Wow, using a magnet. Genius! Who would have ever thought of a magnet to scramble the bits on a magnetic disc platter? I mean, it simply makes no sense. I don't believe it's possible. Can someone please verify whether or not this is actually the case because I just can't believe a magnet would wipe out a platter. No way.
"...that's all obviously enabling something that is illegal."
Well, fantastic. So you can follow this up by making guns, knives, shovels, cars, bleach, and God knows what else illegal since they're obviously enabling murder. Oh, and we may as well outlaw crime mystery books since they provide information on how to do illegal things. But let's not stop at burning just crime mystery novels. We ought to burn chemistry books since that knowledge can be used to create poisons and explosives. And let's outlaw cars because criminals are notorious for using cars in their getaways. I see no reason to stop there, though. I can think of a lot of other stuff we ought to just outlaw today!
The intellectual property industry and law enforcement officials estimate U.S. companies lose as much as $250 billion per year to Internet pirates, who swap digital copies of "The DaVinci Code," Chamillionaire's new album and the latest Grand Theft Auto video game for free.
These 3 products have a value of as much as $250 billion? Wow, these guys really are making too much money. Guess I better go download some more movies.
Also, what about other caffeine sources like soda?
As is pointed out in the study, they don't know that caffeine is the cause. Coffee is loaded with all kinds of bioactive chemicals and it could be any of them. It could even be the cream or sugar people sometimes put in coffee. So the fact is, they have no idea why this is the case. What they'll probably need to do is kill a few hundred mice and rats with booze and coffee to figure out why and how it works.
As for the age of the data, it isn't really that old. It takes time to develop alcoholic cirrhosis and they're basically using historical data to determine who got it and who didn't and based on a questionnaire they filled out at the time of their enrollment in the health care plan, they were able to determine their coffee and alcohol habits. That said, a lot of alcoholics don't admit how much they drink on those kinds of things, so I'm not entirely sure how they can measure the accuracy. Alcoholics usually admit their drinking habits after the evidence is so obvious they can't hide it (like after they've developed alcoholic cirrhosis).
The article is weak on technical details. So, I went to the Sourceforge site which has no home page, no documentation, nothing in the forums, and the only "released" file has an extension of.OWL (insides a zip) that contains XML in an invalid format (various unescaped characters that should be escaped. Also noted in the sole bug submission in the Sourceforge project).
There appears to be nothing of values here. An XML file does not do anyone any good without some documentation as to how one might use it. Did New Scientist somehow get duped or is there simply more to this and it's all hidden away?
The article says one of the problems is figuring out how much fuel you have in zero G because it's all floating around inside the tank. Call me crazy, but can't you just rotate your station and then check the pressure on the inside walls of the tank? Not like centrifugal force is some newfangled idea or anything. It's not like it would even have to rotate particularly fast. Sheesh, do I have to figure out everything for these guys?
I kinda liked the exploding neck collar idea first proposed in the Coneheads movie. Not for the legal immigrants, mind you, but for the illegal ones we catch. Just toss on an exlpoding neck collar that's activated by a wire at the border and they'll think twice about coming back across.
The problem is, you need a new system that does all the things that he says, but at the same time, the new system needs to be compatible with the old, at least the client does. People aren't going to run two completely incompatible mail programs if they can help it, and that poses a block to adoption of a new system. On the other hand, by allowing compatibility, you're simply allowing the old problems through (spam, phishing, etc).
One way I've considered this is the whitelist system. Someone who's never sent me an e-mail before, sends me an e-mail. The e-mail gets held on my server for a X days. The sender then gets a reply from the e-mail server saying something along the lines of: "This person has never received mail from you. Reply to this message with the word 'authorize'" in the subject to confirm sending." Upon doing so, the mail would then be sent to me.
This accomplishes a few things: First of all, a spammer can't send me spam unless they're using a valid e-mail address that can be contacted back. Otherwise, the spam will eventually be flushed off the server after X days. As an additional feature, if I decide the mail that did get sent through was SPAM, I can permanently block that address (or site) by adding it to a block-list.
