You're missing part of the point. If people are content to play older games, the revenue stream for software makers will dry up. I love 3D shooters too, but how many more games do we need based on the Q3 or UT engines? The only games I've ever truly been addicted to are Angband and Escape Velocity, both of which ran fine on my 68040 Macintosh. As much as I respect the work that ID and others are doing, I just can't see myself paying for it when I can play classic games for free.
The software developers won't re-release these classic games because it would be detrimental to their main products. By abandoning titles after a few years, they essentially force you to upgrade. I'm not saying this is the primary motivating factor, but it's certainly an important part. Some people will always buy the latest and greatest, for a variety of reasons; the rest of us only do so when pushed.
This is the way the software industry works. How many Word users need more functionality than Word 5.1 provided? Furthermore, if you can keep people on an insane upgrade cycle, you force them to buy new hardware as well. If each new version of Windows was capable of running faster on older hardware thanks to tighter, more optimized programming rather than feature bloat, the PC makers would revolt. There were stories this summer about charities not being able to get ahold of Windows 3.1 or 95 for the old crappy (but functional) PCs they distribute except at exorbitant prices. It's the exact same problem.
Don't get carried away here, cowboy. When government-supported death squads show up to rape your wife and butcher your kids because you've been running Linux, then we've got a real comparison. Take a look at the actions of US oil companies in, say, Nigeria or Myannmar, and then tell me that AOL or MS is "evil". Even these are nothing in comparison with the "Axis of Evil". I realize living in one of the most liberal countries on earth makes some of us forget what real oppression is, but it's hard to compare media conglomeration with the gassing of minority civilians. As far as China- it's now what, 1.2 billion? I'm graduating from college in three months, and would rather not be drafted to fight the Red Army.
Your comments on conservative media are interesting. The New York Times, one of the most widely respected news sources, has regularly ripped into Bush on the editorial page. I don't have to look hard to find views opposing the administration's actions. Do you live in the Deep South or something?
Finally, *mainstream* writers have been predicting the rise of fascism in the US for a century- Jack London and Sinclair Lewis come to mind. The fact that so far none of this has come to pass would be indication to most sensible Americans that although continued vigilance against possible tyranny is important, our system is generally both resistant and resilient. We've survived worse in the past.
Okay, but he's arguing in that link you gave before that the "irreducible complexity" of molecular motors negates evolution and proves intelligent design. That's my objection. If he were instead to say that "current knowledge of molecular evolution does not explain the existence of these structures", I'd agree. He's taking the stand that the debate is over, when in fact our knowledge of the subject isn't necessarily any less primitive than Darwin's knowledge of vision.
By the way, how does one investigate intelligent design theory? You thinking about something like in "Contact" (not biology, but same idea)?
Just skimming it, I have two points, one philosophical, one scientific:
- Behe points out that some of Darwin's arguments avoided the question of origins for some biological processes (e.g. eyesight) because the science of the time wasn't equipped to address them. I'd argue things aren't any different now. We're working on a vastly smaller scale and are much better informed, but the issues he tackles are on the far frontiers of structural biology and molecular evolution.
- There are cases where protein motor function exists without being used for real motion. Quite a few articles have been published on the "proton pump" ATPase. This is considered a classical example of a molecular motor, but its function is entirely different from dynein or myosin. This doesn't mean a thing, except that Behe is drawing too many conclusions with his argument of irreducible complexity; it seems very premature to say that the component proteins could not have arisen independently. There are many examples of large conformational changes in proteins, not necessarily having anything to do with locomotion on any scale.
Behe's work is interesting; he raises important questions that are well worth addressing. I think he's a little too eager to declare the issue resolved in favor of molecular design, though. I can't argue that evolution presents a well-formulated answer to these problems, but I don't see any reason why it can't or won't, eventually.
The highly indignant researcher from Penn was using a patented research tool which was very expensive to invent and perfect.
See, this is what bugs me so much about scientific discussions on Slashdot- for every expert in the field, there's always one idiot who makes a forceful argument based on a complete lack of understanding.
Anyway, you need to read up on DNA testing, PCR, gene expression, genome analysis, and gene finding. I'm guessing the genetic test the Penn researcher was doing was for a defective form of a certain gene- could be just a single polymorphism. This could be done from a simple tissue sample, probably, and wouldn't require use of Myriad's "invention" or "perfection". Anyone can get the proper homologous sequences for detection made up with the right amount of money- my university has it's own center for this.
Secondly, gene finding is more a matter of hard work than of genius or innovation- hardly meeting the "non-obvious" requirement. There are many methods, but right now it could be as simple as this:
- run a gene-finding program against the raw sequence
- find matches to suspected genes in protein databases
and in some cases you can have an almost certain functional identification of the given gene this way- and you can do it all by computer. This isn't like some super-drug that took teams of researchers years to synthesize, it's a natural product that's relatively easy to find and characterize, with a huge probability of multiple independent discovery.
The real problem is that these genes aren't inventions at all- they are no more than discoveries, however much the biotech corps try to twist definitions. An invention might be something like a human-modified gene that when expressed yields a desireable product. But in this case the protein product would be the better target for a patent.
This is the real indignity- biotechs aren't coming up with useful products, they're just patenting genes like mad in the hope of coming up with a product later. In the case that someone else independently makes a product, they're besieged by lawyers. Myriad couldn't come up with a use for their patented gene, but they're willing to sue a publically-funded researcher to prevent her from performing a valuable medical service that doesn't even require their data. They're parasites, pure and simple, and the single largest reason why we need projects like the HGP. I think the public research centers should begin patenting every new gene and licensing it free of charge, just to keep companies like Myriad from screwing real scientists.
