This is what GM is all about - finding novel uses for plants, not screwing around with stuff we eat.
There's a lot of hostility to GM foods (outside the US, anyway). I think Monsanto and the other users of GM techniques would have done a lot better to develop this plastics process first (ie producing something interesting and actively green since it cuts consumption of finite resources) than to wind up public opinion by pushing something which only benefits the producers.
This reminds of the European v American billion argument: the European billion just got swamped and hardly gets used any more.
For the uninitiated, a European billion is a million million (10^12), a European trillion is 10^18, and so on. The mere fact that I don't have to explain the US system shows how pervasive it is.
This is one reason why the SI units and prefixes are important - they are well-defined, where as words like 'billion' can mean anything. I think I would probably agree with what this group is trying to do if wasn't so stupidly late.
Personally, I'd be quite happy with billions, pints and gallons if they actually meant the same thing everywhere, but they don't. --
Using Linux after the years of using and developing solely for Windows was the most fun I've had out of playing with a computer since I stopped using my Archimedes, and before that my 8 bit machines.
Actually having tools that work and which do what you tell them to just makes so much difference! --
Sinclair? A mere toy! Commodore? An overrated US import!
No, if you wanted true elegance and clean design you were running an Acorn. I still have my old Acorn Atom, with its 1MHz 6502 and 12Kb of RAM... In fact, with the floating point and toolkit ROMs I bought for it, that machine had more ROM than RAM!
Granted that the black and white graphics weren't that cracking (256x192 pixels), but you got a built-in mnemonic assembler and one of the most impenetrably elegant BASIC dialects on the planet (anybody else remember the indirection operators ? and !? Remember the neat way you could add an offset to a base address? A?X = 0;... hmmm). No wonder I'm fond of Perl.
Indeed - I wanted a four letter domain, and the.com version had gone to a domain name 'broker'. I bought.org instead, which I am a little happier with in truth since I'm not a company (yet, anyway). --
Writing a resume (or CV, if you prefer. I do anyway) has always been like playing buzzword bingo in reverse - guess what TLAs and ETLAs will light the lights on the bingo card!
The sad fact is that this will not change - no matter how skilled the person is who is receiving CVs, if they have a stack a yard high to look at they will take shortcuts to filter them. Agencies are just a way for potential employers to push the filtering out to people who don't have better things to do (such as programming, for instance).
Fortunately there are decent agencies out there, and good employers will develop sound relationships with them to ensure that people who really do fit the job description will get through.
I would say that if that employer has hired an agency with such a mindless attitude to CV submissions, they don't care enough about recruitment to be worth working for. Alternatively, you might want to contact the company concerned to tell them what their representatives are doing, and to say that this will put off candidates they will want to speak to.
I suppose the implications of Neuromancer/Matrix-style neural interfaces are almost too obvious to mention, but it goes to show that jacking in to the network is closer than expected.
What I would like to know is whether the rats' normal cognitive functions were affected? That is, apart from the obvious hint of having a huge great wire sticking out of their heads, were the rats unaware of the probes and behaving in a pretty much normal way? I wouldn't fancy a neural interface if I'm not me after its installation.
Apart from this small detail, I can see the following barriers to using this technology for general control of computers:
invasiveness - is this kind of technique ever likely to be implementable without massively invasive surgery? Keyhole techniques don't really apply when you have to drill a hole to get in.
training - in these experiments, great care was taken to learn what neural activity indicated thirst in the subjects. Is there any way this individual training could be genericised?
When news of these mobile phone studies broke in the UK a couple of weeks ago, news organisations (both the BBC and ITN certainly) were drawing comparisons between cellphones and GM crops:
both are relatively new industries
both have had recent scientific studies which cast them in a bad light (various reports have cast doubt on the safety of GM crops which is why they're not being accepted in Europe)
A rather stupid bit of journalism, though - cellphones are sp much more established, and the putative risks so much more avoidable, that the comparison just doesn't bear out.
