I'm curious. I play in orchestras all the time (bassoon, thank you), and I can definitely tell on my computer/discman where the loss of quality shows up. Try, say, Bruckner's 8th or 9th symphonies, or Shostakovich. The trombones sound thin and buzzy. Eeeew.
So, would a top-of-the-line system fix this? I'd always assumed it was the digitizing that caused this, because certainly my used records on my '50s record player don't have this problem (they just sound like ass in other ways). Digital recording seems to amount to a kind of lossy compression- you can only sample so fast. So the timbre of the brass in particular gets lost.
On the other hand, the systems and headphones I've used are all cheap junk. Aside from the aural "experience", would the trombones not sound quite so shitty on a high-end rig? Or am I totally off track, and this has more to do with recording equipment than playback equipment?
Retentive, I am unsure about, probably not latin. I would look it up, but I won't for reasons previously discussed.
From the Latin retenere, "to hold back". Not sure if it's second or third conjugation. Wow, I never though those five years of Latin would come in use here. God, I'm such a dork.
I work at/attend Yale, and we don't support Linux either. Any Windows > 95, and any (recent) Mac OS is fully covered. There's no anti-Linux bias, since many of the computing assistants run Linux and the institutional servers and CS machines all run some flavor of Unix. We just feel that anyone using Linux should be competent to set up and run their machine on their own, or find someone else to help them.
There's certainly no obstacle to anyone running Linux- and I've had no problem with Irix or Solaris either. I think we will continue to offer zero support for the forseeable future, though.
To a large extent, I think this patent is a defensive patent.
I agree. Lighten the fuck up, people. The stuff with themes.org was pretty sketchy, but there's a difference between copying concepts and ideas and copying the entire interface. And unlike trademarks, you don't have to enforce a patent to keep it (though you *do* have to enforce it consistently if you want to go after someone, right?), so let's wait and see if Apple sends cease-and-desists to all those window manager writers.
Remember the Adobe suit against Macromedia for "tabbed pallettes"? Or a suit by some fly-by-night company nobody ever heard of over ColorSync? Or how some maker of OSes for electronic appliances was going to sue Apple over the name "OS 9"? I'd be paranoid too if I were them. OS X is for better or worse one of the most innovative combinations of technology to come out in a while (for worse because I hate the damn genie effect, for better because I'm sooo happy it's Unix), and Apple can't afford to take it up the ass from some other patent holder.
Personally, I think Apple's being a bit anal about all those Aqua themes. Won't stop me using their computers, though, since they've still shown a genuine willingness to work for and with open standards (ditto for Sun, SGI). I don't care if the APSL is "Free Software" or not. If OS X lets me get my job done better than Irix or Linux, I'll use it. The fact that large parts of the OS have been made available (or are already available) in source form out of good faith in the community means a lot to me, and I trust Apple's not stupid enough to jeopardize what could be a great opportunity by legal terrorism of free software developers.
Okay, this is probably a troll anyway, but worth replying to just for the hell of it. Zeroth of all, you can't disprove creationism. Proof of the antithesis tends to do this for most people, but the article was crap anyway.
First of all, read a fucking book (and yes, I've read a considerable number of creationist screeds. I have not yet read Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box", but I will try to soon- at least he's a biochemist, not a fruitcake who thinks Sunday school is a substitute for real physics, geology, chemistry, and biology courses). I suggest "The Diversity of Life", by Edward O. Wilson, one of the foremost evolutionary biologists of our time. "Evolutionary biologist" in this case means "someone who studies organisms from an evolutionary perspective", not "dogmatic anti-religious Richard Dawkins wannabe". Wilson presents the best model of evolution and speciation I've ever seen. Or, if that's a bit too biased and scientific for you, try a description of evolution by reasoning alone (well, that's all the proof you have for the existence of a God)- Lucretius' "De Rerum Natura", published 2000 years ago.
Second of all, take some classes. Doesn't your local public 4-year/community college offer extension courses? As I mentioned above, basic and organic chemistry, fundamental geology (okay. . . I haven't taken that yet either), calculus-based physics, basic biology, genetics, and biochemistry are really a must. Then you can shut the fuck up about "Second Law of Thermodynamics contradicts evolution".
Third of all, why don't you give *any* proof of the bullshit statements you just made- like dating techniques being inherently unreliable, or the strong evidence of "young earth theory". I've heard arguments for the first (whose only valid point is that yes, dating techniques are fallible), but the second is pretty loopy.
