They also have some prior knowledge of the tertiary structure of the protein they're simulating, by the way. So, all they've proved is that they can simulate the folding of a small protein and get results close to what experiment shows. This is a long way off from "we can predict the structure of proteins."
Besides, it tells you nothing about enzymatic activity, interaction with other proteins, interaction with small molecules and ions. . . these are not easily simulated, and certainly aren't covered by their current method. The software they're actually using is fairly standard (I don't mean this in a bad way), and isn't really the type of thing that would be useful for, say, docking experiments.
Frankly, I find David Baker's work at the U of Wasington to be far more impressive from the perspective of biology. (But still not good enough to replace Xray and NMR methods anytime before I retire.) He's not doing distributed computing though, so I guess it doesn't rise to Slashdot levels of sexiness.
By the time Folding@Home or Genome@Home actually produce data useful enough to lead to medical cures, your wristwatch will be powerful enough to fold proteins in seconds. Don't confuse a nifty theoretical exercise with experimental science. Neither the technology nor the methods are sophisticated enough for this to be of any help to people with cancer etc. I wish someone would come up with a project that actually produced useful biological data with distributed computing. BLAST@Home, maybe. Doesn't sound nearly as sexy as protein folding, I guess.
(You're still right about SETI, though. What a freakin' waste.)
Okay, it's nice to see that distributed computing is finally becoming a useful tool. Nonetheless, I don't think there's anything particularly impressive about the biological results. The proteins they're folding are so small that most factors that affect the folding and conformation of the vast majority of proteins simply don't exist. When someone accurately predicts the structure of a normal globular protein at atomic resolution, I'll be impressed. When they can predict the structure of the F1F0 ATPase, then we can throw out crystallography- but it's not going to happen. (Ignoring for the moment that crystallography has it's own issues. . . at least it can show active sites and quaternary structure)
Don't get me wrong, the geek half of me thinks that what they're doing is very cool (and far more interesting/useful than Seti@Home). But I don't think it's very relevant to biology, and I doubt it'll ever replace traditional methods. Computers have almost unlimited potential as an aid to experimental structural biology, but in silico protein folding is still a pipe dream and a hand-waving exercise. The theory is really cool, the practical applications are nearly zero.
(Disclaimer: I don't have a PhD so I'm not very qualified in this field, but I do have a BS in biology and a fair amount of experience in programming and some knowledge of molecular simulation.)
I suspect it's both. I'm pretty sure gene patents are required to define a method for extracting/detecting the sequence in vitro, which is just about the only reason they pass muster as "inventions". The patent is for the gene as a distinct substance, rather than simply as part of a cell. Conversely, I don't think you could run gene detection programs on the latest chromosome assemblies and patent any genes you find- you'd have to obtain them in a lab first.
No, but it does state that anyone down the line is free to redistribute it without royaltys, does it not? So, SAMBA team might pay Microsoft for incorporating full access protocols into their software. But if RedHat, for instance, then takes Samba, maybe modifies it a bit, and incorporates it into their OS, they can't be forced to pay Microsoft again. And Dell, which sells PCs running RedHat, can't be forced to pay MS a royalty for each of these machines. This not what the article was saying, but the requirement for a royalty payment does bar use of these protocols in GPL'd software, from what I understand. To follow Microsoft's rules, SAMBA team would have to pay MS for every copy of SAMBA that was shipped, whether or not they actually distributed it. SAMBA team can force everyone who downloads software from them to pay, but can't force everyone who downloads it (legally) from somewhere else to pay as well.
So what better things do network administrators have to do than administrate the network?
It's too early on a Monday for anyone to be this pedantic. Okay:
The net admins have better things to do than monitor the network for mp3 sharing all the time.
Satisfied? Their job is not to police their users; their job is to ensure that the network is functional and that complaints about illegal activity are handled appropriately. I don't know any admins who are able or willing to spend their day trawling for Britney on student machines, especially since the RIAA is doing that for them.
Okay, I'm going to have to re-read that section, because I totally missed what you're describing... care to give me a page/chapter number?:) I've been re-reading bits and pieces of that and the sequel all summer, because they're too rich and complex to take in at once- especially when you stay up till 7am reading them.
Fair enough- but in that case, you really shouldn't be spending extra money for guaranteed bandwidth. My family paid my way, I'm embarassed to admit, but now that I'm on my own I can't even justify the expense of a decent connection at home- and I'm a programmer, which makes it rather difficult for me to stay in touch.