Also, the classic "unfavourable studies don't count" industry is tobacco: despite millions of deaths being directly attributable to this product, the tobacco industry isn't going away any time soon.
Since any damage is being caused by proximity of aerials to the head, this could all be a gimmick by the cellphone companies to sell more hands free kit. My employer has already committed to giving all corporate cell phone users hands free sets, so it seems to be working. --
It makes some sense - Java as a language has some features which make it a lot safer to program in than C/C++, especially for programmers who habitually forget to free memory: Java is harder to abuse.
The thing is, there are a lot of people out there coding who should not be let loose with C++ - they're not interested enough in coding to learn how to do it properly. On projects where VB is inadequate, WinJava would be a safer choice.
This isn't intended to defend MS' balkanisation of the technology, or to imply that safe code cannot be written in C++, but in a world where important client applications which affect everyone's lives are written for Windows by programmers who don't really understand programming I'd rather those applications were developed using a less brittle language than C++.
This strikes me as being similar to the powers that the Ayatollah Khomeini used to issue a fatwah (death sentence) against the British author Salman Rushdie for writing an allegedly blasphemous book.
The difference, of course, is that fatwahs are not recognised in international law, whereas presumably this Virginian law is likely to be enforced in other states.
Still... if the Ayatollah had been a Virginian... --
"Tera" is 10 to the twelfth power, or a 1 with with 12 zeroes after it. In other words, a terabit is thousand times larger than a gigabit. The next one after "tera" are "exo" and "peta", although I confess I can't remember what order they're in.
A terabyte might be slightly different, though, since bytes tend to be grouped in powers of 2: kilobyte = 2^10, megabyte = 2^20, so a terabyte could be 2^40.
I don't think they can do that. There are two reasons:
the reason OS/2's Windows emulation is so good is because OS/2 was originally co-developed by IBM and MS. This ultimately led to a whole range of cross-licensing agreements for the Windows APIs. Which leads onto #2...
much of the Windows emulation is based on code licensed from MS, which IBM will be legally restrained from publishing.
Finally, OS/2's Windows emulation doesn't include Win32 so it's probably not much use now in any case. --
Kingston Telecom (the telco for Hull) got a bit of a shock a few years ago - they provided free local calls to their customers, then found that some of them were dialling up their Demon accounts and then leaving them connected 24 hours a day.
Kingston were particularly miffed about this because the Demon PoP being called (this was in the days before single number access) was outside Kingston's network, so they were being charged huge amounts by BT and getting nothing back from their customers.
I can't remember how this was resolved, now - whether Kingston put a limit on call length, exempted the PoP number, or whether Demon simply set up a PoP inside Kingston's network.
Does anybody know if Kingston still do free local calls? Or indeed whether the 0845 numbers Demon provide now are exempt from such a rate? (they're not local numbers, after all) --
The problem here is solely one of who is actually responsible for defamatory material.
Morally, one would say that the defamer is (and Demon's Acceptable Use Policy for their web space conforms to this: "13. You will be held responsible for and accept responsibility for any defamatory, confidential, secret or other proprietary material available via your Homepages site.").
Historically though, the publisher has a responsibilty also. This is presumably predicated on the notion that someone would read a defamatory statement before it was published - there would be an editor, or a typesetter, or even a scribe who acts as an agent to enable publication. This agent must see the defamatory material beore it is sent out into the big wide world, and as such the publisher can be construed as knowing about it. Also, of course, publishers generally have more money than authors so an aggrieved party is likely to get more dosh out of them.
Obviously (to netizens, anyway) this whole model of responsiblity explodes in a world of direct communication which requires no intermediaries. For those seeking redress, then, they can either sue the author (who might not be known or legally accessible) or the ISP who carried the dafamation on their server. Given the options, it's hardly surprising if ISPs get it in the neck.
This decision is very unfortunate, though - ISPs should have common carrier status like phone companies or the postal service: they are merely a channel, and do not control or have direct responsibility for the content generated by their users.
