I can think of serveral instances in which corporations might deserve the "corporate death penalty." (I should probably note here that I do not support for the capital punishement, but since the journalist has used the term "death penalty", I guess we're stuck with it). Most of these instances involve a wanton and deliberate disregard for human life. Conspiracy to commit fraud might also be appropriate.
A question must be asked though-- did the crimes of the corporation stem from the actions of management (in which case, prosecution of the management might be more appropriate), or was the structure of the comapny such that the criminal actions were "par for the course," so to speak?
Of course the government has long used the RICO and conspiracy statutes to break up criminal organizations... These statues have long been criticized for puuting too much power in the hands of prosecutors.
Gilmore's musing "Perhaps, after the civil litigation was resolved, the remaining assets of the company -- at least those that were legally gained -- might go on the auction block, with the proceeds going to taxpayers." disturbs me as well. The government should not have a "profit motive" for attacking corporations. It should prosecute corporations for crimes, but should do so in accordence with the seriousness of the alleged offense, not merely because that corporation has assets it covets.
The case involved a woman who was pulled over for seatbelt violations-- something that normally carries a 50 dollar fine. The police officer arrested her for various actions which the woman may or may not have done.
An arrest involves searches, loss of personal dignity, deprivation of freedom, and a notation on a criminal record. Seatbelt violations generally do not involve such deprivations. The woman was put in jail at the discretion of the arresting police officer. She did not enjoy due process.
If cops have the ability to act as judge, jury and executioner, and can escape proper judicial review of their actions, we are doomed as a society.
How trustworthy are these electronic age verification services? I have a feeling that the attourney general's office will be none too swift in prosecuting the fraudulent ones.
Besides, when I search for porn, I want to be as anonymous as possible. Verified Age means verified identity-- and verified identity is more harmeful to privacy than even the most insidious doubleclick cookie.
Dennis Tito had training, but his training would not neccessarily have kept him alive in all situations. After all, the astronauts who did in the Apollo I fire were well trained, and so were the Crew of the 1986 Challenger flight that ended in disaster. Likewise, many cosmonauts have also died due to equipment failure.
The Challenger exploded because of a faulty O-ring, not because of the preparedness of any of the astronauts. According to Richard Feyman, NASA, for various political reasons habitually understated the risk of a catastrophic accident. These artificially low risk assessments prompted NASA to recruit a civilian teacher, and to launch various government officials into space.
Space travel in inherently dangerous, and it is likely that space tourists will die as a result.
Most people use the statement "information wants to free" as a straw man fallacy.
"How can information want anything? These [insert vaguely computer related demonic subspecies here] are nuts."
"Information wants to be free, so we must keep it locked up, and ban unauthorized use of the keys."
I've looked upon the statement as a rallying cry against censorship, and as a way of encouraging free-as-in-speech software. But it can also be applied to other bits of information. For instance, the Government publishes a lot of information-- regulations, court cases, etc. It used to be that private firms published a lot of this material for a select audience-- and the prices reflected both the enourmous cost of printing, but also the ability of their audience to pay through the nose for it.
But with the advent of the internet, a lot of those costs are substantially less. "Freeing" this information has important civic advantages.
I also found this page detailing some of the early usage of this adage here
Tito paid 20 million dollars for the trip. That covered the Russian Soyuz flight and maybe subsidized Russian space flight operations. However, station operations were basically shut down for that period. Since the ISS is a work in progress, that also meant that equipment was not installed, further delaying fully operational status.
The United states has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in this station. Because of budgetary considerations, plans to increase the crew capacity to six (from three) have been put on hold.
Could one make an economic case for building a multi billion dollar space station, and then renting it out to tourists for the cost of delivering them to orbit? No way! How would you pay for your multi billion dollar space station?
The ISS was obstensibly designed for research. Tourists are a distraction. If some idiot with cash to burn believes that there is a sustainable market for space tourism, let him build his own space station.
