I know that this does not fit your criterium of being major organization free, but the journal Nature has a podcast covering each week's contents that is quite good.
From the article: Gene patents give their owners property rights over gene sequences--for example in a diagnostic test, as a test for the efficacy of a new drug, or in the production of therapeutic proteins," Murray said
So what they are really doing is patenting a use for the gene. Typical uses for that gene, such as normal function in your body, would not be patentable.
The problem with the article as it was posted is that it basically reads as: Companies patent hammer. Actually what is being patented is a novel use of a hammer. Discuss the appropriateness of that all you want. But your question drives at the heart of what is important here - just what are we discussing.
Maybe you can sell your wife the same way I did. She hated how our old windows box slowed to a crawl frequently due to malware, adware, etc. I'm sure I could have kept up on all the service patches and updates and adware programs and virus protectors, but screw it. My mac works. Always. With no complaints and no effort on my part.
By the way. Virus protectors are as bad as the viruses themselves. Does any body else complain about these pieces of crap?
There have been several good suggestions already - MBA, biololgy, an advanced degree so you can do research. It really depends on what your goal is. Getting into bioinformatics is quite different than managing an IT department. If you don't have a goal in mind, I would say either 1) don't go back to school or 2) go back and learn what is interesting to you whether it has anything to do with Comp Sci or not.
The CAMBIA BIOS Initiative: Proposal Summary Open innovation is becoming a strikingly successful model in Open Source Software and is currently being applied to a wide range of industries from publishing to space research. BIOS will explore, apply and extend this democratisation of innovation to problems of biology affecting the disenfranchised of the world, in fields ranging from human nutrition, food security and agriculture, to environmental management and improvement, conservation and use of biodiversity, human and veterinary medicine and public health.
Most of the problems facing the "disenfranchised" of the world are not technical but political. Good on the BIOS project for their efforts, but I think peace and some common sense public health practices in the third world will go much further towards helping those people.
What does "cosmic rays pass through them every second" have to do with "nuc-anything"? Just because cosmic rays are harmless doesn't mean that the alpha and beta particles produced by nuclear reactors aren't a very real threat (should they be leaked in the event of a nuclear disaster).
I think what you are trying to say is that many people don't take into account the safety measures in this country and almost all others have been effective for 40 or so years. Because of that, many react irrationally when nuclear power is mentioned. Why not just say that instead of something ridiculous about cosmic rays?
I think the point of the EFF's action is that they are not fighting a bill, but rather an FCC mandate. From one of the linked articles:
Thanks to an FCC ruling, as of July 2005, it will be illegal to manufacture or import DTV tuners unless they include DRM technologies mandated by the FCC.
The FCC only has power to regulate transmissions. They can require broadcasters to transmit a broadcast flag but they cannot require television makers to pay any attention to it. That would require a bill to be voted into law by congress.
Of course, like many legal issues, it is not the ability to enforce an agreement, but simply the threat of legal action which makes something like a non-compete agreement effective. But, my understanding is that non-compete agreements aren't effective (won't scare a person much for working for a competitor) unless they are very tightly defined. For example, I used to work for a crappy computer training company. It was understood that the non-compete clause we signed would be unenforceable because it was too broad - "shall not work for another training company in the next year." If they had defined it to be something like "shall not work for another training company within 30 miles in the next year teaching the current version of the database the instructor was trained in at company expense" then they might have had more leverage in any legal proceeding.
It does look like a non-compete agreement in this case would have a good chance of being effective because Seagate would *probably* have been smart enough to narrow down the specifics enough to keep their chief from going to the competitor...
Nice sentiments, but no one really expects reduced research costs, more competition in the bio-tech industry, or consumer scrutiny simply by "open sourcing" biotech info.
Rather, what the article points out is that there are niches - diseases which disproportionately affect the poor, that affect few people, or for which the patent for a drug has expired - which are ignored by drug companies. The costs of development and meeting regulation requirements would not be recovered in these situations. The article proposes to use an "open source" model to address these niches.
While the article does point out that a freer flow of information would help these situations, I think what the authors really want is the large army of (largely) volunteer brainpower that open source software has.
This is a very interesting analogy. I understand what you are saying, but at least for a freezer, the opposite is true. A freezer is more efficient when full. Essentially it has a large "cold" sink inside of it. The interesting question is whether or not this applies to a fridge where items are inserted and removed and the door is open much more often. Does the large cold sink in the fridge overcome the work needed to be done to cool new items? I dunno. Sounds like a possible IgNobel prize topic to me...:)
I'm pretty sure I could have had a lifetime IT career working in state government. Slashdot has had the private sector "cutting edge development" vs. "behind the times" government work before. It is basically personal preference - exciting and short term vs less exciting but stable. Many associate government work with being boring and while the database I maintained certainly wasn't exciting, it's impact on the state's medical system was.