This makes sending 10 million spams a real problem because you then have to have all 10 million come back to you and then send an authorize reply, before your spam will go through. Since the spammer has to be contactible, it then makes them MUCH more vulnerable to being tracked.
Once an initial authorization has been done, the user would then receive a second mail from the server. This would contain a unique key for that sender to continue communicating, that would be attached to each e-mail. With a new e-mail clients and servers, this part could be automated.
This makes initial communication with someone a bit more trouble, but I think (unless I'm missing something) that this might go a long way towards handling spam. And of course, there'd always be the ability to pre-authorize someone if you know their e-mail address.
How could those calling patterns ever cause false leads? Surely terrorists operate like clocks and do everything by the numbers.
Okay, here's an example of how stupid the example given is (and it's not the example that's stupid, it's the intelligence community): I'm an American I have good friends, or maybe family living overseas. Let's say my brother lives in Germany and he just called me to tell me that his wife had a baby boy. So, what am I going to do? Call everyone in my family and anyone that knows my brother well and say, "Guess what, they had a baby boy."
The fact is that, with calls between friends and family overseas in particular, the calls are not infrequently going to be some sort of major or semi-major news that the person in the States is then going to want to share with other friends and family. If the FBI is getting hit with all this garbage, I'm surprised they find time to do anything else.
I'm not saying this stuff can't be used to find terrorists, but at what expense? I would imagine there are much more effective ways to spend the money.
To bring the example a little closer to home, back in the early 90s when export restrictions on encryption were quite a bit tighter than they are now, I was asked by an uncle of mine (who's a venture capitalist) to do a little research into encryption. He had been approached by a group that had come up with some new encryption algorithm and he wanted me to get some sort of feel for how theirs stacked up.
So, I go onto Usenet and start asking some questions, trying to educate myself on this stuff. A few weeks later, I'm talking to one of my neighbors and she says, "So, did you get that job at the White House?" I said, "What job at the White House?" She said, "Well, there were some agents from the State Department here asking questions about you and they said it was for a job at the White House."
Now, I'm no rocket scientist, but I can do the math. Ask about encryption, agents show up. I suspect the two were related. I'm sure they were probably NSA agents since encryption is really more of their deal, or maybe State Dept. agents tasked by the NSA. But whatever.
Had they even looked at my file, which I'm sure they had since I had a full background check for a security clearance a few years prior, they would have quickly discovered that I'm someone of little consequence and not a likely spy. But no, they had to send out a couple agents to investigate me asking questions that anyone from anywhere around the world could have posted on Usenet. What a complete waste of time and money. And it's not like you couldn't just download regulated encryption algorithms off the net at the time anyway.
But I digress. Spending money to protect us is fine, if it's spent wisely. This is costing time of valuable people and untold amounts fo money for what is sure to be barely usable information. But hey, that should come as no shock to anyone.
I saw the Movie. Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro were great.
All kidding aside, this isn't unlike that case (which was based on a true story). In both cases, the affects of the drug are temporary, which really sucks for the people in the vegetative state. I mean, frankly, if it were me, I'd probably just want to be kept vegetative until you could end it for good. A few hours of being awake but being so weak you can't move and so groggy you can't make any sense of anything, probably wouldn't be very pleasurable. But I guess that's me.
Does Chile have some state of art suprcomputers to achieve this...
No, they plan on using some tin cans and a string and the guys are just going to relay the 0's and 1's off to a country with actual electricity and stuff.
Please go read a little about Chile. They don't live in the dark ages there. It's actually a pretty modern country and hosts to some of the biggest telescopes in the world. Just because they have clean air doesn't make them Neanderthals.
I admit, setting up a CVS client can be a bit of a pain the first time. But I set up a CVS server in no time at all. It was all very simple and I'm not that great with Linux. As for reliability, I've used CVS for years and I have NEVER had any sort of corruption with it whatsoever. I have yet to have a SourceSafe setup that didn't get corrupted at least once. God forbid you want to do anything beyond check-in and check-out and you're practically guaranteed corruption.
