the 1 gene = 1 rna = 1 protein thing certainly doesn't hold up anymore. besides varsplices, as mentioned, there also a plethora of post-translational modifications, eg glycosylation that also give rise to (arguably) different gene products.
- mm/dd/yy is just braindead. dd/mm/yy (the majority of the world) is at least ordered by unit, but even then yy/mm/dd is probably better.
- still. using. the. imperial. system. is. just. braindead. it's difficult not to draw lack of intelligence arguments about the inability of the US to get with the rest of the civilised world on this one.
- the widespread use of 'already' in the present tense. not amusing, not insightful, just bad grammar.
- the use of 'most everything' instead of 'almost everything' -- is grammar and spelling not taught in the US? we already know the metric system is too complicated for them.
- mandatory tipping. what a silly idea. why not just inflate prices by 10-15% and pay the right money, reserving a tip/gratuity for times when one's expectations or perceptions of value are exceeded?
- US "news". propaganda and national cheerleading aside, why is so repetitive, dumbed-down and devoid of insight?
- ludicrous overspending on defense (read: attack) when crime, homelessness, and 2nd world civil infrastructure are so prevalent.
- the US medical system (or lack thereof). seems the US doesn't care about its less-privileged citizens... don't have medical insurance or money? too bad..
- the US "legal" system - aka "who do you want to sue today?". fuck man, what a ridiculous joke this is. the world laughs and the US changes the channel.
- guns. whoever thought that widespread availability to guns and other armaments was a fool. "we need guns so we can take over the government after we finally realise that they don't even listen to us"... yeah, right. see "bowling for columbine".
- the US system of government, aka "presidency for sale". whoever pays the most, bribes the most, sells their soul to mega-corporations the most, wins. whomever thought allowing corporations to straight-out bribe politicians and political candidates was a fool.
- US foreign policy aka "fuck the world, and fuck what our population thinks". there's too much that could be said here for it to be practical to retell. i suggest noam chomsky.
- and the thing that gets me the most -- how does the US population just let this shit their government pulls slide by?
Post constant drivel to Linux advocacy sites about the total superiority of your distribution in all areas. Maintain staunch arrogant composure even in the face of massive irrelevance to the Linux community at large, and generally declining interest even in key geek userbase.
this is so right on the money. i'm sure that 50% of debian users use it because they were deluded into thinking that using debian made them l33t. it's all linux people! a case in point, at my work we've had mandrake users help out debian users get their hardware or RAID working, shock horror!
Nothing exposes how poor MP3 (or even CDs) sound like owning a real quality pair of speakers connected to a clean amp. I have a Nakamichi AV-10 driving B&W DM-603 speakers. I connect the Nakamichi to the digital output of my Turtle Beach Montego soundcard, and it works well enough. Unfortunately, the fidelity of the system makes MP3 files almost unbearable for serious listening.
yeah, this is mostly bollocks - of course mp3's at <128kbps are liable to sound shit, as are mp3's at any bitrate that are recorded by a shit encoder. >=192kbps mp3's recorded by either grip or musicmatch are indistinguishable from cd on my logitech Z-560's, which are not shit speakers.
i can blind pick a 128kbps from a 192kbps on these speakers, but i can't blind pick the difference between cd and >=192 kbps, so for me, 192 kbps mp3s are the go.
saying that all mp3's are shit is a gross generalisation dude.
i can thoroughly endorse all of your comments re: logitech z-560's -- they're great.
whatever the specs may claim, they're certainly loud enough to flood my entire 3br apartment with quality sound. and talk about BASS, geez louise! i know what you mean about turning the bass knob as low as it will go... that sub can make stuff vibrate off my desk and get my walls thumping. definately a bass-lover's delight.
concerning the satellite grilles - i also agree - the high treble notes of hi-hats and cymbal crashes are definately clearer without them, though whether this improves the overall sound or not i guess is a matter of opinion.
perhaps my only complaint is that i'd like the mid-range response on say, guitar notes/chords to be a little "warmer" - but then that's only a minor quibble brought about by listening to a friend's top-of-the-line hifi system... but for AU$380 how the hell could one complain?
i'm glad... i'd like to preserve my (perhaps naive) original notions about australia being a generally sane and safe place.
incidentally, and totally OT, would you happen to have gone to linux.conf.au, sydney 2001? from the mugshot on your website i believe we may have actually once met or been in some kind of group introduction situation. did you perhaps give a talk there??
