There was interesting article about this a few weeks ago in the gaurdian newspaper.
Although it's pretty thin on technical details, it does provide some insight into some of the questions people are posting, such as why they need all this bandwidth, why the US arent part of the project etc.
Basically, I'm all for this great stuff, but until they find a use for it, it's just money wasted when it could be going to places and projects in technology that could actually benefit.
They most definately will find uses for it. I heard recently about the transfer of raw sequencing trace files (for the Human Genome Project) transfered from the UK-->USA. Turns out there wasnt enough bandwidth (these things are basically huge image files, and there are ALOT of them). Therefore they ship them over on DAT tapes.
Furthermore, I quite regurlarly download multi-gigabyte quantaties of data for academic research.
I posted my loveletter to the CCC, took my sweetheart to the restaurant across the road, and sat down at the prime wndow table. Staring romantically towards the glowing lights, framed by the shimmering stars and a huge moon, my message appeared....
"Linda, Will you mar"
Unfortunately, I had forgotten it was only 18 x 8 pixels. Darn. Then there was a powercut.
Nice reply. Thanks.
Sorry to be dull, but you wouldnt know of any good resources/links for this? I dont exactly want to read the acts/bills themselves, but if you know of any good summaries, I would be very interested.
I'm not to knowledgeable about the ins-and outs of these acts. However, this bill would seem to go against the idea - if not the law - of the Data Protection Act (perhaps one of the most-foward thinking, intelligent pieces of legislation in a long time).
This new bill will require ISPs, telco's, etc to keep detailed information on individual's for long periods of time, even though it is entirely unrelated to billing etc. I thought the DPA made this sort of thing difficult? Are the government now breaking their own rules?
OK Lets finish this crappy debate here & now. Seems everyone has different experiences - now theres a suprise. Seeing as my parent comment was buggy, I should really post a revised version.... Here goes:
UNBIASED COMPARISON:
Linux ATI Radeon Drivers:
Open Source, NOT fully featured (I just checked the docs), has caused some problems on some systems.
Linux NVIDIA GeForce Drivers:
Binary only, fully featured (well, very very nearly almost - just checked the docs), many people have reported problems.
Well, it was deliberate flamebait;-) I said so in my post. Though I would get some replies though...
In general, those who have compiled stuff themselves experience less problems than those using the biniary packages.
You cant frigging compile them yourself. I may have been talking shit elswhere, but I do know this.
You can grab the rpm's for SuSe, RedHat, Mandrake.
Cant speak for the others, but the SuSe RPMs are no way just a matter of rpm -ivh....
Yeah, suse have got a nice little script switch_to_nvidia or something, but it didnt work correctly for me. This isnt entirely SuSe's fault, as due to dumb licsensing restrictions, SuSe cant put the real nvidia drivers in their distro. Furthermore, nvidia should be making their own installer, if they are so bent on keeping the source closed.
What features? read the docs. Yes, you true. Sigh. Was getting confused with the nvidia RIVA, which aint fully featured
To reflect their mammoth, monopolistic postion, Microsoft have changed their name to just "Soft".
To reflect the fact they do not, have never and will never sell apples, Apple computers have changes their name to "Mac"
To reflect the fact that they are now more of a computer manufacturior rather than a machine manufacturer, and that they also operate at both a personal and business level, International Business Machines (IBM) have changed their name to International Computers & Stuff (ICS).
To reflect the fact that they are not mandrakes, do not look like mandrakes, and - despite the fact they are french - rarely even eat mandrakes, Mandrake Software are changin their name to "ThatFrenchDistro".
and so on....
To reflect the fact that I am not really Denholm Elliot in Indian Jones and the last crusade, I will now be changing my name by Deed Poll to "Depressed Cupboard Cheescake", to better represent my psychological state.
I know a number of people who have had problems with these drivers, including myself. Thats why I changed to Radeon. I also know a couple of people who have had absolutely no probs whatsoever, like yourself (lucky bastard;-). However, I am sure if the drivers were OS, these problems would be sorted out by the community pretty quick.
Its not that I am anti-anything that isnt Open Source. Just that NVIDIA havent really made a particular effort with the linux drivers themselves:
1. They havent bothered to make an easy instillation. They are obviously of the opinion of "Hey, theyre running linux, they are used to difficult instillations and getting under the bonnet, therefore we shouldnt bother making it easy for them".
