Stragomagus

The main problem I have with this case is that it sets a bad precedent in terms of the constitution. snippet from the 8th amendment [hide=]that excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.[/hide] http://techdirt.com/articles/20090618/1950315285.shtml

The main reason that all these people do this is because of all the red tape involved in being able to play it on any device that they so choose. Lets say I had two DVD players: one from the American Region, One from the European region. If I wanted to watch the movie on the European one and I only had the American version, then I would have to go out and buy a whole new movie with that particular region coding just to watch it on the European one; likewise in reverse. The matter also isn't helped due to this fact and since a large number of people are not aware of of tools that would remove the coding which would in turn free it. I think someone also mentioned "copyright infringement" that is noted under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. While many countries have legislation that is similar to it, these laws cannot be enforced in places where there is no law/ruling on the matter. In turn, groups like the MPAA/RIAA/And other equivalents, the MPAA/RIAA don't actually own the copyrights on the material they are suing over, have begun pushing for isp companies to throw people off the internet just for being suspected of infringing. Let us not forget Britain where if you can hear someones radio or tv you can be charged for a performance if someone else can hear it or in France where there is currently a push for a "three strikes" law and then you are kicked off the internet. Here is another great example. What if I/you/anyone else comes across, or has heard about, a movie/song/TV show/anime/whatever that is only in that countries tongue? What do you do then? If it hasn't been translated into any other language in all the time it has been out, would it not be okay to "pirate" it then beings as there is no other way to obtain it? Examples of groups doing translations on matters such as this can be found all over the net. There are also studies showing that a lot of the pirating is due to being underserved as a customer. So...When you say "pirating", I say that there are al ot of underserved customers waiting to be tapped

