I'm really looking forward to the 65C816 port (Apple IIgs). Then I can use KEGS to run my favorite OSX apps on Linux. It will be nice to be able to use apple programs such as cc and c++ on my other machines.
:)
To my knowledge, the Webstar reward still stands. The contest crack I suggested stems from a pcweek contest, the winner of which (jfs) exploited the third party PhotoAds software. jfs was partially succesful against the crack.linuxppc.org. Details here...
I'm not sure what the point of the challenge is, except perhaps as a marketing/evangelist/flamewar salvo. ("My OS is more scure than your puny little OS. Hah!")
If the reward is claimed, we can probably expect that patches will be quickly written to defeat more malicious attacks in the future. And script kiddies will probably design similar programs, looking for systems that have yet to be patched...
It will turn into a bit of a race between the kernel development groups and the exploiters.
IIRC, a similar challenge was issued for a Mac based webserver (Webstar?)-- the "reward" was claimed by an individual who exploited a fairly insecure third party "classified ads" program. My guess is that third party software will form the basis of most candidate viruses.
The release, even if inadvertant, of viruses into the "wild" can lead to criminal prosecution. This may provide a safer avenue for certain types of computer security research, unlike the hacksmdi contest^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsting operation...
In the introduction to "Learning Perl", Larry Wall observes:
"What nobody noticed in all the excitement was that the computer reductionists were still busily trying to smush your minds flat, albeit on a slightly higher plane of existance. The decree, therefore, went out (I'm sure you've heard of it) that computer incantations were only allowed to perform one miracle apiece, "Do one thing and do it well" was the rallying cry. and with one stroke, shell programmers were condemned to a life of muttering and counting beads on strings, (which in these latter days have come to be known as pipelines)."
And while Perl has not made many contributions to user interface design-- it is half line noise, after all-- it does share a "everything but the kitchen sink" approach to product design.
From a programming point of veiw, the small program does have numeous advantages. The code base is small, it is easy to test and debug, and the "do one thing" edict tends to focus the design.
With large monolithic applications, the APIs and coding peculiarities differ from application to application-- so instead of writing a spell checker pipe based app to work with dozens of other apps, one has to write additional application specific glue code to work with each monolithic application.
Or take multimedia frameworks. Xine, Alsaplayer, OMS, VideoLan, and Ogle each might have a different plugin architecture. A creator of a audio or video codec would have to write hundreds of lines of extra code to support each multimedia framework...
--script to convert files to Maple 5 Notebook
on open(theList)
tell application "Finder"
repeat with theItem in theList
set creator type of theItem to "REL5"
set file type of theItem to "MVNB"
end repeat
end tell
end open
Not exactly simple, but it can be done with a Apple provided program. (And it is faster than ResEdit).
I am sure that in the coming years, Microsoft is likely to provide a online, for-fee, version of Office. It could be problematic if instead of launching StarOffice, double clicking on a spreadsheet file would preferentially launch the network Excel application...
Yesterday, the New York Times had an article reporting claims that "The Black Death" was not neccesarily the Bubonic Plague (Yersinia pestis) (NY Times article), and might have been a hemhorhagic fever-- perhaps even Ebola. The genome of Ebola, is, by the way, known.
I added a 256 Mb chip to my "icebook"-- everything is much faster-- although I spend most of my time running gnu software (installed through fink, sort of an apt-get for MacOSX).
I'm running 10.0.4.
512 Megs would be nice, but a 512 mb chip sells for ~$235. 256 Mb chips are only ~$36.
(Of course, if you buy memory from Apple, the prices skyrocket).
It's commonly said that "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns". A tautological statement in many ways...
But, outlawing guns would tend to diminish supply-- if only a very few new guns were produced-- due in part to lack of a legal market-- the number of guns would gradually diminish, and criminals who might be tempted to discard their weapon (to eliminate evidence) might be less willing to do so.
A gun is a physical object, and, if the legal means of replicating such an object have been removed by the government, new guns can not be easily created.
But PGP is software. It is out in the world, in source code form. Duplication is very simple-- use the cp command. Distribution can be covert, or overt-- and the coded messages can be hidden within more innocuous binary files.
BTW, is Pro Logic the same as Dolby Surround 2.0 that we get on DVDs?
Essentially, yes. Here's a brief run down of the various technologies.