2. There are obviously some fundamental problems with the drivers stability on some systems. This is well known, but NVIDIA arent doing much about it.
3. Certain features have not been enabled in the Linux Drivers.
I can understand why NVIDIA have done this: Linux isnt a particularly big market for them, so theres no point wasting time & effort perfecting the drivers.
However, if they cant be bothered to do it, there are alot of people out there woho would be willing to help - for free.
All NVIDIA need to do is OS the drivers. They get to look like "Good Guys" & get some reliable linux drivers - for free. Is Open Sourcing the drivers really going to give away propreity secrets to the opposition? Surely, they make there money from the hardware, so they cant have much to loose from OS.
For me, the most interesting point is that the US will be adopting 3G (to some extent). This means 3G will be present in US, Europe and Japan. With mobile devices becoming increasingly important, this can only be a good thing.
(arguably a bad comparison:-)
Would the internet be where it is today if the US used IPv6, Europe used IPv4 and Japan used IPv7 ?
Hey, anyone know of any other projects based on the evolution code-base? I kinda like evolution from what I have seen of the pre-release versions. It looks like a real progression. However, I am sure there are alot of people like myself who like the advanced email features that arent really present in other linux-based mail programs. However, I really do not want a calender, schedules, task lists etc.
In the same way that the Mozilla code base has been hacked - in a generally reductionist way - to produce the much-improved Galeon and promising K-Meleon, I feel that Evolution could benefit from the same process.
Yeah, I agree - I doubt that treatments for CF will be used as peformance enhancing drugs. I think both myself and the parent link were using it as an example for gene therapy, as this is the most well known example. However, you could envisage that gene therapy for other traits could be used in this respect (e.g. blood disorders, muscle wasting diseases).
I also agree that gene therapy for CF (and almost everthing else) is still pretty out there. And yes, therapies based on knowledge about the genetic defect & designing a novel solution is still the most viable route. Not too up on this stuff with CF these days, but i do love the example of phenylketonuria: Discovery of the gene lead to understanding of the metabolic pathway involved. After that, all that was required was a change in diet at birth.
yeah... after thinking about it for more than 2 seconds... newline is probably an even worse solution. Im sure there is better way round the problem, but I am also sure it is probably not worth the effort;-)
Sorry, I should of said "reproductive human cloning", which is against the law in the US. Funnily enough - due to a technical loophole - this is currently legal in UK.
Gene therapy is the act of introducing gene(s) into a population of adult cells, for therepeutic benifit. For example, Cystic Fibrosis patients lack the CFTR gene. Therefore, in theory, introducing this gene to the lung cells should correct most of the physiological defects. However, the pharamseutical industry and academic sector have been struggling with this apparantly simple idea for a long time.
Problems include:
-deliviring the gene to the correct tissue in a high enough dose
-Many of the delivery systems rely on (crippled, non-contagious) viral vectors, which can illicit an immune response. A patient died during clinical trials because of this
-It is difficult to get a stable transfection. I.e. Once the gene is in the correct cell, it does not stay their for life.
There are numerous other technical hurdles to overcome, and if the multi-billion pound pharmaceteucial industy is still struggling with them, I find it hard to believe that the (largely ameteur) athletics industry will be using them in 2012.
But, I guess they will use this technology at some point in the future - but not untill it first becomes common place in medicine, like other peformance enhancing drugs. So the point is still valid I guess.
Also, they say this will be difficult to detect. Philisophically, I disagree. I am of the opinion that most actions leave a fingeprint, a signature. You just have to look hard enough. You could detect gene therapy by looking for certain properties of the transgene (e.g. if it was stably integrated, the gene would likely be in the wrong place in the genome. Or if the gene was only delivered to muscle cells, the genetic content of the muscle cells would be different to skin cells).
Furthermore, some people seem to be confusing eugenics with gene therapy. Gene therapy changes the genetic content of populations of adult cells, primarily for therepeutic benifit. Eugenics is the selective breeding of humans. Both techniques could (thereotically) be used to produce people with exta-ordinary abilities. However, eugenics would result in the trait being passed on to future generations. Gene therapy, normally, would not do this, except in the case of germline gene therapy, which I believe is now outlawed in most countries along with human cloning & eugenics.