This has been going on for years... but different
on
Who Owns Your Body?
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My dad came down with mono years ago in college- had to take his spring finals the next fall. After grad school, he came back to get his law degree. At one point he went to the university health center for a checkup. The intern there got really excited when he saw my dad's name- "wow, are you *the* J. Smith? We're still studying your strain of mono!"
He thought this was hilarious. Trouble is, biomedical research ain't what it used to be. Like my molecular genetics teacher told us: "I talked to the professor who discovered that protein. He said now the first thing anyone would do would be to file a patent application. Back then, they just wrote the paper and told everyone about it- never crossed their mind to get IP rights." Now it seems like half the professors here have their own biotech startups. I'd love to go work for one of the many companies in the area doing bioinformatics- but anything I produce could get patented. I'll settle for the Honda Civic over the Jag if I can contribute something positive to society instead of taking genomic data out of the public domain.
I think the use of routine tissue samples for medical studies is great- I'm happy to have my blood contribute to pharmaceutical breakthroughs. But I have no desire to contribute to proprietary projects that will limit rather than expand the possibilities of research due to licensing issues. And I'm disturbed that I and many other students (grad and undergrad) may be unwittingly contributing to for-profit enterprises as part of our education.
Actually, it did go to court. They lost in appeals, just last month for the final time (of course they'd mostly graduated/married/moved off campus anyway). Their argument was that Yale was acting as a monopoly by forcing them to pay board, and that they should not be forced to live in a situation they felt was immoral (Yale's dorms).
I sympathize with their complaints (I'm one of the only ones), but they really seemed to have no clue what college is like. "Put up or shut up" are really the only options- they should have tried Yeshiva instead. Personally, I like living on-campus and think the rule is a good thing, even if I intensely dislike co-ed bathrooms and being told to sleep on the couch for a night (i.e. being "sexiled").
[ the real irony is that Yale has been very supporting of religious students- a decade ago they shifted to card access to buildings after a student was murdered, but they give Orthodox students keys as well to comply with Sabbath. of course we get to listen to liberals screaming about "white conservative establishment" and conservatives screaming about "elitist liberal academics". like, yeah, my CS class is _so_ right-wing. and molecular genetics. . . it's next door to communism. ]
Anyone out there planning to jump to Mac OS X from Linux or one of the (other) BSDs?
Nope. But I sure could see myself switching from Windows 2000. I work in a heterogenous networked environment at a research lab: 2 SGIs, 10-15 Windows desktops, and a shitload of Linux workstations and servers. There's no point trying to replace the Windows machines with Linux- most people either prefer the graphics/desktop (they still program on Unix) or need the apps; I use Linux on my desktop but I have to use another machine any time I want to get non-programming/non-Gimp work done.
Windows 2000 ain't bad. But it ain't Unix either. OS X is beautifully conceived and executed for the most part. I'd much rather use it than Windows, if the applications to make it worthwhile are released soon enough- and it'd work great on my desktop too, with a nice Aqua-aware X server. An OS with that advanced a GUI, with lots of mainstream programs, that still plays nice with other Unix-based OSes? Heaven.
Whine, whine, whine. Everyone seems to have forgotten why AOL was so touchy about that subject.
AOL's system was and is easily reverse-engineered. There's nothing in AIM (at least, there wasn't when this nonsense started) that locks out users of other messenging systems- the protocol isn't exactly ultra-secret. The issue is with use of Buddy Lists. These are provided by *central AOL servers*. To get a competing messenging app to use buddy lists, it has to use AOL's servers.
Take a moment to think about how fucking stupid this is. Microsoft and Yahoo! are demanding that AOL either a) eliminate it's own buddy list servers in favor of a unified system, presumably jointly controlled (?) or b) let everyone else's clients use their servers. This isn't like 'finger joeuser@dynamite.acme.com', it's more like using a bot to steal someone else's web content. Wholly aside from whether this is illegal, it sure sucks to be on the receiving end. I don't like AOL one bit, but I'm totally with them on this one. I imagine there's a considerable investment on the backend to AIM.
It'd be nice (for people who like that sort of thing) if AIM etc. were ported to every OS. But there's no reason to expect them to allow unfettered access to their resources for commercial purposes.