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22795/ pg.1 [hide=]Monoclonal antibodies, which are engineered to hone in on very specific biological targets, have taken off therapeutically in recent years: several are now approved for treating cancers and autoimmune diseases, and nearly 200 are in clinical trials. But one of the challenges of monoclonal-antibody therapy is the fact that some people respond very well to the drugs while others respond only moderately or not at all. A startup called PIKAMAB, based in Menlo Park, CA, believes that it can make monoclonal antibodies more effective by grouping patients together based on their genotype and offering a customized antibody developed for that genotype. The company hopes that this "stratified" approach to drug development and treatment will help drug companies achieve better results. Monoclonal antibodies bind only to specific target molecules, giving them a precision that many other drugs lack. These Y-shaped molecules, which are naturally produced by immune cells called B cells, have a nearly identical base but arms that can vary depending on their intended target. The arms bind precisely to the target while the base of the Y provides an anchor for circulating immune cells to attach to. Monoclonal antibodies were first identified as potential cancer treatments three decades ago, as the molecules could be engineered to bind to cancer cells and provoke an immune response against them. They have also proved useful for treating autoimmune disease and are under investigation as a treatment for many other conditions. But scientists have found that patients respond differently to these drugs, largely because the antibodies are not able to bind to the immune cells of all patients equally well. Studies have found that the process, called antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC), plays a major role in how well several monoclonal-antibody drugs work. How an immune cell attaches to an antibody depends on one of two protein receptors at the cell's surface. People have natural genetic variations in these receptors: certain variations prevent immune cells from binding to antibodies, and these patients respond poorly to these antibody therapies. Vijay Ramakrishnan, founder and CEO of PIKAMAB, believes that monoclonal-antibody therapies could be improved by taking into account the genetic background of each patient. "A one-size-fits-all antibody drug in this case doesn't work," he says. PIKAMAB's approach is to first sort patients depending on whether they are expected to respond to a treatment or not. The company is marketing a "theragnostic" test that separates patients into one of nine groups in a matrix according to their receptor type and an analysis of their immune cells. At one end of the matrix are patients likely to respond well to an existing drug; at the other end are those who are likely to respond poorly. Ramakrishnan says that this test alone can benefit treatment, as it could help a clinician decide whether to begin a monoclonal therapy right away in an excellent responder or eschew the drug in favor of other options in a poor responder.[/hide] pg.2 [hide=]The next step is to develop a portfolio of antibodies that are customized for each group of patients within the matrix. The drugs would be altered slightly so that they can bind specifically to the receptors in patients of each genotype. Ramakrishnan says that the portfolio could consist of a minimum of four and a maximum of nine drugs (one for each group) to achieve a high response rate in each group. The approach is different from "personalized" medicine that is tailored to an individual. Instead, Ramakrishnan says, this "stratified" approach offers some personalization but in a more manageable way. He believes that a stratified approach to monoclonal-antibody therapies can offer advantages to pharmaceutical companies. If they begin stratifying patients in clinical trials, they could achieve better results and help justify the treatments to regulatory agencies and insurers, he says. Companies could also put a higher premium on drugs if those drugs came with theragnostic tests. PIKAMAB hopes to work with pharmaceutical companies to create commercial theragnostic tests and stratified therapies involving drugs that are already on the market or in development. Together, they also plan to develop their own monoclonal antibodies. "I think it's useful to have a predictive test that can accurately describe whether a particular individual has a receptor that will make ADCC easier or harder to exploit as an anti-tumor mechanism," says Louis Weiner, a cancer immunologist at Georgetown University who has no ties to PIKAMAB. Weiner is, however, skeptical that customized antibodies are necessary to improve monoclonal-antibody therapies. He sees more potential in "high affinity" monoclonal antibodies that bind tightly to immune cells regardless of a patient's genotype. Ramakrishnan argues that such drugs may not completely optimize the responses of all genotypes, and that there is room for further improvement with customized drugs. He points out that when monoclonal antibodies are used to treat cancer, it is usually in combination with radiation or other treatment. By optimizing the drugs, he says, it may be possible that certain patients could receive them as stand-alone therapies, thereby reducing the side effects and cost of treatment.[/hide] I'm glad to see that some progress is being made on our ability to produce drugs that are tailored to each recipient of it. The most beneficial thing I can see coming out of this is that having customized drugs, for each patient, will significantly reduce all the side effects we see due to them being made for the masses. In other news...some Stanford researchers have created a program that does calculations on "folding", which relates to ribosomes. (found a video on this a few weeks back while surfing youtube) http://folding.stanford.edu/ Home page [hide=]What is protein folding and how is folding linked to disease? Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery. Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes. You can help by simply running a piece of software. Folding@home is a distributed computing project -- people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals. Folding@home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved. What have we done so far? We have had several successes. You can read about them on our Science page, on our Awards page, or go directly to our Results page. Want to learn more? Click on the links on the left for downloads or more information. You can also download our Executive Summary, which is a PDF suitable for distribution. Also, you can learn more by watching recent seminars (Stanford BMI ; Xerox PARC). One can also help by donating funds to the project, via Stanford University.[/hide] If you want to give them a hand, you can not only just download the program, but can get your entire family involved in the project with a team number.

This is true if the program is designed to take advantage of a two or more core computer, but otherwise it is false. I suppose it could be true if what you are downloading is something smaller to what was originally on the hard drive to manage space in the first place, but the effects would only be negligible at best. Now for my own facts: You can increase your base ram by dedicating some of your hard drive; though it will be slower than pure ram. Magnets from computers are some of the strongest magnets in the world. -psst. Check your hard drive. Excessive dust, when stirred by the fan, can create a lot of kinetic energy which can wipe your computer.