Interesting that you mention Thomas Eedison. Although Edison was a prolific inventer, he (or his companies) was rather ruthless iun defending his patents.
As I recall, he attempted to leverage his invention, patent, and resulting monopoly on the movie projector into a monopoly on film production.
Many (if not all) of his projectors were licensed, not sold, with the stipulation that they only be used to project films distributed by Edison controlled companies.
Interesting technique, but it depends in large part on the use of a standard nomenclature. If a protein is known as "p89" in one article, and as "acetylcholinesterase II" in another article, a link cannot be established so easily.
This technigue, morover, appears only to collate published interactions-- helpful, perhaps, in guiding the conduct of basic research, and the avoidence of duplicate studies-- but less useful when the goal of a researcher is determining the function of unknown genes, or putative protein products. In those cases, protein fold databases or motif databases are much more useful.
Can one give Pubgene a pdb or fasta file-- and find papers on homolougous genes or structurally similar proteins-- or must one use BLAST, or a fold recognition algoritm prior to searching Pubgene?
More than a few bars is really annoying-- forget the fair use issue. If I want to listen to music, I have a stereo. Reproduction on a cell phone cheapens the percieved value of the music.
(It's akin to the line "It's like a Mozart symphony" in Spinal Tap's "Listen to the Flower People, played to a really bad rendition of "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik").
My favorite part of that article is "We always thought 'compliant' had decidedly negative connotations, as in: 'a spineless, compliant little boot-licker'. Leave it to Microsoft to sell submissiveness as a virtue."
Ah, the Register-- blunt, punny language + BOFH. What more could you ask?
I'm curious as to why this process must be banned now. Sure, cloning has a huge "ickyness" factor, but I get the feeling that most of these ethical dilemmas are being "resolved" by individuals who are not rationally approching the matter.
Many of the concerns are with the (lack of )safety of the procedure. Cloning is associated (when performed with other mammals) with extremely low success rates. However, that does not mean that the problems are unsolvable. Perhaps a ten to fifteen year ban on human cloning would be more advisable, subject to review if the problem is solved.
We must remember that in vitro fertilization also has problems associated with implantantation, yet few argue that IVF is ethically problematic because of these problems.
Human cloning, is at presnt, ethically problematical becuase of the high mortality rate. But this does not mean `There is no need for this technology to ever be used with humans,'' (to quote Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kans).
The problem appers to be that the future of cloning humans lies with two groups of people who want to force the issue. The time is not right for bold intrepid scientists to drag humanity kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Nor is it right for lawmakers to read a few papers, listen to a few scientists, and decide the issue for all time.
With advances in cloning technology, it may be possible to replicate mammals with a very high degree of success. At that point, the application of this technology to humans should commence.
Publicity. The SDMI was being introduced at a time when some individuals were having some doubts about efficiency of CSS style algorithms.
CSS was based on the following set of assumptions:
Data that is transmitted in an encrypted format can not be read except by authorized users-- users that have access to the appropriate key.
Of course, as with all covert communications, the key must be transmitted in a secure fashion.
Now, the CSS designers decided that if DVD players were designed with a "hidden" sector, the key could thus be distributed. Persons who merely copied the data from a DVD would have nothing except the encrypted data-- useless without a key. Access to the key depended on physical access to a tangible medium-- the actual DVD-Video disk.
Of course, the key transmission protocol was eventually compromised, and cryptoanalysts discovered that the actual encrytion- instead of being 40-bit, was closer to 25-bit-- literally, a toy code.
Cryptoanalysts and Cryptologists have long recognized that an ideal code should involve a strongly assymetric algorithm-- cheap for a user to decode with a proper key, but expensive for a eavesdropper to decrypt. More importantly, the algorithm should be subjected rigorous testing and/or peer review. The CSS algorithms were not subjected to this kind of testing prior to the release of DVD-Video.
