Actually one thing that concerns me about this is the ACADEMIC use of the network. It's quite common these days for researchers who publish articles in the biggest general purpose scientific journals (Science and Nature) as well as lots of other more specialized journals to put additional information about their work such as additional, very large figures (most Science and Nature articles are 2-3 pages leaving very little room for complicated figures), specialized protocols, raw data sets, etc. on local servers.
If these researchers are penalized for having the results of their scientific research accessed online how does that advance the academic mission of universities? With "publish or perish" being the mantra at most US universities, those who actually do publish useful information will be punished.
What about folks that run mirrors for large databases like GenBank or BLAST? Baylor College of Medicine runs a hugely popular bioinformatics database/query server called Search Launcher. If they were at Cornell, they'd have to shut it down or put up a fucking "Donate With PayPal" button on the site in order to keep running. How exactly does this advance the academic/research mission of a university?
Sure, folks using the academic networks for amassing enormous pr0n databases and leeching warez should have caps on their usage but what about legitimate academic use?
Same story but it was an entire pot of coffee. No zzzzt though as we managed to shut it off fast enough. Let it drain and dry for 4 days, plugged it back in and it works like a champ.
As a special bonus you get a nice coffee aroma when after it's first turned on.
So does this mean that Ep. III will have credits that don't last as long as the film itself since all the CGI, model and other work will be done "in house?" I thought that shit was never going to end in Ep. II (the credits...not the movie).
On a more serious note, this isn't really that surprising. 3-7 years ago, everyone and their dog was doing the diversification thing. Spin off divisions into completely separate companies that have "licensing agreements" with the parent company that allow for sweetheart deals that bulk up both company's "earnings" without any money actually changing hands.
In light of the current spotlight on corporate buttfuckery, now all these companies are bringing these spin off corps back in-house and making like nothing ever happened.
It doesn't hurt that Commandant GW Bush wants to make it so that the bigger your corporation is the less taxes you have to pay so that one $3 billion (annual revenue) corporation will pay about 1/4 the taxes of 3000 $1 million corporations.
There's thousands and thousands of non-RIAA CDs released each and every year. You just have to look a little harder to find them.
Actually I totally agree with you. I've even made a couple of purchases at cdbaby (horrible service and mollasses slow shipping but great selection). I was actually just amazed at how many members they did have and who some of them were. I mean, Nettwerk is the home of a number of anti-corporate indie bands. And Grateful Dead Records (and Rhino which is distributing a fair amount of Dead stuff)? That band (though I despise them) practically invented music swapping.
FWIW, of the last dozen or so CDs I've bought, of the labels that put out those albums Yep Roc Records (Mayflies USA, The Sadies and The Bigger Lovers), Secretly Canadian (Songs:Ohia), New West (2 Slobberbone records), KimChee Records (Cordelia's Dad and PeeWee Fist), Undertow Music (Jay Bennett/Ed Burch and Centro-matic/Will Johnson/South San Gabrie) and as another poster mentioned, Barsuk records, non are RIAA members. But the vast majority of people (including Slashdotters) will likely not go any further than the top 25 rack at the local Tower Records and won't be interested in any bands that they haven't heard 2000 times on their local Clear Channel owned "alternative rock" station. That said, at least they can buy the White Stripes... Sympathy For The Record Industry isn't a member either.
I'm no fan of Hillary Rosen's tactics as head of the RIAA. But it should be pointed out that she's the head of a lobbying/representative group. She does the bidding of the CEOs whose companies pony up fat wads of cash for the services of the organization that she heads. In a recent Wired article (which will be online tomorrow according to the website) she said that her job is basically to do all the unpopular shit that the record execs want her to do, while shielding them from the criticism. In other words, she's a paper tiger. Her successor will be one as well. She and the RIAA are doing the bidding of the likes of Sony, Vivendi Universal, AOL-TW and all the others. I don't see anyone giving Sean (Pissy) Coombs a hard time about the RIAA's tactics but he's as culpable (as the head of a label that is an RIAA member) as Hillary Rosen is.
If you don't like the shit the RIAA is pulling (and you shouldn't), stop buying music from companies that support the RIAA. Of course, after seeing the list here you'll have quite a hard time finding any music to buy.
