Run a small website with the MySQL database? If all the source to that site is not GPLed, you're in violation.
Note true -- MySQL AB only requires that a commercial license be purchased if you plan on redistributing their code. It doesn't matter if you use their code on your website. And it doesn't matter if you distribute your website by itself. They only care if your product distribution includes their code.
Oh wait, you were saying something about MySQL AG. Maybe we're not thinking of the same thing?
You don't need a Google search to make an example -- Google itself is an example! In a 2002 PCWorld interview, Google's Eric Schmidt revealed the following:
At Google, for example, we found it costs less money and it is more efficient to use DRAM as storage as opposed to hard disks--which is kind of amazing. It turns out that DRAM is 200,000 times more efficient when it comes to storing seekable data. In a disk architecture, you have to wait for a disk arm to retrieve information off of a hard-disk platter. DRAM is not only cheaper, but queries are lightning fast.
It doesn't specifically mention that the DRAM in question is in a hard-drive format, but I do remember that when I read this interview for the first time, I was already aware of such devices and had assumed that's what Schmidt was talking about.
Not if your car is a webserver. That's like having a car with a big sign that says "LOOK IN THE WINDOWS! THERE'S COOL STUFF INSIDE THIS CAR!"
But, going back to the original question, we're talking about people trying to access the server as 'root'. Sure the server is like a car with a sign begging people to look in the windows. But what we're talking about is somebody trying to use a homemade key to actual enter the car, and not just look at the windows.
Another analogy: a display shelf in a jewelry store. Everything in there is meant to be looked at. But if you try to get behind the counter to get at the stuff inside, you'll be stopped.
Then wouldn't the patent also cover BMP, GIF, and TGA formats? These are three I can name just off the top of my head that use (or have an option to use) run-length coding, and I think that TIFF might also have a RLC option.
(assuming run-length-coding is the same as run-length-encoding)
Look at the realities of many IT jobs, perhaps nearly all of them: working in excess of 40 hours per week, being on-call, needing up-to-date skills, having to take bad business ideas and translate them into working software.... And the list goes on. I was up till 1:00 last night, working on learning Smalltalk. I won't be compensated for it
I'd like to see some statistics that include self-employeed IT. Several of my peers and co-workers from before/during the burst made it through only by working freelance or starting their own businesses solo (like myself). And let me tell you, all of your points just increase exponentially when you are self-employeed.
- working in excess of 40 hrs/wk - I don't think I've worked fewer than 70 in the last 18 months, even over holidays, and I have been known to pull multiple 100+ hour weeks in a row. - always on call - it's one thing when you have your office call you when there's a problem. It's another when it's your responsibility to notice the problems as well. - need up to date skills - because when you're self-employeed, you're not only trying to please your boss, you also need to be competitive in a tight market, no matter what solution the client is looking for - have to take bad ideas and turn them into working software - ditto, except since I've been unemp^H^H^H^H^H self-employeed, my clients are actually coming to me for advice on how to improve their bad ideas. Yuck.
And self-employeed workers also need to act as project managers, upper management, self-promotion / advertising, etc. in addition to their IT duties. And yes, I speak from experience. I was working until 4:00 last night (fortunately for her, my wife went to bed at 10:30 or so). As a self-employeed IT, I not only get to write code, I get to write contracts. And press releases. And..and..and..and....
So you can build 13 similarly powered coal powerplants for the cost of one solar panel mounted to the Sears Tower
It might take $900k/megawatt to build a coal fired power plant, but once built you still have to sustain it. Its costs will continue for the life of the power plant. Once you put solar panels onto a building, aside from a little light maintenance (har har) it's a one-time cost.
Aside from economical benefits, it's also more accessible and conveniant to be hooked up to power from your own building -- there nothing much short of a true disaster that would knock out your power. Being off the grid can be a very good thing.
And of course, factor in the environmental impact. How much coal do we really have left in the world? It takes nearly 100 tons of prehistoric plant matter to create a single gallon of gasoline. I don't know how much prehistoric life goes into coal, but how about let's just not waste it in the first place?
I've got a VTech 5.8 Ghz phone system -- also two handsets (the system supports up to six) and one base (w/o answering machine). It rocks. My VTech 2.4 Ghz phone had problems going through aluminum siding, but the 5.8 Ghz phone has tremendous range, through all of the trouble-spots I had before. And if you're using 5.8 Ghz, you know you're not going to hurt your 802.11? connection.
