I couldn't find too much info on Parabon's homepage with regards to what sort of modelling they are doing. AFAIK (and I am a PhD grad student in molecular biology) rational drug design is a hit-and-miss business, at best. Most "rational" receptor-ligand designs are usually not optimal and need to be optimized with random methods, such as repeated rounds of in vitro selection. Not sure if the dumbed down webpage is just so that the average joe can understand what is going on, or if this is some kind of scam.
Supporting Napster==supporting Big Music, sort of. When was the last time you searched for indie bands on Napster? There's actually a lot of good music on mp3.com and other free music sites. support them instead. Besides, Usenet is typically more reliable when it comes to getting mp3z anyway.
I downloaded it, read it, and paid for it since I did agree to his terms. The only objection I have to the business model is, what if the product sucks? Saying that "The Plant" (name of the story) sucks is a bit strong, but it's not very good IMHO, if I picked it up at a bookstore and read chapter one, I probably wouldn't bother finishing it, much less buying it.
If he's relying on the user honesty, then wouldn't a "shareware" business model work better? i.e., don't make someone agree to pay for it at the download page but rather suggest a payment amount if the reader enjoyed it? If the Yahoo story that someone posted here is any indication of what sort of honesty consumers are showing (75% so far), it shouldn't be an issue.
The company that makes Ghostscript, Aladdin Enterprises, has a very informative homepage on all the other "Aladdin" companies on the web. Aside from the makers of Stuffit Expamder for Macintosh, there is an Aladdin Knowledge Systems that makes software security products, Aladdin Industries that makes Thermos (tm) bottles, the Aladdin Casino in Las Vegas, and an Alladin company in Queensland, Australia that no one seems to know what they do.
Fucked up shit does not a good cartoon make. You also state that "The stories are long, complicated...and usually have one theme: love conquers all." Long, complicated stories do not a good story make, in and of themselves, regardless of what the theme is. You fail to make any convincing argument as to the virtue of anime.
I'm not saying that anime is crap, I'm just saying I fail to see what's so great about it. Just for the record I grew up in Taiwan where anime is the ONLY thing they show in what is the US equivalent of Saturday morning cartoons.
Seriously, though. I don't understand the infatuation that some people have with anime. Granted, there are some productions that really are classic (most notably Miyazaki's work; the animation is truly artful), but at some point it becomes just more of the same stuff; sci-fi, sex, and violence. Hmm, I may have just answered my own question there:). Nonetheless, lots of the anime I have seen on and off over the years seem to be quite similar. The characters all have the basically the same "design", i.e. big teary eyes and large breasts in skimpy costumes if they are women and spiked hair wielding big guns/mobile armor/$FAVORITE_WEAPON if they are men. The themes are all pretty similar (overblown comedies with strong sexual overtones or extremely violent science fiction/fantasy). I don't want to sound like I'm flaming, it's just that for me personally it's mildly entertaining at best, while it seems to me there exists out there a rabid diehard fandom. What's the "thing" that makes anime so popular?
As for me, I'll stick with the Tom and Jerry show on Cartoon Network. As Calvin used to say, "Falling anvils and explosions, now THAT'S entertainment!".
I own two desktop machines and a laptop, not to mention I use at least 3 different computers at work. Each one has a different keyboard. I'm sure that on each machine I have slightly different timings in typing the same passwords or sentences. Is this to say that I can only listen to an mp3 that I buy online on one computer? Nuts to that. Even if I only own one computer, what happens when my keyboard dies and I have to get a new one?
This has absolutly nothing to do with the OS design, but rather with there applications. If Outlook exspress ran on linux, the exact same thing would happen.
Wrong! You might be able to nuke the home directory of said user, at best. But the rest of the filesystem can't be touched, unless you are reading email as root. This is why an OS like Win9x is fundamentally insecure; it assumes that the user is always "root" and allows free access to devices like hard drives.
In some ways I think a company should be liable for poor design of their products. For instance, the automobile industry is responsible for the safety designs of their vehicles. That's because the lives of the passengers are very valuable. However, how liable should a software company be? Clearly not all data is equally valuable, and some data is less valuable than others (e.g., someone's pr0n collection versus their graduate thesis; as to which is more important I leave as an exercise to the reader:-). The law is having a hard time keeping up with the technology, and ILOVEYOU would seem to be yet another example of this.