What I mean is.. Suppose Bill Gates really did buy an election. Would he need to pay anyone back for the campaign expense? Or would he be free to act on his own will?
In NYC we sort of have that situation with "Mayor Mike" Bloomberg. Paid for his campign out of his own pocket, won in a relative landslide (after outspending his opponent somthing like 2:1) and is now bascially doing whatever he thinks is the right thing to do.
As a f'rinstance, since he didn't get any help in his election from the NYC Teacher's Union (the UFT), he can just announce (as he did the other day) that he's implementing a crackpot new, across the board, elementary education curriculum that he and his school superintendent (who's not an educator by training or avocation) dreamed up, without running it by the actual teachers first.
He actually said the other day that he's not trying to get re-elected, he's just trying to do what he thinks is right.
Make of this what you will but I think it does sort of answer the question. No, he wouldn't be beholden to anyone and could do whatever he thought was right. Be careful though...he wouldn't have to do what you (or "the voters") thought was right, just what HE thought was right.
I've learned a huge amount about new music in the last 18 months since joining a listserv called Postcard From Hell. It was originally started to discuss the legendary alt.country band Uncle Tupelo and, after they broke up, its two spin-off bands/leaders Wilco/Jeff Tweedy and Son Volt/Jay Farrar. Although that is ostensibly the subject of the listserv about 95% of the music related content on the list is about other bands. I've discovered some great bands through this list and met some other people in my area who have similar musical tastes.
Try to find a listserv or newsgroup (better than Yahoo! Groups! With! All! The! Spam!) devoted to a band you already like and then see what you can find out from there. Lurk for awhile, don't just go in and blurt out stupid shit 5 minutes after you subscribe and you'll probably learn a lot. I bought about 40 CDs this past year when in the past I would have purchased 3 or 4.
I can probably deal with spending $20 or less for serious (not point) upgrades of these apps. They're great applications which for the most part have taken the place of other shareware apps. As long as there's price parity (and iDVD supports external burners) then it would probably be a good idea for Apple.
I realize that most/.ers can't even remember what they had for dinner last night but I think we've been through this one before. I know it must have been hard for the editors to find since it had such a dramatically different title..."Lab-Grown Meat. Chunks...."
Anyway, while this is interesting from a tech POV it seems like a dramatic waste of resources for its intended target. Wouldn't growing and processing soy and soy-based products be much less resource intensive?
but it doesn't. Companies have used their power over the legislative process to get the best of all worlds... for them. So now we can neither (legally) copy our own software/music NOR get the kind of backup and exchange service you mention.
Exactly. So what we have now is basically a license to use only that physical piece of software/hardware/whatever you have in your hand.
Lose it? Tough shit...you not only need to buy another hard copy, you have to buy another license (which is probably more onerous than the last one if the lawyers have had a go at it). Want an advanced version or one on a different type of media? Same story.
What keeps a random website from spreading false news?
Nothing.
What keeps slashdot from spreading false news?
Theoretically moderation and Malda et al. Otherwise, the vague sense that they'd like to be taken seriously. Beyond that...nothing.
What keeps cnn.com from spreading false news?
The fact that they can be held publicly accountable. Libel/slander lawsuits prevent them from spreading false news about a particular person or organization. Public/political/advertiser pressure prevent them from spreading patently false news. Their reputation is important to them and they should, theoretically anyway, protect that.
What's cool about this idea is that you get your news weighted and vetted by people you consider trustworthy. The downside is that you need to already have a network of these people and have to know how much you can trust their judgement. If you already have such a network however, you're probably already getting emails/IMs from these people saying, "d00d...did you see this article over on totallyfuckingcoolnews.com," which renders this system redundant.
Personally, all the people that I would trust to point out interesting news to me are getting their info from the same places I am.
Cool in principle anyway. I agree with the poster who said something to the effect of, "just because you don't see the use for this doesn't mean it's not cool."
Bryant Park is more in the vein of a Parisian park (Jardins de Luxembourg for example) than Central Park. More sitting around reading the paper than playing softball.
