It may not technically be Trek, but it certainly feels closer to what I loved about the franchise than the current CBS show does, probably due to Brannon Braga's involvement. The new CBS show is military sci-fi and seems closer to shows like BSG than the exploratory and philosophical themes of the past Trek shows.

I guess saying "it comes from" a virus is a mistake. The right wording would be "we share 7% of our genetic code with a virus". It may well be that useful parts of host's genetic code are integrated into a virus, and that parts of the code originate from a common ancestor from prehistoric times. This would be indistinguishable from code that originates from a virus and got absorbed into human genome.

I know that DNA can be transferred between virus and host.

My point is, how can they say with any certainty that 8% is the number? How do they have any idea what actually came from a virus, and what just happens to match?

The building blocks of each aren't really that much different. How do we know the code for building protein X that is used for part of the virus's wall actually came from it, and doesn't just happen to match the code for building protein Y that is used somewhere in our cells for similar purpose?

The article then goes on to make an association between a virus that only infects brains cells, and this process of DNA transfer. How is the new viral DNA transferred to offspring if it only infects neurons??

He said legitimate moral, not legal.

This is the real reason why poor kids get doped up by doctors - the school has so many zero tolerance policies and the transgressing student's parents have a choice of having their kid kicked out of school, placed in special ed, or drugged. The alternatives, like costly theapy, which more affluent parents can avail themselves of, poor parents can't possibly afford. It's criminal.

First off, to everyone who knows me: This wasn't my story submission

OK, now that's out of the way, I suffer from a related, but not quite so bad situation: I'm pretty much the only Erik Trimble on the Internet (that's not true, but close enough). Google me, and 90% of the first 100 returns point to me, in some way or not (FYI - the MySpace page for "leathercladdemon" isn't me. Really.) There's nothing bad there, it's just that my life has evolved, and having absolutely all of it retained and searchable over the past 20 years allows people to draw incorrect assumptions about me.

This is all the privacy problems that the current young generations seem to be completely oblivious to, and that pundits like to ignore. People's perceptions of you matter, as much as we'd like to think otherwise. That doesn't mean it has to rule your life, but to think that such perceptions don't matter is foolish. The problem with retaining all this data out in the open is that it seriously harms the ability of people to change. And we want people to change. Lots of Very Bad Things happen to society if we forbid people (either legally, or de facto) from changing their paths in life. For just a minor example, look at what being convicted of anything does to one's entire life. It's not good to have complete personal transparency.

I don't have a solution. At least not a simple one. But it needs to understood by everyone that it IS a problem.

-Erik

You are seriously mistaken. UFO stands for "unidentified flying object" -- with the most salient characteristic being "unidentified". Although UFO sightings are often associated with (assumed) extraterrestrial phenomena, this is not necessary for the label. An unidentified object in the sky is still a UFO regardless of origin (and typically will no longer be considered a UFO when identified, even if alien/extraterrestrial).

"Sexually charged issues"? Is that what you're calling it these days? I understand your viewpoint, but I reject it. Preventing children from getting access to actual pornography is one thing. Preventing them from getting good information is entirely another. In between there lies an enormous grey area which yes, often requires assistance from the courts to untangle. But the simple reality is that there are a lot of kids out there who are trapped in situations out of their control who need access to information which this bill makes it illegal to share with them. Would you want the heterosexual male child of [say] a lesbian couple to be denied access information about "normal" family structure? Because arguably it could make it illegal to host content about "disambiguation" of passages in the bible relating to homosexuality by a religious organization.

That wouldn't prove cloaking impossible, it would require that a cloaking screen be powered in some way so that the dissipation of energy from the power source makes up for the extra entropy gained by the refracted light. Marl's proof can't apply that negative refraction is impossible for all frequencies, because we've have experimentally seen negative refraction at specific frequencies, including optical frequencies. What he disproved must a unpowered clock that operates over all frequencies at the same time.

When it comes to use electrons to see cloaked items, there is science fiction and computer game presidence. In Alien vs Predator, the switching to Electric vision, the Alien can easily see a cloaked Predator.

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Optics Feed @ Feed Distiller

Even if zero people were actually viewing the images, the victim would still suffer with the belief that people are. Making child pornography illegal has no effect whatsoever on the victims of the crime, and jailing someone for 20 years for possession is no more productive.

Greed and hoarding behaviors are not relegated only to survival situations.

Can I just be the first to say..."WoW!"

I've read a hundred posts, and have not yet seen this angle yet. But I think that the term "IT Guy" can be used in a derogatory sense only when the employees refer to people in other departments with more formal titles or using their names. So if referring to Jack as an Accountant or Jane as a Account Executive is the norm, and yet they refer to you as "IT guy" they are degrading you relative to others in the organization, who may have far less impressive credentials. If everyone is "Accounting" or "Sales" or "IT" then it is probably nothing to get worked up about. One other thing to consider as well. Some companies consider IT as a business driver or differentiator, and others see it as a cost of doing business. Companies that have a strategic use for IT are going to have a natural respect for IT professionals, but companies that need IT just to re-image laptops will treat you as replaceable and if you are nerdy, they will try to pick on you like they did in high school -- just more discreetly.

I agree, science is not about instant gratification but science has to start at some point. LHC project started before:2004 (this was a date i found where parts were shipped, had a hard time finding an actual start date). LHC project was finished the build, and went live: Sept 2008 (first live fire). The LHC project has not started a scientific study as of November 2009. So how much patience do we need to start experimentation, let alone completing it, publishing the raw findings, analyzing the raw findings, and the coming out with some results?

To AC about my first post and reading it - the regime is 3 raw eggs daily, 2 hours of gym daily, 1 hour of sex daily, and reading the article hours before it was posted to /. and coincidentally going to /. just as the article posted :)

Homer didn't have to invest thousands or even millions of dollars in special effects or recording studios in order to "write" the Odyssey and Shakespeare wasn't worried about people showing up to his plays with video cameras. Honestly, I don't understand how pirates say artists and the entertainment industry just "doesn't get" how technology has changed the world and then use defenses like that.

It's simple, there's stealing a good or service, and there's paying for it. Pirating is stealing. People need to just be honest: They're stealing because technology makes it easy and safe.