Most of the other apps people use a lot (Office, browsers, e-mail, etc) don't max out the processor anyway, and run fast enough on ANY computer that was sold in the last 3-4 years.
Like, duh. The dual PIII-933 with 1GB RAM at the desk behind me isn't much better at web browsing than the old PPro-200 I took home, considering what it cost. And last year I was using a SPARCStation LX for web browsing and X. Even with Solaris, it wasn't much slower than the iMac I had before that, or the PPro. Sure, compiling with gcc is a bitch- but Joe Average or Joe Photoshop does that how often? [frankly, not having it crash every ten minutes was well worth the speed loss]
This is all on the same field as the "why buy Sun or SGI when you can get a PC and put Linux on it" argument. If I want to run Linux, I'll get a PC (which I did); I doubt it'll hold up nearly as well as my SPARCstation (almost 9 years old). If I want to run an innovative, intuitive first-class graphical OS on a machine that'll have good shelf life, I'll buy a Mac sometime after March 24th. Or perhaps finally buy one of those used SGI Indigo2s on Usenet.:)
Apple has three core user groups- graphics/publishing pros, people who want simplicity and ease of use above all else, and Mac fanatics. Their machines are perfect for all of these people. Sure, their current OS is ass, but some of the other apps easily make up for this in pitching Macs to the public. And I don't see anyone coming out with an OS as well-conceived as OS X- it's not perfect, and I wouldn't use it as a web server, but I'd rather use that than the Linux workstation I have now.
You misunderstand some of the key concepts of genomics, and the history of genomes and patents. First off, though, I'd like to point out that "enormous effort" should not justify patents- they are only supposed to be granted for "unique and non-obvious inventions" or something like that. Genes do not meet any of these qualifications, as I'll explain later.
A common and utterly incorrect assumption is that Celera beat the crap out of the HGP. This misses the mark completely. Celera's sequencing technology is fundamentally more risky and would never have been considered when the HGP started. It mostly relies on massive computing power to assemble overlapping sequence fragments, and on the high-throughput sequencers Dr. Venter helped create. This approach is increasingly considered to be scientifically sound and much more efficient- but only thanks to a decade of advances in computing power. Imagine trying to assemble DNA on a SPARCStation 1 instead of on a brand-new P4 or AlphaServer.
Certainly Celera's progress spurred the HGP on, and I think the best result of this may be the refining of the "shotgun" technique. However, it is absurd to say that Celera should get patents for its "enormous effort" when the HGP's approach was in fact much more difficult.
The genome itself cannot be patented; Celera is charging a hefty subscription fee for access to the mouse genome, but a public project will release their own results in the spring (though unfortunately mouse genes will have by then been snapped up by biotechs). The standard for patents on genomic data is ridiculously unclear; single-nucleotide polymorphisms appear to be patentable now. This has led a large public-private consortium mapping these polymorphisms to withold scientific data from everyone out of fear that rival biotechs will steal the results and patent them.
It isn't that hard to find a gene. Do you think companies will perform gene knockout experiments on humans? No, they'll use a gene-finding program, many of which exist. Hell, my lab is doing this now. On the simplest level, all one needs to do is identify suitably long open reading frames (ORFs) and check for homology to known proteins. The only real limitation is how many and how fast your computers are. It's not rocket science; a basic understanding of genetics and some good Perl code will do it. This doesn't prove anything is a gene, but the USPTO probably won't give a shit if it sounds interesting.
A researcher from a local biotech recently boasted of their "patent wizard"- fill in the blanks and you've got a 10-page patent application. This is why patents scare the shit out of so many people. I'm afraid that by the time I'm out of grad school there'll be so many patents that any research I do will have to dodge licensing provisions just to be completed, or that any results of mine will have to be suppressed for fear of lawsuits from biotechs.
This sort of bullshit could destroy public scientific research and destroy America's leadership in this fields, and I'm upset to see people promoting the free-market/privatization view with little or no understanding of the field.
Man, Farscape is about the only good thing to come out of Sci-Fi channel. Makes me wish I'd sprung for extended cable. Effects can be cheesy, but I think the plots, acting, and scripting are miles above anything on Star Trek since TNG. (damn, now there's a show I miss...)
