Next thing you know, other special interests groups are going to start paying off the boy scouts to add more merit badges. Before long there's going to be the Christian Values merit badge and the NRA merit badge (yeah, I know they already have some shooting related ones).. Hell, and when they get really hard up for cash, there'll be the Porn Star merit badge and the Smoking merit badge.
The boy scouts really is a shadow of its former self. I would never send my kids to the scouts these days. 25+ years ago, they were a decent organization, but they've really just gone to hell.
Wow, this is really amazing, because all the bacteria in our digestive track surely relies on sunlight for life.
Bacteria, in general, do not use photosynthesis. A few do, but very few. What bacteria use for an energy source varies quite a bit, actually. But it's certainly not strange for a bacteria to not need sunlight, since the vast majority don't.
Technically, these aren't event bacteria. They're extremophiles which means they fall in the Archae domain, not the Bacteria domain. But maybe I'm being too picky.
Okay, first of all, he's an evolutionary theorist at the London School of Economics. I simply can't believe the BBC is printing such garbage. I mean, I like sci-fi as much as the next guy, but this is pure fantasy.
But in the nearer future, humans will evolve in 1,000 years into giants between 6ft and 7ft tall, he predicts, while life-spans will have extended to 120 years, Dr Curry claims.
Well, first of all, in 1000 years, humans won't evolve to be a foot taller. Even if we were to evolve to those average heights, it'd take a lot longer than 1000 years. I would think anyone knowledgeable about evolution and genetic would know that. Second of all, 120 years? Shit, in the next 1000 years, if the past 100 have been any indication, we'll either have wiped ourselves out, or we'll have virtually unlimited lifespans because of medical advances. Natural lifespan will be completely irrelevant.
Finally, his entire theory hinges on an upper and lower class being maintained and still existing 1000 years from now. I'm not saying 1000 years from now there won't be classes, but look who was in power 1000 years ago. You think their descendents are still in power?
This guy's living in a fantasy world and for the BBC to publish this as anything but fiction is simply wreckless.
We currently have a pretty good understanding of a lot of the processes in the human body, but we have a very poor ability to understand the chain of events that happens when foreign and unnatural molecules are introduced into the body. I mean, we do for certain things. We know how a lot of drugs work and we know how a lot of other things work, but many of these things take many years to understand and even then, stuff slips by and we end up killing people because of unforseen chains of events that these molecules can cause.
I could probably list a thousand things that we've been adding to food over the years that, on the surface, seemed to be great, but after years of consumption ended up causing cancer or some other problem.
Our understanding of human physiology needs to advance a great deal before we start screwing with our food supply any more than we already have. In the U.S., we started adding high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to food products in the 70s and since then, diabetes and obesity have spiraled out of control. Back in the 50s and 60s, coke was sold in 8 oz bottles. Now 16 oz bottles are the norm, not to mention the supersized 32 and 64 oz behemoths a lot of people drink on a daily basis. It would be bad enough if it was just plain table sugar, but HFCS is not natural and I strongly suspect it's far worse for our bodies than we've been led to believe.
Europeans don't smoke more than Americans, yet the incidences of most forms of cancer, including lung cancer are lower than that of Americans. Most Americans are of European stock, so it's not a genetic issue and frankly, I don't even think exercise is the big issue. The big issue is the crap we eat in this country. It's killing us because none of it is natural. The last thing we need is for them to make our food any less natural.
Not safe? What a surprise!
on
Rocket Men
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· Score: 1
It should really come as no suprise to anyone that these things aren't safe. The stabilization is completely manual and let's face it, you get the aim off, and you can be in real trouble. This is definitely something best flown over really soft, flat terrain.
They also have a really short range. Something like several hundred feet, maybe 1000. Still, they're very cool to watch, and that in itself is the only reason it ever needed to be invented. They got some use on several TV shows back in the 70s and I seem to recall one being flown at a Superbowl.