Sounds like Sales monkey trying to drum up business
Erm... yes I know my mum allways told me not to talk to trolls..... But yes, the link I gave was obvious sales shite, but I have used the crypto fs (hide my pr0n stash from mum;-) and it is trivial.
Also if you had actually READ my post, I was implying that mandrake is NOT secure. The point i was trying to make is that American distros are inherintly not great with crypto (due to export restrictions), which really leaves (from the top 5) mandrake and SuSE (or OpenBSD, which is canadian). As I said, mandrake is aimed at the desktop market and is hence not very secure.
I've never been able to find a good Linux equivalent.
Try SuSE. Because they are a European distro (ie no problems with US export controls), and also aimed at secure/server market (unlike mandrake), they have Very Good built in security measures. It is really very trivial to set up a crypto file system. You really should give it a go. See this for some breif details.
Only problem is SuSE dont make iso's downloadable, so you might need to buy (gasp!) a copy. Money well worth spent though.
Slashdot Mirror
There was interesting article about this a few weeks ago in the gaurdian newspaper.
Although it's pretty thin on technical details, it does provide some insight into some of the questions people are posting, such as why they need all this bandwidth, why the US arent part of the project etc.
"Wow, well done guys. Our new multi-gagabyte network is now fully operational"
"Cheers...."
"Uh... Boss, hold on...."
"What?"
"Someone just posted us to slashdot!"
*Poof* goes the bandwidth
Seriously though, if they get slashdotted their really isnt any hope for the rest of us.
Basically, I'm all for this great stuff, but until they find a use for it, it's just money wasted when it could be going to places and projects in technology that could actually benefit.
They most definately will find uses for it. I heard recently about the transfer of raw sequencing trace files (for the Human Genome Project) transfered from the UK-->USA. Turns out there wasnt enough bandwidth (these things are basically huge image files, and there are ALOT of them). Therefore they ship them over on DAT tapes.
Furthermore, I quite regurlarly download multi-gigabyte quantaties of data for academic research.
I posted my loveletter to the CCC, took my sweetheart to the restaurant across the road, and sat down at the prime wndow table. Staring romantically towards the glowing lights, framed by the shimmering stars and a huge moon, my message appeared....
"Linda, Will you mar"
Unfortunately, I had forgotten it was only 18 x 8 pixels. Darn. Then there was a powercut.
i dont use pine.
what is this cryptic m s r f a ?
or is it some obvious joke i have missed?
Nice reply. Thanks.
Sorry to be dull, but you wouldnt know of any good resources/links for this? I dont exactly want to read the acts/bills themselves, but if you know of any good summaries, I would be very interested.
--MB
I'm not to knowledgeable about the ins-and outs of these acts. However, this bill would seem to go against the idea - if not the law - of the Data Protection Act (perhaps one of the most-foward thinking, intelligent pieces of legislation in a long time).
This new bill will require ISPs, telco's, etc to keep detailed information on individual's for long periods of time, even though it is entirely unrelated to billing etc. I thought the DPA made this sort of thing difficult? Are the government now breaking their own rules?
OK Lets finish this crappy debate here & now. Seems everyone has different experiences - now theres a suprise. Seeing as my parent comment was buggy, I should really post a revised version.... Here goes:
UNBIASED COMPARISON:
Linux ATI Radeon Drivers:
Open Source, NOT fully featured (I just checked the docs), has caused some problems on some systems.
Linux NVIDIA GeForce Drivers:
Binary only, fully featured (well, very very nearly almost - just checked the docs), many people have reported problems.
No what have we learned? SOD ALL.
Well, it was deliberate flamebait ;-) I said so in my post. Though I would get some replies though...
....
In general, those who have compiled stuff themselves experience less problems than those using the biniary packages.
You cant frigging compile them yourself. I may have been talking shit elswhere, but I do know this.
You can grab the rpm's for SuSe, RedHat, Mandrake.
