Comment Re:What? (Score 1) 131
You've never encountered "trigger warnings"?
Trigger warning: the hero dies at the end.
Comment Stability is needed (Score 1) 267
The programmers need to design a digital Bretton Woods system and enforce a stable exchange rate. For instance, the value of one eMark could be pegged at one five hundredth of a bitcoin, and the various central banks would be obligated to buy and sell bitcoins and emarks at that rate. That way, a miner wouldn't have to worry about backing the wrong computations.
Researchers Discover New Plant "Language" 70
An anonymous reader writes A Virginia Tech scientist has discovered a potentially new form of plant communication, that allows them to share genetic information with one another. Jim Westwood, a professor of plant pathology, physiology, and weed science, found evidence of this new communication mode by investigating the relationship between dodder, a parasitic plant, and the flowering plant Arabidopsis and tomato plants to which it attaches and sucks out nutrients with an appendage called a haustorium. Westwood examined the plants' mRNA, the molecule in cells that instructs organisms how to code certain proteins that are key to functioning. MRNA helps to regulate plant development and can control when plants eventually flowers. He found that the parasitic and the host plants were exchanging thousands of mRNA molecules between each other, thus creating a conversation.
Comment Bezos asks for more U.S. government corruption? (Score 3, Interesting) 136
I was wondering why the Washington Post was spamming me! How did the Washington Post get my email address? Now I know. Jeff Bezos is allowing his "personal purchase" to have the email address I gave to Amazon.
Bezos apparently bought the Washington Post so that he can use it to try to force legislators to give him attention. The U.S. is becoming even more a rich-get-richer country.
The subjects of the spam messages:
{SPECIAL PREVIEW} Summer Sale: JUST $19 -- SAVE UP TO 81% OFF -- for One Year of Unlimited Digital Access!
{24 HOURS ONLY} Summer Sale: JUST $19 -- SAVE UP TO 81% OFF -- for One Year of Unlimited Digital Access!
{EXTENDED} Summer Sale: JUST $19 -- SAVE UP TO 81% OFF -- for One Year of Unlimited Digital Access!
I think it is a very effective advertising campaign. The effect will be that people will try to avoid buying things from Amazon. Also, after the "Summer Sale", digital access to the Washington Post will cost $100 per year!
Bezos apparently bought the Washington Post so that he can use it to try to force legislators to give him attention. The U.S. is becoming even more a rich-get-richer country.
The subjects of the spam messages:
{SPECIAL PREVIEW} Summer Sale: JUST $19 -- SAVE UP TO 81% OFF -- for One Year of Unlimited Digital Access!
{24 HOURS ONLY} Summer Sale: JUST $19 -- SAVE UP TO 81% OFF -- for One Year of Unlimited Digital Access!
{EXTENDED} Summer Sale: JUST $19 -- SAVE UP TO 81% OFF -- for One Year of Unlimited Digital Access!
I think it is a very effective advertising campaign. The effect will be that people will try to avoid buying things from Amazon. Also, after the "Summer Sale", digital access to the Washington Post will cost $100 per year!
Submission + - Microsoft considered changing the name Internet Explorer to bury its reputation (theinquirer.net)
An anonymous reader writes: MICROSOFT'S Internet Explorer engineering team told a Reddit gathering that discussions about a name change have taken place and could happen again.
Submission + - Companies That Don't Understand Engineers Don't Respect Engineers (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Following up on a recent experiment into the status of software engineers versus managers, Jon Evans writes that the easiest way to find out which companies don't respect their engineers is to figure out which companies simply don't understand them. "Engineers are treated as less-than-equal because we are often viewed as idiot savants. We may speak the magic language of machines, the thinking goes, but we aren't business people, so we aren't qualified to make the most important decisions. ... Whereas in fact any engineer worth her salt will tell you that she makes business decisions daily–albeit on the micro not macro level–because she has to in order to get the job done. Exactly how long should this database field be? And of what datatype? How and where should it be validated? How do we handle all of the edge cases? These are in fact business decisions, and we make them, because we’re at the proverbial coal face, and it would take forever to run every single one of them by the product peopleand sometimes they wouldn’t even understand the technical factors involved. ... It might have made some sense to treat them as separate-but-slightly-inferior when technology was not at the heart of almost every business, but not any more."
Comment Re:Population declines (Score 1) 116
What chemicals spilled, other than all the radioactive water?
And since when have people not been interested in the effects of chemical spills, genetic or otherwise?
Comment Re:Population declines (Score 1) 116
By not studying the narrow strip of land that was affected by the tsunami.
Bah, you're making the radical assumption that scientists have a clue about the things they study.
Comment Re:Not That Surprising (Score 1) 116
Yes, if there's a reactor meltdown in your neighborhood you should stay put and ignore the panic mongers. A little radiation never did anything.
Comment Re:because... GOD! (Score 1) 109
No, my life would have been changed (i.e., ended in the cosmic collapse) if I *had* hit him.
Comment Re:When did the universe get so big? (Score 2) 109
The speed of light is a limit on how fast you can accelerate something *in* space, but it's not a limit on how fast space can expand.
In fact you can't even state the rate of expansion of space as a velocity, because the velocity apparent as the speed of recession depends on how far away you're looking.
Comment Re:LOL (Score 1) 109
It has a psychological effect because ignorant economists use limited knowledge about the universe to justify austerity policies. Friedman using TANSTAAFL, for example. Except now Dark Energy violates TANSTAAFL, and it didn't hold in General Relativity anyway. So we suffer from an artificially imposed scarcity of money because economists suffer from a lack of knowledge about the universe.
That's not rigorous enough for physics, but I do believe it meets the standards for good economics.
Comment Re:Black Magic is the reason! (Score 1) 109
This is all hogwash.
At least that much of your theory is correct.
Comment Re:because... GOD! (Score 1) 109
God is the fundamental reason for why the universe didn't became a black hole in the early stages after the Big Bang
I can stated with equal evidence and authority that the stray cat I almost ran over yesterday is the fundamental reason for why the universe didn't become a black hole in the early stages after the Big Bang.
Be glad I missed him.
Ok, let's hear it.
[clears throat] "the stray cat I almost ran over yesterday is the fundamental reason for why the universe didn't become a black hole in the early stages after the Big Bang."
Comment Re:Summary (Score 3, Interesting) 109
So to extrapolate from the TFA: The laws of physics do not exist in a vacuum...
There's a difference between 'a vacuum' and 'nothing'.