FWIW I think the best use for this network in Bryant Park will be to kill time waiting for their summer movie series to start. Every Monday during the summer they show a classic/cult movie for free on a huge screen in Bryant Park. The idea is to drop by after work with a picnic and watch a flick. Of course, 300,000 other people have the same idea so what usually happens is that a group of people will chose one or 2 people to take the day off work and they'll go camp the park starting at 9am to get a good, big spot. Now I might not mind being the camper.
As a college student, I have more classes and assignments that I can really manage to remember without some central way of tracking them.
I got mine during my first semester of med school. Saved my life for this very reason. After 2 years of med school I took a detour to do a PhD in Molecular Biology and after the first semester of that (which was the only one with any courses) I more or less stopped using mine. I play some games on it and it's got a few phone #s that I use very ocassionaly so haven't bothered to put in my cell, but otherwise it's a paperweight.
That said, I should be finishing my PhD this next semester and heading back to med school for 2 more years so I imagine it will become much more useful soon. Especially since there are tons of medical/reference texts available for PDAs.
Actually, the answer is that some other asshole has already stolen all the copies. Seriously.
When I was a kid and had just been introduced to the idea of porn I thought to myself, "self...maybe the library has Playboy and Penthouse and Hustler...you can just go read them there." So I went to the library (which didn't seem like such a waste of time in 1981) and checked the periodicals list. Lo and behold...they carry all 3 of those mags. So I head to the magazine stacks and find, much to my 10 year old chagrin that although the boxes are there to hold the last 24 issues of Playboy and Penthouse, there are no magazines in them.
Later on when I was in high school, I asked a friend of mine who worked in the library if they actually subscribed to them and if they kept them behind the counter. Apparently they did subscribe, put them out on the shelves and they'd be gone in less than 30 minutes...never to be seen again. (Except perhaps by the janitor who had to peel them off the men's room floor.)
This is in fact how this data is currently envisioned as being used. You walk into your doctors office and give some blood for a genome screen.
The entire genome isn't sequnced...only the regions shown to be linked to a disease or to a drug response/lack of response (cytochrome P450 genes in particular). This data is then put on a mag strip card which you carry with you. when you go see another doctor with certain symptoms (weakness and persistent infections for instance), they run your card through their computer and see that you have a genetic predisposition to megalocytic anemia. Diagnosis made...we can all go home. But wait a second, your card also says that you have a mutation in one of your Cytochrome P450 genes that leads to you metabolizing drug X (whatever is used to treat megalocytic anemia 5 years from now or whenever this technology is widespread) so fast that you can't get an effective dose of it stably in your body. So rather than wasting time and money on drug X, they give you drug Y...a little more expensive perhaps but not as expensive as giving you a useless 4 week treatment of drug X followed by 4 weeks of the useful drug Y. Voila...you're diagnosed, treated and on you way to a healthier life in a matter of minutes instead of hours, days or longer.
Of course there are a whole host of scary, Gattaca-type things that could come of this data and legislation (in the US anyway where we're prone to do stupid shit at the drop of a hat) needs to be put in place and tested in the courts early to prevent discrimination based on this information. In the end however (as someone who's currently working on the research end of this stuff as a PhD student, soon to return to the clinics on the diagnostic end as a med student) this will do far more good than harm IMHO.
Good one. I actually had the exact same thought. Basically what we have here is a crippled (physically and processor-wise) iMac that's not quite as well designed and not nearly as attractive. Sure, it's got the lead-free mobo and boron free LCD (which I assume the iMac doesn't have) but I think the folks who this is aimed at have already gotten themselves an iMac.
I know I did. Price-wise i'm not sure this can compete with anything. 256MB RAM, a CD-ROM and a 900MHz Crusoe for USD1600? Macs are a bargain compared this. Not to mention more pleasant to use.
Maybe an itty bitty serial hardware device that contains the more significant data, which you could carry on a keychain or something would work?
I like this idea. Maybe a little USB key like those drives? No idea on the tech side of it but it seems like a better idea than those smart card reader/smart chip on a credit card combos that seem to be just around the corner.
Any hardware dorks have an idea if this would work or not?
I think this is a great idea and a legitimate response to the idea that artists should get paid for their work by the people who consume that work. If only a band that people who regularly leech music take it from would do such a thing then we could really determine just how good a plan this is.
As it is, I personally would pay good money NOT to get unreleased Bon Jovi tunes. With the released stuff as bad as it is, how much ass must the unreleased tracks suck.
