Most hard drives are rated for something like shocks of over 50 G (decelleration of 50 G), which is quite a lot.
Not as much as you'd think.. A laptop drive is rated higher than that BTW..
I've seen hard drives destroyed with a relatively light shock ("thumping" them on the top), and I've seen drives survive after brutal punishment.. (being thrown to the ground and stomped on.. never get in a POed sysadmin's way..)
The anti-skip crap sounds like fast cache memory like they have in portable CD players these days..
The learning curve on Java is a BITCH. Yeah, yeah, I know you're thinking "Bunk! Java's as easy as they come!"
Bull. Points of fact: 1) Java keeps changing. If they'd get down to standards already more people would use it. Look at Swing for crying out loud.. 1.1 to 1.2 was a whole radical annoying thing.. 2) Java, being wholly OO, is a lot harder to learn for the person that has programmed C for twenty years. C is used WAY more out there in the real world than C++.. I learned the OO way. I have no problems. C++ is my language of choice, but everyone I work with just can't grasp it easily. It takes them a while. Java? Forget it, they don't even try! They don't try because: 3) It's a slow, clunky, badly designed, interpreted, overrated, security-overconcious, bug-riden piece of shit.
I have a program that I would consider to be something fairly easy to do, but it's in Java, thereby becoming extremely difficult. It has to be on the web, and that means java. CGI just ain't gonna work for this one. ActiveX can blow me.
The program basically connects to a Database over the network, and lets a user modify it. The mapping of inputs to tables is fairly one to one, so basically it's just a front end to the DB. Easy right? Hardly...
JDBC works maybe 75% of the time. Often it fails for no reason... There's no standards in how JDBC connects across a network.. It all depends on the server you're running... Come to think of it, there's no standards on Java between the two major browsers (both of which must work, yes, bloody m$). That means the simplest way is to use the Sun Java Plugin, adding one more thing that users must do for this POS to work right.. All the servers that support JDBC (This is on NT, not by my choice, mind) seem to suck terribly. Most of them crash a lot, few will run as a service, none are open-source and/or freeware...
Bloody annoying, that's what java is. You can't get around to programming any damn thing because you're too busy finding any way to get the stuff to make it work in the first place..
I fear that "going mainstream" might just amount to people doing everything they can to look like a geek, rather than actually be one. They'll install Redhat, Caldera, or Mandrake, run Enlightenment, and hang out in some #channel, being k00l d00ds. They'll wear Copyleft t-shirts, talk about what Linus or Raymond said lately, and use the Linux credit card. (Well, at least that'll bring more capital into the Community for furthering development!!;)
This has already occured. Have you ever physically met a script kiddie? It's an enlightening experience. Somewhat terrifying too.
Of course, once you realize they are, in fact, a script kiddie, you can proceed to "deprogram" them (beat them down mercilessly).:-)
Yet as we all know, being a geek takes so much time and effort...and study. I have gained the impression that this amount of learning is just not something that non-geeks are interested in.
It's worse than this. The kiddies I have met, mainly 18-year olds just entering college, know enough to be annoying, yet don't have the ability to learn, IMHO. Reminds me of a guy I met named "Chuck"..
Chuck is/was a script kiddie. He knew just enough to impress those without knowledge (i.e. most of the people of the world), but not enough to actually accomplish anything. They were impressed by his ability to download warez from IRC (oooooooh!) and his ability to use a computer fairly well (double oooooh!). He's not actually bright enough to understand, well, network protocols, but he can figure out Back Orifice because it's not all THAT hard. It only took him 2 weeks to dope it out, and that was with help.
Anyway, the point is that the person I described is real, I met him, I knew him well. I didn't like him or anything, but our common friends thought he was really smart. He was fairly bright, but not grade A material. His problem was that he had no desire to learn the fundamentals of any subject. He saw computing as a means to an end (ie. screwing with people).. He didn't program, because it didn't offer him instant gratification.
That kid was a geek poser. Trying to fit a stereotype he knew nothing about the reality of. Pretty damn disturbing if you ask me.
I'd read about his space elevator concept, both in his books and in actual papers on the subject.. Like all good ideas, it's very, very simple.. But I still thought diamond was the way to go.. I'd never considered bucky tubes.. genius man, genius..
Good Line here: By the way, I'm an absentee landlord of a hundred square miles of some rather rugged territory near the orbit of Mars. I have an asteroid named after me. Isaac Asimov's got one too. It's smaller and more eccentric.
Ha! Asimov would have loved that..
Let's see here... more browsing.. ah ha! He talks about how he originally came up with the idea for the geosyncronous satellite for communications:
Q. One of the legends about you is that you came up with the idea for Comsat in an article you wrote in 1945 and that you never patented the idea.
A. Oh, so you want to ask me about how I lost a billion dollars in my spare time? Well, you see when I wrote my "comsat" paper, it was 1945....I didn't think that satellites could be launched until the end of the century.... I just wrote this article and sent it off and got £15 for it....what I should have done is to try to copyright the word "comsat." If I'd done that....
Good one.. Bit uninformative of anything new, and definitely the article is way too short.. I'd really like to see an indepth interview, or at least to read about whatever he wants to write about.. Someone like Clarke, well, they're just plain interesting, all the time..
