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Biotech

Plastic-Eating Bacteria Could Help Clean Up Waste (inhabitat.com) 75

Kristine Lofgren writes: Japanese researchers have discovered a microorganism that literally devours ocean-clogging plastic. The bacterium Ideonella sakaiensis can completely break down polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a common plastic used in bottles and containers. That type of plastic makes up a huge proportion of all the plastic waste in the world, particularly in the ocean. The bacterium uses a pair of enzymes to break down PET and turn it into a food source. The problem is, it takes up to six weeks for the bacterium to completely breakdown a small, low-grade sample of PET. Microbiologist Kohei Oda of the Kyoto Institute of Technology co-authored the study published this week in the journal Science, and he told PBS NewsHour he was "very surprised to find microorganisms that degrade PET" because the plastic has always been thought to be non-biodegradable. Now, scientists just need to figure out how to harness the hungry little bug to recycle plastic and reduce pollution.

Comment Re:Copyright against ad-blockers (Score 1) 618

As I wrote in my reply to Oligonicella, the document served by the web server is a collective work consisting of the article proper combined with advertisements licensed from advertisers through the ad network. Or what am I missing?

The server can also simultaneously serve up content in frames, iframes, RSS, XML, JSON in response to dynamic requests.

Just because these are viewed in the same browser window doesn't necessarily make them part of the same "document." A compilation of works may contain elements that are not derivatives of each other.

Mind you, IANAL and I don't know if any of this has been decided by a court, so pardon the argument "ex posteriori!"

Censorship

Pianist Asks Washington Post To Remove Review Under "Right To Be Forgotten" 257

Goatbert writes with word that pianist Dejan Lazic, unhappy with the opinion of Post music critic Anne Midgette, "has asked the Washington Post to remove an old review from their site in perhaps the best example yet of why it is both a terrible ruling and concept." It’s the first request The Post has received under the E.U. ruling. It’s also a truly fascinating, troubling demonstration of how the ruling could work. “To wish for such an article to be removed from the internet has absolutely nothing to do with censorship or with closing down our access to information,” Lazic explained in a follow-up e-mail to The Post. Instead, he argued, it has to do with control of one’s personal image — control of, as he puts it, “the truth.” (Here is the 2010 review to which Lazic objects.)

Comment Re:Well (Score 1) 564

They were around in 94, but they were relatively expensive and rare. That res usually required a fancier video card too to get a better DAC.

Here's a good example from the Mac world c. 1995, offering accelerated 1600x1200 resolution and multimonitor support. It was definitely high-end (~$3500) if you wanted true color at that resolution.

http://www.lowendmac.com/video/thunder4gx.html

Comment Re:Perl (Score 1) 536

Take the semicoln in C. It's not needed. It's really just a pleasant confirmation to the compiler to let it know that your current statement is done.

It certainly is needed, if you want to keep white space insignificant. C compilers can skip over every space, tab, and line break that isn't part of a string. Getting rid of semicolons would needlessly complicate lexical analysis.

Comment Re:The whole point of a shell (Score 1) 176

It's something of a myth that keyboarding is faster than mousing for equivalent tasks - for example, people compare using keyboard shortcuts for selecting, copying, and pasting when they should be comparing selection with arrow keys.

Likewise, if you use VIM shortcuts to jump through the text, you're really comparing a find-and-replace feature which is just as fast with the mouse.

The real speed gains come from using keyboard shortcuts in combination with the mouse - it's not either/or. When you have a bunch of copy-pasting to do, keeping your right hand on the mouse for selection and left on Ctrl+C Ctrl+V is the fastest method.

Comment Re:Imagine what a great chat (Score 1) 161

You must be ne-- oh, my bad. :)

Seriously, though, it doesn't matter what the question was about - pick any religious topics such as Mac vs. Windows, Linux vs. everybody, vi vs. emacs etc. and you will see the same frothing-at-the-mouth chest puffery here!

"You can't accept that someone that is so close to your accepted template of a [computer professional] has this differing viewpoint [about JavaScript]."

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