The SDMI proponents, hearing this criticism, decided that their coding algorithms needed that extra bullet point: "peer-reviewed". But, apparently, they had neglected to consider that their algorithms might amount to nought. They only had visions of a future press release:
"SDMI invulnerable to hacking! Music Industry safe from hackers."
And, because, all of the participants in HackSDMI were bound by confidentiality clauses, no one would be the wiser.
Well, if one were throughly cynical, one could imagine the following scenes:
Scientist: If you give us lots of money, we'll be able to produce a complete genome, and cure all human diseases through genetic manipulation.
Non-Scientist: OK.
[Some years later]
Scientist: The genome is complete. Thank you for funding us.
Non-Scientist: Why are we still afficted with disease?
Scientist: Although we decoded all the DNA, we still don't know exactly how some genes control other genes. It's going to take many years of study. However, genes encode proteins, and if we can figure out how proteins fold (which is, technically, NP-complete), we can generate a complete proteome. With this proteome, we can cure all known diseases.
Non-Scientist: OK. Here's your money.
Scientist: Thanks. This is going to keep my lab funded for years to come. [sings "I'm in the money, I'm in the money"]...
The genome is only the first step. Now, the role of each gene in the organism must be defined-- a someaht more difficult task that will require the application of computational techniques to accomplish.
Many of these techniques involve probabilistic methods (Baysian, Markov Chains), informed by evolutionary principles to adduce an answer.
I use several packages that are a real pain to install-- ALSA and Livid are two examples. Lately, I've been trying out quasimodo and ardour (two sound recording applications.) Most of these packages come from cvs, primarily because I'm interested in the source. ALSA is very unstable, and because it is kernel dependent-- the updates are as frequent as kernel releases.
But each of these packages consists of several subpackages-- each of which must be installed, before compilation of the next subpackage can proceed.
ALSA consists of alsa-driver, alsa-lib, and alsa-utils. LiViD consists of libcss, (optionally) libmpeg2, oms, and omi. Quasimodo has about six different sub libraries (at least one of which depends of ALSA), plus associated applications. Ardour depends on Quasimodo...
The only sane solution I've found is to totally automate the process with a loop along the lines of.
#!/bin/bash
for d in libcss libmpeg2 oms omi
do
echo "entering package $d"
cd $d
autogen.sh
make clean all
su -c"make install"
cd..
done
While I do have to type the root password several times, it is a bit more convenient than compiling source as root. But is it reall more dangerous than typing "rpm -Uvh *.rpm"?
Probably the best solution would be to set up a user accessible (/usr/cvs perhaps) hierarchy that doesn't require root access to write to e.g./usr/cvs/bin, but still, one needs to install libraries with the (root only) libconf tool. On the other hand, "configure" defaults to installing in/usr/local..
OMS is a bit of a processor hog-- but that's mostly because it's difficult to get specifications on the Motion Comp and iDCT features from video card venders.
If you play at the highest resolutions and with the highest level of detail, some games are pretty demanding-- although performance is usually dependent on the make/model of video card.
At one site (Tom's Hardware, perhaps) benchmarks processors with a MPEG2 to MPEG4 conversion test.
Freerepublic doesn't allow users to log on anonymously, that's the point. The server is private property, so Jim Rob can let anyone he wants on there, and if an offending user keeps on coming back, and harassing the people on the board, he will get charged with trespassing.
I think a distinction must be made between pseudonymity-- in which an author posts under a consistent "nom de guerre", and strict anonymity, where authorship is unknown.
To put it another way, I could adopt a nickname (e.g. CommodusTerraMajor), and post scientillating political commentary under that name. CommodusHumusMajor would aquire karma (perhaps) and a "track record" of previous posts. But few would be able to connect CommodusHumusMajor with me, allowing myself to go about my life unmolested by angry slashdotters.