I give it another 20 years before we see a working prototype of something in that magnitude.

http://gamecareerguide.com/features/750 ... ating_.php [hide=]GameCareerGuide.com's Game Design Challenge is an exercise in becoming a game developer, asking you to look at games in a new way -- from the perspective of a game creator, producer, marketer, businessperson, and so forth. Every few weeks, we'll present you with a challenge about developing video games. You'll have two weeks to brainstorm a brilliant solution (see below for how to submit your answers). After the two week submission period elapses, the best answers and the names of those who submitted them will be posted, along with some commentary. The Challenge Design a social interaction system for a massively multiplayer game featuring friendly characters who can't understand each other. Assignment Details MMOs are world games; some games, like Final Fantasy XI, operate on global servers. Beyond that, though, they're very often filled with fantasy races of markedly different backgrounds and even physiologies. Most, however, don't play into it very much. What kind of gameplay system would allow players who can't communicate by typing to interact? FFXI (pictured) has a simple translation system that functions to communicate set phrases between languages. But it's hardly a core part of the gameplay. What can you do to further integrate communication into the game in an entertaining way? As part of this competition, you can deliver as much or as little of the MMO's primary gameplay system and mythology as you like -- whatever it takes to get your point across and build on it. But the crucial part of the challenge is creating a communicative gameplay system that will actually entice players to use it, and might even -- best case scenario -- allow players who speak different languages in real life interact meaningfully. The system should also function for NPC (computer-controlled) characters as well as live players. To Submit Work on your ideas, figure out your strategy for coming up with a solution, and ask questions on the forum . When your submission is complete, send it to email [email protected] with the subject line "Design Challenge: Creating Fun Communication!" Please type your answer directly in the email body. Submissions should be no more than 500 words and may contain up to three images. Be sure to include your full name and school affiliation or job title. Entries must be submitted by Wednesday, June 24 Results will be posted Tuesday, June 30 Disclaimer: GameCareerGuide.com is not responsible for similarities between the content submitted to the Game Design Challenge and any existing or future products or intellectual property.[/hide] At first when I read this little challenge I thought of a system like quick chat that is already in runescape, but that still would not solve the problem as the players would still be seeing everything in the same language and if the other person can't read that little bit either then the system is useless. As we all know, trying to communicate across different languages is very difficult, but this idea proposes a whole new way of dealing with other languages in a mmorpg, or any other way for that matter. The crutch of this idea is to have either the server do real-time translations and then send them to any and all within the radius of the text in the persons preferred tongue or have the game-client do the translations in semi-real-time via the game's client. This solves the problem in both instances, but servers today might overheat and explode having to do that many translations at a time so it would be better if the game makers made the translations possible through the game client itself. This would result in quite a few lanaguage packages having to be downloaded, but it would be worth it as communication would no longer be a problem in the game. Have a solution to this challenge? Then post away.

I'm sure this youtube channel has something that you could be interested in. http://www.youtube.com/user/MIT.