Just out of curiosity, what was it about that movie you especially disliked? Was it the movie itself, or the fact that Verhoeven had $100mil to do one of the greatest sci-fi novels ever, and did "Alien: 90210" instead? Was it the lack of armored suits, which was what bugged me most? (unless you haven't read the book, in which case I assume it's just the movie) Personally, I find Dune much more annoying- it's attempting to be a real interpretation of a great novel rather than a trashy multiplex flick, it makes less sense with more beer, and it isn't long enough to do the job right. And it's a shame Lynch had to change some minor things that just aren't what Herbert wrote (like the weirding ways).
As long as I ignore the mental image of Heinlein crying at what they did to his book, I find Starship Troopers quite enjoyable. Drugs and alcohol help a lot, too- it's a lot more fun watching it in my dorm room Friday night than it was in the theater. It's a crappy movie, but a very well made and watchable crappy movie. No artistic value whatsoever, but that goes for most movies nowadays.
The one thing about that movie that is terrific is the CGI. Wow. Really, no other movie I've seen has used so much computer animation and made it work. Star Wars Episode I? Garbage. Verhoeven's bugs rule.
Or Macintosh, of course. The OS X/Aqua version isn't half bad. IE supposedly works on Solaris/SPARC, but it dumped a core on me after two seconds.
I use Netscape because my primary computers (work and home) run Linux more or less by necessity (I'm a part-time Unix programmer and I'm too cheap to buy Exceed). And it's by far the worst part of the Linux experience. Crashes at the slightest provocation, whether FrontPage-generated pages, bad CSS, bad JavaScript, bad applets, or bad hair day. Hopefully I'll inherit an old SGI O2 and Netscape (and X in general) won't suck quite as much. Mmmmm. . . Irix. Gotta try Konqueror, though...
yup. though I mostly used a typewriter back then. people just sort of assumed I was a total computer geek. . . and years and years later, they're finally right. sigh.
But I've dealt with people who can't get over how l337 they are because they waste you in Duke Nukem. That's the sort I was talking about.
Maturity? Obviously you've missed the point of this story, but in any case you seem to have odd delusions about personal property and information security. Regardless of whether the powers that be need to audit their code better, the fact that the site could be cracked in no way justifies the actions of the childish losers who went ahead and broke in. I'll avoid the tortured analogies to an unlocked house, but I certainly expect that polite users will stay the fuck away from my machines, whether or not I overlooked the buffer-overflow-du-jour. I wouldn't for a moment trust any asshole who ended up with a root prompt on a system I use or run without authorization.
I agree with earlier posters that the second-rate pieces of shit that did this shouldn't be sued or legally harassed- have their parents spank them and send them to bed early without dessert. But it's hard to imagine these vandals serving any more useful purpose than as a focus for the contempt of their middle-school classmates.
I work at / attend a university with a large structural biology facility (and a number of excellent crystallographers). I'm actually learning bioinformatics, but there's a lot of crossover largely because of the shared need for high-power computing resources. Our lab is based largely on Linux, with a mix of Linux and NT on the desktop; we only have a couple of SGIs because for what we're doing (genomic sequence alignment, Perl, C, web development) Linux is obviously a more cost-effective solution (and we mostly support the systems ourselves).
The structural biologists still use SGIs (and a few Alphas) for anything important, though. The combination of available software, long lifespan, and, yes, overall power makes the workstations very attractive despite Linux, but I also get the feeling that it's just something people are comfortable with. NT remains confined to a few boxes used for word processing, thank god. SGI also can apparently be very generous with people developing Unix software, which helps prevent mass migration to Intel-based systems.
I'd rather use Irix, myself- though I learned Unix primarily on Linux, I was blown away by the elegance and stability of workstations that must be pushing five years old now (there's still an Indigo for special imaging use; there are some 9-year-old Suns lying around too). AND THEY WORK. I've made Linux scream in pain, on a VA Linux workstation, no less, though it's nothing compared to what I've done to NT.:) I'm hoping SGI will port their X server and window manager to Linux- It simply blows away anything comparable. I personally use Linux and VMware, but a lot of people aren't willing to put up with the inherent instability, clumsiness, and pure ugliness of X on Linux, and for this reason and the convenience of Office we now have Unix programmers using NT desktops.
I really don't see much pressure to change systems on a large scale. With us, certainly, SGI has priced itself out of business; but we'll keep using Unix of some sort for a long time. The sysadmins here are all Unix/VMS types, and when your PHBs are themselves longtime Unix users/programmers there's simply no reason to switch. But you won't find many people doing their dissertations or reasearch papers in TeX any more- in that arena, MS has most certainly won.