SourceSafe IS that unreliable. Always has been, always will be. The base code is crap, pure and simple. Oh SourceSafe how dost thou corrupt thyself? Let me count the ways! Oh wait, I don't have to. Michael Bolton already has. (BTW, I suspect he's not the singer.)
I seriously doubt this is even close to what Da Vinci sounds like. The true test of this would be to take someone on this project who has never heard of Mike Tyson, give them a photograph of him, and see if they come close to what he sounds like. I suspect they wouldn't be even be in the same ballpark. I know Leonardo did a lot of anatomical drawings, but unless he managed to do a really, really detailed drawing of his own vocal chords, I suspect they're making a very rough guess.
Boy, I never saw this one coming. The government using their phone number records to investigate things that aren't related to terrorists. I sure thought they were going to stick to protecting us from terrorists with this data.
I have no problem with the government obtaining a warrant to get this information. But that's not what they've done. What they've done is about as good as tapping phones. Anyone who sees it differently has WAY too much trust of the U.S. government.
And I know that they'll argue that these leaks somehow put us in danger of a terrorist attack. I mean, if the subject had been something as mundane as outting a CIA operative, then of course, they'd be sure to overlook it, particularly if the leak came out of the offices of the President and Vice President.
It amazes me that people aren't yelling and screaming about this and marching in front of the White House. People in this country have become too complacent and they're going to lose the freedoms that so many people have died to protect over the years. And when it comes to that, we'll have nobody to blame but ourselves.
We can blame Bush and his administration, but when it comes down to it, they're not to blame. Because we know what they're doing and we're not kicking their asses out on the street.
When you're a convicted felon, you pretty much lose your right to privacy. Whether you're sentenced to prison or probation, it doesn't matter. Giving a DNA sample is not much different than having to give you fingerprints, which you're required to do when you're arrested, not even convicted.
So personally, I have no problem with it. Don't want to give up your DNA? Don't commit crimes.
Look, more and more, DNA is being used in investigations and that's a good thing. It's getting innocent people out of prison and it's putting guilty people away. As much as I have issues with the government and invasion of privacy, I don't have issues with the police enforcing the law and using the tools available to them to solve crimes.
Once you're convicted, the law makes the assumption that you have a tendency towards crime, so they collect data that will help them catch you if you do it in the future. That makes sense. That's why they've been taking fingerprints and mug shots since those two pieces of information have become part of fighting crime. They're tools that are, for the most part, used for very good things.
The guy broke the law, got convicted, and if the police feel they need a DNA sample as part of their ability to enforce the law in the future, then I'm totally okay with that.
Now, that said, once his sentence is completed and he's no longer on probation, then no, they shouldn't be able to come collect this data from him. Once you've served your time, unless there's a compelling reason to believe otherwise (such as being a suspect in a new crime), you should have your right to privacy back. But as long as you're serving, whether in prison, or at home, you don't. It's that simple.
I have it on good authority that pedophiles actually eat food. Not only that, but I've heard they actually need food to survive. So, my solution is simple: Outlaw food. This will, I have no doubt, put a dent in the pedophile population and bring the problem under control.
...but sometimes I just wonder if we've already passed up that miracle cure.
It's possible that a cure is out there in some plant in the Amazon, or as some bacteria found at the bottom of oceans. But there is no "one" cure for cancer. Cancer works in various ways which means there are various ways to kill it. Pharmacology has come a long way in the past 30 years. These days, it's very targetted. You pick a way you want to attack the cancer, and then you create a drug that does it.
For example, there's a protein called Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF). Cancer causes the release of VEGF around the tumor that in turn, mediates the growth of new blood vessels around the tumor allowing it to get nourishment and grow. So there are several manners that you can try to prevent this. One manner is to try to prevent the creation and release of VEGF in the first place. Another is that you can "competitively inhibit" VEGF by creating a protein that "looks" like VEGF and binds where VEGF normally binds and causes blood vessel growth, except that your particular strain of protein doesn't actually trigger the growth. But by binding where VEGF normally does, you're inhibiting the VEGF from being able to bind and eventually it will be disposed of.