At the same time, the name CommodusTerraMajor could become synonymous with insightful commentary (Score +1 bonus). It could be that the very name would inspire people to carefully read the post, trusting his every word. This would be a valued pseudonym
Or, I could post as an Anomymous Coward, knowledgable of the fact that my words (Score:0) will be ignored by most slashdotters, as an anonymous individual cannot earn a reputation.
To cry "censorship" in this situation is the same as crying "censorship" when a movie is given an R-rating.
It's interesting that you compare the FCC's indecency provisons to the MPAA's rating regime, as I was just reading an article in this morning's Washington Post which claimed that the ratings methodology was flawed-- concentrating on isolated utterances or imagery, rather than on a appreciation of the total context of the film.
I don't see why everyone is getting all riled up abot the possibility of genetic contamination. I mean, it's not like companies have had any trouble segregating Starlink corn from non-GM corn...
Actually, it is possible to build a codec that produces better sound quality (at the same bitrate) as MP3.
But none of these codecs will be superior, in sonic quality, to CD-Audio, DVD-A, or SACD. Of course, one is unlikely to find PC ports of the latter two formats.
On the other hand, the percieved audience for SDMI probably does not include audiophiles. People who listen to EnSync have neither the taste nor the equipment to enjoy a higher resolution format. However, if you pair that insipid pap with a "free ticket" offer (available exclusively with the SDMI format) there might be some takers.
1) In short, how far have we really come in the cloning process? I know that we have come very far, but in relation to how far we have to go to actually clone something, and do so consistently. I can think of Absolute zero and (Hot Fusion?) where we can "DO IT", or get real close, but we're still a long way off from it being useful or feasible.
Ansolute zero cannot be reached. It's a physical impossibilty. However, a sustainable fusion reaction should be technically possible.
2) Living matter versus inanimate objects. I know it doesn't seem to make sense, but if we can alter DNA and cell structure, what is the distance we need to go before we can actually alter the molecular structure of inanimate objects. (Lead into Gold)
Is this a troll?
You can transmute lead into gold-- but not by chemical (molecular level) processes. A gold atom has 79 protons. A lead atom has 82 protons. Figure out a way to subtract three protons from each lead atom, and you're all set. Of course, the expense of atomic transmutation would dwarf the value of the gold so produced.
3) What do I, as a person, have to fear, or admire, about cloning. I know there is a "mass hysteria" over around the subject, but that doesn't mean much to me.
Some people are afraid of new things. A number of ethical dilemmas would be raised by cloning a person:
Suppose Alfred decides to clone himself, and raise that clone (Alfred II) as his own child. Would Alfred II be able to live his own life, free of experiemntation. Or would Alfred attempt to resolve his own personal problems. "If only I practiced the piano from the age of three. Alfred II must be taught how to play full-time."
Of course this happens all the time with today's children, but since a child shares genetic material from both his mother and father, both parents (in theory) have a genetic stake in the outcome, ending some of the egregrious "experimentation."
My favorite ethical problem has to do with the raising of aencephalic clones for organ harvesting. (Obviously, if a clone were to be used for organ harvesting, genetically stoping brain develepment would be beneficial from a moral standpoint-- fewer problems with homicide laws, and from an energetics standpoint-- the brain consumes an incredible amount of food.)
However, some people believe that genetically halting neurodevelopment is itself "playing god."
Slashdot's Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) ProgramTM:
Protecting Intellectual Property
In keeping with its status as the internet's largest venue for Nerdish News, Slashdot does not and cannot verify that posters have the right or ability
tocommunicate certain ideas in their slashdot postings. However, we are committed to removing
infringing or unlicensed posts once an authorized representative of the rights
owner properly reports them to us. Slashdot's Verified Rights Owner (VeRO)
Program works to ensure that items presented to the the Slashdot community do not infringe upon the
copyright, trademark or other intellectual property rights of third parties.