I feel sorry for Demon here, to be honest - they're just trying to avoid being held in contempt. --
I understand BT are trialling, although I don't know where and the results have apparently been mixed. They may not roll out the service at all.
No idea about other providers of DSL. Since BT are the only real copper carrier here (unless you live in Hull) it seems unlikely.
Cable modems are on their way though - our cable provider (NTL) is running a trial in Guildford now and say they will start selling it to customers in Surrey and Hampshire in July. Other regions are scheduled over the next year or so.
However, NTL require you to buy a 3Com card (150 quid) and to have a NIC (they offer a 3Com one themselves), and the subscription is 40 quid a month (includes ISP charge).
Other bad things are that they only support Windows at the moment, dynamically allocate IP addresses, and conspicuously say nothing about running servers. That may not mean anything, but... their suggested target market does not include homebrew web serving.
Another very clear evocation of the principles of Open Source. But...
No matter how vehemently immoral business practices are decried, the fact is that the most popular operating systems in use today are the product of a business culture which considers Sun Tzu's "Art of War" to be required reading but which eschews the cultural values (Confucian? Buddhist? I confess I don't know Sun Tzu's origins) that gave a moral context to his writings.
Such a business culture practically requires that a position of strength be used to pound the opposition into tiny pieces, and no advantage will be passed by in that aim. The rights of the customer are rarely considered.
The only way to establish a more sane operating system market where serving the users becomes more important than pulping your competitors is to divorce OS development from business.
However - in trying to sell such a divorce to the general population of users I doubt that it's advisable to talk of honour (or honor, if you prefer): taking up the Star Trek analogy from Part II, the most widely recognised symbol of honour is probably the Klingons. Sad to say, any idea strongly identified with Trek is generally considered irredeemably geeky and hence not worth considering.
Never mind being Slashdotted, that page on MS' web site killed my browser (Netscape 4.07).
If they really want Linux people to step up to the plate, they really ought to make their pages readable by browsers their audience are likely to be using! --
As an Acorn kiddie I'm loath to admit this, but Clive Sinclair was pivotal in bringing affordable computers to the masses. His little plastic door wedges (the ZX80, ZX81 and Spectrum) introduced a whole generation to programming.
No - that was the Jupiter Ace. Same h/w as the Speccy, but with a massive 4k of RAM and about the same shape as a ZX80 (ie a door wedge). The Atom was a precursor of the BBC Micro - 1MHz 6502, 2k RAM basic expandable on board to an astounding 12k, BASIC and assembler in ROM.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a lot of hostility to GM foods (outside the US, anyway). I think Monsanto and the other users of GM techniques would have done a lot better to develop this plastics process first (ie producing something interesting and actively green since it cuts consumption of finite resources) than to wind up public opinion by pushing something which only benefits the producers.
If customers don't like it, they won't buy it.
--
I tried a couple of pictures with my digicam (using the LCD as a viewfinder) but all I got was lense flare - didn't think to bring a filter...
--
It is milliard in English, as you say, but I've never ever heard this word used.
--
For the uninitiated, a European billion is a million million (10^12), a European trillion is 10^18, and so on. The mere fact that I don't have to explain the US system shows how pervasive it is.
This is one reason why the SI units and prefixes are important - they are well-defined, where as words like 'billion' can mean anything. I think I would probably agree with what this group is trying to do if wasn't so stupidly late.
Personally, I'd be quite happy with billions, pints and gallons if they actually meant the same thing everywhere, but they don't.
--
Actually having tools that work and which do what you tell them to just makes so much difference!
--
No, if you wanted true elegance and clean design you were running an Acorn. I still have my old Acorn Atom, with its 1MHz 6502 and 12Kb of RAM... In fact, with the floating point and toolkit ROMs I bought for it, that machine had more ROM than RAM!
Granted that the black and white graphics weren't that cracking (256x192 pixels), but you got a built-in mnemonic assembler and one of the most impenetrably elegant BASIC dialects on the planet (anybody else remember the indirection operators ? and !? Remember the neat way you could add an offset to a base address? A?X = 0;... hmmm). No wonder I'm fond of Perl.
