Even though gasoline prices were very high recently, a gallon of gasoline in the US is still cheap in comparison to the amount of energy it contains. It costs less for a gallon of gas than it does for a gallon of Coca-Cola (sugar water, coloring, some CO2, and gobs of marketing). Not that I think the oil companies are saints. They gouged at the pump at every hint of a change in oil production, even if the wholesale price won't affect the channel for days or weeks. Their recent BS about dropping prices before the government started noticing was deception at best and an outright lie at worst. It's like the price of memory - a rumor in Taiwan and the prices fluctuate.
First, I want to say that Linux/BSD are my primary platforms. I'm writing this from a Debian machine (admittedly under Netscape but Lynx, pine and trn are second nature to me). I have no difficulty in recompiling kernels or tweaking makefiles. This being said, I use Macs for a lot of graphics work. They are extremely easy to use and configure. Case in point: when I needed to attach a Zip drive I only had to plug it in and start the computer and the drive was automatically detected. This may seem an idiotic reason to someone at home with mke2fs and vi'ing fstab, but is a godsend for those artsy, graphics types who are not technical. Second, though Windows is catching up swiftly, the Mac has excellent color calibration and media features. Again, this seems a minor detail to gimp users, but it's a huge cost saver when it comes time to proofing ($2 a proof on a dye-sub can add up quickly). Linux does not yet have a comparable technology. Also, multiple monitor support has been in Macs for a long time. It's difficult to appreciate this unless you're using it for production work, but it's one of those features that I cannot easily do without. Yes, Linux can support this with multiple X servers or Metro-X and Windows now support this with some tweaking but it is no where NEAR as supported as the Mac. Believe me, I've looked at the alternatives. As for other reasons, I don't think innovation and swimming against the current should be so lightly dismissed. USB and Firewire are really cool technologies. Macs, though they didn't pioneer USB, were one of the first systems to deploy it widely. Wireless ethernet is also very cool and very useful. Again, though not the originators, Apple has made it affordable. I hate to sound like I'm defending Apple, because they clearly have done some BAD THINGS. But you seem to be holding them to a higher standard than any other company.
This is somewhat OT, but concerns privacy. I created a script to clear out all references to doubleclick.net and adserv in my ~/.netscape/cookies file whenever Netscape is launched. Is this enough? What is the file format of that cookie? Though I originally wanted to ban all cookies, my online banking and a multitude of other sites have major problems unless cookies are enabled.
I grabbed it yesterday and have been using it for a couple hours now. It uses Wine and actually has a few.exe files in the install dir (defaults to/usr/lib/corel). It's geared more towards image editing rather than creation (though you can do this too). This is somewhat in contrast to Gimp, which seems easier to use for new logos and suchlike. Though I'd expected it to be slow (like parts of StarOffice), it actually is pretty responsive on my PII350.
God, it sometimes seems that people are not amazed at all this cool stuff that's happening. There was a time when I bemoaned that I did not live when the ground breaking discoveries were being made until I realized that we're at the cusp of some really massive changes. Everything you mentioned would be revolutionary in other times, but because so much is happening, the significance is missed during the chaos. I'm always amazed that Leibniz and Newton, Wallace and Darwin, and other pairs or groups had earth-shattering discoveries revealed so closely together. It's as if the discovery was ready to emerge and needed only a medium to do the revealing. Who was it that said that advanced science would be indistinguishable from magic?
The problem with nuclear power is not necessarily that of radiation, which (in a modern US plant) is probably less than the background radiation. Part of the problem is that the waste water effluent from these plants can harm the ecosystem. They have a deleterious effect on algae and fish populations, causing other ecological problems. Most of this is from thermal effluent causing changes in the favorable species. Brown algae perhaps prefers a higher temperature than favorable species. Also, power plants happen to be built near environmentally sensitive areas (i.e., far from people!). Turkey Point is a good example. Manatees seem to congregate near them though!