Cant speak for the others, but the SuSe RPMs are no way just a matter of rpm -ivh
Yeah, suse have got a nice little script switch_to_nvidia or something, but it didnt work correctly for me. This isnt entirely SuSe's fault, as due to dumb licsensing restrictions, SuSe cant put the real nvidia drivers in their distro. Furthermore, nvidia should be making their own installer, if they are so bent on keeping the source closed.
What features? read the docs.
Yes, you true. Sigh. Was getting confused with the nvidia RIVA, which aint fully featured
To reflect the fact they do not, have never and will never sell apples, Apple computers have changes their name to "Mac"
To reflect the fact that they are now more of a computer manufacturior rather than a machine manufacturer, and that they also operate at both a personal and business level, International Business Machines (IBM) have changed their name to International Computers & Stuff (ICS).
To reflect the fact that they are not mandrakes, do not look like mandrakes, and - despite the fact they are french - rarely even eat mandrakes, Mandrake Software are changin their name to "ThatFrenchDistro".
and so on....
To reflect the fact that I am not really Denholm Elliot in Indian Jones and the last crusade, I will now be changing my name by Deed Poll to "Depressed Cupboard Cheescake", to better represent my psychological state.
Thankyou, and.... Goodnight
I know a number of people who have had problems with these drivers, including myself. Thats why I changed to Radeon. I also know a couple of people who have had absolutely no probs whatsoever, like yourself (lucky bastard ;-). However, I am sure if the drivers were OS, these problems would be sorted out by the community pretty quick.
Its not that I am anti-anything that isnt Open Source. Just that NVIDIA havent really made a particular effort with the linux drivers themselves:
1. They havent bothered to make an easy instillation. They are obviously of the opinion of "Hey, theyre running linux, they are used to difficult instillations and getting under the bonnet, therefore we shouldnt bother making it easy for them".
2. There are obviously some fundamental problems with the drivers stability on some systems. This is well known, but NVIDIA arent doing much about it.
3. Certain features have not been enabled in the Linux Drivers.
I can understand why NVIDIA have done this: Linux isnt a particularly big market for them, so theres no point wasting time & effort perfecting the drivers.
However, if they cant be bothered to do it, there are alot of people out there woho would be willing to help - for free.
All NVIDIA need to do is OS the drivers. They get to look like "Good Guys" & get some reliable linux drivers - for free. Is Open Sourcing the drivers really going to give away propreity secrets to the opposition? Surely, they make there money from the hardware, so they cant have much to loose from OS.
--MB
Yes, I am utterly biased & asking for flamage:
Linux ATI Radeon Drivers:
Open Source, reliable, fully featured.
Linux NVIDIA GeForce Drivers:
Binary only, unreliable, cause frequent hangs on many systems, not fully featured.
'Nuff said.
Yes, I was a bit confused by all this. I'm not sure that these people know what their talking about, and it is potentially libelous.
Basically, they are saying that Iain Duncan Smith has been hacking into computers and taking Snort, right?
Information and discussions for blind SuSE Linux users (english)
Software for Blind Linux Users: Brass - Braille and speech server
-Does anyone know where I can download Gibson-Linux?
-"Yeah dude, we were like ROCKING wembley stadium... But then we got slashdotted"
-Cant play tonight.... guitar got a virus.
-This Guitar has caused an illegal operation and will be restarted.
-"Hi, looks like your trying to play Johnny B. Goode. Would you like me to help you with that?"
-This guitar sucks. It only has two notes: 1 and 0
-Hey, I cant get broadband. Do you think they will release a modem version?
-Token ring on the guitar string?
-Packet loss during the thrash-metal guitar solo?
Was the big bang louder than drum & bass?
For me, the most interesting point is that the US will be adopting 3G (to some extent). This means 3G will be present in US, Europe and Japan. With mobile devices becoming increasingly important, this can only be a good thing.
(arguably a bad comparison:-)
Would the internet be where it is today if the US used IPv6, Europe used IPv4 and Japan used IPv7 ?
Hey, anyone know of any other projects based on the evolution code-base? I kinda like evolution from what I have seen of the pre-release versions. It looks like a real progression. However, I am sure there are alot of people like myself who like the advanced email features that arent really present in other linux-based mail programs. However, I really do not want a calender, schedules, task lists etc.
