(warning, I use chemical symbols. You might want a periodic table).
I agree with you that there could well be life that is vastly different than what we are used to.
Another thing is, we often make the following assumptions in terms of life forms, and we can be ceratain of none of them:
1) requirements of Carbon and Oxygen
-- Sulphur, Silicon, and any far-left or far-right non-noble element can handle the requirements here (namely something that can form long complex structures, and something highly reactive that nonetheless has stable compounds wherein it exists)
But this doesn't make sense to me. When you say far-left and far-right, I assume you mean the periodic table. That means you are talking about Cl, Br, Na, K, etc. That doesn't make sense (they tend to only make 1 bond), so I figure you are talking about the p-block.
That means you are talking about B, F, C, Si, Cl and Br. What is special about carbon is that it forms 4 bonds. So, this means you are just talking about carbon and silicon. Let's throw out anything heavier (Ge, Sn) because they aren't that abundant.
Sure, there could be something based on silicon but... Look at CO2 (a gas) and SiO2 (silica, a solid). Carbon just seems like the best candidate for life to be based on. Nitrogen (or P) and boron (or Al) seem to be the best other candidates.
Doesn't matter to the community if they can't find a distro that has support for all their hardware. Doesn't doesn't matter if Dell can't offer any support yet.
I am using one of these precisions. These are supported machines sold by Dell with RedHat preinstalled. All my hardware works.
There are only 22. Spain has L, Portugal owns O and A. They license them (Spain to Mexico, Panama, Cuba, EL Salvador, etc.) but it is very rare to get a new license nowadays.
I don't think the respondents were WSJ readers necessarily. They describe 5 people as: retired professor, homemaker, college student, person who gets free medicine from Merck (no bias there), and a sales rep for a medical photography company. It was just a phone survey, I think.
I don't like typing things in the address bar. If I want to go to Best Buy's website, I type best buy in the search box. I don't know why I do this, but I do.
Moreover, he calculated that the technological controls would require considerable consumption of computing power with the system conducting 30 checks each second to ensure that there are no attacks on the security of the premium content.
That sounds a little over blown. Max video bitrate is 40 Mbps (or is it MBytes/s?). So every million bits or so you check to make sure all is on the up and up. This doesn't sound very computationally intensive. Am I missing something?
The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) wants to find out exactly how competitive the US broadband market is. To do that, it needs access to the raw data collected by the FCC, but the agency has refused to turn it over on the grounds that it could give a competitive advantage to other companies. CPI now finds itself in a District Court battle against the agency, which is being supported by AT&T, Verizon, and the three major industry trade groups: NCTA (cable), CTIA (wireless), and USTA (telephone).
CPI wants the FCC database of Form 477 filings. These documents are filed with the FCC by every telecom company in the US, and they give the agency data on each company's line deployments, broken down by ZIP code (and generally unaudited by the FCC). The FCC then uses this data to generate reports about the state of broadband competition, usually arguing that nothing radical needs to be done.
But the agency's methods for generating these reports have come under scrutiny, and CPI wants to take a look for itself. When talking about broadband deployment, for instance, the FCC says that any particular ZIP code has broadband access if even a single cable or DSL connection exists there. It also classes "broadband" as anything above 200kbps--a woefully low standard for any true broadband connection.
The General Accounting Office, the federal government's internal watchdog agency, took the FCC to task (PDF) last May for the way it prepared these reports. The GAO's own examination of Form 477 data found that the median number of broadband options in a particular ZIP code was two, not eight as the FCC claimed.
CPI filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FCC on August 24. After the statutory 20 business days had passed without any word from the agency, CPI filed suit on September 25, 2006. That apparently got the FCC's attention; the FOIA request was officially denied the next day.
The matter is now in the hands of a federal judge, and the FCC is trying to have the case dismissed. The agency argues that the material in the reports is confidential business information and that the release of it could damage the companies involved. In a court filing, Alan Feldman of the FCC tells the court how this might work. "For example," he says, "information about how a company's number of lines has increased or decreased in a particular area over time provides competitors with insights into how that company is focusing its investment and marketing efforts." He also notes that most filers requested confidentiality for their data.
CPI hopes to add the Form 477 data to its Media Tracker, a web site that shows consumers the available broadband providers, cable operators, television and radio stations, and newspapers in the area.
Olin College is a nontradtional college of maybe 75 kids per incoming class.