Something can be patented and freely available. Actually patenting something does make it freely available, just not necessarily freely usable. A patent disclosure has to include all the details necessary for a person competent in the field to reproduce the work. You could still patent something and make it freely useable however, though the likelyhood that Dr Venter is doing this is vanishingly small.
But what the heck is he actually trying to patent? The Human Genome? That's just information. It's not a process, it's not a technique, it's not a thing as such. That's like me trying to patent a dictionary. Not the actual book, but the information contained in there.
It just doesn't make much sense. He can't be trying to patent the actual information, since he's going to sell it, type of thing.. My guess it that the patents are techniques for gaining the information that they invented and used.. sort of the bruce force methods they discuss in the article..
It'll never mean anything anyway. The genome would leak onto the internet faster than anything. The problem with selling something like that is that you can't prove that someone used your data when the copy gets leaked.
The story is crap, it doesn't make sense, I can't grasp it... argh! I hate badly written stories that don't make any sense! ---
Sounds crazy? I dunno. As long as no one gets into their mind to drive a car remote through a webcam on the hood...
Damn good idea! Patent it!
Actually... well, I think it would be pretty cool to get a small car, like an RC car on steroids, drive it down to the liquor store, say.. and order some beer and so forth thru the speaker... well..
okay maybe not.. but it could be pretty cool to remotely drive a web enabled rc car through my neighborhood..
Despite assurances earlier this year to the US Congress that Celera's discoveries would be freely available, Dr Venter is now seeking to patent more than 6,000 pieces of genetic information.
Ummm.. Isn't that technically purjury under US Law? I recall something like this.. not sure where I read that from, but the gist of it was you can't lie to congress for any reason, or something to that effect..
This only applies if he's a US citizen I suppose..
That post was a damn good troll. But anyway, here's my response to it...
How come whenever something about Christianity on/., everyone assumes that all Christendom is behind it, and it will inevitably end in A) moral confusion and/or B) holy wars and/or C) unjust persecution of geeks.
Well, from my personal past experience, I've usually found this to actually be the case, when you get right down to the matter...
Sorry to crush a collective dillusion, but Christians _are_ capable of independent thought, and aren't necessarily bent on starting a second Inquisition.
Many people call themselves "Christian", yet have wildly differing belief systems. Your Christianity may just be the local flavor... It's not really a proper term or anything. Never forget this.
BTW, most people you refer to aren't against "Christianity", they're against "religion."
And then there are comments like "They might actually revel in blasphemy and angel-bashing." refering to watching The Simpsons? There is not a commandment that says "thou shall not laugh."
No, just "though shalt not exercise any independant thought without first asking your duly-appointed man-of-god to see if it goes along with the local 'holy' way to be"...
And then we get the comment "Religion and freedom have never really gotten along." Nice tie, but it doesn't explain a few people like Gangis Kahn, Napolean, or Hitler (who prosecuted the Jewish RACE much more so than the religion).
And then there's the Crusades, the hundreds of years of perscution of non-Catholics by the Catholic church, the Inquisition, etc, etc..
Look, you can cut it either way. (BTW, Hitler was not an athiest you know..)
I am sorry, I guess it is just more 'fun' to live with a severly outdated, extremely prejudicial view of the religious.
It sure is!:-) I enjoy my prejudices.
Prejudice: 2. An opinion or judgment formed without due examination; prejudgment; a leaning toward one side of a question from other considerations than those belonging to it; an unreasonable predilection for, or objection against, anything; especially, an opinion or leaning adverse to anything, without just grounds, or before sufficient knowledge. (from www.dictionary.com)
True and to the point. I am prejudiced against religious people. I suppose I should define a religious person.. A "religious" person, to me, is a person who allows religion to come before reason. I have no problem with someone who believes in anything, as long as: they don't try to convert me and they aren't stupid about it. Trying to convert me is putting religion before reason because a smack upside the head often offends. I have no patience for morons who don't get it when I say I am an atheist (not something I usually bring up anyway).. Multiple offenses result in getting kicked around the room, being smacked with harder items that happen to be at hand, and eventually, if pushed too far, causing me to reach for my gun (only happened once, and it wasn't loaded, and I just wanted the moron to go away)...
But when a person's beliefs causes them to ignore facts that are blatantly apparent, then I'm not happy. I have a firm belief in the scientific method. Evidence, theory, test, repeat. It's the way to find out anything, even if it takes a long, long time. Religion has no evidence either way, and therefore currently falls outside the scientific method. Look at the definition of prejustice again. Deeply religious people like this are prejudiced against science. Being a geek, I cannot abide this.
Therefore, once a person proves himself to be "religious" per my definition, then yes, I am prejudiced, and usually annoyed with that person to the point that I will no longer associate with them.
Kinda sucks when I'm down in the bible belt, but you gotta stick by your principles.
has the first post phenotype gotten this out of hand??
The "first post" crap would go away if everyone would just ignore it all around. Hell, I rarely see them since they get moderated down to -1 quite fast. The only reason they seem to hang around is that people then bitch about people posting "first post" BS, and there's simply not enough moderator points to moderate these down further. Let them slide, and place your trust in the moderator system. Don't respond, ignore. Use the points, Luke...:-)
This is the last post I hope to ever see regarding first post lusers.. please let it be the last... ---
No company now would commit to a closed hardware strategy. It would cost them more than using commodity components. Just as importantly, it would commit them to a single source for support and parts. Why then do they commit to a single software supplier ?