Has anyone here experienced a densely used WiFi network?
Opening day of MacWorld NY 2001. The access points on the main floor were so full that most of the time you couldn't even access the network and if you could it was slower than dial-up. There were other access areas (downstairs near the seminar rooms) that had better access and speed.
That said, as mentioned before, this can easily be alleviated with a few (hundred) extra WAPs. Dartmouth doesn't have that many students so full campus coverage with usable bandwidth for all is relatively easy to come by. Wiring it up so that every UCB student (or UT-Austin) who wanted it could have full throughput speed might be a bit on the expensive side.
Leave it to a/.er to completely ignore reality. You don't own an Epson scanner do you? Sure you can live with it. For anyone else that wanted to use an epson scanner on Linus and use the proper quality drivers for it are all now shit out of luck! That's really the only way to look at it. GPL natzis kill useful product and cause more fear in the industry about going near GPL anything.
And you of course miss the point as well. Yes...it's a bummer that you can not currently dl the Epson Linux scanner drivers (I assume that you've already got them). But the point is that they realized that they violated a copyright/trademark style license (one that has almost no legal muscle behind it) and decided to make themselves compliant. So, for a few days/weeks, there won't be an Epson driver for the scanner but, assuming they're not full of shit, we will all soon be able to dl a driver that will be full function and comply with the license.
Nobody's going to get sued, credit will be given where it's due and (again, assuming they're not blowing smoke up our asses), Linux folk wishing to use Epson scanners (there are probably like 12 of you out there) will be able to use an officially sanctioned driver. Looks like the license works pretty decently to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually one thing that concerns me about this is the ACADEMIC use of the network. It's quite common these days for researchers who publish articles in the biggest general purpose scientific journals (Science and Nature) as well as lots of other more specialized journals to put additional information about their work such as additional, very large figures (most Science and Nature articles are 2-3 pages leaving very little room for complicated figures), specialized protocols, raw data sets, etc. on local servers.
If these researchers are penalized for having the results of their scientific research accessed online how does that advance the academic mission of universities? With "publish or perish" being the mantra at most US universities, those who actually do publish useful information will be punished.
What about folks that run mirrors for large databases like GenBank or BLAST? Baylor College of Medicine runs a hugely popular bioinformatics database/query server called Search Launcher. If they were at Cornell, they'd have to shut it down or put up a fucking "Donate With PayPal" button on the site in order to keep running. How exactly does this advance the academic/research mission of a university?
Sure, folks using the academic networks for amassing enormous pr0n databases and leeching warez should have caps on their usage but what about legitimate academic use?
BFL
Same story but it was an entire pot of coffee. No zzzzt though as we managed to shut it off fast enough. Let it drain and dry for 4 days, plugged it back in and it works like a champ.
As a special bonus you get a nice coffee aroma when after it's first turned on.
BFL
So does this mean that Ep. III will have credits that don't last as long as the film itself since all the CGI, model and other work will be done "in house?" I thought that shit was never going to end in Ep. II (the credits...not the movie).
On a more serious note, this isn't really that surprising. 3-7 years ago, everyone and their dog was doing the diversification thing. Spin off divisions into completely separate companies that have "licensing agreements" with the parent company that allow for sweetheart deals that bulk up both company's "earnings" without any money actually changing hands.
In light of the current spotlight on corporate buttfuckery, now all these companies are bringing these spin off corps back in-house and making like nothing ever happened.
It doesn't hurt that Commandant GW Bush wants to make it so that the bigger your corporation is the less taxes you have to pay so that one $3 billion (annual revenue) corporation will pay about 1/4 the taxes of 3000 $1 million corporations.
I'm just sayin'...
BFL
10,000 dumbfucks don't make it right.
BFL
(burning some karma)
There's thousands and thousands of non-RIAA CDs released each and every year. You just have to look a little harder to find them.
Actually I totally agree with you. I've even made a couple of purchases at cdbaby (horrible service and mollasses slow shipping but great selection). I was actually just amazed at how many members they did have and who some of them were. I mean, Nettwerk is the home of a number of anti-corporate indie bands. And Grateful Dead Records (and Rhino which is distributing a fair amount of Dead stuff)? That band (though I despise them) practically invented music swapping.
