So...if any exploit, trojan horse, or even simple "trick" exists to get smart tag files onto unwitting IE6 user's systems, someone could create a "goatse.cx" virus that puts the infamous trolling link all over not just slashdot, but pages everywhere (from the point of view of the IE6 user).
You can almost hear the goatse.cx guy frantically signing up to put banner ads on his page to cash in on all the hits he's going to get:-)
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Re:Xvideo Stuff now working with tdfx ?
on
XFree 4.1.0 Out
·
· Score: 2
I haven't been able to tell, unfortunately - the CVS versions of DRI SEEM to have had the xv problem fixed...except that I can't use it to tell for sure. It appears there's a severe bug in Banshee chipset support (but reportedly Voodoo3/5 is working okay). If they only sync'ed up the DRI with the rest of Xfree86 two weeks ago, I'm guessing the problem I'm running into is still in there...
Still hoping the DRI guys manage to get the Banshee support fixed soon... ---
I sure hope this works better than the Navy's "Smart Ship"...
("Major Emciessi! It's General Protectionfault on the phone! He demands to know why our SmarTrucks' laser keep spontaneously activating themselves and burning '1 0wn J00!' into nearby objects!...)
Interesting bit of numerology voodoo trivia:
"666" is the decimal representation. Written in the Roman numerals used around the time this was written it's:
DCLXVI.
Sort of like a countdown...Maybe it represents how long the license for the software will last before you have to renew it:-).
"Joe sent me" is the "specific key" to get into that speakeasy.
Oh, yes, and before somebody points out that speakeasies were illegal during prohibition, imagine that 'Joe sent me' is the password to get into a number of establishments, some legal and some not. There, now the analogy fits a little better. There are "infringing" uses (getting into a speakeasy) and "non-infringing" uses (getting into the exclusive chess-playing club run by the Mafia boss who happens to also be a chess fiend...), just as the decryption key could, hypothetically, be used to simply watch a legally-purchased DVD or, also hypothetically, to make a decrypted 6GB file that someone wants to clog their broadband lines with nonstop for a day or two just so their buddy on the other side of town can download an illegal copy of it...
Are the parameters a form of speech ? I wouldn't think so.
This is arguable, I think. After all, the decoding key is, in essence, a "password".
Imagine someone in the prohibition era ( a strangely apropos setting for this analogy) sending a message to a group of like-minded individuals that says "To get into the speakeasy, go to the corner of 5th and Main street, walk down the stairs, and tell the guy at the door 'Joe sent me.'".
"Joe sent me" is the "specific key" to get into that speakeasy. Does that make the "Joe sent me" part of the message a non-speech element?
I've been wondering what this means. In the cartoons at least, it always seems to be added to the end of statements as emphasis, especially when the speaker is angry (or so my completely unscientific observation seems to be...I don't speak Japanese at all, other than a widely scattered and mostly useless handful of words and phrases. I just happened to notice this "ending" to phrases in subtitled anime one day...)
We are almost at the point where all actors will be needed to do is speak with actually have to do any filming.
Probably true...and hilariously ironic, in my opinion.
When movies were invented, actors just had to look good, but since there was no sound, they didn't have to sound good. Then they added sound. (Everybody's seen "Singing in the Rain", right?) Now we're working towards getting rid of the "look good" requirement...but the actors and actresses more than ever need to sound good.
A more philosophical person than me would probably make some sort of observation about Tao at this point or something...
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Re:Linux Replaces Tom Cruise!
on
Linux and Shrek
·
· Score: 2
we can stop indirectly funding the Cult of $cientology by paying admission for movies
Is it just me, or do all of the Scientology-"trained" actors have trouble portraying emotions? If you watch their faces from about the nose up, it seems like the whole area stays the same, other than the occasional squint or wrinkling of the brow, no matter what the emotional content of the scene is. It's actually slightly disturbing. It's almost as if you can tell which actors and actresses are into Scientology by watching for the "deadness" around their eyes...