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22650/ pg.1 [hide=]In an attempt to address global warming, a handful of power plants are capturing carbon dioxide during the energy-generation process, liquefying the gas under high pressure and piping it to geologic storage sites miles away. But sequestering carbon dioxide underground is impractical in many areas, and it raises fears that the stored gas will escape. Now a new plant in Linden, NJ, will test an ocean carbon-sequestration technology that could expand its potential dramatically. If permits are approved, the plant, operated by SCS Energy, based in Concord, MA, will pump its carbon dioxide pollution into sandstone located almost two miles beneath the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Previous storage efforts have focused on filling underground structures such as depleted oil reservoirs, but these structures don't contain enough volume to accommodate the vast amounts of CO2 produced. On the other hand, undersea storage has raised concern that carbon dioxide could slowly leak into ocean water. Harvard University professor Daniel Schrag addressed some of these concerns in a 2006 PNAS paper, in which he suggested storingcarbon dioxide in porous sediment hundreds of meters below the sea floor in deep parts of the ocean. Stored at this depth, under higher pressure and temperatures, the carbon dioxide should be less buoyant and remain trapped indefinitely. The two injection sites being surveyed for the new carbon-sequestration project are under about 100 meters of water, and about 2,500 to 3,500 meters down in the rock. "We are going deeper overall under the floor, but we aren't working in a deep region of the sea," says Schrag, who serves as a consultant to the project. Pressure-management systems should make the process possible, Schrag adds. "It turns out pressure management is the most important part of this, and it's much easier under the ocean," he says. Both on land and offshore, pumping carbon dioxide into sandstone usually displaces water, causing pressure to build up. "If you inject vast amounts of CO2, you have to make space," says Schrag. "You push the water to the side, but it can't go anywhere." Injecting the CO2 too quickly, or adding more than the rock can hold, risks fracturing the sandstone, allowing the CO2 to slowly leech out over time.[/hide] pg.2 [hide=]Schrag argues that drilling an escape route for water that has remained trapped in the porous rock for millions of years will help ease the pressure on the rock. "This ancient seawater is very similar to modern seawater, so there should be no ecological impact from letting it out," he says. The release of seawater from the rock will raise sea levels over time, but not by much, says Schrag. The four million tons of CO2 produced by the plant each year will only cause about a micrometer rise in seawater over 100 years. Even if 1,000 coal plants began sequestering carbon offshore, sea levels should only rise by a millimeter during this time frame, Schrag says. Dave Goldberg, a research scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, agrees that the idea is sound but says that any pilot project should be carefully shepherded to make sure that there is no harm to the ecosystem. The ocean is so vast that injecting CO2 shouldn't raise water levels much, either by lifting the floor or displacing trapped water, he says, but the bacterial ecology might potentially be changed. "Water slowly percolates through the rock at the bottom of the ocean in many places," Goldberg says. "The impact of speeding this up and introducing new opportunities for water movement is an open research question." Carbon sequestration remains a controversial issue, however, and many environmental groups worry that it could allow coal plants to earn approval ahead of cleaner energy technologies. Another concern is how sequestration will impact ocean wildlife. Whether carbon sequestration will become a reality will also be an issue of politics. Schrag was recently appointed to President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Schrag says that carbon sequestration should be one of several ways to combat climate change. "We need it all," he says. "We need renewables, we need better energy efficiency, we need energy conservation, and we need carbon sequestration."[/hide] I think this has some nice potential, but as the article addresses the environmental effects could be bad if it does not work out as planned.

I posted this to see if anyone else's anti-spyware had captured the same phenomenon. At first, when I saw that Spybot had actually found something for a change, which sort of made me happy that I had been infected(because I do go out of my way to get such things to happen), but nope it was just a small update by microsoft that attempted to switch my default anti-virus and firewall. Like Makoto said, although it is a rather annoying thing, it is nothing major to worry about. Security center hasn't mentioned anything for months about security weaknesses so that is why it raised an eyebrow.

As you can see in the picture, Microsoft has tried to override both my firewall and anti-virus. uggh, it wouldn't be bad if they'd just give up instead of trying to change my defaults through their updates, which have also *drum roll* crashed my computer at least twice.

