97% of the Walmart computer buyers don't know what Mandrake Linux is, call a 'computer-literate' friend, who is very good with fdisk, and have it replaced by an illegal copy of windows within two days after the purchase.
But if you cannot parallelize a problem that much, one fast computer solves a problem faster.
In bioinformatics, one of the more power-demanding applications of super computers, there are many problems that can not easily be split up in smaller independent pieces. 32-bit memory addressing is often a problem as well. Of course these problems can be circumvented, but in the end it all comes down to speed and not having to re-engineer complicated scientific code.
Ofcourse, in order to make a good impression on your new boss, you should know how to spell the word protein first.
I know, it is very difficult to do all the stuff above, without having a basic background in biology. There is always a need for sys admins, though. Many of these biotech have complicated heterogeneous computing facilities, which can be fun/challenging to manage.
Microsoft is not only afraid of free software, they are actually slowing down people coding on their own windows by not having proper API documentation and by having sub-standard, previous generation widgets in their visual studio (VS) software. In this way, any program made with this tool is immediately recognizable, and looks and feels less slick than their own stuff. A couple of years ago, I had to code an entire treeview to do exactly what explorer does. I don't think they do this at MS.
It was clear to me, it must be another way to slow down competition. Last time I wrote a line of code in windows, is a long time ago now, and it will probably stay that way.
that this has probably nothing to do with SUN SO being not free anymore? I think the people at Mandrake, saw that after their announce of money shortage, a lot of people suddenly subscribed to their club (like I did). Most of the people think $5 a month is enough, but hesitate about the $10 a month subscription.
Probably, a guy at Mandrake thought: "why not make it a little bit more attractive to go for the $10 option by introducing a difference (though with open office around, really only psychologically)". Maybe people will think: " uhmm... star office, what's next. You know what, I'll tick the $10 option."
I have worked with Discovery Link, it contains wrappers around heterogenous database sources, like Oracle, flat text files and tries to integrate everything into a single representation.
In life sciences data sources are huge and plentiful. This thing is a monster, it's slow and it needs lots of dedicated people integrating and maintaining it. I'm not even talking about the (IBM) hardware you need for this.
No, I'm a pragmatic guy. I will integrate on the fly whatever I need to know. The idea is nice and all, but it is unworkable at the moment.
Well my friend you have obviously been brainwashed. Did no one ever tell you there is no such thing as true altruism. If you believe so, you got some catching up to do. I suggest you start with the article, the other posts, Darwin and some Nietschze.
Yes Erlich, Pasteur and Koch (although I doubt you know what they achieved) were also just curious and had personal interests driving them (although much more came out of that).
If I was in need of a brain transplant, you would be the recipient, I'm afraid.
I do not agree with you for the following reasons:
Researchers spend a lot of time doing research. I spend 10 years in a small, dark lab, doing genetic research, becoming a total stranger to family and friends. Do you really think the benefit of mankind was driving me? (I like to tell this on parties, though.). It was more scientific interest and being appreciated (envied, in my wet dreams) by other scientists. Darn, I paid for it. You just contributed your 25 cents a year!.
Scientist are valued by publications and amounts of funds raised. All of these things require you to keep your information from falling into 'competitors' hands. If not, you perish. If being a scientist means you are not entitled to rewards, or being able to protect your work from the (huge and not-always-so-nice) competition then people will stay away from it. In this regard, it is completely unlike the OSS movement, where the reward is based on sharing your work with others (because there is no other way to be rewarded). Scientist who do important work, better protect it. There's a lot of people who would jump on the oppurtunity to 'use' someone elses work. It's not always sure that the inventor will be in the authorlist or acknowledgements.
Since players will be able to purchase items, how will cheating be dealt with, since it could involve real money?
We will do everything in our power to prevent cheating in Project Entropia. We have already constructed a system to prevent this. In the case of somebody still being able to cheat, we will close their account and engage legal proceedings against these persons in real life.
Yes, of course I made a little calculation error. However I could argue that you would need to encode information about the methylation of nucleotides as well. In this case you would need at least three bits per base pair, making it (pfew) about a gigabyte. bzip2-it, and yes it would fit on a CD-ROM (beats the complexity of an AOL-trial CD-ROM any time).
Well, I'm afraid that I do not agree with you. Not even from a technical point of view: the regulatory parts (enhancer, promoters) do not take up the rest of the genome (see pufferfish genome, which is a compact version of the mammalian one). It can even be in that 5%, which was a very high estimate for the protein coding part.
My point was that it doesn't take a lot to make extremely complex things. Even a bacteria that has a genome 1/100 the size of the human one is pretty complex.
And by the way don't believe the people that say that environment is an extremely important factor in human complexity. Like it or not, genetics is contributing far more. Chimpansees are not restrained from being able to read, because they grow up in a forest. Chimpansees share 99% of our genetic material. That is what I call efficient compression of information.
Say the human genome consists of 3.000.000.000 basepairs. There are 4 different basepairs (A,T,G and C). 5% of this is coding for protein. 1.500.000.000 basepairs. So a 1.5 Gb file is enough to encode an entire human being. I don't think 100:1 compression ratio is a lot.
Slashdot Mirror
I would rather have a DIVX hardware ENcoder. Something that allows you to rip^H^H^H make safety copies of you DVD collection in less time.
Come on give it try and install windows on it. Ooops it went just down from 40 teraflops to effectively 1 (the other 39 is probably used for IE).
97% of the Walmart computer buyers don't know what Mandrake Linux is, call a 'computer-literate' friend, who is very good with fdisk, and have it replaced by an illegal copy of windows within two days after the purchase.
I'm ancient. If you want to catch up with my IT knowledge you better start reading these books.
seems to have done OK in the IT business and wrote a nice book about it.
the road ahead
But if you cannot parallelize a problem that much, one fast computer solves a problem faster.