VeRO Program participants, upon reciept of the appropriate monies, are granted a Slashdot account with a permanent supply of ten moderation points, to be used to supress posts that may conflict with their copyrightm, trademark, or other intellectual property rights.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the ISS is quite noisy. At one point, background noise levels on the Zvezda module were on average, 70-75 dB. So, you may not hear this:
"Honey, we're going to have to use more straps. I just cant get enough friction."
"That's because you keep floating away from me."
But you will hear the incessent drone of hydraulic pumps and fans and dust collectors. Ah, how romantic!
I can think of serveral instances in which corporations might deserve the "corporate death penalty." (I should probably note here that I do not support for the capital punishement, but since the journalist has used the term "death penalty", I guess we're stuck with it). Most of these instances involve a wanton and deliberate disregard for human life. Conspiracy to commit fraud might also be appropriate.
A question must be asked though-- did the crimes of the corporation stem from the actions of management (in which case, prosecution of the management might be more appropriate), or was the structure of the comapny such that the criminal actions were "par for the course," so to speak?
Of course the government has long used the RICO and conspiracy statutes to break up criminal organizations... These statues have long been criticized for puuting too much power in the hands of prosecutors.
Gilmore's musing "Perhaps, after the civil litigation was resolved, the remaining assets of the company -- at least those that were legally gained -- might go on the auction block, with the proceeds going to taxpayers." disturbs me as well. The government should not have a "profit motive" for attacking corporations. It should prosecute corporations for crimes, but should do so in accordence with the seriousness of the alleged offense, not merely because that corporation has assets it covets.
The case involved a woman who was pulled over for seatbelt violations-- something that normally carries a 50 dollar fine. The police officer arrested her for various actions which the woman may or may not have done.
An arrest involves searches, loss of personal dignity, deprivation of freedom, and a notation on a criminal record. Seatbelt violations generally do not involve such deprivations. The woman was put in jail at the discretion of the arresting police officer. She did not enjoy due process.
If cops have the ability to act as judge, jury and executioner, and can escape proper judicial review of their actions, we are doomed as a society.
How trustworthy are these electronic age verification services? I have a feeling that the attourney general's office will be none too swift in prosecuting the fraudulent ones.
Besides, when I search for porn, I want to be as anonymous as possible. Verified Age means verified identity-- and verified identity is more harmeful to privacy than even the most insidious doubleclick cookie.
Dennis Tito had training, but his training would not neccessarily have kept him alive in all situations. After all, the astronauts who did in the Apollo I fire were well trained, and so were the Crew of the 1986 Challenger flight that ended in disaster. Likewise, many cosmonauts have also died due to equipment failure.
The Challenger exploded because of a faulty O-ring, not because of the preparedness of any of the astronauts. According to Richard Feyman, NASA, for various political reasons habitually understated the risk of a catastrophic accident. These artificially low risk assessments prompted NASA to recruit a civilian teacher, and to launch various government officials into space.
Space travel in inherently dangerous, and it is likely that space tourists will die as a result.
"How can information want anything? These [insert vaguely computer related demonic subspecies here] are nuts."
"Information wants to be free, so we must keep it locked up, and ban unauthorized use of the keys."
I've looked upon the statement as a rallying cry against censorship, and as a way of encouraging free-as-in-speech software. But it can also be applied to other bits of information. For instance, the Government publishes a lot of information-- regulations, court cases, etc. It used to be that private firms published a lot of this material for a select audience-- and the prices reflected both the enourmous cost of printing, but also the ability of their audience to pay through the nose for it.
But with the advent of the internet, a lot of those costs are substantially less. "Freeing" this information has important civic advantages.
I also found this page detailing some of the early usage of this adage here
Tito paid 20 million dollars for the trip. That covered the Russian Soyuz flight and maybe subsidized Russian space flight operations. However, station operations were basically shut down for that period. Since the ISS is a work in progress, that also meant that equipment was not installed, further delaying fully operational status.
The United states has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in this station. Because of budgetary considerations, plans to increase the crew capacity to six (from three) have been put on hold.