Or am I just "seeing things"? (The "Is it just me?" wasn't meant to be rhetorical, I really am wondering if anyone else has noticed this...)
Using Linux to make money is almost as bad as using God to make money.
Would it be okay to use God to make Linux?
(I have this sudden vision of Linus Torvalds sending email to the kernel development mailing list saying God just spoke to him, and if he doesn't get 1,000,000 lines of code by next month God will SIGTERM him...)
"Emperor's New Groove" is not what I'd classify as great Disney fare.
Yes, but that was the point of it, or so I tend to think. The whole style of the movie was different from the rest of disney's usual stuff.
'course, that's because they brought in the guy that did "Cat's Don't Dance" (a rather good and yet apparently mostly unknown cartoon movie. Sort of a Gene Kelly musical/dance-meets-classic-Warner-Brothers-cartoo ns kind of thing - I recommend it, anyway) to make it. Mark Dindal is spiffy...
While I'm not planning to line up on opening night to watch Shrek, I get the feeling that it's definitely going to be worth seeing.
Essentially, XFS is 10% of the entire kernel size, making it perhaps the single-most sophisticated driver available. On the flip-side, I can't help but feel that that much code is going to have -some- impact on the rest of the system.
Well, it seems to break modules in the one patch of the 2.4.3 kernel that I've tried so far. (Unpack fresh kernel source, patch with both XFS patches, compile...XFS works [compiled directly into kernel], but every module I try to load [sound, drm driver, etc.] complains about unresolved symbols. Not sure what to do about that). Anybody else run into this one? I've been itching to try XFS on a couple of my systems...
Lastly, anyone found a way to get XFS, JFS and AFS into the same kernel? (Without using a sledgehammer, preferbly.)
If this isn't bad enough, I'd like to get XFS and MOSIX into the same kernel. Hows THAT for masochistic? Need to figure out how to get the XFS patch into 2.4.4, though...
Now if they would only make linux drivers from my HP HPLC...
Actually, I think Agilent took that department with them when they split from HP, so you'd have to talk to them. I'm guessing they won't get a clue in this regard for at least a few more years, and will instead continue having NT-only HPLC controllers. (or so I understand it).
Any thoughts on other prerequisites for consumer genetic engineering?
I'm not sure "consumer genetic engineering" is quite the right phrase (can you picture "consumer kernel hacking"?), but I know what you mean, I think.
It's not necessarily as difficult or complex, or even expensive, as you might think. This:
A lab also requires stable environments for the growth of organisms: "artificial wombs" where food is supplied to the growing embryo and the temperature, pH, etc. are kept well-regulated.
...only applies if you're working with comparatively complex organisms. A wide range of microbes, plants, and a few simple animals can be cultivated with little more effort than sea-monkeys.
The reagents needed for some of the reactions (as someone mentioned in another post) are probably the most limiting thing right now (some biotech equipment is MUCH more expensive, but generally only needed for particular applications - how many hobby biotechnologists would really NEED a mass spectrometer for what they want to do?). The costs and availability of the reagents (such as restriction enzymes, cellulase, DNA polymerase, and so on, depending on what one is trying to do) should improve as time goes on, though.
I would not, though, limit the notion of home biotechnology to "genetic engineering", though that'd be fun for many of us. There are a lot of "biotechnological" activities available that don't need to involve genetic engineering, much of which doesn't require much more sophistication than fermenting your own pickles or yoghurt, or brewing your own beer.
What we would need [...]is some basic education on pH, temperature (yep, ya can't put that embryo in the freezer, Bobby!) etc.
This is certainly true, just as some basic education about computers is necessary for software hacking. Fortunately, the information necessary for "biology hacking" is just about as readily available online, in books, and at the local community college as computer information is.
Greater public participation in this kind of hobby would mean less ignorance, and "less ignorance" is something that I think the general public desperately needs (and not only about biology, either...).