Nevertheless, I say don't hold Microsoft liable for viruses that exploit its insecure OS. People will either get fed up with losing their data and switch to better programs/OS'es or pay more money to companies like Symantec of MacAfee and stay in the rat race with the h4X0rz. Let the market decide for itself.
not to say that I agree with the feds, but I believe it is true that convicted felons do not have the same civil and legal rights as the rest of us. I believe their set of "rights" is limited.
How in the world are they going to do this for profit?
You could make a profit by:
(1) leasing "space" for scientific experiments requiring zero-gee and/or without the interference of Earth's atmosphere.
(2) like you mention (and as they plan), advertising revenue.
(3) tourism. According to the story some guy is willing to shell out 15 million to visit Mir. The total amount of venture captial put into the project currently is only 20 million. Remember the old rich guy in Contact?
(4) use it as infrastructure for training your own astro/cosmonauts, for future private ventures. Gives you a big head start on your competitors if you already own and operate a space station.
(5) if you are an evil genius planning to take over the world, Mir may make a nice orbital weapons platform:)
> Their flight performance is reasonable (just don't expect much range from them!),
The Taiwan Strait is quite narrow, you don't need much range. I think 200 klicks at the widest point.
> And a crew properly trained to take advantage of that ordinance and avionics advantage can make a single F-16 the equal of four MiG-21's (if it could carry more ordinance the advantage could be even more).
True. However, the PRC outnumbers the ROC 25 to 1 in the air, so a 4 to 1 kill ratio is not enough. Keep in mind that this outnumbering is ONLY in the Fujian military district (the province nearest Taiwan). PRC can move in more planes from other provinces easily. PRC has more than enough hardware to take Taiwan by force several times over.
The Ching-Kuo fighter is a joke. The internal codename for the plane is IDF, what the acronym stands for I don't remember (I-something defense fighter I think) but it was jokingly reffered to by Taiwanese as "I don't fly".
MiG-21's are considered to be on par with F-16's (more or less). Taiwan may have a "slight" edge technologically, but it's by no means a large edge. PRC has a HUGE material and human resource advantage over the ROC.
> Furthermore, certain Senators have indicated that they will advise the President to veto the bill if it ever reaches his desk my mistake, the President's National Security Advisors, not senators. just read today's article in the NY Times.
I'm not saying they're pussies, I'm just stating the unavoidable fact that in terms of logistics, it's very difficult to keep Taiwan on par with the PRC with regards to military hardware. the Fujian military district alone has 25-fold air superiority over the Taiwan Strait. Don't forget that for every MiG the ROCAF shoots down 2 can replace it immediately; every F-16 the PRCAF shoots down is a lost plane. You need an insane kill ratio to defend against any kind of sustained attack, that kind of kill ratio is not going to be obtained by hardware like F-16's and Dassault Mirages.
Don't forget also that the PRC has a large navy as well, they could just as easily seal off Taiwan's ports.
Don't get me wrong, I am pro-Taiwan (from Taiwan, in fact). I just don't see the point in beefing up the military when it's painfully obvious we are hopelessly outnumbered.
I don't have a link offhand, but National Public Radio (NPR) News reported last night that the bill that overwhemingly (the vote was something like 300+ to 70) passed in the House of Representatives (re: incresed military support of Taiwan) will almost certainly be thrown out when it reaches the Senate. Furthermore, certain Senators have indicated that they will advise the President to veto the bill if it ever reaches his desk. From a purely political point of view the bill is more of a "slap in the face" to the PRC in retaliation for the recent events regarding the Los Alamos fiasco, than a real effort at assisting Taiwan. Furthermore, even if this was a "real" bill aimed at beefing up the Taiwanese military, you must realize that the PRC's air superiority over the Taiwan Strait is nearly 25 to 1 versus Taiwanese forces. PRC has manufacturing capabilities of their fighters and bombers, while Taiwan has a tiny fleet of outdated F5-E interceptors and a few slightly less outdated F-16's. Taiwan also does not have manufacturing material or capability. This is without mentioning ground forces, for which I don't remember the numbers offhand. So basically, unless you give Taiwan tactical nuclear weapons (bad idea for obvious reasons) or other weapons of mass destruction, there really isn't much you can do realistically to beef up the Taiwanese military. In a practical sense the Taiwanese military is used more for anti-smuggling operations and to protect fishermen near international water boundaries by Japan, the Phillipines, and the PRC.