Hard to believe something that cool was built in the 70s and nobody does anything like that 30 years later. How sad is that?
I guess it was just one more of these "Maybe we're bad, but we're so much better then teh terrists!!1" posts.
How did you get that I was saying "we're so much better than the terrorists?" You clearly didn't get what I was saying AT ALL. I was equating the idea that nakedness = pornography with societies that are influenced too heavily by religious fundamentalism. That includes the U.S. If you think the religious right in this country (our president is among their number) isn't fundamentalist, then you don't know what fundamentalists are. Frankly, they're no better than the terrorists. They're equally intolerant and equally ignorant.
Sad to say, but it really won't. I didn't watch it when it was running, but I watched it before the movie came out and really enjoyed it. The movie was pretty decent too.
I think the problem with Serenity is that it's simply too sophisticated for your WWF fan types. The chinese expressions mixed in, six-gun slingers in space ships. It's just too much for a Nascar fan to cope with. I'm not saying the show is without its fans. I simply think that the average viewer can't quite get it, at least in the States, and that's too bad. It had a lot of originality and even though it had some rough edges, I think they would have really found their groove with another season.
Yes, but the Daily Show is not SUPPOSED to have "substance". It's on the COMEDY CHANNEL for chrissakes.
Yes and no. The daily show is supposed to be funny, but I think it's very clear that, on a certain level, it's about raising important issues. They do it by making fun of the ridiculously stupid things that are happening. Unfortunately, the current government in the U.S. is just a goldmine of material for them.
I'll give you an example. Back when the plot to blow up planes flying out of Britian was uncovered, they ran an episode where he was interviewing John Oliver, one of their "correspondants". The exchange went something like this:
Stewart: John, will these steps server to diffuse the threat is the question?
Oliver: Not at all John. Unfortunately there's a larger issue here. The fact is, the men arrested are British citizens, which means the form of government in Britian must not be democracy. For as you know, Democracy is the only known antidote to extremism.
Stewart: So what does that mean?
Oliver: It means ranging change John. America must topple the British government...
Now, funny, yes. Hysterical even. But look at what they're doing: They're showing how absolutely ludicrous the rhetoric of the current administration is. I don't know of a single news program that could show that in a clearer way than to do it with humor, as they have. It's incredibly effective.
So yes, they're on Comedy Central, but I don't think that means they should be or even try to be devoid of substance. On the contrary, I think humor is simply their way of delivering substance.
You should realize, the equivalence nakedness == pornography is virtually unique to the USA.
Au contraire, we share that distinction with a number of other countries that have their governments controlled by strong fundamentalist religious groups.
I dropped out of college about 18 years ago a bit shy of my degree in Computer Science. I hardly noticed any cheating back then at all. I mean, I'm sure it happened and I knew of a few people who did, but for the most part, it wasn't something I noticed often.
I have recently gone back to school majoring in chemistry and biology and I'm just astounded at the amount of cheating that goes on. And at least 18 years ago, when people cheated, they tried to hide it, even from other students. These days, it's just right out in the open. I have other students asking me for answers all the time. It makes me very uncomfortable because I want to get along with people in my classes, but I simply will not get involved in cheating. I'm pre-med and it would ruin my chances of getting into medical school. And somewhat related, one of the biggest cheaters I've noticed is another pre-med student and all I can think is, if she ever does get into medical school, she's not going to survive very long.
Really, I never used eDonkey, but I've used eMule quite a bit. It seemed to me that they would have had a strong case against the RIAA. Yes, they would have to worry about the issue of providing tools for pirating, and in the current legal environment, that's pretty dangerous, but the case history has been that if you can show substantial non-infringing uses, then it's not illegal, and let's face it, you can find very substantial examples of non-infringing content on the eDonkey network. That just seems like it would have been a pretty easy case to make. IANAL, however, and their lawyer(s) clearly thought differently. Oh well, everyone hold their breath until the RIAA disappears in a puff of irrelevance. 10 years from now, they'll be a distant memory.
