"You're kidding, right? Please tell me you're kidding."
I suppose that was a little bit too preachy, but I was really annoyed that a high traffic site like this would post an artical that gives such a terribly wrong impression of such a worthwhile project and the companies who gave their name and resources to help promote it. Who knows, maybe a little guilt trip will make the editors realise that they do wield a lot of power on this site and try not to keep making the same stupid mistakes.
Ok, as none of the slashdot editors seem to be able to do any editing here are a couple of excerpts from various faqs and information services describing how this stuff work.
Are you going to sell the results to large pharmaceutical companies?
--No. The results of this study are the intellectual property of the University of Oxford and the National Foundation for Cancer Research, who will make the scientific findings of this project available to the greater scientific community.
Are the results going to be made public?
Yes. Prof. Graham Richards' research group, the project coordinators, will publish the results. This group originally designed the project and is currently orchestrating the study. Scientific interpretation of the results from this study will take some time. Results and scientific findings will be published in the usual manner through a peer-reviewed process.
So the results are going to the National Foundation for Cancer Research and Oxford. The National Foundation for Cancer Research are not the type of body to charge for commercial development of this work
The project software cannot detect or transfer anything on your machine but project-specific information. It just allows your computer to screen molecules that may be developed into drugs to fight cancer. Each individual computer analyzes a few molecules and then sends the results back over the Internet for further research.
So your computer is only allowed to scan molecules
A. 100% Philanthropic:
The programs and, more specifically, workloads should be 100% philanthropic. Being a 100% philanthropic program means that that the program(s) run non-profit projects all of the time. Programs that run commercial projects "from time to time" are NOT considered 100% philanthropic.
B. No Cost to the Public:
The program should be completely "free" to the public. This means that there should be no cost to the public to download any of the software applications needed to run the workloads.
C. Complete Disclosure to User:
The programs should allow complete disclosure of information to the user about the workloads running on the user's machine (including, but not limited to, the type of data being processed), without giving away proprietary information.
D. Complete Disclosure to the Public:
The programs should allow all results obtained from processed workloads to be completely disclosed to the public within approximately 12 months of receiving the results.
So thank you michael for allowing your cynicism and laziness in research to potentially take a lot of computing resources away from an important project. Yes it is getting attention for all the parties involved but it is not a cheap trick to steal our computer cycles for commercial interests, if you join for the cancer project then that is all you will work on
So when you go home to bed tonight make sure and think about how much extra suffering your lack of editorial integrity may have caused cancer sufferers due to lost computing resources for this project. When will the slashdot editors learn that they can't just post any old crap, slashdot is not a small site where a mistake has no affect, it has a huge readership and needs to start taking some responsibility for the integrity of the stories it posts.
Thank you, I expect to see the front page updated with a retraction of these false allegations soon to try and repair some of the damage your laziness has done. For the first time since I started posted here I have finally found something important enough to use my +1 bonus. I hope it is the last time this is needed.
They patented a method to convert text from an arbitrary charset, to UNICODE, and then convert this to plain text as U+XXXX where XXXX is the hev version of the unicode charset. Thats a basic first year programming assignment and definately not an innovation. The first part is obviously crap as converting from one charset to another is not a new idea (Hell java does it for nearly every charset in existance for years). As for the rest does outputing a unicode character in hex count as an innovation? Is there anyone here who works with unicode and hasn't done the same thing as part of debugging an application?
Whats next, patent a method for converting from an arbitrary number set to decimal and then outputting it in hex? The stupidity of the USPTO boggles the mind.
No it isn't current, at the time oracle stock was worth 69 and microsoft stock worth 53, at the moment they are worth 15 and 57 respectively making Bill a hell of a lot richer than Larry.
Being in charge of Enterprise Interoperability products you must be aware of the (some say deliberate) incompatibilities that Microsoft introduced into the Kerberos protocol. Why were these changes made and is there any intention of rectifying them at Microsoft?
"I don't know anyone who has wanted to drink before they were 21 who has not been able to get their hands on alcohol"
You obviously don't know many 5 year olds then. If a five year old could go into a shop and buy a beer they would plain and simple. The reason there are age limits is because some things are too risky for young people. I didn't start drinking until I was 16 and looking back I realise I was too young then.
Microsoft have not made any attempts to enforce this patent, they are not part of the brigade who will patent something stupid and then sue everyone who tries to use it. You should be happier that a company like Microsoft who don't pursue stupid patent infringment suits has a patent on such a basic thing. Now if someone else tries to patent something similar at least a company with some financial clout can go after them.
