a portion) of my same-type factories from one interface. Supcom2 does not seem to have that ability. The grid placement of buildings feels much the same in SupCom2, but I haven't seen any mention of the benefits of placing energy/mass extractors next to buildings to improve the resource efficiency of that building. However, I haven't really looked into whether this is actually missing or just not mentioned. I kind of miss the discrete tech levels of units as well. Overall, I can't tell if SupCom2 is more streamlined (good) or simplified (bad.)
I do believe this "Netcraft" statement is a humorous reference to an old meme "X is dying, Netcraft confirms it."
No, it won't cover the costs. But, to be the company behind the first (even second or third) private moon landing? That's the sort of reputation that sticks with a company for a long time. Not everything in business is about profit. Or atleast it didn't use to be...
Prestige. If you had a choice of LEO capable companies, wouldn't you be more apt to choose one that's gone to the moon? Sure, LEO and the moon are wildly different, but that's the point: To stick out and say "Hey, look what we can do!" There's no way that wouldn't impress potential clients.
But, then that's beside the point either of you are trying to make...
It's time to adjust the environment variables again! *Presses WinKey+Pause*
The real news here doesn't appear to be that endogenization has occured through our past (OK, maybe the 8% number is news; I don't know about the numbers...) but instead that a virus, bornavirus, is displaying this property. This is news because bornaviruses are not retroviruses (previously the only know virus-types to produce endogenous copies.) Furthermore, the article seems to suspect that this virus may have ties to the schizophrenia and mood disorders...
Yes, I would also buy one!
Blast it, I failed the broadcast take over announcing my intentions for world domination! It was my demostration of my earthquake machine! me, me ME!
I feel just a twinge of pride knowing that I help contribute a tiny handful of those stories. Here's too you, Slashdot, and all the editors, contributors, moderators, users, and cowards that helped make you what you are!
Yeah, like I said: "Don't read too much into this yammering post" ;) But seriously, certainly not one of my best (or even close to my most coherent) posts.
My basic idea was "PETA is endorsing a product that leads to the slaughter of certain groups without breeding replacements and therefore reducing their population." I dunno, I guess I was thinking "Better to have lived and been slaughtered for food than to have never lived at all." Terribly flawed (as you and others have illustrated.)
This Artifical Meat is going to backfire on PETA. If, in 5-10 years, this Artificial Meat market becomes big enough to surpass traditional meat harvesting techniques, what does PETA think will happen to all that cattle and other like animals? What are we just going to give them up and let them live free? No, we'll slaughter the livestock we have as we transition to the new method. Then, we expand over the previous land we used to graze and keep the animals; replacing (more or less) open land with whatever vats, structures, and buildings we need to develope SyntheSteak. Domesticated populations will plummet and wild populations will be no better off, the net result will be fewer animals in the world (but more meat!)
Don't read too much into this yammering post; I'm all for this idea.
I simply wonder why PETA still thinks being stuck in the farm is worse than what we've (historically) done to animals that don't serve as useful a purpose. If the cow or pig isn't being used, I would expect us to (intentionally or not) create conditions in their environment which pushes them out and dwindles their population, not unlike we've done to wolves or such.
I can agree to that; security is everybody's concern.
The developer can (and should) empower the user to control their data and metadata, and the user must be cautious enough to exercise that power appropriately.
When dealing with data and situations this complex? Good luck.
Just look at the example given in the article summary. There's no concievable way a developer could protect against that situation, short of not developing the technology to begin with. Sometimes, security/privacy falls to personal responsibility. Sure, that's where all the best systems go to hell, but it's just not something we can (currently) just work around. We can warn users, tell them the dangers, but when it comes right down to it: it's all about the nature of the user. If the user's nature is (right or wrong) paranoid/cautious, then we're going see less abuse than if their nature is wide open.
So to, is there nothing wrong with deciding that uploading a bit metadata may be used violate one's sense of privacy.
Paranoia's just a state, it's neither bad nor good. Acting on that paranoia to hurt ones self or others, that's bad. I see nothing harmful about not uploading these bits of information and therefore, paranoia or not, it's not a bad idea.
Now, I may not agree it's common sense as the GP does, but I don't think it's paranoia either.
"If humans could put Rainbows in a Zoo, they would."
--Bill Watterson, via Hobbes in Calvin and Hobbes.
For that matter, how can we even be certain they're even being used for critical applications? Maybe they had some piddling alt system or prototype to develop and they just wanted to save some money? I mean, if the other (known) purchaser of these electronics is a vacuum cleaner manufacturer, We couldn't exactly be talking high-performance electronics to start with...
...Unless the reason the vacuum cleaner manufacturer is unnamed is they were working on some sort of super powerful "Stealth" Vacuum cleaner. Or maybe an Unmanned Vacuum Cleaner (a "UVC" as it were.)
Nah, they're just the only two who fell for it (why else would the fakers keep needing new aliases?) In truth, the vacuum-cleaner manufacturer probably did know they were fake and didn't care.
Or how about just 'G'? I mean it's not already taken, it rhymes with the the incredibly successful 'C' and it is still easily associated with Google (or Good.)
A Law has no place making a judgement on the past (defined as the period prior to the law's acceptance.) Historical injustices of religions, cults, or other groups are irrelevant to modern law. Furthermore, an event like The Crusades should not affect the outcome of some hypothetical trial accusing Christianity of fraud, as the The Crusades are not an event related to the fraud accusation. OK, yes so you could claim certain figures gathered funds for the crusades, but again, the Law shall not pass judgement on actions taken prior to the establishment of the law. If one wants to take on modern religion on these same grounds, they should go ahead; it's their right. But, they should know that the outcome of such trail should (and must) be based soley on the letter of the law. The Law makes special provisions for religion. Religion is defined by the Law. The Law says Scientology is not a religion (in France) but accepts Christianity as a religion. Therefore, Scientology is rightfully (in the eyes of the Law) held accordingly.
Your categorization of these groups are different from that of the Law. If you don't like it, then you must change the Law.
LAWL!!!1