Yeah -- I think many of these "xblort69 writes..." posts are submitted by the editors themselves to stir up the geeks a little. It has become a bit of a farce.
Lewis Perdue also claims his 1983 novel "The Da Vinci Legacy" was largely plagiarized by Brown. You can read 'Da Vinci Code' Plagiarism Lawsuits for more details. If i look back far enough, surely I _must_ have written something I can sue them both for;-)
... gather evidence against massage parlors by paying for and receiving oral sex. Policing sexuality is clearly a "tricky" business, i guess. Does anyone else see these stories as another sign that the U.S. is headed toward the kind of twisted Christian theocracy Margaret Atwood describes in The Handmaid's Tale?
Exactly A/C. And someone always has to pay for the hardware, bandwidth, electricity, food, clothing, lodging, healthcare and education required for the production of "free" (and not free) software.
Creationism, ID or Cosmic Muffins are things you can BELIEVE in if you choose to. Evolution is something you can OBSERVE -- if you choose to (but is a fact regardless of what you choose)
How you adapt your personal theology to encompass both (or reject one of the above) is up to you.
For those who are interested in a compelling survey of what has been observed as far as modern human evolution and devlopment goes, check out Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies".
While I agree that it is wrong for western companies to bow down to the power of the Chinese government, I think you have to focus more attention on the role of U.S. government. After all, Bush granted China "Normal Trading Partner" status a few years ago. Either the U.S. people should force their politicians to place ethical limits on trade with China or American/.'ers should face the fact that their "democratically" elected regime is more than happy to sacrifice ethics for the Almighty Dollar (or Yen). If your governemt is happy to see its corporate citizens and consumers profit from the misery and subjugation of other people, then why shouldn't Microsoft or Yahoo or Google join in the fun? If we can ignore poor old Google for a minute, we know that North Americans (and Europeans?) are buying up ridiculously cheap Chinese goods -- products that are made with questionable labor and environmental practices. If we can't help ourselves (and morality seems to elude the "market forces" that control us) then all we can do is lobby the government to put additonal limits on how corporations.
Looks like your fees go up quite a bit after you stop being a student. Even if they don't, suppose you instead got a modest 7% interest on that $199/year over 45 years -- that would give you $60,844.60 to play with in your dotage. Anyhow, good luck with the frozen head thing;-)
... You've been frozen for 150 years, but your Cryo company went under about 80 years ago. Actually that company has been bought and sold a number of times. You actually spent a few weeks in a meat locker in Chicago until a new facility could be found. Unfortunately we were legally obligated to dip into your "inheritance" to pay for emergency cooling and relocation. You still have a few dollars left, but after converting them into American Yen, it looks like you will have to go back to work. Mr Pizer? Are you listening to me? Ah... yes, where is the rest of your body? Well, you see after the last market crash the Cryo industry was forced to make a few, um, cutbacks. What now? Well, Mr. Pizer, you've lucked into a wonderful Brave New World, you know. You've been assigned to the circus with all the others. You'll be pulled by trained monkeys round the ring on a special cart along with the other heads. It doesn't pay all that well, but it will keep the feeding tube flowing and cover any back taxes owing. And it does make the children laugh! Mr. Pizer? Now don't be angry with me Mr. Pizer...
Well I paid wayyy too much for a 256MB iRiver a couple of years ago. Nice little player, with FM stereo, voice (and FM) recorder, etc. But capacity is kinda small, eh? Now I've bought a 5GB Virgin Electronics Player (still with FM) for $129 Canadian. It works well enough and sounds great. No -- it's not as simple or elegant as an iPod. My player has ten -- yes TEN! -- buttons to deal with. It must have taken me a whole or hour or two to get used to the funky interface. On the other hand try searching Google for "broken iPod", "frozen iPod" or "lost iPod" and you'll feel better if you are a Cheap Philistine like me. Actually i did have a problem with the Virgin Player in the first few days -- the song indexes got corrupted, so i ran CHKDSK and all was well. Just for the hell of it i formatted the drive, re-flashed the ROM, copied the system file back and re-synched it. No problems since. But then again, that iPod wheel is pretty nice -- if i had had money to burn i woulda given my money to Jobs.