I thought the point of contention is not actual interoperability between the clients, but in use of the buddy lists. Access to buddy lists requires access to AOL's servers. Hence, anyone needing to replicate the function of buddy lists on their third-party client must be able to connect to AOL's servers, without asking AOL's permission. I'm almost certain there was a story about this a while ago that explicitly stated that the IM protocol was easily replicated by Yahoo, MSN, etc., but that buddy lists were the real obstacle.
Correct me if I'm wrong, please. AOL has spent a substantial amount of money on the infrastructure, and is giving away a free client with the caveat that it will display ads. AOL loses this ad revenue if other people hack into its network. I hate AOL's service, and I never use AIM, but I'm not under the delusion that they should have to allow other companies unfettered access to its resources. What the makers of Trillian are doing seems like grounds for a lawsuit or computer crime investigation.
As of the time I'm reading this, there are at least twenty similar comments. Yours is the last. Congratulations, you're both stupid and slow.
What's the point of a moderated forum if no one reads the other comments? Fucking morons. You're making certain editors look far more professional and quick-witted than they deserve.
RedHat seems to be doing better than ever, even to the point of making a profit. On the other hand, by the time AOL bought Netscape, that company was already pretty much dead in the water. Therefore, such comparisons aren't especially apt. What makes Alan and the Slashbots so sure that AOL will fuck this up?
I agree, that column on O'Reilly made a lot of sense. But it didn't sound like Alan was citing creative differences as a reason for leaving, because he certainly can't know what the fuck AOL plans for RedHat. Does he think AOL execs will tell him which parts of the kernel to patch? No, it sounds like Alan is being a big crybaby, again. Stallmanesque hysteria serves no one- WTF is Slashdot posting this guy's drivel, anyway?
I haven't given this much thought- I'm a technical user, not an open-source/free software fanboy, and as long as I can avoid running Microsoft's excrement on my computers I'm happy. I tend to agree that AOL will find a way to fuck RedHat up in some fashion- maybe making Linux popular at last while producing a distro that's unusable for my purposes. But Alan's claim of feeling "insulted" is just dumb- thank god Linus is the "voice of Linux", not Alan.
Re:Vernor Vinge: My Hero
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True Names
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· Score: 1
Jesus Christ, Michael, what the fuck were you thinking when you posted this story? I knew this asshole Mentifex would blow his load when he saw the perfect opportunity to spam us with his AI project. Maybe he's not offtopic this time, but he's sure as hell a troll.
You're missing the point. C# barely exists right now, and "being implemented" is a lot different from "has been implemented" when you're teaching intro CS. There's no good reason to switch to it except for the inevitability of Microsoft dominance in the market. Java is already being used widely and was cross-platform from the beginning, which Sun intended. I don't see anything like VS.NET or the.NET ADO being released for non-MS platforms right now, and I doubt MS will take the initiative to do this.
Besides, I've seen statistics that say Java will soon become the most popular language in the world. It's an industry standard, at least. Hell, I don't even like Java. I hate writing Java code- ends up all looking like "public static class Monkey extends Ape throws Feces" and you have to use constructs like "Calendar.toDate(new CalendarInstance).printDate("D", DateFormat(1))" or some such nonsense to print the day. I think they should teach the class in Python. Java is okay, I guess. But C#? Give me a fucking break.
I'm not saying those are my reasons for objecting to the use of Microsoft products- I object to them because I feel they are awfully written and I find them actually more difficult to use than the alternatives (too techy compared to Mac, too inefficient compared to Linux). What I object to is when people champion MS products based on the name alone. I tell non-Unix people to use MS Office, because I don't much care for the alternatives (not that I like Office all that much...), but I wouldn't ever tell someone to learn programming with C#.
This works both ways- at one of my jobs we developed a bunch of projects on a coworker's Linux desktop/server. When the projects were ready to use the entire thing was moved to a Sun Blade 100, because that's what the official admins were familiar with. Switching admins didn't help much, but that box was a headache. I don't have anything against Solaris, but that was a stupid mistake- we weren't in any position to get any real technical advantage by using Sun products.
My university (one of the top in the US, supposedly) just started teaching the intro CS class (for non-coders) using C#. Why? God only knows. They used to teach it in Java- they switched from Pascal very early on, which was probably a bad choice. But now Java is superbly well-documented, and becoming an industry standard. C# may become an industry standard, but only because MS is behind it. So now that course is essentially Windows-only. (The standard data structures and systems programming courses are, of course, still done on Unix- by now, of course, in the form of RedHat 7)
There are quite a few people who push Linux as the best and only solution. These people are dorks. However, most of us react more strongly to MS products being pushed as the best and only solutions because:
- MS software pricing is an obscenity.
- Linux companies haven't used illegal coercion to make their products the market leaders.
- Until recently, people did not choose Linux-based solutions simply because they had the word "Linux" in them.
- the possibility of single-vendor lock-in is virtually nonexistent for Linux.
I work part-time in tech support here, and I cannot tell you how annoying it is to have to deal with all the Microsoft fanboys who think Windows is the final point in computing evolution. These are techincally astute students, among the brightest in the world, and incapable of dealing with anything that doesn't have the Start menu and Explorer. For my part, I'm glad I'm studying computational biology, where MS products are by and large recognized as utter garbage. If Windows ever becomes the platform of choice for serious scientific computing, I'm going to law school instead.
Wow, we do this too. Our NIS/main file server is Morgoth, Balin and Thorin are our web servers, Aragorn and Pippin are SGI workstations, Frodo is one of our dual Xeon work nodes, and most of the desktops are named after dwarves.
Our general-purpose Windows 2000 machine is named after Grishnakh the Hill Orc (my choice).
