The thing that keeps living systems living is that they have mechanisms in place to repair themselves. From what the article said, no self-regenerating systems are in place in the fuel cell. They're counting on the original build to last. Your horse lives so many years and walks so many miles because it can regenerate damaged muscles. Unless the fuel cell were equipped with the enzyme's gene and the machinery to translate the information in the gene into newly synthesized enzyme, this fuel cell will not last as long as your horse.
That raises an interesting question. We're a long way off from having a fuel cell that could synthesize new enzyme, but supposing one were invented should it be patentable? The best way to build one would be to start with a living organism and tweak it. But if it were built from scratch would it be patentable? (I realize that living organisms are patentable, thanks to the ineptitude of the USPTO, but all patented organisms are tweaked versions of natural organisms. This would be something different.)
And a follow-up question: If posting is allowed during the window, who will be moderating during that time? If only trolls subscribe so that they can get FP, then only trolls will be moderating. The rest of us will see a new story 20 min later with half a dozen +5 comments that are all FP flaming, goatse, Natalie Portman, or SOVIET RUSSIA (with an occasional death of Steven King).
This is an unlikely scenario, I admit, but a possibility. I suppose CmdrTaco would just null the 'feature' if it turned out that way. I think it's more likely that subscribers will be mostly responsible folks who post decent comments. There's not really a basis for supposition that the population of subscribers will be skewed one way or the other.
(Read more about Slashdot trolling phenomena here. It's a good laugh and explains a few quirks about this site that may have perturbed you if you're new around here. Also click the link in my.sig if you want free music.)
And to nitpick even further, Watson and Crick didn't discover the structure. They formulated a model for the structure which was the first to accurately describe all of the scientific observations made up to that time. X-ray crystallography couldn't get high enough resolution to unambiguously prove the model for another few decades. At the time they proposed the model, there was not sufficient data to be absolutely certain about its accuracy. In other words, they did some masterful guesswork. The remarkable thing about W&C's original model was how accurate it was.
Dr. Crick later postulated the central dogma of molecular biology, which states that DNA is replicated for inheritance, is transcribed to RNA, and that RNA is translated to protein. The central dogma is now well-established, but was certainly not when Crick proposed it. The role of RNA in protein synthesis was rather foggy at the time. Crick was a remarkable scientist who certainly deserved the Nobel Prize. The field of molecular biology has benefitted immeasureably from his contributions.
The same goes for Linus Pauling. W&C beat him to the DNA structure, but he made some great contributions to the field nonetheless. Pauling's DNA structure was based upon the protonated form of DNA - where the phosphodiester backbone is electrically neutral. There is actually a -1 charge on phosphates in DNA, which is one of the reasons why the backbone wraps around the outside of the molecule. In his triple helix model the backbone was on the inside of the molecule, with the bases pointing out. This would made sense if the phophates were neutral, because they wouldn't repel each other. Having the bases on the outside also made sense because if the information was contained in the bases, then they ought to be accessible. He also had the wrong tautomeric forms of the bases, so the base pairing with hydrogen bonds wouldn't work properly. His was a good model. He was doing some good work. Just barking up the wrong tree.
Pauling's greatest contributions were in protein structure. He proposed the alpha helix secondary structural element, which is found everywhere in proteins. If folding@home makes any progress whatsoever, they are building on the work of Linus Pauling.
You could recreate some of the synergy (buzzzzzzzzz) of actors working together in real time if the performances were done simultaneously with an instant messenger using an audio stream or webcam. If done correctly, this could solve the problem of disjoint performances.
But it would create a few logistical problems. The performers would need to record their own work at their own computers. That would mean each of them using Audacity or whatever and knowing enough to get good sounds out of it. They would each need good quality sound cards and microphones. And pretty fast internet connections. That's a lot to ask.
Then there is the problem of mixing down. First the actors need to get their wav files to the sound engineer. Wav files are HUGE! You could cut down some of the size by using FLAC or something, but you're still talking about some pretty massive files. Another reason why the actors need fat pipes. Mixing down an entire book would be an enormous task. It takes hours to mix down a three minute song. Mixing an audio book is a bit simpler than a pop song, I imagine, but it would still take an incredibly long time to do.
I think this would be really cool, and I'd like to participate if someone gets a project going, but there are a few things that need to be worked out. The fact that I can write this post using Galeon on Linux is a major testament to the power of peer production efforts.