There are other proteins involved in cancer and other drugs are involved with these proteins. So there are a variety of ways of attacking cancers. The most amazing work along these lines has taken place in the last decade and it's getting better all the time. I suspect it won't be long (a few decades maybe) before cancer is a thing of the past.
This cancer gene could be the one that also gives humans a soul.
Don't worry, thanks to the Human Genome project, we have already mapped the "soul" gene and it just so happens that it is exactly the same gene as the cancer gene. I have good news: You won't be getting cancer. The bad news is, you don't have soul.
The media is quick to call things like this a cure. The fact remains that, with some exceptions, men are not mice. Back in the late 90s, angiogenesis inhibitors (a class of drugs that inhibit the growth of new blood vessels, needed by tumors to provide nourishment as they grow) were being tested with amazing success in mice, preventing the spread of almost every form of cancer. It was hailed as the coming cure.
Some angiogenesis inhibitors have proven to be very helpful in treating cancer, but they are not a cure. They aren't nearly as effective in humans as they were in mice, it appears.
I'm always skeptical (and you should be too), when you hear about something that isn't even in clinical trials, as a possible cure for some disease people get. People simply don't respond the same as mice.
That said, this does look promising as an avenue, but I wouldn't go out and take up smoking just yet.
Tannenbaum has a theory on how Linux should be done. Well, personally, I don't believe his theory can be put into practice, at least not without some serious tradeoffs in overall complexity and more importantly, performance. So here's my proposition: Andy, write that new kernel and show us how it's done. I look forward to seeing it.
I'm no physicist, but that looks like it uses a lot of electricity. And seeing as you're basically deflecting high energy cosimc rays, I suppose you'll need a fair amount of energy to effectively deflect them. What kind of solar panels will you need to run that?
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Wow, using a magnet. Genius! Who would have ever thought of a magnet to scramble the bits on a magnetic disc platter? I mean, it simply makes no sense. I don't believe it's possible. Can someone please verify whether or not this is actually the case because I just can't believe a magnet would wipe out a platter. No way.
"...that's all obviously enabling something that is illegal."
Well, fantastic. So you can follow this up by making guns, knives, shovels, cars, bleach, and God knows what else illegal since they're obviously enabling murder. Oh, and we may as well outlaw crime mystery books since they provide information on how to do illegal things. But let's not stop at burning just crime mystery novels. We ought to burn chemistry books since that knowledge can be used to create poisons and explosives. And let's outlaw cars because criminals are notorious for using cars in their getaways. I see no reason to stop there, though. I can think of a lot of other stuff we ought to just outlaw today!
The intellectual property industry and law enforcement officials estimate U.S. companies lose as much as $250 billion per year to Internet pirates, who swap digital copies of "The DaVinci Code," Chamillionaire's new album and the latest Grand Theft Auto video game for free.
These 3 products have a value of as much as $250 billion? Wow, these guys really are making too much money. Guess I better go download some more movies.
Also, what about other caffeine sources like soda?
As is pointed out in the study, they don't know that caffeine is the cause. Coffee is loaded with all kinds of bioactive chemicals and it could be any of them. It could even be the cream or sugar people sometimes put in coffee. So the fact is, they have no idea why this is the case. What they'll probably need to do is kill a few hundred mice and rats with booze and coffee to figure out why and how it works.
As for the age of the data, it isn't really that old. It takes time to develop alcoholic cirrhosis and they're basically using historical data to determine who got it and who didn't and based on a questionnaire they filled out at the time of their enrollment in the health care plan, they were able to determine their coffee and alcohol habits. That said, a lot of alcoholics don't admit how much they drink on those kinds of things, so I'm not entirely sure how they can measure the accuracy. Alcoholics usually admit their drinking habits after the evidence is so obvious they can't hide it (like after they've developed alcoholic cirrhosis).
1: Set up VoIP web site
2: Get customers to pay for VoIP
3: Connect customers at someone else's expense.