The point I'm trying to make is that where I work (and went to school), there are many students who would have no problem spending extra money to enable network abuse. Private universities aren't really ever going to be true meritocracies, but I'd prefer not to see the prep-school crowd live well at my expense just because they can afford it. I'm the first to admit that I had unfair advantages going into college, but nothing like some of the people here. How well you do in college, and the extent to which you're able to benefit from the available resources, should not be dependent on your financial situation.
Put another way, what if bandwidth was metered and everyone had downloading privileges equivalent to how much they paid? It's much more fair to give certain uses of the network higher priority, regardless of who's using it, and establish a flat fee for access. I'm bitter enough about being forced to pay for cable, even though I didn't own a TV my senior year.
So everyone trying to do real work with the network gets to take it in the ass because you rich brats pay extra to saturate the T3? I don't think P2P ought to be banned, but my university is reducing P2P speeds to nearly AOL levels and I think this is terrific. All those yuppies in the dorms can go buy the CDs- I have research to do. Entertainment uses of the Internet should never be allowed to interfere with work at a research university- I don't care how much your parents are paying, but it's not for mp3 downloads.
I was told something similar a few years ago when I was one of the student support staff at my alma mater (a larger private university). The IT director said the administration got letters from the RIAA all the time reporting student computers distributing copyrighted files, and asking for the student names and contact info. The university's response was to contact the student personally, make it very clear that they were not to do this or else they'd lose their network connection, verify that they'd removed copyrighted material from public view, and then reply to the RIAA that any problem that might have existed was resolved. No admission of wrongdoing, no personal information- they handle it internally and tell the RIAA to bug off.
This is by far the most sensible policy. The net admins have better things to do than monitor the network all the time, and the administration has no desire to turn over its students to entertainment lawyers. All they care about is keeping a well-ordered network, where students don't clog the T3 and don't get lawyergrams sent to the President's office. Students have in fact been thrown off the residential network for violations, but I don't think anyone's been in trouble with outside authorities.
I know this is horrendously off-topic, but I'd just like to say that's one badass user name you have. I'm glad someone else enjoyed that book as much as I did.
It's little idiocies like this that make reading Slashdot comments both a delight and a pain in the ass. You sound like the inverse of that fake poster that says "When you're using Napster, you're supporting Communism!" Your comment is more like "Fight police brutality: support copyright infringement!"
Right, I'm not taking the small character set into account, and in this case there are newlines (but not position indices)- which might reduce the apparent repetition as far as gzip is concerned, but doesn't do much to the file size. However, there are not _really_ just four characters in any of the files, because the genome still has so many gaps. Centromere regions are a bitch to sequence, and right now the small arms of even the well-covered chromosomes are virtually blank (as far as I know), mainly because they're mostly rDNA and not as interesting. So you need to add the 'N' character, because for the time being you'll never get a completely sequenced chromosome. Even considering that sequencing technology is getting better and better, some stuff is just a pain in the ass and not really worth the extra effort in most cases.
I guess the obvious snide in joke to make here would be that since Venter's talking about this, we can assume that everyone who goes for this will end up with quite a few N's in their sequences. (sorry, I've heard a few too many Cato Institute types use Celera as an example of why we should eliminate the NIH. morons.)
Yes and no. I just tried gzipping chromosome 22 (one of the smallest) - it goes from 35MB to 10MB. The entire genome is about 3.5GB. However, keep in mind that the repetition isn't perfect, because from what I understand repeat motifs are more like regex's than simply the same sequence over and over again. A custom compression scheme could probably do much better than gzip.
I dunno. . . put a throbbing techno beat behind it, you might have something. Esepcially since so much of our genomes is actually repeated motifs like SINEs or Alu sequences. Music to clone by. Even better, take some real genes or even just the DNA encoding protein fragments, and see if you get anything interesting. (I think "Leucine Zipper" would be a badass song name.)
I'm a bioinformaticist- maybe I'll try this if I get bored some evening.
I believe that's because of the 14th amendment- local governments (or their agents, including schools) are not allowed to violate your rights under the constitution. They can provide additional rights, but not revoke those granted by the federal government. Thus the US Supreme Court can rescind state laws, or change the verdict or sentence in a death penalty case (the majority of which are not federal).