From even a moderate distance, very closely. I think part of it is simply the stance, the way it's held. But it's also colored like a rifle, the same length as a rifle, and has a similar handle on one end. It's very convincing. Actually aiming the thing, and pointing it at somebody, would be more than enough to create some seriously panicked people.
Concept is cool, but anybody that uses this thing in public would be in serious danger of being shot by a SWAT team.
Heck, this doesn't even seem to be an SCO issue....
Even if IBM acknolwedges the emails -- all they say is that IBM might not own the AIX code. They don't say that SCO does! If it turns out that, say, Novell owns the AIX code instead of IBM -- that isn't going to help SCO at all. Announcing this on the SCOForum or wherever, and not in a courtroom discovery session... the point is just to spread FUD. And raise their stock value....
This news isn't SCO's "smoking gun" -- it's their "steaming pile of crap".
If I were Katie Jones, I'd setup Google AdWords on my front page, and perhaps a sponsored link to the katie.com book on Amazon, and use the proceeds to power a legal fund.
When I first read your idea, I thought it was terrific. But then I remembered how quickly these trademark battles go sour when it appears (to a judge at least) that the 'victim' is using their mis-identity to make a profit. For instance, the Mike Rowsoft case got really bad for poor Mike when he unwittingly asked them for an offer for his site. Now, your idea wouldn't attempt to make a profit through the claimant, but it would still attempt to make a profit through circumstances only occuring after the mis-identity.
This might work if she put up more original content (maybe not the content she's already had to take down, but at least something that is NOT referring to the Katie.com book) and then used Google AdWords, but using keywords that reflect her original content. I would stay away from putting up the sponsored link to the book on Amazon.
(although the little devil in me wants to suggest that she posts links to competing books on similar topics from other publishers)
I would finish the daily assignment in three or four mintues and then screw around with the computer the rest of the period
Exactly the same with me, but for a different reason. I hadn't used computers very much by 8th grade, but I had played piano since I was 5. Typing came very natural for me, even though on my first day I was equal with everybody else.
When the teacher noticed how well I was doing (I think I was typing at 60-80% of her own typing speed at the end of our first week), she told me to forget it and just work on whatever I wanted to for the rest of the year. (but it was a required class that I couldn't just skip) I wrote a lot of short stories that year....
But more along the point, I think typing classes are extremely useful. Because most jobs are integrating some level of computer use in them, and the faster you can type the more efficient you become. And efficiency is, IMO, the basis of Progress.
The concept of "on the shoulders of giants" is about efficiency, because it means we don't have to redo or rediscover things to proceed past them. Good typing is the same thing on a much, much smaller -- but still useful -- scale. Why should you have to 'rediscover' where the 'G' is on the keyboard every time you use it, before you can utilize it?
Sure, but comparing that to Microsoft? Microsoft has more money than many nations (heck, even Bill Gates alone beat out some nations the last time I saw the list). It would take a lot of individuals to match that.
And percentage-wise, how many users of OSS contribute to the funds? I was impressed when the community bought the rights back for Blender. Now, what I'm very happy about is news of people like Mark Shuttleworth, who are contributing to and defend open source.
But the point of my post was that, instead of comparing open source to Microsoft under the current system, what is really needed is reform at the government level. Free software developed by entire communities rather than costly software developed by business that rely on the bottom line -- well, that's what innovation is all about. The government should support that, instead of supporting the system that always benefits the corporation.
And how many patents does Windows (or DID windows) violate of Apple? (Before Microsoft either changed it, or bought the patent, etc) This happens all the time!
Except US politics (thanks to lobbyists) is set up to protect mega-corporations before individuals. When a mega-corporation tries this, they can get away with it. Individuals -- and projects driven by individuals -- simply cannot afford the multi-million-dollar lawyer fees necessary to defend themselves, or purchase the patents.
...whether Microsoft has an explicit strategy of using patents as a weapon against open source.
And the US is worried about other countries having weapons of mass destruction. What about weapons like this, that harm the whole of society, and even Progress itself?
Now, obviously this guy had no idea the dept. would react this way, but it would have been smarter (in hindsight) had he done this:
1. Tell boss he needs to install software on his computer to monitor for harmful activity. 2. Install WinSpy 3. Report findings
If he had done the first item via email or some other documentable method, it would have qualified for permission to use the screen capture utility. (Well, the dept. would probably have still done what they did, but this would make it a breeze to defend in court)
I like to keep business logic in one place as much as possible. You are almost assured to have some in your app, so I try to keep all logic there.