FWIW, of the last dozen or so CDs I've bought, of the labels that put out those albums Yep Roc Records (Mayflies USA, The Sadies and The Bigger Lovers), Secretly Canadian (Songs:Ohia), New West (2 Slobberbone records), KimChee Records (Cordelia's Dad and PeeWee Fist), Undertow Music (Jay Bennett/Ed Burch and Centro-matic/Will Johnson/South San Gabrie) and as another poster mentioned, Barsuk records, non are RIAA members. But the vast majority of people (including Slashdotters) will likely not go any further than the top 25 rack at the local Tower Records and won't be interested in any bands that they haven't heard 2000 times on their local Clear Channel owned "alternative rock" station. That said, at least they can buy the White Stripes... Sympathy For The Record Industry isn't a member either.
BFL
I should probably post this AC but what the hell.
I'm no fan of Hillary Rosen's tactics as head of the RIAA. But it should be pointed out that she's the head of a lobbying/representative group. She does the bidding of the CEOs whose companies pony up fat wads of cash for the services of the organization that she heads. In a recent Wired article (which will be online tomorrow according to the website) she said that her job is basically to do all the unpopular shit that the record execs want her to do, while shielding them from the criticism. In other words, she's a paper tiger. Her successor will be one as well. She and the RIAA are doing the bidding of the likes of Sony, Vivendi Universal, AOL-TW and all the others. I don't see anyone giving Sean (Pissy) Coombs a hard time about the RIAA's tactics but he's as culpable (as the head of a label that is an RIAA member) as Hillary Rosen is.
If you don't like the shit the RIAA is pulling (and you shouldn't), stop buying music from companies that support the RIAA. Of course, after seeing the list here you'll have quite a hard time finding any music to buy.
BFL
What I mean is.. Suppose Bill Gates really did buy an election. Would he need to pay anyone back for the campaign expense? Or would he be free to act on his own will?
In NYC we sort of have that situation with "Mayor Mike" Bloomberg. Paid for his campign out of his own pocket, won in a relative landslide (after outspending his opponent somthing like 2:1) and is now bascially doing whatever he thinks is the right thing to do.
As a f'rinstance, since he didn't get any help in his election from the NYC Teacher's Union (the UFT), he can just announce (as he did the other day) that he's implementing a crackpot new, across the board, elementary education curriculum that he and his school superintendent (who's not an educator by training or avocation) dreamed up, without running it by the actual teachers first.
He actually said the other day that he's not trying to get re-elected, he's just trying to do what he thinks is right.
Make of this what you will but I think it does sort of answer the question. No, he wouldn't be beholden to anyone and could do whatever he thought was right. Be careful though...he wouldn't have to do what you (or "the voters") thought was right, just what HE thought was right.
Caveat votor.
BFL
...mmmmm! Porntastic.
(posted w/ Safari)
BFL
I've learned a huge amount about new music in the last 18 months since joining a listserv called Postcard From Hell. It was originally started to discuss the legendary alt.country band Uncle Tupelo and, after they broke up, its two spin-off bands/leaders Wilco/Jeff Tweedy and Son Volt/Jay Farrar. Although that is ostensibly the subject of the listserv about 95% of the music related content on the list is about other bands. I've discovered some great bands through this list and met some other people in my area who have similar musical tastes.
Try to find a listserv or newsgroup (better than Yahoo! Groups! With! All! The! Spam!) devoted to a band you already like and then see what you can find out from there. Lurk for awhile, don't just go in and blurt out stupid shit 5 minutes after you subscribe and you'll probably learn a lot. I bought about 40 CDs this past year when in the past I would have purchased 3 or 4.
BFL
I can probably deal with spending $20 or less for serious (not point) upgrades of these apps. They're great applications which for the most part have taken the place of other shareware apps. As long as there's price parity (and iDVD supports external burners) then it would probably be a good idea for Apple.
BFL
I realize that most /.ers can't even remember what they had for dinner last night but I think we've been through this one before. I know it must have been hard for the editors to find since it had such a dramatically different title..."Lab-Grown Meat. Chunks...."