Actually, it was a pretty fair statement (and I'm a US citizen and about as white as they get). This is a case of criminal negligence at the very least. Norton ought to be thrown out for this; same would have applied to Babbitt.
Some AC made a snide remark about the Indians simply not getting taxpayer money. Wrong, dipshit. This trust is revenue made from management of the lands held in trust for the Indians, after they got kicked off of the original reservations to make way for settlers. The government was supposed to "collect and disburse to the Indians any revenues generated by mining, oil and gas extraction", etc., and return it to the Indians. This is not about welfare, this is about yet another breach of treaty.
Basically, the government professes to have no idea where the money is, how much there is, etc. Racism was responsible for the Indians being booted off their old reservations; most likely the bureaucrats managing the trust decided since it was just a bunch of Indians, no one would care. I can only assume this is what is happening now.
I dislike hearing racism blamed for every problem an ethnic minority may have, but this is a genuinely sickening case. I don't have liberal guilt over how my ancestors profitted from the destruction of the Indians, but this is elitist government at its worst. Norton should resign for her disgraceful conduct in this affair, and some people should face criminal charges.
Oh god, you again? Jesus, some people just don't know when to put the bong down. I'm sick of hearing about your artificial minds. If your artificial mind can write my history paper by monday at 9:30, then I'll start caring.
Moderators, you know what to do. Check this weirdo's previous posts out.
Ack. This was an April fool's joke, remember? Perl6 development is partly based around a VM called "parrot" because it should be reusable for other languages, e.g. Python. I don't see any indication on the python home page that they're planning on using it, though. It's a neat idea, but it's a long way from being a "shared backend" for python as well as perl, and the Parrot home page makes it quite clear that its principle use is for Perl6.
Re:I need this like I need colonic irrigation
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Galeon 1.0 Released
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You're missing part of my point, as is the AC who told me to "BUY A NEW FUCKING COMPUTER". I'm pissed because the bloat is useless, *and* because it slows down all web use no matter what. Why spend $2000(*) on a new PC so complex pages can suck only half as much? Even on the ones that render fine, I do not need animations and dynamic content to entice me. I find virtually all such embellishments to be useless distractions, and quite frequently they interfere with actual use of the page (e.g. pop-ups. whoever made the decision to allow disablement of pop-ups in Konqueror and Galeon are fuckin' gods. I love you guys, whoever you are).
My point is that a new PC will not vastly increase my enjoyment or use of online content. I do not need Flash, ever, but many sites feel their content is not good enough to stand on its own without some $200/hour consultant's animated excrescence bursting from the screen. And either Netscape's plugin handling sucks worse than I thought or these people don't know what HTML is, because I *always* get little popups saying "This site requires the plugin blah blah blah."
The real problem with the SGI (Indigo 2, by the way, and a very decent 256MB of memory) is that that Netscape 4.7 for IRIX is the single worst piece of software I have ever encountered, surpassing even Windows Me. It is a truly embarassing piece of work. I would point out that on my 300Mhz Pentium II laptop (128MB of memory) the Web is almost as awful; Netscape tends to freeze altogether rather than crash on Linux, most of the time. On the Athlon at work, at least it loads decently. Still, even on the Athlon the bloat of the Web is noticable and obnoxious.
(*) I say $2000 because for a new computer to be worthwhile, it'd have to totally kick the shit out of the current ones. I want to make a real investment. The SGI was $200, plus a $100 memory upgrade. Like I said, it does almost everything I need. A new computer would need 1GB of memory, SCSI, GeForce2 or better, 15" TFT, etc. Otherwise, what's the point? Anyone who thinks I should upgrade my computer to be able to handle Flash and Java plugins is out of their mind.
I need this like I need colonic irrigation
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Galeon 1.0 Released
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Netscape 4.7 crashes all the fucking time. It's really an obscenity. It's bad on Linux, but atrocious on IRIX- which I still use for a number of weird reasons (nice UI, classy computer)- and this is quite unfortunate since I like the way Netscape renders on IRIX. I'll try to buy books online and the browser keeps going down like a transvestite in a subway restroom. If I turn JavaScript off, stability is fine- and pages look like ass or don't even load. Especially if they're made for IE.
Galeon's home page uses DIV and SPAN tags everywhere. I get one column about an inch wide on the left with all text and images. My CPU sounds like it's about to puke. Turn JS off, and I get a 1994-style page with gray background. None of the web pages I create have this problem, but I'm not trying to awe people with my mastery of Dreamweaver. If it can't be done in Vi or Emacs, it's not worth doing.
I'm with Jamie Zawinski on this one. The web has become a giant, soggy mess, and it seems as if the fall of the dotcoms has made everyone even more desperate to prove they've got their shit together by throwing up a huge Flash/Java/DHTML/pop-up-enabled masturbatory home page. My computer used to be used for number crunching and modelling- still makes a great X terminal and molecular graphics workstation- but that 150Mhz MIPS CPU doesn't stand a chance against today's web.
Galeon appears to have some useful features. Perhaps it'll suck less than Netscape 6.1 on Linux. Konqueror is nice, except that running it on anything other than Linux (or perhaps BSD) is rather troublesome, and it's still unstable, and I only get 8bit color running it remotely over X. I would pay cash for a browser that would ignore pop-ups, ignore Flash, ignore Java, and render all pages correctly and quickly. In the meantime, I'm going to have to keep running 'killall netscape' every thirty minutes. I could get a better computer, but this one does almost everything I need. I guess faster 3D would be nice- and compiling can be sluggish- but why should I upgrade my computer to use the Web? This thing blew away any PC on the market when Netscape 1 came out. I refuse to be sucked into the forced-obsolescence cycle. Fuck the economy, I like my computers old and working.
That giant sucking noise you hear is my computer loading msnbc.com.