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I'm curious. I play in orchestras all the time (bassoon, thank you), and I can definitely tell on my computer/discman where the loss of quality shows up. Try, say, Bruckner's 8th or 9th symphonies, or Shostakovich. The trombones sound thin and buzzy. Eeeew.
So, would a top-of-the-line system fix this? I'd always assumed it was the digitizing that caused this, because certainly my used records on my '50s record player don't have this problem (they just sound like ass in other ways). Digital recording seems to amount to a kind of lossy compression- you can only sample so fast. So the timbre of the brass in particular gets lost.
On the other hand, the systems and headphones I've used are all cheap junk. Aside from the aural "experience", would the trombones not sound quite so shitty on a high-end rig? Or am I totally off track, and this has more to do with recording equipment than playback equipment?
-Nat
Retentive, I am unsure about, probably not latin. I would look it up, but I won't for reasons previously discussed.
From the Latin retenere, "to hold back". Not sure if it's second or third conjugation. Wow, I never though those five years of Latin would come in use here. God, I'm such a dork.
-Nat
I work at/attend Yale, and we don't support Linux either. Any Windows > 95, and any (recent) Mac OS is fully covered. There's no anti-Linux bias, since many of the computing assistants run Linux and the institutional servers and CS machines all run some flavor of Unix. We just feel that anyone using Linux should be competent to set up and run their machine on their own, or find someone else to help them.
There's certainly no obstacle to anyone running Linux- and I've had no problem with Irix or Solaris either. I think we will continue to offer zero support for the forseeable future, though.
Gee, maybe Microsoft should advertise Win2k with an infant shitting its diapers. What better way to advertise a 1-year old OS. . . and a MS one, too.
To a large extent, I think this patent is a defensive patent.
I agree. Lighten the fuck up, people. The stuff with themes.org was pretty sketchy, but there's a difference between copying concepts and ideas and copying the entire interface. And unlike trademarks, you don't have to enforce a patent to keep it (though you *do* have to enforce it consistently if you want to go after someone, right?), so let's wait and see if Apple sends cease-and-desists to all those window manager writers.
Remember the Adobe suit against Macromedia for "tabbed pallettes"? Or a suit by some fly-by-night company nobody ever heard of over ColorSync? Or how some maker of OSes for electronic appliances was going to sue Apple over the name "OS 9"? I'd be paranoid too if I were them. OS X is for better or worse one of the most innovative combinations of technology to come out in a while (for worse because I hate the damn genie effect, for better because I'm sooo happy it's Unix), and Apple can't afford to take it up the ass from some other patent holder.
Personally, I think Apple's being a bit anal about all those Aqua themes. Won't stop me using their computers, though, since they've still shown a genuine willingness to work for and with open standards (ditto for Sun, SGI). I don't care if the APSL is "Free Software" or not. If OS X lets me get my job done better than Irix or Linux, I'll use it. The fact that large parts of the OS have been made available (or are already available) in source form out of good faith in the community means a lot to me, and I trust Apple's not stupid enough to jeopardize what could be a great opportunity by legal terrorism of free software developers.
*Yawn*
Okay, this is probably a troll anyway, but worth replying to just for the hell of it. Zeroth of all, you can't disprove creationism. Proof of the antithesis tends to do this for most people, but the article was crap anyway.
First of all, read a fucking book (and yes, I've read a considerable number of creationist screeds. I have not yet read Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box", but I will try to soon- at least he's a biochemist, not a fruitcake who thinks Sunday school is a substitute for real physics, geology, chemistry, and biology courses). I suggest "The Diversity of Life", by Edward O. Wilson, one of the foremost evolutionary biologists of our time. "Evolutionary biologist" in this case means "someone who studies organisms from an evolutionary perspective", not "dogmatic anti-religious Richard Dawkins wannabe". Wilson presents the best model of evolution and speciation I've ever seen. Or, if that's a bit too biased and scientific for you, try a description of evolution by reasoning alone (well, that's all the proof you have for the existence of a God)- Lucretius' "De Rerum Natura", published 2000 years ago.
Second of all, take some classes. Doesn't your local public 4-year/community college offer extension courses? As I mentioned above, basic and organic chemistry, fundamental geology (okay. . . I haven't taken that yet either), calculus-based physics, basic biology, genetics, and biochemistry are really a must. Then you can shut the fuck up about "Second Law of Thermodynamics contradicts evolution".