Dolby Surround: a method of matricing four tracks into a stereo soundtrack. Often called 2.0, to highlight the fact that only two discrete channels of sound are recorded onto the film, DVD, laserdisc, etc. .
These channels can be uncompressed (PCM, usually 1536 kbs), or compressed using the Dolby Digital compression system (varies, can be as high as 448 kbs, or as low as 192 kbs).
Dolby Digital: a method of storing up to 5.1 channels (the.1 referring to a low bandwidth "Low Frequency Effects" channel) in a compressed format (maximum bitrate is 640 kbs, usually less than 448 kbs).
Dolby Surround EX: a method of matricing 3 channels into the Left Surround and Right Surround channels, so that a Rear surround channel can be reproduced.
Dolby Prologic: the most common method of extracting the extra channels from a Dolby Surround soundtrack. 4 channels are reproduced--Left, Right, Center and Surround. Typically the Rear channel is piped to two rear speakers.
Dolby Prologic II: a newer decoding sytem with more advanced decoding algorithms-- supposedly it can mimic a left and right surround.
In a DTS 5.1 or Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, there are 6 independent sountracks-- one for each speaker. The.1 bit refers to the fact that the Low Frequency Effects channel contains about one tenth as much information as a front or surround channel.
In the old Dolby Surround system, the surround and center channels were extracted from the left and right stereo channels...
For example, if the left and right channels contained the same audio at a particular time, the audio would be directed to the center channel. Don't ask me how the surround channel was extracted.
Unfortunately, such a system is essentially unable to play sound from two speakers at once. Dolby Digital 5.1 improved on this system by seperating the surround channel into a left and right surround, and futher, by eliminating the extraction step-- six tracks are recorded instead of just the right and left. This allows the sountrack to use all of the speakers simultaneously.
With Dolby 5.1 Surround EX, we're back to matrix surround. If the right and left surround channels contain the same audio, that bit is directed to the rear surround. 5.1 EX is 6 channels mixed so that a seventh can be extracted.
6.1 would imply that the rear surround channel is recorded seperately. I believe that DTS has a discrete 6.1 mode.
Nuclear strikes against Afghanistan will only exacerbate the various conditions that encourage disillusioned youths to join terrorist organizations, and throw their own lives away in a manner calculated to take the lives of others.
It has been speculated, rightly or wongly, that the persons behind this terrorist plot wish to foment a global conflict between those they see as their allies and those they see as their enemies.
The recent attacks were directed against symbols-- financial, political, and military. Each person who died was killed not because of personal reasons, but because they happened to be in the building at that exact moment. Make no mistake, the terrorists intended to kill-- but they made no effort to determine who, in their eyes, "deserved" personally to die.
Attacks, particularly with nuclear weapons, that reflect a similar callousness towards the individuality of human life, are no more morally justified than the terrorist attcks they were intended to avenge.
Morevever, the purported justification-- to shock into submission-- bears a chilling similarity to the motive behind most terrorist attrocities.
Hmm.
I don't really think that designing a language to be accessible to the blind or the color blind is catering to the "lowest common denominator".
Theoretically, the main requirement for a programmer is a brain. Everything else is secondary. One can argue that a fast computer is nice, and good compilers are also helpful.
Vision really doesn't enter into it.
ColorForth is a personal language designed to fit the personal quirks of its creator. That personal fit also makes it less useful as a universal language.
As for the jet fighter analogy-- it is much harder to design a jet fighter that can be flown both effectively and safely by a nearsighted pilot. that it is to design a computer language accessible to the color blind.
cm said "
20-20 vision is required for fighter pilots. I have no qualms about requiring color vision for programmers. Everyone does not need to be a programmer."
I would disagree. While the Free Software Foundation, for instance, does not explicitly condone "programming regardless of skill"-- contributing to gcc does require some aptitude, free software allows anyone to program--without regard to financial means, or the willingness to sign NDA's.
Before color forth, color vision was not a prerequisate for programmers. Why should it be now? (Why are boldface, italic, and roman not appropriate analogues for red green and yellow, anyway?)
Re:What the hell do you expect?
on
More WTC News
·
· Score: 2
I would be much more surprised if they didn't deploy Carnivore.
I will also be surprised if the boxes don't go away when they are done.
Why would the FBI remove the boxes? If the federal government could get advanced warning of future attacks, and save lives-- why not enforce Carnivores permanently on ISPs?