4: Profit$$$$
Sounds like a clever business model to me.
The article is weak on technical details. So, I went to the Sourceforge site which has no home page, no documentation, nothing in the forums, and the only "released" file has an extension of .OWL (insides a zip) that contains XML in an invalid format (various unescaped characters that should be escaped. Also noted in the sole bug submission in the Sourceforge project).
There appears to be nothing of values here. An XML file does not do anyone any good without some documentation as to how one might use it. Did New Scientist somehow get duped or is there simply more to this and it's all hidden away?
The article says one of the problems is figuring out how much fuel you have in zero G because it's all floating around inside the tank. Call me crazy, but can't you just rotate your station and then check the pressure on the inside walls of the tank? Not like centrifugal force is some newfangled idea or anything. It's not like it would even have to rotate particularly fast. Sheesh, do I have to figure out everything for these guys?
I kinda liked the exploding neck collar idea first proposed in the Coneheads movie. Not for the legal immigrants, mind you, but for the illegal ones we catch. Just toss on an exlpoding neck collar that's activated by a wire at the border and they'll think twice about coming back across.
The problem is, you need a new system that does all the things that he says, but at the same time, the new system needs to be compatible with the old, at least the client does. People aren't going to run two completely incompatible mail programs if they can help it, and that poses a block to adoption of a new system. On the other hand, by allowing compatibility, you're simply allowing the old problems through (spam, phishing, etc).
One way I've considered this is the whitelist system. Someone who's never sent me an e-mail before, sends me an e-mail. The e-mail gets held on my server for a X days. The sender then gets a reply from the e-mail server saying something along the lines of: "This person has never received mail from you. Reply to this message with the word 'authorize'" in the subject to confirm sending." Upon doing so, the mail would then be sent to me.
This accomplishes a few things: First of all, a spammer can't send me spam unless they're using a valid e-mail address that can be contacted back. Otherwise, the spam will eventually be flushed off the server after X days. As an additional feature, if I decide the mail that did get sent through was SPAM, I can permanently block that address (or site) by adding it to a block-list.
This makes sending 10 million spams a real problem because you then have to have all 10 million come back to you and then send an authorize reply, before your spam will go through. Since the spammer has to be contactible, it then makes them MUCH more vulnerable to being tracked.
Once an initial authorization has been done, the user would then receive a second mail from the server. This would contain a unique key for that sender to continue communicating, that would be attached to each e-mail. With a new e-mail clients and servers, this part could be automated.
This makes initial communication with someone a bit more trouble, but I think (unless I'm missing something) that this might go a long way towards handling spam. And of course, there'd always be the ability to pre-authorize someone if you know their e-mail address.
How could those calling patterns ever cause false leads? Surely terrorists operate like clocks and do everything by the numbers.
Okay, here's an example of how stupid the example given is (and it's not the example that's stupid, it's the intelligence community): I'm an American I have good friends, or maybe family living overseas. Let's say my brother lives in Germany and he just called me to tell me that his wife had a baby boy. So, what am I going to do? Call everyone in my family and anyone that knows my brother well and say, "Guess what, they had a baby boy."
The fact is that, with calls between friends and family overseas in particular, the calls are not infrequently going to be some sort of major or semi-major news that the person in the States is then going to want to share with other friends and family. If the FBI is getting hit with all this garbage, I'm surprised they find time to do anything else.
I'm not saying this stuff can't be used to find terrorists, but at what expense? I would imagine there are much more effective ways to spend the money.
To bring the example a little closer to home, back in the early 90s when export restrictions on encryption were quite a bit tighter than they are now, I was asked by an uncle of mine (who's a venture capitalist) to do a little research into encryption. He had been approached by a group that had come up with some new encryption algorithm and he wanted me to get some sort of feel for how theirs stacked up.
So, I go onto Usenet and start asking some questions, trying to educate myself on this stuff. A few weeks later, I'm talking to one of my neighbors and she says, "So, did you get that job at the White House?" I said, "What job at the White House?" She said, "Well, there were some agents from the State Department here asking questions about you and they said it was for a job at the White House."