Re:Oh boy...
on
Goodbye, Dolly
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· Score: 4, Informative
Your telomere explanation was pretty good, except that telomeres aren't just any substance. They're DNA. The end of a chromosome has short repeating sequences of a few base pairs (ex: AATTAATT, etc.) which are not all replicated when a cell duplicates its genome and divides. This presumably acts as a molecular "clock" for the organism to keep track of its "age," but this is pretty controversial and unsubstantiated.
Click here to read more about telomeres. (Why don't more people link to Wiki?)
Even if this telomere function were well-established, it doesn't entirely explain the aging process. It seems that part of the process is due to oxidative damage caused by radical reactions in the mitochondria. But similar reactions happen in chloroplasts and some plants live for millenia!
The exciting thing about biology is that you reach the frontiers of knowledge in the field during your first year of introductory undergraduate coursework. In math you reach the frontiers maybe by your fourth year or in grad school. For physics and chemistry, somewhere in between. Biology is full of unexplained phenomena. If you want to make a great fundamental discovery in one of the hard sciences, then become a biologist. So much is unknown!
What the loons on the extreme of the extreme don't understand is that Microsoft would love to have an excuse to not attend. Microsoft is not coming because it wants to. It is coming because it is compelled to.
It's Microsoft's government customers who want them there to explain themselves in public when they say that Shared Source is better than Open Source, instead of just talking that way in private. And it is the government that wants them to do it in front of Open Source supporters, so that they can hear both sides at the same time.
This sounds like a good idea. It forces them to state their views rather clearly in a discussion forum. What better way is there to scrutinize the issue than to hear both sides from the horses' mouths? If their "shared source is as good as open source" shpeal is just a bunch of rubbish then their arguements won't hold water. I'd be very interested to hear a compelling argument in their favor. Evaluating counter-arguments is a great way to formulate and solidify your opinion.
Yeah, but you're still using company bandwidth. I don't write my Slashdotting hours on my timecard, but I'm still consuming company property for personal use. I have mixed feelings about the ethics of Slashdotting on work computers. I work in tech, so in a way I'm just keeping on top of recent developments. I also work for a university that I attend as a student, so really the bandwidth is mine to use as a student if not as an employee. But these are questions we should consider when we catch ourselves mindlessly reloading Slashdot ten times/hour.
I have mixed feelings abou this topic. I see their point about wanting to move on to other technologies, but I think they'll have a hard time engendering discontent among floppy disk users.
I use floppies all of the time. I also use writable CD's all of the time. The criteria that I use in determining which storage medium to use is 1) the size of the file(s) I want to transfer and 2) the permanence needed. If I want to copy a small file that I don't need to keep a backup copy of (like a text or image file), I use floppies. If I download an executable or media file, I record it to a CD.
Note that my selection criteria do not include consideration of the age of the technology. And why should it?
CDs are not good replacements for floppies. They are too big. They require a case. They are less hardy. I can see USB storage devices taking over floppies, though. They can be rather small and convenient.
Re:The best socialism...
on
Corporate KDE
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· Score: 5, Insightful
You bring up an interesting point. I'm glad MY government doesn't fund open source projects. Why should MY tax dollars fund development that is going to be used by people who don't pay taxes to the US?
This is just one more thing that the government has no business wasting my money on.
You're probably just a troll, but for all those readers who may be swayed by your amazingly bad attitude, let me explain why governemt funding of open source software is a very good thing.
We live in a global economy. If the U.S. takes an economic plunge, the world feels it. The same is true (although perhaps less strongly felt) for other countries, especially Europe and Japan. IANAE (I am not an economist), but doesn't it make sense that one government's expenses to benefit its own economy have an effect on the global economy? How much money has the U.S. governemt spent on technological research? Doesn't technology benefit the world? What about medical research? How much has government-funded research improved the quality of medical care around the world?
Now consider this: Would you rather the government 1) pay an international tax to some software developer in another country, or 2) develop their own software (which they can maintain total control of and don't have to pay an international company to use) while benefitting their own people by providing great free software and employing software designers?
There was a great interview with Andreas Pour of KDE where he talked about government funding of open source projects. The section is too long to quote here (I hate those super-long comments...) but here's a small chunk:
If you will, you can liken a desktop infrastructure as society's infrastructure, not so different from roads, schools, universities and emergency services. These types of infrastructure are inherently monopolistic since economic (development cost, transaction costs, return on investment, etc.) and "moral" factors (freedom, equality, etc.) are such that the use of taxes for creating and maintaining them is universal.