i feel one has to err on the side of trust is such circumstances. it would seem a little too elaborate and passionate a mail to be some random troll. i freely admit to being a little more 'brotherly' these days because of all the fucking FUD and warmongering for oil that's coming out of canberra and washington at the moment.
hi anonymous coward. i'm sorry for what happened. i'm australian and it's hard to believe that some australians are actually buying into this anti-muslim propaganda spouted by the current US and australian governments. this is deliberate, right-wing propaganda designed to incite anger and resentment in the west against muslims in order to boslter support for an extremely unpopular war against iraq for oil.
please please please report your story, just as you've written above, to your local press, and to the the sydney morning herald or the australian. the truth here in australia is that most people are against the war, and against racism, big time. a couple of decades of having every culture and cuisine at our very doorstep have made most people realise what a great thing multiculturalism really is.
i'm sorry for your experience. most of us are really nice people.
i know what you're trying to say but it's not right. the patenting of genes occurs solely to prevent others (other comapanies, research institutions) from exploiting/developing cures through the exploitation/manipulation of that gene.
the fact is, discovering a potential gene/therapeutic target is only the first step in a long (10-15 years) and arduous road to a publically available cure/therapy, which is when the financial floodgates finally open (wide). the gene itself is worth nothing (in terms of $$$ value of course) until a therapy which exploits that gene or its gene product is discovered, and THAT'S where the money is. that and only that is what should (usually) be protectable/patentable.
GENETIC PATENTS ARE FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG because they prevent others from developing or even researching potential therapies right at the beginning of the discovery pipeline, which clearly and absolutely PREVENTS innovation/discovery and is AGAINST the public good. the innovation is the *therapy* that exploits the gene, not the gene itself. i can "discover" a (likely) new gene with some cheap and nasty perl and the publically available celera sequences, but what does the gene do? is it "important"? how does it work? does it cause, or correlate with, the incidence of some disease? how? etc etc. surely i shouldn't have the right to claim (patent) that gene as my "invention" until i've shown that it does something interesting and can demonstrate a method of its exploitation, right?
all in all, GENE PATENTS ARE MERELY SPECULATIVE LAND-GRABS, like someone bursting into a department store on the first morning of the post-christmas sales and then staking a claim on all the bargain bins whilst crying 'i got there first!'. the bargain bin should be open to everyone until someone picks something of value out of it, right?
in the same way that all web-savvy people decried the ridiculousness of amazon and others with their ludicrous patents, anyone worth their salt in molecular biology/biochemistry knows that GENE PATENTS ARE JUST WRONG WRONG WRONG.
And for anyone who says we shoudl NOT modify the weather, I have a wakeup call for you. Your argument is weak because humans are always going to adapt their environment to suit their needs. This is human nature and it flies in the face of our ability to survive. Our natural instinct is to change our world in order to suit our needs, from changing arid land to farmland or building a shelter so that the rain does not soak us while we sleep. We are always going to seek ways to make our environment more appealing to us and this is just the next logical step in that direction.
this doesn't mean we should do it. the desire to aggressively adapt our personal circumstances for self-benefit is a carryover from when we were actually subject to darwinian evolution. we passed that point of self-preservation long ago.
civilisation is about accepting that the wellbeing of the environment and future generations has to take precedence over short-term benefit/financial gain. at present, the ecology of weather is beyond our capabilities, it is folly to conceive attempting to alter it.
don't worry, the enemy of the civilised world, dubya bush, will kill off a few more thousand by randomly invading iraq for oil, thereby invoking the hatred of a thousand new potential terrorists for doing so, who'll pass on the favour by indirectly killing a few thousand more (innocents).
i lived in denmark for 6 months. there, as well as here, in my native australia, the only *real* sources of american influence are from TV, movies, and by extension, advertising and business models. i think you'd find if you dared to ask that most non-US people abhor the idea of US culture with its superficiality and 'me'-ness ever infiltrating their own culture. i don't think it will happen outside of the sphere of entertainment and possibly fast food.
i have spent time in the US as well, and there is a US-centricity to your media like you wouldn't believe unless you'd spent a reasonable amount of time outside the US. i, and many others i know find it really quite troubling.... especially in light of the pro-violence, pro-government-control policies of your current government.... not unlike the political climate in pre-WWII germany....