The "open-source" hook comes from the idea that between the availability of genomic information, public access to that information and the standardization of techniques, molecular biology and bioengineering is going to become accessible to the home hacker.
It quite possibly will, though as you say, there's a lot more involved in biology "hacking" than software.
Molecular biology, at least in the foreseeable future, requires a steady stream of spending on reagents.
This is potentially true, though to what extent this slows anybody down depends on exactly what they want to do. After all, exactly the same can be said of homebrewing beer [which, really, IS a "biotechnological" hobby...] Anyway, to be a "real" software hacker requires a steady stream of spending on new hardware and internet access, as well, right?:-)
As patents expire (The core patent on Polymerase Chain Reaction expires somewhere around 2005, as I recall...and a PCR thermocycler is, basically, just a hot-water bath with a timer and a thermostat. Definitely something could at least be approximated usably by a dedicated hobbyist from spare parts...), it will become possible for people to "home brew" (literally) various reagents. I doubt very many people will have a large collection of different fermentation tanks in their garages, but a dedicated "bio-hacker" might get into producing, say, chromomycin, which he can trade with some associates who produce other things.
But coming up with useful projects requires a deep knowledge of the field you're going to work in, far beyond what a coder needs to write a web browser or wedding planning software.
Have you noticed how much stuff goes into a web browser these days?:-) But seriously, it again depends on just what one wants to do. There are very complex and difficult projects, and there are very simple ones. Basic procedures for recombinant DNA are fairly simple when working with microbes, and other than the cost of the reagents, as you've mentioned (note to self: look up patent expiration dates on various restriction enzymes...) is pretty cheap to do. Even working with, say, recombinant DNA in plants - I've seen the lengths (and expenses!) computer hackers sometimes go to in building cooling systems for their computers, so I have no trouble picturing some enterprising individual making a home-built "gene-gun".
Even simpler, many of the techniques could be applied to hobby "detection and analysis" problems. Check the microbes growing in your garden, and adjust their populations to optimize the growth of your prize roses, for example. Speaking of which, as one of the "Amateur Scientist" columns in Scientific American mentioned a while back, you can use gel electrophoresis techniques to get a look at the individual dyes that make up the color in those roses, and track it from generation to generation so you know how close you're getting to producing blue ones. Just for sheer twisted amusement, I'd actually like someday to personally do some molecular phylogeny of brewing yeast from around the world...but then again, I'd also like to make neo-trilobites and glow-in-the-dark houseplants someday, so you can judge for yourself how many of my crazy schemes I'll ever actually get to try...(p.s. anybody know any good online information regarding paleoentomology?)
So, to summarize, just as there's a whole range of potentially enjoyable software hacking one can do - from simple throwaway one-shot shell scripts to kernel hacking and web browsers - there's a whole range of biology "hacking" within reach of even "grocery and hardware store"-grade equipment, if one is willing to look beyond human cloning and fluorescent green animals sort of projects that seem to get most of the attention these days...
[...]then take the chances that that intelligent life would live long enough to develop radio[...]
I once read an article (or was it a chapter of a book? Can't remember now) discussing the infamous "Drake Equation" (regarding the probability of detecting intelligent life via SETI).
The author had pointed out that the variable intended to represent how long a form of intelligent life existed before dying off really meant "how long a form of intelligent life broadcasts detectably in the radio spectrum", as far as SETI is concerned.
The author then speculated that strong, readily detectable radio signals from Earth will have been going roughly 100 years before cable, fiberoptics, and other "non-broadcast" means of communication start supplanting them.
He then plugged THAT number into the Drake Equation and got...1.
"That must be us." the author quipped...
Not that I have a problem with SETI or anything, but I found the argument very interesting...
Atomfilms (and probably several other places around the net) has Psychic Pigs Tech Support [http://www.atomfilms.com/films/film.asp?film_id=9 07 for those concerned about goatliness.]
("The Sun card tells us your problem is server-side..."). It's Macromedia flash format.
[...]shake the ISS around until the US system thought it was out of control and went into what is called Free Drift Mode.