http://www.technologyreview.com/business/22549/ pg.1 [hide=]Last week, Bright Automotive, a startup based in Anderson, IN, unveiled a plug-in hybrid utility van designed to travel 50 miles on half a gallon of gasoline. The company plans to start producing the Idea vehicle in large volume by the end of 2012, and it hopes to sell 50,000 a year starting in 2013. At a time when dozens of automakers are developing new hybrids and electric vehicles, Bright is notable because of its history. Its CEO, John Waters, designed the battery pack for the EV-1, GM's first electric vehicle, and the company is a spinoff from the Rocky Mountain Institute, a highly regarded nonprofit based in Boulder, CO. The institute is famous for proposing in the mid-1990s to radically change the design of cars to make them more efficient. The Idea is the partial realization of its Hypercar concept, a hybrid vehicle that would use as little as one-fifth the amount of fuel that today's vehicles use. It does so by combining a hybrid of gas and electric propulsion (and eventually fuel cells instead of the gas engine) with lightweight composite materials, an aerodynamic design, and more efficient electronic accessories. The Rocky Mountain Institute had started another company to develop the Hypercar, but that vehicle never made it into production. Bright thinks that its new business model, which involves selling vehicles to commercial and government fleets rather than to the public, could help make things different this time. Fleet customers look at the total cost of ownership, Waters says, not just the up-front cost, which is higher for plug-in hybrids, since they incorporated both a gas engine and an electric motor and also require a costly battery pack. He says that over the life of the vehicle, fuel savings will make up for the higher initial cost. Several potential customers have already signed letters of intent to purchase the vehicle once it's in mass production, says Lyle Shuey, Bright's vice president of marketing and sales. The van was designed in cooperation with a number of potential customers, including Duke Energy--an investor in Bright--and Cox Communications. Recent government support for more efficient vehicles could also help the company succeed. Bright is applying for $450 million in government loans to scale up production. Other incentives, such as tax credits for plug-in hybrids in the stimulus package will also help. "Obama's emphasis on the electrification of the vehicle makes this the perfect time to be in the industry," says Evan House, the company's vice president for advanced battery engineering. Like the Hypercar, the Idea will be lightweight and aerodynamic, although the design doesn't quite go to the extremes of the original concept. For example, rather than using a carbon-composite frame, it uses a metal one, although it's made of aluminum instead of steel to reduce weight, and the designers have incorporated composites elsewhere in the vehicle. The van weighs 1,500 pounds less than conventional vehicles of its size, the company says. Reducing that amount of weight reduces the size of the battery pack needed for the vehicle's 30-mile electric range, which also reduces the overall cost of the vehicle, House says.[/hide] pg.2 [hide=]The vehicle's "through-the-road" parallel plug-in hybrid design also cuts costs. In general, plug-in hybrid vehicles use more than one source of power to propel the vehicle. Typically, an electric motor--powered by batteries that can be recharged using an ordinary outlet--is coupled with a gasoline engine that extends the range of the vehicle beyond the distance that it could travel on the energy stored in the batteries alone. In the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, due out next year, the gas engine serves only as a generator that recharges the battery after it's depleted--there's no mechanical connection between the gas engine and the wheels. In this design, the electric motor has to be big enough to provide all of the power needed for acceleration. In contrast, in a proposed plug-in hybrid from Toyota, the gas engine and the electric motor are both mechanically connected to the wheels via a power-splitting device, which controls how much of the power needed to turn the wheels comes from each. In this setup, the motor can be smaller, but the power-splitting device adds cost and weight. In the Idea design, a gasoline generator powers the front wheels, as in a conventional vehicle, while the rear wheels are driven by an electric motor that draws power from a battery pack. There's no mechanical connection between either motor, so the only link is the road itself--hence the name "through-the-road" hybrid. When the driver presses on the accelerator, a control system automatically decides how much of the power for accelerating the vehicle will come from gas-powered front wheels and how much will come from the electricity-powered rear wheels. When the battery is fully charged, the van can travel on electricity alone for about 30 miles, although for very fast acceleration, the control system has to call on the gas engine for a boost of power. After 30 miles, the power needed to propel the car comes mostly from the gas engine, but the battery can provide bursts of power as needed for acceleration, or to keep the engine operating at its optimal power range. The battery can be recharged by the gas engine (much as a conventional engine charges the starter battery) or by capturing energy from braking. The vehicle can travel 50 miles between battery charges using half a gallon of gas (equivalent to 100 miles per gallon). But if it has to go further between charges, it uses more gasoline--for example, traveling 70 miles takes one gallon of gasoline. In this design, the electric motor doesn't need to provide all the power, so it can be smaller and cheaper than the motor used in the Volt. It also doesn't need the mechanical power-splitting device used by Toyota, Shuey says. Bright plans to build its own battery pack using lithium iron phosphate cells, a battery chemistry that's safer and lasts longer than the lithium cobalt oxide used in laptops and cell phones, but the company hasn't yet named the battery supplier. But some experts predict that Bright will have a difficult time competing with other automakers. Mike Omotoso, senior manager of power-train forecasting at J.D. Power and Associates, says that sales projections of 50,000 vehicles are optimistic. "It looks like a good vehicle," he says, but he adds that "the overall demand for that type of vehicle isn't as high as they think it is." What's more, the company will face competition from Ford, which has announced plans for an electric van to be available starting in 2010. Ford has a much bigger marketing budget, and it already has factories to produce the vehicle, Omotoso says. Bright will also compete with Smith Electric Vehicles and Azure Dynamics, which makes a hybrid delivery truck.[/hide] It's nice to know that hybrid cars are on the "up and up", but can you spot the inaccuracy in the article?