How is this news. This all sounded really familiar and old, and of course, the first site I went to on a google search took me to this from 2000. There's tons of stuff from 2004 on studies done with pidgeons. But this stuff is definitely not new.
Here's the bottom line: If you have to ask the question, "Should the user be able to change this?" then the answer is: YES.
Actually, from a software design point of view, that's not necessarily the correct answer. If you make everything configurable that every user would possibly want to change, then you're looking at a UI that's going to be almost impossible to navigate, at least when you're talking about an OS the size of Vista. That said, I think this is a case where it should be something the user can change.
It seems to me that all the attacks on both of these hash systems (SHA-1 and MD5) involve different message sizes which is easily fixed by using both hash and message size as a verification. I honestly don't come close to understanding the math involved in these hashes, but I get the idea that the complexity involved in creating a hash using the exact same amount of data is far higher.
Maybe factoring in message size as part of the hash is the solution? I don't know. Again, the math is way above me. But you could certainly do it by adding on some extra bits to the hash itself. A bit costly in size, but seems like maybe it might be worthwhile.
is pretty simple, effective, and easy to maintain. Granted, I only have about 1500 DVDs in my system, but I think it would scale pretty easily.
I put them in a case similar to these (the exact ones I use appear to no longer be carried by Best Buy).
In my particular case, I label the DVDs with the content, then write a category and disc # on each sleeve. I created little cardboar dividers that I slip between the categories. I then add the disc to an excel spreadsheet that I keep with the category, disc #, and description of the contents. For 30,000, you might want a database, but for me, a spreadsheet is adequate. I can fit about 300 discs in a box.
I find it very easy to find stuff and I find it very easy to maintain when adding new stuff. I tried the binders, but those were just too much trouble to keep organized and they took up way too much space. Space-wise, you simply can't get much more efficient than this.
Starting in Season 8, SG-1 really started to go downhill, but I really felt like they were starting to put it back together this season and I was really starting to enjoy it again. When Browder first came onboard, I really felt like that was the end, but I've started liking him and I think the show has really returned to the kind of stories that make it great.
Whether it continues or not, it has been an excellent series and will, for a while at least, have its place as, I believe, the second longest consecutive running sci-fi series in history. It's going to be hard for anyone to beat the original Dr. Who's 26 consecutive seasons, and obviously that isn't going to happen soon. I was kind of hoping SG-1 might give it a run for its money, though.
The creators, writers, and actors who have been involved, old and new, all deserve congratulations for really fine work.
And if you RMFP (read my F-ing post), you'd realize I wasn't addressing the article, but a previous post. You're correct. The article makes it clear they have no idea if this drug will do anything at this point. It could have no pain-killing properties and be terribly physically addictive for all they know.
That said, there are a variety of morphine-derived drugs that exhibit painkilling properties and the properties that make morphine painkilling are fairly well understood. Drug development isn't quite as much like blindly throwing darts at a dartboard as it once was. What makes a drug active vs. a similar inactive drug, particularly for old drugs like Morphine, is generally pretty well understood and designing drugs that have those properties involves a lot more design than luck. Still, many drugs can have unintended consequences because the human body is extremely complex.
Painkillers (opioid painkillers, specifically) are addictive precisely because of their analgesic effects.
Don't confuse addiction with habit. Addiction is a physical dependency and that aspect doesn't necessarily have any relation to its analgesic effect. Aspirin has analgesic properties, but NO addictive qualities.
What makes opioids addictive is unknown. What makes them analgesic is, to some degree, understood. The two may be linked, but because something is analgesic does not make it addictive. It may be "habit-forming", on the other hand. Marijuana, for example, can be habit-forming, but it is not addictive because one does not develop a physical dependence on the presence of the drug in their system.