Just a week ago, I read of spirited European campaigns against Echelon. In the Washington Post, an architecture critic was railing against the use of jersey barriers to "defend" the Washington Monument. The walls that surrounded the G-8 summit and will surround the IMF summit were being compared to the Berlin wall. A few months ago, persons were grumbling about the continued closure of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House. Now that the World Trade center and Pentagon attacks have taken the lives of thousands, proponents of fortifying D.C. will probably garner more and not less support. Carnivore, and Echelon were first predicated on fears of terrorist activity-- fears that were dismissed by civil libertarians as somewhat vacuous in the past. Now that such fears are (sadly) more justifiable-- opposition to the growth of surveillance activity will become less urgent and relevant in the minds of many government officials.
Of course, the flaws don't have to do with the trampling of "fair use", or perhaps even the saddling of public domain data with usage restrictions.
Under the DMCA, the models of access control could be based on a simple bitflip (Real Networks), ROT13 (some of the more incompetent Adobe Acrobat extension writers), or a 40 bit cipher that, because of design idiocy, was the equivalent of 25 bits of decently designed software (DVD/CSS).
Since these methods will go through the Commerce Department, it may be that the stupider algorithms will be filtered out, and any standardized system will rely on stronger methods.
Although this will mean that stupidity will longer be subsidized, tryranny still will be.
Should this bill be introduced, passed, and signed, it might have serious effects on the ability to run Linux in the U.S. The bill explicitly refers to software--including, I presume Linux, but even if it applied only to hardware, drivers to use the new "secure" videocards, "soundcards", and other mandated hardware components would most likely not be open source, due to licensing/certification requirements.
Should it apply also to software, the failure of coders to implement "secure media pathways" in the kernel could mean that Linux could not be manufactured in and/or imported into the U.S. .
Theoretically, even if the kernel did contain such protection, any hacker could adjust certain lines of sourcecode to ensure that plaintext versions of copyrighted material could be accessed without much effort-- a loophole that could be plugged by a zealous Commerce Secretary banning "source code" versions.
Although certain grandfathering provisions exist in the bill, we all know that the kernel is not set in stone-- and new versions are released regularly to deal with new hardware, fix bugs, and improve performance. Ten years from now, kernel-2.4.x will likely not run on the latest and greatest hardware...
So, don't think of this as just another DMCA. Think of the bill as a "closed source subsidy act". Think of Jack Valenti and his ilk rooting your box...
Technically, Specfp/SpecInt measure the perormance of a particular system, running a particular OS... The CPU is often handicapped by the choice of motherboard, for instance.
Although it might be useful for a typical computer shopper to see a standardized benchmark, most people are not interested in Quantum chromodynamics or computer chess
I have a feeling that the Supreme Court may not look upon this too favorably. In Kyllo v. US, the court ruled that use of a thermal imaging device to detect IR radiation (evidence of indoor marijuana cultivation) leaking from an apartment constituted a search, and thus required a warrant.
The standard the court promulgated is as follows: Where, as here, the Government uses a device that is not
in general public use, to explore details of the home that
would previously have been unknowable without physical
intrusion, the surveillance is a "search" and is presump-tively
unreasonable without a warrant.
The slip opinion (99-8508) is available in pdf format
Although the government did have a warrent to search thus supects home in this case, they did not have permission to wiretap. Since the bug could concievably be used to wiretap, the government has the responsibility to provide evidence that the device did not go beyond the scope of the existing warrant.
Kyllo suggests that, since the device's capabilities are secret, such a device is presumptively not in public use, and requires the most expansive of warrents for legal use. Since the feds did not have a wiretap warrent, and such a device could be used for such activity, the placement of the device is illegal. (IANAL)
Oh, I agree. Xenotransplantation is risky-- and even though waivers may be obtainable from the FDA, transplants may cause serious epidemiological problems. The solution may lie in creating new "mouse-free" lines, but because federal funds will not be made available to support the creation of such lines, private enterprise will have to step in...
But private, commercial research poses its own set of problems. Firstly, it's much more difficult to regulate. Secondly, it is almost ceratin that these discoveries will be patented to the nth degree, making it much more difficult for academic investigators to conduct research without signing non-disclosure agreements. etc.
(Corporate sponsored research often includes a clause about not publishing negative results, and other perversions of traditional academic freedom.)
Slashdot Mirror
The real measure of the success of an emulator is virus level compatibility.
And for Linux and FreeBSD users?