Yes -- I could not agree more. Clinton granted Most Favoured Nation trading status to China in the 90's. Bush affirmed this by granting "granting permanent normal trading relations (PNTR) status" in 2001. So, is you don't like what MS is doing in China -- too bad i guess since both Dem and Rep administrations have encouraged trade relations:
President Bush Grants Permanent Normal Trade Relations Status to China
STATEMENT BY THE DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary (Crawford, Texas) December 27, 2001
Today the President signed a proclamation granting permanent normal trading relations (PNTR) status to the People's Republic of China and terminating application of Jackson-Vanik provisions to China. Taking effect January 1, 2002, this is the final step in normalizing U.S.-China trade relations and welcoming China into a global, rules-based trading system. It marks the completion of more than a decade of bilateral and multilateral negotiations, and the beginning of a process of working constructively with China to help it fully implement its commitments on trade liberalization.
Congress authorized these actions subject to the President's certification that the final terms of entry for China into the WTO were at least equivalent to those agreed to bilaterally between the United States and China in 1999, and China's successful entry into the WTO. The President certified the equivalency of the final terms on November 9, 2001; China formally became a WTO member on December 11, 2001.
Wow. "lying bastard" and then "morally bankrupt degenerate worthless slimeballs". Such powerful argumentation. The free world is fortunate that your blog is not available in China -- otherwise you might just cause a big ol' war. In any case, you can have the last word if you decide to reply to this 'cause I won't be reading it. Peace and out, as they say.
I didn't say Microsoft was not in the wrong here. I can see how the prospect of sacrificing the entire Chinese market (and how many $millions in investment) to protect the rights of a single blogger would be a tricky moral choice to make. This is a moral decision i (and probably you) will never be called upon to make. Microsoft -- or Yahoo -- could try to argue that by collaborating a little they at least get to keep a Western influence (and a vague promise of free speech) alive in China. Maybe they don't think that way -- or if they do, maybe that is falacious also. I dunno.
And yes, the other cases are somewhat different, but they DO illustrate various ways big business collaborates with questionable regimes for the sake of money. Of course _YOU_ can block sites with your router. But it's different when your own governement blocks sites for you, isn't it?
Perhaps you would do well not to make this such a black and white issue. BTW, i spent about 5 minutes Googling to find those 3 examples. With a little more effort you can find plenty more of them.
Yes, given the huge problems in the world, Slashdot's anal focus on Microsoft used to bother me also. But, Slashdot is nothing if not about small things: gadgets, nanobots, lego hacks and crazy conspiracy theories float endlessly down a collective river of desire for free software, free music and free movies. We keep reading because there are occasional flashes of brilliance and once in a while the editors actually post some "Stuff that Matters".
BTW, the "demoicde" numbers you post are interesting -- and depressing. I don't see the United States listed on the chart though. Seems like killing 240,000 people with nukes during WW2 would count as democide: [ http://www.freep.com/news/nw/hiroshima5e_20050805. htm ]
It comes down to development and support. In order to ship a PC, Dell has to package and certify a boat load of drivers and asssorted software. It has to be more cost-effective to do this and cater to Windows -- the OS that 95% of the world uses. More to the point -- Dell -- and other vendors -- have to do the best they can to make drivers reliable, easy to re-install, configure and troubleshoot in order to maintain their reputations and keep support costs down.
Now consider support. If you are a Windows user -- preferably an XP user -- and you call Dell or HP for support, theoretically all of the drivers have been tested, most issues have been noted and posted to a knowledge base and chances are good that the tech at the other end of the line will have reasonable experience in helping you solve the problem.