Now, I'm no rocket scientist, but I can do the math. Ask about encryption, agents show up. I suspect the two were related. I'm sure they were probably NSA agents since encryption is really more of their deal, or maybe State Dept. agents tasked by the NSA. But whatever.
Had they even looked at my file, which I'm sure they had since I had a full background check for a security clearance a few years prior, they would have quickly discovered that I'm someone of little consequence and not a likely spy. But no, they had to send out a couple agents to investigate me asking questions that anyone from anywhere around the world could have posted on Usenet. What a complete waste of time and money. And it's not like you couldn't just download regulated encryption algorithms off the net at the time anyway.
But I digress. Spending money to protect us is fine, if it's spent wisely. This is costing time of valuable people and untold amounts fo money for what is sure to be barely usable information. But hey, that should come as no shock to anyone.
I saw the Movie. Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro were great.
All kidding aside, this isn't unlike that case (which was based on a true story). In both cases, the affects of the drug are temporary, which really sucks for the people in the vegetative state. I mean, frankly, if it were me, I'd probably just want to be kept vegetative until you could end it for good. A few hours of being awake but being so weak you can't move and so groggy you can't make any sense of anything, probably wouldn't be very pleasurable. But I guess that's me.
I can finish making my "spidy" suit....
Does Chile have some state of art suprcomputers to achieve this...
No, they plan on using some tin cans and a string and the guys are just going to relay the 0's and 1's off to a country with actual electricity and stuff.
Please go read a little about Chile. They don't live in the dark ages there. It's actually a pretty modern country and hosts to some of the biggest telescopes in the world. Just because they have clean air doesn't make them Neanderthals.
I admit, setting up a CVS client can be a bit of a pain the first time. But I set up a CVS server in no time at all. It was all very simple and I'm not that great with Linux. As for reliability, I've used CVS for years and I have NEVER had any sort of corruption with it whatsoever. I have yet to have a SourceSafe setup that didn't get corrupted at least once. God forbid you want to do anything beyond check-in and check-out and you're practically guaranteed corruption.
SourceSafe IS that unreliable. Always has been, always will be. The base code is crap, pure and simple. Oh SourceSafe how dost thou corrupt thyself? Let me count the ways! Oh wait, I don't have to. Michael Bolton already has. (BTW, I suspect he's not the singer.)
I seriously doubt this is even close to what Da Vinci sounds like. The true test of this would be to take someone on this project who has never heard of Mike Tyson, give them a photograph of him, and see if they come close to what he sounds like. I suspect they wouldn't be even be in the same ballpark. I know Leonardo did a lot of anatomical drawings, but unless he managed to do a really, really detailed drawing of his own vocal chords, I suspect they're making a very rough guess.
Boy, I never saw this one coming. The government using their phone number records to investigate things that aren't related to terrorists. I sure thought they were going to stick to protecting us from terrorists with this data.
I have no problem with the government obtaining a warrant to get this information. But that's not what they've done. What they've done is about as good as tapping phones. Anyone who sees it differently has WAY too much trust of the U.S. government.
And I know that they'll argue that these leaks somehow put us in danger of a terrorist attack. I mean, if the subject had been something as mundane as outting a CIA operative, then of course, they'd be sure to overlook it, particularly if the leak came out of the offices of the President and Vice President.
It amazes me that people aren't yelling and screaming about this and marching in front of the White House. People in this country have become too complacent and they're going to lose the freedoms that so many people have died to protect over the years. And when it comes to that, we'll have nobody to blame but ourselves.
We can blame Bush and his administration, but when it comes down to it, they're not to blame. Because we know what they're doing and we're not kicking their asses out on the street.
dead... beating and beating and beating....
When you're a convicted felon, you pretty much lose your right to privacy. Whether you're sentenced to prison or probation, it doesn't matter. Giving a DNA sample is not much different than having to give you fingerprints, which you're required to do when you're arrested, not even convicted.
So personally, I have no problem with it. Don't want to give up your DNA? Don't commit crimes.