(The bolded parts) In other words, it doesn't matter how many people may have achieved this particular 99 it is still something that you yourself have achieved. Even further, is that if you had a party of some sort your friends were able to enjoy that experience as well. If anyone ever comes up to you and belittles your achievement just say, "golly gee whiz go [bleep] yourself".

Yes, I am referring to a sitting position Reb where the actual weight would be lessened due to the incline. As such, inclines allow you to lift many times your own weight. Yes, I am aware that real life is nothing like "Dragon Ball Z", anyone trying to lift as much weight as they do would most likely end up with a broken back or worse. I don't start out with like 5000 of something, but something more manageable. Such managing would look like this in week 1: 20 pushups, 20 jumping jacks(using dumbbells while doing these would destroy your ligaments), 50 situps, 50 slow punches(with the 10lb dumbbells(builds the forearms)), and 50 squats. Now, at the end of 4 weeks would that sound "Dragon ball Zish" to you? The 3 hour workouts switch off and on between upper and lower, with light workouts inbetween the heavy ones to regain composure, so it should not come as a surprise that I wouldn't be out of breath or feeling like jelly. Yes, leg weights do work and that is by building up ankle strength as well as the calf muscles while in a sitting position(constantly move your legs up and down and eventually you will feel a burn). Walking in them on a regular basis also builds your stamina irregardless of what weight-watchers says. Additionally, they help with those who don't have very good balance, which I don't have. Now for you k1. Did you join the forums just to flame?

I have twitch muscles in the upper body, just can't get them to gain more mass(they will get more firm though), while my legs are the complete opposite. Height: 5' 3'' Body weight: 115 - 120 pounds leg strength: 400 - 500 pounds Arm strength: 40 - 80 pounds(well toned though) Lung Strength: 1.5 miles before running out of breath or near 2 minutes underwater Endurance: Able to withstand a 3-hour hardcore workout session without running out of breath and also without feeling like I'm made out of jelly. - note: the above is unrestricted strength mode only since it is quite dangerous to always be training like that. Sometimes I go on these month long training binges where I'll start out with a base number of pushups, squats, situps, jumping jacks, and punches and I'll double them at the end of every week. During these sessions I'll be using 10lb hand weights. I also have these nice 5lb leg weights that I wear everyday for the entire day, taking them off only when going to bed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_server 200-700$ per server. http://www.layeredtech.com//dedicated-hosting/dedicated-servers/multi-processor-multi-core/ Those are the type of servers that most online games run on. Most of them will run upward of $20,000-$50,000(the more specialized ones will run into the hundreds of thousands) just due to the massive amount of data they have to handle. http://onlineads.diggersrealm.com/google_adsense/how_much_can_i_make_from_adsense_from_a_political_website.html This site details how much you can possibly make from an online advertisement. This should help in calculating how much can be made from the many advertisements Jagex puts on their many pages. Server Cost: [hide=]Starting amount: $229.99 - $799.99 Possible ending amount: $300 - $1200[/hide] Server Yearly Cost: [hide=]Starting amount: $2759.88 - $9599.88 Possible ending amount: $3600 - $14,400.00[/hide] Commercial Business Bandwith Cost: [hide=]$70.00 - $150.00(This is landline cost and not satellite, which is a whole other can of worms)[/hide] Commercial Bandwitdh Yearly cost: [hide=]$840.00 - $1800.00[/hide] Jagex Server Yearly Cost: [hide=]Amount of FTP server: 74 Amount of PTP servers: 81 Amount of mixed servers: 0 Total amount of servers: 155 Starting Amount: FTP: 266,391.12 - 843,591.12 PTP: 291,590.28 - 923,390.28 Mixed: 0.00 Total: 557,981.40 - 1,766,981.4 Possible Ending Amount: FTP: 328,551.12 - 1,198,800.00 PTP: 359,640.00 - 1,312,200.00 Mixed: 0.00 Total: 688,191.12 - 2,511,000.00[/hide]