This one statement is just so unbelievably wrong..
Now before you get all upset, I love open source as much as any of you. OSS is a great, good, noble thing.. So keep that in mind..
It's fairly obvious that Alan Cox really doesn't fully understand the business mind, which is understandable, since nobody but a business mind can grasp it.:-)
Companies DO commit to closed hardware solutions. Companies WILL put pretty much their entire revenue in the hands of their suppliers. This happens often. Daily. Hourly.
Why? Companies are run by people in management who don't care about "the right way" to do something. Heck, most of the time they don't bother to analyse the long-term effects of their actions. A company wants to make money, and they want to make it NOW. Sure, they'd like to make it later too, but if we can make more NOW, that's the important thing. I have to deal with this mentality all the time.
Similarly, in a production environment, downtime is unacceptable. Companies need guaranteed, strong, support. But they need something else: they need multiple sources of support.
Of COURSE a company would rather buy a closed source software system, and trust them for support. Why? Shifting of blame. Remember that a company usually does not make the decision to have a software system designed for them. No, a person in management who works for the company makes that decision. If it doesn't work, he gets the blame. By going with a closed-source app custom made for them, they have someone to blame when it breaks. They have someone to push around to fix it. The guy who made the call to get this system probably will keep his job when it fails (and all systems will fail eventually).
However, let's say he's got brains. Let's say he knows that the open-source app is the better way to go. In terms of support, you can't beat it. Thousands of people working on it? GREAT! But, the downside is this: How do you push around people who work for essentially nothing in their spare time? Quick answer: you don't. You have no leverage. If your system breaks, and they can't fix it quickly, you're more or less screwed. Even if you KNOW this will never happen, you can't prove it to a board of directors, can you? The simple possiblity that it could happen is enough to make you reject the open source concept. Better for it to fail fairly often and have someone who you can blame than to have it fail rarely and have all the blame yourself.
Now I don't say this is right. But this is how the management in the companies I work for (read: program custom apps for) think... This is based on my limited experience, your mileage may vary, type of thing...
One more thing: In many ways the motor car is a very good example of the fact that the open source model is not something revolutionary, as Bob Young is so keen to point out - it is the model we use in almost all serious grown up industry.
HAHAHAHAHAH! One of those things I program custom apps for is several motor companies. Many programs I have written are on the line at several plants now. I have to go to these places to install and maintain these apps I have written. This stuff is a closed-source as it gets, my friend. Automobile manufacturers are one of THE MOST custom application, closed-source, driven industries in the entire world. WHOLE SYSTEMS that exist on these production lines are not only custom software, but custom HARDWARE from ONE COMPANY. One company makes the hardware AND the software. If that system goes down in any large way, SO DOES THE LINE. Neat, huh? Get a tour sometime of your nearest car production plant. Watch the systems hanging from the line very very closely. None are open-source. Not one.
Google is the search engine for me! Literally! I searched for my name and it came up with most of the projects/pages that I have been involved in for the years.
I must admit, I was impressed with the number of references to my name it came up with, but the one that really threw me (because the middle inital was correct) was this one:
The Samuel J. Wood Library The C.V. Starr Biomedical Information Center The Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College and Graduate School of Medical Sciences of Cornell University 1300 York Avenue New York, NY 10021-4896
Wow.. I had no idea. I'm going to have to go to NY now..:-)
(regarding the toll booth thing, for example) Okay, assume you're not broadcasting a cc#, just an ID number.. What's to prevent someone copying that and running up charges on your account?
The fact is, that any system like this can be duplicated and abused, while it's in its infancy.. Look at all the fraud that has occured (and still occurs) with cell-phone theft.. It's not hard to see that the system is becoming available before the means to secure it.
Yes, it could be secure. Public-key cryptography could make a system secure by, for example, the toll-booth broadcasting a key out to encrypt with (just off the top of my head, so don't take it as fact or anything).. But how much do you want to bet that security has not been implemented to the point where you, or I, or Joe Cracker thinks it's secure?
Any system that involves automatic transfer of funds or services needs absolute security within unreasonable limits before I will adopt it. Plain and simple. By "unreasonable limits," I mean limits that are above and beyond my expectations. If there's a chance I could crack the system myself in under a month, I won't go for it. Forget it. I'll stick to cash, thanks.
Did you notice that the Dolly clone was NOT the same size? There was a BIG size difference. Identical twins are usually about the same size. OK so they shared the same womb and womb environment, but I doubt such a significant size difference can be explained by different womb environments.
Are you a complete idiot?
First off, Dolly and Dolly's clone are NOT TWINS! Twins implies birth together. Dolly is two years (?) or so older than the clone. Could this possibly explain size difference? Hmmmm?
And Mitochondrial DNA has next to no effect on the animal's development. If you really cared, you could have the mDNA identical simply by:
a) using fertilized eggs from the animal to be cloned to transplant into as well as from (assuming it's female).
b) same as above, but using fertilized eggs from the mother of the clone to transplant into (since mDNA are passed through the mother's side only).