This isn't going to help them as far as the bandwidth problem goes, but Intel now offers their Fortran compiler free for unsupported noncommercial use. This includes F90, which opens up a lot more opportunities. It does need a (free, still) license, so it's a little tricky to obtain, but still very worthwhile. As far as I've seen it's the only free F90 compiler for Linux and the only free F77 compiler besides g77, and it's likely to be far faster than g77 as well.
Fuckin' A. That was one incredible movie. Well written, *well acted*, great camerawork, stunning fight scenes. The one with blindfolds was incredible. I need to buy this on DVD, soon.
I don't usually expect that much from a Jet Li movie either, but even some of the worse ones I've seen- like "Black Mask"- have at least been good trashy fun. What pissed me off about "The One" was that even the fight scenes weren't too great. Jet Li is the type of guy who shouldn't use special effects, and this movie heaped them on. "Kiss of the Dragon" wasn't a very good movie, but at least when he got a chance to give a beatdown he did it without effects, and looked superb.
Yeah, Mark (?) Neumann, one of the Republican Revolutionaries of '94, ran an aggressive campaign. Feingold steadfastly refused to take soft money, and nearly lost as a result of this. That was an interesting year; Linda Smith, an ultra-conservative Washington representative, lost her senate bid partly because the RNC refused to fund her until the last minute because she too was a strong finance reform advocate. She's about as far to the right as Russ is to the left, but I felt sorry for her just on principle. I was shocked that Mitch McConnell didn't lose his position in the party after these twin disasters. I do not, however, think the DNC helped at all- they wanted to very much, and he resisted.
I met Russ once shortly after he joined the Senate- he gave us a tour of Congress (my dad knew him from the UofWisc). I agree with one of the posters above- aside from McCain, he's one of the only politicians I can feel good about. I may violently disagree with their political stands at times, but I honestly believe it's based on principle, not pandering. I'm afraid he won't last through next election- the GOP will rip him to shreds with their ads.
Everyone's TCP/IP stack is based on the BSD stack. All other IP-based stacks died a merciful death long ago. The Berkeley version was written relatively early in the history of the Internet (c. 1980); a more recent version is being used of course, but it isn't lifted from FreeBSD or anything.
It's under the BSD license because it's meant to promote interoperability. The original stack, I believe, was written (by Bill Joy, perhaps?) because the existing ones were so shitty. It was intended as a standard to be used by everyone. If not for this sort of work, we'd be stuck with IPX, AppleTalk, DECnet, etc. At any rate, the frequently-repeated declaration that MS (here, Linux) is using BSD code misses the mark quite a bit. The Internet is essentially built on that code at this point. Try finding a modern OS that doesn't support sockets- that's a Berkeley innovation. FreeBSD and the like are as about far removed from that original code as Linux is.
The difference here is that the TCP/IP stack was intended from the beginning to be incorporated everywhere; it wasn't based on any stupid philosophy about free software. Same idea as X11- they're more interested in promoting an open standard, in this case with large amounts of code (which is ultimately less important than the standard itself- what if "TCP/IP" were GPL'd, or patented?). MS is right that code like that should be under a very unrestrictive license. Other innovations, like scripting languages, daemons, OS kernels, compilers, etc., should be under whatever license the writer feels like. Every license has its place, despite what the fruitcakes here say.
2. The revolutionaries fought to liberate their homeland from what they perceived as foreign occupation. They did not blow up babies.
3. bin Laden *was* a freedom fighter; we trained him for that, remember? Now he's a terrorist. The attacks on US military abroad can be regarded as "freedom fighting", I suppose; we do have sizable forces in Saudi Arabia. The WTC can not.
4. Keep in mind that most of bin Laden's victims previous to Sept. 11th were the unfortunate African civilians in our embassies- very few Americans died. It was an attack on us (the USA), but we suffered the least overall.
I find it disturbing that so many leftists have been looking for justification for the WTC attacks and decrying the US retaliation while ignoring the embassies. We (rather, Clinton) fucked up afterwards by bombing Sudan, but bin Laden still deserves to die for what he did in Tanzania alone. The idea that the deaths of US civilians somehow equate to the deaths of civilians at the hands of the US military is simply disgusting, but the idea that all those African civilians don't matter in this debate is disgusting and racist.
I'm getting pretty sick of these arguments. Millions are starving in Iraq because Sadaam would rather build up his army and palaces than feed his people. The sanctions have been a humanitarian disaster, yes, but that's ultimately his fault, not ours.
Get the facts straight, dickhead. bin Laden used civilian aircraft as bombs to take out civilian buildings, with the explicit purpose of causing civilian casualties. The embassy bombings of '98 weren't even directed at US power, and killed mostly innocent African civilians. The US has merely created obstacles to Iraqi trade, but unfortunately Iraq's people suffer while its bioweapons and nuclear projects continue. All you wannabe activists need to direct your "Food not bombs" whining at Hussein, not the US gov't.
No, no, no. The Constitution establishes limits on what the government can do, not on what corporations can do. It might be entirely possible (though rather stupid) for Congress to pass a law saying "no citizen shall be deprived of their 1st amendment rights as a result of contracts entered into", but that hasn't happened yet. The best example would be an NDA- you don't have a legal right to violate an NDA you've signed in the name of "free speech".
Lots of organizations restrict your freedom of speech- like my university, for instance. If you don't like it, you're free to deal with someone else. They can't exile you to Siberia or have you shot for sedition, unlike governments.