I started with c and I'm guilty of still thinking out problems in c and then converting to c++. Most of the folks I work with use c++, and this seems to be true for a few places I've been. For the basic stuff like reports or cgi engines, moving between c and c++ is trivial because the same code will work with minor tweaking. So I guess it comes down to who you'll be working with, because you'll end up having to learn the language that the team is using. That was my story a couple years back. That being said, I think that I'm a stronger c++ programmer because of my c background. C forces you to get a little more intimate with the language and a lot more diligent.
http://www.cerfnet.com/~mpcline/C++-FAQs-Lite/ is a good place to start. "GNU C++ for Linux" is a GREAT book. So is "C Primer Plus" and "C++ Primer Plus". What I suggest to everyone wanting to learn c or c++ (don't let the names fool you, they're quite different) is to load GNU/Linux or BSD using gcc/g++. People have made arguments for using graphical IDEs because that's the way it's done in "real world." But, it's sort of like using a calculator in arithmetic or algebra. KL PS: Didn't mean to sound preachy..:)
The graphics were fun. What made it useful was a daemon like feature (I forget the syntax, it's been two decades) that allowed you to get interrupted on events. This seems trivial now, but at the time of very linear languages like BASIC it was a very useful feature.
C++? I know that obvious objections are that C++ is too complicated for children, but I can argue for it. In C++ you can have close to immediate feedback, necessary because of the TV shortened attention span of today's kids. Teach them how to g++ helloworld.cpp and they can start with quick programs. You can scale C++ very easily. Add functionality by linking a library. If they want to learn GUI, just link in toad or kapplication or whatnot. New math features? Show them how to create a library and what it does. Very important, C++ lets you be somewhat creative with your code. It lets you skin the cat in new ways. So you kids won't get stuck worrying about rigid pascal-like structures (this can come later). Though I am a diehard C programmer, C++ is now old enough that books are no longer showing non-standard features that aren't in the spec (a problem when trying to learn newborn languages).
Fire your calculus teacher.:) We are most definitely not communicating -- different languages apparently. The error is in thinking that 1-0.999... 0. As we're not speaking the same language I can only offer an example: Do you remember Philosophy 101 and Zeno's little problem of moving across a room? Say that you want to cover a distance and travel at x units per time unit. According to Zeno, you'd first need to cover half the distance. Then you cover half the remaining distance. Then half the remaining again, ad infinitum. Zeno believed that you would never reach your destination because there would always be a tiny half that would need to be crossed. This all goes out the window when limits come into play. You can write the above as the limit of n,n(1)-->n(infinity) of 1/2^n. I.e., 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8. If you perform the mathematics you get 2. Not a number arbitrarily close to 2, but 2. This is borne out if you consider the time involved. For a given (x distance unit)/(time unit) you can cover x units in t units. E.g., if your rate is 2 m/s, you'll travel 2 metres per second. So your time to travel across Zeno's distance is the sum of the t's, just as the distance is the sum of the x's. But you don't end up in a state of suspended motion verging on that last 1/2^infinity. 2 seconds comes and goes. As someone mentioned, this limit mathematics is what made the concept of infintessimals and paradoxes like Zeno's irrelevant. To bring it back to.9999..., we only need to change the formula from 1/2^n to an expression yielding: 9(.1)^1 + 9(.1)^2 + 9(.1)^3.... 9(.1)^infinity. Do the summation and you get... 1. Hope this clears it up.. KL
I think you're confusing a couple aspects of infinity. You cannot use standard arithmetic when dealing with infinity. I.e., infinity + 1 is still infinity. Here's a link to an explanation: Why Infinity...
My first exposure to Bob Dylan was in 1982 when a friend made about six audio cassettes for me. Four years later I had bought every Bob Dylan album out there. When CDs came out I repurchased about half of them. Fifteen years later I have the collection on MP3. Now I'm previewing certain songs that I want. I recently purchased the Shawshank Redemption soundtrack after hearing a portion from Marriage of Figara on MP3. I have also purchased a Bjork and Jane's Addiction CD after hearing MP3s. I will not purchase Metallica because I previewed their album and found it wanting. Personally, they sound like a bunch of old guys trying to sound relevant. So yes, MP3s have hurt their sales.
