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Comment Re:Just like bacteria or virii (Score 1) 326

It's in a book on his experiments...

http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/22514...

Page 4.
4
Fig 1. John B. Calhoun in rodent Universe 133

and page 18.

Calhounâ(TM)s rodent experiments (note that "universe 133" was actually a mouse experiment, but it is as ever with reference to rats that the work is recalled)

And I hate the lack of ability to edit combined with Slashdot's poor treatment of unicode quote marks!

Comment Re:Just like bacteria or virii (Score 4, Interesting) 326

I must be misremembering the universe #.

Here's a link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

and a quote...

Mouse experiments
John Calhoun with mice experiment.

In the early 1960s, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) acquired property in a rural area outside Poolesville, Maryland. The facility that was built on this property housed several research projects, including those headed by Calhoun. It was here that his most famous experiment, the mouse universe, was created.[1] In July 1968 four pairs of mice were introduced into the Utopian universe. The universe was a 9-foot (2.7 m) square metal pen with 54-inch-high (1.4 m) sides. Each side had four groups of four vertical, wire mesh âoetunnelsâ. The âoetunnelsâ gave access to nesting boxes, food hoppers, and water dispensers. There was no shortage of food or water or nesting material. There were no predators. The only adversity was the limit on space.
John Calhoun meeting Pope Paul VI on 27 September 1973.

Initially the population grew rapidly, doubling every 55 days. The population reached 620 by day 315, after which the population growth dropped markedly. The last surviving birth was on day 600. This period between day 315 and day 600 saw a breakdown in social structure and in normal social behavior. Among the aberrations in behavior were the following: expulsion of young before weaning was complete, wounding of young, inability of dominant males to maintain the defense of their territory and females, aggressive behavior of females, passivity of non-dominant males with increased attacks on each other which were not defended against. After day 600, the social breakdown continued and the population declined toward extinction. During this period females ceased to reproduce. Their male counterparts withdrew completely, never engaging in courtship or fighting. They ate, drank, slept, and groomed themselves â" all solitary pursuits. Sleek, healthy coats and an absence of scars characterized these males. They were dubbed âoethe beautiful onesâ.

The conclusions drawn from this experiment were that when all available space is taken and all social roles filled, competition and the stresses experienced by the individuals will result in a total breakdown in complex social behaviors, ultimately resulting in the demise of the population.

Calhoun saw the fate of the population of mice as a metaphor for the potential fate of man. He characterized the social breakdown as a âoesecond deathâ, with reference to the âoesecond deathâ mentioned in the Biblical book of Revelation 2:11 [1] His study has been cited by writers such as Bill Perkins as a warning of the dangers of the living in an "increasingly crowded and impersonal

Comment Just like bacteria or virii (Score 2) 326

The portion of the population which breeds under given circumstances will come to dominate the population.

It might be expressed as a particular religion, simple horniness combined with resistance to using birth control, or myriad other ways.

But that part of the population will be a larger percentage over time and finally come to dominate the population.

There is an exception-- a universe 133 scenario. The population in those experiments collapsed and did not recover.

Comment Re: "forced labor" (Score 1) 183

Actually, the war on poverty was working until the GOP insisted on surrendering.

And yes, businesses that mooch on the taxpayer to supplement their inadequate payroll are evil. They know damned well they are mooching off of people with a lot less than they already have.

We don't claim the car thief is blameless if you leave your keys in your car, do we?

Comment Re:"forced labor" (Score 1) 183

That's the new innovation of forced labor. In the bad old days, slaves were quite expensive so you had to provide food, clothing, shelter, and at least minimal healthcare.

The new improved forced labor lets them pick up the slaves cheap, provide them minimal food and shelter and just let them die from overwork.

Comment What is really happening here? (Score 1) 981

We are in a War on Faith, because Faith justifies anything and ISIS takes it to extremes. But in the end they are just a bigger version of Christian-dominated school boards that mess with the teaching of Evolution, or Mormon sponsors of anti-gay-marriage measures, or my Hebrew school teacher, an adult who slapped me as a 12-year-old for some unremembered offense against his faith.

Comment Re:Anti-math and anti-science ... (Score 1) 981

Hm. The covenant of Noah is about two paragraphs before this part (King James Version) which is used for various justifications of slavery and discrimination against all sorts of people because they are said to bear the Curse of Ham. If folks wanted to use the Bible to justify anything ISIS says is justified by God's words in the Koran, they could easily do so.

18 And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.
19 These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.
20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:
21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.
22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.
23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness.
24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.
25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
26 And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

Comment Re:Simple set of pipelined utilties! (Score 1) 385

Both upsides were already easily solvable. Most distro's rc scripts already call a function to start a daemon. That could easily have called a helper program to set up the cgroup and register on dbus to act as a controller for the group.

Meanwhile, at least Debian's rc scripts already had dependencies listed in their headers that could be used to compute a start order. It could as easily be used to compute a makefile to start in parallel.

The problem is, now that the init process will be such a hairball of dependencies, it becomes harder to implement such solutions without seemingly unrelated bits breaking. For example, no reasonable person expects the GUI desktop to break if you switch out init. (and no reasonable person creates such a dependency)

Comment Re:Attacker is your Peer (Score 1) 85

Or, you go with signed routes. That is, you use a public key system to prove that you have the right to broadcast a route for a particular subnet.

In practice, it will probably mean some router upgrades. No more router cpus that were considered a bit underpowered for a calculator in the '90s. However, as an interim measure, it could be used to set some BGP filters to limit the potential damage.

Comment Re:Because of capitalism. (Score 1) 85

The problem is, we're tipped over into corporatism where the net is controlled by a very few very large legal sictions tha tthe courts insist are somehow people.

You worry about the bad old government censoring the net but forget to worry about the ISPs censoring the net.

I can't imagine why you think the overmetered network protects us from the market cornering legislation and the pompous asses. Without proper net neutrality, we get all of the above and nowhere to turn.

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