I don't think this is a +5 Funny comment, more like an allegorical +5 Insightful one over the present state of linux. Linux zealots rave on and on about how completely in control you are with the linux operating system, but put it in the hands of ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD and it will not do the things they want it to do.
Seriously. Make it user-friendly and it will sell. Rave on about 'how cool it is' and it will not.
Note to zealots: highlight my point and prove your total lack of irony by replying to this post telling me 'I'm a moron because I can't get gentoo to install' or 'I installed Mandrake, therefore you suck and therefore linux is cool and user friendly'. Remember, windows is still mainstream, linux is not and the plural of 'analogy' is not 'data'.
I wrote 16 well-worded letters of protest to a cross-section of MEPs. The general results are as follows:
About 10 wrote back, even if I wasn't in their region. UKIP is FIRMLY AGAINST LIB DEM is FIRMLY AGAINST GREENS are FIRMLY AGAINST TORIES are MAINLY AGAINST NEW LABOUR (aka The Red Peril) are TENTATIVELY FOR
So...what the fuck is going on? The majority of people I wrote to are against this legislation, and even the Tories (Republican types for the US readers) don't like the sound of big US businesses being able to enforce their vast backlog of software patents over here.
But the most informative answers I got back were from the UKIP members. They basically said 'We're all against it, but the views of the general public don't matter to the EU commission anyway, so we're all stuffed.'
Look at the fiasco over the consitution. Noone wants it except the mandarins at the top. Same for software patents.
Keep writing those letters, but focus on your New Labour MEP - we've already won over the others.
You do know that it was only planned to be a 5-season story arc from the beginning, and they had confirmed funding for the 5th season as they were wrapping up the 4th, right?
And then the rug was completely pulled from under them.
The show was going to end naturally. Why they didn't stick to their original promise of money for that last season, I don't know.
I think you'll find Raul Julia died of a stroke the year that Street Fighter was released. So unless you're saying there's a link between making shitty movies and developing cancer leading to a stroke...you've got the wrong end of the stick.
Am I the only one suspicious of the fact thet their first 'posted challenge' is also something that has commercial value, especially in the realm of DRM?
Market cap of 22 billion fell to 12 billion? Oh boo-fucking-hoo. A multimillion dollar company saw its value halve to make it - shock, horror - a multibillion dollar company.
It's the story of the generous billionaire. If a billionaire gives away half his value, he's still ridiculously rich beyond most people's dreams. He doesn't become poor.
If a poor man gives away half his value, he becomes even poorer.
Get a sense of value and proportionality before you go crying about the losses of ultra-rich corporations.
Why? Is life really that bad? To be really cruel, everyone would have to be suffering all the time. And believe me, even those of us who are worst off have slight reprieves along the way.
"In hundreds or thousands of years from now, we may have advanced our technology so we can create creatures from DNA sequence information," Dr Eddy Rubin, director of the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California, told the BBC News website.
This is remarkably short-sighted for someone in his position. I'd say a few decades at most, given our current rate of advancement in understanding genetics. IIRC the human genome was sequenced in less than half the time originally estimated.
Oops...some other really tough problems they'll also have to solve along the way:
1 - Synthesising DNA chains more than 1,000bp long in one go...not easy. http:///http://www.dna.biosource.com/> Even long-established companies can't put together more than a few dozen basepairs in a custom chain.
2 - Eukaryotic proteins require chaperonins to assist folding. Which chaperonin goes where and when to help which part of folding? Noone really knows. Good luck solving that one. http://www.chaperone.sote.hu/Examples.html
3 - Glycosylation and post-translational modification. That's right, you've now got to solve the species specific addition of sugars and other bits and pieces to your newly synthesised protein. We can almost do it in hamsters...nice try in humans. I'll give you 10 years solid research at the least. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8063726&dopt=Abstract - just one of many original research papers on this huge topic.
So this ain't gonna happen any time soon. Photoshop for proteins? Sure, just like etch-a-sketch for car manufacturing.
Hate to say it, but this sounds like a pipedream. They want to 'take the proteins and tweak them' an dthen have a computer program spit out the DNA required to make that protein.
Well whoop-de-do. I'd like to make a computer that can generate wormholes. Doesn't mean it's going to happen.
Firstly, protein modelling is notoriously complex. Remember folding@home? http://folding.stanford.edu/ That's right - hundreds of thousands of computers cracking the problem of 12 amino acid chains. That's an oligopeptide, sort of like a 'protein lite'. Real proteins are hundreds to thousands of amino acids long.