Eh!? Infinity + 1? Index on infinity? There is no 1 at that position. The zeros stretch on interminably to the horizon and beyond. They don't end. They stretch beyond Aunt Harriet's farm, beyond the State Fair, beyond the Capitol, beyond the ocean, beyond the exotic, whispered lands of Katmandu or Nepal, across mountains, and still no sign of the end. Zeroes, zeroes everywhere, and not a nth in sight. Bearded gurus have conjectured that the One must exist, and all passed into Eternity, ever peering across the landscape, till Time took them. And still no One!
Windows isn't based on dos any more then Linux is because of Dosemu and lodlin.com.
Wrong. Win95/98 still have good old MS-DOS underneath the hood. In other words, you cannot run 95/98 without DOS (just because you don't see it on bootup doesn't mean it's not there). This is probably true in WinME, though much of the DOS command.com functionality has apparently been removed. True, NT is not DOS based, but can run DOS applications in a special subsystem. I'm not sure what to make of your comment about Win32. One of the reasons 95/98 is faster than NT/Linux for some applications is the fact that DOS is so light. In fact, many have argued that DOS is not really an OS but a library of hardware routines. My hope for the next NT is that MS finally gets rid of drive letters. This holdover really, really tells of NT's deep roots in DOS.
Fahrenheit 451 is a good story. Whether it ranks along the likes of Moby Dick or Hamlet is another matter. As a novel, some of its morals come off as a little preachy and political (considering the era when F451 was written this is no surprise). I did, however, enjoy the thought of people memorizing entire books for prosperity. It reminded me of the monks in Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz as they copied manuscript after manuscript.
A recent Miami Herald article talked about the use of an IBM RS/6000SP to process weather data. It's close to 30 times as fast as the previous machine. Though I'm curious as to how this machine compares to the NOAA supercomputer, I'm really interested in how much better predictions can get with systems like the one at NOAA. How much (statistical) confidence is in current weather prediction over 1 month? 3 months? 1 year? How much will the NOAA system expect to improve weather forecasting. BTW, As a Florida resident, accurate forecasting of hurricane paths could save millions of dollars. Thanks for your time. Kwan
This was my reasoning: There is absolutely no reason for non-critical services to run on a critical database machine. For example, company intranet, non-critical user file services, etc.. Other critical items including printing, DNS, and backups can be placed on separate servers. In truth, the E6500 has not had the legendary uptime that I was expecting from a Sun box. This was partly due to misconfiguration when first installed, but most recently because of a faulty SIMM board.
I recently purchased Solaris 8 for Intel. It installed without difficulty on a 550Mhz AMD clone with SCSI drives, 512Meg RAM. This machine hauls. I've already been slowly replacing services from an E6500 to smaller Linux machines. With Sun's new licensing I can put 8i on my servers and replace a few 450s and 250s without a major re-learning process. What this means is that instead of a 1.0x10^6 $ in E6500, I can do the same for 50000 in Intel/AMD boxes.
I administered a Remedy Action Request System for a few months. We used an Oracle backend database and (arg) NT IIS for the web portion. However, it does run on SunOS/Solaris SPARC machines. This may be a little overkill for what you want though. If you search "HELPDESK" on freshmeat.net, the first hit is a pretty good web problem tracker. http://www.jrobst.freeserve.co.uk/helpdesk.html It requires apache and MySQL (may work with Postgres or others). If all you needed was a list of problems to choose, a description field, username, etc.., you could whip one together in a day or so using libcgi++ and some simple javascript. Email me at kwanlowe@netscape.net if I can help further with this.
Insurance companies base much of their rates on statistics. That's why even though you may be a perfect driver, if you're 25 years old and male, you're going to pay a lot for insurance. You personal record means diddly to them. If the insurance company knows that your genes give you a predisposition to heart attacks or cancer, then they will adjust their rates accordingly. However, I agree with you that knowing the genome can lead to improved quality of life for many.
