Quite true. I wonder how many of those farmers from India buy seed from big companies though... It's probably less then the number of US farmers who buy seed from those big companies.
One thing you have to remember is that these days very few farmers use their own seed. Almost all of them just buy it. This is due to hybrids that don't breed true and simple economics.
Not only that, but Alphas have never really been geared toward the general consumer. Most have been high-end server machines. Also, as far as I know, Alpha won't run x86 code because it uses a different architecture. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)
You're right. You can run WinNT on Alpha's if you get a special Alpha-only copy of WinNT. But then you still need Alpha-only copies of everything else... For the most part this doesn't happen with Linux, FreeBSD etc. as everything is availailable in source form.
Nope. Even the webmasters of a site have a hard time getting truly reliable stats. What happens if someone decides that they want to up the hit counter on a site?
Now just imagine trying to figure out if a webmaster is lieing. You can't.
The only way to get reliable stats on a web site is to actually go and monitor users. Say by monitoring their http requests at major routers. But not only are their privacy issues here but how are you going to do that? You would need the co-operation of the ISPs. And even then you might not be right due to HTTP requests going through other routes.
Even the netcraft HTTP requests can be faked. But I don't think many people would bother...
And with those netcraft studies people are still complaining that "the big sites" don't use Apache and instead use Microsoft. And many of the sites running on Apache are actually just small-time sites getting very few users.
You can't win...
Re:But some think genetic engineering is dangerous
on
Planet Gattaca
·
· Score: 1
In any case tinkering with existing organisms is IMO more likly to cause problems then creating new, and very primitive, organisms. An existing one has been fine-tuned through millions of years of evolution and has a much higher chance of doing damage then some scientists creation that was lucky to even reproduce.
As for terminator genes that would cause plants to become resistant to the effects by evolution. Assuming such gene-swaps can happen in the first place.
And most seed can't even reproduce anyway. Non-viable hybrids are very popular. Nor does your average farmer use his or her own seed. Aside from the developing world, which doesn't use modern seeds, they all buy new seed every season.
Spam isn't "no big deal" It costs lots of money to maintain servers that can handle large amount of email. Spam just adds to the load. When you send 500,000 messages to and ISP, as is often done by spammers, you use up *huge* amounts of computing power. Hard drive space may be cheap but it does cost money. The millions of spam messages add up real quick.
This is something I've been waiting for. Spam does cause damage. If you flooded someone's network with zillions of ICMP packets in a packet flood should you be liable? Of course! The same applies for spam. Some people may cry "Free Speach!" but really. Free speach is not helped by allowing spam. If I was to packet flood you with the Communist Manifesto could I claim that I should be protected by free speach? Of course not.
There are common carrier precidents that allow an ISP to escape liability if they do not try to filter out what their customers see. Spam should be an exception.
In the mean time I hope more ISPs follow AOL and sue spammers. It's about time.
No more dangerous then genetic engineering...
on
Planet Gattaca
·
· Score: 1
The creation of a new form of life is no more dangerous then your average run of the mill genetic engineering. The life those scientists want to create is simplified at best. It will be the lowest common denominator. Who honestly thinks something like that could cause any damage? Aside from messing up some clean labware any simplified organizism wouldn't last 5 minutes with the competition you get from other forms of life.
With your average gene splicing and other forms of genetic engineering you're starting off with a viable organism and changing what it does. That could cause some problems without safeguards.
Europa may be cold on the surface but it is possible that in the core it's much hotter due to the gravity of Jupiter "kneeding" the water and heating it up. On earth we have tides from the moon's gravity. On Europa the tides could be strong enough to actually heat up it's core by friction. The heat caused by that might be enough to allow life, however primitive, to survive.
As has been said multiple times, it is impossible to censor the internet and block someone who knows what he's doing. I'd expect the ISPs to comply, but anybody with basic technical expertise would probably get an offshore shell account and run a proxy there. It might actually be an incentive for the young to learn about tunneling technologies that would allow them to bypass censorship. What do you think ? Will people even bother to learn, or will we see Australian-Censorship-Bypass-HOWTO along with a full range of new software to help in the process ?
Censorship bypassing information is available at 2600 Australia
You have to wonder if the only reason the Australian Broadcasting Authority is trying to promote censorship is just to stay around and "be usefull" All goverment organizations need to have a reason to be around, even if the reason is flimsy. Maybe censorship will be the "next big thing" for the ABA.
This is kind of like how businesses look for new markets to expand into don't you think?
Enclose a check with all letters you send to NSI. If you want to make a complaint write out a nice big one for $50 If you need to get tech supports give 'em $10 If you want to change any aspect of anything about $100 should do.
I would disagree. Those old typewriters were hell in a black case.:) I've tried one, nasty! They put huge amounts of pressure on your left pinkie finger. Horrible.
My grandma was once a typist in the days of manual typewriters. She now has arthritis. It's worst on her left pinkie finger. And she was just diagnosed with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in addition to her arthritis.