Classic, classic days...
--
Indeed - I wanted a four letter domain, and the .com version had gone to a domain name 'broker'. I bought .org instead, which I am a little happier with in truth since I'm not a company (yet, anyway).
--
The sad fact is that this will not change - no matter how skilled the person is who is receiving CVs, if they have a stack a yard high to look at they will take shortcuts to filter them. Agencies are just a way for potential employers to push the filtering out to people who don't have better things to do (such as programming, for instance).
Fortunately there are decent agencies out there, and good employers will develop sound relationships with them to ensure that people who really do fit the job description will get through.
I would say that if that employer has hired an agency with such a mindless attitude to CV submissions, they don't care enough about recruitment to be worth working for. Alternatively, you might want to contact the company concerned to tell them what their representatives are doing, and to say that this will put off candidates they will want to speak to.
--
What I would like to know is whether the rats' normal cognitive functions were affected? That is, apart from the obvious hint of having a huge great wire sticking out of their heads, were the rats unaware of the probes and behaving in a pretty much normal way? I wouldn't fancy a neural interface if I'm not me after its installation.
Apart from this small detail, I can see the following barriers to using this technology for general control of computers:
- invasiveness - is this kind of technique ever likely to be implementable without massively invasive surgery? Keyhole techniques don't really apply when you have to drill a hole to get in.
- training - in these experiments, great care was taken to learn what neural activity indicated thirst in the subjects. Is there any way this individual training could be genericised?
Cool thing, though.--
- both are relatively new industries
- both have had recent scientific studies which cast them in a bad light (various reports have cast doubt on the safety of GM crops which is why they're not being accepted in Europe)
A rather stupid bit of journalism, though - cellphones are sp much more established, and the putative risks so much more avoidable, that the comparison just doesn't bear out.Also, the classic "unfavourable studies don't count" industry is tobacco: despite millions of deaths being directly attributable to this product, the tobacco industry isn't going away any time soon.
--
Since any damage is being caused by proximity of aerials to the head, this could all be a gimmick by the cellphone companies to sell more hands free kit. My employer has already committed to giving all corporate cell phone users hands free sets, so it seems to be working.
--
For me, it was nurse-maiding a troop of coding monkeys who were only doing programming as a stepping stone into management.
I think C++ is a fantastic language, but it is a very sharp instrument which needs skill to wield well.
--
The thing is, there are a lot of people out there coding who should not be let loose with C++ - they're not interested enough in coding to learn how to do it properly. On projects where VB is inadequate, WinJava would be a safer choice.
This isn't intended to defend MS' balkanisation of the technology, or to imply that safe code cannot be written in C++, but in a world where important client applications which affect everyone's lives are written for Windows by programmers who don't really understand programming I'd rather those applications were developed using a less brittle language than C++.
--
The difference, of course, is that fatwahs are not recognised in international law, whereas presumably this Virginian law is likely to be enforced in other states.
Still... if the Ayatollah had been a Virginian...
--
Sorry, forget that - didn't read the post properly in the first place.
--
A terabyte might be slightly different, though, since bytes tend to be grouped in powers of 2: kilobyte = 2^10, megabyte = 2^20, so a terabyte could be 2^40.
It's quite a lot, either way.
--
- the reason OS/2's Windows emulation is so good is because OS/2 was originally co-developed by IBM and MS. This ultimately led to a whole range of cross-licensing agreements for the Windows APIs. Which leads onto #2...
- much of the Windows emulation is based on code licensed from MS, which IBM will be legally restrained from publishing.
Finally, OS/2's Windows emulation doesn't include Win32 so it's probably not much use now in any case.--
Kingston were particularly miffed about this because the Demon PoP being called (this was in the days before single number access) was outside Kingston's network, so they were being charged huge amounts by BT and getting nothing back from their customers.
I can't remember how this was resolved, now - whether Kingston put a limit on call length, exempted the PoP number, or whether Demon simply set up a PoP inside Kingston's network.