I don't believe that the end of the 1990's will end Apocalypse movies. At the end of 1997 I heard that we're going to die because 1998=666*3. 3 being some sort of evil number and all. In 1998 comets would bombard the earth and kill us all. In 1999 comets would bombard the earth, earthquakes would swallow us, some planets would line up, and a partridge in a pear tree would eat us. Approaching the end of the 1990s, I hear talks about computers crashing and unleashing global destruction. People are saying that the signs of the end of the world (prophecied in all the major religious documents) have come: floods, earthquakes, war. Throughout 2000 people will say that 2001 is really the start of the millenium and that paranoia was a year early. "THIS year is really the year we die!" In 2003 people will say that Christ was really born around 4 A.D. and the calendars are a touch off. "THIS year is really the year we die!" . . In 2037 people will say that the world will end because the some time function will run out of seconds. "THIS is really the year we die!" :)
Discover had a short article on the so-called "junk" DNA. Apparently, these sequences have served legitimate purposes in our evolution, doing things like enhancing or reducing the effect of other genes. If anything, these genes with unknown purpose add to the genetic diversity of the species. Who knows, maybe they may confer some immunity for as yet undiscovered virus. BTW, today on NPR there was a short news piece on genetically engineered crops and their (possible) deleterious effects on other plant species. We've seen articles on Slashdot (?) about glow-in-the-dark Christmas trees too. By introducing these genes to the world (controlled until some bee cross-pollinates a similar uncontrolled species) we are crap-shooting. I am not yet convinced that genetically engineering crops is ultimately economical.
I know that this is probably not a popular move on Apple's part. However, this is how I see it: Programmers should (ideally) speak with the quality of their code. I enjoy Linux partly because of the humility of its developers. Aside from their sometimes tongue-in-cheek talk of world domination, most don't pat themselves on the back or search for approval. They speak with their code, as do many anonymous or near anonymous contributors to the Open Source library.I would much rather have Apple employees speak with tight, efficient code than with some fancy flag graphic no matter how neato.
Slashdot Mirror
Even though gasoline prices were very high recently, a gallon of gasoline in the US is still cheap in comparison to the amount of energy it contains. It costs less for a gallon of gas than it does for a gallon of Coca-Cola (sugar water, coloring, some CO2, and gobs of marketing).
Not that I think the oil companies are saints. They gouged at the pump at every hint of a change in oil production, even if the wholesale price won't affect the channel for days or weeks. Their recent BS about dropping prices before the government started noticing was deception at best and an outright lie at worst. It's like the price of memory - a rumor in Taiwan and the prices fluctuate.
First, I want to say that Linux/BSD are my primary platforms. I'm writing this from a Debian machine (admittedly under Netscape but Lynx, pine and trn are second nature to me). I have no difficulty in recompiling kernels or tweaking makefiles. This being said, I use Macs for a lot of graphics work. They are extremely easy to use and configure.
Case in point: when I needed to attach a Zip drive I only had to plug it in and start the computer and the drive was automatically detected. This may seem an idiotic reason to someone at home with mke2fs and vi'ing fstab, but is a godsend for those artsy, graphics types who are not technical.
Second, though Windows is catching up swiftly, the Mac has excellent color calibration and media features. Again, this seems a minor detail to gimp users, but it's a huge cost saver when it comes time to proofing ($2 a proof on a dye-sub can add up quickly). Linux does not yet have a comparable technology.
Also, multiple monitor support has been in Macs for a long time. It's difficult to appreciate this unless you're using it for production work, but it's one of those features that I cannot easily do without. Yes, Linux can support this with multiple X servers or Metro-X and Windows now support this with some tweaking but it is no where NEAR as supported as the Mac. Believe me, I've looked at the alternatives.
As for other reasons, I don't think innovation and swimming against the current should be so lightly dismissed. USB and Firewire are really cool technologies. Macs, though they didn't pioneer USB, were one of the first systems to deploy it widely. Wireless ethernet is also very cool and very useful. Again, though not the originators, Apple has made it affordable.
I hate to sound like I'm defending Apple, because they clearly have done some BAD THINGS. But you seem to be holding them to a higher standard than any other company.