Private individuals, however, are not under the same restrictions. I'm not sure what the source of the ban against racial discrimination is; I think the SCOTUS has struck down laws that mandate it, but additional laws (state or federal) prohibit certain types of discrimination by individuals. Other things such as gay rights laws, where they exist, are local. I've never seen a law about firearm owners, though.
That's an excellent idea, and I was about to suggest the same thing. However, in this case I'd argue for Python. I'm not a huge Python junkie, and I actually use Perl for most things, but if you want it to be easy for non-hackers to script and extend you should choose a language with cleaner syntax. At the level you probably want, Python really will look like pseudocode. Perl just seems like a bad idea for this because the syntax is so. . . different. You really don't want people taking advantage of all the shortcuts it offers.
I'm suggesting this partly because there's a really excellent molecular graphics package out there called PyMOL. It's got an OpenGL core written in C, but the application itself is essentially one giant Python module, with higher-level commands and APIs written directly in Python. It also has a simplified command language- so you can extend it three different ways, and control it two different ways. Unfortunately the code is not very well documented and it's essentially a one-man job- rather difficult for me to contribute. However, the product creates beautiful images and the overall design concept is very sound. I know that several other similar programs use the same model, one using Tcl instead.
These aren't going to be directly useful for the task under discussion, but they are very similar- the more sophisticated molecular graphics programs really are like 3D modellers. It's be a good idea to check them out, since they're more accessible (i.e. open-source) and higher-quality than most regular 3D products. They're also all cross-platform.
Read the article again. They explicitly mention hepatitis research, and Harvard suing over osteoporosis research. Then there's the suggestion that HGS may be able to interfere with AIDS research. And aside from screwing other people, Big Pharma is now trying to squeeze every little bit of life out of existing products for which it has patents (or can get bogus new ones) rather than doing actual innovation.
This isn't *quantitative* evidence, but it doesn't sound like the author just pulled all this out of his ass. And as a biomedical researcher, I assure you there is a huge body of evidence to support the article's assertion which did not appear there.
I never used Kaleidoscope, but I did like to change some of the colors and fonts. Aqua is still too much style over substance. I do not care if people can sit down in front of my computer and use it- since I use Linux most of the time now anyway, very few people could use my computer. I want to have *my* computer work for *me*. I don't care about company workstations.
THANK YOU! Some common sense at last. Why is this so hard for people here to accept? Everyone gets so hung up on their particular ideology- "software should be free", "music should be shared", "strong IP law is the foundation of our economy"- that they're unable to agree on a middle ground, which is almost always best for everyone.
You don't need to be opposed to the concept Intellectual Property to recognize how screwed up our system is. I support O-S/Free Software, run Linux, oppose software patents, and dislike Microsoft, and yet at work I'm one of the only ones speaking out against our rampant piracy of Adobe and MS products.
What "Orwellian Newspeak"? Initially I assumed you were some Ann Coulter-reading lunatic, but you mention FOX along with CNN. And you speak of them all following an "Official State Position". Care to elaborate? I don't watch TV, so it's hard to know exactly what you're referring to, but I hadn't ever thought of CNN as a bunch of Bush groupies. Are you one of those people who opposes calling suicide bombers "terrorists"?
And you're still wrong, by the way; if all you watch is television news, OF COURSE you're cutting of your access to diverse ideas and viewpoints. The only one to blame is you: CNN et al. do not prevent you from seeking out other news sources, which is what "censorship" is. Go read Indymedia, for Christ's sake, and stop bawling about how network news is practicing censorship.
Re:Frequently Asked User Interface Questions
on
Inside Ximian
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· Score: 2
'i am a stupid asshole that don't know about the difference between a DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT (such as kde or gnome) and a WINDOWMANAGER (such as windowmaker or afterstep)'
The parent poster said "USER INTERFACE". Not "DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT". You do not need a desktop environment to have a user interface. Fuckwit.
I suppose since so many idiots here don't read linked articles, it was inevitable that they eventually not read relevant comments either.
Re:Frequently Asked User Interface Questions
on
Inside Ximian
·
· Score: 2
I've found WindowMaker (or AfterStep) does quite well in this regard. Sure, it's another knockoff (of a truly innovative OS), but it's nothing like Windows. It's also quite stable and much faster than GNOME or KDE. It just isn't as intuitive for first-time users, and since it doesn't behave like Windows and thus doesn't meet the demands of idiots and corporate types who think Linux needs a standard GUI, all the development effort and publicity goes into GNOME and KDE.