Just because it is Microsoft doesn't nescessarily mean it is bad. The time could be better spent trying to get rid of a patent that is being enforced rather than just a childish drive to pull one over on Microsoft.
Because the linux advocates constantly criticise microsofts service packs means of upgrading. Buy windows 2000 and you have to download 1 service pack and thats means its a terrible OS that needs constant patching. Download linux 2.4.0 then 2.4.1 and then 2.4.2 in less than half that timespan and rather than meaning that 2.4.0 was a terrible OS that needs constant patching it is an innovative OS with a rapid turnaround.
"I admit that sometimes I say "England" when I mean "United Kingdom," but the part of the UK that I'm talking about when I say that is England. I just forget that I might be talking about Scotland, Ireland, the Falkland Islands and other places as well."
Ireland is not part of the U.K. Northern Ireland is but the Republic of Ireland is not. Nice of you to make the same stupid mistake of blanketing areas falsely as being part of a larger whole while complaining about it yourself. That O level geography is really standing you in good stead today.
Well just because you can think of how to do it after reading the article doesn't make it non-obvious. Just because something seems obvious in hindsight doesnt make it non-obvious to begin with.
I assume that Power saving only works if there arent frequent power downs and power ups, if these machines were power saving for 1min then had to power up again there probably wouldnt be much (if any) saving whereas the wear on the servers would be a lot greater.
"You may not sell or auction any EverQuest characters, items, coin or copyrighted material."
HappyPuppy has a good article on this. You play the game you agree to abide by the rules, fail to do so and sony can yank your account. Seems pretty cut and dried to me.
"that can actually put you behind because the new addons need time to catch up with the rest"
Yeah and sometimes these new "junior programmers" are opinionated young upstarts who get it into there head that the whole project needs a re-write when in fact their own programming abilities are not good enough to allow them to read other peoples code.
It is easy to see flaws in anyones code, I know where I work we sometimes joke about obvious inefficiencies etc in others peoples code, but a lot of the reasons you might think a code re-write is that code is generally written in a manner that isn't optimal. Yeah youll find stuff that is obviously poor but if it works then it isnt all that bad.
If you are a junior programmer on a project then you need to justify your place in the team. And if the first thing you do is go flaming other peoples code then you are not marking yourself as a team player. If possible talk to the guy who first wrote the code, maybe he had a different perspective on the code. Something that is complex might seem terrible to you. Try looking at a Boyer-Moore implementation someday and you wont be the first to thing that 2 nested for loops is much better, the fact is that what looks worse is actually better in that situation and the same in many.
Lots of money wasted over it. The question is would you bet your life on those odds? Well you probably do everytime you cross the road, Does 1 person in 2million die when they cross the road? seems about right to me, wasting so much time and money on an terribly small chance is stupid. There is almost certainly some other component more likely to fail in the shuttle that just hasnt been found. If you are going to hold off until there is 100% certainty that the launch will go off without a hitch then nothing will ever get done. I feel a lot more respect for the challenger crew who took a chance for the sake of discovery than for the discovery people who stall at the slightest sign of difficulty.
... that Shuttle Chief Dittemore couldnt work out the odds of 2 parts in 6056 failing with a 4 in 6056 failure rate. Thats 1/((4/6056)^2) or 1 in 2292196 if they came from 2 seperate batches of 6056 of which 4 fail or 1/((4/6056)*(2/6055)) being 1 in 3055756.67 chance if both came from the same 6056 batch of which 4 fail. Sorry if a shuttle chief who doesnt know basic statistics doesn't inspire confidence in NASA.
Of course the problem most people have with junk mail is the amount of time they waste sifting through it. Spending more time on junk mail doesnt really solve that problem
Ahh, I always thought they could manufacture diamonds to any grade and quality, but they were just prevented from selling them as jewellery. By the way did anyone read 2001 (or maybe 2010), there is a part in there where A.C.C. mentions that the pressure and temperature at the core of jupiter is sufficient that its core could be a diamond the size of the earth. I always thought that was a pretty amazing possibility.
Slashdot Mirror
"You're kidding, right? Please tell me you're kidding."
I suppose that was a little bit too preachy, but I was really annoyed that a high traffic site like this would post an artical that gives such a terribly wrong impression of such a worthwhile project and the companies who gave their name and resources to help promote it. Who knows, maybe a little guilt trip will make the editors realise that they do wield a lot of power on this site and try not to keep making the same stupid mistakes.
Decado
Ok, as none of the slashdot editors seem to be able to do any editing here are a couple of excerpts from various faqs and information services describing how this stuff work.