Most people agree that it doesn't really matter that much.
Come up with a map structure to allow visualization of your network by the room layout (this would rock)..
Make the maps be dynamic, so that when other machines come on the network, other rooms can be added for those machines (this is probably the most important thing to do)..
Make important processes unkillable.. make processes that probably shouldn't be killed fight back harder..
Processes that die naturally should wink out of existance rather than dying.. Don't want to end up with bodies lying all over the place for no good reason..:-)
Is there a way to kill a process remotely short of using ssh or something similar? No big deal if not. You could use something to the effect of when you open the door (that has the machine name written on it), it ssh's to that machine in order to give you process control or gives you "ACCESS DENIED" and shoots at you a few times if you don't have access...
Also, machines running windows would be represented by empty rooms with the Bill Gates Head in the middle (sort of like Romero's Head in Doom2).. Kill the head and the windows machine crashes..:-)
For Windows NT there is remote process control, but I don't know if there's an implementation on Linux.. Must check into it. Then you could, at least partially, kill NT processes remotely..
I recommend something simple, like, obviously having icons to click to run a program. You put an icon for Netscape on there, one for WordPerfect, One for whatever he could want to run.
How? Well, that depends.
Afterstep for Linux is very easy to do this with, and very hard for adjust later. Little chance of him breaking it by clicking in the wrong place. Disable the multiple windows, only use the button bar, remove the menu from right-clicking the desktop. The good thing is that this is easily configurable. Just start deleting text from config files and you'll get there pretty quick. Plus, it's too simple to crash (even KDE crashes sometimes).
If you want to go windows, use the default windows install, install LiteStep (an AfterStep clone for Windows9x), configure it the same way, and change that to the shell. No more explorer, no more crazy config stuff, nada. Just a button bar. Simple, easy.
With the linux based setup, you get remote admin (if something does perchance foul up, you ain't gotta drive to grandpa's house).
If I setup my Linux box to allow dial-ins by my friends, so they can have internet over my Cable Modem (or T1 or what have you), does that make me an ISP? Would the telco want to charge me?
There's nothing in my contract stating I can't use my line 24/7..
The simple fact is that the telco's have been able to modify their contract so as to charge ISP's more for a long time. It's really simple, as all they have to do is to charge for usage rather than a flat rate. They don't do this, because they don't care that much. The ISP's have to already install bunches of lines, and the telco is making money hand over fist thereby.
Besides, I no longer trust anything I read on ZDNet...
Secondly, Microsoft, a number of years ago, apparently independently rediscovered a mathematical construct called a Bayesian network, which now forms the heart of Microsoft's help system. As I understand it, they have patented this usage. Bayesian networks were first described 200 years ago, but can a patent applying them to computer support (or perhaps to other applications - I have not been able to obtain a copy of MS' patent) be valid? Or does the claim of pre-existing art invalidate it?
Microsoft's patent is pretty good, considering they actually did something no-one had done before. They took the Bayesian network principle and applied it to user-interactive systems, mainly help systems. One of the major results of this was that annoying little paperclip bastard, the Office Assistant. However, although it's mainly been only applied to help systems (troubleshooting wizards too), the goal of the project was to develop intelligent, learning user interfaces. All this came together in Office 97.
Yes, that Office assistant really will learn your moves and learn what the heck you are doing, if you don't so pissed off at him that you turn him off in the first few minutes of owning the product.
The disclaimer on the right is a good one. The scientific truth is much funnier. As soon as I make a product, I'll include something along these lines.:-)
One of my teachers in school had a system similar to this, although we didn't really know it at the time.
Our programs were submitted via e-mail, using specific subject lines made up of your student number, assignment number, etc...
The system automagically grabbed the code, compiled it, ran it, checked output, did pattern checking for cheaters (and since we were allowed work in groups and submit the same code for each member of the group, it took that into account too), and even had a scripting method to allow the professor to check for specific things to add or subtract points for (like if we had to use a certain function, or a certain type of data structure).
Since we were usually writing classes and functions rather than whole programs, this is actually a bit easier than it sounds. He'd build a framework that each assignment must fit in, type of thing..
The professor wrote it himself, over the years. I finally got to play with it when I got the password to his unix account (easy to guess.. only took 8 tries). I added a few backdoors, which was fine by me since I wasn't in his classes anymore.
Sometimes I wonder if he ever found them, since I did tell a lot of people how to beat the system once I had corrupted it.
This story probably is very boring to you, but it gave me something to type.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
When you ask Google "What the best search engine in the world?", it replies:
Hmmm.. I'll bet that after the next scan, Google comes up first on that list. I'll just say that I've seen a lot of links that look like:
Google! - The best search engine in the world!
---
Most hard drives are rated for something like shocks of over 50 G (decelleration of 50 G), which is quite a lot.
Not as much as you'd think.. A laptop drive is rated higher than that BTW..
I've seen hard drives destroyed with a relatively light shock ("thumping" them on the top), and I've seen drives survive after brutal punishment.. (being thrown to the ground and stomped on.. never get in a POed sysadmin's way..)
The anti-skip crap sounds like fast cache memory like they have in portable CD players these days..
---
And here's why: Learning curve.
The learning curve on Java is a BITCH. Yeah, yeah, I know you're thinking "Bunk! Java's as easy as they come!"