Frankly, I think such clauses are absurd. The logo, sure, but the HTML editor? Some junior partner in a Seattle law firm is trying waaay too hard. However, no one is forcing you to use FrontPage, and why would you use Frontpage if you think MS sucks? Duh. I use vi on Linux/IRIX, so this sounds like lots of fuss about nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
You're missing part of the point. If people are content to play older games, the revenue stream for software makers will dry up. I love 3D shooters too, but how many more games do we need based on the Q3 or UT engines? The only games I've ever truly been addicted to are Angband and Escape Velocity, both of which ran fine on my 68040 Macintosh. As much as I respect the work that ID and others are doing, I just can't see myself paying for it when I can play classic games for free.
The software developers won't re-release these classic games because it would be detrimental to their main products. By abandoning titles after a few years, they essentially force you to upgrade. I'm not saying this is the primary motivating factor, but it's certainly an important part. Some people will always buy the latest and greatest, for a variety of reasons; the rest of us only do so when pushed.
This is the way the software industry works. How many Word users need more functionality than Word 5.1 provided? Furthermore, if you can keep people on an insane upgrade cycle, you force them to buy new hardware as well. If each new version of Windows was capable of running faster on older hardware thanks to tighter, more optimized programming rather than feature bloat, the PC makers would revolt. There were stories this summer about charities not being able to get ahold of Windows 3.1 or 95 for the old crappy (but functional) PCs they distribute except at exorbitant prices. It's the exact same problem.
-Nat
Don't get carried away here, cowboy. When government-supported death squads show up to rape your wife and butcher your kids because you've been running Linux, then we've got a real comparison. Take a look at the actions of US oil companies in, say, Nigeria or Myannmar, and then tell me that AOL or MS is "evil". Even these are nothing in comparison with the "Axis of Evil". I realize living in one of the most liberal countries on earth makes some of us forget what real oppression is, but it's hard to compare media conglomeration with the gassing of minority civilians. As far as China- it's now what, 1.2 billion? I'm graduating from college in three months, and would rather not be drafted to fight the Red Army.
Your comments on conservative media are interesting. The New York Times, one of the most widely respected news sources, has regularly ripped into Bush on the editorial page. I don't have to look hard to find views opposing the administration's actions. Do you live in the Deep South or something?
Finally, *mainstream* writers have been predicting the rise of fascism in the US for a century- Jack London and Sinclair Lewis come to mind. The fact that so far none of this has come to pass would be indication to most sensible Americans that although continued vigilance against possible tyranny is important, our system is generally both resistant and resilient. We've survived worse in the past.
Okay, but he's arguing in that link you gave before that the "irreducible complexity" of molecular motors negates evolution and proves intelligent design. That's my objection. If he were instead to say that "current knowledge of molecular evolution does not explain the existence of these structures", I'd agree. He's taking the stand that the debate is over, when in fact our knowledge of the subject isn't necessarily any less primitive than Darwin's knowledge of vision.
By the way, how does one investigate intelligent design theory? You thinking about something like in "Contact" (not biology, but same idea)?
Just skimming it, I have two points, one philosophical, one scientific:
- Behe points out that some of Darwin's arguments avoided the question of origins for some biological processes (e.g. eyesight) because the science of the time wasn't equipped to address them. I'd argue things aren't any different now. We're working on a vastly smaller scale and are much better informed, but the issues he tackles are on the far frontiers of structural biology and molecular evolution.
- There are cases where protein motor function exists without being used for real motion. Quite a few articles have been published on the "proton pump" ATPase. This is considered a classical example of a molecular motor, but its function is entirely different from dynein or myosin. This doesn't mean a thing, except that Behe is drawing too many conclusions with his argument of irreducible complexity; it seems very premature to say that the component proteins could not have arisen independently. There are many examples of large conformational changes in proteins, not necessarily having anything to do with locomotion on any scale.
Behe's work is interesting; he raises important questions that are well worth addressing. I think he's a little too eager to declare the issue resolved in favor of molecular design, though. I can't argue that evolution presents a well-formulated answer to these problems, but I don't see any reason why it can't or won't, eventually.
The highly indignant researcher from Penn was using a patented research tool which was very expensive to invent and perfect.
See, this is what bugs me so much about scientific discussions on Slashdot- for every expert in the field, there's always one idiot who makes a forceful argument based on a complete lack of understanding.
Anyway, you need to read up on DNA testing, PCR, gene expression, genome analysis, and gene finding. I'm guessing the genetic test the Penn researcher was doing was for a defective form of a certain gene- could be just a single polymorphism. This could be done from a simple tissue sample, probably, and wouldn't require use of Myriad's "invention" or "perfection". Anyone can get the proper homologous sequences for detection made up with the right amount of money- my university has it's own center for this.
Secondly, gene finding is more a matter of hard work than of genius or innovation- hardly meeting the "non-obvious" requirement. There are many methods, but right now it could be as simple as this:
- run a gene-finding program against the raw sequence
- find matches to suspected genes in protein databases
and in some cases you can have an almost certain functional identification of the given gene this way- and you can do it all by computer. This isn't like some super-drug that took teams of researchers years to synthesize, it's a natural product that's relatively easy to find and characterize, with a huge probability of multiple independent discovery.
The real problem is that these genes aren't inventions at all- they are no more than discoveries, however much the biotech corps try to twist definitions. An invention might be something like a human-modified gene that when expressed yields a desireable product. But in this case the protein product would be the better target for a patent.
This is the real indignity- biotechs aren't coming up with useful products, they're just patenting genes like mad in the hope of coming up with a product later. In the case that someone else independently makes a product, they're besieged by lawyers. Myriad couldn't come up with a use for their patented gene, but they're willing to sue a publically-funded researcher to prevent her from performing a valuable medical service that doesn't even require their data. They're parasites, pure and simple, and the single largest reason why we need projects like the HGP. I think the public research centers should begin patenting every new gene and licensing it free of charge, just to keep companies like Myriad from screwing real scientists.