Could one make an economic case for building a multi billion dollar space station, and then renting it out to tourists for the cost of delivering them to orbit? No way! How would you pay for your multi billion dollar space station?
The ISS was obstensibly designed for research. Tourists are a distraction. If some idiot with cash to burn believes that there is a sustainable market for space tourism, let him build his own space station.
Interesting that you mention Thomas Eedison. Although Edison was a prolific inventer, he (or his companies) was rather ruthless iun defending his patents.
As I recall, he attempted to leverage his invention, patent, and resulting monopoly on the movie projector into a monopoly on film production.
Many (if not all) of his projectors were licensed, not sold, with the stipulation that they only be used to project films distributed by Edison controlled companies.
Interesting technique, but it depends in large part on the use of a standard nomenclature. If a protein is known as "p89" in one article, and as "acetylcholinesterase II" in another article, a link cannot be established so easily.
This technigue, morover, appears only to collate published interactions-- helpful, perhaps, in guiding the conduct of basic research, and the avoidence of duplicate studies-- but less useful when the goal of a researcher is determining the function of unknown genes, or putative protein products. In those cases, protein fold databases or motif databases are much more useful.
Can one give Pubgene a pdb or fasta file-- and find papers on homolougous genes or structurally similar proteins-- or must one use BLAST, or a fold recognition algoritm prior to searching Pubgene?
More than a few bars is really annoying-- forget the fair use issue. If I want to listen to music, I have a stereo. Reproduction on a cell phone cheapens the percieved value of the music.
(It's akin to the line "It's like a Mozart symphony" in Spinal Tap's "Listen to the Flower People, played to a really bad rendition of "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik").
My favorite part of that article is "We always thought 'compliant' had decidedly negative connotations, as in: 'a spineless, compliant little boot-licker'. Leave it to Microsoft to sell submissiveness as a virtue."
Ah, the Register-- blunt, punny language + BOFH. What more could you ask?
IIRC, cryptome.org regularly purges its logs to avoid such requests...
An example to follow?
I'm curious as to why this process must be banned now. Sure, cloning has a huge "ickyness" factor, but I get the feeling that most of these ethical dilemmas are being "resolved" by individuals who are not rationally approching the matter.
Many of the concerns are with the (lack of )safety of the procedure. Cloning is associated (when performed with other mammals) with extremely low success rates. However, that does not mean that the problems are unsolvable. Perhaps a ten to fifteen year ban on human cloning would be more advisable, subject to review if the problem is solved.
We must remember that in vitro fertilization also has problems associated with implantantation, yet few argue that IVF is ethically problematic because of these problems.
Human cloning, is at presnt, ethically problematical becuase of the high mortality rate. But this does not mean `There is no need for this technology to ever be used with humans,'' (to quote Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kans).
The problem appers to be that the future of cloning humans lies with two groups of people who want to force the issue. The time is not right for bold intrepid scientists to drag humanity kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Nor is it right for lawmakers to read a few papers, listen to a few scientists, and decide the issue for all time.
With advances in cloning technology, it may be possible to replicate mammals with a very high degree of success. At that point, the application of this technology to humans should commence.
Publicity. The SDMI was being introduced at a time when some individuals were having some doubts about efficiency of CSS style algorithms.
CSS was based on the following set of assumptions:
Data that is transmitted in an encrypted format can not be read except by authorized users-- users that have access to the appropriate key.
Of course, as with all covert communications, the key must be transmitted in a secure fashion.
Now, the CSS designers decided that if DVD players were designed with a "hidden" sector, the key could thus be distributed. Persons who merely copied the data from a DVD would have nothing except the encrypted data-- useless without a key. Access to the key depended on physical access to a tangible medium-- the actual DVD-Video disk.
Of course, the key transmission protocol was eventually compromised, and cryptoanalysts discovered that the actual encrytion- instead of being 40-bit, was closer to 25-bit-- literally, a toy code.