Bull. Points of fact:
1) Java keeps changing. If they'd get down to standards already more people would use it. Look at Swing for crying out loud.. 1.1 to 1.2 was a whole radical annoying thing..
2) Java, being wholly OO, is a lot harder to learn for the person that has programmed C for twenty years. C is used WAY more out there in the real world than C++.. I learned the OO way. I have no problems. C++ is my language of choice, but everyone I work with just can't grasp it easily. It takes them a while. Java? Forget it, they don't even try! They don't try because:
3) It's a slow, clunky, badly designed, interpreted, overrated, security-overconcious, bug-riden piece of shit.
I have a program that I would consider to be something fairly easy to do, but it's in Java, thereby becoming extremely difficult. It has to be on the web, and that means java. CGI just ain't gonna work for this one. ActiveX can blow me.
The program basically connects to a Database over the network, and lets a user modify it. The mapping of inputs to tables is fairly one to one, so basically it's just a front end to the DB. Easy right? Hardly...
JDBC works maybe 75% of the time. Often it fails for no reason...
There's no standards in how JDBC connects across a network.. It all depends on the server you're running...
Come to think of it, there's no standards on Java between the two major browsers (both of which must work, yes, bloody m$). That means the simplest way is to use the Sun Java Plugin, adding one more thing that users must do for this POS to work right..
All the servers that support JDBC (This is on NT, not by my choice, mind) seem to suck terribly. Most of them crash a lot, few will run as a service, none are open-source and/or freeware...
Bloody annoying, that's what java is. You can't get around to programming any damn thing because you're too busy finding any way to get the stuff to make it work in the first place..
Sorry, I had to vent a bit....
---
I fear that "going mainstream" might just amount to people doing everything they can to look like a geek, rather than actually be one. They'll install Redhat, Caldera, or Mandrake, run Enlightenment, and hang out in some #channel, being k00l d00ds. They'll wear Copyleft t-shirts, talk about what Linus or Raymond said lately, and use the Linux credit card. (Well, at least that'll bring more capital into the Community for furthering development!! ;)
:-)
This has already occured. Have you ever physically met a script kiddie? It's an enlightening experience. Somewhat terrifying too.
Of course, once you realize they are, in fact, a script kiddie, you can proceed to "deprogram" them (beat them down mercilessly).
Yet as we all know, being a geek takes so much time and effort...and study. I have gained the impression that this amount of learning is just not something that non-geeks are interested in.
It's worse than this. The kiddies I have met, mainly 18-year olds just entering college, know enough to be annoying, yet don't have the ability to learn, IMHO. Reminds me of a guy I met named "Chuck"..
Chuck is/was a script kiddie. He knew just enough to impress those without knowledge (i.e. most of the people of the world), but not enough to actually accomplish anything. They were impressed by his ability to download warez from IRC (oooooooh!) and his ability to use a computer fairly well (double oooooh!). He's not actually bright enough to understand, well, network protocols, but he can figure out Back Orifice because it's not all THAT hard. It only took him 2 weeks to dope it out, and that was with help.
Anyway, the point is that the person I described is real, I met him, I knew him well. I didn't like him or anything, but our common friends thought he was really smart. He was fairly bright, but not grade A material. His problem was that he had no desire to learn the fundamentals of any subject. He saw computing as a means to an end (ie. screwing with people).. He didn't program, because it didn't offer him instant gratification.
That kid was a geek poser. Trying to fit a stereotype he knew nothing about the reality of. Pretty damn disturbing if you ask me.
---
I'd read about his space elevator concept, both in his books and in actual papers on the subject.. Like all good ideas, it's very, very simple.. But I still thought diamond was the way to go.. I'd never considered bucky tubes.. genius man, genius..
Good Line here:
By the way, I'm an absentee landlord of a hundred square miles of some rather rugged territory near the orbit of Mars. I have an asteroid named after me. Isaac Asimov's got one too. It's smaller and more eccentric.
Ha! Asimov would have loved that..
Let's see here... more browsing.. ah ha! He talks about how he originally came up with the idea for the geosyncronous satellite for communications:
Q. One of the legends about you is that you came up with the idea for Comsat in an article you wrote in 1945 and that you never patented the idea.
A. Oh, so you want to ask me about how I lost a billion dollars in my spare time? Well, you see when I wrote my "comsat" paper, it was 1945....I didn't think that satellites could be launched until the end of the century.... I just wrote this article and sent it off and got £15 for it....what I should have done is to try to copyright the word "comsat." If I'd done that....
Good one.. Bit uninformative of anything new, and definitely the article is way too short.. I'd really like to see an indepth interview, or at least to read about whatever he wants to write about.. Someone like Clarke, well, they're just plain interesting, all the time..
---
Something can be patented and freely available. Actually patenting something does make it freely available, just not necessarily freely usable. A patent disclosure has to include all the details necessary for a person competent in the field to reproduce the work. You could still patent something and make it freely useable however, though the likelyhood that Dr Venter is doing this is vanishingly small.
But what the heck is he actually trying to patent? The Human Genome? That's just information. It's not a process, it's not a technique, it's not a thing as such. That's like me trying to patent a dictionary. Not the actual book, but the information contained in there.