Slashdot Mirror
They also have some prior knowledge of the tertiary structure of the protein they're simulating, by the way. So, all they've proved is that they can simulate the folding of a small protein and get results close to what experiment shows. This is a long way off from "we can predict the structure of proteins."
Besides, it tells you nothing about enzymatic activity, interaction with other proteins, interaction with small molecules and ions. . . these are not easily simulated, and certainly aren't covered by their current method. The software they're actually using is fairly standard (I don't mean this in a bad way), and isn't really the type of thing that would be useful for, say, docking experiments.
Frankly, I find David Baker's work at the U of Wasington to be far more impressive from the perspective of biology. (But still not good enough to replace Xray and NMR methods anytime before I retire.) He's not doing distributed computing though, so I guess it doesn't rise to Slashdot levels of sexiness.
By the time Folding@Home or Genome@Home actually produce data useful enough to lead to medical cures, your wristwatch will be powerful enough to fold proteins in seconds. Don't confuse a nifty theoretical exercise with experimental science. Neither the technology nor the methods are sophisticated enough for this to be of any help to people with cancer etc. I wish someone would come up with a project that actually produced useful biological data with distributed computing. BLAST@Home, maybe. Doesn't sound nearly as sexy as protein folding, I guess.
(You're still right about SETI, though. What a freakin' waste.)
Okay, it's nice to see that distributed computing is finally becoming a useful tool. Nonetheless, I don't think there's anything particularly impressive about the biological results. The proteins they're folding are so small that most factors that affect the folding and conformation of the vast majority of proteins simply don't exist. When someone accurately predicts the structure of a normal globular protein at atomic resolution, I'll be impressed. When they can predict the structure of the F1F0 ATPase, then we can throw out crystallography- but it's not going to happen. (Ignoring for the moment that crystallography has it's own issues. . . at least it can show active sites and quaternary structure)
Don't get me wrong, the geek half of me thinks that what they're doing is very cool (and far more interesting/useful than Seti@Home). But I don't think it's very relevant to biology, and I doubt it'll ever replace traditional methods. Computers have almost unlimited potential as an aid to experimental structural biology, but in silico protein folding is still a pipe dream and a hand-waving exercise. The theory is really cool, the practical applications are nearly zero.
(Disclaimer: I don't have a PhD so I'm not very qualified in this field, but I do have a BS in biology and a fair amount of experience in programming and some knowledge of molecular simulation.)
I suspect it's both. I'm pretty sure gene patents are required to define a method for extracting/detecting the sequence in vitro, which is just about the only reason they pass muster as "inventions". The patent is for the gene as a distinct substance, rather than simply as part of a cell. Conversely, I don't think you could run gene detection programs on the latest chromosome assemblies and patent any genes you find- you'd have to obtain them in a lab first.
Regardless, it's still bullshit.
No, but it does state that anyone down the line is free to redistribute it without royaltys, does it not? So, SAMBA team might pay Microsoft for incorporating full access protocols into their software. But if RedHat, for instance, then takes Samba, maybe modifies it a bit, and incorporates it into their OS, they can't be forced to pay Microsoft again. And Dell, which sells PCs running RedHat, can't be forced to pay MS a royalty for each of these machines. This not what the article was saying, but the requirement for a royalty payment does bar use of these protocols in GPL'd software, from what I understand. To follow Microsoft's rules, SAMBA team would have to pay MS for every copy of SAMBA that was shipped, whether or not they actually distributed it. SAMBA team can force everyone who downloads software from them to pay, but can't force everyone who downloads it (legally) from somewhere else to pay as well.
try to get the cort to neatly spell out every little detail of what M$ is required to do
I'd just like to try to get Slashdot posters to spell out every little detail of their comments correctly for a change.
So what better things do network administrators have to do than administrate the network?
It's too early on a Monday for anyone to be this pedantic. Okay:
The net admins have better things to do than monitor the network for mp3 sharing all the time.
Satisfied? Their job is not to police their users; their job is to ensure that the network is functional and that complaints about illegal activity are handled appropriately. I don't know any admins who are able or willing to spend their day trawling for Britney on student machines, especially since the RIAA is doing that for them.
Okay, I'm going to have to re-read that section, because I totally missed what you're describing... care to give me a page/chapter number? :) I've been re-reading bits and pieces of that and the sequel all summer, because they're too rich and complex to take in at once- especially when you stay up till 7am reading them.