I thought the point of contention is not actual interoperability between the clients, but in use of the buddy lists. Access to buddy lists requires access to AOL's servers. Hence, anyone needing to replicate the function of buddy lists on their third-party client must be able to connect to AOL's servers, without asking AOL's permission. I'm almost certain there was a story about this a while ago that explicitly stated that the IM protocol was easily replicated by Yahoo, MSN, etc., but that buddy lists were the real obstacle.
Correct me if I'm wrong, please. AOL has spent a substantial amount of money on the infrastructure, and is giving away a free client with the caveat that it will display ads. AOL loses this ad revenue if other people hack into its network. I hate AOL's service, and I never use AIM, but I'm not under the delusion that they should have to allow other companies unfettered access to its resources. What the makers of Trillian are doing seems like grounds for a lawsuit or computer crime investigation.
As of the time I'm reading this, there are at least twenty similar comments. Yours is the last. Congratulations, you're both stupid and slow.
What's the point of a moderated forum if no one reads the other comments? Fucking morons. You're making certain editors look far more professional and quick-witted than they deserve.
RedHat seems to be doing better than ever, even to the point of making a profit. On the other hand, by the time AOL bought Netscape, that company was already pretty much dead in the water. Therefore, such comparisons aren't especially apt. What makes Alan and the Slashbots so sure that AOL will fuck this up?
I agree, that column on O'Reilly made a lot of sense. But it didn't sound like Alan was citing creative differences as a reason for leaving, because he certainly can't know what the fuck AOL plans for RedHat. Does he think AOL execs will tell him which parts of the kernel to patch? No, it sounds like Alan is being a big crybaby, again. Stallmanesque hysteria serves no one- WTF is Slashdot posting this guy's drivel, anyway?
I haven't given this much thought- I'm a technical user, not an open-source/free software fanboy, and as long as I can avoid running Microsoft's excrement on my computers I'm happy. I tend to agree that AOL will find a way to fuck RedHat up in some fashion- maybe making Linux popular at last while producing a distro that's unusable for my purposes. But Alan's claim of feeling "insulted" is just dumb- thank god Linus is the "voice of Linux", not Alan.
Jesus Christ, Michael, what the fuck were you thinking when you posted this story? I knew this asshole Mentifex would blow his load when he saw the perfect opportunity to spam us with his AI project. Maybe he's not offtopic this time, but he's sure as hell a troll.
You're missing the point. C# barely exists right now, and "being implemented" is a lot different from "has been implemented" when you're teaching intro CS. There's no good reason to switch to it except for the inevitability of Microsoft dominance in the market. Java is already being used widely and was cross-platform from the beginning, which Sun intended. I don't see anything like VS.NET or the .NET ADO being released for non-MS platforms right now, and I doubt MS will take the initiative to do this.
Besides, I've seen statistics that say Java will soon become the most popular language in the world. It's an industry standard, at least. Hell, I don't even like Java. I hate writing Java code- ends up all looking like "public static class Monkey extends Ape throws Feces" and you have to use constructs like "Calendar.toDate(new CalendarInstance).printDate("D", DateFormat(1))" or some such nonsense to print the day. I think they should teach the class in Python. Java is okay, I guess. But C#? Give me a fucking break.
I'm not saying those are my reasons for objecting to the use of Microsoft products- I object to them because I feel they are awfully written and I find them actually more difficult to use than the alternatives (too techy compared to Mac, too inefficient compared to Linux). What I object to is when people champion MS products based on the name alone. I tell non-Unix people to use MS Office, because I don't much care for the alternatives (not that I like Office all that much...), but I wouldn't ever tell someone to learn programming with C#.
This works both ways- at one of my jobs we developed a bunch of projects on a coworker's Linux desktop/server. When the projects were ready to use the entire thing was moved to a Sun Blade 100, because that's what the official admins were familiar with. Switching admins didn't help much, but that box was a headache. I don't have anything against Solaris, but that was a stupid mistake- we weren't in any position to get any real technical advantage by using Sun products.
My university (one of the top in the US, supposedly) just started teaching the intro CS class (for non-coders) using C#. Why? God only knows. They used to teach it in Java- they switched from Pascal very early on, which was probably a bad choice. But now Java is superbly well-documented, and becoming an industry standard. C# may become an industry standard, but only because MS is behind it. So now that course is essentially Windows-only. (The standard data structures and systems programming courses are, of course, still done on Unix- by now, of course, in the form of RedHat 7)
There are quite a few people who push Linux as the best and only solution. These people are dorks. However, most of us react more strongly to MS products being pushed as the best and only solutions because:
- MS software pricing is an obscenity.
- Linux companies haven't used illegal coercion to make their products the market leaders.
- Until recently, people did not choose Linux-based solutions simply because they had the word "Linux" in them.
- the possibility of single-vendor lock-in is virtually nonexistent for Linux.
I work part-time in tech support here, and I cannot tell you how annoying it is to have to deal with all the Microsoft fanboys who think Windows is the final point in computing evolution. These are techincally astute students, among the brightest in the world, and incapable of dealing with anything that doesn't have the Start menu and Explorer. For my part, I'm glad I'm studying computational biology, where MS products are by and large recognized as utter garbage. If Windows ever becomes the platform of choice for serious scientific computing, I'm going to law school instead.
Wow, we do this too. Our NIS/main file server is Morgoth, Balin and Thorin are our web servers, Aragorn and Pippin are SGI workstations, Frodo is one of our dual Xeon work nodes, and most of the desktops are named after dwarves.
Our general-purpose Windows 2000 machine is named after Grishnakh the Hill Orc (my choice).
Actually, it was a pretty fair statement (and I'm a US citizen and about as white as they get). This is a case of criminal negligence at the very least. Norton ought to be thrown out for this; same would have applied to Babbitt.
