Theo de Raadt, co-creator of OpenSSH, hopes the community, not the courts, will decide the trademark skirmish. He points to a licensing agreement that allowed independent versions of SSH before Ylönen received a trademark in 1996, and he wonders why Ylönen has taken five years to decide to enforce the trademark.
He adds: "There are two main clinchers going on here. One is the fact that this licence file predates the trademark, and it grants rights that cannot be removed. And the other is the history of non-enforcement... against anybody else in the entire field using this name, then suddenly enforcing us because we're getting big enough."
Looks like it is too little too late as far as trade mark enforcement goes. If nothing else, Ylönen may be trying to cash in on the name of OpenSSH.
Although there is a point that he (Ylönen) has to do something, I suppose, and better late than never. But it is likely too late.
Greed is good.
Therefore Free is Bad(tm)
The freedom to share freely what I create because I want to is Bad. The freedom to give is bad.
THEREFORE
Slavery is the goal of human happiness, especially when everyone else is the slave.
Outlaw Christmas.
[/sarcasm]
Some people just cannot see the fundamental results of the flaws in their philosophy.
Blindspots like this = justifying the crimes they have commited, that they are planning to commit, or wish they could commit.
feh
The freedom of the world is not dependant on everyone becoming a microserf. But microsoft's wealth is. they must grow, or die. And to heck with who they stomp on to get their way.
What about latency? I dont want to wait 2 minutes for a reply!
Get a DSL Line!;) Also, this is assuming you query the *entire* group. Part of the purpose of the ALPINE protocol is to adapt to the repsonse you receive during queries. The first query you
make may take 2.5 seconds. The next you may query the responsive peers first, and you may find what you are looking for in 1 second. The next query may be further refined and your peers are organized so that you find what your looking for in a fraction of a second.
You can only do this type of adaptive configuration tailored to *each* peer and their use of the network if you allow them to do the quering themselves, and order the queries themselves. This implies a direct connections to the people they are quering.
You cannot perform this type of custom adative configuration without an extreme amount of overhead in a routed architecture, thus the need for DTCP.
I do not know about you, but an awful lot of users out there do not have high speed access yet. And I can think of many folks whose first action would be to search everything.
"And to celebrate Mac OS X and this momentous year, we're offering a special bonus to the first 1500 WWDC 2001 registrants - a handsome black leather, Mac OS X jacket valued at US $249. So register now and we'll see you in May."
So the question is, does the addition of the Logo enhance the value of the jacket?
or will we see something like:
jacket valued at $249 with Logo, ($350 without).
Will it be like those cheap products that MS used to have as promo items from the company store? I had gotten ahold of one of those swiss army knives with the MS logo on it. (I still have it, for evidence.)
In my opinion, the blade could not hold a sharp edge worth spit, and it flopped around loose on the handle. You would have thought they would have at least gotten something that would be good PR.
Those are the ones that you have zero control over. Some #$%^@ accidentally put it into a shared medical database that I have AIDS. Now I can't get insurance. Banks won't give me loans nor credit cards. I have tests proving I don't have AIDS yet I cannot cleanse this false information because there is no way I can even know every medical data warehouse that has the info. It's like it's it's been posted to USENET. I send cancel messages but the original post still manages to live on all over the place
This has been originally modded as funny, but this kind of thing does happen. There is a serious problem between paper records getting mixed up, and other snafues, and that is documented with something just as mundane as credit records.
Now you include this with the idea of medical records, and it can get very messy very quickly. I do not know if it really happened, but it is completely believable.
In some ways, usenet is worse. There was a story a year or two ago about some exec at a major dot com who erased everything he wrote in the archives of the WELL, on the basis that it might be used in-appropriately against him, stuff he said when he was a freshman in college and stupid, etc.
Usenet does not have such an erase option, not that I know of. And neither do these databases. You do not have any legal recourse I know of to fix false or messed up data in the medical records. This is very real.