Third of all, why don't you give *any* proof of the bullshit statements you just made- like dating techniques being inherently unreliable, or the strong evidence of "young earth theory". I've heard arguments for the first (whose only valid point is that yes, dating techniques are fallible), but the second is pretty loopy.
I welcome your flames. Bring it on.
Nat
My dad came down with mono years ago in college- had to take his spring finals the next fall. After grad school, he came back to get his law degree. At one point he went to the university health center for a checkup. The intern there got really excited when he saw my dad's name- "wow, are you *the* J. Smith? We're still studying your strain of mono!"
He thought this was hilarious. Trouble is, biomedical research ain't what it used to be. Like my molecular genetics teacher told us: "I talked to the professor who discovered that protein. He said now the first thing anyone would do would be to file a patent application. Back then, they just wrote the paper and told everyone about it- never crossed their mind to get IP rights." Now it seems like half the professors here have their own biotech startups. I'd love to go work for one of the many companies in the area doing bioinformatics- but anything I produce could get patented. I'll settle for the Honda Civic over the Jag if I can contribute something positive to society instead of taking genomic data out of the public domain.
I think the use of routine tissue samples for medical studies is great- I'm happy to have my blood contribute to pharmaceutical breakthroughs. But I have no desire to contribute to proprietary projects that will limit rather than expand the possibilities of research due to licensing issues. And I'm disturbed that I and many other students (grad and undergrad) may be unwittingly contributing to for-profit enterprises as part of our education.
Actually, it did go to court. They lost in appeals, just last month for the final time (of course they'd mostly graduated/married/moved off campus anyway). Their argument was that Yale was acting as a monopoly by forcing them to pay board, and that they should not be forced to live in a situation they felt was immoral (Yale's dorms).
I sympathize with their complaints (I'm one of the only ones), but they really seemed to have no clue what college is like. "Put up or shut up" are really the only options- they should have tried Yeshiva instead. Personally, I like living on-campus and think the rule is a good thing, even if I intensely dislike co-ed bathrooms and being told to sleep on the couch for a night (i.e. being "sexiled").
[ the real irony is that Yale has been very supporting of religious students- a decade ago they shifted to card access to buildings after a student was murdered, but they give Orthodox students keys as well to comply with Sabbath. of course we get to listen to liberals screaming about "white conservative establishment" and conservatives screaming about "elitist liberal academics". like, yeah, my CS class is _so_ right-wing. and molecular genetics. . . it's next door to communism. ]
Nope. But I sure could see myself switching from Windows 2000. I work in a heterogenous networked environment at a research lab: 2 SGIs, 10-15 Windows desktops, and a shitload of Linux workstations and servers. There's no point trying to replace the Windows machines with Linux- most people either prefer the graphics/desktop (they still program on Unix) or need the apps; I use Linux on my desktop but I have to use another machine any time I want to get non-programming/non-Gimp work done.
Windows 2000 ain't bad. But it ain't Unix either. OS X is beautifully conceived and executed for the most part. I'd much rather use it than Windows, if the applications to make it worthwhile are released soon enough- and it'd work great on my desktop too, with a nice Aqua-aware X server. An OS with that advanced a GUI, with lots of mainstream programs, that still plays nice with other Unix-based OSes? Heaven.
AOL's system was and is easily reverse-engineered. There's nothing in AIM (at least, there wasn't when this nonsense started) that locks out users of other messenging systems- the protocol isn't exactly ultra-secret. The issue is with use of Buddy Lists. These are provided by *central AOL servers*. To get a competing messenging app to use buddy lists, it has to use AOL's servers.
Take a moment to think about how fucking stupid this is. Microsoft and Yahoo! are demanding that AOL either a) eliminate it's own buddy list servers in favor of a unified system, presumably jointly controlled (?) or b) let everyone else's clients use their servers. This isn't like 'finger joeuser@dynamite.acme.com', it's more like using a bot to steal someone else's web content. Wholly aside from whether this is illegal, it sure sucks to be on the receiving end. I don't like AOL one bit, but I'm totally with them on this one. I imagine there's a considerable investment on the backend to AIM.
It'd be nice (for people who like that sort of thing) if AIM etc. were ported to every OS. But there's no reason to expect them to allow unfettered access to their resources for commercial purposes.