IBM's Blue Gene supercomputers were even specifically designed with protein folding simulations in mind - read http://www.research.ibm.com/bluegene/.
So this company seems to be doing the following
1 Come up with nifty, but blindingly obvious, idea 2 Crack the age-old problem of accurately simulating protein folding 3 Profit!!!
It's just that step one is literally so obvious that you could ask a kid. And step 2 is so notoriously complex that I don't expect this company to amount to anything more than a plughole for research grants.
Your reply is rather hot-headed. If you know how the other systems 'don't work' and therefore dismiss them, are you de facto defending the US system, which by definition is indefensible because it fails to cover the entire population?
How am I wrong and you right?
Oh, I'm sorry...attack the messenger and not the message. Go on, say I'm an arrogant idiot. Doesn't change the facts of the argument.
Socialised healthcare (EU and Canada) = Universal healthcare Capitalist healthcare (USA, most developing nations) = non-universal healthcare
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What an intelligent and insightful comment. Having a strong opinion on one subject should clearly be a bar to voting.
What an enlightened democracy you would run. Got an opinion? Willing to stand by your opinion through voting? Right - no vote for you.
I recently contacted 9 local MEPs. The general spread of replies was as follows.
UKIP, Lib Dem AGAINST software patents
Conservatives TENTATIVELY AGAINST
Labour ALMOST CERTAINLY FOR
So concentrate on those lying scum-sucking Labour MEPs in your local district.
-Nano.
Peter F. Hamilton - best UK newcomer. More focus on the 'Sci'. Read him, you'd enjoy it.
It's because the vast majority of people are fucking morons. Fucking morons just so happen to take offence when someone points this fact out to them.
Hence inner-city scum (chavs or neds) in the UK using 'innit' and 'bruvva' a lot.
-Nano.
I don't think this is a +5 Funny comment, more like an allegorical +5 Insightful one over the present state of linux. Linux zealots rave on and on about how completely in control you are with the linux operating system, but put it in the hands of ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD and it will not do the things they want it to do.
Seriously. Make it user-friendly and it will sell. Rave on about 'how cool it is' and it will not.
Note to zealots: highlight my point and prove your total lack of irony by replying to this post telling me 'I'm a moron because I can't get gentoo to install' or 'I installed Mandrake, therefore you suck and therefore linux is cool and user friendly'. Remember, windows is still mainstream, linux is not and the plural of 'analogy' is not 'data'.
An excellent bit of background reading for our US comrades. Should be +5, but sadly got no mod points.
-Nano.
I wrote 16 well-worded letters of protest to a cross-section of MEPs. The general results are as follows:
About 10 wrote back, even if I wasn't in their region.
UKIP is FIRMLY AGAINST
LIB DEM is FIRMLY AGAINST
GREENS are FIRMLY AGAINST
TORIES are MAINLY AGAINST
NEW LABOUR (aka The Red Peril) are TENTATIVELY FOR
So...what the fuck is going on? The majority of people I wrote to are against this legislation, and even the Tories (Republican types for the US readers) don't like the sound of big US businesses being able to enforce their vast backlog of software patents over here.
But the most informative answers I got back were from the UKIP members. They basically said 'We're all against it, but the views of the general public don't matter to the EU commission anyway, so we're all stuffed.'
Look at the fiasco over the consitution. Noone wants it except the mandarins at the top. Same for software patents.
Keep writing those letters, but focus on your New Labour MEP - we've already won over the others.
-Nano.
And will be fatter, more prone to diabetes and joint disorders and eat junk food.
Get them outside and keep them there as long as possible (figuratively). They'll come back in at a later age anyway.
-Nano.
Darth Ciwincispider
Darth Potent
Darth Ebriated
You do know that it was only planned to be a 5-season story arc from the beginning, and they had confirmed funding for the 5th season as they were wrapping up the 4th, right?
And then the rug was completely pulled from under them.
The show was going to end naturally. Why they didn't stick to their original promise of money for that last season, I don't know.
I think you'll find Raul Julia died of a stroke the year that Street Fighter was released. So unless you're saying there's a link between making shitty movies and developing cancer leading to a stroke...you've got the wrong end of the stick.
-Nano.
Good point...
-Nano.