In bioinformatics, one of the more power-demanding applications of super computers, there are many problems that can not easily be split up in smaller independent pieces. 32-bit memory addressing is often a problem as well. Of course these problems can be circumvented, but in the end it all comes down to speed and not having to re-engineer complicated scientific code.
Ofcourse, in order to make a good impression on your new boss, you should know how to spell the word protein first.
I know, it is very difficult to do all the stuff above, without having a basic background in biology. There is always a need for sys admins, though. Many of these biotech have complicated heterogeneous computing facilities, which can be fun/challenging to manage.
Microsoft is not only afraid of free software, they are actually slowing down people coding on their own windows by not having proper API documentation and by having sub-standard, previous generation widgets in their visual studio (VS) software. In this way, any program made with this tool is immediately recognizable, and looks and feels less slick than their own stuff. A couple of years ago, I had to code an entire treeview to do exactly what explorer does. I don't think they do this at MS.
It was clear to me, it must be another way to slow down competition. Last time I wrote a line of code in windows, is a long time ago now, and it will probably stay that way.
Can anyone make a mirror in case it gets /.ted?
Does it dream of electric sheep?
Just some more details: the East India Company (M$ back than) was Dutch and was called de vereenigde oostindische companie.
And yes, they had a monopoly. If we could only 'pirate' the M$ offices in Redmond...
that this has probably nothing to do with SUN SO being not free anymore? I think the people at Mandrake, saw that after their announce of money shortage, a lot of people suddenly subscribed to their club (like I did). Most of the people think $5 a month is enough, but hesitate about the $10 a month subscription.
Probably, a guy at Mandrake thought: "why not make it a little bit more attractive to go for the $10 option by introducing a difference (though with open office around, really only psychologically)". Maybe people will think: " uhmm... star office, what's next. You know what, I'll tick the $10 option."
Would have worked for me. Too late for them now.
I have worked with Discovery Link, it contains wrappers around heterogenous database sources, like Oracle, flat text files and tries to integrate everything into a single representation.
In life sciences data sources are huge and plentiful. This thing is a monster, it's slow and it needs lots of dedicated people integrating and maintaining it. I'm not even talking about the (IBM) hardware you need for this.
No, I'm a pragmatic guy. I will integrate on the fly whatever I need to know. The idea is nice and all, but it is unworkable at the moment.
Well my friend you have obviously been brainwashed. Did no one ever tell you there is no such thing as true altruism. If you believe so, you got some catching up to do. I suggest you start with the article, the other posts, Darwin and some Nietschze.
Yes Erlich, Pasteur and Koch (although I doubt you know what they achieved) were also just curious and had personal interests driving them (although much more came out of that).
If I was in need of a brain transplant, you would be the recipient, I'm afraid.
I do not agree with you for the following reasons:
Researchers spend a lot of time doing research. I spend 10 years in a small, dark lab, doing genetic research, becoming a total stranger to family and friends. Do you really think the benefit of mankind was driving me? (I like to tell this on parties, though.). It was more scientific interest and being appreciated (envied, in my wet dreams) by other scientists. Darn, I paid for it. You just contributed your 25 cents a year!.
Scientist are valued by publications and amounts of funds raised. All of these things require you to keep your information from falling into 'competitors' hands. If not, you perish. If being a scientist means you are not entitled to rewards, or being able to protect your work from the (huge and not-always-so-nice) competition then people will stay away from it. In this regard, it is completely unlike the OSS movement, where the reward is based on sharing your work with others (because there is no other way to be rewarded). Scientist who do important work, better protect it. There's a lot of people who would jump on the oppurtunity to 'use' someone elses work. It's not always sure that the inventor will be in the authorlist or acknowledgements.
I can't share my opinion on genetic research data with you right now. I'm writing a business plan.
From this interview
with on of the developers.
Since players will be able to purchase items, how will cheating be dealt with, since it could involve real money?
We will do everything in our power to prevent cheating in Project Entropia. We have already constructed a system to prevent this. In the case of somebody still being able to cheat, we will close their account and engage legal proceedings against these persons in real life.
Interesting article about how it took two weeks to cheat this Dreamcast RPG.
Does anyone have any info on how secure this game will be? Can I add money to my account without paying?
Bet you, AOL is not gonna like this.
Would it not be cool to disconnect the display from the windows CE thingy, and hook it up to a regular PC?
I can imagine having two of these, playing RTCWolfenstein in 3 dimensions while lying in bed.
Yes, of course I made a little calculation error. However I could argue that you would need to encode information about the methylation of nucleotides as well. In this case you would need at least three bits per base pair, making it (pfew) about a gigabyte. bzip2-it, and yes it would fit on a CD-ROM (beats the complexity of an AOL-trial CD-ROM any time).
I know Dilbert used to be one of that sites.
Well, I'm afraid that I do not agree with you. Not even from a technical point of view: the regulatory parts (enhancer, promoters) do not take up the rest of the genome (see pufferfish genome, which is a compact version of the mammalian one). It can even be in that 5%, which was a very high estimate for the protein coding part.
My point was that it doesn't take a lot to make extremely complex things. Even a bacteria that has a genome 1/100 the size of the human one is pretty complex.
And by the way don't believe the people that say that environment is an extremely important factor in human complexity. Like it or not, genetics is contributing far more. Chimpansees are not restrained from being able to read, because they grow up in a forest. Chimpansees share 99% of our genetic material. That is what I call efficient compression of information.
Say the human genome consists of 3.000.000.000 basepairs. There are 4 different basepairs (A,T,G and C). 5% of this is coding for protein. 1.500.000.000 basepairs. So a 1.5 Gb file is enough to encode an entire human being. I don't think 100:1 compression ratio is a lot.