Conversely, if you buy a barebones systems and run into problems, Dell will have fewer Linux techs who can help, these techs will be more expensive to retain and _your_ level of competency will have a huge impact on the length and outcome of the support call than if you were a lowly Windows user.
Perhaps if you could purchase with an iron-clad zero-support option, then Dell could justify dropping the price. But probably not. Dell is probably just as greedy and unwilling to pass the savings on to the customer (if they don't have to) as most other companies. This is also true of many open source vendors. Whether it's Dell, RedHat or IBM, they'll work hard to extract money out of us one way or another.
I agree that eminent domain has NOT (as far as i've heard) been applied to intellectual property. My point was that given the recent supreme court ruling, I can imagine someone may attempt it. In any case, check out this CNN Story: "A recent study by the property rights group Institute for Justice, which is representing the New London homeowners in court, found about 10,000 cases from 1998 to 2002 of local governments in 41 states using or threatening to use eminent domain to transfer home and properties from one private owner to another. Courts in at least six states have upheld the practice."
Funny you should say that. The U.S. Supreme Court has just decided that US towns can expropriate private land so that corporations like Wal-Mart can build on the land. So your "property" may not always be "yours" -- though if your patents were to be expropriated because of this "eminent domain" decision, you would at least be compensated. So yes, someone can build a better home on your lot if they convince you town that it is in the public's interest to do so.
York University in Toronto has an interesting facility:
York's virtual reality room turns perception on its head
Home to Canada's only fully-immersive environment
TORONTO, March 31, 2005 -- Jumping into the virtual world of a videogame is helping York University researchers understand how humans orient themselves on solid ground and in outer space.
Professor Michael Jenkin and his team at York's Centre for Vision Research have developed a 'virtual reality room' called IVY (Immersive Virtual Environment at York) in order to study our perception of gravity and motion, and how we orient ourselves spatially.
"We're displaying an environment from [the popular videogame] Doom right now, but of course that's just an example of one simulation," Jenkin says.
The room is the only six-sided immersive environment in Canada, and one of a mere handful internationally. Its walls, ceiling and floor are comprised of pixel maps generated by a cluster of computers running Linux. The entire structure is made of the same glass used in the CN Tower's observation deck. The floor alone took two years to complete.
Researchers are able to manipulate the environment within IVY, changing the scenery and its orientation, in order to understand how people become disoriented and how their internal perception of 'up' and 'down' is informed.
"Some people become incredibly confused. I've actually seen people fall over in there," Jenkin says.
The research is being used by the Canadian Space Agency and National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) to find ways to help strengthen astronauts' sense of 'up' and 'down' in zero gravity environments.
Jenkin's team also hopes to find methods of counteracting the gradual loss of spatial orientation that occurs as we age.
One of the most challenging aspects of IVY's design was to create a system that allowed subjects to experience both the look and feel of moving through the virtual space.
A graduate student developed a wireless 'head-tracking' device that follows subjects' movements and alters the displays accordingly. Users wear stereo shutter glasses which give a 3-D effect.
"The computer compensates when you move around so it looks correct. It knows where you've moved, where your eyes are," says Jenkin.
As the country's only truly immersive environment, IVY is also in demand from private industry for a myriad of projects.
"If someone brings us their data set, we can render it and they can walk through and interact with it," says Jenkin.
"We're constantly pushing the boundaries and learning how better to do VR."
Good old ornery Orrin. Remember when he took money from Novell, Sun, Oracle and AOL to fight Microsoft in the late 90's. Back then, many in the OSS community cheered him on for his integrity and forthrightness in taking on Microsoft. I guess cheering him on can't buy as much "integrity" as cold hard cash and the use of a corporate jet for his campaign.
I remember seeing demos of "fractal image comression" -- it was extremely good at the time. There is more info about it here: Fractal Compression Projects".