Does anybody know if Kingston still do free local calls? Or indeed whether the 0845 numbers Demon provide now are exempt from such a rate? (they're not local numbers, after all)
--
Morally, one would say that the defamer is (and Demon's Acceptable Use Policy for their web space conforms to this: "13. You will be held responsible for and accept responsibility for any defamatory, confidential, secret or other proprietary material available via your Homepages site.").
Historically though, the publisher has a responsibilty also. This is presumably predicated on the notion that someone would read a defamatory statement before it was published - there would be an editor, or a typesetter, or even a scribe who acts as an agent to enable publication. This agent must see the defamatory material beore it is sent out into the big wide world, and as such the publisher can be construed as knowing about it. Also, of course, publishers generally have more money than authors so an aggrieved party is likely to get more dosh out of them.
Obviously (to netizens, anyway) this whole model of responsiblity explodes in a world of direct communication which requires no intermediaries. For those seeking redress, then, they can either sue the author (who might not be known or legally accessible) or the ISP who carried the dafamation on their server. Given the options, it's hardly surprising if ISPs get it in the neck.
This decision is very unfortunate, though - ISPs should have common carrier status like phone companies or the postal service: they are merely a channel, and do not control or have direct responsibility for the content generated by their users.
I feel sorry for Demon here, to be honest - they're just trying to avoid being held in contempt.
--
I understand BT are trialling, although I don't know where and the results have apparently been mixed. They may not roll out the service at all.
No idea about other providers of DSL. Since BT are the only real copper carrier here (unless you live in Hull) it seems unlikely.
Cable modems are on their way though - our cable provider (NTL) is running a trial in Guildford now and say they will start selling it to customers in Surrey and Hampshire in July. Other regions are scheduled over the next year or so.
However, NTL require you to buy a 3Com card (150 quid) and to have a NIC (they offer a 3Com one themselves), and the subscription is 40 quid a month (includes ISP charge).
Other bad things are that they only support Windows at the moment, dynamically allocate IP addresses, and conspicuously say nothing about running servers. That may not mean anything, but... their suggested target market does not include homebrew web serving.
More here.
--
No matter how vehemently immoral business practices are decried, the fact is that the most popular operating systems in use today are the product of a business culture which considers Sun Tzu's "Art of War" to be required reading but which eschews the cultural values (Confucian? Buddhist? I confess I don't know Sun Tzu's origins) that gave a moral context to his writings.
Such a business culture practically requires that a position of strength be used to pound the opposition into tiny pieces, and no advantage will be passed by in that aim. The rights of the customer are rarely considered.
The only way to establish a more sane operating system market where serving the users becomes more important than pulping your competitors is to divorce OS development from business.
However - in trying to sell such a divorce to the general population of users I doubt that it's advisable to talk of honour (or honor, if you prefer): taking up the Star Trek analogy from Part II, the most widely recognised symbol of honour is probably the Klingons. Sad to say, any idea strongly identified with Trek is generally considered irredeemably geeky and hence not worth considering.
How about we use the word 'integrity' instead?
--
Dunx
British and loving it.
--
Never mind being Slashdotted, that page on MS' web site killed my browser (Netscape 4.07).
If they really want Linux people to step up to the plate, they really ought to make their pages readable by browsers their audience are likely to be using!
--
As an Acorn kiddie I'm loath to admit this, but Clive Sinclair was pivotal in bringing affordable computers to the masses. His little plastic door wedges (the ZX80, ZX81 and Spectrum) introduced a whole generation to programming.
If that's not important enough...
Both the Wired item and the VNU Net article have a direct quote from the man himself.
No - that was the Jupiter Ace. Same h/w as the Speccy, but with a massive 4k of RAM and about the same shape as a ZX80 (ie a door wedge). The Atom was a precursor of the BBC Micro - 1MHz 6502, 2k RAM basic expandable on board to an astounding 12k, BASIC and assembler in ROM.