I was camping at Mt. Washington once and a bunch of punks from Olin College were at the campsite next to me.
There were a lot of them, about 20, and they seemed to have a singular mind. They all had a zeal for playing stupid campfire games that strongly implied "We are borderline in a cult. We will follow our leader to death. Our leader knows all. Our leader is divine." Lucky for us the leader wasn't there but the signs of brainwash seemed all to clear. They played frisbee with reckless abandon. All of them. There were no dissenters. This was a large group of 18-20 year old guys and girls and no one seemed interested in anything interesting. There was no drinking, no flirting, no cursing, no dirty jokes. It was too wholesome for me to come to grips with. Something had to be up.
Anyways, they were annoying but were busy for a while and they quieted down around dinner time. After dinner the fire was going and we didn't have much to do. Our neighbors fired the brainwashing equipment back up though. Now things were bad. I had already decided that I hated these kids and was saying things like "I want to kill those kids with the blunt end of the hatchet." and "Let's go piss on their fire." That was when they didn't have my full attention. Now they had my full attention and decided to play some chanting game. "A chanting game?" you ask, "I'm not familiar..." As far as I could tell some one would add a phrase that started with the number one and then everyone would repeat it. Then the same for number two and everyone would repeat the phrases for number one and two. Then a phrase for three and then say them for one, two and three. I don't remember them but it would go like this, to use a well known example.
*chanting*
"One partridge in a pear tree."
"One partridge in a pear tree, two turtle doves." ...
"One partridge in a pear tree,... , twelve drummers drumming."
The phrases were longer than that, too. The one I remember was something like "Seven thousand Macedonian warriors preparing for battle." If you don't know what a Macedonian warrior is, it is code for those kids are gay.
"There's some social change that needs to happen, not just at the university level" how dare you speak, Olin graduate!
He has been instrumental in the careers of rappers like Young Jeezy and Lil Wayne. He appears on the cover of the March issue of the hip-hop magazine XXL, alongside his friend and business partner T.I., the top-selling rapper of 2006.
It sounds like this guy is a very big name in his field. The 81,000 discs doesn't sound like a massive amount if you compare him to a radio station. It also says he has lots of unofficial recordings like outtakes and freestyles never meant to be published. For all we know it could include blank CD-Rs.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you that there could well be life that is vastly different than what we are used to.
But this doesn't make sense to me. When you say far-left and far-right, I assume you mean the periodic table. That means you are talking about Cl, Br, Na, K, etc. That doesn't make sense (they tend to only make 1 bond), so I figure you are talking about the p-block.
That means you are talking about B, F, C, Si, Cl and Br. What is special about carbon is that it forms 4 bonds. So, this means you are just talking about carbon and silicon. Let's throw out anything heavier (Ge, Sn) because they aren't that abundant.
Sure, there could be something based on silicon but... Look at CO2 (a gas) and SiO2 (silica, a solid). Carbon just seems like the best candidate for life to be based on. Nitrogen (or P) and boron (or Al) seem to be the best other candidates.
Wow, I just glanced at it, but this whole "pee-dee-eff" thing looks like it might do well...
Direct link to pdf
You must have got too close.
I searched for "myspace spam theglobe"
me too:
...
...
$ mplayer 171471main_Victoria480.mov
Fourcc: avc1 Codec: 'H.264'
Server isn't responding to me. So I ask google. cache
I am using one of these precisions. These are supported machines sold by Dell with RedHat preinstalled. All my hardware works.
Ahh, the memories. *70-xxx-xxxx
Public Radio International had a 5 minute piece on this a few weeks ago. You can listen here if you can play wma.
I saw this in the FireHose and it was about 10k votes.
$9.99 if you sign up early.
From the first article.
$4000 laptop is too expensive for me, sigh.
There are only 22. Spain has L, Portugal owns O and A. They license them (Spain to Mexico, Panama, Cuba, EL Salvador, etc.) but it is very rare to get a new license nowadays.
I don't think the respondents were WSJ readers necessarily. They describe 5 people as: retired professor, homemaker, college student, person who gets free medicine from Merck (no bias there), and a sales rep for a medical photography company. It was just a phone survey, I think.
I don't like typing things in the address bar. If I want to go to Best Buy's website, I type best buy in the search box. I don't know why I do this, but I do.
It seems like cruise missiles (which aren't ballistic) do a lot of damage. This would not bother a cruise missile.