Re:yet another way to look at it...
on
Re-Pet a Reality
·
· Score: 1
Hey... the woman's cat lived for 17 years. Pretty damn good for a cat. I'm not against medical research -- it's sad that the US govt is limiting stem cell research and making it difficult for people to work on things like creating islet cells for diabetics and healing spinal cord injuries. Cloning cats at $50,000 a pop isn't going to help anyone but the shareholders of the "Savings and Clone" company.
Do you really think death is something we should "fight"? Does "fighting" death mean spending millions of dollars on exotic treatments for the wealthy while millions go hungry, while poor people in economic "free zones" toil in factories to make goods sold in North American malls?
That $50,000 could have eased the suffering of a large number of people. As for our unwillingness to "accept death" and our reliance on pharabusiness to "fight" it, we are helping to create superbugs. Bah humbug.
Hey -- it's all part of the big picture -- but I'm sorry for mentioning it.
The trouble is that the original post of this thread, with it's loaded "looks promising" analysis of this designer clat clone presumes a uniformity of thought among Slashdot readers. Sorry, but I beg to differ. I'm not against genetic research -- I'm against using a ridiculous proportion of resources: captital, medical knowledge, etc for the sad appeasement of a short-sighted persons's pathetic need to bring a 17-year old cat "back to life".
Symbol of our society
on
Re-Pet a Reality
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"Looks promising", eh?
No, just another example flagrant consumption -- commodity fetishism at its worst. Even life has a price for those who can afford it. As other have pointed out, $50,000 could have helped relieve a lot of suffering for people and animals alike.
Looked at another way, its just another example of our society's pathological fear of death. The Egyptians also had an major death fear/fetish and they even mumified their pet cats once in a while -- but at least they buried them!
And American soldiers are dying by the score to help preserve that way of life. Another sad day for the planet.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah -- I think many of these "xblort69 writes ..." posts are submitted by the editors themselves to stir up the geeks a little. It has become a bit of a farce.
Lewis Perdue also claims his 1983 novel "The Da Vinci Legacy" was largely plagiarized by Brown. You can read 'Da Vinci Code' Plagiarism Lawsuits for more details. If i look back far enough, surely I _must_ have written something I can sue them both for ;-)
... gather evidence against massage parlors by paying for and receiving oral sex. Policing sexuality is clearly a "tricky" business, i guess. Does anyone else see these stories as another sign that the U.S. is headed toward the kind of twisted Christian theocracy Margaret Atwood describes in The Handmaid's Tale?
See Washington Post article to read about the Spotsylvania police "beat".
Well said! May the points of a 1000 moderators enrich your Karma.
Exactly A/C. And someone always has to pay for the hardware, bandwidth, electricity, food, clothing, lodging, healthcare and education required for the production of "free" (and not free) software.
...or perhaps you want it to be louder because you _already_ have hearing loss. Have you had your hearing checked lately?
It's simple:
Creationism, ID or Cosmic Muffins are things you can BELIEVE in if you choose to.
Evolution is something you can OBSERVE -- if you choose to (but is a fact regardless of what you choose)
How you adapt your personal theology to encompass both (or reject one of the above) is up to you.
For those who are interested in a compelling survey of what has been observed as far as modern human evolution and devlopment goes, check out Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies".
While I agree that it is wrong for western companies to bow down to the power of the Chinese government, I think you have to focus more attention on the role of U.S. government. After all, Bush granted China "Normal Trading Partner" status a few years ago. Either the U.S. people should force their politicians to place ethical limits on trade with China or American /.'ers should face the fact that their "democratically" elected regime is more than happy to sacrifice ethics for the Almighty Dollar (or Yen). If your governemt is happy to see its corporate citizens and consumers profit from the misery and subjugation of other people, then why shouldn't Microsoft or Yahoo or Google join in the fun? If we can ignore poor old Google for a minute, we know that North Americans (and Europeans?) are buying up ridiculously cheap Chinese goods -- products that are made with questionable labor and environmental practices. If we can't help ourselves (and morality seems to elude the "market forces" that control us) then all we can do is lobby the government to put additonal limits on how corporations.