The most difficult challenge to obtaining substantial financial contributions for FS / OS projects is that the person making the contribution does not, in general, obtain a proportionately larger benefit. So currently financial contributions (including hiring developers or releasing proprietary code to the FS / OS communities) are made mainly when the cost to the bottom line is reasonable (e.g., a company may conclude that releasing a product which it was already distributing for free would reduce its development costs without impacting its revenues, and perhaps also increase market share for the proprietary enhancements). But it is far less likely that a company will on its own fund the development of a widely-used product with no particular benefit to it.
As with roads and schools, however, Governments need not concern themselves with questions of direct returns on investment. Improvements in the general welfare alone justify public expenditures. Rather than seek to reap profits for some relatively small set of owners, the purpose of Government spending is to improve the quality of life for all their citizens. Moreover, a large part of the Government's historic economic role was to spread costs among its citizens where the benefits would be shared largely by all and the economics of development made other forms of construction less practical. Finally, Governments of free nations dedicated to the principles of freedom, democracy and choice have traditionally allocated resources to important public projects that promote or preserve these essential human rights.
Surely any believer in free government must consider this a powerful argument in favor of governemt funding for open source. Would you rather the government pay to fix bugs in MS software? That's being done as well, so stop complaining or CowboyNeal will eat you.
Oh, yeah! There's a lot of redundancy in the genetic code.
If each nucleotide coded for an amino acid, then there would only be four possible amino acids used in proteins. If two nucleotides in sequence coded for one amino acid, then there would be 4^2=16 possible amino acids. In actuality there are 20 amino acids in common use in organisms, so a three-base code is used. These groups of three nucleotides are called codons.
3 nucleotides code for 1 amino acid, so there are 4^3=64 possible codons . There are only 20 amino acids in common usage, so obviously all 64 codons aren't needed. The extra codons are used for redundancy. Check out this page and notice how the amino acid serine (Ser [S]) is encoded by all codons beginning with TC. So any TC* codon will give you a serine in the translated protein. Some organisms prefer one codon over another, but in general you can the change the third codon without affecting the protein much.
So the answer to your question is yes - sort of. You can change a gene sequence without changing the protein sequence, but does that mean it's a completely different gene? Not really. It still does the same thing. It depends on how the patent is worded. If the patent gives control over the sequence, then you could be getting out on a loophole with some site-directed mutatagenesis. But if the patent gives control over the gene then it's a different story. Lots of greyspace there. I think the whole thing is just silly. Are they going to sue my pancreas for synthesizing insulin using their intellectual property?
Read this page for a good explanation of the whole process of translating nucleotide sequences into proteins.
"In the 57-page patent, 31 pages are filled with streams of As, Ts, Gs, and Cs, letters that represent the four amino acids that make up the DNA fragments that relate to the kinases." [emphasis added]
OUCH! Amino acids do not make up the genetic code! ATGC are nucleotides. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein. The amino acid sequence of proteins is encoded in the sequence of nucleotides in nucleic acid.
I realize that this post could be considered a nitpick, but to me it's not. It's like a software designer reading somewhere that the source code for an application was "written in the XML programming language." Doesn't that make your gut clamp up? Or what about, "Internet Explorer is my operating system?"
Or an alternate version for the PPI. Be sure to cut and paste different paragraphs from it:
Dear Planned Parenthood Initiative,
I am opposed to your use of form letters in your activists efforts. I think people should express their own opinions in their own words.
I think people should express their own opinions in their own words, therefore I am opposed to your use of form letters in your activists efforts.
Like, I think people should totally have opinions, and stuff, but like, they should be their own. You're totally not an individual if you can only express yourself through someone else's words.
To form letters, opposed I am. Opinions given by individual, should be.
If you want a laptop that runs Linux, chances are you know how to install the OS yourself and have used it elsewhere. I can see two distribution possibilities:
Include Linux drivers for all of the hardware and let the user install their own distro.
Choose a distro (any distro) and preinstall the most commonly used options for what the average consumer uses that machine for. Include the full distro on a CD-ROM with all options so that everyone can install whatever they want. Those who want another distro can put the CD with their stash of AOL disks.
I prefer the first option. It's cheaper and less wasteful. But some people want to buy a computer and just have it run at first bootup. Those people would prefer the second option. Perhaps Dell could let consumers choose between the two. Trying to cater to everyone in such a diverse crowd is just impossible. People who want Linux generally know how to install/uninstall options (especially if something like RH 8 is used). And it's not too hard to just do a clean install.
Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said the ruling was "a victory for consumers everywhere" because "copyright, whose aim it is to provide incentive for the creation and preservation of creative works, is in the public interest."