Some AC made a snide remark about the Indians simply not getting taxpayer money. Wrong, dipshit. This trust is revenue made from management of the lands held in trust for the Indians, after they got kicked off of the original reservations to make way for settlers. The government was supposed to "collect and disburse to the Indians any revenues generated by mining, oil and gas extraction", etc., and return it to the Indians. This is not about welfare, this is about yet another breach of treaty.
Basically, the government professes to have no idea where the money is, how much there is, etc. Racism was responsible for the Indians being booted off their old reservations; most likely the bureaucrats managing the trust decided since it was just a bunch of Indians, no one would care. I can only assume this is what is happening now.
I dislike hearing racism blamed for every problem an ethnic minority may have, but this is a genuinely sickening case. I don't have liberal guilt over how my ancestors profitted from the destruction of the Indians, but this is elitist government at its worst. Norton should resign for her disgraceful conduct in this affair, and some people should face criminal charges.
I recommend the official website for the case to anyone who'd like a more in-depth look.
Oh god, you again? Jesus, some people just don't know when to put the bong down. I'm sick of hearing about your artificial minds. If your artificial mind can write my history paper by monday at 9:30, then I'll start caring.
Moderators, you know what to do. Check this weirdo's previous posts out.
Ack. This was an April fool's joke, remember? Perl6 development is partly based around a VM called "parrot" because it should be reusable for other languages, e.g. Python. I don't see any indication on the python home page that they're planning on using it, though. It's a neat idea, but it's a long way from being a "shared backend" for python as well as perl, and the Parrot home page makes it quite clear that its principle use is for Perl6.
You're missing part of my point, as is the AC who told me to "BUY A NEW FUCKING COMPUTER". I'm pissed because the bloat is useless, *and* because it slows down all web use no matter what. Why spend $2000(*) on a new PC so complex pages can suck only half as much? Even on the ones that render fine, I do not need animations and dynamic content to entice me. I find virtually all such embellishments to be useless distractions, and quite frequently they interfere with actual use of the page (e.g. pop-ups. whoever made the decision to allow disablement of pop-ups in Konqueror and Galeon are fuckin' gods. I love you guys, whoever you are).
My point is that a new PC will not vastly increase my enjoyment or use of online content. I do not need Flash, ever, but many sites feel their content is not good enough to stand on its own without some $200/hour consultant's animated excrescence bursting from the screen. And either Netscape's plugin handling sucks worse than I thought or these people don't know what HTML is, because I *always* get little popups saying "This site requires the plugin blah blah blah."
The real problem with the SGI (Indigo 2, by the way, and a very decent 256MB of memory) is that that Netscape 4.7 for IRIX is the single worst piece of software I have ever encountered, surpassing even Windows Me. It is a truly embarassing piece of work. I would point out that on my 300Mhz Pentium II laptop (128MB of memory) the Web is almost as awful; Netscape tends to freeze altogether rather than crash on Linux, most of the time. On the Athlon at work, at least it loads decently. Still, even on the Athlon the bloat of the Web is noticable and obnoxious.
(*) I say $2000 because for a new computer to be worthwhile, it'd have to totally kick the shit out of the current ones. I want to make a real investment. The SGI was $200, plus a $100 memory upgrade. Like I said, it does almost everything I need. A new computer would need 1GB of memory, SCSI, GeForce2 or better, 15" TFT, etc. Otherwise, what's the point? Anyone who thinks I should upgrade my computer to be able to handle Flash and Java plugins is out of their mind.
Netscape 4.7 crashes all the fucking time. It's really an obscenity. It's bad on Linux, but atrocious on IRIX- which I still use for a number of weird reasons (nice UI, classy computer)- and this is quite unfortunate since I like the way Netscape renders on IRIX. I'll try to buy books online and the browser keeps going down like a transvestite in a subway restroom. If I turn JavaScript off, stability is fine- and pages look like ass or don't even load. Especially if they're made for IE.
Galeon's home page uses DIV and SPAN tags everywhere. I get one column about an inch wide on the left with all text and images. My CPU sounds like it's about to puke. Turn JS off, and I get a 1994-style page with gray background. None of the web pages I create have this problem, but I'm not trying to awe people with my mastery of Dreamweaver. If it can't be done in Vi or Emacs, it's not worth doing.
I'm with Jamie Zawinski on this one. The web has become a giant, soggy mess, and it seems as if the fall of the dotcoms has made everyone even more desperate to prove they've got their shit together by throwing up a huge Flash/Java/DHTML/pop-up-enabled masturbatory home page. My computer used to be used for number crunching and modelling- still makes a great X terminal and molecular graphics workstation- but that 150Mhz MIPS CPU doesn't stand a chance against today's web.
Galeon appears to have some useful features. Perhaps it'll suck less than Netscape 6.1 on Linux. Konqueror is nice, except that running it on anything other than Linux (or perhaps BSD) is rather troublesome, and it's still unstable, and I only get 8bit color running it remotely over X. I would pay cash for a browser that would ignore pop-ups, ignore Flash, ignore Java, and render all pages correctly and quickly. In the meantime, I'm going to have to keep running 'killall netscape' every thirty minutes. I could get a better computer, but this one does almost everything I need. I guess faster 3D would be nice- and compiling can be sluggish- but why should I upgrade my computer to use the Web? This thing blew away any PC on the market when Netscape 1 came out. I refuse to be sucked into the forced-obsolescence cycle. Fuck the economy, I like my computers old and working.
That giant sucking noise you hear is my computer loading msnbc.com.