But if you have a large-scale solution, including multiple applications on multiple platforms that rely on the same algorithm, it makes sense to have a central location for your core logic, so that when you update the logic, you won't have to recompile everything that accesses it.
This doesn't limit you to stored procedures, it could be done just as effectively with PHP and XML.
This isn't my story, but my sister-in-law who, granted, is not exactly what I would call stoical.
Her vision was something along the lines of 20/800, and everybody chipped in (over $5,000) to get her corrective eye surgery for college graduation. She completely freaked out during the surgery. They have to cut a flap into your eye, while you're awake, and with little-to-no anesthesia. She had a complete panic attack at this point, although continued through the end.
After healing, her eyes were something like 20/25 in one and 20/35 in the other. Terrific improvement, and she stopped wearing glasses. After a few months though, she was back to 20/60 in one eye, and 20/80 in the other. She doesn't wear glasses all the time, but is required to for driving. This kind of relapse is fairly common I believe, but not this severe.
Like every other deal I've heard of, she can go back any time she wants to get corrected the rest of the way, "with no extra charge." (yeah, right) She's not planning on doing so, mostly because of the fear of the surgery, but also because of cost. The 'deal' was for surgery with the same laser they had previously used, and they didn't use that one any more. The one they had now was 'better', but came with more expensive licensing. So in order to finish the correction, she would now have to pay something like an extra $500 per eye.
So, your mileage may vary, but it didn't work very well for her. And whatever you do, watch out for those 'deals' with fine print.
So all you are saying is that the terrorists didn't need to do anything to win.
"Terrorists" - root: 'terror', ie 'fear'. Actions are not required to create fear. Fear can be caused through worry of potential actions, or even those with imagined potential (irrational fear). Attacks like 9/11 enforce the potentiality of the actions in the minds of the fearful. By acting on this, such as putting up surveillance cameras or creating the Patriot Act, we are acknowledging the establishment of this fear. The fear has been created, therefore the terrorists have accomplished their namesake.
That some individual terrorists might have ultimate goals is not relevant.
First, I just want to respond to some of the earlier comments that recommend not using a catch-all and instead bouncing back a reply when emails are sent to the wrong address. This is a bad idea. Don't contribute to the quantity of unwanted emails clogging up everyone's bandwidth.
I guarantee that, regardless of the amount of spam involved, you will receive more spam in your catch-all email address than genuine-yet-misdirected emails. And since spam is frequently sent with some unrelated poor individual's email address tacked on in the 'from' and 'reply-to' headers, you're just generating more unwanted email for these folks. If somebody really needs to get ahold of you, and they don't hear a response to their email, they'll either try to send it again or try to contact you via different means. Either::blackhole:: the email, or actually collect it through a catch all address. Don't send a response.
Now, in my own experience -- I run a handful of domains. I operate my business through email, so it's doubly important for me to archive all communication. I do throw all email received from my catch-all address directly into the trash (and some of my catch-all addresses get several hundred pieces of spam every day). But I only throw out my spam once a month or two. So if a client later contacts me, asking if I received his email, I can at least search for it and retrieve it. I know it might seem pointless if I can just get the information from them again, but my clients for some reason like it better when I can find an email they've sent than to discover that it was lost along the way.
It's also worth noting that people are understanding about spam -- I've never had a client get upset about their email being thrown out accidentally.
Because they bring in more money that the average BS researcher. It's just economics.
And if the pharmaceutical researcher brought in that much money instead of the 'professional' athlete, and we flip-flopped the question, the answer would still be "just economics" -- but this time with additional benefit to humanity. Why is our economic system configured to reward something that doesn't help society? I supposed I'm just a science geek who thinks that evolution is pretty smart, rewarding that which benefits the species and all....
Re:Changed the view of the US?
on
Bobby Fischer Found
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Oh, just give that Jeopardy guy a chance. By the time he tops $10 million, the country will be teeming with Brainiac wannabes...
At some point along the way, I picked up this quote from a Slashdot post, that bears repeating (or at least paraphrasing -- and I wish I could tell you who said it):
You know, if we had recruiters for Pharmaceuticals standing outside of colleges offering new graduates 10.2 million over 3 years, then cancer would have been cured 10 years ago. Why do athletes, that contribute NOTHING to society, get paid the most?
