It's sorta scary to see that people whos very job it is to broaden our understanding can be horrible quick to judge [...], as that will only slow down the speed we as a society learns about the world around us.
Not really. Quickly dismissing crackpots will actually speed up the progress of science by making more time available for more promising work.
>AquaPharm is keeping the identity of its MRSA-killing >bacteria a closely guarded secret, and taken out patents >on how they can be cultivated and used.
It doesn't make sense. The purpose of the patent system is to grant limited monopoly in exchange for the *publication* of the invention. You can't patent it and keep it a secret.
Also, the sentence is grammatically incorrect. I suspect some editor at CNN did his job of mangling the story until it says the opposite of what the journalist intended...
If this suit passes in the favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss The Constitution goodbye."
If this suit passes in favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss The Internet goodbye.
I mean, if any jerk can sue the ISPs for transmitting packets they don't like, the Internet just cannot work.
Moreover, contests like these are disastrously counter-productive in the coder's
quest to have his profession recognized as a legitimate field of engineering.
Engineering is about doing the most with the smallest amount of resources. Time is just
another resource.
Do Mechanical Engineers have contests to see who can design a bridge the fastest?
NO! Because if that bridge falls down, it people die. Likewise, now
that computers are running life-support systems and the like, there is no room for error.
I can tell you that the first contest entries to be eliminated will be the ones
that crash or give the wrong result on any of the input sets. There is no room
for error in this contest either. And that's one of the reasons why functional
languages usually do so well. Most C programmers cannot write a bug-free program in 3
days (except maybe for hello world). Some Caml programmers can.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a bug in the story:
>AquaPharm is keeping the identity of its MRSA-killing
>bacteria a closely guarded secret, and taken out patents
>on how they can be cultivated and used.
It doesn't make sense. The purpose of the patent system
is to grant limited monopoly in exchange for the
*publication* of the invention. You can't patent it and
keep it a secret.
Also, the sentence is grammatically incorrect. I suspect
some editor at CNN did his job of mangling the story
until it says the opposite of what the journalist intended...
The Titanic sunk more than 90 years ago, not 70.
There is only one standard format for date and time: ISO 8601
Who wants to bet that the FBI is logging all connections to the iSee web site ?
(And what will the slashdot effect do to that logging ?)