So yes, lifetime IT jobs probably exist and they don't necessarily have to be boring. It really depends on what you are looking for.
Now that would have been cool! The Gemini at Cedar Point is a twin coaster. Back in its hayday the riders would be shouting for their car to "win". The atmosphere was incredidble. I'm still a die hard red train rider to this day.
Interesting you brought up safety - on the Gemini you can actually give high fives to the people in the othter train. And when you are a little kid, it seems like they can almost pull you out!
There is no "fare". This was covered in a different post. It is a one time fee to get into the park. There is no per-ride cost. Both TTD and MF cost US$25 million to build (according to rcdb.com), and both take roughly the same riders per hour.
I still maintain that it is a quick ride because they realize there is only so much space on the peninsula, and that to make the thing long enough to impact the riders/hr would have taken all the space the park has. So now you get a rather intense 20 second ride. Which is really what you came for. No one remembers the second hill.
The millenium force gets 1600 riders/hr. This one is predicted to get 1500. Usually the turnover is dictated by the size of a train and how fast you can load/unload them. There will be a train going up the hill, one on the track and one in the house loading/unloading. When they are going 70-120 mph, you'd need an awfully long track to change this model. Since this coaster is so fast, there will only be one train going up the hill or on the track. All the others will be loading/unloading and keep the line moving that way.
I think the reason it is short is twofold. 1) Cedar Point is on an peninsula and space is getting scarce. 2) No one really cares what comes after the first hill.
I don't believe it is as simple as some of the "screw the customer and move 'em along" remarks would lead you to believe
I don't have the time to do the search, but I am pretty sure that microsoft has used the DMCA to remove content from/. before. Think it had something to do with SAMBA. In the end, it may not have been MS, but someone has had slashdot remove links before...
I saw one other post which indirectly asked the following questions and it got no responses and only modded to 2. But I really want to know:
Why is this on slashdot? What relevance does this have to geeks besides ESR liking guns? Yes, it has been a busy topic but there are a lot of topics which would get a lot of comments but that doesn't mean they belong here.
I really think we ought to rename slashdot to alt.conspiracy. Where else can you find the same group of people that will blame government and large corporations for being to stupid to do anything correctly but then turn around and in the same breath accuse them of being able to manipulate the global transportation market? Amazing.
It's simple. Because there is no alternative which performs as well in so many conditions so cheaply. Some alternatives may be more efficient, some may provide the same performance, etc, but NONE do have all the qualities gasoline does. And gasoline is cheap cheap cheap.
Explain that to me. Everywhere I've ever lived the local public school took in the local children. It was the rich private schools which were "selective" and weeded out those not deemed worthy.
Slashdot Mirror
I know that this does not fit your criterium of being major organization free, but the journal Nature has a podcast covering each week's contents that is quite good.
From the article:
Gene patents give their owners property rights over gene sequences--for example in a diagnostic test, as a test for the efficacy of a new drug, or in the production of therapeutic proteins," Murray said
So what they are really doing is patenting a use for the gene. Typical uses for that gene, such as normal function in your body, would not be patentable.
The problem with the article as it was posted is that it basically reads as:
Companies patent hammer. Actually what is being patented is a novel use of a hammer. Discuss the appropriateness of that all you want. But your question drives at the heart of what is important here - just what are we discussing.
Jack
Maybe you can sell your wife the same way I did. She hated how our old windows box slowed to a crawl frequently due to malware, adware, etc. I'm sure I could have kept up on all the service patches and updates and adware programs and virus protectors, but screw it. My mac works. Always. With no complaints and no effort on my part.
By the way. Virus protectors are as bad as the viruses themselves. Does any body else complain about these pieces of crap?
Jack
There have been several good suggestions already - MBA, biololgy, an advanced degree so you can do research. It really depends on what your goal is. Getting into bioinformatics is quite different than managing an IT department. If you don't have a goal in mind, I would say either 1) don't go back to school or 2) go back and learn what is interesting to you whether it has anything to do with Comp Sci or not.
Its a duplicate. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Most of the problems facing the "disenfranchised" of the world are not technical but political. Good on the BIOS project for their efforts, but I think peace and some common sense public health practices in the third world will go much further towards helping those people.
Here's hoping...
What does "cosmic rays pass through them every second" have to do with "nuc-anything"? Just because cosmic rays are harmless doesn't mean that the alpha and beta particles produced by nuclear reactors aren't a very real threat (should they be leaked in the event of a nuclear disaster).
I think what you are trying to say is that many people don't take into account the safety measures in this country and almost all others have been effective for 40 or so years. Because of that, many react irrationally when nuclear power is mentioned. Why not just say that instead of something ridiculous about cosmic rays?