pray god it never comes to that. and don't say it couldn't happen, it's been said before.
a company must obligingly choose a limited number of directions/priorities due to financial concerns and the fickle nature of public (shareholder) perception. linux/open source doesn't suffer either of these limitations, but rather, suffers from "unglamourousness" - where certain parts of computing/software infrastructure are required for the function/elegance of the final product, but which never recieve sufficient attention because they're not "cool" enough to attract the necessary interest/kudos.
that said, i think most open source developers are "scratching their own itch", and not necessarily implementing a vision per se. perhaps projects like kde and the linux kernel have more tightly focused "sub-visions", but at the end of the day, it's the patchwork of open source that makes the tapestry.
matt h
Re:I am sure I am not the only one bothered by thi
on
Human-Mouse Hybrids?
·
· Score: 2
PhD == Doctor of Philosophy, the traditional title for high-level studies in any field.
the 'O' and the 'K'?
re: capitals... well, i guess you could say that i prefer lower-case for non-formal writing... it's easier and faster to type (no SHIFT key all the time), and IMHO looks better.
i could be a SA and say that i think capitalism is fundamentally wrong, but i wn't say that.;-)
I'm always troubled when people think you can solve (or lessen) mass starvation by simply feeding the people who are starving.
there are other solutions - modifying crops so that can grow in saline or polluted soil, in low water/nutrient conditions etc. that is, empowering poor countries and communities with technology.
i agree that growing more food is not necessarily the answer, though some redistribution and education would go a long way.
Re:I am sure I am not the only one bothered by thi
on
Human-Mouse Hybrids?
·
· Score: 2
You're not by any chance one of those scientists who turned himself into a half man/half mouse after your research approval was turned down are you? Tsk.
they don't just call me "the horse" because i like being taken out and ridden hard...
Slashdot Mirror
the 1 gene = 1 rna = 1 protein thing certainly doesn't hold up anymore. besides varsplices, as mentioned, there also a plethora of post-translational modifications, eg glycosylation that also give rise to (arguably) different gene products.
Don't you mean a Marketeer?
nah, i think he means a musketeer. linux is really big with animated disney characters, don't know why.
well, my girlfriend sucked my dick while i was using linux, does that count?
i agree completely. let's see...
- mm/dd/yy is just braindead. dd/mm/yy (the majority of the world) is at least ordered by unit, but even then yy/mm/dd is probably better.
- still. using. the. imperial. system. is. just. braindead. it's difficult not to draw lack of intelligence arguments about the inability of the US to get with the rest of the civilised world on this one.
- the widespread use of 'already' in the present tense. not amusing, not insightful, just bad grammar.
- the use of 'most everything' instead of 'almost everything' -- is grammar and spelling not taught in the US? we already know the metric system is too complicated for them.
- mandatory tipping. what a silly idea. why not just inflate prices by 10-15% and pay the right money, reserving a tip/gratuity for times when one's expectations or perceptions of value are exceeded?
- US "news". propaganda and national cheerleading aside, why is so repetitive, dumbed-down and devoid of insight?
- ludicrous overspending on defense (read: attack) when crime, homelessness, and 2nd world civil infrastructure are so prevalent.
- the US medical system (or lack thereof). seems the US doesn't care about its less-privileged citizens... don't have medical insurance or money? too bad..
- the US "legal" system - aka "who do you want to sue today?". fuck man, what a ridiculous joke this is. the world laughs and the US changes the channel.
- guns. whoever thought that widespread availability to guns and other armaments was a fool. "we need guns so we can take over the government after we finally realise that they don't even listen to us"... yeah, right.
see "bowling for columbine".
- the US system of government, aka "presidency for sale". whoever pays the most, bribes the most, sells their soul to mega-corporations the most, wins. whomever thought allowing corporations to straight-out bribe politicians and political candidates was a fool.
- US foreign policy aka "fuck the world, and fuck what our population thinks". there's too much that could be said here for it to be practical to retell. i suggest noam chomsky.
- and the thing that gets me the most -- how does the US population just let this shit their government pulls slide by?
...that debian might get its act together and get even remotely up to date?
Post constant drivel to Linux advocacy sites about the total superiority of your distribution in all areas. Maintain staunch arrogant composure even in the face of massive irrelevance to the Linux community at large, and generally declining interest even in key geek userbase.
this is so right on the money. i'm sure that 50% of debian users use it because they were deluded into thinking that using debian made them l33t. it's all linux people! a case in point, at my work we've had mandrake users help out debian users get their hardware or RAID working, shock horror!
moron
my sentiments exactly.
dude, that's a syntax error - it should be:
2003 == 1984
this message brought to you by george orwell-hitler bush.