Looks like your fees go up quite a bit after you stop being a student. Even if they don't, suppose you instead got a modest 7% interest on that $199/year over 45 years -- that would give you $60,844.60 to play with in your dotage. Anyhow, good luck with the frozen head thing ;-)
... You've been frozen for 150 years, but your Cryo company went under about 80 years ago. Actually that company has been bought and sold a number of times. You actually spent a few weeks in a meat locker in Chicago until a new facility could be found. Unfortunately we were legally obligated to dip into your "inheritance" to pay for emergency cooling and relocation. You still have a few dollars left, but after converting them into American Yen, it looks like you will have to go back to work. Mr Pizer? Are you listening to me? Ah... yes, where is the rest of your body? Well, you see after the last market crash the Cryo industry was forced to make a few, um, cutbacks. What now? Well, Mr. Pizer, you've lucked into a wonderful Brave New World, you know. You've been assigned to the circus with all the others. You'll be pulled by trained monkeys round the ring on a special cart along with the other heads. It doesn't pay all that well, but it will keep the feeding tube flowing and cover any back taxes owing. And it does make the children laugh! Mr. Pizer? Now don't be angry with me Mr. Pizer...
Well I paid wayyy too much for a 256MB iRiver a couple of years ago. Nice little player, with FM stereo, voice (and FM) recorder, etc. But capacity is kinda small, eh? Now I've bought a 5GB Virgin Electronics Player (still with FM) for $129 Canadian. It works well enough and sounds great. No -- it's not as simple or elegant as an iPod. My player has ten -- yes TEN! -- buttons to deal with. It must have taken me a whole or hour or two to get used to the funky interface. On the other hand try searching Google for "broken iPod", "frozen iPod" or "lost iPod" and you'll feel better if you are a Cheap Philistine like me. Actually i did have a problem with the Virgin Player in the first few days -- the song indexes got corrupted, so i ran CHKDSK and all was well. Just for the hell of it i formatted the drive, re-flashed the ROM, copied the system file back and re-synched it. No problems since. But then again, that iPod wheel is pretty nice -- if i had had money to burn i woulda given my money to Jobs.
Yes -- I could not agree more. Clinton granted Most Favoured Nation trading status to China in the 90's. Bush affirmed this by granting "granting permanent normal trading relations (PNTR) status" in 2001. So, is you don't like what MS is doing in China -- too bad i guess since both Dem and Rep administrations have encouraged trade relations:
. html
http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/econ/grants1227
President Bush Grants Permanent Normal Trade Relations Status to China
STATEMENT BY THE DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
(Crawford, Texas)
December 27, 2001
Today the President signed a proclamation granting permanent normal trading relations (PNTR) status to the People's Republic of China and terminating application of Jackson-Vanik provisions to China. Taking effect January 1, 2002, this is the final step in normalizing U.S.-China trade relations and welcoming China into a global, rules-based trading system. It marks the completion of more than a decade of bilateral and multilateral negotiations, and the beginning of a process of working constructively with China to help it fully implement its commitments on trade liberalization.
Congress authorized these actions subject to the President's certification that the final terms of entry for China into the WTO were at least equivalent to those agreed to bilaterally between the United States and China in 1999, and China's successful entry into the WTO. The President certified the equivalency of the final terms on November 9, 2001; China formally became a WTO member on December 11, 2001.
Wow. "lying bastard" and then "morally bankrupt degenerate worthless slimeballs". Such powerful argumentation. The free world is fortunate that your blog is not available in China -- otherwise you might just cause a big ol' war. In any case, you can have the last word if you decide to reply to this 'cause I won't be reading it. Peace and out, as they say.
I didn't say Microsoft was not in the wrong here. I can see how the prospect of sacrificing the entire Chinese market (and how many $millions in investment) to protect the rights of a single blogger would be a tricky moral choice to make. This is a moral decision i (and probably you) will never be called upon to make. Microsoft -- or Yahoo -- could try to argue that by collaborating a little they at least get to keep a Western influence (and a vague promise of free speech) alive in China. Maybe they don't think that way -- or if they do, maybe that is falacious also. I dunno.