Before its controlled crash into Eros, NEAR-Shoemaker beamed back pictures with the best resolution ever of an asteroid. The images, one as close as 120 meters (394 feet), bring into focus features as small as a golf ball, said mission scientist Joseph Veverka. Those and other NEAR pictures should keep astronomers busy for awhile. Some suggest unknown forces breaking up boulders, moving debris into flat crater pools and creating unidentifiable depressions the size of hand and footprints.
Oh my.
I can see someone in the ufo community going on about Nasa photos of alien footprints on the asteroid.
which is NOT what Nasa said.
I do not mind being entertained by the whackos on late night radio, but I can see this getting out of hand.
Do they screen these machines for Stability, and the like? the last thing we need is a bunch of Stalker boxen in the pool.
And what can we say about the temperment of something prone to BSOD? or can they even legally mention handicaps and diseases like that? (Or would It be Prejudice?)
even though there is not too much danger of transmitting a virus or something like that between species (Mac to Wintel, for example) do we have a morality police who will make it its'job to to maintain an appropriate level of purity?
For that matter, when was the last time YOU took a purity test?
My understanding is that this is not correct. If this were the case then you could use any old point light source but you can't. What is going on here is the laser light interfering with itself in your eye. See this link from the exploratorium:
So is the variation caused by the interferance, on a receptor by receptor basis or not?
Each receptors reports only one dot of light intensity data back to the brain. Or do the Receptors report more than one data point to the brain at the same time?
There is also the point of performance differances between coherent vs none coherent light.
Some folks have great knowledge of Lasers, but are missing data on Eye Physiology. The bottom line is that each sensory cell in the eye, be it a cone or a rod, sends one point of brightness data to the brain.
With colors , this corresponds to the colors mentioned below. Cells do not send multiple sets of brightness levels at the same time the brain sorts out the variations of light and dark to construct the lines and shapes and forms we perceive in the world. A cell sensing for Red sends data for that one point of red intensity, nothing else. Note that each cell can sense down to one photon of energy levels.
Really, this is simple sensory stuff here. Point sensors for light intensity.
When you have a laser light, YES there is interferance. Of course there is.
So one cell senses one level of light, and another cell senses another.
The question then becomes are the cells larger or smaller than the wave length of light. Since they can be observed in an optical microscope, they are larger. This means that the individual sensors are sending individual messages regarding the light intensity back to the brain, based on the average light intensity on that individual cone or rod.
Remember this: Individual messages for light intensity by independent light sensors.
Therefore you will have light sensing on a cell by cell basis of the light and dark patterns of light interferance from the laser light, and it must be on a cell by cell basis. there for you can see the speckles because of the eye's reception of the interferance patterns on a cell by cell basis.
The graininess is inherent with the size of the sensors, the cones of the eyes.
Remember that this are individual sensors.
Additional data can be found here, as well as many medica; web pages on eye physiology:
Anatomy, Physiology & Pathology of the Human Eye, and is quoted below:
photoreceptors (cones and rods)
(intro omitted) The brain actually can detect one photon of light (the smallest unit of energy) being absorbed by a photoreceptor.
There are about 6.5 to 7 million cones in each eye, and they are sensitive to bright light and to color. The highest concentration of cones is in the macula. The fovea centralis, at
the center of the macula, contains only cones and no rods. There are 3 types of cone pigments, each most sensitive to a certain wavelength of light: short (430-440 nm), medium (535-540 nm) and long (560-565 nm). The wavelength of light perceived as brightest to the human eye is 555 nm, a greenish-yellow. (A ìnanometerîónmóis one billionth of a meter, which is one millionth of a millimeter.) Once a cone pigment is bleached by light, it takes about 6 minutes to regenerate.