In other news, Adolf Hitler claimed that the Holocaust was a great victory for citizens everywhere because killing innocent Jews, for the purpose of cleaning the human gene pool, is in the public interest.
"An operating system does not mean just a kernel, barely enough to run other programs. In the 1970s, every operating system worthy of the name included command processors, assemblers, compilers, interpreters, debuggers, text editors, mailers, and much more. ITS had them, Multics had them, VMS had them, and Unix had them. The GNU operating system would include them too."
He seems to feel that an OS includes CUSPS. If not, we may have had a complete GNU OS back in '89 or so.
[tangent] What would have happened to the Linux kernel if GNU had been fully functional in the early 90's? Would it have become the illegitimate child of the GNU Project that it is today? Would RMS be so bipolar in his reaction to it? Just a thought to ponder...[/tangent]
If booted in non-TCPA mode, is it possible to use the TPM for other calculations? He mentioned the possibility of using it for SSH and other things. What about decoding audio/video formats?
A follow-up question: Is it possible to use the TPM for things other than security and TCPA-related calculations? If you boot in non-TCPA mode, is it possible to use the processor instead of just letting it sit there on the board doing nothing? I'm not a hardware guy, just a curious quasi-geek.
Q: You said this was designed to be cross-platform. Where's the mac version?
A: Designed to be cross-platform doesn't mean we offer a build on every platform, it just means the code itself works anywhere. We don't officially offer Phoenix for Mac, but some people have already begun experimenting with mac versions (see this page). We may consider officially releasing Phoenix for Mac in the future, but we want to focus on Windows and Linux for now.
I seriously dig the Phoenix project. Mozilla is way too big and way more than I would ever use. Phoenix is just right (and getting better with every release).
Unfortunately for Mozilla, Phoenix isn't mature enough yet to be Mac's choice of browser. Give it a year or so and we'll probably see a Mac version of Phoenix which will rival Safari in speed and size.
I think Tux Racer is about the coolest game I've ever played. My very favorite course is "Who Says Penguins Can't Fly?" although I have become somewhat partial to "Path of Daggers" lately. Anyone else out there love Tux Racer?
Original question: Has Microsoft ever, in its entire history, made a better product than the competition, sold it for a better price, and made a profit doing so? I'm not trolling; I'm genuinely curious to know if this has ever happened.
Your answer: MS Office. Since Win3.11 days, MS Office has generally been easier to use than other similar apps. It's usually been fairly expensive too. But it has a *massive* market share, and the revenue from the Office suite is basically subsidising everything else in MS - operating systems make a small profit, Office makes an enormous profit, and everything else MS makes is actually making significant losses. And Office had to establish this position over the dead bodies of many other well-entrenched packages.
What you say is true, but it doesn't answer the question. Some of the well-entrenched packages (ie: WordPerfect) were superior to Word in the opinion of end users. WP had full functionality by about version 5. The later releases were mainly GUI enhancements (not entirely, but in general). I used to work in IT for the LDS Church, which used WP back in the mid 90's. While I worked there WP was phased out in favor of Word. Many of our users were irate about this, especially when Word would put an indent in the same place no matter what you did (or some similar stupid behavior). In WP you could just reveal the codes and easily see the problem. Not in Word. You could make an argument that Word is superior to WP, but it wouldn't fly so well with a lot of people.
Before you can proceed in the program guide setup you have to scroll through the 44 pages of the Terms of Service and select agree. Once again, this is done fairly quickly using the remote just by holding the down-arrow and then hitting ok. (Emphasis added)
Reading 44 pages is hardly a quick task, no matter if you have a remote control, scrolling mouse, or whatever. Unless it reads like 44 pages from a Dr. Seuss book. Then I wouldn't mind so much.
You may not reverse engineer on a train, you may not reverse engineer in the rain. You may not share files with a fox, you may not let files leave this box...
That reminds me of when I first got into web design. It was during the winter months in a large family room in the basement at my parents' house. My computer desk was about the only thing in the room. The computer I had at the time didn't put out much heat, and anyway it was no match for the drafty window right above the desk. I guess I could have warmed up my fingers by putting them on the CPU or something, but it was easier to just blow on them. I just about froze my fingers off that winter.
I read through the original discussion. It was really interesting, especially posts like this one and its replies. The parody site is pretty convincing.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing that keeps living systems living is that they have mechanisms in place to repair themselves. From what the article said, no self-regenerating systems are in place in the fuel cell. They're counting on the original build to last. Your horse lives so many years and walks so many miles because it can regenerate damaged muscles. Unless the fuel cell were equipped with the enzyme's gene and the machinery to translate the information in the gene into newly synthesized enzyme, this fuel cell will not last as long as your horse.