The 2001-3001 series of four books make a really interesting read from a historical point of view. The first installation, 2001, was written as an adaption of a screenplay from a 1968 movie, and 3001 was a relatively recent work, published in 1997. Aside from a relatively intruiging storyline, I think one of the most interesting aspects of the series is the evolution of ideas that Clarke has pertaining to his view of the near future. As we close in on 2001 in real life, we note that very little of his view of the then-future has come to fruition, not due to a lack of technology, but from a lack of direction. As 2001 in the real world is just around the corner, and 2010 is just beyond the horizon, it's an interesting time to dig these out and read (or re-read) them. One of the universal truths that he depicts quite well in the series is how he portrays the ability of The Suits to never be able to conceptually grasp a Good Thing and ultimately mess it up. 2001 is the only one of the series that "reads" a bit poorly, compared to the others, I would suggest renting the movie as well, Stanley Kubrick does an amazing job; keep in mind this is a 1968 film.
instructions in software rather than built into the hardware? isn't that basically what a winmodem does?;-) now all the non-windows, non-linux using crowd can complain there are no drivers for this hardware;-)
wearable computers are for people who need to work with their hand(s) free, perhaps field technicians/maintainence crew, doctors, etc etc. such devices will probably appeal to the professional market rather than the general population. As for a more mainstream market, I'm sure Madison Avenue could find a way to portray wearable computers as being "hip" if they really wanted to, but insofar as practical applications go, cell phones and pagers will probably be more appealing to the masses for practical reasons (smaller bulk/mass for acceptable functionality). Then again, if you can run Quake on one of these things...:)
run a nifty-looking KDE or E/GNOME desktop, and screen capture it. You could have a wordperfect or staroffice word processing window open, with the captions for all the leading stories in it, a GIMP or ee window open with Tux in it, etc etc. Open a GNOME panel drawer with all the spiffy looking subfolders in it, each one corresponding to a article header in that issue. Also have a netscape window open, pointed to linux.org or something. Shows off the funtionality of Linux quite well, as well as the GUI eyecandy. Myc
Slashdot Mirror
I couldn't find too much info on Parabon's homepage with regards to what sort of modelling they are doing. AFAIK (and I am a PhD grad student in molecular biology) rational drug design is a hit-and-miss business, at best. Most "rational" receptor-ligand designs are usually not optimal and need to be optimized with random methods, such as repeated rounds of in vitro selection. Not sure if the dumbed down webpage is just so that the average joe can understand what is going on, or if this is some kind of scam.
Supporting Napster==supporting Big Music, sort of. When was the last time you searched for indie bands on Napster? There's actually a lot of good music on mp3.com and other free music sites. support them instead. Besides, Usenet is typically more reliable when it comes to getting mp3z anyway.
I downloaded it, read it, and paid for it since I did agree to his terms. The only objection I have to the business model is, what if the product sucks? Saying that "The Plant" (name of the story) sucks is a bit strong, but it's not very good IMHO, if I picked it up at a bookstore and read chapter one, I probably wouldn't bother finishing it, much less buying it.
If he's relying on the user honesty, then wouldn't a "shareware" business model work better? i.e., don't make someone agree to pay for it at the download page but rather suggest a payment amount if the reader enjoyed it? If the Yahoo story that someone posted here is any indication of what sort of honesty consumers are showing (75% so far), it shouldn't be an issue.
The company that makes Ghostscript, Aladdin Enterprises, has a very informative homepage on all the other "Aladdin" companies on the web. Aside from the makers of Stuffit Expamder for Macintosh, there is an Aladdin Knowledge Systems that makes software security products, Aladdin Industries that makes Thermos (tm) bottles, the Aladdin Casino in Las Vegas, and an Alladin company in Queensland, Australia that no one seems to know what they do.
Fucked up shit does not a good cartoon make. You also state that "The stories are long, complicated ...and usually have one theme: love conquers all." Long, complicated stories do not a good story make, in and of themselves, regardless of what the theme is. You fail to make any convincing argument as to the virtue of anime.
I'm not saying that anime is crap, I'm just saying I fail to see what's so great about it. Just for the record I grew up in Taiwan where anime is the ONLY thing they show in what is the US equivalent of Saturday morning cartoons.