Nothing exposes how poor MP3 (or even CDs) sound like owning a real quality pair of speakers connected to a clean amp. I have a Nakamichi AV-10 driving B&W DM-603 speakers. I connect the Nakamichi to the digital output of my Turtle Beach Montego soundcard, and it works well enough. Unfortunately, the fidelity of the system makes MP3 files almost unbearable for serious listening.
yeah, this is mostly bollocks - of course mp3's at <128kbps are liable to sound shit, as are mp3's at any bitrate that are recorded by a shit encoder. >=192kbps mp3's recorded by either grip or musicmatch are indistinguishable from cd on my logitech Z-560's, which are not shit speakers.
i can blind pick a 128kbps from a 192kbps on these speakers, but i can't blind pick the difference between cd and >=192 kbps, so for me, 192 kbps mp3s are the go.
saying that all mp3's are shit is a gross generalisation dude.
i can thoroughly endorse all of your comments re: logitech z-560's -- they're great.
whatever the specs may claim, they're certainly loud enough to flood my entire 3br apartment with quality sound. and talk about BASS, geez louise! i know what you mean about turning the bass knob as low as it will go... that sub can make stuff vibrate off my desk and get my walls thumping. definately a bass-lover's delight.
concerning the satellite grilles - i also agree - the high treble notes of hi-hats and cymbal crashes are definately clearer without them, though whether this improves the overall sound or not i guess is a matter of opinion.
perhaps my only complaint is that i'd like the mid-range response on say, guitar notes/chords to be a little "warmer" - but then that's only a minor quibble brought about by listening to a friend's top-of-the-line hifi system... but for AU$380 how the hell could one complain?
i'm glad... i'd like to preserve my (perhaps naive) original notions about australia being a generally sane and safe place.
incidentally, and totally OT, would you happen to have gone to linux.conf.au, sydney 2001? from the mugshot on your website i believe we may have actually once met or been in some kind of group introduction situation. did you perhaps give a talk there??
i feel one has to err on the side of trust is such circumstances. it would seem a little too elaborate and passionate a mail to be some random troll. i freely admit to being a little more 'brotherly' these days because of all the fucking FUD and warmongering for oil that's coming out of canberra and washington at the moment.
hi anonymous coward. i'm sorry for what happened. i'm australian and it's hard to believe that some australians are actually buying into this anti-muslim propaganda spouted by the current US and australian governments. this is deliberate, right-wing propaganda designed to incite anger and resentment in the west against muslims in order to boslter support for an extremely unpopular war against iraq for oil.
please please please report your story, just as you've written above, to your local press, and to the the sydney morning herald or the australian. the truth here in australia is that most people are against the war, and against racism, big time. a couple of decades of having every culture and cuisine at our very doorstep have made most people realise what a great thing multiculturalism really is.
i'm sorry for your experience. most of us are really nice people.
sincerely
matt
...think that KDE looks great, much better than gnome, and much better than XP as well.
thanks for all your hard work guys, i think you're doing great work.
and the trolling of that /. story would probably go as follows:
One-est post!
launch every arwen portman for great PROFIT!
ALL YOUR SHIRE WEED ARE BELONG TO US!
IN SOVIET MORDOR, the One ring longs after YOU!!!
as a consultant to an evil Fortune 500 megalomaniac dictator, it is clear, from any consideration of the facts, that Middle-Earth is dying
i know what you're trying to say but it's not right. the patenting of genes occurs solely to prevent others (other comapanies, research institutions) from exploiting/developing cures through the exploitation/manipulation of that gene.
the fact is, discovering a potential gene/therapeutic target is only the first step in a long (10-15 years) and arduous road to a publically available cure/therapy, which is when the financial floodgates finally open (wide). the gene itself is worth nothing (in terms of $$$ value of course) until a therapy which exploits that gene or its gene product is discovered, and THAT'S where the money is. that and only that is what should (usually) be protectable/patentable.