Ever read 1984? In it there is a anti-goverment oganization that shields it'self by making sure that there is no central person. Even the creator of it only knew about 10 other people in the organization. Perhaps the same thing could be applied to MP3 trading? Say if when you log on you connect to one computer, find that's computer's "buddies" and on from there. Searching would be pretty high-bandwidth though...
I wonder how this would apply to Slashdot? In Slashdot all of the messages are moderated. So is Slashdot more then just a conduit of information just like a telephone company is? Or are we doing more? While there is no real censorship, messages are never removed, by moderating a message down to -1 it is often not seen by the vast majority of slashdotters. Is this enough to make slashdot a publisher of information?
What about the articals posted on the main page? They are checked before they get posted. Does that mean that Slashdot could be liable?
I'd like to get cable access with something like a 5gig limit on data transfer if I was allowed to do anything I wanted with my access be that normal surfing or hosting websites.
But why do I get the feeling that the Big Pond users are still not going to be allowed to do as they please with their access? Stupid!
If there is enough water it's quite possible for life to servive by floatation. The extreme pressure down in the bottom of the ocean isn't enough to stop life. The extreme gravity on some planets would only prohibit any land-dwelling life.
Patenting of genes isn't any different then a standard copyright. You create x gene that does x usefull thing and you patent it. Thats no different then someone writing x computer program that does x usefull thing.
However this isn't true when you try to patent a gene that you just found in an organism. For instance the idea of patenting part of the human genome is just abserd. Those genes don't belong to the first person that finds them. They are public domain. The same applies to anyone trying to patent any other living creature that the patente didn't create.
So in all every gene on this planet that exists in any living creature should be public domain. Any other gene thats created by a company in the process of doing business, such as the many treatments in medicine or the many geneticly engineered foods, is something that can be patented so long as the rest of the patent rules apply.
Well if such data collection is illegal why not sue 'em? Tell the judge that the program is a trojen horse just like any other and see what happens. With some lobbying you could probably win if the privacy violation was great, say in the case of lots of personal data getting tracked. Id would probably win in this case but not other companies...
If there is a licence for internet users what's the minimum age? How hard is it to get the licence? If it isn't possible to easily get such a license you would crush the net.
Slashdot Mirror
Quite true. I wonder how many of those farmers from India buy seed from big companies though... It's probably less then the number of US farmers who buy seed from those big companies.
One thing you have to remember is that these days very few farmers use their own seed. Almost all of them just buy it. This is due to hybrids that don't breed true and simple economics.
Who needs other alternatives when you have WinNT?
Sending snail mail is the best idea. Emails have a good chance of getting ignored. Letters don't.
Calling up that someone is the second best idea.
Not only that, but Alphas have never really been geared toward the general consumer. Most have been
high-end server machines. Also, as far as I know, Alpha won't run x86 code because it uses a different
architecture. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)
You're right. You can run WinNT on Alpha's if you get a special Alpha-only copy of WinNT. But then you still need Alpha-only copies of everything else... For the most part this doesn't happen with Linux, FreeBSD etc. as everything is availailable in source form.
Geeze... slashdot.org/articles/99/11/09/ 1342207.shtml is on the list too...
Nope. Even the webmasters of a site have a hard time getting truly reliable stats. What happens if someone decides that they want to up the hit counter on a site?
Now just imagine trying to figure out if a webmaster is lieing. You can't.
The only way to get reliable stats on a web site is to actually go and monitor users. Say by monitoring their http requests at major routers. But not only are their privacy issues here but how are you going to do that? You would need the co-operation of the ISPs. And even then you might not be right due to HTTP requests going through other routes.
Even the netcraft HTTP requests can be faked. But I don't think many people would bother...
And with those netcraft studies people are still complaining that "the big sites" don't use Apache and instead use Microsoft. And many of the sites running on Apache are actually just small-time sites getting very few users.
You can't win...
In any case tinkering with existing organisms is IMO more likly to cause problems then creating new, and very primitive, organisms. An existing one has been fine-tuned through millions of years of evolution and has a much higher chance of doing damage then some scientists creation that was lucky to even reproduce.
As for terminator genes that would cause plants to become resistant to the effects by evolution. Assuming such gene-swaps can happen in the first place.
And most seed can't even reproduce anyway. Non-viable hybrids are very popular. Nor does your average farmer use his or her own seed. Aside from the developing world, which doesn't use modern seeds, they all buy new seed every season.
Spam isn't "no big deal" It costs lots of money to maintain servers that can handle large amount of email. Spam just adds to the load. When you send 500,000 messages to and ISP, as is often done by spammers, you use up *huge* amounts of computing power. Hard drive space may be cheap but it does cost money. The millions of spam messages add up real quick.