That raises an interesting question. We're a long way off from having a fuel cell that could synthesize new enzyme, but supposing one were invented should it be patentable? The best way to build one would be to start with a living organism and tweak it. But if it were built from scratch would it be patentable? (I realize that living organisms are patentable, thanks to the ineptitude of the USPTO, but all patented organisms are tweaked versions of natural organisms. This would be something different.)
And a follow-up question: If posting is allowed during the window, who will be moderating during that time? If only trolls subscribe so that they can get FP, then only trolls will be moderating. The rest of us will see a new story 20 min later with half a dozen +5 comments that are all FP flaming, goatse, Natalie Portman, or SOVIET RUSSIA (with an occasional death of Steven King).
This is an unlikely scenario, I admit, but a possibility. I suppose CmdrTaco would just null the 'feature' if it turned out that way. I think it's more likely that subscribers will be mostly responsible folks who post decent comments. There's not really a basis for supposition that the population of subscribers will be skewed one way or the other.
(Read more about Slashdot trolling phenomena here. It's a good laugh and explains a few quirks about this site that may have perturbed you if you're new around here. Also click the link in my .sig if you want free music.)
And to nitpick even further, Watson and Crick didn't discover the structure. They formulated a model for the structure which was the first to accurately describe all of the scientific observations made up to that time. X-ray crystallography couldn't get high enough resolution to unambiguously prove the model for another few decades. At the time they proposed the model, there was not sufficient data to be absolutely certain about its accuracy. In other words, they did some masterful guesswork. The remarkable thing about W&C's original model was how accurate it was.
Dr. Crick later postulated the central dogma of molecular biology, which states that DNA is replicated for inheritance, is transcribed to RNA, and that RNA is translated to protein. The central dogma is now well-established, but was certainly not when Crick proposed it. The role of RNA in protein synthesis was rather foggy at the time. Crick was a remarkable scientist who certainly deserved the Nobel Prize. The field of molecular biology has benefitted immeasureably from his contributions.
The same goes for Linus Pauling. W&C beat him to the DNA structure, but he made some great contributions to the field nonetheless. Pauling's DNA structure was based upon the protonated form of DNA - where the phosphodiester backbone is electrically neutral. There is actually a -1 charge on phosphates in DNA, which is one of the reasons why the backbone wraps around the outside of the molecule. In his triple helix model the backbone was on the inside of the molecule, with the bases pointing out. This would made sense if the phophates were neutral, because they wouldn't repel each other. Having the bases on the outside also made sense because if the information was contained in the bases, then they ought to be accessible. He also had the wrong tautomeric forms of the bases, so the base pairing with hydrogen bonds wouldn't work properly. His was a good model. He was doing some good work. Just barking up the wrong tree.
Pauling's greatest contributions were in protein structure. He proposed the alpha helix secondary structural element, which is found everywhere in proteins. If folding@home makes any progress whatsoever, they are building on the work of Linus Pauling.
end nitpick;You could recreate some of the synergy (buzzzzzzzzz) of actors working together in real time if the performances were done simultaneously with an instant messenger using an audio stream or webcam. If done correctly, this could solve the problem of disjoint performances.
But it would create a few logistical problems. The performers would need to record their own work at their own computers. That would mean each of them using Audacity or whatever and knowing enough to get good sounds out of it. They would each need good quality sound cards and microphones. And pretty fast internet connections. That's a lot to ask.
Then there is the problem of mixing down. First the actors need to get their wav files to the sound engineer. Wav files are HUGE! You could cut down some of the size by using FLAC or something, but you're still talking about some pretty massive files. Another reason why the actors need fat pipes. Mixing down an entire book would be an enormous task. It takes hours to mix down a three minute song. Mixing an audio book is a bit simpler than a pop song, I imagine, but it would still take an incredibly long time to do.
I think this would be really cool, and I'd like to participate if someone gets a project going, but there are a few things that need to be worked out. The fact that I can write this post using Galeon on Linux is a major testament to the power of peer production efforts.
Your telomere explanation was pretty good, except that telomeres aren't just any substance. They're DNA. The end of a chromosome has short repeating sequences of a few base pairs (ex: AATTAATT, etc.) which are not all replicated when a cell duplicates its genome and divides. This presumably acts as a molecular "clock" for the organism to keep track of its "age," but this is pretty controversial and unsubstantiated.