GENETIC PATENTS ARE FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG because they prevent others from developing or even researching potential therapies right at the beginning of the discovery pipeline, which clearly and absolutely PREVENTS innovation/discovery and is AGAINST the public good. the innovation is the *therapy* that exploits the gene, not the gene itself. i can "discover" a (likely) new gene with some cheap and nasty perl and the publically available celera sequences, but what does the gene do? is it "important"? how does it work? does it cause, or correlate with, the incidence of some disease? how? etc etc. surely i shouldn't have the right to claim (patent) that gene as my "invention" until i've shown that it does something interesting and can demonstrate a method of its exploitation, right?
all in all, GENE PATENTS ARE MERELY SPECULATIVE LAND-GRABS, like someone bursting into a department store on the first morning of the post-christmas sales and then staking a claim on all the bargain bins whilst crying 'i got there first!'. the bargain bin should be open to everyone until someone picks something of value out of it, right?
in the same way that all web-savvy people decried the ridiculousness of amazon and others with their ludicrous patents, anyone worth their salt in molecular biology/biochemistry knows that GENE PATENTS ARE JUST WRONG WRONG WRONG.
- a card-carrying scientist
better to be ignorant of what can be done than ignorant about the consequences, or just plain ignorant.
And for anyone who says we shoudl NOT modify the weather, I have a wakeup call for you. Your argument is weak because humans are always going to adapt their environment to suit their needs. This is human nature and it flies in the face of our ability to survive. Our natural instinct is to change our world in order to suit our needs, from changing arid land to farmland or building a shelter so that the rain does not soak us while we sleep. We are always going to seek ways to make our environment more appealing to us and this is just the next logical step in that direction.
this doesn't mean we should do it. the desire to aggressively adapt our personal circumstances for self-benefit is a carryover from when we were actually subject to darwinian evolution. we passed that point of self-preservation long ago.
civilisation is about accepting that the wellbeing of the environment and future generations has to take precedence over short-term benefit/financial gain. at present, the ecology of weather is beyond our capabilities, it is folly to conceive attempting to alter it.
don't worry, the enemy of the civilised world, dubya bush, will kill off a few more thousand by randomly invading iraq for oil, thereby invoking the hatred of a thousand new potential terrorists for doing so, who'll pass on the favour by indirectly killing a few thousand more (innocents).
i lived in denmark for 6 months. there, as well as here, in my native australia, the only *real* sources of american influence are from TV, movies, and by extension, advertising and business models. i think you'd find if you dared to ask that most non-US people abhor the idea of US culture with its superficiality and 'me'-ness ever infiltrating their own culture. i don't think it will happen outside of the sphere of entertainment and possibly fast food.
i have spent time in the US as well, and there is a US-centricity to your media like you wouldn't believe unless you'd spent a reasonable amount of time outside the US. i, and many others i know find it really quite troubling.... especially in light of the pro-violence, pro-government-control policies of your current government.... not unlike the political climate in pre-WWII germany....
pray god it never comes to that. and don't say it couldn't happen, it's been said before.
indeed.
a company must obligingly choose a limited number of directions/priorities due to financial concerns and the fickle nature of public (shareholder) perception. linux/open source doesn't suffer either of these limitations, but rather, suffers from "unglamourousness" - where certain parts of computing/software infrastructure are required for the function/elegance of the final product, but which never recieve sufficient attention because they're not "cool" enough to attract the necessary interest/kudos.
that said, i think most open source developers are "scratching their own itch", and not necessarily implementing a vision per se. perhaps projects like kde and the linux kernel have more tightly focused "sub-visions", but at the end of the day, it's the patchwork of open source that makes the tapestry.
matt h
PhD == Doctor of Philosophy, the traditional title for high-level studies in any field.
;-)
the 'O' and the 'K'?
re: capitals... well, i guess you could say that i prefer lower-case for non-formal writing... it's easier and faster to type (no SHIFT key all the time), and IMHO looks better.
i could be a SA and say that i think capitalism is fundamentally wrong, but i wn't say that.
cheers, matt
I'm always troubled when people think you can solve (or lessen) mass starvation by simply feeding the people who are starving.
there are other solutions - modifying crops so that can grow in saline or polluted soil, in low water/nutrient conditions etc. that is, empowering poor countries and communities with technology.
i agree that growing more food is not necessarily the answer, though some redistribution and education would go a long way.
You're not by any chance one of those scientists who turned himself into a half man/half mouse after your research approval was turned down are you? Tsk.
they don't just call me "the horse" because i like being taken out and ridden hard...