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Comment Re:It's so very odd..... (Score 1, Insightful) 1376

by pnotequalsnp (#28760757) Attached to: Ireland Criminalizes Blasphemy
To paraphrase Dawkins: "agnosticism is flawed because it assumes that the probability that God exists is equal to the probability that God does not exist". I think you would rather say that right now you cannot rule out the existence or the non-existence of "God" (provably soon). But to say that they are equally likely (probability) is incredibly naive, since you presumably have to tell me which God you are talking about, which history has shown to be ever-changing (Zeus, Thor, etc.). Therefore you are neither atheist nor agnostic.

Comment Re:nice (Score 1) 181

by pnotequalsnp (#27367011) Attached to: Android Scans DVD Bar Codes, Downloads Movies
Sorry sir but you are wrong. I'll reiterate my limited econ 101 experience: we assume perfect information for markets to be perfectly efficient, so having the price across all offerings is a good thing. What you should decide is if the extra cost at the given store is worth the added benefits (customer service, locality, other factors). This is commonplace today, for example when choosing eco-friendly dry cleaning, products without lead etc. Obviously people choosing Walmart are making the choice that the added services are not worth the extra price. Not everyone has the same values (which determine price) as you.

Comment It does not rock (Score 2, Interesting) 239

by pnotequalsnp (#26337299) Attached to: New Method To Revolutionize DNA Sequencing
Considering current sequencing technology generates terabytes of data per day (see the Sanger center), then wouldn't it be efficient to maximize the amount of information per pixel (i.e. per byte)? This method is actually is much worse (orders of magnitude) than the current method. There are many other problems with what they do, but hopefully the cash infusion can last them another 2 years until the write a paper like this. BTW, the say that appropriate camera tech. will be available in 2-5 years, but they're ready now! They might be buying time...
Censorship

YouTube Reposts Anti-Scientology Videos 435

Posted by timothy from the fun-and-easy-to-destroy-stuff dept.
Ian Lamont writes "YouTube has reposted anti-Scientology videos and reinstated suspended YouTube accounts after receiving thousands of apparently bogus DCMA take-down notices. Four thousand notices were sent to YouTube last Thursday and Friday by American Rights Counsel, LLC. After YouTube users responded with counter-notices, many of the videos were reposted. It turns out that the American Rights Counsel had no copyright claim on the videos, and the group may not even exist, although the text of the DCMA notices have been linked to a Wikipedia editor. While filing a false DMCA notice is a criminal offense, prosecution in these cases rarely comes about."
The Internet

IsoHunt Petitions Canadian Court For Copyright Blessing 217

Posted by timothy from the petition-to-the-courts-not-petition-online dept.
A Cow writes "As an act of self-defense, the popular BitTorrent site isoHunt has decided to file a petition to ask the Court of British Columbia to confirm that isoHunt — and sister sites Torrentbox and Podtropolis — do not infringe copyright. isoHunt owner Gary explains to TorrentFreak: 'Our petition summarizes BitTorrent technology, its open nature and a whole ecosystem of websites and operators that has developed around it, that CRIA does not own copyright to all files distributed over BitTorrent or on isoHunt websites, and we seek legal validation that we can continue to innovate within this emerging BitTorrent ecosystem on the Internet.'"
Patents

Akamai Wins Lawsuit to Protect Obvious Patent 173

Posted by Zonk from the keeping-things-locked-down dept.
brandaman writes "Akamai, the largest content delivery network (CDN) with about 70% market share, recently won its lawsuit against the against second largest CDN - Limelight Networks. The suit asserted that Limelight was infringing on Akamai's patent which, upon examination, seems to be somewhat on the obvious side. 'In accordance with the invention, however, a base HTML document portion of a Web page is served from the Content Provider's site while one or more embedded objects for the page are served from the hosting servers, preferably, those hosting servers near the client machine. By serving the base HTML document from the Content Provider's site, the Content Provider maintains control over the content.' Limelight is obviously not pleased, and this is not the first lawsuit Akamai has won regarding its patents."
Medicine

Researchers Discover Gene That Blocks HIV 333

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the i'm-pretty-good-at-giving-people-bad-news dept.
stemceller writes to tell us that a team of researchers at the University of Alberta claims to have discovered a gene capable of blocking HIV thereby preventing the onset of full blown AIDS. "Stephen Barr, a molecular virologist in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, says his team has identified a gene called TRIM22 that can block HIV infection in a cell culture by preventing the assembly of the virus. 'When we put this gene in cells, it prevents the assembly of the HIV virus," said Barr, a postdoctoral fellow. "This means the virus cannot get out of the cells to infect other cells, thereby blocking the spread of the virus.'"
Sci-Fi

Submission + - The Role of Mitochondrial DNA in Aging and Cancer

Submitted by pnotequalsnp
pnotequalsnp writes: Doug Wallace, PHD UC Irvine, gave a very interesting talk on the role of Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) entitled "Human Origins, Aging, Cancer & Degenerative Disease".

One of the interesting conclusions is that aging is correlated to body temperature (or exercise) and overeating. mtDNA produces ATP and heat. In warm blooded humans, typically their mtDNA produces more heat for the body by burning calories. On the other hand, cold blooded humans produce less heat and more ATP to use as energy for the body. Basically, keeping your electron transfer chain oxidized in your mtDNA (by exercising or converting calories to heat) will reduce cancer risk (free radicals produced). If you have a tightly coupled mtDNA (produce less heat and more ATP) and you overeat (meaning more calories), then you will reduce the electron transfer chain within your mtDNA, creating more free radicals, resulting in apotosis (cell suicide) and you will age faster.

In short, calorie restricition will increase lifespan and reduce cancer risk, especially in cold blooded humans.

Click here for a video of the talk
Slashdot.org

Submission + - Fermi Lab discovers Cascade B

Submitted by pnotequalsnp
pnotequalsnp writes: A new heavy particle has been discovered by physicists at the Fermi lab in Illinois.
The particle — known as cascade b — is special because it's the first of its kind to be made up of quarks representing all three quark families, the lab announced in a news release.
The Fermi lab article can be found at http://www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/press_releases/D zero_baryon.html

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