There are about 120 to 130 million rods in each eye, and they are sensitive to dim light, to movement, and to shapes. The highest concentration of rods is in the peripheral retina,
decreasing in density up to the macula. Rods do not detect color, which is the main reason it is difficult to tell the color of an object at night or in the dark. The rod pigment is most
sensitive to the light wavelength of 500 nm. Once a rod pigment is bleached by light, it takes about 30 minutes to regenerate. Defective or damaged cones results in color deficiency; whereas, defective or damaged rods results in problems seeing in the dark and at night.
(Regarding present monitor technology): This means that we are typically stuck at a maximum resolution of 1600x1200, and this leads to a problem. The human eye can see aliasing artifacts at resolution up to and even beyond
4000x4000, so obviously 1600x1200 is not sufficient. The obvious move we make is to implement anti-aliasing.
Just as a point of interest, and education:
There is an easy way that you can observe the finest possible detail that your eyes can resolve. This is merely for demonstration and educational purposes, and does not have other immediate applications. This small experiment will merely allow you to observe the individual "pixels", you could say, of your own eyes.
Get a hold of a simple penlight laser pointer, and point it away from you at something that will make a nicesplash of light, such as a bit of matte white plastic, a dirty glass, etc.
While holding the point of laser light perfectly still (if possible), also hold your head still. You might want to have your pointer resting on something, as well as your head. (Safety first kids! Don't look directly at the laser)
Observe the pattern of light/dark Pixelation. Note that the pattern does not twinkle and does not shift so long as you hold your head still, and you hold the light still.
Barely move you head slightly and slowly, and notice that pattern of Light/Dark moves slowly and consistantly with your head movement. The relationship of the light/spots does not shift at random, but shifts consistantly with your head motion, while you keep everything else still.
The Light/Dark spots are essentially you seeing the individual Pixels (cones and rods, actually) of your your own eyes.
You would think if you were going to license sitting you would at least provide a cofortable seat..
Don't forget, any attempt to bypass the inherent funtionality of the chair is piracy, and is prosecutable under the applicable copyright protection laws.
Therefore, the use of, say, a good stiff section of planking, or several layers of heavy cardboard to sit in the chair without swiping the card would be considered theft of services.
Since our number of genes is so surprisingly close to much much "simpler" (as perceived by the human ego) organisms, then genes can't be where it's at is no doubt going to be a popular conclusion.
Philosophers, religionists, and psychoquacks will each in their own way seek to put their own spin on the matter. For example Social Darwinism, was one attempt to rotely apply the idea of evolution to the society at large. They arrived at the flawed conclusion that "If I win/beat/trample over you, then of course I must be better." This was incorporated into notions of social superiority and imperialisms.
These philosophical mistakes need to be avoided, since they devolve into zero sum games at best.
You need also to be aware of politically motivated versions of various sciences and philosophies. Psychiatry is infamous for this sort of thing, providing the political underpinnings for the Nazi state, for example. A more recent version of this was the old Soviet Union, where opposition to the state was classified a mental dis-order, treated with electroshock, brain surgury, etc.
These are things that we tend to think do not happen any more, until we look at thing like ethic cleansing, and other notions of "purity". We even see a weird mix of paranoia and hypochondria, not the imagining of all sorts of diseases in oneself, but the imagining of all sorts of diseases and defect in others. In a political context, this would be dangerous to have in those with heavy influence in the decision making process.
Obviously, those with political motivations and agendas will often grab onto anything to push them, especially if they are ethically impaired.
On theNewsHour, PBS had a story on this the past day or so. They have a large webpage with many links dedicated to the whole issue. One thing that is interesting is that there are fewer genes than had been first imagined. The end result is that the genes are more often like a multi-purpose module, and that much of the functionality of the system is in the proteins system such as enzymes, etc. As it was noted:
What's going to happen is we have to go into the protein world to really understand where the genome is taking the next level of biology. That's ten times as complex at
least.
What is also noted is that the combination of these protein interactions is staggeringly more complex. I can imagine that the system interactions may be a million times or more complex.