Slashdot Mirror
The Thunderbird icon looks like an envelope with a toupe!
I think it looks like a squinty-eyed anime emoticon (the blue hair makes it anime).
However, when I can actually see the logos, I love them
Agreed! They're very creative and well done at high res.
Yeah, but subsequent 3.4g batteries cost $30 apiece and can't be recharged.
And the device only lets you use 80% of the battery's charge before shutting down, supposedly to avoid damaging the prin^H^H^H^H device
Run a small website with the MySQL database? If all the source to that site is not GPLed, you're in violation.
Note true -- MySQL AB only requires that a commercial license be purchased if you plan on redistributing their code. It doesn't matter if you use their code on your website. And it doesn't matter if you distribute your website by itself. They only care if your product distribution includes their code.
Oh wait, you were saying something about MySQL AG. Maybe we're not thinking of the same thing?
It doesn't specifically mention that the DRAM in question is in a hard-drive format, but I do remember that when I read this interview for the first time, I was already aware of such devices and had assumed that's what Schmidt was talking about.
Not if your car is a webserver. That's like having a car with a big sign that says "LOOK IN THE WINDOWS! THERE'S COOL STUFF INSIDE THIS CAR!"
But, going back to the original question, we're talking about people trying to access the server as 'root'. Sure the server is like a car with a sign begging people to look in the windows. But what we're talking about is somebody trying to use a homemade key to actual enter the car, and not just look at the windows.
Another analogy: a display shelf in a jewelry store. Everything in there is meant to be looked at. But if you try to get behind the counter to get at the stuff inside, you'll be stopped.
the patent in question is on run-length coding
Then wouldn't the patent also cover BMP, GIF, and TGA formats? These are three I can name just off the top of my head that use (or have an option to use) run-length coding, and I think that TIFF might also have a RLC option.
(assuming run-length-coding is the same as run-length- encoding)
Look at the realities of many IT jobs, perhaps nearly all of them: working in excess of 40 hours per week, being on-call, needing up-to-date skills, having to take bad business ideas and translate them into working software.... And the list goes on. I was up till 1:00 last night, working on learning Smalltalk. I won't be compensated for it
I'd like to see some statistics that include self-employeed IT. Several of my peers and co-workers from before/during the burst made it through only by working freelance or starting their own businesses solo (like myself). And let me tell you, all of your points just increase exponentially when you are self-employeed.
- working in excess of 40 hrs/wk - I don't think I've worked fewer than 70 in the last 18 months, even over holidays, and I have been known to pull multiple 100+ hour weeks in a row.
- always on call - it's one thing when you have your office call you when there's a problem. It's another when it's your responsibility to notice the problems as well.
- need up to date skills - because when you're self-employeed, you're not only trying to please your boss, you also need to be competitive in a tight market, no matter what solution the client is looking for
- have to take bad ideas and turn them into working software - ditto, except since I've been unemp^H^H^H^H^H self-employeed, my clients are actually coming to me for advice on how to improve their bad ideas. Yuck.
And self-employeed workers also need to act as project managers, upper management, self-promotion / advertising, etc. in addition to their IT duties. And yes, I speak from experience. I was working until 4:00 last night (fortunately for her, my wife went to bed at 10:30 or so). As a self-employeed IT, I not only get to write code, I get to write contracts. And press releases. And..and..and..and....
So you can build 13 similarly powered coal powerplants for the cost of one solar panel mounted to the Sears Tower
It might take $900k/megawatt to build a coal fired power plant, but once built you still have to sustain it. Its costs will continue for the life of the power plant. Once you put solar panels onto a building, aside from a little light maintenance (har har) it's a one-time cost.
Aside from economical benefits, it's also more accessible and conveniant to be hooked up to power from your own building -- there nothing much short of a true disaster that would knock out your power. Being off the grid can be a very good thing.
And of course, factor in the environmental impact. How much coal do we really have left in the world? It takes nearly 100 tons of prehistoric plant matter to create a single gallon of gasoline. I don't know how much prehistoric life goes into coal, but how about let's just not waste it in the first place?
I've got a VTech 5.8 Ghz phone system -- also two handsets (the system supports up to six) and one base (w/o answering machine). It rocks. My VTech 2.4 Ghz phone had problems going through aluminum siding, but the 5.8 Ghz phone has tremendous range, through all of the trouble-spots I had before. And if you're using 5.8 Ghz, you know you're not going to hurt your 802.11? connection.