That this was a slow gestating virus that could lie dormant for years before going into reproductive mode. How does 180 days of "apparent" immunity (with no control group?!?) make a valid experiment?
Actually, that's not really the case. HIV actually replicates very quickly after infection. Even though one may not show symptoms for many years, that's unusual. Most people develop the first symptoms within weeks of getting the virus. But with or without symptoms, signs of the virus can be found very quickly, particularly in the lymphatic system.
Do not confuse HIV infection and symptoms with AIDS. One isn't considered to have AIDS until their T-Cell count falls below 200 cells per uL. This is usually the point where the person starts developing the kinds of diseases that normally don't affect healthy people. Before that point, you still has a tendency to get sick from a number of more common illnesses.
I've never understood how they can make guitar tableture a copyright violation when you have a gazillion sites out there posting lyrics. How is that any different? The tableture is someone's interpretation of what the artists are doing on the guitar or bass. From experience, I can say for a fact that it's rarely entirely accurate, so it's not really a copyright violation. It's artistic interpretation. Lyrics are far more likely to be accurate and therefore far more likely to actually violate copyrights. Still, I don't really think that either should be a violation.
Besides, this is just as likely to help the RIAA as any of their other foot shooting methods. I mean, how much can you piss off your customer base before they simply stop being your customer base?
Port 25 has on occasion put out FUD such as claiming Microsoft is doing more to improve security than any other vendor and...
I'm sorry, how does this qualify as "fear", "uncertainty" or "doubt?" Maybe FUD means something else to you? That sounds more like CCS, "calming", "certainty", and "surety" than FUD. I'm not saying their statements are true, simply that it's not FUD.
While it appears they believe these two planet-like objects formed together outside of a proper solar system, stray planets floating through space along are probably not all that rare, particularly smaller single ones. The current thinking in solar system development is that Jupiter+ sized planets sometimes move inward towards their host star as the planets develop. When they do this, planets whose orbits they come near will generally either get flung into the host star or outside of the system completely from the gravity of the Jupiter+ sized planet. Since there appears to be no shortage of solar systems with large planets in close or highly elliptical orbits, it would seem to suggest that quite a few planets get flung from their systems. Unfortunately they'd generally be too small and dark for us to see (unless they happened to pass through our solar system).
I don't mean this in a mean way, but really, Slashdot, News for Nerds. You work in an investment bank. I'd think your resources for investing information there would be much better than here.
Changing fields is fine. I'm doing it myself, but take some time and research the field. There are books that are career oriented for all sorts of fields and I'm sure there are for finance and investing as well. Read about the different types of jobs and see what appeals to you.
I spent a few years before making the decision to go into medicine, albeit, there's a long-term investment in education in going that route that you don't really have with many other fields. So you may not need to take as much time to think about it, but do take some time and think about it. Research it, learn about it, figure out if it's what you really want to do.
I have a friend who worked in bonds for a while and he hated it. I have an uncle who did the same thing and loved it (and was incidentally very good at it and has made a mint). If it really appeals to you, go for it. But do the research. Make sure it's what you want before you divert yourself from an existing career.
The brain is far more dynamic than any microprocessors. There's simply no way to reproduce that kind of fault tolerance without a living system. When parts of the brain are damaged, a few things happen. There may be enough redundancy that it simply continues to work. This is reproducible to some degree. Look at RAID. But when the brain fault tolerance isn't there, the only way for the brain to get back lost abilities is to start growing new neurons, making new axon connections and to build a new neural network (this ability tends to diminish quickly with age, however). If microprocessors fail, you can't just have a computer make new ones and rebuild new physical wirings, unless I've missed some really stunning breakthroughs in nanotechnology over the past few days. We're REALLY far away from doing anything that approaches what the brain does. Hell, we're really far away from being able to do what an arm can do. Sure, we can make one that bends and holds things and moves and even "feels" to some degree. But we sure as hell can't make one that you can break and it will heal itself.