Like, duh. The dual PIII-933 with 1GB RAM at the desk behind me isn't much better at web browsing than the old PPro-200 I took home, considering what it cost. And last year I was using a SPARCStation LX for web browsing and X. Even with Solaris, it wasn't much slower than the iMac I had before that, or the PPro. Sure, compiling with gcc is a bitch- but Joe Average or Joe Photoshop does that how often? [frankly, not having it crash every ten minutes was well worth the speed loss]
This is all on the same field as the "why buy Sun or SGI when you can get a PC and put Linux on it" argument. If I want to run Linux, I'll get a PC (which I did); I doubt it'll hold up nearly as well as my SPARCstation (almost 9 years old). If I want to run an innovative, intuitive first-class graphical OS on a machine that'll have good shelf life, I'll buy a Mac sometime after March 24th. Or perhaps finally buy one of those used SGI Indigo2s on Usenet. :)
Apple has three core user groups- graphics/publishing pros, people who want simplicity and ease of use above all else, and Mac fanatics. Their machines are perfect for all of these people. Sure, their current OS is ass, but some of the other apps easily make up for this in pitching Macs to the public. And I don't see anyone coming out with an OS as well-conceived as OS X- it's not perfect, and I wouldn't use it as a web server, but I'd rather use that than the Linux workstation I have now.
You misunderstand some of the key concepts of genomics, and the history of genomes and patents. First off, though, I'd like to point out that "enormous effort" should not justify patents- they are only supposed to be granted for "unique and non-obvious inventions" or something like that. Genes do not meet any of these qualifications, as I'll explain later.
A common and utterly incorrect assumption is that Celera beat the crap out of the HGP. This misses the mark completely. Celera's sequencing technology is fundamentally more risky and would never have been considered when the HGP started. It mostly relies on massive computing power to assemble overlapping sequence fragments, and on the high-throughput sequencers Dr. Venter helped create. This approach is increasingly considered to be scientifically sound and much more efficient- but only thanks to a decade of advances in computing power. Imagine trying to assemble DNA on a SPARCStation 1 instead of on a brand-new P4 or AlphaServer.
Certainly Celera's progress spurred the HGP on, and I think the best result of this may be the refining of the "shotgun" technique. However, it is absurd to say that Celera should get patents for its "enormous effort" when the HGP's approach was in fact much more difficult.
The genome itself cannot be patented; Celera is charging a hefty subscription fee for access to the mouse genome, but a public project will release their own results in the spring (though unfortunately mouse genes will have by then been snapped up by biotechs). The standard for patents on genomic data is ridiculously unclear; single-nucleotide polymorphisms appear to be patentable now. This has led a large public-private consortium mapping these polymorphisms to withold scientific data from everyone out of fear that rival biotechs will steal the results and patent them.
It isn't that hard to find a gene. Do you think companies will perform gene knockout experiments on humans? No, they'll use a gene-finding program, many of which exist. Hell, my lab is doing this now. On the simplest level, all one needs to do is identify suitably long open reading frames (ORFs) and check for homology to known proteins. The only real limitation is how many and how fast your computers are. It's not rocket science; a basic understanding of genetics and some good Perl code will do it. This doesn't prove anything is a gene, but the USPTO probably won't give a shit if it sounds interesting.
A researcher from a local biotech recently boasted of their "patent wizard"- fill in the blanks and you've got a 10-page patent application. This is why patents scare the shit out of so many people. I'm afraid that by the time I'm out of grad school there'll be so many patents that any research I do will have to dodge licensing provisions just to be completed, or that any results of mine will have to be suppressed for fear of lawsuits from biotechs.
This sort of bullshit could destroy public scientific research and destroy America's leadership in this fields, and I'm upset to see people promoting the free-market/privatization view with little or no understanding of the field.
Man, Farscape is about the only good thing to come out of Sci-Fi channel. Makes me wish I'd sprung for extended cable. Effects can be cheesy, but I think the plots, acting, and scripting are miles above anything on Star Trek since TNG. (damn, now there's a show I miss...)
Just out of curiosity, what was it about that movie you especially disliked? Was it the movie itself, or the fact that Verhoeven had $100mil to do one of the greatest sci-fi novels ever, and did "Alien: 90210" instead? Was it the lack of armored suits, which was what bugged me most? (unless you haven't read the book, in which case I assume it's just the movie) Personally, I find Dune much more annoying- it's attempting to be a real interpretation of a great novel rather than a trashy multiplex flick, it makes less sense with more beer, and it isn't long enough to do the job right. And it's a shame Lynch had to change some minor things that just aren't what Herbert wrote (like the weirding ways).