Look, more and more, DNA is being used in investigations and that's a good thing. It's getting innocent people out of prison and it's putting guilty people away. As much as I have issues with the government and invasion of privacy, I don't have issues with the police enforcing the law and using the tools available to them to solve crimes.
Once you're convicted, the law makes the assumption that you have a tendency towards crime, so they collect data that will help them catch you if you do it in the future. That makes sense. That's why they've been taking fingerprints and mug shots since those two pieces of information have become part of fighting crime. They're tools that are, for the most part, used for very good things.
The guy broke the law, got convicted, and if the police feel they need a DNA sample as part of their ability to enforce the law in the future, then I'm totally okay with that.
Now, that said, once his sentence is completed and he's no longer on probation, then no, they shouldn't be able to come collect this data from him. Once you've served your time, unless there's a compelling reason to believe otherwise (such as being a suspect in a new crime), you should have your right to privacy back. But as long as you're serving, whether in prison, or at home, you don't. It's that simple.
Come on, we all know it's David Levinson. Who else could possibly take over an alien mothership with an Apple laptop? I've tried. It's hard.
I have it on good authority that pedophiles actually eat food. Not only that, but I've heard they actually need food to survive. So, my solution is simple: Outlaw food. This will, I have no doubt, put a dent in the pedophile population and bring the problem under control.
...but sometimes I just wonder if we've already passed up that miracle cure.
It's possible that a cure is out there in some plant in the Amazon, or as some bacteria found at the bottom of oceans. But there is no "one" cure for cancer. Cancer works in various ways which means there are various ways to kill it. Pharmacology has come a long way in the past 30 years. These days, it's very targetted. You pick a way you want to attack the cancer, and then you create a drug that does it.
For example, there's a protein called Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF). Cancer causes the release of VEGF around the tumor that in turn, mediates the growth of new blood vessels around the tumor allowing it to get nourishment and grow. So there are several manners that you can try to prevent this. One manner is to try to prevent the creation and release of VEGF in the first place. Another is that you can "competitively inhibit" VEGF by creating a protein that "looks" like VEGF and binds where VEGF normally binds and causes blood vessel growth, except that your particular strain of protein doesn't actually trigger the growth. But by binding where VEGF normally does, you're inhibiting the VEGF from being able to bind and eventually it will be disposed of.
There are other proteins involved in cancer and other drugs are involved with these proteins. So there are a variety of ways of attacking cancers. The most amazing work along these lines has taken place in the last decade and it's getting better all the time. I suspect it won't be long (a few decades maybe) before cancer is a thing of the past.
This cancer gene could be the one that also gives humans a soul.
Don't worry, thanks to the Human Genome project, we have already mapped the "soul" gene and it just so happens that it is exactly the same gene as the cancer gene. I have good news: You won't be getting cancer. The bad news is, you don't have soul.
The media is quick to call things like this a cure. The fact remains that, with some exceptions, men are not mice. Back in the late 90s, angiogenesis inhibitors (a class of drugs that inhibit the growth of new blood vessels, needed by tumors to provide nourishment as they grow) were being tested with amazing success in mice, preventing the spread of almost every form of cancer. It was hailed as the coming cure.
Some angiogenesis inhibitors have proven to be very helpful in treating cancer, but they are not a cure. They aren't nearly as effective in humans as they were in mice, it appears.
I'm always skeptical (and you should be too), when you hear about something that isn't even in clinical trials, as a possible cure for some disease people get. People simply don't respond the same as mice.
That said, this does look promising as an avenue, but I wouldn't go out and take up smoking just yet.
Tannenbaum has a theory on how Linux should be done. Well, personally, I don't believe his theory can be put into practice, at least not without some serious tradeoffs in overall complexity and more importantly, performance. So here's my proposition: Andy, write that new kernel and show us how it's done. I look forward to seeing it.
I'm no physicist, but that looks like it uses a lot of electricity. And seeing as you're basically deflecting high energy cosimc rays, I suppose you'll need a fair amount of energy to effectively deflect them. What kind of solar panels will you need to run that?