Holy crap, Oryx and Crake is coming true! ChickieNobs!!!

Actually, the problem with using Folding@Home would be that the "proof of work" would be just as expensive to verify as the "work", as the only way to verify it would be to reproduce the calculations and see that the results are the same.

The issue is that no one knows the answers to the protein folding problems. That's why so many calculations are being done to try and determine whether the conformation of a protein can be determined a priori. You could add 100 folding calculations, but you have no way of knowing whether that's more complex than a…

The "mining" process is trying to find a signature for the block to try to verify it's security.

See, and my first thought was that the planners or the creative team leads have small kids at home, and have been reading "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie..." - one of the most annoying children's books ever - every night at bedtime for the last six months.

It's a whole discipline of criminal theory, the whole solicitation, conspiracy, accessory, attempt, completed crimes spectrum. You're looking at both intent and harm. But not all attempts are thwarted because of incompetence. This basic scenario concerns a life or death result but usually, there's an attempt and…

Nope, mining bitcoin necessarily involves calculations that are only useful for mining bitcoins. Calculations like the ones involved in Folding@Home don't have a pre-determined difficulty, so using them would blow up bitcoin's whole self-regulation thing.

Criminal code drafting is frustrating but I do like these kinds of considerations. One of the conversations I ran across was about assault with a deadly weapon and what objects were likely to lead to serious bodily injury (e.g., food items depending on if they're frozen, another person as a weapon, etc.). I think…

We remember Michelson and Morley for attempted physics...

I am actually pro- most of government stamps of approval being a voluntary process, to include a large part of the FDA and the USDA. However, the issue is that uncertified goods will eventually be cheaper, meaning that the poor will be more at risk for food-borne pathogens.

However, as Doug cleverly fails to explain,…

I have a degree in animal and dairy science and grandparents with a dairy farm. Of course, I don't think hygiene has been thrown out the window. In fact, I think it was pretty clear in my original comment that I don't think that.

Wow! Please tell me you're joking. How can you make aged cheese without bacteria?

Also, milk can transmit some diseases, like TB. If you have a cow with TB, anyone drinking the milk could also get it. That said, I do believe if you own a cow, you can drink the milk in whatever way pleases you. But if you're going to insist on drinking raw milk, I believe goat's milk is supposed to be safer.

This? This is my mouth. This is where all my the things my brain does comes out. You would do well to watch this area because it's going to rip your pedantic arguments to shreds.

You know what else has "good bacteria" that won't potentially kill you? Yogurt and kefir. It doesn't matter how clean and up to code organic you keep your farm. One cow with a little bit of left over mud on her udder or one milker who forgets the pre-dip before milking and you've got a listeria, campylobacter, e.coli…

Posting this here, because I don't think the author of this article as well as many Jezzies (though yay for the Jezzies chipping in) understand the real controversy around Roe v. Wade and why Justice Ginsberg is criticizing it.

Wow- I've actually met Raymond and his dad! I worked @ U of Arkansas when Raymond was applying to be a student back in 2008, and they came through my office. Great attitude and approach to his life- he is so driven to learn. I remember a brief conversation with his father, who was telling me how excited his son was…

Fields like literature, philosophy and psychology require experience-based intelligence whereas a field such as mathematics (and by extension physics, which is largely mathematics-based) rely heavily on raw talent. If you're naturally gifted with numbers you don't necessarily have to do all the ground work and can…

Every time there's an HPV or cancer post on Gawker/Jezebel I pipe up, so maybe people are starting to get sick of me. Nevertheless, this is really worth saying, but stop me if you've heard this one before.

More like University of NSFW, amirite?