Anyway, while this is interesting from a tech POV it seems like a dramatic waste of resources for its intended target. Wouldn't growing and processing soy and soy-based products be much less resource intensive?
BFL
(former vegetarian...mmmmm...steak)
but it doesn't. Companies have used their power over the legislative process to get the best of all worlds... for them. So now we can neither (legally) copy our own software/music NOR get the kind of backup and exchange service you mention.
Exactly. So what we have now is basically a license to use only that physical piece of software/hardware/whatever you have in your hand.
Lose it? Tough shit...you not only need to buy another hard copy, you have to buy another license (which is probably more onerous than the last one if the lawyers have had a go at it). Want an advanced version or one on a different type of media? Same story.
The worst of both worlds if you will.
What keeps a random website from spreading false news?
Nothing.
What keeps slashdot from spreading false news?
Theoretically moderation and Malda et al. Otherwise, the vague sense that they'd like to be taken seriously. Beyond that...nothing.
What keeps cnn.com from spreading false news?
The fact that they can be held publicly accountable. Libel/slander lawsuits prevent them from spreading false news about a particular person or organization. Public/political/advertiser pressure prevent them from spreading patently false news. Their reputation is important to them and they should, theoretically anyway, protect that.
What's cool about this idea is that you get your news weighted and vetted by people you consider trustworthy. The downside is that you need to already have a network of these people and have to know how much you can trust their judgement. If you already have such a network however, you're probably already getting emails/IMs from these people saying, "d00d...did you see this article over on totallyfuckingcoolnews.com," which renders this system redundant.
Personally, all the people that I would trust to point out interesting news to me are getting their info from the same places I am.
Cool in principle anyway. I agree with the poster who said something to the effect of, "just because you don't see the use for this doesn't mean it's not cool."
BFL
...that their network guys are better than their photographers. If not they'll be better off playing nethack over a 28K modem.
BFL
Bryant Park is more in the vein of a Parisian park (Jardins de Luxembourg for example) than Central Park. More sitting around reading the paper than playing softball.
FWIW I think the best use for this network in Bryant Park will be to kill time waiting for their summer movie series to start. Every Monday during the summer they show a classic/cult movie for free on a huge screen in Bryant Park. The idea is to drop by after work with a picnic and watch a flick. Of course, 300,000 other people have the same idea so what usually happens is that a group of people will chose one or 2 people to take the day off work and they'll go camp the park starting at 9am to get a good, big spot. Now I might not mind being the camper.
BFL
As a college student, I have more classes and assignments that I can really manage to remember without some central way of tracking them.
I got mine during my first semester of med school. Saved my life for this very reason. After 2 years of med school I took a detour to do a PhD in Molecular Biology and after the first semester of that (which was the only one with any courses) I more or less stopped using mine. I play some games on it and it's got a few phone #s that I use very ocassionaly so haven't bothered to put in my cell, but otherwise it's a paperweight.
That said, I should be finishing my PhD this next semester and heading back to med school for 2 more years so I imagine it will become much more useful soon. Especially since there are tons of medical/reference texts available for PDAs.
BFL
Actually, the answer is that some other asshole has already stolen all the copies. Seriously.
When I was a kid and had just been introduced to the idea of porn I thought to myself, "self...maybe the library has Playboy and Penthouse and Hustler...you can just go read them there." So I went to the library (which didn't seem like such a waste of time in 1981) and checked the periodicals list. Lo and behold...they carry all 3 of those mags. So I head to the magazine stacks and find, much to my 10 year old chagrin that although the boxes are there to hold the last 24 issues of Playboy and Penthouse, there are no magazines in them.
Later on when I was in high school, I asked a friend of mine who worked in the library if they actually subscribed to them and if they kept them behind the counter. Apparently they did subscribe, put them out on the shelves and they'd be gone in less than 30 minutes...never to be seen again. (Except perhaps by the janitor who had to peel them off the men's room floor.)
BFL
This is in fact how this data is currently envisioned as being used. You walk into your doctors office and give some blood for a genome screen.