Great...so the ISS is really a giant pinball machine with one of the flippers locked up, so we need to get it to go "TILT" and shut down so we can reset it?:-)
Slashdot Mirror
How about "IntelliActiveDirectSmartPatchX"?
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Interesting...
So...if any exploit, trojan horse, or even simple "trick" exists to get smart tag files onto unwitting IE6 user's systems, someone could create a "goatse.cx" virus that puts the infamous trolling link all over not just slashdot, but pages everywhere (from the point of view of the IE6 user).
You can almost hear the goatse.cx guy frantically signing up to put banner ads on his page to cash in on all the hits he's going to get :-)
---
I haven't been able to tell, unfortunately - the CVS versions of DRI SEEM to have had the xv problem fixed...except that I can't use it to tell for sure. It appears there's a severe bug in Banshee chipset support (but reportedly Voodoo3/5 is working okay). If they only sync'ed up the DRI with the rest of Xfree86 two weeks ago, I'm guessing the problem I'm running into is still in there... Still hoping the DRI guys manage to get the Banshee support fixed soon...
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I feel the same way - I thought Flay spent too much time whining about water on the floor and moping and such and not enough time actually cooking...
I don't know about Emeril, though. Personally, I'd vote Alton Brown of "Good Eats" fame, myself...
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I sure hope this works better than the Navy's "Smart Ship"...
("Major Emciessi! It's General Protectionfault on the phone! He demands to know why our SmarTrucks' laser keep spontaneously activating themselves and burning '1 0wn J00!' into nearby objects!...)
---
Interesting bit of numerology voodoo trivia: :-).
"666" is the decimal representation. Written in the Roman numerals used around the time this was written it's:
DCLXVI.
Sort of like a countdown...Maybe it represents how long the license for the software will last before you have to renew it
---
Oh, yes, and before somebody points out that speakeasies were illegal during prohibition, imagine that 'Joe sent me' is the password to get into a number of establishments, some legal and some not. There, now the analogy fits a little better. There are "infringing" uses (getting into a speakeasy) and "non-infringing" uses (getting into the exclusive chess-playing club run by the Mafia boss who happens to also be a chess fiend...), just as the decryption key could, hypothetically, be used to simply watch a legally-purchased DVD or, also hypothetically, to make a decrypted 6GB file that someone wants to clog their broadband lines with nonstop for a day or two just so their buddy on the other side of town can download an illegal copy of it...
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This is arguable, I think. After all, the decoding key is, in essence, a "password".
Imagine someone in the prohibition era ( a strangely apropos setting for this analogy) sending a message to a group of like-minded individuals that says "To get into the speakeasy, go to the corner of 5th and Main street, walk down the stairs, and tell the guy at the door 'Joe sent me.'".
"Joe sent me" is the "specific key" to get into that speakeasy. Does that make the "Joe sent me" part of the message a non-speech element?
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I've been wondering what this means. In the cartoons at least, it always seems to be added to the end of statements as emphasis, especially when the speaker is angry (or so my completely unscientific observation seems to be...I don't speak Japanese at all, other than a widely scattered and mostly useless handful of words and phrases. I just happened to notice this "ending" to phrases in subtitled anime one day...)
So...what's it mean?
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Probably true...and hilariously ironic, in my opinion.
When movies were invented, actors just had to look good, but since there was no sound, they didn't have to sound good. Then they added sound. (Everybody's seen "Singing in the Rain", right?) Now we're working towards getting rid of the "look good" requirement...but the actors and actresses more than ever need to sound good.
A more philosophical person than me would probably make some sort of observation about Tao at this point or something...
---
Is it just me, or do all of the Scientology-"trained" actors have trouble portraying emotions? If you watch their faces from about the nose up, it seems like the whole area stays the same, other than the occasional squint or wrinkling of the brow, no matter what the emotional content of the scene is. It's actually slightly disturbing. It's almost as if you can tell which actors and actresses are into Scientology by watching for the "deadness" around their eyes...