Cryptoanalysts and Cryptologists have long recognized that an ideal code should involve a strongly assymetric algorithm-- cheap for a user to decode with a proper key, but expensive for a eavesdropper to decrypt. More importantly, the algorithm should be subjected rigorous testing and/or peer review. The CSS algorithms were not subjected to this kind of testing prior to the release of DVD-Video.
The SDMI proponents, hearing this criticism, decided that their coding algorithms needed that extra bullet point: "peer-reviewed". But, apparently, they had neglected to consider that their algorithms might amount to nought. They only had visions of a future press release:
"SDMI invulnerable to hacking! Music Industry safe from hackers."
And, because, all of the participants in HackSDMI were bound by confidentiality clauses, no one would be the wiser.
Well, if one were throughly cynical, one could imagine the following scenes:
Scientist: If you give us lots of money, we'll be able to produce a complete genome, and cure all human diseases through genetic manipulation.
Non-Scientist: OK.
[Some years later]
Scientist: The genome is complete. Thank you for funding us.
Non-Scientist: Why are we still afficted with disease?
Scientist: Although we decoded all the DNA, we still don't know exactly how some genes control other genes. It's going to take many years of study. However, genes encode proteins, and if we can figure out how proteins fold (which is, technically, NP-complete), we can generate a complete proteome. With this proteome, we can cure all known diseases.
Non-Scientist: OK. Here's your money.
Scientist: Thanks. This is going to keep my lab funded for years to come. [sings "I'm in the money, I'm in the money"]...
The genome is only the first step. Now, the role of each gene in the organism must be defined-- a someaht more difficult task that will require the application of computational techniques to accomplish.
Many of these techniques involve probabilistic methods (Baysian, Markov Chains), informed by evolutionary principles to adduce an answer.
I use several packages that are a real pain to install-- ALSA and Livid are two examples. Lately, I've been trying out quasimodo and ardour (two sound recording applications.) Most of these packages come from cvs, primarily because I'm interested in the source. ALSA is very unstable, and because it is kernel dependent-- the updates are as frequent as kernel releases.
..
/usr/cvs/bin, but still, one needs to install libraries with the (root only) libconf tool. On the other hand, "configure" defaults to installing in /usr/local ..
But each of these packages consists of several subpackages-- each of which must be installed, before compilation of the next subpackage can proceed.
ALSA consists of alsa-driver, alsa-lib, and alsa-utils. LiViD consists of libcss, (optionally) libmpeg2, oms, and omi. Quasimodo has about six different sub libraries (at least one of which depends of ALSA), plus associated applications. Ardour depends on Quasimodo...
The only sane solution I've found is to totally automate the process with a loop along the lines of.
#!/bin/bash
for d in libcss libmpeg2 oms omi
do
echo "entering package $d"
cd $d
autogen.sh
make clean all
su -c"make install"
cd
done
While I do have to type the root password several times, it is a bit more convenient than compiling source as root. But is it reall more dangerous than typing "rpm -Uvh *.rpm"?
Probably the best solution would be to set up a user accessible (/usr/cvs perhaps) hierarchy that doesn't require root access to write to e.g.
OMS is a bit of a processor hog-- but that's mostly because it's difficult to get specifications on the Motion Comp and iDCT features from video card venders.
If you play at the highest resolutions and with the highest level of detail, some games are pretty demanding-- although performance is usually dependent on the make/model of video card.
At one site (Tom's Hardware, perhaps) benchmarks processors with a MPEG2 to MPEG4 conversion test.
Amusingly, this very same argument was used by Southern slaveholders in their accusations against the British.
I think a distinction must be made between pseudonymity-- in which an author posts under a consistent "nom de guerre", and strict anonymity, where authorship is unknown.
To put it another way, I could adopt a nickname (e.g. CommodusTerraMajor), and post scientillating political commentary under that name. CommodusHumusMajor would aquire karma (perhaps) and a "track record" of previous posts. But few would be able to connect CommodusHumusMajor with me, allowing myself to go about my life unmolested by angry slashdotters.