The entire genome isn't sequnced...only the regions shown to be linked to a disease or to a drug response/lack of response (cytochrome P450 genes in particular). This data is then put on a mag strip card which you carry with you. when you go see another doctor with certain symptoms (weakness and persistent infections for instance), they run your card through their computer and see that you have a genetic predisposition to megalocytic anemia. Diagnosis made...we can all go home. But wait a second, your card also says that you have a mutation in one of your Cytochrome P450 genes that leads to you metabolizing drug X (whatever is used to treat megalocytic anemia 5 years from now or whenever this technology is widespread) so fast that you can't get an effective dose of it stably in your body. So rather than wasting time and money on drug X, they give you drug Y...a little more expensive perhaps but not as expensive as giving you a useless 4 week treatment of drug X followed by 4 weeks of the useful drug Y. Voila...you're diagnosed, treated and on you way to a healthier life in a matter of minutes instead of hours, days or longer.
Of course there are a whole host of scary, Gattaca-type things that could come of this data and legislation (in the US anyway where we're prone to do stupid shit at the drop of a hat) needs to be put in place and tested in the courts early to prevent discrimination based on this information. In the end however (as someone who's currently working on the research end of this stuff as a PhD student, soon to return to the clinics on the diagnostic end as a med student) this will do far more good than harm IMHO.
E
Good one. I actually had the exact same thought. Basically what we have here is a crippled (physically and processor-wise) iMac that's not quite as well designed and not nearly as attractive. Sure, it's got the lead-free mobo and boron free LCD (which I assume the iMac doesn't have) but I think the folks who this is aimed at have already gotten themselves an iMac.
I know I did. Price-wise i'm not sure this can compete with anything. 256MB RAM, a CD-ROM and a 900MHz Crusoe for USD1600? Macs are a bargain compared this. Not to mention more pleasant to use.
E
Fuck that. If we want it to be consumer friendly, let's call it Bob. Wait...didn't somebody try that already?
E
"I get at least 30 albums a month or so at 10 bucks a month. That's 10 cents each."
Yes, I'm sure this guy is a real tech junkie, early adopter hardcore geek type, what with his mad basic math $k1llz and all.
Does anyone proof this stuff?
E
Maybe an itty bitty serial hardware device that contains the more significant data, which you could carry on a keychain or something would work?
I like this idea. Maybe a little USB key like those drives? No idea on the tech side of it but it seems like a better idea than those smart card reader/smart chip on a credit card combos that seem to be just around the corner.
Any hardware dorks have an idea if this would work or not?
E
I think this is a great idea and a legitimate response to the idea that artists should get paid for their work by the people who consume that work. If only a band that people who regularly leech music take it from would do such a thing then we could really determine just how good a plan this is.
As it is, I personally would pay good money NOT to get unreleased Bon Jovi tunes. With the released stuff as bad as it is, how much ass must the unreleased tracks suck.
E
Has anyone here experienced a densely used WiFi network?
Opening day of MacWorld NY 2001. The access points on the main floor were so full that most of the time you couldn't even access the network and if you could it was slower than dial-up. There were other access areas (downstairs near the seminar rooms) that had better access and speed.
That said, as mentioned before, this can easily be alleviated with a few (hundred) extra WAPs. Dartmouth doesn't have that many students so full campus coverage with usable bandwidth for all is relatively easy to come by. Wiring it up so that every UCB student (or UT-Austin) who wanted it could have full throughput speed might be a bit on the expensive side.
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Leave it to a /.er to completely ignore reality. You don't own an Epson scanner do you? Sure you can live with it. For anyone else that wanted to use an epson scanner on Linus and use the proper quality drivers for it are all now shit out of luck! That's really the only way to look at it. GPL natzis kill useful product and cause more fear in the industry about going near GPL anything.
And you of course miss the point as well. Yes...it's a bummer that you can not currently dl the Epson Linux scanner drivers (I assume that you've already got them). But the point is that they realized that they violated a copyright/trademark style license (one that has almost no legal muscle behind it) and decided to make themselves compliant. So, for a few days/weeks, there won't be an Epson driver for the scanner but, assuming they're not full of shit, we will all soon be able to dl a driver that will be full function and comply with the license.
Nobody's going to get sued, credit will be given where it's due and (again, assuming they're not blowing smoke up our asses), Linux folk wishing to use Epson scanners (there are probably like 12 of you out there) will be able to use an officially sanctioned driver. Looks like the license works pretty decently to me.
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