Or am I just "seeing things"? (The "Is it just me?" wasn't meant to be rhetorical, I really am wondering if anyone else has noticed this...)
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Would it be okay to use God to make Linux?
(I have this sudden vision of Linus Torvalds sending email to the kernel development mailing list saying God just spoke to him, and if he doesn't get 1,000,000 lines of code by next month God will SIGTERM him...)
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Yes, but that was the point of it, or so I tend to think. The whole style of the movie was different from the rest of disney's usual stuff.
'course, that's because they brought in the guy that did "Cat's Don't Dance" (a rather good and yet apparently mostly unknown cartoon movie. Sort of a Gene Kelly musical/dance-meets-classic-Warner-Brothers-cartoo ns kind of thing - I recommend it, anyway) to make it. Mark Dindal is spiffy...
While I'm not planning to line up on opening night to watch Shrek, I get the feeling that it's definitely going to be worth seeing.
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Well, it seems to break modules in the one patch of the 2.4.3 kernel that I've tried so far. (Unpack fresh kernel source, patch with both XFS patches, compile...XFS works [compiled directly into kernel], but every module I try to load [sound, drm driver, etc.] complains about unresolved symbols. Not sure what to do about that). Anybody else run into this one? I've been itching to try XFS on a couple of my systems...
Lastly, anyone found a way to get XFS, JFS and AFS into the same kernel? (Without using a sledgehammer, preferbly.)If this isn't bad enough, I'd like to get XFS and MOSIX into the same kernel. Hows THAT for masochistic? Need to figure out how to get the XFS patch into 2.4.4, though...
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Actually, I think Agilent took that department with them when they split from HP, so you'd have to talk to them. I'm guessing they won't get a clue in this regard for at least a few more years, and will instead continue having NT-only HPLC controllers. (or so I understand it).
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Maybe compaq, Toshiba, et al have been using the magnets to stick crayon drawings to the refigerators in their respective break rooms. :-)
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But, if it was bug-free, it wouldn't be compatible with windows anymore, would it? :-)
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I'm not sure "consumer genetic engineering" is quite the right phrase (can you picture "consumer kernel hacking"?), but I know what you mean, I think.
It's not necessarily as difficult or complex, or even expensive, as you might think. This:
A lab also requires stable environments for the growth of organisms: "artificial wombs" where food is supplied to the growing embryo and the temperature, pH, etc. are kept well-regulated....only applies if you're working with comparatively complex organisms. A wide range of microbes, plants, and a few simple animals can be cultivated with little more effort than sea-monkeys.
The reagents needed for some of the reactions (as someone mentioned in another post) are probably the most limiting thing right now (some biotech equipment is MUCH more expensive, but generally only needed for particular applications - how many hobby biotechnologists would really NEED a mass spectrometer for what they want to do?). The costs and availability of the reagents (such as restriction enzymes, cellulase, DNA polymerase, and so on, depending on what one is trying to do) should improve as time goes on, though.
I would not, though, limit the notion of home biotechnology to "genetic engineering", though that'd be fun for many of us. There are a lot of "biotechnological" activities available that don't need to involve genetic engineering, much of which doesn't require much more sophistication than fermenting your own pickles or yoghurt, or brewing your own beer.
What we would need [...]is some basic education on pH, temperature (yep, ya can't put that embryo in the freezer, Bobby!) etc.This is certainly true, just as some basic education about computers is necessary for software hacking. Fortunately, the information necessary for "biology hacking" is just about as readily available online, in books, and at the local community college as computer information is.
Greater public participation in this kind of hobby would mean less ignorance, and "less ignorance" is something that I think the general public desperately needs (and not only about biology, either...).
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It quite possibly will, though as you say, there's a lot more involved in biology "hacking" than software.
