Everybody in the field knows that the
sequencing of the genome has already provided us
with a tremendous wealth of important information.
Likewise, everybody in the field knows that the hype about curing genetic diseases is a lie to keep the money flowing. Nobody has any clue about how to do gene therapy. And most researchers don't care: they are interested in basic science, as they should. I think that was one valid point of the article.
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Re:Yeah, when will the networks notice?
on
Calling Out TiVo
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· Score: 3
All those big time investors are in there to make sure that Tivo doesn't get a commercial-skip
button (which it doesn't have). They are scared.
I hope that soon somebody comes out with a Tivo-like device which skips all the program downloading crap and just gives us what we want: commercial skipping.
I guess for now all we are left with are VCR's that can edit out commercials.
I think it was invented by Lars Wirzenius: have
your procmail script generate an automatic
reply to everyone who sends you email and who
is not on your "known-contacts" list. The email
instructs them to resend the email, with
a modified subject line. This weeds out all bots.
The humans who get through are automatically
added to the known-contacts list, unless you
block them permanently.
The despam script is an embodiment of that idea.
Is that script still available somewhere?
If you put the protection of privacy in the
constitution (which the US forgot to do), then
even government and corporations couldn't get
around it. They could still spy on you of course,
but the obtained information could never be
openly used against you.
And "you can't stop technology" is not a truism: many technologies (chemical weapons, anti personal landmines, human cloning, genetically engineered food) have been rejected by many countries.
All you need to protect privacy is to have it
anchored in your constitution. Simply make sure
that everyone who stores personal information
can do so only after having obtained consent.
All the technical gimmicks are then pointless,
because they couldn't be legally used.
The obsession with "expectation of privacy" in the US comes from the fact that the Supreme Court
has construed its right to privacy too narrow: you only have a right to privacy if you believe
that you are currently private. In a world full
of CCTV's, the right to privacy therefore is
history. This is no issue for countries with
properly protected privacy rights.
It's still somewhat of a sensible policy, if you look into how much the average American owes on his credit cards, and think about what would happen if large numbers of said average Americans started bankruptcying their way out of paying that back.
Even after fraud and bankruptcy losses, credit card lenders have the highest profit rates among all lenders. They want this bill because it increase those profits a bit more, and the GOP complies.
The point is, don't think that you can insult, disparage, or mislead with impunity because you have labeled a statement "satire."
Pick up Hustler magazine, look at the ad parodies. They happily insult all sorts of corporations and celebrities, every month, with fake ads. With impunity. Hustler is rich and could be sued for hundreds of millions, but isn't. That proves that their actions are protected.
The other point is this: Mastercard is not sending the letters because it wants to sue RHF, or because it is serious about making RHF cease and desist.
In other words, when they claim that Templeton violated various federal and state statutes, they are lying and deceiving in order to make him give up something of value (the posted joke). This is the definition of fraud.
For a large company like Mastercard, it is a worthwhile investment to have a staff of cubicled drones
It is a shitty investment. How many people cancelled their credit cards because MasterCard sued Nader over an ad parody, and lost? How many people will now think of Columbine everytime they see one of the priceless ads? It's amazine how much harm the cubicled drones did to the brand.
I'm sorry that you use prison labor and export those products to my country.
I've never understood this prison labor accusation. My understanding is that US
prisoners are forced to work too, without
a just compensation, so where's the difference?
AIF is important because it's likely that many cancers will have a defective copy of it. With advances in gene therapy, it should soon be possible to insert new copies of the gene into the cancerous cells thereby triggering apoptosis in them and destroyin the tumour
That wouldn't work: gene transfer is always extremely inefficient, maybe 1 in a hundred or in a thousand cells will take up and incorporate the gene correctly. Those few cells will then apoptose soon after, leaving the rest of the
cancer cells multiplying happily.
If we assume that deadly accidents hit you with
equal probability independent of your age, then lifespans would be distributed according to the exponential distribution: given a new-born baby, the likelyhood that it will die at age x is roughly proportional 1/600*exp(-x/600). On average, it will live 600 years and standard deviation would also be 600 years.
They are not refering to Shor's integer factorization algorithm. No quantum computer
has ever factored an integer. Current quantum
computers can solve trivial problems like: given
the numbers 2, 1, 3, 1, is any of those numbers
a three?
Buy a copy protected CD in the store, copy it
via your CD player's digital out, then return
it to the store for a full refund ("It's defect, it didn't play on my computer!").
Note that this technique only works for copy protected CDs, since others cannot be returned after having been opened.
The developing world needs the BASIC things like food, clean water, and political stability that we take for granted.
True, and they also need decent educational systems. And at least at the college level, computers are a must. There's no question that the cheapest solution that satisfies all the requirements is a free Unix on an old PC. And many schools in the thirld world have figured that out.
just because something's short enough to memorize doesn't mean copyright doesn't apply. Go the bookstore, pick up a book of modern poetry, and memorize a poem.
Is that even allowed? After all, you created a copy in your brain matter without the proper authorization from the copyright holder. Maybe fair use applies though.
This number depends on your choice of M, but that's no big deal.