So in my mind, patenting a gene might wind up being similar to patenting the management system of a nuclear power plant, and thinking that therefore you understand nuclear physics.
I remember seeing this last year, when then said it was three plus years off. So at least it is keeping up with projections.
Here are a couple of stories from The Register on this:
ONE - UK boffins reckon they can cram 10,800GB of data on a PC card
Monday, 9 October 2000
TWO - UK boffins unveil $35 '2300GB on a PC Card' RAM breakthrough
Monday, 9 August 1999
Note that the original stories said that the figures were in the thousands of gigabytes - this means TERABYTES
Cavendish Management Resources (CMR)seems to be an investment company. Keele University also seems legit, although the Cavendish website seems under the weather.
So it looks like they are making it through the vaporware stage, and approaching the heavy fog stage, before we a watch it materialize.
Bottom line for me is that I do not think I will hold my breath waiting, but I would love it to happen.
Personally, I think clubs aren't quite the way to go. The arguments would just be heavy and blunt. Now with swords, you have the cut and thrust of debate, the deadly riposte, the parry, the defensive stance etc.
The point being, of course, is to thin their numbers.
or maybe we could have truth in advertising by deciding all court cases in the WWWF.
The best way to settle all of these law suits is for all of the lawyers to fight it out with clubs and other blunt objects
In a DeathMatch.
This solves two problems
Too many law suits
Too many Lawyers.
Remember, lawyers most often get paid for their time in court, getting ready for court, etc. Therefore, it is in their best interest, not the interest of their clients, to have long and protracted legal disputes. They get paid either way.
Hmm. Maybe we could setup a live Quake level out in the middle of the desert of something. I bet people would even pay to watch!
As I posted here earlier, the Register has a fascinating story about IBM collaborating with the Nazis during WWII. Needless to say, the Nazis took full advantadge of what data management capabilities they had access to.
So understandably, I am nervous about any Government or business collection of data above and beyond the minimum needed. Some people never have enough.
There is a fascinating article on the Register about how IBM helped out the Nazis during WWII. All of that data processing capability IBM sold to them allowed the Nazis to be far mor efficient in implementing their "final solution." Granted, it was "only" punch cardtechnology, but it still helped them tremendously.
Now we all agree that pedophiles should be strung up by the thumbs, etc.
But what actions should we take, or should Google take, to handle this? Or should they remain "nuetral" in all of this?
The issue in _Brazil_ wasn't privacy, it was bureaucracy. The government has no idea who you are, doesn't care, and doesn't need to care. This is unrelated to privacy. _The Trial_ may be the best example of the three, but _1984_ is surely the most accessible.
There is a fascinating article on the Register about how IBM helped out the Nazis during WWII. All of that data processing capability IBM sold to them allowed the Nazis to be far mor efficient in implementing their "final solution." Granted, it was "only" punch card technology, but it still helped them tremendously.
This is the marriage of bureaucracy and privacy concerns.
While a large number of items are made of plastic, many of the higher durability components are made of metals, sometimes with exotic alloys, very tight tolerances, and unusual properties.
Consider a common car engine with the higher and higher temperatures and pressures neede for fuel efficiency. There are many curved parts made to high tolerances. Never mind little details like gasoline and oil, and heat removal issues.
The short answer is that there are places where it can be used, but it is not ready for prime time at all under these conditions.
In this case, if the manufacturers could have saved money or improved performance via a plastic engine, they would have. Instead, the future is more in the direction of ceramics in this high performance field.
Heck, - would you want a plastic or a metal heat sink for your overclocked CPU?
There was a fascinating interview of Laurence Lessig by Tim O'Reilly and openp2p.com editor Richard Koman, found here. This is complete with audio (if you want) with your choice of Real Audio or MP3.
In the intro to the interview, it is noted that Lessig will deliver a keynote titled "Free Code, Freeing Culture" at the O'Reilly Peer-to-Peer Conference on Friday, Feb. 16.