Fair enough- but in that case, you really shouldn't be spending extra money for guaranteed bandwidth. My family paid my way, I'm embarassed to admit, but now that I'm on my own I can't even justify the expense of a decent connection at home- and I'm a programmer, which makes it rather difficult for me to stay in touch.
The point I'm trying to make is that where I work (and went to school), there are many students who would have no problem spending extra money to enable network abuse. Private universities aren't really ever going to be true meritocracies, but I'd prefer not to see the prep-school crowd live well at my expense just because they can afford it. I'm the first to admit that I had unfair advantages going into college, but nothing like some of the people here. How well you do in college, and the extent to which you're able to benefit from the available resources, should not be dependent on your financial situation.
Put another way, what if bandwidth was metered and everyone had downloading privileges equivalent to how much they paid? It's much more fair to give certain uses of the network higher priority, regardless of who's using it, and establish a flat fee for access. I'm bitter enough about being forced to pay for cable, even though I didn't own a TV my senior year.
So everyone trying to do real work with the network gets to take it in the ass because you rich brats pay extra to saturate the T3? I don't think P2P ought to be banned, but my university is reducing P2P speeds to nearly AOL levels and I think this is terrific. All those yuppies in the dorms can go buy the CDs- I have research to do. Entertainment uses of the Internet should never be allowed to interfere with work at a research university- I don't care how much your parents are paying, but it's not for mp3 downloads.
I was told something similar a few years ago when I was one of the student support staff at my alma mater (a larger private university). The IT director said the administration got letters from the RIAA all the time reporting student computers distributing copyrighted files, and asking for the student names and contact info. The university's response was to contact the student personally, make it very clear that they were not to do this or else they'd lose their network connection, verify that they'd removed copyrighted material from public view, and then reply to the RIAA that any problem that might have existed was resolved. No admission of wrongdoing, no personal information- they handle it internally and tell the RIAA to bug off.
This is by far the most sensible policy. The net admins have better things to do than monitor the network all the time, and the administration has no desire to turn over its students to entertainment lawyers. All they care about is keeping a well-ordered network, where students don't clog the T3 and don't get lawyergrams sent to the President's office. Students have in fact been thrown off the residential network for violations, but I don't think anyone's been in trouble with outside authorities.
I know this is horrendously off-topic, but I'd just like to say that's one badass user name you have. I'm glad someone else enjoyed that book as much as I did.
It's little idiocies like this that make reading Slashdot comments both a delight and a pain in the ass. You sound like the inverse of that fake poster that says "When you're using Napster, you're supporting Communism!" Your comment is more like "Fight police brutality: support copyright infringement!"
Right, I'm not taking the small character set into account, and in this case there are newlines (but not position indices)- which might reduce the apparent repetition as far as gzip is concerned, but doesn't do much to the file size. However, there are not _really_ just four characters in any of the files, because the genome still has so many gaps. Centromere regions are a bitch to sequence, and right now the small arms of even the well-covered chromosomes are virtually blank (as far as I know), mainly because they're mostly rDNA and not as interesting. So you need to add the 'N' character, because for the time being you'll never get a completely sequenced chromosome. Even considering that sequencing technology is getting better and better, some stuff is just a pain in the ass and not really worth the extra effort in most cases.
I guess the obvious snide in joke to make here would be that since Venter's talking about this, we can assume that everyone who goes for this will end up with quite a few N's in their sequences. (sorry, I've heard a few too many Cato Institute types use Celera as an example of why we should eliminate the NIH. morons.)
Yes and no. I just tried gzipping chromosome 22 (one of the smallest) - it goes from 35MB to 10MB. The entire genome is about 3.5GB. However, keep in mind that the repetition isn't perfect, because from what I understand repeat motifs are more like regex's than simply the same sequence over and over again. A custom compression scheme could probably do much better than gzip.
I dunno. . . put a throbbing techno beat behind it, you might have something. Esepcially since so much of our genomes is actually repeated motifs like SINEs or Alu sequences. Music to clone by. Even better, take some real genes or even just the DNA encoding protein fragments, and see if you get anything interesting. (I think "Leucine Zipper" would be a badass song name.)
I'm a bioinformaticist- maybe I'll try this if I get bored some evening.
I believe that's because of the 14th amendment- local governments (or their agents, including schools) are not allowed to violate your rights under the constitution. They can provide additional rights, but not revoke those granted by the federal government. Thus the US Supreme Court can rescind state laws, or change the verdict or sentence in a death penalty case (the majority of which are not federal).