This is somewhat OT, but concerns privacy. I created a script to clear out all references to doubleclick.net and adserv in my ~/.netscape/cookies file whenever Netscape is launched. Is this enough? What is the file format of that cookie?
Though I originally wanted to ban all cookies, my online banking and a multitude of other sites have major problems unless cookies are enabled.
I grabbed it yesterday and have been using it for a couple hours now. It uses Wine and actually has a few .exe files in the install dir (defaults to /usr/lib/corel).
It's geared more towards image editing rather than creation (though you can do this too). This is somewhat in contrast to Gimp, which seems easier to use for new logos and suchlike. Though I'd expected it to be slow (like parts of StarOffice), it actually is pretty responsive on my PII350.
God, it sometimes seems that people are not amazed at all this cool stuff that's happening. There was a time when I bemoaned that I did not live when the ground breaking discoveries were being made until I realized that we're at the cusp of some really massive changes. Everything you mentioned would be revolutionary in other times, but because so much is happening, the significance is missed during the chaos.
I'm always amazed that Leibniz and Newton, Wallace and Darwin, and other pairs or groups had earth-shattering discoveries revealed so closely together. It's as if the discovery was ready to emerge and needed only a medium to do the revealing.
Who was it that said that advanced science would be indistinguishable from magic?
The problem with nuclear power is not necessarily that of radiation, which (in a modern US plant) is probably less than the background radiation. Part of the problem is that the waste water effluent from these plants can harm the ecosystem. They have a deleterious effect on algae and fish populations, causing other ecological problems. Most of this is from thermal effluent causing changes in the favorable species. Brown algae perhaps prefers a higher temperature than favorable species. Also, power plants happen to be built near environmentally sensitive areas (i.e., far from people!). Turkey Point is a good example. Manatees seem to congregate near them though!
I started with c and I'm guilty of still thinking out problems in c and then converting to c++. Most of the folks I work with use c++, and this seems to be true for a few places I've been. For the basic stuff like reports or cgi engines, moving between c and c++ is trivial because the same code will work with minor tweaking. So I guess it comes down to who you'll be working with, because you'll end up having to learn the language that the team is using. That was my story a couple years back.
That being said, I think that I'm a stronger c++ programmer because of my c background. C forces you to get a little more intimate with the language and a lot more diligent.
http://www.cerfnet.com/~mpcline/C++-FAQs-Lite/ is a good place to start. "GNU C++ for Linux" is a GREAT book. So is "C Primer Plus" and "C++ Primer Plus". What I suggest to everyone wanting to learn c or c++ (don't let the names fool you, they're quite different) is to load GNU/Linux or BSD using gcc/g++. People have made arguments for using graphical IDEs because that's the way it's done in "real world." But, it's sort of like using a calculator in arithmetic or algebra.
KL
PS: Didn't mean to sound preachy..:)
The graphics were fun. What made it useful was a daemon like feature (I forget the syntax, it's been two decades) that allowed you to get interrupted on events. This seems trivial now, but at the time of very linear languages like BASIC it was a very useful feature.
C++? I know that obvious objections are that C++ is too complicated for children, but I can argue for it.
In C++ you can have close to immediate feedback, necessary because of the TV shortened attention span of today's kids. Teach them how to g++ helloworld.cpp and they can start with quick programs.
You can scale C++ very easily. Add functionality by linking a library. If they want to learn GUI, just link in toad or kapplication or whatnot. New math features? Show them how to create a library and what it does.
Very important, C++ lets you be somewhat creative with your code. It lets you skin the cat in new ways. So you kids won't get stuck worrying about rigid pascal-like structures (this can come later).
Though I am a diehard C programmer, C++ is now old enough that books are no longer showing non-standard features that aren't in the spec (a problem when trying to learn newborn languages).
Fire your calculus teacher. :) .9999..., we only need to change the formula from 1/2^n to an expression yielding: 9(.1)^1 + 9(.1)^2 + 9(.1)^3.... 9(.1)^infinity. Do the summation and you get... 1.
