adam
- Posted on:
- Wednesday November 28 2007 2:57pm
@BW:
I think Emalee and I will be skipping the festivities this weekend... We've got a ton of crap to take care of here in Madison.
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adam
@BW:
I think Emalee and I will be skipping the festivities this weekend... We've got a ton of crap to take care of here in Madison.
CrowScape
In other news, physicists have destroyed the universe.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/21/scicosmos121.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox
Peter
Adam, Sadly that article brings up a very sore point for scientists. The idea of using an enucleated cell (for example take the nucleus out of just an ovum, egg cell, and put in a skin cell nucleus - thereby creating stem cell lines without ever having fertilization between sperm and egg ever take place) is not a new one (it's been in the works since about 1995). What the scientists have created here sounds to much like a pleuripotent cell and not a totipotent cell (which is what 99% world thinks of when they hear the term "stem cell"). A totipotent cell is a stem cell that can become any tissue type and can undergo divisions forever (has no limit on the number of times it can divide). A pleuripotent cell is a cell who can no longer become any tissue type and/or no longer has infinite divisions. The reason why adult stem cells aren't good for research is that they are pleuripotent and not totipotent which most of the stem cell lines for viable treatment option research require. They have a fixed number of divisions and once they run out of divisions, the cell progenitor cell is finished. Once again, the scientists here have developed a novel pleuripotent cell and there test on telomeres will prove that. These articles come out about once a year and everyone gets excited but we end up with the same problem - the creation of a pleuripotent cell with limited divisions instead of a true stem cell (totipotent cell).
adam
Peter, you might find this interesting...
http://www.news.wisc.edu/14474
In a paper to be published Nov. 22 in the online edition of the journal Science, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers reports the genetic reprogramming of human skin cells to create cells indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells.
-A
nearscape
One more time before I just pick a date. Old school gathering. When do you want it?
adam
http://www.fsckin.com/2007/09/10/this-guy-installs-linux-in-places-no-man-should-go/
Why didn't we think of this first?!?!
-A
CrowScape
I've become convinced that Hitler wasn't actually that bad, as people keep bringing him up in regards to the most banal of government infringements. For instance, I used to think that he was bad for shoving people into ovens. Now I find out he was bad for reading people's letters.
The problem is not when the government has everyone's information. The problem is when the government knows that it has YOUR information. Collecting every bit of data on the internet just makes it several orders of magnitude more difficult to do the latter, which is why I doubt that what's going on in that room is what you think is going on (i.e. any data they get on you from this isn't being stored). Since the US is the home of the world's largest telecom companies, a large amount of traffic that originates and ends overseas winds up traveling through US networks. The quickest way to monitor foreign traffic is to take the stream of Internet traffic and run it through filters, like a whale sucking up seawater and running it through plates to catch the krill.
Should there be safeguards in place to ensure that American citizens do not become confused with the krill? Of course, take that up with Congress. But it is the job of the NSA to conduct foreign surveillance in the most effective manner, and the Constitution does not cover foreigners not in the US.
And this from someone who thought Japan, with its omnipresent surveillance, was so much freer than the US. No, you'll never live that down.
Intrigue
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071111-ex-att-employee-nsa-snooping-internet-traffic-too.html
I feel like we have time traveled back in time to George Orwell's 1984 future.
This is really scary, and in the hands of someone like Hitler this would mean all sorts of holy hell brought down on everyone. THIS MAKES ME F'NG SICK TO MY STOMACH. I hate what Hitler did, and I HATE EVEN MORE THAT PEOPLE LET IT HAPPEN.
CrowScape
I got me a copy of Hellgate: London. It rocks, as in a very excellent marriage of Diablo to Unreal. It's also a unique hybrid MMORPG, with a tiered subscription service: you can play online for free, or you can pay a subscription to receive more content/options. As someone who likes playing for free, I'm finding this a very satisfactory arrangement, especially as free players do get some of the pay-subsidized content to trickle down. Plus there is the possibility that the subscriber content will be released as expansion packs later, which is also cool. However, with the exception of the stations (Hellgate's version of towns), the entire game is instanced. So, if you are not in a party, you will not see any other players while you are blowing up demons.