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Next thing you know, other special interests groups are going to start paying off the boy scouts to add more merit badges. Before long there's going to be the Christian Values merit badge and the NRA merit badge (yeah, I know they already have some shooting related ones).. Hell, and when they get really hard up for cash, there'll be the Porn Star merit badge and the Smoking merit badge.
The boy scouts really is a shadow of its former self. I would never send my kids to the scouts these days. 25+ years ago, they were a decent organization, but they've really just gone to hell.
Wow, this is really amazing, because all the bacteria in our digestive track surely relies on sunlight for life.
Bacteria, in general, do not use photosynthesis. A few do, but very few. What bacteria use for an energy source varies quite a bit, actually. But it's certainly not strange for a bacteria to not need sunlight, since the vast majority don't.
Technically, these aren't event bacteria. They're extremophiles which means they fall in the Archae domain, not the Bacteria domain. But maybe I'm being too picky.
Okay, first of all, he's an evolutionary theorist at the London School of Economics. I simply can't believe the BBC is printing such garbage. I mean, I like sci-fi as much as the next guy, but this is pure fantasy.
But in the nearer future, humans will evolve in 1,000 years into giants between 6ft and 7ft tall, he predicts, while life-spans will have extended to 120 years, Dr Curry claims.
Well, first of all, in 1000 years, humans won't evolve to be a foot taller. Even if we were to evolve to those average heights, it'd take a lot longer than 1000 years. I would think anyone knowledgeable about evolution and genetic would know that. Second of all, 120 years? Shit, in the next 1000 years, if the past 100 have been any indication, we'll either have wiped ourselves out, or we'll have virtually unlimited lifespans because of medical advances. Natural lifespan will be completely irrelevant.
Finally, his entire theory hinges on an upper and lower class being maintained and still existing 1000 years from now. I'm not saying 1000 years from now there won't be classes, but look who was in power 1000 years ago. You think their descendents are still in power?
This guy's living in a fantasy world and for the BBC to publish this as anything but fiction is simply wreckless.
We currently have a pretty good understanding of a lot of the processes in the human body, but we have a very poor ability to understand the chain of events that happens when foreign and unnatural molecules are introduced into the body. I mean, we do for certain things. We know how a lot of drugs work and we know how a lot of other things work, but many of these things take many years to understand and even then, stuff slips by and we end up killing people because of unforseen chains of events that these molecules can cause.
I could probably list a thousand things that we've been adding to food over the years that, on the surface, seemed to be great, but after years of consumption ended up causing cancer or some other problem.
Our understanding of human physiology needs to advance a great deal before we start screwing with our food supply any more than we already have. In the U.S., we started adding high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to food products in the 70s and since then, diabetes and obesity have spiraled out of control. Back in the 50s and 60s, coke was sold in 8 oz bottles. Now 16 oz bottles are the norm, not to mention the supersized 32 and 64 oz behemoths a lot of people drink on a daily basis. It would be bad enough if it was just plain table sugar, but HFCS is not natural and I strongly suspect it's far worse for our bodies than we've been led to believe.
Europeans don't smoke more than Americans, yet the incidences of most forms of cancer, including lung cancer are lower than that of Americans. Most Americans are of European stock, so it's not a genetic issue and frankly, I don't even think exercise is the big issue. The big issue is the crap we eat in this country. It's killing us because none of it is natural. The last thing we need is for them to make our food any less natural.
It should really come as no suprise to anyone that these things aren't safe. The stabilization is completely manual and let's face it, you get the aim off, and you can be in real trouble. This is definitely something best flown over really soft, flat terrain.
They also have a really short range. Something like several hundred feet, maybe 1000. Still, they're very cool to watch, and that in itself is the only reason it ever needed to be invented. They got some use on several TV shows back in the 70s and I seem to recall one being flown at a Superbowl.
Hard to believe something that cool was built in the 70s and nobody does anything like that 30 years later. How sad is that?