From http://members.ud.com/vypc/cancer/faq_proj.htm
Are you going to sell the results to large pharmaceutical companies?
--No. The results of this study are the intellectual property of the University of Oxford and the National Foundation for Cancer Research, who will make the scientific findings of this project available to the greater scientific community.
Are the results going to be made public?
Yes. Prof. Graham Richards' research group, the project coordinators, will publish the results. This group originally designed the project and is currently orchestrating the study. Scientific interpretation of the results from this study will take some time. Results and scientific findings will be published in the usual manner through a peer-reviewed process.
So the results are going to the National Foundation for Cancer Research and Oxford. The National Foundation for Cancer Research are not the type of body to charge for commercial development of this work
From http://members.ud.com/vypc/cancer/index.htm
The project software cannot detect or transfer anything on your machine but project-specific information. It just allows your computer to screen molecules that may be developed into drugs to fight cancer. Each individual computer analyzes a few molecules and then sends the results back over the Internet for further research.
So your computer is only allowed to scan molecules
From Intels criteria for Philantropic projectshttp://www.intel.com/cure/criteria.htm
A. 100% Philanthropic:
The programs and, more specifically, workloads should be 100% philanthropic. Being a 100% philanthropic program means that that the program(s) run non-profit projects all of the time. Programs that run commercial projects "from time to time" are NOT considered 100% philanthropic.
B. No Cost to the Public:
The program should be completely "free" to the public. This means that there should be no cost to the public to download any of the software applications needed to run the workloads.
C. Complete Disclosure to User:
The programs should allow complete disclosure of information to the user about the workloads running on the user's machine (including, but not limited to, the type of data being processed), without giving away proprietary information.
D. Complete Disclosure to the Public:
The programs should allow all results obtained from processed workloads to be completely disclosed to the public within approximately 12 months of receiving the results.
So thank you michael for allowing your cynicism and laziness in research to potentially take a lot of computing resources away from an important project. Yes it is getting attention for all the parties involved but it is not a cheap trick to steal our computer cycles for commercial interests, if you join for the cancer project then that is all you will work on
So when you go home to bed tonight make sure and think about how much extra suffering your lack of editorial integrity may have caused cancer sufferers due to lost computing resources for this project. When will the slashdot editors learn that they can't just post any old crap, slashdot is not a small site where a mistake has no affect, it has a huge readership and needs to start taking some responsibility for the integrity of the stories it posts.
Thank you, I expect to see the front page updated with a retraction of these false allegations soon to try and repair some of the damage your laziness has done. For the first time since I started posted here I have finally found something important enough to use my +1 bonus. I hope it is the last time this is needed.
Decado
They patented a method to convert text from an arbitrary charset, to UNICODE, and then convert this to plain text as U+XXXX where XXXX is the hev version of the unicode charset. Thats a basic first year programming assignment and definately not an innovation. The first part is obviously crap as converting from one charset to another is not a new idea (Hell java does it for nearly every charset in existance for years). As for the rest does outputing a unicode character in hex count as an innovation? Is there anyone here who works with unicode and hasn't done the same thing as part of debugging an application?
Whats next, patent a method for converting from an arbitrary number set to decimal and then outputting it in hex? The stupidity of the USPTO boggles the mind.
No it isn't current, at the time oracle stock was worth 69 and microsoft stock worth 53, at the moment they are worth 15 and 57 respectively making Bill a hell of a lot richer than Larry.
Being in charge of Enterprise Interoperability products you must be aware of the (some say deliberate) incompatibilities that Microsoft introduced into the Kerberos protocol. Why were these changes made and is there any intention of rectifying them at Microsoft?
And even if the boycott did work they would just blame the reduced sales on napster, they win either way.
"I don't know anyone who has wanted to drink before they were 21 who has not been able to get their hands on alcohol"
You obviously don't know many 5 year olds then. If a five year old could go into a shop and buy a beer they would plain and simple. The reason there are age limits is because some things are too risky for young people. I didn't start drinking until I was 16 and looking back I realise I was too young then.
And I'll bet they can clear 1,000,000 attacks before the day is out.
Just like the moderator who decided my little joke was offtopic. Silly me, I didn't realise that replying to an ontopic post was offtopic
If I think I am smarter than you does that create a paradox? Or do we both end up with infinite amounts of smartness?
Microsoft have not made any attempts to enforce this patent, they are not part of the brigade who will patent something stupid and then sue everyone who tries to use it. You should be happier that a company like Microsoft who don't pursue stupid patent infringment suits has a patent on such a basic thing. Now if someone else tries to patent something similar at least a company with some financial clout can go after them.