It just doesn't make much sense. He can't be trying to patent the actual information, since he's going to sell it, type of thing.. My guess it that the patents are techniques for gaining the information that they invented and used.. sort of the bruce force methods they discuss in the article..
It'll never mean anything anyway. The genome would leak onto the internet faster than anything. The problem with selling something like that is that you can't prove that someone used your data when the copy gets leaked.
The story is crap, it doesn't make sense, I can't grasp it... argh! I hate badly written stories that don't make any sense!
---
Sounds crazy? I dunno. As long as no one gets into their mind to drive a car remote through a webcam on the hood...
Damn good idea! Patent it!
Actually... well, I think it would be pretty cool to get a small car, like an RC car on steroids, drive it down to the liquor store, say.. and order some beer and so forth thru the speaker... well..
okay maybe not.. but it could be pretty cool to remotely drive a web enabled rc car through my neighborhood..
---
I'd never heard of this thing, but a quick google search (I love that search engine) came up with this for all those interested...
http://www.nashville.net/~theremin/
---
Despite assurances earlier this year to the US Congress that Celera's discoveries would be freely available, Dr Venter is now seeking to patent more than 6,000 pieces of genetic information.
Ummm.. Isn't that technically purjury under US Law? I recall something like this.. not sure where I read that from, but the gist of it was you can't lie to congress for any reason, or something to that effect..
This only applies if he's a US citizen I suppose..
---
That post was a damn good troll. But anyway, here's my response to it...
/., everyone assumes that all Christendom is behind it, and it will inevitably end in A) moral confusion and/or B) holy wars and/or C) unjust persecution of geeks.
:-) I enjoy my prejudices.
How come whenever something about Christianity on
Well, from my personal past experience, I've usually found this to actually be the case, when you get right down to the matter...
Sorry to crush a collective dillusion, but Christians _are_ capable of independent thought, and aren't necessarily bent on starting a second Inquisition.
Many people call themselves "Christian", yet have wildly differing belief systems. Your Christianity may just be the local flavor... It's not really a proper term or anything. Never forget this.
BTW, most people you refer to aren't against "Christianity", they're against "religion."
And then there are comments like "They might actually revel in blasphemy and angel-bashing." refering to watching The Simpsons? There is not a commandment that says "thou shall not laugh."
No, just "though shalt not exercise any independant thought without first asking your duly-appointed man-of-god to see if it goes along with the local 'holy' way to be"...
And then we get the comment "Religion and freedom have never really gotten along." Nice tie, but it doesn't explain a few people like Gangis Kahn, Napolean, or Hitler (who prosecuted the Jewish RACE much more so than the religion).
And then there's the Crusades, the hundreds of years of perscution of non-Catholics by the Catholic church, the Inquisition, etc, etc..
Look, you can cut it either way. (BTW, Hitler was not an athiest you know..)
I am sorry, I guess it is just more 'fun' to live with a severly outdated, extremely prejudicial view of the religious.
It sure is!
Prejudice: 2. An opinion or judgment formed without due examination; prejudgment; a leaning toward one side of a question from other considerations than those belonging to it; an unreasonable predilection for, or objection against, anything; especially, an opinion or leaning adverse to anything, without just grounds, or before sufficient knowledge.
(from www.dictionary.com)
True and to the point. I am prejudiced against religious people.
I suppose I should define a religious person.. A "religious" person, to me, is a person who allows religion to come before reason. I have no problem with someone who believes in anything, as long as: they don't try to convert me and they aren't stupid about it. Trying to convert me is putting religion before reason because a smack upside the head often offends. I have no patience for morons who don't get it when I say I am an atheist (not something I usually bring up anyway).. Multiple offenses result in getting kicked around the room, being smacked with harder items that happen to be at hand, and eventually, if pushed too far, causing me to reach for my gun (only happened once, and it wasn't loaded, and I just wanted the moron to go away)...
But when a person's beliefs causes them to ignore facts that are blatantly apparent, then I'm not happy. I have a firm belief in the scientific method. Evidence, theory, test, repeat. It's the way to find out anything, even if it takes a long, long time. Religion has no evidence either way, and therefore currently falls outside the scientific method. Look at the definition of prejustice again. Deeply religious people like this are prejudiced against science. Being a geek, I cannot abide this.
Therefore, once a person proves himself to be "religious" per my definition, then yes, I am prejudiced, and usually annoyed with that person to the point that I will no longer associate with them.
Kinda sucks when I'm down in the bible belt, but you gotta stick by your principles.
---
has the first post phenotype gotten this out of hand??
:-)
The "first post" crap would go away if everyone would just ignore it all around. Hell, I rarely see them since they get moderated down to -1 quite fast. The only reason they seem to hang around is that people then bitch about people posting "first post" BS, and there's simply not enough moderator points to moderate these down further. Let them slide, and place your trust in the moderator system. Don't respond, ignore. Use the points, Luke...
This is the last post I hope to ever see regarding first post lusers.. please let it be the last...
---
No company now would commit to a closed hardware strategy. It would cost them more than using commodity components. Just as importantly, it would commit them to a single source for support and parts. Why then do they commit to a single software supplier ?
:-)
This one statement is just so unbelievably wrong..
Now before you get all upset, I love open source as much as any of you. OSS is a great, good, noble thing.. So keep that in mind..