I guess it was just one more of these "Maybe we're bad, but we're so much better then teh terrists!!1" posts.
How did you get that I was saying "we're so much better than the terrorists?" You clearly didn't get what I was saying AT ALL. I was equating the idea that nakedness = pornography with societies that are influenced too heavily by religious fundamentalism. That includes the U.S. If you think the religious right in this country (our president is among their number) isn't fundamentalist, then you don't know what fundamentalists are. Frankly, they're no better than the terrorists. They're equally intolerant and equally ignorant.
Sad to say, but it really won't. I didn't watch it when it was running, but I watched it before the movie came out and really enjoyed it. The movie was pretty decent too.
I think the problem with Serenity is that it's simply too sophisticated for your WWF fan types. The chinese expressions mixed in, six-gun slingers in space ships. It's just too much for a Nascar fan to cope with. I'm not saying the show is without its fans. I simply think that the average viewer can't quite get it, at least in the States, and that's too bad. It had a lot of originality and even though it had some rough edges, I think they would have really found their groove with another season.
Yes, but the Daily Show is not SUPPOSED to have "substance". It's on the COMEDY CHANNEL for chrissakes.
Yes and no. The daily show is supposed to be funny, but I think it's very clear that, on a certain level, it's about raising important issues. They do it by making fun of the ridiculously stupid things that are happening. Unfortunately, the current government in the U.S. is just a goldmine of material for them.
I'll give you an example. Back when the plot to blow up planes flying out of Britian was uncovered, they ran an episode where he was interviewing John Oliver, one of their "correspondants". The exchange went something like this:
Stewart: John, will these steps server to diffuse the threat is the question?
Oliver: Not at all John. Unfortunately there's a larger issue here. The fact is, the men arrested are British citizens, which means the form of government in Britian must not be democracy. For as you know, Democracy is the only known antidote to extremism.
Stewart: So what does that mean?
Oliver: It means ranging change John. America must topple the British government...
Now, funny, yes. Hysterical even. But look at what they're doing: They're showing how absolutely ludicrous the rhetoric of the current administration is. I don't know of a single news program that could show that in a clearer way than to do it with humor, as they have. It's incredibly effective.
So yes, they're on Comedy Central, but I don't think that means they should be or even try to be devoid of substance. On the contrary, I think humor is simply their way of delivering substance.
You should realize, the equivalence nakedness == pornography is virtually unique to the USA.
Au contraire, we share that distinction with a number of other countries that have their governments controlled by strong fundamentalist religious groups.
I dropped out of college about 18 years ago a bit shy of my degree in Computer Science. I hardly noticed any cheating back then at all. I mean, I'm sure it happened and I knew of a few people who did, but for the most part, it wasn't something I noticed often.
I have recently gone back to school majoring in chemistry and biology and I'm just astounded at the amount of cheating that goes on. And at least 18 years ago, when people cheated, they tried to hide it, even from other students. These days, it's just right out in the open. I have other students asking me for answers all the time. It makes me very uncomfortable because I want to get along with people in my classes, but I simply will not get involved in cheating. I'm pre-med and it would ruin my chances of getting into medical school. And somewhat related, one of the biggest cheaters I've noticed is another pre-med student and all I can think is, if she ever does get into medical school, she's not going to survive very long.
Really, I never used eDonkey, but I've used eMule quite a bit. It seemed to me that they would have had a strong case against the RIAA. Yes, they would have to worry about the issue of providing tools for pirating, and in the current legal environment, that's pretty dangerous, but the case history has been that if you can show substantial non-infringing uses, then it's not illegal, and let's face it, you can find very substantial examples of non-infringing content on the eDonkey network. That just seems like it would have been a pretty easy case to make. IANAL, however, and their lawyer(s) clearly thought differently. Oh well, everyone hold their breath until the RIAA disappears in a puff of irrelevance. 10 years from now, they'll be a distant memory.