Click here to read more about telomeres. (Why don't more people link to Wiki?)
Even if this telomere function were well-established, it doesn't entirely explain the aging process. It seems that part of the process is due to oxidative damage caused by radical reactions in the mitochondria. But similar reactions happen in chloroplasts and some plants live for millenia!The exciting thing about biology is that you reach the frontiers of knowledge in the field during your first year of introductory undergraduate coursework. In math you reach the frontiers maybe by your fourth year or in grad school. For physics and chemistry, somewhere in between. Biology is full of unexplained phenomena. If you want to make a great fundamental discovery in one of the hard sciences, then become a biologist. So much is unknown!
From the article:
What the loons on the extreme of the extreme don't understand is that Microsoft would love to have an excuse to not attend. Microsoft is not coming because it wants to. It is coming because it is compelled to.
It's Microsoft's government customers who want them there to explain themselves in public when they say that Shared Source is better than Open Source, instead of just talking that way in private. And it is the government that wants them to do it in front of Open Source supporters, so that they can hear both sides at the same time.
This sounds like a good idea. It forces them to state their views rather clearly in a discussion forum. What better way is there to scrutinize the issue than to hear both sides from the horses' mouths? If their "shared source is as good as open source" shpeal is just a bunch of rubbish then their arguements won't hold water. I'd be very interested to hear a compelling argument in their favor. Evaluating counter-arguments is a great way to formulate and solidify your opinion.
Yeah, but you're still using company bandwidth. I don't write my Slashdotting hours on my timecard, but I'm still consuming company property for personal use. I have mixed feelings about the ethics of Slashdotting on work computers. I work in tech, so in a way I'm just keeping on top of recent developments. I also work for a university that I attend as a student, so really the bandwidth is mine to use as a student if not as an employee. But these are questions we should consider when we catch ourselves mindlessly reloading Slashdot ten times/hour.
I have mixed feelings abou this topic. I see their point about wanting to move on to other technologies, but I think they'll have a hard time engendering discontent among floppy disk users.
I use floppies all of the time. I also use writable CD's all of the time. The criteria that I use in determining which storage medium to use is 1) the size of the file(s) I want to transfer and 2) the permanence needed. If I want to copy a small file that I don't need to keep a backup copy of (like a text or image file), I use floppies. If I download an executable or media file, I record it to a CD.
Note that my selection criteria do not include consideration of the age of the technology. And why should it?
CDs are not good replacements for floppies. They are too big. They require a case. They are less hardy. I can see USB storage devices taking over floppies, though. They can be rather small and convenient.
You bring up an interesting point. I'm glad MY government doesn't fund open source projects. Why should MY tax dollars fund development that is going to be used by people who don't pay taxes to the US?
This is just one more thing that the government has no business wasting my money on.
You're probably just a troll, but for all those readers who may be swayed by your amazingly bad attitude, let me explain why governemt funding of open source software is a very good thing.
We live in a global economy. If the U.S. takes an economic plunge, the world feels it. The same is true (although perhaps less strongly felt) for other countries, especially Europe and Japan. IANAE (I am not an economist), but doesn't it make sense that one government's expenses to benefit its own economy have an effect on the global economy? How much money has the U.S. governemt spent on technological research? Doesn't technology benefit the world? What about medical research? How much has government-funded research improved the quality of medical care around the world?
Now consider this: Would you rather the government 1) pay an international tax to some software developer in another country, or 2) develop their own software (which they can maintain total control of and don't have to pay an international company to use) while benefitting their own people by providing great free software and employing software designers?
There was a great interview with Andreas Pour of KDE where he talked about government funding of open source projects. The section is too long to quote here (I hate those super-long comments...) but here's a small chunk:
If you will, you can liken a desktop infrastructure as society's infrastructure, not so different from roads, schools, universities and emergency services. These types of infrastructure are inherently monopolistic since economic (development cost, transaction costs, return on investment, etc.) and "moral" factors (freedom, equality, etc.) are such that the use of taxes for creating and maintaining them is universal.
The most difficult challenge to obtaining substantial financial contributions for FS / OS projects is that the person making the contribution does not, in general, obtain a proportionately larger benefit. So currently financial contributions (including hiring developers or releasing proprietary code to the FS / OS communities) are made mainly when the cost to the bottom line is reasonable (e.g., a company may conclude that releasing a product which it was already distributing for free would reduce its development costs without impacting its revenues, and perhaps also increase market share for the proprietary enhancements). But it is far less likely that a company will on its own fund the development of a widely-used product with no particular benefit to it.
