I have read many comments in the media claiming that the Mozilla project has effectively failed to exploit the masses of un-tapped programming talent that were to supercharge Communicator, that most of the work is still done by Netscape employees. Further there is that story a while ago about Mozilla staff being layed off. Does anyone really know exactly how healthy this project is?
On your first point, we all contain a mish-mash of genetic components from a wide variety of species. My point is that evolution is an extremely powerful mechanism for improving the phenotype. For man's primitive bumbling to have any effect on the ecosystem it would require that a GM species becomes better able to survive in the natural environment than a naturally evolved species, in effect, to beat evolution at its own game. For anybody with experience of Genetic Algorithms, this is an extremely difficult task, even if that is what we want to do, for it to happen by accident is less likely than the proverbial Shakespearian monkey.
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What is so great about this comment?
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Gene Leakage
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· Score: 1
Hmmm, this one is off topic but at the time I wrote this, this article had a score of 3. Now, I don't really understand what sets this article above other articles in this thread. Any of you shady monitors care to comment (anonymously of course)?
I think there is a "frankenstein" like paranoia surrounding GM foods. Genetic Manipulation has been going on since evolution began, and believe me - evolution is much better at it than we will ever be. Even artificial genetic engineering has been going on for ages, dogs, cats, horses, they have all been genetically engineered by selective breeding.
If having an insect resistance gene were in the overall scheme of things beneficial to every plant on the planet, chances are they would have those genes. The truth is that insects would rapidly evolve to counter such a change (as mosquetos have adapted to chemicals such as DDT).
People must realise that life did not survive on this planet for 4 billion years by being fragile.
Look at Redhat, is that a weekend project? Your defense for I.P law is like arguing that they shouldn't have gotten rid of prohibition in the 20s because it would have but Al Capone and his employees out of business. People whose jobs are founded on unjust laws deserve no protection. And if you that that would put all programmers out of business, think again. I would suggest that only a minority of programmers are involved in application development for applications that are sold to the public.
I think this guy is dead right. I think that when people in the future look back on restrictions on our personal freedom, that's what IP law is, they will be baffled at how an intelligent society didn't question it before now. The problem is that people have been brainwashed into looking at information as property. It isn't! It is nothing more than patterns on a piece of paper. The fact that preventing copying is now almost impossible forces the issue, but it is not the reason behind the argument. Companies like Redhat have proved that you can profit without IP protection. Complianing that changing this law will put people out of work is like saying that they shouldn't have done away with prohibition in the 20s as it would have put Al Capone and his employees out of business.
Slashdot is slowly becomming the Emacs of news forums, ie. having millions of features that only those who were there from the start will understand, in other words, it is over-engineered. The shier complexity of the moderator system, and its proposed increase in complexity in the near future, are an extreme example. My policy when coming up with solutions to problems, when the solution gets even half as complex as Rob's moderator mechanism, is to assume there must be an easy way and try to find it. Let's look at where this entire mechanism came from... first comment posts. When the whole debate about first comment posts first came about my reccomendation was to either randomise comment ordering, or to disply comments in reverse ordering. That would make "first-comment" postings irrelevant. Instead we now have a super-bloated system which raises all kinds of questions about whether it is censorship.
I guess it is unlikely that Rob will scrap the moderator system now having put so much work into it, but I still think he should.
A joke is a joke, but having so many, and dragging them out like this is just not funny, I am getting bored. This is probably the first time that I have every been disappointed in/. I can take a joke like the next man, but if I wanted to laugh there are plenty of sites that are more amusing than/. will ever be on the web. You guys should learn that restraint is one of the most important qualities of a good joke.
This is getting silly. Could someone please confirm whether this is an april fool. Here in the U.K April Fool's day ends at 12pm, it is now 5.10pm here, meaning that it should be ending in the U.S. soon, and as far as I am concerned, none too soon.
The occasional April fool jape is fine and dandy, but need I remind anyone about the story of the boy who cried "wolf"? While the Linux riots story was funny, I think this one is pushing it a bit.
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What idiot gave this useless comment a high score
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Tuesday Quickies
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Just on an aside... One of the things that surprised me during my recent visit to america were the frequent references by politicians (Bill in particular) to "god". Not to preach (no pun intended) but despite the special position of the Church of England in Britain, politicians here seem to do a much better job of keeping religon out of politics.