How is this news. This all sounded really familiar and old, and of course, the first site I went to on a google search took me to this from 2000. There's tons of stuff from 2004 on studies done with pidgeons. But this stuff is definitely not new.
Here's the bottom line: If you have to ask the question, "Should the user be able to change this?" then the answer is: YES.
Actually, from a software design point of view, that's not necessarily the correct answer. If you make everything configurable that every user would possibly want to change, then you're looking at a UI that's going to be almost impossible to navigate, at least when you're talking about an OS the size of Vista. That said, I think this is a case where it should be something the user can change.
It seems to me that all the attacks on both of these hash systems (SHA-1 and MD5) involve different message sizes which is easily fixed by using both hash and message size as a verification. I honestly don't come close to understanding the math involved in these hashes, but I get the idea that the complexity involved in creating a hash using the exact same amount of data is far higher.
Maybe factoring in message size as part of the hash is the solution? I don't know. Again, the math is way above me. But you could certainly do it by adding on some extra bits to the hash itself. A bit costly in size, but seems like maybe it might be worthwhile.
is pretty simple, effective, and easy to maintain. Granted, I only have about 1500 DVDs in my system, but I think it would scale pretty easily.
I put them in a case similar to these (the exact ones I use appear to no longer be carried by Best Buy).
In my particular case, I label the DVDs with the content, then write a category and disc # on each sleeve. I created little cardboar dividers that I slip between the categories. I then add the disc to an excel spreadsheet that I keep with the category, disc #, and description of the contents. For 30,000, you might want a database, but for me, a spreadsheet is adequate. I can fit about 300 discs in a box.
I find it very easy to find stuff and I find it very easy to maintain when adding new stuff. I tried the binders, but those were just too much trouble to keep organized and they took up way too much space. Space-wise, you simply can't get much more efficient than this.
Starting in Season 8, SG-1 really started to go downhill, but I really felt like they were starting to put it back together this season and I was really starting to enjoy it again. When Browder first came onboard, I really felt like that was the end, but I've started liking him and I think the show has really returned to the kind of stories that make it great.
Whether it continues or not, it has been an excellent series and will, for a while at least, have its place as, I believe, the second longest consecutive running sci-fi series in history. It's going to be hard for anyone to beat the original Dr. Who's 26 consecutive seasons, and obviously that isn't going to happen soon. I was kind of hoping SG-1 might give it a run for its money, though.
The creators, writers, and actors who have been involved, old and new, all deserve congratulations for really fine work.
And if you RMFP (read my F-ing post), you'd realize I wasn't addressing the article, but a previous post. You're correct. The article makes it clear they have no idea if this drug will do anything at this point. It could have no pain-killing properties and be terribly physically addictive for all they know.
That said, there are a variety of morphine-derived drugs that exhibit painkilling properties and the properties that make morphine painkilling are fairly well understood. Drug development isn't quite as much like blindly throwing darts at a dartboard as it once was. What makes a drug active vs. a similar inactive drug, particularly for old drugs like Morphine, is generally pretty well understood and designing drugs that have those properties involves a lot more design than luck. Still, many drugs can have unintended consequences because the human body is extremely complex.
Painkillers (opioid painkillers, specifically) are addictive precisely because of their analgesic effects.
Don't confuse addiction with habit. Addiction is a physical dependency and that aspect doesn't necessarily have any relation to its analgesic effect. Aspirin has analgesic properties, but NO addictive qualities.
What makes opioids addictive is unknown. What makes them analgesic is, to some degree, understood. The two may be linked, but because something is analgesic does not make it addictive. It may be "habit-forming", on the other hand. Marijuana, for example, can be habit-forming, but it is not addictive because one does not develop a physical dependence on the presence of the drug in their system.
That this was a slow gestating virus that could lie dormant for years before going into reproductive mode. How does 180 days of "apparent" immunity (with no control group?!?) make a valid experiment?