And yes, the other cases are somewhat different, but they DO illustrate various ways big business collaborates with questionable regimes for the sake of money. Of course _YOU_ can block sites with your router. But it's different when your own governement blocks sites for you, isn't it?
Perhaps you would do well not to make this such a black and white issue. BTW, i spent about 5 minutes Googling to find those 3 examples. With a little more effort you can find plenty more of them.
but keep bashing Microsoft as the personification of evil if it helps you forget these things:
Google Bows to Chinese Censorship
How about Yahoo:
Information supplied by Yahoo ! helped journalist Shi Tao get 10 years in prison
and there is this on Cisco and China:
China's Internet: Let a Thousand Filters Bloom
Yes, given the huge problems in the world, Slashdot's anal focus on Microsoft used to bother me also. But, Slashdot is nothing if not about small things: gadgets, nanobots, lego hacks and crazy conspiracy theories float endlessly down a collective river of desire for free software, free music and free movies. We keep reading because there are occasional flashes of brilliance and once in a while the editors actually post some "Stuff that Matters".
. htm ]
BTW, the "demoicde" numbers you post are interesting -- and depressing. I don't see the United States listed on the chart though. Seems like killing 240,000 people with nukes during WW2 would count as democide: [ http://www.freep.com/news/nw/hiroshima5e_20050805
It comes down to development and support. In order to ship a PC, Dell has to package and certify a boat load of drivers and asssorted software. It has to be more cost-effective to do this and cater to Windows -- the OS that 95% of the world uses. More to the point -- Dell -- and other vendors -- have to do the best they can to make drivers reliable, easy to re-install, configure and troubleshoot in order to maintain their reputations and keep support costs down.
Now consider support. If you are a Windows user -- preferably an XP user -- and you call Dell or HP for support, theoretically all of the drivers have been tested, most issues have been noted and posted to a knowledge base and chances are good that the tech at the other end of the line will have reasonable experience in helping you solve the problem.
Conversely, if you buy a barebones systems and run into problems, Dell will have fewer Linux techs who can help, these techs will be more expensive to retain and _your_ level of competency will have a huge impact on the length and outcome of the support call than if you were a lowly Windows user.
Perhaps if you could purchase with an iron-clad zero-support option, then Dell could justify dropping the price. But probably not. Dell is probably just as greedy and unwilling to pass the savings on to the customer (if they don't have to) as most other companies. This is also true of many open source vendors. Whether it's Dell, RedHat or IBM, they'll work hard to extract money out of us one way or another.
I agree that eminent domain has NOT (as far as i've heard) been applied to intellectual property. My point was that given the recent supreme court ruling, I can imagine someone may attempt it. In any case, check out this CNN Story: "A recent study by the property rights group Institute for Justice, which is representing the New London homeowners in court, found about 10,000 cases from 1998 to 2002 of local governments in 41 states using or threatening to use eminent domain to transfer home and properties from one private owner to another. Courts in at least six states have upheld the practice."
Wal-mart is mentioned specifically as a beneficiary of eminent domain here: Wal-Mart, the Abuse of Eminent Domain and Corporate Welfare.
Funny you should say that. The U.S. Supreme Court has just decided that US towns can expropriate private land so that corporations like Wal-Mart can build on the land. So your "property" may not always be "yours" -- though if your patents were to be expropriated because of this "eminent domain" decision, you would at least be compensated. So yes, someone can build a better home on your lot if they convince you town that it is in the public's interest to do so.
York University in Toronto has an interesting facility:
York's virtual reality room turns perception on its head
Home to Canada's only fully-immersive environment
TORONTO, March 31, 2005 -- Jumping into the virtual world of a
videogame is helping York University researchers understand how humans orient themselves on solid ground and in outer space.