This is something I've been waiting for. Spam does cause damage. If you flooded someone's network with zillions of ICMP packets in a packet flood should you be liable? Of course! The same applies for spam. Some people may cry "Free Speach!" but really. Free speach is not helped by allowing spam. If I was to packet flood you with the Communist Manifesto could I claim that I should be protected by free speach? Of course not.
There are common carrier precidents that allow an ISP to escape liability if they do not try to filter out what their customers see. Spam should be an exception.
In the mean time I hope more ISPs follow AOL and sue spammers. It's about time.
The creation of a new form of life is no more dangerous then your average run of the mill genetic engineering. The life those scientists want to create is simplified at best. It will be the lowest common denominator. Who honestly thinks something like that could cause any damage? Aside from messing up some clean labware any simplified organizism wouldn't last 5 minutes with the competition you get from other forms of life.
With your average gene splicing and other forms of genetic engineering you're starting off with a viable organism and changing what it does. That could cause some problems without safeguards.
Europa may be cold on the surface but it
is possible that in the core it's much hotter due
to the gravity of Jupiter "kneeding" the water and
heating it up. On earth we have tides from the
moon's gravity. On Europa the tides could be
strong enough to actually heat up it's core by
friction. The heat caused by that might be enough
to allow life, however primitive, to survive.
As has been said multiple times, it is impossible to censor the internet and block someone who knows what
he's doing. I'd expect the ISPs to comply, but anybody with basic technical expertise would probably get an
offshore shell account and run a proxy there. It might actually be an incentive for the young to learn about
tunneling technologies that would allow them to bypass censorship. What do you think ? Will people even
bother to learn, or will we see Australian-Censorship-Bypass-HOWTO along with a full range of new
software to help in the process ?
Censorship bypassing information is available at 2600 Australia
You have to wonder if the only reason the Australian Broadcasting Authority is trying to promote censorship is just to stay around and "be usefull" All goverment organizations need to have a reason to be around, even if the reason is flimsy. Maybe censorship will be the "next big thing" for the ABA.
This is kind of like how businesses look for new markets to expand into don't you think?
Enclose a check with all letters you send to NSI. If you want to make a complaint write out a nice big one for $50 If you need to get tech supports give 'em $10 If you want to change any aspect of anything about $100 should do.
Remember, bribes work!
I would disagree. Those old typewriters were hell in a black case. :) I've tried one, nasty! They put huge amounts of pressure on your left pinkie finger. Horrible.
My grandma was once a typist in the days of manual typewriters. She now has arthritis. It's worst on her left pinkie finger. And she was just diagnosed with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in addition to her arthritis.
Ever read 1984? In it there is a anti-goverment oganization that shields it'self by making sure that there is no central person. Even the creator of it only knew about 10 other people in the organization. Perhaps the same thing could be applied to MP3 trading? Say if when you log on you connect to one computer, find that's computer's "buddies" and on from there. Searching would be pretty high-bandwidth though...
You said basically what I said, only sooner. :)
Should'a read more of the posts. :)
I wonder how this would apply to Slashdot? In Slashdot all of the messages are moderated. So is Slashdot more then just a conduit of information just like a telephone company is? Or are we doing more? While there is no real censorship, messages are never removed, by moderating a message down to -1 it is often not seen by the vast majority of slashdotters. Is this enough to make slashdot a publisher of information?
What about the articals posted on the main page? They are checked before they get posted. Does that mean that Slashdot could be liable?
Well I agree that if stealing $87,000 should be enough to get the death penalty then those crackers should get the death penalty.
But I don't believe in the death penalty. There is too high a chance of you getting the wrong person...
I'd like to get cable access with something like a 5gig limit on data transfer if I was allowed to do anything I wanted with my access be that normal surfing or hosting websites.
But why do I get the feeling that the Big Pond users are still not going to be allowed to do as they please with their access? Stupid!
If there is enough water it's quite possible for life to servive by floatation. The extreme pressure down in the bottom of the ocean isn't enough to stop life. The extreme gravity on some planets would only prohibit any land-dwelling life.
Patenting of genes isn't any different then a standard copyright. You create x gene that does x usefull thing and you patent it. Thats no different then someone writing x computer program that does x usefull thing.
However this isn't true when you try to patent a gene that you just found in an organism. For instance the idea of patenting part of the human genome is just abserd. Those genes don't belong to the first person that finds them. They are public domain. The same applies to anyone trying to patent any other living creature that the patente didn't create.
So in all every gene on this planet that exists in any living creature should be public domain. Any other gene thats created by a company in the process of doing business, such as the many treatments in medicine or the many geneticly engineered foods, is something that can be patented so long as the rest of the patent rules apply.
Well if such data collection is illegal why not sue 'em? Tell the judge that the program is a trojen horse just like any other and see what happens. With some lobbying you could probably win if the privacy violation was great, say in the case of lots of personal data getting tracked. Id would probably win in this case but not other companies...
If there is a licence for internet users what's the minimum age? How hard is it to get the licence? If it isn't possible to easily get such a license you would crush the net.
This scheme will never fly, I hope.