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CodeCon 2005 Program Now Available
An anonymous reader writes "Bram Cohen just announced the CodeCon 2005 program. This follows a recent Seattle Times story about Bram, which mentions his work on CodeCon in addition to BitTorrent. The program has a number of projects that should be familiar to Slashdot readers, such as OTR and RPOW, as well as new projects like SciTools, a free bioinformatics toolkit. CodeCon, co-founded by Bram Cohen and Len Sassaman to fix their frustration with the lack of affordable, high-quality tech conferences, has delivered interesting projects each year, and its fourth year looks to be no exception. The conference is once again in San Francisco, the weekend before the RSA Security conference, February 11-13th. Admission is a mere $80 at the door for three days. In addition to being one of the highest-content tech conferences around, Google has thrown a conference party at the W Hotel each year that makes the conference more than worth the admission. (Last year, surprise 'crasher' Donald Knuth even made an appearance.)"
HERE! is a torrent of all the torrents on the former SUpernova site!
There exist other packages that provide similar functionality, but which typically cost several hundred or thousand dollars per year, per license. Throughout the development of SciTools, Integrated DNA Technologies has focused on using the suite to add value to the physical products we sell, rather than viewing software as a product in itself.
A very admirable goal indeed! However existing software patents could really put a damper on this endevour. It is really important that the European community is reconsidering software patents in light of the implications for humanitarian research. Unfortunately the US patent is still run in such a way that human need can be left out of the equation. To paraphrase Steve Balmer 'intellectual property has become more valuable than hardware'.
Unfortunately this recent world view has become the norm in the United States. Whereas the rest of the world is starting to see the light. It is true that information is power, but the hording and misuse of information by few is the road to despotism. In which ever political system you choose, despotism is despotism. Private capitalism or socialistic capitolism, the two have the same end, despotism. The good old US of A does need to rethink things or face the consiquences. I know this is off topic but it needs to be said.
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