It is a fascinating interview. In fact, I am surprised that it didn't get posted here because it is both intelligent and educational. It stimulates the brain cells it does.
I cannot say that I completely agree with the premise of Kafka as a better symbol for the problems of privacy compared to Big Brother. I think that both models have flaws.
Personally, I would think maybe something like "Brazil" would be better, but it has been so long since I have seen the movie. As I recall, the movie is so wild that it might be utterly incomprehensible to the very lawyers that we would want to educate.
So I wonder what would be a better illustration. Maybe something by one of the existentialists?
Why shouldn't companies be allowed to test their employees for conditions that would lead to higher health care cost and exclude those it feels are too expensive to cover? What is served by foisting these costs on to employers?
It is expected that most insurance companies would have some sort of medical exam for things like life insurance, to avoid issues just like this.
But more general items like health insurance are another thing. Or would you like to have YOUR own insurance cancelled because, you
are getting older, and might get sick, and thank you for paying out the 30 or 40 years of premiums without much payout.
There has been a major problem with insurances companies cancelling insurance when you go to use it in a major way.
In this context, avoiding people who might not even know they have some genetic condition can be suspect. The point is not insuring people based on pre-existing conditions is a bad thing. The potential insurance liability should be shared "equally" (or at random) by all insurers.
"Unapproved" tests in this case is not the same as "unapproved" medicine. Medicine is sometimes regulated so that people do not hurt themselves. Tests are sometimes regulated so that the companies do not rip you off.
(now to continue)
Obviously, there is a point where a life can be save only if we use the ten million dollar procedure, and hey, this guy is "only a street bum".
So now you have opened the fine can of worms entitled "The value of Human Life".
Yummy Yummy Yummy.
How much value do you put on a human life, and how would you assess it? How valuable is your girl friend, or your mother, or your other Generic valuable relative?
You know that some people subjectively assess others as worthless. (lawyers and politicians, for example) How much should you take that literally?
You have had a clever thought, and have not been clever enough to figure out how it applies to the world at large, or to the people around you.
The local cop pulls me over and asks me for a motocycle license. The would pull you over just because it is so weird.
and I do not know about wiping out on this. I can see where the road kill potential is a bit higher than I would want.
Worryingly, there are no brakes and it seems the only way to perform an emergency stop is to fall off. But then, it's designed to be used on beaches and has a top speed of just 22mph, so you're unlikely to hurt yourself too much.
On the other hand, people do alot of things that I would not do.
Slashdot Mirror
Theo de Raadt, co-creator of OpenSSH, hopes the community, not the courts, will decide the trademark skirmish. He points to a licensing agreement that allowed independent versions of SSH before Ylönen received a trademark in 1996, and he wonders why Ylönen has taken five years to decide to enforce the trademark.
He adds: "There are two main clinchers going on here. One is the fact that this licence file predates the trademark, and it grants rights that cannot be removed. And the other is the history of non-enforcement... against anybody else in the entire field using this name, then suddenly enforcing us because we're getting big enough."
Looks like it is too little too late as far as trade mark enforcement goes. If nothing else, Ylönen may be trying to cash in on the name of OpenSSH.
Although there is a point that he (Ylönen) has to do something, I suppose, and better late than never. But it is likely too late.
Oh yeh, IANAL btw
Therefore Free is Bad(tm)
The freedom to share freely what I create because I want to is Bad.
The freedom to give is bad.
THEREFORE
Slavery is the goal of human happiness, especially when everyone else is the slave.
Outlaw Christmas.
[/sarcasm]
Some people just cannot see the fundamental results of the flaws in their philosophy.
Blindspots like this = justifying the crimes they have commited, that they are planning to commit, or wish they could commit.
feh
The freedom of the world is not dependant on everyone becoming a microserf. But microsoft's wealth is. they must grow, or die. And to heck with who they stomp on to get their way.
I make obscene noises in their general direction
What about latency? I dont want to wait 2 minutes for a reply!