Am I the only one suspicious of the fact thet their first 'posted challenge' is also something that has commercial value, especially in the realm of DRM?
-Nano.
In a similar vein, why doesn't the national lottery fund a light rail public transport system for Bristol? That might actually be useful...
-Nano.
Are you on drugs? Can't you tell the guy you replied to is using a ridiculous analogy to outline the fallacies of his parent post?
It's called humour/sarcasm. Get it?
Market cap of 22 billion fell to 12 billion? Oh boo-fucking-hoo. A multimillion dollar company saw its value halve to make it - shock, horror - a multibillion dollar company.
It's the story of the generous billionaire. If a billionaire gives away half his value, he's still ridiculously rich beyond most people's dreams. He doesn't become poor.
If a poor man gives away half his value, he becomes even poorer.
Get a sense of value and proportionality before you go crying about the losses of ultra-rich corporations.
-Nano.
Alice: Yeah...make sure we stick 'combat terrorism' in there somewhere. That'll make sure we get the cash.
Bob: Oooh ooh...and maybe the frontpage on some reputable internet discussion board *cough*.
-Nano.
Frank? Is that you?
-Nano.
She explains "dinosaurs produced and shelled their eggs much more like modern birds than like modern crocodiles."
Shouldn't that be:
Modern birds, far more so than crocodiles, produce and shell their eggs like dinosaurs.
-Nano.
Why? Is life really that bad? To be really cruel, everyone would have to be suffering all the time. And believe me, even those of us who are worst off have slight reprieves along the way.
-Nano.
FTFA:
"In hundreds or thousands of years from now, we may have advanced our technology so we can create creatures from DNA sequence information," Dr Eddy Rubin, director of the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California, told the BBC News website.
This is remarkably short-sighted for someone in his position. I'd say a few decades at most, given our current rate of advancement in understanding genetics. IIRC the human genome was sequenced in less than half the time originally estimated.
-Nano.
Oops...some other really tough problems they'll also have to solve along the way:
= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8063726&dopt=Abstract - just one of many original research papers on this huge topic.
1 - Synthesising DNA chains more than 1,000bp long in one go...not easy. http:///http://www.dna.biosource.com/> Even long-established companies can't put together more than a few dozen basepairs in a custom chain.
2 - Eukaryotic proteins require chaperonins to assist folding. Which chaperonin goes where and when to help which part of folding? Noone really knows. Good luck solving that one. http://www.chaperone.sote.hu/Examples.html
3 - Glycosylation and post-translational modification. That's right, you've now got to solve the species specific addition of sugars and other bits and pieces to your newly synthesised protein. We can almost do it in hamsters...nice try in humans. I'll give you 10 years solid research at the least. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd
So this ain't gonna happen any time soon. Photoshop for proteins? Sure, just like etch-a-sketch for car manufacturing.
-Nano.
Hate to say it, but this sounds like a pipedream. They want to 'take the proteins and tweak them' an dthen have a computer program spit out the DNA required to make that protein.
Well whoop-de-do. I'd like to make a computer that can generate wormholes. Doesn't mean it's going to happen.
Firstly, protein modelling is notoriously complex. Remember folding@home? http://folding.stanford.edu/
That's right - hundreds of thousands of computers cracking the problem of 12 amino acid chains. That's an oligopeptide, sort of like a 'protein lite'. Real proteins are hundreds to thousands of amino acids long.
IBM's Blue Gene supercomputers were even specifically designed with protein folding simulations in mind - read http://www.research.ibm.com/bluegene/.
So this company seems to be doing the following
1 Come up with nifty, but blindingly obvious, idea
2 Crack the age-old problem of accurately simulating protein folding
3 Profit!!!
It's just that step one is literally so obvious that you could ask a kid. And step 2 is so notoriously complex that I don't expect this company to amount to anything more than a plughole for research grants.
-Nano.
Why not US$69.00 for each registration?
-Nano.
Your reply is rather hot-headed. If you know how the other systems 'don't work' and therefore dismiss them, are you de facto defending the US system, which by definition is indefensible because it fails to cover the entire population?
How am I wrong and you right?
Oh, I'm sorry...attack the messenger and not the message. Go on, say I'm an arrogant idiot. Doesn't change the facts of the argument.
Socialised healthcare (EU and Canada) = Universal healthcare
Capitalist healthcare (USA, most developing nations) = non-universal healthcare
Again, how am I wrong and you right?
-Nano.