We are most definitely not communicating -- different languages apparently. The error is in thinking that 1-0.999... 0. As we're not speaking the same language I can only offer an example:
Do you remember Philosophy 101 and Zeno's little problem of moving across a room? Say that you want to cover a distance and travel at x units per time unit. According to Zeno, you'd first need to cover half the distance. Then you cover half the remaining distance. Then half the remaining again, ad infinitum. Zeno believed that you would never reach your destination because there would always be a tiny half that would need to be crossed.
This all goes out the window when limits come into play. You can write the above as the limit of n,n(1)-->n(infinity) of 1/2^n. I.e., 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8. If you perform the mathematics you get 2. Not a number arbitrarily close to 2, but 2.
This is borne out if you consider the time involved. For a given (x distance unit)/(time unit) you can cover x units in t units. E.g., if your rate is 2 m/s, you'll travel 2 metres per second. So your time to travel across Zeno's distance is the sum of the t's, just as the distance is the sum of the x's. But you don't end up in a state of suspended motion verging on that last 1/2^infinity. 2 seconds comes and goes.
As someone mentioned, this limit mathematics is what made the concept of infintessimals and paradoxes like Zeno's irrelevant.
To bring it back to
Hope this clears it up.. KL
I think you're confusing a couple aspects of infinity. You cannot use standard arithmetic when dealing with infinity. I.e., infinity + 1 is still infinity. Here's a link to an explanation: Why Infinity...
My first exposure to Bob Dylan was in 1982 when a friend made about six audio cassettes for me. Four years later I had bought every Bob Dylan album out there. When CDs came out I repurchased about half of them. Fifteen years later I have the collection on MP3.
Now I'm previewing certain songs that I want. I recently purchased the Shawshank Redemption soundtrack after hearing a portion from Marriage of Figara on MP3. I have also purchased a Bjork and Jane's Addiction CD after hearing MP3s.
I will not purchase Metallica because I previewed their album and found it wanting. Personally, they sound like a bunch of old guys trying to sound relevant. So yes, MP3s have hurt their sales.
Eh!? Infinity + 1? Index on infinity? There is no 1 at that position. The zeros stretch on interminably to the horizon and beyond. They don't end. They stretch beyond Aunt Harriet's farm, beyond the State Fair, beyond the Capitol, beyond the ocean, beyond the exotic, whispered lands of Katmandu or Nepal, across mountains, and still no sign of the end. Zeroes, zeroes everywhere, and not a nth in sight. Bearded gurus have conjectured that the One must exist, and all passed into Eternity, ever peering across the landscape, till Time took them. And still no One!
Windows isn't based on dos any more then Linux is because of Dosemu and lodlin.com.
Wrong. Win95/98 still have good old MS-DOS underneath the hood. In other words, you cannot run 95/98 without DOS (just because you don't see it on bootup doesn't mean it's not there). This is probably true in WinME, though much of the DOS command.com functionality has apparently been removed. True, NT is not DOS based, but can run DOS applications in a special subsystem. I'm not sure what to make of your comment about Win32.
One of the reasons 95/98 is faster than NT/Linux for some applications is the fact that DOS is so light. In fact, many have argued that DOS is not really an OS but a library of hardware routines.
My hope for the next NT is that MS finally gets rid of drive letters. This holdover really, really tells of NT's deep roots in DOS.
Fahrenheit 451 is a good story. Whether it ranks along the likes of Moby Dick or Hamlet is another matter. As a novel, some of its morals come off as a little preachy and political (considering the era when F451 was written this is no surprise). I did, however, enjoy the thought of people memorizing entire books for prosperity. It reminded me of the monks in Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz as they copied manuscript after manuscript.
A recent Miami Herald article talked about the use of an IBM RS/6000SP to process weather data. It's close to 30 times as fast as the previous machine. Though I'm curious as to how this machine compares to the NOAA supercomputer, I'm really interested in how much better predictions can get with systems like the one at NOAA. How much (statistical) confidence is in current weather prediction over 1 month? 3 months? 1 year? How much will the NOAA system expect to improve weather forecasting.