Get a DSL Line! ;) Also, this is assuming you query the *entire* group. Part of the purpose of the ALPINE protocol is to adapt to the repsonse you receive during queries. The first query you
make may take 2.5 seconds. The next you may query the responsive peers first, and you may find what you are looking for in 1 second. The next query may be further refined and your peers are organized so that you find what your looking for in a fraction of a second.
You can only do this type of adaptive configuration tailored to *each* peer and their use of the network if you allow them to do the quering themselves, and order the queries themselves. This implies a direct connections to the people they are quering.
You cannot perform this type of custom adative configuration without an extreme amount of overhead in a routed architecture, thus the need for DTCP.
I do not know about you, but an awful lot of users out there do not have high speed access yet. And I can think of many folks whose first action would be to search everything.
Remember, half the population is below average.
So the question is, does the addition of the Logo enhance the value of the jacket?
or will we see something like:
jacket valued at $249 with Logo, ($350 without).
Will it be like those cheap products that MS used to have as promo items from the company store? I had gotten ahold of one of those swiss army knives with the MS logo on it. (I still have it, for evidence.)
In my opinion, the blade could not hold a sharp edge worth spit, and it flopped around loose on the handle. You would have thought they would have at least gotten something that would be good PR.
This has been originally modded as funny, but this kind of thing does happen. There is a serious problem between paper records getting mixed up, and other snafues, and that is documented with something just as mundane as credit records.
Now you include this with the idea of medical records, and it can get very messy very quickly. I do not know if it really happened, but it is completely believable.
In some ways, usenet is worse. There was a story a year or two ago about some exec at a major dot com who erased everything he wrote in the archives of the WELL, on the basis that it might be used in-appropriately against him, stuff he said when he was a freshman in college and stupid, etc.
Usenet does not have such an erase option, not that I know of. And neither do these databases. You do not have any legal recourse I know of to fix false or messed up data in the medical records. This is very real.
Oh my.
I can see someone in the ufo community going on about Nasa photos of alien footprints on the asteroid.
which is NOT what Nasa said.
I do not mind being entertained by the whackos on late night radio, but I can see this getting out of hand.
[sigh]
And what can we say about the temperment of something prone to BSOD? or can they even legally mention handicaps and diseases like that? (Or would It be Prejudice?)
even though there is not too much danger of transmitting a virus or something like that between species (Mac to Wintel, for example) do we have a morality police who will make it its'job to to maintain an appropriate level of purity?
For that matter, when was the last time YOU took a purity test?
So is the variation caused by the interferance, on a receptor by receptor basis or not?
Each receptors reports only one dot of light intensity data back to the brain. Or do the Receptors report more than one data point to the brain at the same time?
There is also the point of performance differances between coherent vs none coherent light.
With colors , this corresponds to the colors mentioned below. Cells do not send multiple sets of brightness levels at the same time the brain sorts out the variations of light and dark to construct the lines and shapes and forms we perceive in the world. A cell sensing for Red sends data for that one point of red intensity, nothing else. Note that each cell can sense down to one photon of energy levels.
Really, this is simple sensory stuff here. Point sensors for light intensity.
When you have a laser light, YES there is interferance. Of course there is.
So one cell senses one level of light, and another cell senses another.
The question then becomes are the cells larger or smaller than the wave length of light. Since they can be observed in an optical microscope, they are larger. This means that the individual sensors are sending individual messages regarding the light intensity back to the brain, based on the average light intensity on that individual cone or rod. Remember this: Individual messages for light intensity by independent light sensors. Therefore you will have light sensing on a cell by cell basis of the light and dark patterns of light interferance from the laser light, and it must be on a cell by cell basis. there for you can see the speckles because of the eye's reception of the interferance patterns on a cell by cell basis. The graininess is inherent with the size of the sensors, the cones of the eyes. Remember that this are individual sensors. Additional data can be found here, as well as many medica; web pages on eye physiology: Anatomy, Physiology & Pathology of the Human Eye, and is quoted below:
Number of Windows Operating System crashes since January 1st:
27,010,000 and counting
This is something that we should have available for download or link up or something.
what a hoot!