As with roads and schools, however, Governments need not concern themselves with questions of direct returns on investment. Improvements in the general welfare alone justify public expenditures. Rather than seek to reap profits for some relatively small set of owners, the purpose of Government spending is to improve the quality of life for all their citizens. Moreover, a large part of the Government's historic economic role was to spread costs among its citizens where the benefits would be shared largely by all and the economics of development made other forms of construction less practical. Finally, Governments of free nations dedicated to the principles of freedom, democracy and choice have traditionally allocated resources to important public projects that promote or preserve these essential human rights.
Surely any believer in free government must consider this a powerful argument in favor of governemt funding for open source. Would you rather the government pay to fix bugs in MS software? That's being done as well, so stop complaining or CowboyNeal will eat you.
Oh, yeah! There's a lot of redundancy in the genetic code.
If each nucleotide coded for an amino acid, then there would only be four possible amino acids used in proteins. If two nucleotides in sequence coded for one amino acid, then there would be 4^2=16 possible amino acids. In actuality there are 20 amino acids in common use in organisms, so a three-base code is used. These groups of three nucleotides are called codons.
3 nucleotides code for 1 amino acid, so there are 4^3=64 possible codons . There are only 20 amino acids in common usage, so obviously all 64 codons aren't needed. The extra codons are used for redundancy. Check out this page and notice how the amino acid serine (Ser [S]) is encoded by all codons beginning with TC. So any TC* codon will give you a serine in the translated protein. Some organisms prefer one codon over another, but in general you can the change the third codon without affecting the protein much.
So the answer to your question is yes - sort of. You can change a gene sequence without changing the protein sequence, but does that mean it's a completely different gene? Not really. It still does the same thing. It depends on how the patent is worded. If the patent gives control over the sequence, then you could be getting out on a loophole with some site-directed mutatagenesis. But if the patent gives control over the gene then it's a different story. Lots of greyspace there. I think the whole thing is just silly. Are they going to sue my pancreas for synthesizing insulin using their intellectual property?
Read this page for a good explanation of the whole process of translating nucleotide sequences into proteins.
From the Article:
"In the 57-page patent, 31 pages are filled with streams of As, Ts, Gs, and Cs, letters that represent the four amino acids that make up the DNA fragments that relate to the kinases." [emphasis added]
OUCH! Amino acids do not make up the genetic code! ATGC are nucleotides . Amino acids are the building blocks of protein. The amino acid sequence of proteins is encoded in the sequence of nucleotides in nucleic acid.
I realize that this post could be considered a nitpick, but to me it's not. It's like a software designer reading somewhere that the source code for an application was "written in the XML programming language." Doesn't that make your gut clamp up? Or what about, "Internet Explorer is my operating system?"
Or an alternate version for the PPI. Be sure to cut and paste different paragraphs from it:
Dear Planned Parenthood Initiative,
I am opposed to your use of form letters in your activists efforts. I think people should express their own opinions in their own words.
I think people should express their own opinions in their own words, therefore I am opposed to your use of form letters in your activists efforts.
Like, I think people should totally have opinions, and stuff, but like, they should be their own. You're totally not an individual if you can only express yourself through someone else's words.
To form letters, opposed I am. Opinions given by individual, should be.
Sincerely,
(insert your name here)
Everyone copy and paste this letter and send it to the Republican National Committee
:Dear Republican National Committee,
I am opposed to your use of form letters in your activists efforts. I think people should express their own opinions in their own words.
Sincerely,
(insert your name here)
If you want a laptop that runs Linux, chances are you know how to install the OS yourself and have used it elsewhere. I can see two distribution possibilities:
- Include Linux drivers for all of the hardware and let the user install their own distro.
- Choose a distro (any distro) and preinstall the most commonly used options for what the average consumer uses that machine for. Include the full distro on a CD-ROM with all options so that everyone can install whatever they want. Those who want another distro can put the CD with their stash of AOL disks.
I prefer the first option. It's cheaper and less wasteful. But some people want to buy a computer and just have it run at first bootup. Those people would prefer the second option. Perhaps Dell could let consumers choose between the two. Trying to cater to everyone in such a diverse crowd is just impossible. People who want Linux generally know how to install/uninstall options (especially if something like RH 8 is used). And it's not too hard to just do a clean install.Wow. Thanks for pointing that out. I've never seen that one before. I'll have to be more careful in the future. :)
Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said the ruling was "a victory for consumers everywhere" because "copyright, whose aim it is to provide incentive for the creation and preservation of creative works, is in the public interest."