I'm really looking forward to the 65C816 port (Apple IIgs). Then I can use KEGS to run my favorite OSX apps on Linux. It will be nice to be able to use apple programs such as cc and c++ on my other machines.
:)
To my knowledge, the Webstar reward still stands. The contest crack I suggested stems from a pcweek contest, the winner of which (jfs) exploited the third party PhotoAds software. jfs was partially succesful against the crack.linuxppc.org. Details here...
I'm not sure what the point of the challenge is, except perhaps as a marketing/evangelist/flamewar salvo. ("My OS is more scure than your puny little OS. Hah!")
If the reward is claimed, we can probably expect that patches will be quickly written to defeat more malicious attacks in the future. And script kiddies will probably design similar programs, looking for systems that have yet to be patched...
It will turn into a bit of a race between the kernel development groups and the exploiters.
IIRC, a similar challenge was issued for a Mac based webserver (Webstar?)-- the "reward" was claimed by an individual who exploited a fairly insecure third party "classified ads" program. My guess is that third party software will form the basis of most candidate viruses.
The release, even if inadvertant, of viruses into the "wild" can lead to criminal prosecution. This may provide a safer avenue for certain types of computer security research, unlike the hacksmdi contest^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsting operation...
In the introduction to "Learning Perl", Larry Wall observes:
"What nobody noticed in all the excitement was that the computer reductionists were still busily trying to smush your minds flat, albeit on a slightly higher plane of existance. The decree, therefore, went out (I'm sure you've heard of it) that computer incantations were only allowed to perform one miracle apiece, "Do one thing and do it well" was the rallying cry. and with one stroke, shell programmers were condemned to a life of muttering and counting beads on strings, (which in these latter days have come to be known as pipelines)."
And while Perl has not made many contributions to user interface design-- it is half line noise, after all-- it does share a "everything but the kitchen sink" approach to product design.
From a programming point of veiw, the small program does have numeous advantages. The code base is small, it is easy to test and debug, and the "do one thing" edict tends to focus the design.
With large monolithic applications, the APIs and coding peculiarities differ from application to application-- so instead of writing a spell checker pipe based app to work with dozens of other apps, one has to write additional application specific glue code to work with each monolithic application.
Or take multimedia frameworks. Xine, Alsaplayer, OMS, VideoLan, and Ogle each might have a different plugin architecture. A creator of a audio or video codec would have to write hundreds of lines of extra code to support each multimedia framework...
I believe that this can be done with Applescript:
--script to convert files to Maple 5 Notebook
on open(theList)
tell application "Finder"
repeat with theItem in theList
set creator type of theItem to "REL5"
set file type of theItem to "MVNB"
end repeat
end tell
end open
Not exactly simple, but it can be done with a Apple provided program. (And it is faster than ResEdit).
I am sure that in the coming years, Microsoft is likely to provide a online, for-fee, version of Office. It could be problematic if instead of launching StarOffice, double clicking on a spreadsheet file would preferentially launch the network Excel application...
Apple has, to my knowledge, no such plans...
Yesterday, the New York Times had an article reporting claims that "The Black Death" was not neccesarily the Bubonic Plague (Yersinia pestis) (NY Times article), and might have been a hemhorhagic fever-- perhaps even Ebola. The genome of Ebola, is, by the way, known.
E-Titanium? Reminds me of the fliers littering the street outside my home.
paraphrased:
have a pc? do you want to make money fast? for more information on our pyramid scheme contact us at eonlinework-dom
What kind of online "work" is not electronic?
Titanium is merely the next step in the progression of products from
[name]
[name]-plus
[name]-gold
[name]-platinum
[name]-platinum-plus
[name]-95
[name]-98
[name]-2000
[name]-millenium
[name]-titanium edition
I added a 256 Mb chip to my "icebook"-- everything is much faster-- although I spend most of my time running gnu software (installed through fink, sort of an apt-get for MacOSX).
I'm running 10.0.4.
512 Megs would be nice, but a 512 mb chip sells for ~$235. 256 Mb chips are only ~$36.
(Of course, if you buy memory from Apple, the prices skyrocket).
It's commonly said that "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns". A tautological statement in many ways...
But, outlawing guns would tend to diminish supply-- if only a very few new guns were produced-- due in part to lack of a legal market-- the number of guns would gradually diminish, and criminals who might be tempted to discard their weapon (to eliminate evidence) might be less willing to do so.