Just as a point of interest, and education:
There is an easy way that you can observe the finest possible detail that your eyes can resolve. This is merely for demonstration and educational purposes, and does not have other immediate applications. This small experiment will merely allow you to observe the individual "pixels", you could say, of your own eyes.
Get a hold of a simple penlight laser pointer, and point it away from you at something that will make a nicesplash of light, such as a bit of matte white plastic, a dirty glass, etc.
While holding the point of laser light perfectly still (if possible), also hold your head still. You might want to have your pointer resting on something, as well as your head. (Safety first kids! Don't look directly at the laser)
Observe the pattern of light/dark Pixelation. Note that the pattern does not twinkle and does not shift so long as you hold your head still, and you hold the light still.
Barely move you head slightly and slowly, and notice that pattern of Light/Dark moves slowly and consistantly with your head movement. The relationship of the light/spots does not shift at random, but shifts consistantly with your head motion, while you keep everything else still.
The Light/Dark spots are essentially you seeing the individual Pixels (cones and rods, actually) of your your own eyes.
Don't forget, any attempt to bypass the inherent funtionality of the chair is piracy, and is prosecutable under the applicable copyright protection laws.
Therefore, the use of, say, a good stiff section of planking, or several layers of heavy cardboard to sit in the chair without swiping the card would be considered theft of services.
Philosophers, religionists, and psychoquacks will each in their own way seek to put their own spin on the matter. For example Social Darwinism, was one attempt to rotely apply the idea of evolution to the society at large. They arrived at the flawed conclusion that "If I win/beat/trample over you, then of course I must be better." This was incorporated into notions of social superiority and imperialisms.
These philosophical mistakes need to be avoided, since they devolve into zero sum games at best.
You need also to be aware of politically motivated versions of various sciences and philosophies. Psychiatry is infamous for this sort of thing, providing the political underpinnings for the Nazi state, for example. A more recent version of this was the old Soviet Union, where opposition to the state was classified a mental dis-order, treated with electroshock, brain surgury, etc.
These are things that we tend to think do not happen any more, until we look at thing like ethic cleansing, and other notions of "purity". We even see a weird mix of paranoia and hypochondria, not the imagining of all sorts of diseases in oneself, but the imagining of all sorts of diseases and defect in others. In a political context, this would be dangerous to have in those with heavy influence in the decision making process.
Obviously, those with political motivations and agendas will often grab onto anything to push them, especially if they are ethically impaired.
What's going to happen is we have to go into the protein world to really understand where the genome is taking the next level of biology. That's ten times as complex at least.
What is also noted is that the combination of these protein interactions is staggeringly more complex. I can imagine that the system interactions may be a million times or more complex.
So in my mind, patenting a gene might wind up being similar to patenting the management system of a nuclear power plant, and thinking that therefore you understand nuclear physics.
Here are a couple of stories from The Register on this:
ONE - UK boffins reckon they can cram 10,800GB of data on a PC card
Monday, 9 October 2000
TWO - UK boffins unveil $35 '2300GB on a PC Card' RAM breakthrough
Monday, 9 August 1999
Note that the original stories said that the figures were in the thousands of gigabytes - this means TERABYTES
Cavendish Management Resources (CMR)seems to be an investment company. Keele University also seems legit, although the Cavendish website seems under the weather.
So it looks like they are making it through the vaporware stage, and approaching the heavy fog stage, before we a watch it materialize.
Bottom line for me is that I do not think I will hold my breath waiting, but I would love it to happen.
The point being, of course, is to thin their numbers.
or maybe we could have truth in advertising by deciding all court cases in the WWWF.
It can't be any worse than it is now.
This might even have potential
In a DeathMatch.