Job perks will come back when I say they're coming back, dammit!
(*Note: I'm self employeed. I don't care if job perks are coming 'by in style' or not.)
How much does it resemble a rifle?
From even a moderate distance, very closely. I think part of it is simply the stance, the way it's held. But it's also colored like a rifle, the same length as a rifle, and has a similar handle on one end. It's very convincing. Actually aiming the thing, and pointing it at somebody, would be more than enough to create some seriously panicked people.
Concept is cool, but anybody that uses this thing in public would be in serious danger of being shot by a SWAT team.
At a glance, this seems like purely an AIX issue
Heck, this doesn't even seem to be an SCO issue....
Even if IBM acknolwedges the emails -- all they say is that IBM might not own the AIX code. They don't say that SCO does! If it turns out that, say, Novell owns the AIX code instead of IBM -- that isn't going to help SCO at all. Announcing this on the SCOForum or wherever, and not in a courtroom discovery session... the point is just to spread FUD. And raise their stock value....
This news isn't SCO's "smoking gun" -- it's their "steaming pile of crap".
If I were Katie Jones, I'd setup Google AdWords on my front page, and perhaps a sponsored link to the katie.com book on Amazon, and use the proceeds to power a legal fund.
When I first read your idea, I thought it was terrific. But then I remembered how quickly these trademark battles go sour when it appears (to a judge at least) that the 'victim' is using their mis-identity to make a profit. For instance, the Mike Rowsoft case got really bad for poor Mike when he unwittingly asked them for an offer for his site. Now, your idea wouldn't attempt to make a profit through the claimant, but it would still attempt to make a profit through circumstances only occuring after the mis-identity.
This might work if she put up more original content (maybe not the content she's already had to take down, but at least something that is NOT referring to the Katie.com book) and then used Google AdWords, but using keywords that reflect her original content. I would stay away from putting up the sponsored link to the book on Amazon.
(although the little devil in me wants to suggest that she posts links to competing books on similar topics from other publishers)
I would finish the daily assignment in three or four mintues and then screw around with the computer the rest of the period
Exactly the same with me, but for a different reason. I hadn't used computers very much by 8th grade, but I had played piano since I was 5. Typing came very natural for me, even though on my first day I was equal with everybody else.
When the teacher noticed how well I was doing (I think I was typing at 60-80% of her own typing speed at the end of our first week), she told me to forget it and just work on whatever I wanted to for the rest of the year. (but it was a required class that I couldn't just skip) I wrote a lot of short stories that year....
But more along the point, I think typing classes are extremely useful. Because most jobs are integrating some level of computer use in them, and the faster you can type the more efficient you become. And efficiency is, IMO, the basis of Progress.
The concept of "on the shoulders of giants" is about efficiency, because it means we don't have to redo or rediscover things to proceed past them. Good typing is the same thing on a much, much smaller -- but still useful -- scale. Why should you have to 'rediscover' where the 'G' is on the keyboard every time you use it, before you can utilize it?
Sure, but comparing that to Microsoft? Microsoft has more money than many nations (heck, even Bill Gates alone beat out some nations the last time I saw the list). It would take a lot of individuals to match that.
And percentage-wise, how many users of OSS contribute to the funds? I was impressed when the community bought the rights back for Blender. Now, what I'm very happy about is news of people like Mark Shuttleworth, who are contributing to and defend open source.
But the point of my post was that, instead of comparing open source to Microsoft under the current system, what is really needed is reform at the government level. Free software developed by entire communities rather than costly software developed by business that rely on the bottom line -- well, that's what innovation is all about. The government should support that, instead of supporting the system that always benefits the corporation.
And how many patents does Windows (or DID windows) violate of Apple? (Before Microsoft either changed it, or bought the patent, etc) This happens all the time!
Except US politics (thanks to lobbyists) is set up to protect mega-corporations before individuals. When a mega-corporation tries this, they can get away with it. Individuals -- and projects driven by individuals -- simply cannot afford the multi-million-dollar lawyer fees necessary to defend themselves, or purchase the patents.
...whether Microsoft has an explicit strategy of using patents as a weapon against open source.
And the US is worried about other countries having weapons of mass destruction. What about weapons like this, that harm the whole of society, and even Progress itself?
must...stop...rant....