At the same time, the name CommodusTerraMajor could become synonymous with insightful commentary (Score +1 bonus). It could be that the very name would inspire people to carefully read the post, trusting his every word. This would be a valued pseudonym
Or, I could post as an Anomymous Coward, knowledgable of the fact that my words (Score:0) will be ignored by most slashdotters, as an anonymous individual cannot earn a reputation.
It's interesting that you compare the FCC's indecency provisons to the MPAA's rating regime, as I was just reading an article in this morning's Washington Post which claimed that the ratings methodology was flawed-- concentrating on isolated utterances or imagery, rather than on a appreciation of the total context of the film.
I don't see why everyone is getting all riled up abot the possibility of genetic contamination. I mean, it's not like companies have had any trouble segregating Starlink corn from non-GM corn...
Actually, it is possible to build a codec that produces better sound quality (at the same bitrate) as MP3.
But none of these codecs will be superior, in sonic quality, to CD-Audio, DVD-A, or SACD. Of course, one is unlikely to find PC ports of the latter two formats.
On the other hand, the percieved audience for SDMI probably does not include audiophiles. People who listen to EnSync have neither the taste nor the equipment to enjoy a higher resolution format. However, if you pair that insipid pap with a "free ticket" offer (available exclusively with the SDMI format) there might be some takers.
Ansolute zero cannot be reached. It's a physical impossibilty. However, a sustainable fusion reaction should be technically possible.
2) Living matter versus inanimate objects. I know it doesn't seem to make sense, but if we can alter DNA and cell structure, what is the distance we need to go before we can actually alter the molecular structure of inanimate objects. (Lead into Gold)
Is this a troll? You can transmute lead into gold-- but not by chemical (molecular level) processes. A gold atom has 79 protons. A lead atom has 82 protons. Figure out a way to subtract three protons from each lead atom, and you're all set. Of course, the expense of atomic transmutation would dwarf the value of the gold so produced.
3) What do I, as a person, have to fear, or admire, about cloning. I know there is a "mass hysteria" over around the subject, but that doesn't mean much to me.
Some people are afraid of new things. A number of ethical dilemmas would be raised by cloning a person: Suppose Alfred decides to clone himself, and raise that clone (Alfred II) as his own child. Would Alfred II be able to live his own life, free of experiemntation. Or would Alfred attempt to resolve his own personal problems. "If only I practiced the piano from the age of three. Alfred II must be taught how to play full-time." Of course this happens all the time with today's children, but since a child shares genetic material from both his mother and father, both parents (in theory) have a genetic stake in the outcome, ending some of the egregrious "experimentation." My favorite ethical problem has to do with the raising of aencephalic clones for organ harvesting. (Obviously, if a clone were to be used for organ harvesting, genetically stoping brain develepment would be beneficial from a moral standpoint-- fewer problems with homicide laws, and from an energetics standpoint-- the brain consumes an incredible amount of food.) However, some people believe that genetically halting neurodevelopment is itself "playing god."
Slashdot's Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) ProgramTM:
Protecting Intellectual Property
In keeping with its status as the internet's largest venue for Nerdish News, Slashdot does not and cannot verify that posters have the right or ability
tocommunicate certain ideas in their slashdot postings. However, we are committed to removing
infringing or unlicensed posts once an authorized representative of the rights
owner properly reports them to us. Slashdot's Verified Rights Owner (VeRO)
Program works to ensure that items presented to the the Slashdot community do not infringe upon the
copyright, trademark or other intellectual property rights of third parties.
VeRO Program participants, upon reciept of the appropriate monies, are granted a Slashdot account with a permanent supply of ten moderation points, to be used to supress posts that may conflict with their copyrightm, trademark, or other intellectual property rights.
The washington post article is available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A555 29-2001Mar11.html