Actually, that's not really the case. HIV actually replicates very quickly after infection. Even though one may not show symptoms for many years, that's unusual. Most people develop the first symptoms within weeks of getting the virus. But with or without symptoms, signs of the virus can be found very quickly, particularly in the lymphatic system.
Do not confuse HIV infection and symptoms with AIDS. One isn't considered to have AIDS until their T-Cell count falls below 200 cells per uL. This is usually the point where the person starts developing the kinds of diseases that normally don't affect healthy people. Before that point, you still has a tendency to get sick from a number of more common illnesses.
I've never understood how they can make guitar tableture a copyright violation when you have a gazillion sites out there posting lyrics. How is that any different? The tableture is someone's interpretation of what the artists are doing on the guitar or bass. From experience, I can say for a fact that it's rarely entirely accurate, so it's not really a copyright violation. It's artistic interpretation. Lyrics are far more likely to be accurate and therefore far more likely to actually violate copyrights. Still, I don't really think that either should be a violation.
Besides, this is just as likely to help the RIAA as any of their other foot shooting methods. I mean, how much can you piss off your customer base before they simply stop being your customer base?
Port 25 has on occasion put out FUD such as claiming Microsoft is doing more to improve security than any other vendor and...
I'm sorry, how does this qualify as "fear", "uncertainty" or "doubt?" Maybe FUD means something else to you? That sounds more like CCS, "calming", "certainty", and "surety" than FUD. I'm not saying their statements are true, simply that it's not FUD.
While it appears they believe these two planet-like objects formed together outside of a proper solar system, stray planets floating through space along are probably not all that rare, particularly smaller single ones. The current thinking in solar system development is that Jupiter+ sized planets sometimes move inward towards their host star as the planets develop. When they do this, planets whose orbits they come near will generally either get flung into the host star or outside of the system completely from the gravity of the Jupiter+ sized planet. Since there appears to be no shortage of solar systems with large planets in close or highly elliptical orbits, it would seem to suggest that quite a few planets get flung from their systems. Unfortunately they'd generally be too small and dark for us to see (unless they happened to pass through our solar system).
I don't mean this in a mean way, but really, Slashdot, News for Nerds. You work in an investment bank. I'd think your resources for investing information there would be much better than here.
Changing fields is fine. I'm doing it myself, but take some time and research the field. There are books that are career oriented for all sorts of fields and I'm sure there are for finance and investing as well. Read about the different types of jobs and see what appeals to you.
I spent a few years before making the decision to go into medicine, albeit, there's a long-term investment in education in going that route that you don't really have with many other fields. So you may not need to take as much time to think about it, but do take some time and think about it. Research it, learn about it, figure out if it's what you really want to do.
I have a friend who worked in bonds for a while and he hated it. I have an uncle who did the same thing and loved it (and was incidentally very good at it and has made a mint). If it really appeals to you, go for it. But do the research. Make sure it's what you want before you divert yourself from an existing career.
Any decade now? Boy, you are optimistic. Try any millennia now..
The brain is far more dynamic than any microprocessors. There's simply no way to reproduce that kind of fault tolerance without a living system. When parts of the brain are damaged, a few things happen. There may be enough redundancy that it simply continues to work. This is reproducible to some degree. Look at RAID. But when the brain fault tolerance isn't there, the only way for the brain to get back lost abilities is to start growing new neurons, making new axon connections and to build a new neural network (this ability tends to diminish quickly with age, however). If microprocessors fail, you can't just have a computer make new ones and rebuild new physical wirings, unless I've missed some really stunning breakthroughs in nanotechnology over the past few days. We're REALLY far away from doing anything that approaches what the brain does. Hell, we're really far away from being able to do what an arm can do. Sure, we can make one that bends and holds things and moves and even "feels" to some degree. But we sure as hell can't make one that you can break and it will heal itself.