It's fairly obvious that Alan Cox really doesn't fully understand the business mind, which is understandable, since nobody but a business mind can grasp it.
Companies DO commit to closed hardware solutions. Companies WILL put pretty much their entire revenue in the hands of their suppliers. This happens often. Daily. Hourly.
Why? Companies are run by people in management who don't care about "the right way" to do something. Heck, most of the time they don't bother to analyse the long-term effects of their actions. A company wants to make money, and they want to make it NOW. Sure, they'd like to make it later too, but if we can make more NOW, that's the important thing. I have to deal with this mentality all the time.
Similarly, in a production environment, downtime is unacceptable. Companies need guaranteed, strong, support. But they need something else: they need multiple sources of support.
Of COURSE a company would rather buy a closed source software system, and trust them for support. Why? Shifting of blame. Remember that a company usually does not make the decision to have a software system designed for them. No, a person in management who works for the company makes that decision. If it doesn't work, he gets the blame. By going with a closed-source app custom made for them, they have someone to blame when it breaks. They have someone to push around to fix it. The guy who made the call to get this system probably will keep his job when it fails (and all systems will fail eventually).
However, let's say he's got brains. Let's say he knows that the open-source app is the better way to go. In terms of support, you can't beat it. Thousands of people working on it? GREAT! But, the downside is this: How do you push around people who work for essentially nothing in their spare time? Quick answer: you don't. You have no leverage. If your system breaks, and they can't fix it quickly, you're more or less screwed. Even if you KNOW this will never happen, you can't prove it to a board of directors, can you? The simple possiblity that it could happen is enough to make you reject the open source concept. Better for it to fail fairly often and have someone who you can blame than to have it fail rarely and have all the blame yourself.
Now I don't say this is right. But this is how the management in the companies I work for (read: program custom apps for) think... This is based on my limited experience, your mileage may vary, type of thing...
One more thing:
In many ways the motor car is a very good example of the fact that the open source model is not something revolutionary, as Bob Young is so keen to point out - it is the model we use in almost all serious grown up industry.
HAHAHAHAHAH! One of those things I program custom apps for is several motor companies. Many programs I have written are on the line at several plants now. I have to go to these places to install and maintain these apps I have written. This stuff is a closed-source as it gets, my friend. Automobile manufacturers are one of THE MOST custom application, closed-source, driven industries in the entire world. WHOLE SYSTEMS that exist on these production lines are not only custom software, but custom HARDWARE from ONE COMPANY. One company makes the hardware AND the software. If that system goes down in any large way, SO DOES THE LINE. Neat, huh? Get a tour sometime of your nearest car production plant. Watch the systems hanging from the line very very closely. None are open-source. Not one.
Just my $0.02...
---
Google is the search engine for me! Literally! I searched for my name and it came up with most of the projects/pages that I have been involved in for the years.
:-)
I must admit, I was impressed with the number of references to my name it came up with, but the one that really threw me (because the middle inital was correct) was this one:
The Samuel J. Wood Library
The C.V. Starr Biomedical Information Center
The Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College and Graduate School of Medical Sciences of Cornell University
1300 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021-4896
Wow.. I had no idea. I'm going to have to go to NY now..
The other "Samuel J. Wood"
---
I can forsee a great potential for abuse here...
(regarding the toll booth thing, for example) Okay, assume you're not broadcasting a cc#, just an ID number.. What's to prevent someone copying that and running up charges on your account?
The fact is, that any system like this can be duplicated and abused, while it's in its infancy.. Look at all the fraud that has occured (and still occurs) with cell-phone theft.. It's not hard to see that the system is becoming available before the means to secure it.
Yes, it could be secure. Public-key cryptography could make a system secure by, for example, the toll-booth broadcasting a key out to encrypt with (just off the top of my head, so don't take it as fact or anything).. But how much do you want to bet that security has not been implemented to the point where you, or I, or Joe Cracker thinks it's secure?
Any system that involves automatic transfer of funds or services needs absolute security within unreasonable limits before I will adopt it. Plain and simple. By "unreasonable limits," I mean limits that are above and beyond my expectations. If there's a chance I could crack the system myself in under a month, I won't go for it. Forget it. I'll stick to cash, thanks.
---
A quick search of that site turned up this: http://209.207.236.112/irp/pro gram/process/echelon.htm
Pretty entertaining stuff.. Neat site.
---
Did you notice that the Dolly clone was NOT the same size? There was a BIG size difference. Identical twins are usually about the same size. OK so they shared the same womb and womb environment, but I doubt such a significant size difference can be explained by different womb environments.
Are you a complete idiot?
First off, Dolly and Dolly's clone are NOT TWINS! Twins implies birth together. Dolly is two years (?) or so older than the clone. Could this possibly explain size difference? Hmmmm?
And Mitochondrial DNA has next to no effect on the animal's development. If you really cared, you could have the mDNA identical simply by:
a) using fertilized eggs from the animal to be cloned to transplant into as well as from (assuming it's female).
b) same as above, but using fertilized eggs from the mother of the clone to transplant into (since mDNA are passed through the mother's side only).
Most people agree that it doesn't really matter that much.
---
Okay, now here's what we have to do...