A gun is a physical object, and, if the legal means of replicating such an object have been removed by the government, new guns can not be easily created.
But PGP is software. It is out in the world, in source code form. Duplication is very simple-- use the cp command. Distribution can be covert, or overt-- and the coded messages can be hidden within more innocuous binary files.
Essentially, yes. Here's a brief run down of the various technologies. Dolby Surround: a method of matricing four tracks into a stereo soundtrack. Often called 2.0, to highlight the fact that only two discrete channels of sound are recorded onto the film, DVD, laserdisc, etc. .
These channels can be uncompressed (PCM, usually 1536 kbs), or compressed using the Dolby Digital compression system (varies, can be as high as 448 kbs, or as low as 192 kbs).
Dolby Digital: a method of storing up to 5.1 channels (the .1 referring to a low bandwidth "Low Frequency Effects" channel) in a compressed format (maximum bitrate is 640 kbs, usually less than 448 kbs).
Dolby Surround EX: a method of matricing 3 channels into the Left Surround and Right Surround channels, so that a Rear surround channel can be reproduced.
Dolby Prologic: the most common method of extracting the extra channels from a Dolby Surround soundtrack. 4 channels are reproduced--Left, Right, Center and Surround. Typically the Rear channel is piped to two rear speakers.
Dolby Prologic II: a newer decoding sytem with more advanced decoding algorithms-- supposedly it can mimic a left and right surround.
In a DTS 5.1 or Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, there are 6 independent sountracks-- one for each speaker. The .1 bit refers to the fact that the Low Frequency Effects channel contains about one tenth as much information as a front or surround channel.
In the old Dolby Surround system, the surround and center channels were extracted from the left and right stereo channels...
For example, if the left and right channels contained the same audio at a particular time, the audio would be directed to the center channel. Don't ask me how the surround channel was extracted.
Unfortunately, such a system is essentially unable to play sound from two speakers at once. Dolby Digital 5.1 improved on this system by seperating the surround channel into a left and right surround, and futher, by eliminating the extraction step-- six tracks are recorded instead of just the right and left. This allows the sountrack to use all of the speakers simultaneously.
With Dolby 5.1 Surround EX, we're back to matrix surround. If the right and left surround channels contain the same audio, that bit is directed to the rear surround. 5.1 EX is 6 channels mixed so that a seventh can be extracted.
6.1 would imply that the rear surround channel is recorded seperately. I believe that DTS has a discrete 6.1 mode.
Nuclear strikes against Afghanistan will only exacerbate the various conditions that encourage disillusioned youths to join terrorist organizations, and throw their own lives away in a manner calculated to take the lives of others.
It has been speculated, rightly or wongly, that the persons behind this terrorist plot wish to foment a global conflict between those they see as their allies and those they see as their enemies.
The recent attacks were directed against symbols-- financial, political, and military. Each person who died was killed not because of personal reasons, but because they happened to be in the building at that exact moment. Make no mistake, the terrorists intended to kill-- but they made no effort to determine who, in their eyes, "deserved" personally to die.
Attacks, particularly with nuclear weapons, that reflect a similar callousness towards the individuality of human life, are no more morally justified than the terrorist attcks they were intended to avenge.
Morevever, the purported justification-- to shock into submission-- bears a chilling similarity to the motive behind most terrorist attrocities.
Hmm.
I don't really think that designing a language to be accessible to the blind or the color blind is catering to the "lowest common denominator".
Theoretically, the main requirement for a programmer is a brain. Everything else is secondary. One can argue that a fast computer is nice, and good compilers are also helpful.
Vision really doesn't enter into it.
ColorForth is a personal language designed to fit the personal quirks of its creator. That personal fit also makes it less useful as a universal language.
As for the jet fighter analogy-- it is much harder to design a jet fighter that can be flown both effectively and safely by a nearsighted pilot. that it is to design a computer language accessible to the color blind.
I would disagree. While the Free Software Foundation, for instance, does not explicitly condone "programming regardless of skill"-- contributing to gcc does require some aptitude, free software allows anyone to program--without regard to financial means, or the willingness to sign NDA's.
Before color forth, color vision was not a prerequisate for programmers. Why should it be now? (Why are boldface, italic, and roman not appropriate analogues for red green and yellow, anyway?)