This isn't going to help them as far as the bandwidth problem goes, but Intel now offers their Fortran compiler free for unsupported noncommercial use. This includes F90, which opens up a lot more opportunities. It does need a (free, still) license, so it's a little tricky to obtain, but still very worthwhile. As far as I've seen it's the only free F90 compiler for Linux and the only free F77 compiler besides g77, and it's likely to be far faster than g77 as well.
Fuckin' A. That was one incredible movie. Well written, *well acted*, great camerawork, stunning fight scenes. The one with blindfolds was incredible. I need to buy this on DVD, soon.
I don't usually expect that much from a Jet Li movie either, but even some of the worse ones I've seen- like "Black Mask"- have at least been good trashy fun. What pissed me off about "The One" was that even the fight scenes weren't too great. Jet Li is the type of guy who shouldn't use special effects, and this movie heaped them on. "Kiss of the Dragon" wasn't a very good movie, but at least when he got a chance to give a beatdown he did it without effects, and looked superb.
Yeah, Mark (?) Neumann, one of the Republican Revolutionaries of '94, ran an aggressive campaign. Feingold steadfastly refused to take soft money, and nearly lost as a result of this. That was an interesting year; Linda Smith, an ultra-conservative Washington representative, lost her senate bid partly because the RNC refused to fund her until the last minute because she too was a strong finance reform advocate. She's about as far to the right as Russ is to the left, but I felt sorry for her just on principle. I was shocked that Mitch McConnell didn't lose his position in the party after these twin disasters. I do not, however, think the DNC helped at all- they wanted to very much, and he resisted.
I met Russ once shortly after he joined the Senate- he gave us a tour of Congress (my dad knew him from the UofWisc). I agree with one of the posters above- aside from McCain, he's one of the only politicians I can feel good about. I may violently disagree with their political stands at times, but I honestly believe it's based on principle, not pandering. I'm afraid he won't last through next election- the GOP will rip him to shreds with their ads.
Everyone's TCP/IP stack is based on the BSD stack. All other IP-based stacks died a merciful death long ago. The Berkeley version was written relatively early in the history of the Internet (c. 1980); a more recent version is being used of course, but it isn't lifted from FreeBSD or anything.
It's under the BSD license because it's meant to promote interoperability. The original stack, I believe, was written (by Bill Joy, perhaps?) because the existing ones were so shitty. It was intended as a standard to be used by everyone. If not for this sort of work, we'd be stuck with IPX, AppleTalk, DECnet, etc. At any rate, the frequently-repeated declaration that MS (here, Linux) is using BSD code misses the mark quite a bit. The Internet is essentially built on that code at this point. Try finding a modern OS that doesn't support sockets- that's a Berkeley innovation. FreeBSD and the like are as about far removed from that original code as Linux is.
The difference here is that the TCP/IP stack was intended from the beginning to be incorporated everywhere; it wasn't based on any stupid philosophy about free software. Same idea as X11- they're more interested in promoting an open standard, in this case with large amounts of code (which is ultimately less important than the standard itself- what if "TCP/IP" were GPL'd, or patented?). MS is right that code like that should be under a very unrestrictive license. Other innovations, like scripting languages, daemons, OS kernels, compilers, etc., should be under whatever license the writer feels like. Every license has its place, despite what the fruitcakes here say.
So many morons, so little time. . .
1. Can you provide a citation for the 3,000,000?
2. The revolutionaries fought to liberate their homeland from what they perceived as foreign occupation. They did not blow up babies.
3. bin Laden *was* a freedom fighter; we trained him for that, remember? Now he's a terrorist. The attacks on US military abroad can be regarded as "freedom fighting", I suppose; we do have sizable forces in Saudi Arabia. The WTC can not.
4. Keep in mind that most of bin Laden's victims previous to Sept. 11th were the unfortunate African civilians in our embassies- very few Americans died. It was an attack on us (the USA), but we suffered the least overall.
I find it disturbing that so many leftists have been looking for justification for the WTC attacks and decrying the US retaliation while ignoring the embassies. We (rather, Clinton) fucked up afterwards by bombing Sudan, but bin Laden still deserves to die for what he did in Tanzania alone. The idea that the deaths of US civilians somehow equate to the deaths of civilians at the hands of the US military is simply disgusting, but the idea that all those African civilians don't matter in this debate is disgusting and racist.
I'm getting pretty sick of these arguments. Millions are starving in Iraq because Sadaam would rather build up his army and palaces than feed his people. The sanctions have been a humanitarian disaster, yes, but that's ultimately his fault, not ours.
Get the facts straight, dickhead. bin Laden used civilian aircraft as bombs to take out civilian buildings, with the explicit purpose of causing civilian casualties. The embassy bombings of '98 weren't even directed at US power, and killed mostly innocent African civilians. The US has merely created obstacles to Iraqi trade, but unfortunately Iraq's people suffer while its bioweapons and nuclear projects continue. All you wannabe activists need to direct your "Food not bombs" whining at Hussein, not the US gov't.
No, no, no. The Constitution establishes limits on what the government can do, not on what corporations can do. It might be entirely possible (though rather stupid) for Congress to pass a law saying "no citizen shall be deprived of their 1st amendment rights as a result of contracts entered into", but that hasn't happened yet. The best example would be an NDA- you don't have a legal right to violate an NDA you've signed in the name of "free speech".
Lots of organizations restrict your freedom of speech- like my university, for instance. If you don't like it, you're free to deal with someone else. They can't exile you to Siberia or have you shot for sedition, unlike governments.
Frankly, I think such clauses are absurd. The logo, sure, but the HTML editor? Some junior partner in a Seattle law firm is trying waaay too hard. However, no one is forcing you to use FrontPage, and why would you use Frontpage if you think MS sucks? Duh. I use vi on Linux/IRIX, so this sounds like lots of fuss about nothing.