That sounds a little over blown. Max video bitrate is 40 Mbps (or is it MBytes/s?). So every million bits or so you check to make sure all is on the up and up. This doesn't sound very computationally intensive. Am I missing something?
Here is the pdf of the paper on arXiv for those interested.
Did I, maggard (5579), did I?
The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) wants to find out exactly how competitive the US broadband market is. To do that, it needs access to the raw data collected by the FCC, but the agency has refused to turn it over on the grounds that it could give a competitive advantage to other companies. CPI now finds itself in a District Court battle against the agency, which is being supported by AT&T, Verizon, and the three major industry trade groups: NCTA (cable), CTIA (wireless), and USTA (telephone).
CPI wants the FCC database of Form 477 filings. These documents are filed with the FCC by every telecom company in the US, and they give the agency data on each company's line deployments, broken down by ZIP code (and generally unaudited by the FCC). The FCC then uses this data to generate reports about the state of broadband competition, usually arguing that nothing radical needs to be done.
But the agency's methods for generating these reports have come under scrutiny, and CPI wants to take a look for itself. When talking about broadband deployment, for instance, the FCC says that any particular ZIP code has broadband access if even a single cable or DSL connection exists there. It also classes "broadband" as anything above 200kbps--a woefully low standard for any true broadband connection.
The General Accounting Office, the federal government's internal watchdog agency, took the FCC to task (PDF) last May for the way it prepared these reports. The GAO's own examination of Form 477 data found that the median number of broadband options in a particular ZIP code was two, not eight as the FCC claimed.
CPI filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FCC on August 24. After the statutory 20 business days had passed without any word from the agency, CPI filed suit on September 25, 2006. That apparently got the FCC's attention; the FOIA request was officially denied the next day.
The matter is now in the hands of a federal judge, and the FCC is trying to have the case dismissed. The agency argues that the material in the reports is confidential business information and that the release of it could damage the companies involved. In a court filing, Alan Feldman of the FCC tells the court how this might work. "For example," he says, "information about how a company's number of lines has increased or decreased in a particular area over time provides competitors with insights into how that company is focusing its investment and marketing efforts." He also notes that most filers requested confidentiality for their data.
CPI hopes to add the Form 477 data to its Media Tracker, a web site that shows consumers the available broadband providers, cable operators, television and radio stations, and newspapers in the area.
Olin College is a nontradtional college of maybe 75 kids per incoming class.
... ... , twelve drummers drumming."
I was camping at Mt. Washington once and a bunch of punks from Olin College were at the campsite next to me. There were a lot of them, about 20, and they seemed to have a singular mind. They all had a zeal for playing stupid campfire games that strongly implied "We are borderline in a cult. We will follow our leader to death. Our leader knows all. Our leader is divine." Lucky for us the leader wasn't there but the signs of brainwash seemed all to clear. They played frisbee with reckless abandon. All of them. There were no dissenters. This was a large group of 18-20 year old guys and girls and no one seemed interested in anything interesting. There was no drinking, no flirting, no cursing, no dirty jokes. It was too wholesome for me to come to grips with. Something had to be up.
Anyways, they were annoying but were busy for a while and they quieted down around dinner time. After dinner the fire was going and we didn't have much to do. Our neighbors fired the brainwashing equipment back up though. Now things were bad. I had already decided that I hated these kids and was saying things like "I want to kill those kids with the blunt end of the hatchet." and "Let's go piss on their fire." That was when they didn't have my full attention. Now they had my full attention and decided to play some chanting game. "A chanting game?" you ask, "I'm not familiar..." As far as I could tell some one would add a phrase that started with the number one and then everyone would repeat it. Then the same for number two and everyone would repeat the phrases for number one and two. Then a phrase for three and then say them for one, two and three. I don't remember them but it would go like this, to use a well known example.
*chanting*
"One partridge in a pear tree."
"One partridge in a pear tree, two turtle doves."
"One partridge in a pear tree,
The phrases were longer than that, too. The one I remember was something like "Seven thousand Macedonian warriors preparing for battle." If you don't know what a Macedonian warrior is, it is code for those kids are gay.
"There's some social change that needs to happen, not just at the university level" how dare you speak, Olin graduate!
It sounds like this guy is a very big name in his field. The 81,000 discs doesn't sound like a massive amount if you compare him to a radio station. It also says he has lots of unofficial recordings like outtakes and freestyles never meant to be published. For all we know it could include blank CD-Rs.