Private individuals, however, are not under the same restrictions. I'm not sure what the source of the ban against racial discrimination is; I think the SCOTUS has struck down laws that mandate it, but additional laws (state or federal) prohibit certain types of discrimination by individuals. Other things such as gay rights laws, where they exist, are local. I've never seen a law about firearm owners, though.
That's an excellent idea, and I was about to suggest the same thing. However, in this case I'd argue for Python. I'm not a huge Python junkie, and I actually use Perl for most things, but if you want it to be easy for non-hackers to script and extend you should choose a language with cleaner syntax. At the level you probably want, Python really will look like pseudocode. Perl just seems like a bad idea for this because the syntax is so. . . different. You really don't want people taking advantage of all the shortcuts it offers.
I'm suggesting this partly because there's a really excellent molecular graphics package out there called PyMOL. It's got an OpenGL core written in C, but the application itself is essentially one giant Python module, with higher-level commands and APIs written directly in Python. It also has a simplified command language- so you can extend it three different ways, and control it two different ways. Unfortunately the code is not very well documented and it's essentially a one-man job- rather difficult for me to contribute. However, the product creates beautiful images and the overall design concept is very sound. I know that several other similar programs use the same model, one using Tcl instead.
These aren't going to be directly useful for the task under discussion, but they are very similar- the more sophisticated molecular graphics programs really are like 3D modellers. It's be a good idea to check them out, since they're more accessible (i.e. open-source) and higher-quality than most regular 3D products. They're also all cross-platform.
Read the article again. They explicitly mention hepatitis research, and Harvard suing over osteoporosis research. Then there's the suggestion that HGS may be able to interfere with AIDS research. And aside from screwing other people, Big Pharma is now trying to squeeze every little bit of life out of existing products for which it has patents (or can get bogus new ones) rather than doing actual innovation.
This isn't *quantitative* evidence, but it doesn't sound like the author just pulled all this out of his ass. And as a biomedical researcher, I assure you there is a huge body of evidence to support the article's assertion which did not appear there.
I never used Kaleidoscope, but I did like to change some of the colors and fonts. Aqua is still too much style over substance. I do not care if people can sit down in front of my computer and use it- since I use Linux most of the time now anyway, very few people could use my computer. I want to have *my* computer work for *me*. I don't care about company workstations.
THANK YOU! Some common sense at last. Why is this so hard for people here to accept? Everyone gets so hung up on their particular ideology- "software should be free", "music should be shared", "strong IP law is the foundation of our economy"- that they're unable to agree on a middle ground, which is almost always best for everyone.
You don't need to be opposed to the concept Intellectual Property to recognize how screwed up our system is. I support O-S/Free Software, run Linux, oppose software patents, and dislike Microsoft, and yet at work I'm one of the only ones speaking out against our rampant piracy of Adobe and MS products.
What "Orwellian Newspeak"? Initially I assumed you were some Ann Coulter-reading lunatic, but you mention FOX along with CNN. And you speak of them all following an "Official State Position". Care to elaborate? I don't watch TV, so it's hard to know exactly what you're referring to, but I hadn't ever thought of CNN as a bunch of Bush groupies. Are you one of those people who opposes calling suicide bombers "terrorists"?
And you're still wrong, by the way; if all you watch is television news, OF COURSE you're cutting of your access to diverse ideas and viewpoints. The only one to blame is you: CNN et al. do not prevent you from seeking out other news sources, which is what "censorship" is. Go read Indymedia, for Christ's sake, and stop bawling about how network news is practicing censorship.
From the article: Some days he clocked 11 hours.
11 hours? Pussy.
'i am a stupid asshole that don't know about the difference between a DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT (such as kde or gnome) and a WINDOWMANAGER (such as windowmaker or afterstep)'
The parent poster said "USER INTERFACE". Not "DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT". You do not need a desktop environment to have a user interface. Fuckwit.
I suppose since so many idiots here don't read linked articles, it was inevitable that they eventually not read relevant comments either.
I've found WindowMaker (or AfterStep) does quite well in this regard. Sure, it's another knockoff (of a truly innovative OS), but it's nothing like Windows. It's also quite stable and much faster than GNOME or KDE. It just isn't as intuitive for first-time users, and since it doesn't behave like Windows and thus doesn't meet the demands of idiots and corporate types who think Linux needs a standard GUI, all the development effort and publicity goes into GNOME and KDE.