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090421/1248354597.shtml [hide=]from the oops dept Just as the various broadband providers are ramping up their bogus astroturf attempts to convince the world that broadband caps are necessary and good for customers, Saul Hansell has been digging deep into the numbers and can't find any justification at all for the caps. All those stories about overwhelmed networks and exponential traffic growth? Not happening. If anything, the evidence is that the opposite is happening: advances in technology means that it's become cheaper for broadband providers to meet the needs of their customers. And those needs are growing, but that growth rate has been slowing, and is quite manageable. So, basically, the broadband companies are hyping up a problem that just isn't there. There is no crunch. There aren't bandwidth shortages that require cutting off heavy users. The only reason to set up such tiers is to squeeze more money out of customers without providing any improvements in service (actually, while providing less service). And it's all possible thanks to the lack of competition in the marketplace.[/hide] and some data to back up that article.... http://www.dtc.umn.edu/mints/2002-2008/analysis-2002-2008.html That is all you need to know as to why tiered and a capped internet will not workas well as being a bs argument overall.

If Zonealarm is giving you that much trouble then I would suggest on going to a new one. Here are the top five free firewalls out there: http://www.iopus.com/guides/free-firewall.htm

Here are a few things that will work on scratches that appear on a cd in this link. http://cdrot.com/info/cd-repair-guide-from-cd-rot

Here is a list of things that come to mind mauranius. 1. There is an unusually high amount of crosstalk between your connection and another, or group of, connections in your building which is leading to an unstable connection. The only thing that can solve this is to get the isp out there to fix it. 2. Check Zonealarms firewall settings to make sure it is not interfering with the flow of information. 3. Emule may be taking up more than its fairshare of your bandwith, turn it off and see if that solves the problem. 4. Your routers firmware was updated and that is the cause. If it hasn't been updated then update it otherwise reset the router to its factory defaults. http://www.techimo.com/forum/networking-internet/182886-router-ip-issues.html I hope one of these will solve the problem.

The only way to track it in that way is to have a deep packet sniffer that is set to intercept any packets that come from a certain area to this particular site. Let me warn you though, doing this will get you cut off from your internet connection real quick without prior notice to the isp service provider, it will also attract alot of unwanted attention that is not the isp service as well.

The problem is most likely to do with your firewall. If it is not that then, beings as it is a wireless connection, you are in an area where the wireless coverage is spotty for your wireless router.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/A+century+of+medical+miracles-a011768231 The article in this link details a good majority of the advances in medical and biological technology over the past 100 years or so. (I'd have copied it into this post, but the article had the copy function disabled) Also changed the title of the thread to "The World of Medical Advances". With the way computer technology is advancing expect to see the amount of advances in the medical and biology field to dwarf those of the twentieth century.

The main problem I have with this test is that every year that they modify a question....I fall further to the bottom left corner. This is basically what I have gone from in five years. 1.3 1.5 to -5.55 -5.23 so yeah, I don't see how such small changes to the test can result in such a fast turn of views in such a short time frame, especially when my answers to the questions have remained unchanged.

Read the mit technology review as it has stuff like this every other day.