As long as I ignore the mental image of Heinlein crying at what they did to his book, I find Starship Troopers quite enjoyable. Drugs and alcohol help a lot, too- it's a lot more fun watching it in my dorm room Friday night than it was in the theater. It's a crappy movie, but a very well made and watchable crappy movie. No artistic value whatsoever, but that goes for most movies nowadays.
The one thing about that movie that is terrific is the CGI. Wow. Really, no other movie I've seen has used so much computer animation and made it work. Star Wars Episode I? Garbage. Verhoeven's bugs rule.
Or Macintosh, of course. The OS X/Aqua version isn't half bad. IE supposedly works on Solaris/SPARC, but it dumped a core on me after two seconds.
I use Netscape because my primary computers (work and home) run Linux more or less by necessity (I'm a part-time Unix programmer and I'm too cheap to buy Exceed). And it's by far the worst part of the Linux experience. Crashes at the slightest provocation, whether FrontPage-generated pages, bad CSS, bad JavaScript, bad applets, or bad hair day. Hopefully I'll inherit an old SGI O2 and Netscape (and X in general) won't suck quite as much. Mmmmm. . . Irix. Gotta try Konqueror, though...
Middle school's a sore spot, huh?
yup. though I mostly used a typewriter back then. people just sort of assumed I was a total computer geek. . . and years and years later, they're finally right. sigh.
But I've dealt with people who can't get over how l337 they are because they waste you in Duke Nukem. That's the sort I was talking about.
Maturity? Obviously you've missed the point of this story, but in any case you seem to have odd delusions about personal property and information security. Regardless of whether the powers that be need to audit their code better, the fact that the site could be cracked in no way justifies the actions of the childish losers who went ahead and broke in. I'll avoid the tortured analogies to an unlocked house, but I certainly expect that polite users will stay the fuck away from my machines, whether or not I overlooked the buffer-overflow-du-jour. I wouldn't for a moment trust any asshole who ended up with a root prompt on a system I use or run without authorization.
I agree with earlier posters that the second-rate pieces of shit that did this shouldn't be sued or legally harassed- have their parents spank them and send them to bed early without dessert. But it's hard to imagine these vandals serving any more useful purpose than as a focus for the contempt of their middle-school classmates.
I work at / attend a university with a large structural biology facility (and a number of excellent crystallographers). I'm actually learning bioinformatics, but there's a lot of crossover largely because of the shared need for high-power computing resources. Our lab is based largely on Linux, with a mix of Linux and NT on the desktop; we only have a couple of SGIs because for what we're doing (genomic sequence alignment, Perl, C, web development) Linux is obviously a more cost-effective solution (and we mostly support the systems ourselves).
:) I'm hoping SGI will port their X server and window manager to Linux- It simply blows away anything comparable. I personally use Linux and VMware, but a lot of people aren't willing to put up with the inherent instability, clumsiness, and pure ugliness of X on Linux, and for this reason and the convenience of Office we now have Unix programmers using NT desktops.
The structural biologists still use SGIs (and a few Alphas) for anything important, though. The combination of available software, long lifespan, and, yes, overall power makes the workstations very attractive despite Linux, but I also get the feeling that it's just something people are comfortable with. NT remains confined to a few boxes used for word processing, thank god. SGI also can apparently be very generous with people developing Unix software, which helps prevent mass migration to Intel-based systems.
I'd rather use Irix, myself- though I learned Unix primarily on Linux, I was blown away by the elegance and stability of workstations that must be pushing five years old now (there's still an Indigo for special imaging use; there are some 9-year-old Suns lying around too). AND THEY WORK. I've made Linux scream in pain, on a VA Linux workstation, no less, though it's nothing compared to what I've done to NT.
I really don't see much pressure to change systems on a large scale. With us, certainly, SGI has priced itself out of business; but we'll keep using Unix of some sort for a long time. The sysadmins here are all Unix/VMS types, and when your PHBs are themselves longtime Unix users/programmers there's simply no reason to switch. But you won't find many people doing their dissertations or reasearch papers in TeX any more- in that arena, MS has most certainly won.