BTW, As a Florida resident, accurate forecasting of hurricane paths could save millions of dollars. Thanks for your time. Kwan
Link to Miami Herald article from May 21, 2000
This was my reasoning: There is absolutely no reason for non-critical services to run on a critical database machine. For example, company intranet, non-critical user file services, etc.. Other critical items including printing, DNS, and backups can be placed on separate servers. In truth, the E6500 has not had the legendary uptime that I was expecting from a Sun box. This was partly due to misconfiguration when first installed, but most recently because of a faulty SIMM board.
I recently purchased Solaris 8 for Intel. It installed without difficulty on a 550Mhz AMD clone with SCSI drives, 512Meg RAM. This machine hauls. I've already been slowly replacing services from an E6500 to smaller Linux machines. With Sun's new licensing I can put 8i on my servers and replace a few 450s and 250s without a major re-learning process.
What this means is that instead of a 1.0x10^6 $ in E6500, I can do the same for 50000 in Intel/AMD boxes.
I administered a Remedy Action Request System for a few months. We used an Oracle backend database and (arg) NT IIS for the web portion. However, it does run on SunOS/Solaris SPARC machines. This may be a little overkill for what you want though.
If you search "HELPDESK" on freshmeat.net, the first hit is a pretty good web problem tracker. http://www.jrobst.freeserve.co.uk/helpdesk.html It requires apache and MySQL (may work with Postgres or others).
If all you needed was a list of problems to choose, a description field, username, etc.., you could whip one together in a day or so using libcgi++ and some simple javascript. Email me at kwanlowe@netscape.net if I can help further with this.
Insurance companies base much of their rates on statistics. That's why even though you may be a perfect driver, if you're 25 years old and male, you're going to pay a lot for insurance. You personal record means diddly to them.
If the insurance company knows that your genes give you a predisposition to heart attacks or cancer, then they will adjust their rates accordingly.
However, I agree with you that knowing the genome can lead to improved quality of life for many.
I don't believe that the end of the 1990's will end Apocalypse movies. At the end of 1997 I heard that we're going to die because 1998=666*3. 3 being some sort of evil number and all. In 1998 comets would bombard the earth and kill us all. In 1999 comets would bombard the earth, earthquakes would swallow us, some planets would line up, and a partridge in a pear tree would eat us. Approaching the end of the 1990s, I hear talks about computers crashing and unleashing global destruction. People are saying that the signs of the end of the world (prophecied in all the major religious documents) have come: floods, earthquakes, war.
:)
Throughout 2000 people will say that 2001 is really the start of the millenium and that paranoia was a year early. "THIS year is really the year we die!"
In 2003 people will say that Christ was really born around 4 A.D. and the calendars are a touch off. "THIS year is really the year we die!"
. . In 2037 people will say that the world will end because the some time function will run out of seconds. "THIS is really the year we die!"
Discover had a short article on the so-called "junk" DNA. Apparently, these sequences have served legitimate purposes in our evolution, doing things like enhancing or reducing the effect of other genes.
If anything, these genes with unknown purpose add to the genetic diversity of the species. Who knows, maybe they may confer some immunity for as yet undiscovered virus.
BTW, today on NPR there was a short news piece on genetically engineered crops and their (possible) deleterious effects on other plant species. We've seen articles on Slashdot (?) about glow-in-the-dark Christmas trees too. By introducing these genes to the world (controlled until some bee cross-pollinates a similar uncontrolled species) we are crap-shooting. I am not yet convinced that genetically engineering crops is ultimately economical.
I know that this is probably not a popular move on Apple's part. However, this is how I see it: Programmers should (ideally) speak with the quality of their code. I enjoy Linux partly because of the humility of its developers. Aside from their sometimes tongue-in-cheek talk of world domination, most don't pat themselves on the back or search for approval. They speak with their code, as do many anonymous or near anonymous contributors to the Open Source library.I would much rather have Apple employees speak with tight, efficient code than with some fancy flag graphic no matter how neato.
Try the following site
http://www.switch.ch/misc/leinen/fasl/nm/ Unicenter also has a Linux port, don't know the status though.