Now, obviously this guy had no idea the dept. would react this way, but it would have been smarter (in hindsight) had he done this:
1. Tell boss he needs to install software on his computer to monitor for harmful activity.
2. Install WinSpy
3. Report findings
If he had done the first item via email or some other documentable method, it would have qualified for permission to use the screen capture utility. (Well, the dept. would probably have still done what they did, but this would make it a breeze to defend in court)
I like to keep business logic in one place as much as possible. You are almost assured to have some in your app, so I try to keep all logic there.
But if you have a large-scale solution, including multiple applications on multiple platforms that rely on the same algorithm, it makes sense to have a central location for your core logic, so that when you update the logic, you won't have to recompile everything that accesses it.
This doesn't limit you to stored procedures, it could be done just as effectively with PHP and XML.
This isn't my story, but my sister-in-law who, granted, is not exactly what I would call stoical.
Her vision was something along the lines of 20/800, and everybody chipped in (over $5,000) to get her corrective eye surgery for college graduation. She completely freaked out during the surgery. They have to cut a flap into your eye, while you're awake, and with little-to-no anesthesia. She had a complete panic attack at this point, although continued through the end.
After healing, her eyes were something like 20/25 in one and 20/35 in the other. Terrific improvement, and she stopped wearing glasses. After a few months though, she was back to 20/60 in one eye, and 20/80 in the other. She doesn't wear glasses all the time, but is required to for driving. This kind of relapse is fairly common I believe, but not this severe.
Like every other deal I've heard of, she can go back any time she wants to get corrected the rest of the way, "with no extra charge." (yeah, right) She's not planning on doing so, mostly because of the fear of the surgery, but also because of cost. The 'deal' was for surgery with the same laser they had previously used, and they didn't use that one any more. The one they had now was 'better', but came with more expensive licensing. So in order to finish the correction, she would now have to pay something like an extra $500 per eye.
So, your mileage may vary, but it didn't work very well for her. And whatever you do, watch out for those 'deals' with fine print.
So all you are saying is that the terrorists didn't need to do anything to win.
"Terrorists" - root: 'terror', ie 'fear'. Actions are not required to create fear. Fear can be caused through worry of potential actions, or even those with imagined potential (irrational fear). Attacks like 9/11 enforce the potentiality of the actions in the minds of the fearful. By acting on this, such as putting up surveillance cameras or creating the Patriot Act, we are acknowledging the establishment of this fear. The fear has been created, therefore the terrorists have accomplished their namesake.
That some individual terrorists might have ultimate goals is not relevant.
First, I just want to respond to some of the earlier comments that recommend not using a catch-all and instead bouncing back a reply when emails are sent to the wrong address. This is a bad idea. Don't contribute to the quantity of unwanted emails clogging up everyone's bandwidth.
::blackhole:: the email, or actually collect it through a catch all address. Don't send a response.
I guarantee that, regardless of the amount of spam involved, you will receive more spam in your catch-all email address than genuine-yet-misdirected emails. And since spam is frequently sent with some unrelated poor individual's email address tacked on in the 'from' and 'reply-to' headers, you're just generating more unwanted email for these folks. If somebody really needs to get ahold of you, and they don't hear a response to their email, they'll either try to send it again or try to contact you via different means. Either
Now, in my own experience --
I run a handful of domains. I operate my business through email, so it's doubly important for me to archive all communication. I do throw all email received from my catch-all address directly into the trash (and some of my catch-all addresses get several hundred pieces of spam every day). But I only throw out my spam once a month or two. So if a client later contacts me, asking if I received his email, I can at least search for it and retrieve it. I know it might seem pointless if I can just get the information from them again, but my clients for some reason like it better when I can find an email they've sent than to discover that it was lost along the way.
It's also worth noting that people are understanding about spam -- I've never had a client get upset about their email being thrown out accidentally.
Because they bring in more money that the average BS researcher. It's just economics.
And if the pharmaceutical researcher brought in that much money instead of the 'professional' athlete, and we flip-flopped the question, the answer would still be "just economics" -- but this time with additional benefit to humanity. Why is our economic system configured to reward something that doesn't help society? I supposed I'm just a science geek who thinks that evolution is pretty smart, rewarding that which benefits the species and all....
At some point along the way, I picked up this quote from a Slashdot post, that bears repeating (or at least paraphrasing -- and I wish I could tell you who said it):
Wait, these guys can get into Oxford and they don't know better than to write these types of articles anonymously?
I don't know if Oxford should be more worried about their network or their entrance standards....