Seriously, though. I don't understand the infatuation that some people have with anime. Granted, there are some productions that really are classic (most notably Miyazaki's work; the animation is truly artful), but at some point it becomes just more of the same stuff; sci-fi, sex, and violence. Hmm, I may have just answered my own question there :). Nonetheless, lots of the anime I have seen on and off over the years seem to be quite similar. The characters all have the basically the same "design", i.e. big teary eyes and large breasts in skimpy costumes if they are women and spiked hair wielding big guns/mobile armor/$FAVORITE_WEAPON if they are men. The themes are all pretty similar (overblown comedies with strong sexual overtones or extremely violent science fiction/fantasy). I don't want to sound like I'm flaming, it's just that for me personally it's mildly entertaining at best, while it seems to me there exists out there a rabid diehard fandom. What's the "thing" that makes anime so popular?
As for me, I'll stick with the Tom and Jerry show on Cartoon Network. As Calvin used to say, "Falling anvils and explosions, now THAT'S entertainment!".
I own two desktop machines and a laptop, not to mention I use at least 3 different computers at work. Each one has a different keyboard. I'm sure that on each machine I have slightly different timings in typing the same passwords or sentences. Is this to say that I can only listen to an mp3 that I buy online on one computer? Nuts to that. Even if I only own one computer, what happens when my keyboard dies and I have to get a new one?
Wrong! You might be able to nuke the home directory of said user, at best. But the rest of the filesystem can't be touched, unless you are reading email as root. This is why an OS like Win9x is fundamentally insecure; it assumes that the user is always "root" and allows free access to devices like hard drives.
Nevertheless, I say don't hold Microsoft liable for viruses that exploit its insecure OS. People will either get fed up with losing their data and switch to better programs/OS'es or pay more money to companies like Symantec of MacAfee and stay in the rat race with the h4X0rz. Let the market decide for itself.
IANAL.
not to say that I agree with the feds, but I believe it is true that convicted felons do not have the same civil and legal rights as the rest of us. I believe their set of "rights" is limited.
Anyone who is a lawyer care to comment?
I don't think they have their semantics right.
RedHat *is* linux. Or it is *a* linux, at any rate.
Linux, however, is *not* RedHat.
You could make a profit by:
(1) leasing "space" for scientific experiments requiring zero-gee and/or without the interference of Earth's atmosphere.
(2) like you mention (and as they plan), advertising revenue.
(3) tourism. According to the story some guy is willing to shell out 15 million to visit Mir. The total amount of venture captial put into the project currently is only 20 million. Remember the old rich guy in Contact?
(4) use it as infrastructure for training your own astro/cosmonauts, for future private ventures. Gives you a big head start on your competitors if you already own and operate a space station.
(5) if you are an evil genius planning to take over the world, Mir may make a nice orbital weapons platform :)
heh, didn't notice that the high school student in question is an author on the paper aforementioned. No *wonder* it reeked of plagerism! ;)
Here is the reference. I'd hyperlink it, but accessing Nature's online site requires registration. Most good university libraries should carry Nature.
Clelland, C.T., Risca, Viviana, and Bancroft, C. (1999). Hiding messages in DNA microdots. Nature 399, 533-534.
Whoever did the judging for this contest should have done a literature search to show originality of the work.
> Their flight performance is reasonable (just don't expect much range from them!),
The Taiwan Strait is quite narrow, you don't need much range. I think 200 klicks at the widest point.
> And a crew properly trained to take advantage of that ordinance and avionics advantage can make a single F-16 the equal of four MiG-21's (if it could carry more ordinance the advantage could be even more).
True. However, the PRC outnumbers the ROC 25 to 1 in the air, so a 4 to 1 kill ratio is not enough. Keep in mind that this outnumbering is ONLY in the Fujian military district (the province nearest Taiwan). PRC can move in more planes from other provinces easily. PRC has more than enough hardware to take Taiwan by force several times over.
The Ching-Kuo fighter is a joke. The internal codename for the plane is IDF, what the acronym stands for I don't remember (I-something defense fighter I think) but it was jokingly reffered to by Taiwanese as "I don't fly".
MiG-21's are considered to be on par with F-16's (more or less). Taiwan may have a "slight" edge technologically, but it's by no means a large edge. PRC has a HUGE material and human resource advantage over the ROC.
> Furthermore, certain Senators have indicated that they will advise the President to veto the bill if it ever reaches his desk my mistake, the President's National Security Advisors, not senators. just read today's article in the NY Times.