RMS is a largely unique political figure. Unlike most politicians, he actually went out and built something with his own time, sweat, and blood, in order to bring about his vision. People criticise the fact that he has principles, and that he sticks to those principles. I think that after the amount of time and effort that he has put in to benefit the computer user community the guy has more than earned the right to have ideals, and we owe it to him to listen to his views. Personally I take an even more extreme view of intellectual property. I think that intellectual property law is unjust, and I don't think software "piracy" is immoral.
Dumping Katz and getting Wood would not solve the problem! The problem is that one person, namely Katz, has special status on SlashDot. This implies that his opinion is more important than the rest of the riff-raff. And this is against the principles of a de-centralised media! Getting rid of Katz only to replace him with someone else would not change anything.
You misunderstand the problem. The whole spirit of/. as I (and I suspect most others) see it is that no longer to the lucky few get to broadcast their "superior" opinions to the ignorant masses. Rob has made a mistake by giving Katz special status on/. It implies that his opinions are more important than that of everyone else. If anything/. is about getting away from the centraised media, so why should a journalist get special treatment? Katz should have the same rights as any other/. reader, no more and no less.
I must confess that I was previously baffled by why there was so much criticism of Katz, I assumed it was just a nerdy rejection of someone just because he wasn't a hacker. Over the past few days though I have been finding it difficult to find much in the way of content in Katz's articles, other than self promotion. I too now lend my voice to those who feel Katz shouldn't have been given special status on SlashDot. Let him post comments, and submit articles in the same way that the rest of us do, but don't give him special status because he is a well known, that implies that his opinion is more important than the "riff-raff" who made/. what it is today.
This CDDB thing really makes me angry. The database that is used by these people was built up by ordinary users of programs like QCD who wanted to help out other users of the system by entering CD details. The CDDB people are now trying to sell the product of that good will. It is cheeky at best, and downright immoral at worst. I second the call for a free CDDB-a-like which is protected from potential future exploitation by a GPL-like licence. I am happy to come up with an interface spec (email ianc@dai.ed.ac.uk) if anyone has a nice server and some programming time! Alternatively, would it be possible to use some kind of clean-room method to "re-discover" the CDDB interface protocol, and circumvent these idiots.
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Java 1.2 = Java 2.0 ... been out for months ???
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Java 2 on Linux
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Not on Linux. JDK1.2 has been out for a while on Windows (and is very very impressive I might add) but is only due (if the rumours are true) to come out on Linux in the next few days. I can't wait!
So who gets the money that people bid, and if this guy keeps it, what gives him the moral right to profit from the linux name? Surely he should plough the money back into the linux community.
Genetic art webpages have been around for ages, there is even a webpage where you can help to evolve entire maths-based movies. Results of these systems are rarely that impressive (although it is a really nice idea). I think Karl Sims started it.
If they try in the U.S you can be almost sure that the nobrainer patent people will not be as stringent. The US patent office seems to delight in permitting the silliest things to be patented, with the excuse that it can always be fought out in court. That is assuming that the people hurt by the stupid patent can afford to go to court in the first place!
Surely there is prior-art in the form of princess Diana herself? If this 3D model thing worked then by similar reasoning someone could patent all images of the moon, or even an unwilling subject's face! When will people recognise that intellectual property, and patents in particular, are a pandora's box of problems, and are fundimentally stupid in concept anyway. Information wants to be free!!
Slashdot Mirror
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A - Stable (ruling out Netscape & Mozilla)
B - Graphical (ruling out Lynx)
C - Doesn't require Qt (ruling out KFM)
Anyone got any ideas?
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If having an insect resistance gene were in the overall scheme of things beneficial to every plant on the planet, chances are they would have those genes. The truth is that insects would rapidly evolve to counter such a change (as mosquetos have adapted to chemicals such as DDT).
People must realise that life did not survive on this planet for 4 billion years by being fragile.
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I guess it is unlikely that Rob will scrap the moderator system now having put so much work into it, but I still think he should.
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The occasional April fool jape is fine and dandy, but need I remind anyone about the story of the boy who cried "wolf"? While the Linux riots story was funny, I think this one is pushing it a bit.
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Personally I take an even more extreme view of intellectual property. I think that intellectual property law is unjust, and I don't think software "piracy" is immoral.
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I second the call for a free CDDB-a-like which is protected from potential future exploitation by a GPL-like licence. I am happy to come up with an interface spec (email ianc@dai.ed.ac.uk) if anyone has a nice server and some programming time!
Alternatively, would it be possible to use some kind of clean-room method to "re-discover" the CDDB interface protocol, and circumvent these idiots.
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