:-)
:-)
Come up with a map structure to allow visualization of your network by the room layout (this would rock)..
Make the maps be dynamic, so that when other machines come on the network, other rooms can be added for those machines (this is probably the most important thing to do)..
Make important processes unkillable.. make processes that probably shouldn't be killed fight back harder..
Processes that die naturally should wink out of existance rather than dying.. Don't want to end up with bodies lying all over the place for no good reason..
Is there a way to kill a process remotely short of using ssh or something similar? No big deal if not. You could use something to the effect of when you open the door (that has the machine name written on it), it ssh's to that machine in order to give you process control or gives you "ACCESS DENIED" and shoots at you a few times if you don't have access...
Also, machines running windows would be represented by empty rooms with the Bill Gates Head in the middle (sort of like Romero's Head in Doom2).. Kill the head and the windows machine crashes..
For Windows NT there is remote process control, but I don't know if there's an implementation on Linux.. Must check into it. Then you could, at least partially, kill NT processes remotely..
---
I recommend something simple, like, obviously having icons to click to run a program. You put an icon for Netscape on there, one for WordPerfect, One for whatever he could want to run.
How? Well, that depends.
Afterstep for Linux is very easy to do this with, and very hard for adjust later. Little chance of him breaking it by clicking in the wrong place. Disable the multiple windows, only use the button bar, remove the menu from right-clicking the desktop. The good thing is that this is easily configurable. Just start deleting text from config files and you'll get there pretty quick. Plus, it's too simple to crash (even KDE crashes sometimes).
If you want to go windows, use the default windows install, install LiteStep (an AfterStep clone for Windows9x), configure it the same way, and change that to the shell. No more explorer, no more crazy config stuff, nada. Just a button bar. Simple, easy.
With the linux based setup, you get remote admin (if something does perchance foul up, you ain't gotta drive to grandpa's house).
---
What is an ISP? Hmmmm?
If I setup my Linux box to allow dial-ins by my friends, so they can have internet over my Cable Modem (or T1 or what have you), does that make me an ISP? Would the telco want to charge me?
There's nothing in my contract stating I can't use my line 24/7..
The simple fact is that the telco's have been able to modify their contract so as to charge ISP's more for a long time. It's really simple, as all they have to do is to charge for usage rather than a flat rate. They don't do this, because they don't care that much. The ISP's have to already install bunches of lines, and the telco is making money hand over fist thereby.
Besides, I no longer trust anything I read on ZDNet...
---
Secondly, Microsoft, a number of years ago, apparently independently rediscovered a mathematical construct called a Bayesian network, which now forms the heart of Microsoft's help system. As I understand it, they have patented this usage. Bayesian networks were first described 200 years ago, but can a patent applying them to computer support (or perhaps to other applications - I have not been able to obtain a copy of MS' patent) be valid? Or does the claim of pre-existing art invalidate it?
Microsoft's patent is pretty good, considering they actually did something no-one had done before. They took the Bayesian network principle and applied it to user-interactive systems, mainly help systems. One of the major results of this was that annoying little paperclip bastard, the Office Assistant. However, although it's mainly been only applied to help systems (troubleshooting wizards too), the goal of the project was to develop intelligent, learning user interfaces. All this came together in Office 97.
Yes, that Office assistant really will learn your moves and learn what the heck you are doing, if you don't so pissed off at him that you turn him off in the first few minutes of owning the product.
For more info, Check out http://www.research.microsoft. com/~horvitz/lumiere.htm which contains a bunch of info on the project. It's called Lumiere.
---
Obviously this should be 512 Meg.. My company uses these machines themselves, for servers we build... They are some powerful systems.
But, I thought Dell didn't sell barebones systems (no OS)? I do believe they sell some Linux preinstalled, but not bare as stated in the article...
In any case, maybe this will help me convince my managers to dump this Windows NT BS we are forced to use on these server systems.. ACK!
---
Since it's a slow download from some of those sites, I've mirrored the image on Business Wire of Washington DC.. It's at this link...
Sorry about the tripod popup crap.. It's handy for stuff like this though.
---
The disclaimer on the right is a good one. The scientific truth is much funnier. As soon as I make a product, I'll include something along these lines. :-)
---
if you got into his account - you must have the code.
No, this was years ago. I no longer have the source...
---
One of my teachers in school had a system similar to this, although we didn't really know it at the time.
:-)
Our programs were submitted via e-mail, using specific subject lines made up of your student number, assignment number, etc...
The system automagically grabbed the code, compiled it, ran it, checked output, did pattern checking for cheaters (and since we were allowed work in groups and submit the same code for each member of the group, it took that into account too), and even had a scripting method to allow the professor to check for specific things to add or subtract points for (like if we had to use a certain function, or a certain type of data structure).
Since we were usually writing classes and functions rather than whole programs, this is actually a bit easier than it sounds. He'd build a framework that each assignment must fit in, type of thing..
The professor wrote it himself, over the years. I finally got to play with it when I got the password to his unix account (easy to guess.. only took 8 tries). I added a few backdoors, which was fine by me since I wasn't in his classes anymore.
Sometimes I wonder if he ever found them, since I did tell a lot of people how to beat the system once I had corrupted it.
This story probably is very boring to you, but it gave me something to type.
---