I will also be surprised if the boxes don't go away when they are done. Why would the FBI remove the boxes? If the federal government could get advanced warning of future attacks, and save lives-- why not enforce Carnivores permanently on ISPs?
Just a week ago, I read of spirited European campaigns against Echelon. In the Washington Post, an architecture critic was railing against the use of jersey barriers to "defend" the Washington Monument. The walls that surrounded the G-8 summit and will surround the IMF summit were being compared to the Berlin wall. A few months ago, persons were grumbling about the continued closure of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House. Now that the World Trade center and Pentagon attacks have taken the lives of thousands, proponents of fortifying D.C. will probably garner more and not less support. Carnivore, and Echelon were first predicated on fears of terrorist activity-- fears that were dismissed by civil libertarians as somewhat vacuous in the past. Now that such fears are (sadly) more justifiable-- opposition to the growth of surveillance activity will become less urgent and relevant in the minds of many government officials.
What about "Leather Goddesses of Phobos"? :)
Of course, the flaws don't have to do with the trampling of "fair use", or perhaps even the saddling of public domain data with usage restrictions.
Under the DMCA, the models of access control could be based on a simple bitflip (Real Networks), ROT13 (some of the more incompetent Adobe Acrobat extension writers), or a 40 bit cipher that, because of design idiocy, was the equivalent of 25 bits of decently designed software (DVD/CSS).
Since these methods will go through the Commerce Department, it may be that the stupider algorithms will be filtered out, and any standardized system will rely on stronger methods.
Although this will mean that stupidity will longer be subsidized, tryranny still will be.
Should this bill be introduced, passed, and signed, it might have serious effects on the ability to run Linux in the U.S. The bill explicitly refers to software--including, I presume Linux, but even if it applied only to hardware, drivers to use the new "secure" videocards, "soundcards", and other mandated hardware components would most likely not be open source, due to licensing/certification requirements.
Should it apply also to software, the failure of coders to implement "secure media pathways" in the kernel could mean that Linux could not be manufactured in and/or imported into the U.S. .
Theoretically, even if the kernel did contain such protection, any hacker could adjust certain lines of sourcecode to ensure that plaintext versions of copyrighted material could be accessed without much effort-- a loophole that could be plugged by a zealous Commerce Secretary banning "source code" versions.
Although certain grandfathering provisions exist in the bill, we all know that the kernel is not set in stone-- and new versions are released regularly to deal with new hardware, fix bugs, and improve performance. Ten years from now, kernel-2.4.x will likely not run on the latest and greatest hardware...
So, don't think of this as just another DMCA. Think of the bill as a "closed source subsidy act". Think of Jack Valenti and his ilk rooting your box...
Technically, Specfp/SpecInt measure the perormance of a particular system, running a particular OS... The CPU is often handicapped by the choice of motherboard, for instance. Although it might be useful for a typical computer shopper to see a standardized benchmark, most people are not interested in Quantum chromodynamics or computer chess
You don't actually need Cat5 wiring in your home. You can use Cat3. Hope that helps!
The standard the court promulgated is as follows: Where, as here, the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a "search" and is presump-tively unreasonable without a warrant.
The slip opinion (99-8508) is available in pdf format
Although the government did have a warrent to search thus supects home in this case, they did not have permission to wiretap. Since the bug could concievably be used to wiretap, the government has the responsibility to provide evidence that the device did not go beyond the scope of the existing warrant.
Kyllo suggests that, since the device's capabilities are secret, such a device is presumptively not in public use, and requires the most expansive of warrents for legal use. Since the feds did not have a wiretap warrent, and such a device could be used for such activity, the placement of the device is illegal. (IANAL)
Oh, I agree. Xenotransplantation is risky-- and even though waivers may be obtainable from the FDA, transplants may cause serious epidemiological problems. The solution may lie in creating new "mouse-free" lines, but because federal funds will not be made available to support the creation of such lines, private enterprise will have to step in...
But private, commercial research poses its own set of problems. Firstly, it's much more difficult to regulate. Secondly, it is almost ceratin that these discoveries will be patented to the nth degree, making it much more difficult for academic investigators to conduct research without signing non-disclosure agreements. etc.
(Corporate sponsored research often includes a clause about not publishing negative results, and other perversions of traditional academic freedom.)
Did anybody expect an ISP owned primarily by Time-Warner to act in a responsible manner? After all, the parent company owns several movie studios.
Synergy, hah. More like incest...