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22465/ [hide=]Patients who underwent a procedure to wipe out the immune system and reconstitute it with their own stem cells remained insulin injection-free for up to three to four years after the procedure, according to a study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The research provides further evidence that a stem-cell transplant can reverse type 1 diabetes in some patients. Although a stem-cell transplant is a drastic procedure with a risk of serious side effects, this represents the most successful treatment to reverse the disease in humans without the need for ongoing medication. The report extends research published in 2007 showing that the majority of 15 patients who underwent a blood stem-cell transplant were able to remain insulin-free for more than 18 months. Richard Burt, a coauthor of the study and a specialist in autoimmune disease at Northwestern University, says that "the criticism of the prior study was that maybe this was some kind of extended honeymoon"; he's referring to a phenomenon in which patients newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes will see their symptoms improve temporarily as they make health changes. This latest study extends the treatment to an additional five patients and shows that most patients have been able to remain off insulin for a longer period of time. In addition, it shows that patients have increased levels of a biological indicator of insulin secretion--evidence that they are indeed producing insulin on their own. Type 1 diabetes is a chronic disease in which the immune system attacks the insulin-secreting beta cells in the pancreas; the body eventually fails to produce enough insulin to control blood-sugar levels. Because this form of diabetes is an autoimmune disease, scientists have been looking for ways to stop the immune system's destructive actions. One idea is to "reset" the patient's immune system by wiping it out with drugs and then rebuild it with the patient's own stem cells. Blood or hematopoietic stem cells reside in the bone marrow and are responsible for replenishing blood and immune-system cells. Hematopoietic stem-cell transplant is most often used to treat patients with cancers like leukemia and other diseases of the blood, but it has recently been investigated as a way to treat several autoimmune diseases, including diabetes and lupus. In this study, which was based at the University of Sao Paulo, in Brazil, patients first underwent drug treatments to boost their blood stem-cell production, making it possible to harvest stem cells from the blood rather than from the bone marrow. The patients were then hospitalized and given chemotherapy that severely impaired their immune systems; they simultaneously received drugs to prevent infections. The stem cells were purified from the blood and then injected back into the patients, where they could travel to the bone marrow and rebuild the immune system. Twenty of 23 patients were able to go off insulin treatment for an average of 31 months; 12 of those have maintained this state, while 8 relapsed and began taking low doses of insulin. The researchers also measured levels of C-peptide, a by-product of insulin production that is used as an indicator of how much insulin is being manufactured in the pancreas. Burt explains that even on a "honeymoon" period, C-peptide levels will decrease in diabetics, but for patients in this study, "C-peptide levels kept going up and hit their maximum at two to three years." A stem-cell transplant would only be effective in newly diagnosed patients who still have some beta cells left to preserve. Some patients have also achieved insulin independence with an experimental treatment that involves transplanting insulin-secreting cells from a donor. However, these patients require immunosuppressive drugs to keep their immune systems from rejecting the donor cells. "This is the first treatment that, after one treatment, patients are on no insulin and require no medications," Burt says. Gordon Weir, head of islet transplantation at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, says that the results are impressive and that the treatment is "clearly having some effect on the natural course of the type 1 diabetes," but it's still too soon to declare this a permanent cure. Furthermore, he says that excitement about the results should be tempered by concerns about the potential dangers of the treatment and confusion about how the stem-cell transplant is actually working. In this study, two patients developed pneumonia because of the treatment; three others later experienced hormonal disorders, and nine patients developed a sperm deficiency. Weir points out that the treatment regimen involved many drugs--including powerful chemotherapy agents--which may also have affected the diabetes. "We don't actually know the stem cells had anything to do with this result," he says. Weir hopes that the trial will spur further studies on the role of the stem cells and ways to make the treatment safer. Burt and his colleagues are now awaiting FDA approval for a randomized trial that would provide more rigorous data about the benefit of this treatment for diabetes.[/hide] Alot to read, but it seems diabetes will be on its way out in the next 20 years