In the same way that the Mozilla code base has been hacked - in a generally reductionist way - to produce the much-improved Galeon and promising K-Meleon, I feel that Evolution could benefit from the same process.
Offers, anyone? Im a little busy right now.....
Hi,
Yeah, I agree - I doubt that treatments for CF will be used as peformance enhancing drugs. I think both myself and the parent link were using it as an example for gene therapy, as this is the most well known example. However, you could envisage that gene therapy for other traits could be used in this respect (e.g. blood disorders, muscle wasting diseases).
I also agree that gene therapy for CF (and almost everthing else) is still pretty out there. And yes, therapies based on knowledge about the genetic defect & designing a novel solution is still the most viable route. Not too up on this stuff with CF these days, but i do love the example of phenylketonuria: Discovery of the gene lead to understanding of the metabolic pathway involved. After that, all that was required was a change in diet at birth.
yeah... after thinking about it for more than 2 seconds... newline is probably an even worse solution. Im sure there is better way round the problem, but I am also sure it is probably not worth the effort ;-)
You right. Told you i know shit all html. Its those darn tables. Even so, do they have to put a space to avoid it? why not just a newline character?
Sorry, I should of said "reproductive human cloning", which is against the law in the US. Funnily enough - due to a technical loophole - this is currently legal in UK.
2012 sounds a little early to me.
Gene therapy is the act of introducing gene(s) into a population of adult cells, for therepeutic benifit. For example, Cystic Fibrosis patients lack the CFTR gene. Therefore, in theory, introducing this gene to the lung cells should correct most of the physiological defects. However, the pharamseutical industry and academic sector have been struggling with this apparantly simple idea for a long time.
Problems include:
-deliviring the gene to the correct tissue in a high enough dose
-Many of the delivery systems rely on (crippled, non-contagious) viral vectors, which can illicit an immune response. A patient died during clinical trials because of this
-It is difficult to get a stable transfection. I.e. Once the gene is in the correct cell, it does not stay their for life.
There are numerous other technical hurdles to overcome, and if the multi-billion pound pharmaceteucial industy is still struggling with them, I find it hard to believe that the (largely ameteur) athletics industry will be using them in 2012.
But, I guess they will use this technology at some point in the future - but not untill it first becomes common place in medicine, like other peformance enhancing drugs. So the point is still valid I guess.
Also, they say this will be difficult to detect. Philisophically, I disagree. I am of the opinion that most actions leave a fingeprint, a signature. You just have to look hard enough. You could detect gene therapy by looking for certain properties of the transgene (e.g. if it was stably integrated, the gene would likely be in the wrong place in the genome. Or if the gene was only delivered to muscle cells, the genetic content of the muscle cells would be different to skin cells).
Furthermore, some people seem to be confusing eugenics with gene therapy. Gene therapy changes the genetic content of populations of adult cells, primarily for therepeutic benifit. Eugenics is the selective breeding of humans. Both techniques could (thereotically) be used to produce people with exta-ordinary abilities. However, eugenics would result in the trait being passed on to future generations. Gene therapy, normally, would not do this, except in the case of germline gene therapy, which I believe is now outlawed in most countries along with human cloning & eugenics.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/wireless/2001-0 9-06-update.htm
. ht ml
http://quicken.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-7070200
Sounds like Sales monkey trying to drum up business
;-) and it is trivial.
Erm... yes I know my mum allways told me not to talk to trolls..... But yes, the link I gave was obvious sales shite, but I have used the crypto fs (hide my pr0n stash from mum
Also if you had actually READ my post, I was implying that mandrake is NOT secure. The point i was trying to make is that American distros are inherintly not great with crypto (due to export restrictions), which really leaves (from the top 5) mandrake and SuSE (or OpenBSD, which is canadian). As I said, mandrake is aimed at the desktop market and is hence not very secure.
I've never been able to find a good Linux equivalent.
Try SuSE. Because they are a European distro (ie no problems with US export controls), and also aimed at secure/server market (unlike mandrake), they have Very Good built in security measures. It is really very trivial to set up a crypto file system. You really should give it a go. See this for some breif details.
Only problem is SuSE dont make iso's downloadable, so you might need to buy (gasp!) a copy. Money well worth spent though.