Jack
Thanks to an FCC ruling, as of July 2005, it will be illegal to manufacture or import DTV tuners unless they include DRM technologies mandated by the FCC.
The FCC only has power to regulate transmissions. They can require broadcasters to transmit a broadcast flag but they cannot require television makers to pay any attention to it. That would require a bill to be voted into law by congress.
Of course, like many legal issues, it is not the ability to enforce an agreement, but simply the threat of legal action which makes something like a non-compete agreement effective. But, my understanding is that non-compete agreements aren't effective (won't scare a person much for working for a competitor) unless they are very tightly defined. For example, I used to work for a crappy computer training company. It was understood that the non-compete clause we signed would be unenforceable because it was too broad - "shall not work for another training company in the next year." If they had defined it to be something like "shall not work for another training company within 30 miles in the next year teaching the current version of the database the instructor was trained in at company expense" then they might have had more leverage in any legal proceeding.
It does look like a non-compete agreement in this case would have a good chance of being effective because Seagate would *probably* have been smart enough to narrow down the specifics enough to keep their chief from going to the competitor...
Nice sentiments, but no one really expects reduced research costs, more competition in the bio-tech industry, or consumer scrutiny simply by "open sourcing" biotech info.
Rather, what the article points out is that there are niches - diseases which disproportionately affect the poor, that affect few people, or for which the patent for a drug has expired - which are ignored by drug companies. The costs of development and meeting regulation requirements would not be recovered in these situations. The article proposes to use an "open source" model to address these niches.
While the article does point out that a freer flow of information would help these situations, I think what the authors really want is the large army of (largely) volunteer brainpower that open source software has.
My particular field is bioinformatics, but many (most?) serious math and science applications are made for unix/linux.
> Are you people THAT eager to show off your useless knowledge?
Umm... Yes. It's Slashdot.
This is a very interesting analogy. I understand what you are saying, but at least for a freezer, the opposite is true. A freezer is more efficient when full. Essentially it has a large "cold" sink inside of it. The interesting question is whether or not this applies to a fridge where items are inserted and removed and the door is open much more often. Does the large cold sink in the fridge overcome the work needed to be done to cool new items? I dunno. Sounds like a possible IgNobel prize topic to me... :)
So yes, lifetime IT jobs probably exist and they don't necessarily have to be boring. It really depends on what you are looking for.
Now that would have been cool! The Gemini at Cedar Point is a twin coaster. Back in its hayday the riders would be shouting for their car to "win". The atmosphere was incredidble. I'm still a die hard red train rider to this day.
Interesting you brought up safety - on the Gemini you can actually give high fives to the people in the othter train. And when you are a little kid, it seems like they can almost pull you out!
There is no "fare". This was covered in a different post. It is a one time fee to get into the park. There is no per-ride cost. Both TTD and MF cost US$25 million to build (according to rcdb.com), and both take roughly the same riders per hour.
I still maintain that it is a quick ride because they realize there is only so much space on the peninsula, and that to make the thing long enough to impact the riders/hr would have taken all the space the park has. So now you get a rather intense 20 second ride. Which is really what you came for. No one remembers the second hill.
The millenium force gets 1600 riders/hr. This one is predicted to get 1500. Usually the turnover is dictated by the size of a train and how fast you can load/unload them. There will be a train going up the hill, one on the track and one in the house loading/unloading. When they are going 70-120 mph, you'd need an awfully long track to change this model. Since this coaster is so fast, there will only be one train going up the hill or on the track. All the others will be loading/unloading and keep the line moving that way.
I think the reason it is short is twofold. 1) Cedar Point is on an peninsula and space is getting scarce. 2) No one really cares what comes after the first hill.
I don't believe it is as simple as some of the "screw the customer and move 'em along" remarks would lead you to believe
I don't have the time to do the search, but I am pretty sure that microsoft has used the DMCA to remove content from /. before. Think it had something to do with SAMBA. In the end, it may not have been MS, but someone has had slashdot remove links before...
I saw one other post which indirectly asked the following questions and it got no responses and only modded to 2. But I really want to know:
Why is this on slashdot? What relevance does this have to geeks besides ESR liking guns? Yes, it has been a busy topic but there are a lot of topics which would get a lot of comments but that doesn't mean they belong here.
I really think we ought to rename slashdot to alt.conspiracy. Where else can you find the same group of people that will blame government and large corporations for being to stupid to do anything correctly but then turn around and in the same breath accuse them of being able to manipulate the global transportation market? Amazing.
It's simple. Because there is no alternative which performs as well in so many conditions so cheaply. Some alternatives may be more efficient, some may provide the same performance, etc, but NONE do have all the qualities gasoline does. And gasoline is cheap cheap cheap.
Selective Public School?!
Explain that to me. Everywhere I've ever lived the local public school took in the local children. It was the rich private schools which were "selective" and weeded out those not deemed worthy.