If they can't even prove that Omega is independent of M (and the TM encoding scheme), then Omega surely doesn't deserve the title "probability that a random TM halts". It's just some non-canonically defined uncomputable but definable real number. There are lots of those.
Give me a canonically defined "inherently meaningful natural constant" that's uncomputable, and I might be
impressed. The criterion for "canonical" is that all sufficiently advanced foreign intelligences will know about the number, just like they know Pi, E etc. They won't know the number's digits, of course, but they will know its definition.
An internet tax could be a beautiful third strike against the joke that is e-commerce: first the
widespread ignoring of banner ads, then the repeated stories about stolen credit card numbers,
and now the tax. Soon we'll be rid of the suits again!
If a 12 year boy engages in "adult behavior" and kills a girl, he is treated as an adult and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Fine. If a 12 year old boy engages in "adult behavior" and watches porn, then he should also be treated as an adult (i.e. he should be left alone). Fair is fair.
This is quite nice: the banner advertising model
breaks apart, and at the same time more and more consumers
finally realize that it is not
secure to shop with your credit card online.
That should do it for web companies, shouldn't it?
I still remember how disappointed I was on the day when Yahoo switched from a volunteer project to a business and started with banner ads. "Corporations have arrived in our last little corner, the internet." But maybe, just maybe, if we keep ignoring and filtering their ads, we can drive them back and run the net as it was always supposed to be run: by enthusiastic volunteers.
Ads, and not just banner ads, suck on a much more basic level: they are propaganda designed to trick me into doing something that I didn't want to do in the first place. I find that offensive. If I want to buy something, I'm perfectly able to research the available offerings and compare price/performance ratios.
I object to the "Buy more stuff and you'll be happy!!" message that's hammered into my brain without pause.
Slashdot Mirror
Likewise, everybody in the field knows that the hype about curing genetic diseases is a lie to keep the money flowing. Nobody has any clue about how to do gene therapy. And most researchers don't care: they are interested in basic science, as they should. I think that was one valid point of the article.
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I hope that soon somebody comes out with a Tivo-like device which skips all the program downloading crap and just gives us what we want: commercial skipping.
I guess for now all we are left with are VCR's that can edit out commercials.
--
The despam script is an embodiment of that idea. Is that script still available somewhere?
--
And "you can't stop technology" is not a truism: many technologies (chemical weapons, anti personal landmines, human cloning, genetically engineered food) have been rejected by many countries.
--
The obsession with "expectation of privacy" in the US comes from the fact that the Supreme Court has construed its right to privacy too narrow: you only have a right to privacy if you believe that you are currently private. In a world full of CCTV's, the right to privacy therefore is history. This is no issue for countries with properly protected privacy rights.
--
Even after fraud and bankruptcy losses, credit card lenders have the highest profit rates among all lenders. They want this bill because it increase those profits a bit more, and the GOP complies.
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Pick up Hustler magazine, look at the ad parodies. They happily insult all sorts of corporations and celebrities, every month, with fake ads. With impunity. Hustler is rich and could be sued for hundreds of millions, but isn't. That proves that their actions are protected.
The other point is this: Mastercard is not sending the letters because it wants to sue RHF, or because it is serious about making RHF cease and desist.
In other words, when they claim that Templeton violated various federal and state statutes, they are lying and deceiving in order to make him give up something of value (the posted joke). This is the definition of fraud.
For a large company like Mastercard, it is a worthwhile investment to have a staff of cubicled drones
It is a shitty investment. How many people cancelled their credit cards because MasterCard sued Nader over an ad parody, and lost? How many people will now think of Columbine everytime they see one of the priceless ads? It's amazine how much harm the cubicled drones did to the brand.
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I've never understood this prison labor accusation. My understanding is that US prisoners are forced to work too, without a just compensation, so where's the difference?
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That wouldn't work: gene transfer is always extremely inefficient, maybe 1 in a hundred or in a thousand cells will take up and incorporate the gene correctly. Those few cells will then apoptose soon after, leaving the rest of the cancer cells multiplying happily.
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Stability is obviously not an issue in those cases.
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Note that this technique only works for copy protected CDs, since others cannot be returned after having been opened.
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It's like when you write programs for PRAMs in your parallel algorithms class. The algorithms are fine and all, but PRAMs don't exist.
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True, and they also need decent educational systems. And at least at the college level, computers are a must. There's no question that the cheapest solution that satisfies all the requirements is a free Unix on an old PC. And many schools in the thirld world have figured that out.
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Is that even allowed? After all, you created a copy in your brain matter without the proper authorization from the copyright holder. Maybe fair use applies though.
--
If they can't even prove that Omega is independent of M (and the TM encoding scheme), then Omega surely doesn't deserve the title "probability that a random TM halts". It's just some non-canonically defined uncomputable but definable real number. There are lots of those.
Give me a canonically defined "inherently meaningful natural constant" that's uncomputable, and I might be impressed. The criterion for "canonical" is that all sufficiently advanced foreign intelligences will know about the number, just like they know Pi, E etc. They won't know the number's digits, of course, but they will know its definition.
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That should do it for web companies, shouldn't it?
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I object to the "Buy more stuff and you'll be happy!!" message that's hammered into my brain without pause.
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