This solves two problems
Too many law suits
Too many Lawyers.
Remember, lawyers most often get paid for their time in court, getting ready for court, etc. Therefore, it is in their best interest, not the interest of their clients, to have long and protracted legal disputes. They get paid either way.
Hmm. Maybe we could setup a live Quake level out in the middle of the desert of something. I bet people would even pay to watch!
So understandably, I am nervous about any Government or business collection of data above and beyond the minimum needed. Some people never have enough.
Now we all agree that pedophiles should be strung up by the thumbs, etc.
But what actions should we take, or should Google take, to handle this? Or should they remain "nuetral" in all of this?
There is a fascinating article on the Register about how IBM helped out the Nazis during WWII. All of that data processing capability IBM sold to them allowed the Nazis to be far mor efficient in implementing their "final solution." Granted, it was "only" punch card technology, but it still helped them tremendously.
This is the marriage of bureaucracy and privacy concerns.
Consider a common car engine with the higher and higher temperatures and pressures neede for fuel efficiency. There are many curved parts made to high tolerances. Never mind little details like gasoline and oil, and heat removal issues.
The short answer is that there are places where it can be used, but it is not ready for prime time at all under these conditions.
In this case, if the manufacturers could have saved money or improved performance via a plastic engine, they would have. Instead, the future is more in the direction of ceramics in this high performance field.
Heck, - would you want a plastic or a metal heat sink for your overclocked CPU?
In the intro to the interview, it is noted that Lessig will deliver a keynote titled "Free Code, Freeing Culture" at the O'Reilly Peer-to-Peer Conference on Friday, Feb. 16.
It is a fascinating interview. In fact, I am surprised that it didn't get posted here because it is both intelligent and educational. It stimulates the brain cells it does.
Personally, I would think maybe something like "Brazil" would be better, but it has been so long since I have seen the movie. As I recall, the movie is so wild that it might be utterly incomprehensible to the very lawyers that we would want to educate.
So I wonder what would be a better illustration. Maybe something by one of the existentialists?
gack, it is late, and my mind has turned to mush.
(As posted previously in UK Insurance Co. Admits Using Genetic Screening') (added comments follow):
It is expected that most insurance companies would have some sort of medical exam for things like life insurance, to avoid issues just like this.
But more general items like health insurance are another thing. Or would you like to have YOUR own insurance cancelled because, you are getting older, and might get sick, and thank you for paying out the 30 or 40 years of premiums without much payout.
There has been a major problem with insurances companies cancelling insurance when you go to use it in a major way.
In this context, avoiding people who might not even know they have some genetic condition can be suspect. The point is not insuring people based on pre-existing conditions is a bad thing. The potential insurance liability should be shared "equally" (or at random) by all insurers.
"Unapproved" tests in this case is not the same as "unapproved" medicine. Medicine is sometimes regulated so that people do not hurt themselves. Tests are sometimes regulated so that the companies do not rip you off.
(now to continue)
Obviously, there is a point where a life can be save only if we use the ten million dollar procedure, and hey, this guy is "only a street bum".
So now you have opened the fine can of worms entitled "The value of Human Life".
Yummy Yummy Yummy.
How much value do you put on a human life, and how would you assess it? How valuable is your girl friend, or your mother, or your other Generic valuable relative?
You know that some people subjectively assess others as worthless. (lawyers and politicians, for example) How much should you take that literally?
You have had a clever thought, and have not been clever enough to figure out how it applies to the world at large, or to the people around you.
Not clever enough by at least half.
The local cop pulls me over and asks me for a motocycle license. The would pull you over just because it is so weird.
and I do not know about wiping out on this. I can see where the road kill potential is a bit higher than I would want.
Worryingly, there are no brakes and it seems the only way to perform an emergency stop is to fall off. But then, it's designed to be used on beaches and has a top speed of just 22mph, so you're unlikely to hurt yourself too much.
On the other hand, people do alot of things that I would not do.