Professor Michael Jenkin and his team at York's Centre for Vision Research have developed a 'virtual reality room' called IVY (Immersive Virtual Environment at York) in order to study our perception of gravity and motion, and how we orient ourselves spatially.
"We're displaying an environment from [the popular videogame] Doom right now, but of course that's just an example of one simulation," Jenkin says.
The room is the only six-sided immersive environment in Canada, and one of a mere handful internationally. Its walls, ceiling and floor are comprised of pixel maps generated by a cluster of computers running Linux. The entire structure is made of the same glass used in the CN Tower's observation deck. The floor alone took two years to complete.
Researchers are able to manipulate the environment within IVY, changing the scenery and its orientation, in order to understand how people become disoriented and how their internal perception of 'up' and 'down' is informed.
"Some people become incredibly confused. I've actually seen people fall over in there," Jenkin says.
The research is being used by the Canadian Space Agency and National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) to find ways to help strengthen astronauts' sense of 'up' and 'down' in zero gravity environments.
Jenkin's team also hopes to find methods of counteracting the gradual loss of spatial orientation that occurs as we age.
One of the most challenging aspects of IVY's design was to create a system that allowed subjects to experience both the look and feel of moving through the virtual space.
A graduate student developed a wireless 'head-tracking' device that follows subjects' movements and alters the displays accordingly. Users wear stereo shutter glasses which give a 3-D effect.
"The computer compensates when you move around so it looks correct. It knows where you've moved, where your eyes are," says Jenkin.
As the country's only truly immersive environment, IVY is also in demand from private industry for a myriad of projects.
"If someone brings us their data set, we can render it and they can walk through and interact with it," says Jenkin.
"We're constantly pushing the boundaries and learning how better to do VR."
-30-
Good old ornery Orrin. Remember when he took money from Novell, Sun, Oracle and AOL to fight Microsoft in the late 90's. Back then, many in the OSS community cheered him on for his integrity and forthrightness in taking on Microsoft. I guess cheering him on can't buy as much "integrity" as cold hard cash and the use of a corporate jet for his campaign.
I remember seeing demos of "fractal image comression" -- it was extremely good at the time. There is more info about it here: Fractal Compression Projects".
Hey... the woman's cat lived for 17 years. Pretty damn good for a cat. I'm not against medical research -- it's sad that the US govt is limiting stem cell research and making it difficult for people to work on things like creating islet cells for diabetics and healing spinal cord injuries. Cloning cats at $50,000 a pop isn't going to help anyone but the shareholders of the "Savings and Clone" company.
Do you really think death is something we should "fight"? Does "fighting" death mean spending millions of dollars on exotic treatments for the wealthy while millions go hungry, while poor people in economic "free zones" toil in factories to make goods sold in North American malls?
That $50,000 could have eased the suffering of a large number of people. As for our unwillingness to "accept death" and our reliance on pharabusiness to "fight" it, we are helping to create superbugs. Bah humbug.
Hey -- it's all part of the big picture -- but I'm sorry for mentioning it.
The trouble is that the original post of this thread, with it's loaded "looks promising" analysis of this designer clat clone presumes a uniformity of thought among Slashdot readers. Sorry, but I beg to differ. I'm not against genetic research -- I'm against using a ridiculous proportion of resources: captital, medical knowledge, etc for the sad appeasement of a short-sighted persons's pathetic need to bring a 17-year old cat "back to life".
"Looks promising", eh?
No, just another example flagrant consumption -- commodity fetishism at its worst. Even life has a price for those who can afford it. As other have pointed out, $50,000 could have helped relieve a lot of suffering for people and animals alike.
Looked at another way, its just another example of our society's pathological fear of death. The Egyptians also had an major death fear/fetish and they even mumified their pet cats once in a while -- but at least they buried them!
And American soldiers are dying by the score to help preserve that way of life. Another sad day for the planet.