Molecular biology, at least in the foreseeable future, requires a steady stream of spending on reagents.This is potentially true, though to what extent this slows anybody down depends on exactly what they want to do. After all, exactly the same can be said of homebrewing beer [which, really, IS a "biotechnological" hobby...] Anyway, to be a "real" software hacker requires a steady stream of spending on new hardware and internet access, as well, right? :-)
As patents expire (The core patent on Polymerase Chain Reaction expires somewhere around 2005, as I recall...and a PCR thermocycler is, basically, just a hot-water bath with a timer and a thermostat. Definitely something could at least be approximated usably by a dedicated hobbyist from spare parts...), it will become possible for people to "home brew" (literally) various reagents. I doubt very many people will have a large collection of different fermentation tanks in their garages, but a dedicated "bio-hacker" might get into producing, say, chromomycin, which he can trade with some associates who produce other things.
But coming up with useful projects requires a deep knowledge of the field you're going to work in, far beyond what a coder needs to write a web browser or wedding planning software.Have you noticed how much stuff goes into a web browser these days? :-) But seriously, it again depends on just what one wants to do. There are very complex and difficult projects, and there are very simple ones. Basic procedures for recombinant DNA are fairly simple when working with microbes, and other than the cost of the reagents, as you've mentioned (note to self: look up patent expiration dates on various restriction enzymes...) is pretty cheap to do. Even working with, say, recombinant DNA in plants - I've seen the lengths (and expenses!) computer hackers sometimes go to in building cooling systems for their computers, so I have no trouble picturing some enterprising individual making a home-built "gene-gun".
Even simpler, many of the techniques could be applied to hobby "detection and analysis" problems. Check the microbes growing in your garden, and adjust their populations to optimize the growth of your prize roses, for example. Speaking of which, as one of the "Amateur Scientist" columns in Scientific American mentioned a while back, you can use gel electrophoresis techniques to get a look at the individual dyes that make up the color in those roses, and track it from generation to generation so you know how close you're getting to producing blue ones. Just for sheer twisted amusement, I'd actually like someday to personally do some molecular phylogeny of brewing yeast from around the world...but then again, I'd also like to make neo-trilobites and glow-in-the-dark houseplants someday, so you can judge for yourself how many of my crazy schemes I'll ever actually get to try...(p.s. anybody know any good online information regarding paleoentomology?)
So, to summarize, just as there's a whole range of potentially enjoyable software hacking one can do - from simple throwaway one-shot shell scripts to kernel hacking and web browsers - there's a whole range of biology "hacking" within reach of even "grocery and hardware store"-grade equipment, if one is willing to look beyond human cloning and fluorescent green animals sort of projects that seem to get most of the attention these days...
---
I once read an article (or was it a chapter of a book? Can't remember now) discussing the infamous "Drake Equation" (regarding the probability of detecting intelligent life via SETI).
The author had pointed out that the variable intended to represent how long a form of intelligent life existed before dying off really meant "how long a form of intelligent life broadcasts detectably in the radio spectrum", as far as SETI is concerned.
The author then speculated that strong, readily detectable radio signals from Earth will have been going roughly 100 years before cable, fiberoptics, and other "non-broadcast" means of communication start supplanting them.
He then plugged THAT number into the Drake Equation and got...1.
"That must be us." the author quipped...
Not that I have a problem with SETI or anything, but I found the argument very interesting...
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A gigantic explosion of matter and/or energy that creates an entire universe...and they call it the "Big Bang".
I agree with Calvin/Bill Watterson - "The Horrendous Space Kablooie" has a much nicer ring to it...
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So the rumors are true then? The Windows in "Windows ME" is a verb? :-)
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How about "revenue stream hijacking"? :-)
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Atomfilms (and probably several other places around the net) has Psychic Pigs Tech Support [http://www.atomfilms.com/films/film.asp?film_id=9 07 for those concerned about goatliness.]
("The Sun card tells us your problem is server-side..."). It's Macromedia flash format.
---
Great...so the ISS is really a giant pinball machine with one of the flippers locked up, so we need to get it to go "TILT" and shut down so we can reset it? :-)
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