I'm not saying they're pussies, I'm just stating the unavoidable fact that in terms of logistics, it's very difficult to keep Taiwan on par with the PRC with regards to military hardware. the Fujian military district alone has 25-fold air superiority over the Taiwan Strait. Don't forget that for every MiG the ROCAF shoots down 2 can replace it immediately; every F-16 the PRCAF shoots down is a lost plane. You need an insane kill ratio to defend against any kind of sustained attack, that kind of kill ratio is not going to be obtained by hardware like F-16's and Dassault Mirages.
Don't forget also that the PRC has a large navy as well, they could just as easily seal off Taiwan's ports.
Don't get me wrong, I am pro-Taiwan (from Taiwan, in fact). I just don't see the point in beefing up the military when it's painfully obvious we are hopelessly outnumbered.
I don't have a link offhand, but National Public Radio (NPR) News reported last night that the bill that overwhemingly (the vote was something like 300+ to 70) passed in the House of Representatives (re: incresed military support of Taiwan) will almost certainly be thrown out when it reaches the Senate. Furthermore, certain Senators have indicated that they will advise the President to veto the bill if it ever reaches his desk. From a purely political point of view the bill is more of a "slap in the face" to the PRC in retaliation for the recent events regarding the Los Alamos fiasco, than a real effort at assisting Taiwan. Furthermore, even if this was a "real" bill aimed at beefing up the Taiwanese military, you must realize that the PRC's air superiority over the Taiwan Strait is nearly 25 to 1 versus Taiwanese forces. PRC has manufacturing capabilities of their fighters and bombers, while Taiwan has a tiny fleet of outdated F5-E interceptors and a few slightly less outdated F-16's. Taiwan also does not have manufacturing material or capability. This is without mentioning ground forces, for which I don't remember the numbers offhand. So basically, unless you give Taiwan tactical nuclear weapons (bad idea for obvious reasons) or other weapons of mass destruction, there really isn't much you can do realistically to beef up the Taiwanese military. In a practical sense the Taiwanese military is used more for anti-smuggling operations and to protect fishermen near international water boundaries by Japan, the Phillipines, and the PRC.
The 2001-3001 series of four books make a really interesting read from a historical point of view. The first installation, 2001, was written as an adaption of a screenplay from a 1968 movie, and 3001 was a relatively recent work, published in 1997. Aside from a relatively intruiging storyline, I think one of the most interesting aspects of the series is the evolution of ideas that Clarke has pertaining to his view of the near future. As we close in on 2001 in real life, we note that very little of his view of the then-future has come to fruition, not due to a lack of technology, but from a lack of direction. As 2001 in the real world is just around the corner, and 2010 is just beyond the horizon, it's an interesting time to dig these out and read (or re-read) them. One of the universal truths that he depicts quite well in the series is how he portrays the ability of The Suits to never be able to conceptually grasp a Good Thing and ultimately mess it up. 2001 is the only one of the series that "reads" a bit poorly, compared to the others, I would suggest renting the movie as well, Stanley Kubrick does an amazing job; keep in mind this is a 1968 film.
instructions in software rather than built into the hardware? isn't that basically what a winmodem does? ;-) now all the non-windows, non-linux using crowd can complain there are no drivers for this hardware ;-)
wearable computers are for people who need to work with their hand(s) free, perhaps field technicians/maintainence crew, doctors, etc etc. such devices will probably appeal to the professional market rather than the general population. As for a more mainstream market, I'm sure Madison Avenue could find a way to portray wearable computers as being "hip" if they really wanted to, but insofar as practical applications go, cell phones and pagers will probably be more appealing to the masses for practical reasons (smaller bulk/mass for acceptable functionality). Then again, if you can run Quake on one of these things... :)
I bought a Celeron 400 laptop, and they shipped me a PII 400 :)
run a nifty-looking KDE or E/GNOME desktop, and screen capture it. You could have a wordperfect or staroffice word processing window open, with the captions for all the leading stories in it, a GIMP or ee window open with Tux in it, etc etc. Open a GNOME panel drawer with all the spiffy looking subfolders in it, each one corresponding to a article header in that issue. Also have a netscape window open, pointed to linux.org or something. Shows off the funtionality of Linux quite well, as well as the GUI eyecandy. Myc