Just because it is Microsoft doesn't nescessarily mean it is bad. The time could be better spent trying to get rid of a patent that is being enforced rather than just a childish drive to pull one over on Microsoft.
FPSE open sourced but not GPL, you still need the authors permission to modify or distribute.
Yeah turning off java will prevent the new Flash adds from annoying you, good move!
Because the linux advocates constantly criticise microsofts service packs means of upgrading. Buy windows 2000 and you have to download 1 service pack and thats means its a terrible OS that needs constant patching. Download linux 2.4.0 then 2.4.1 and then 2.4.2 in less than half that timespan and rather than meaning that 2.4.0 was a terrible OS that needs constant patching it is an innovative OS with a rapid turnaround.
Am I the only one who spots the hipocracy here?
"I admit that sometimes I say "England" when I mean "United Kingdom," but the part of the UK that I'm talking about when I say that is England. I just forget that I might be talking about Scotland, Ireland, the Falkland Islands and other places as well."
Ireland is not part of the U.K. Northern Ireland is but the Republic of Ireland is not. Nice of you to make the same stupid mistake of blanketing areas falsely as being part of a larger whole while complaining about it yourself. That O level geography is really standing you in good stead today.
Well just because you can think of how to do it after reading the article doesn't make it non-obvious. Just because something seems obvious in hindsight doesnt make it non-obvious to begin with.
Plus the problem isnt the couple of servers per organisation, its the hundreds of employees that leave their machines on 24/7 running seti.
I assume that Power saving only works if there arent frequent power downs and power ups, if these machines were power saving for 1min then had to power up again there probably wouldnt be much (if any) saving whereas the wear on the servers would be a lot greater.
From the everquest EULA:
"You may not sell or auction any EverQuest characters, items, coin or copyrighted material."
HappyPuppy has a good article on this. You play the game you agree to abide by the rules, fail to do so and sony can yank your account. Seems pretty cut and dried to me.
"that can actually put you behind because the new addons need time to catch up with the rest"
Yeah and sometimes these new "junior programmers" are opinionated young upstarts who get it into there head that the whole project needs a re-write when in fact their own programming abilities are not good enough to allow them to read other peoples code.
It is easy to see flaws in anyones code, I know where I work we sometimes joke about obvious inefficiencies etc in others peoples code, but a lot of the reasons you might think a code re-write is that code is generally written in a manner that isn't optimal. Yeah youll find stuff that is obviously poor but if it works then it isnt all that bad.
If you are a junior programmer on a project then you need to justify your place in the team. And if the first thing you do is go flaming other peoples code then you are not marking yourself as a team player. If possible talk to the guy who first wrote the code, maybe he had a different perspective on the code. Something that is complex might seem terrible to you. Try looking at a Boyer-Moore implementation someday and you wont be the first to thing that 2 nested for loops is much better, the fact is that what looks worse is actually better in that situation and the same in many.
Yes, he did say he couldnt figure it out
Lots of money wasted over it. The question is would you bet your life on those odds? Well you probably do everytime you cross the road, Does 1 person in 2million die when they cross the road? seems about right to me, wasting so much time and money on an terribly small chance is stupid. There is almost certainly some other component more likely to fail in the shuttle that just hasnt been found. If you are going to hold off until there is 100% certainty that the launch will go off without a hitch then nothing will ever get done. I feel a lot more respect for the challenger crew who took a chance for the sake of discovery than for the discovery people who stall at the slightest sign of difficulty.
... that Shuttle Chief Dittemore couldnt work out the odds of 2 parts in 6056 failing with a 4 in 6056 failure rate. Thats 1/((4/6056)^2) or 1 in 2292196 if they came from 2 seperate batches of 6056 of which 4 fail or 1/((4/6056)*(2/6055)) being 1 in 3055756.67 chance if both came from the same 6056 batch of which 4 fail. Sorry if a shuttle chief who doesnt know basic statistics doesn't inspire confidence in NASA.
Of course the problem most people have with junk mail is the amount of time they waste sifting through it. Spending more time on junk mail doesnt really solve that problem
Ahh, I always thought they could manufacture diamonds to any grade and quality, but they were just prevented from selling them as jewellery. By the way did anyone read 2001 (or maybe 2010), there is a part in there where A.C.C. mentions that the pressure and temperature at the core of jupiter is sufficient that its core could be a diamond the size of the earth. I always thought that was a pretty amazing possibility.