In other news, Adolf Hitler claimed that the Holocaust was a great victory for citizens everywhere because killing innocent Jews, for the purpose of cleaning the human gene pool, is in the public interest.
Quote from RMS in The GNU Project:
"An operating system does not mean just a kernel, barely enough to run other programs. In the 1970s, every operating system worthy of the name included command processors, assemblers, compilers, interpreters, debuggers, text editors, mailers, and much more. ITS had them, Multics had them, VMS had them, and Unix had them. The GNU operating system would include them too."
He seems to feel that an OS includes CUSPS. If not, we may have had a complete GNU OS back in '89 or so.
[tangent] What would have happened to the Linux kernel if GNU had been fully functional in the early 90's? Would it have become the illegitimate child of the GNU Project that it is today? Would RMS be so bipolar in his reaction to it? Just a thought to ponder...[/tangent]
If booted in non-TCPA mode, is it possible to use the TPM for other calculations? He mentioned the possibility of using it for SSH and other things. What about decoding audio/video formats?
A follow-up question: Is it possible to use the TPM for things other than security and TCPA-related calculations? If you boot in non-TCPA mode, is it possible to use the processor instead of just letting it sit there on the board doing nothing? I'm not a hardware guy, just a curious quasi-geek.
Q: You said this was designed to be cross-platform. Where's the mac version?
A: Designed to be cross-platform doesn't mean we offer a build on every platform, it just means the code itself works anywhere. We don't officially offer Phoenix for Mac, but some people have already begun experimenting with mac versions (see this page). We may consider officially releasing Phoenix for Mac in the future, but we want to focus on Windows and Linux for now.
I seriously dig the Phoenix project. Mozilla is way too big and way more than I would ever use. Phoenix is just right (and getting better with every release).
Unfortunately for Mozilla, Phoenix isn't mature enough yet to be Mac's choice of browser. Give it a year or so and we'll probably see a Mac version of Phoenix which will rival Safari in speed and size.
I think Tux Racer is about the coolest game I've ever played. My very favorite course is "Who Says Penguins Can't Fly?" although I have become somewhat partial to "Path of Daggers" lately. Anyone else out there love Tux Racer?
Original question: Has Microsoft ever, in its entire history, made a better product than the competition, sold it for a better price, and made a profit doing so? I'm not trolling; I'm genuinely curious to know if this has ever happened.
Your answer: MS Office. Since Win3.11 days, MS Office has generally been easier to use than other similar apps. It's usually been fairly expensive too. But it has a *massive* market share, and the revenue from the Office suite is basically subsidising everything else in MS - operating systems make a small profit, Office makes an enormous profit, and everything else MS makes is actually making significant losses. And Office had to establish this position over the dead bodies of many other well-entrenched packages.
What you say is true, but it doesn't answer the question. Some of the well-entrenched packages (ie: WordPerfect) were superior to Word in the opinion of end users. WP had full functionality by about version 5. The later releases were mainly GUI enhancements (not entirely, but in general). I used to work in IT for the LDS Church, which used WP back in the mid 90's. While I worked there WP was phased out in favor of Word. Many of our users were irate about this, especially when Word would put an indent in the same place no matter what you did (or some similar stupid behavior). In WP you could just reveal the codes and easily see the problem. Not in Word. You could make an argument that Word is superior to WP, but it wouldn't fly so well with a lot of people.
Not a flame, just a nitpick.
From the article:
Before you can proceed in the program guide setup you have to scroll through the 44 pages of the Terms of Service and select agree. Once again, this is done fairly quickly using the remote just by holding the down-arrow and then hitting ok. (Emphasis added)
Reading 44 pages is hardly a quick task, no matter if you have a remote control, scrolling mouse, or whatever. Unless it reads like 44 pages from a Dr. Seuss book. Then I wouldn't mind so much.
You may not reverse engineer on a train, you may not reverse engineer in the rain. You may not share files with a fox, you may not let files leave this box...
That reminds me of when I first got into web design. It was during the winter months in a large family room in the basement at my parents' house. My computer desk was about the only thing in the room. The computer I had at the time didn't put out much heat, and anyway it was no match for the drafty window right above the desk. I guess I could have warmed up my fingers by putting them on the CPU or something, but it was easier to just blow on them. I just about froze my fingers off that winter.
I read through the original discussion. It was really interesting, especially posts like this one and its replies. The parody site is pretty convincing.