An interesting question could be can WINE be used to study virus like SirCam with a mimizing risk to the computer since its a "virtual" installation? Loosing one of your WINE installations can't nearly be as bad as loosing a real install. If the process goes run away it should be easy to kill it, erase the setup and reinstall.
Here is a chance for Bugzilla to take a quantum step beyond other bug tracking software. If any of the bugzilla maintainers are reading this please consider adding SOAP API to bugzilla as a neutral and independant way to manipulate bugzilla instalations. This way you can design any GUI you want while talking to the same server software.
It seems that usually the next step after designing a robust web server application platform is to somehow externalize functionality so that things that aren't web browsers can use it as well. Go for it Bugzilla!
The problem is that the SPL is a discriminatory license. Even though this license is pointed directly at those who try to take GFS work and make a product for profit around it, it is no better than saying "Those who are left handed must pay the licensing fee". If it is silly to require "left handed license fees", then why should people pay for "nearly free softare" because they aren't using it in a "free" manner?
What do they mean by "building a product from GFS"? If you looked at the code, gain some insight into networking from GFS, and use this knowledge to make a telnet client do you owe Sistina money? What happens if you are a contractor making a software solution internal to a private company that uses parts or all of GFS to do some of the work? Did the contractor just make a product they sold to the hiring company? Who is responsible for paying the license fee?
I really have a distaste for software that is "nearly free". The spirit of giving away software freely is that you give it to everyone not just a certain segement of the population.
This is definately newsworth to see a version of Windows ported to a 64 bit implementation. Nothing is as trivial as just porting the core/kernel. Just ask Sun how well Solaris 2.6 went.
This leads to a couple of side question: How are the Linux and BSD IA-64 ports doing? I heard something about both of them awhile back. Both camps reported stuff is going well with kernels and compilers running but then the news just died away. Anything new an interesting to report? I would be interested in how much bloat going to a pure 64 bit kernel actually is.
Didn't Intel claim that the Pentium is a 64 bit processor? Where are the 64 bit ports? *shock* Does this mean that Intel wasn't exactly truthful?:-)
Hurm...what really bothers me is that a bunch of people are saying "This is bad! Where is the modivation for pharma company to do R&D now?!"
I am way to young to know what polio was. My grandparents tell me it was a pretty scary thing but thanks to one guy and his research team polio is very preventable and contained. I was under the impression Jonas Salk did his research into polio vacines not because there was money to be had but because polio was a nasty crippling disease. I could be wrong though...
Is it too much to expect people to look in to the cure for AIDS because they think the world would be a better place without such a horrible thing around? Do people really have that much faith in big company's bottom lines to drive R&D to cure AIDS and other nasty disease?
After playing hours of Soul Calibur, DOA2, Tekken Tag, GT3 and some other video game its name I have forgotten at this point, I was about ready to fire up Tribe 2 when I thought about checkin Slashdot for some good news about Video Games to read this! AAAAARGG!
Kuhn's quote: However, programmers don't deserve any "rights" that infringe on the freedoms of others. Often in society, we decide that the right to act a certain way should be limited because it infringes on the freedom of others.
invenustus' quote: This is a path that leads to less freedom, not more, I fear. Yes, most of us believe that the government should intervene in acts of violence or acts that violate other people's rights to life or property. But Kuhn is implying here that proprietary software should be illegal, and that's dangerous....
You misunderstand. Making a license that puts *everyone* (users, creators, learners) on equal footing is the only way to be fair. This leads to more cooperation and more software and code that is free(as in bear and freedom) for everyone.
This "fear" of the GPL taking freedom and rights away from authors of code is bizare and unfounded. Why do authors instinctively want and think they deserve "more rights" than everyone else when it comes to the stuff they create to freely distribute? Trying to get more rights for a group of people takes away rights from all the rest.
The idea that one group can have more rights and more freedom over a thing that is Free is silly. That is more dangerous than you think. Its what keeps all of the players in close software like Microsoft in power.
Running away does not fix the issue(ie. a bad law was passed). I can't believe people even suggest this as a correct corse of action.
There are two common ways to change the laws in most places in the US and at the Federal level.
- Get the lawmakers to amend the law
- Have a high court over turn the law
I would rather have courts review the law, all the way up to the Supreme Court, than to have lawmakers muck around with this issue any more. If Sklyarov flees how can the issue be pushed? It is a risk that unfortunately only Sklyarov can face but if not him who and when? Letting this horribly bad law sit on the books any longer is as a bad an idea as telling Sklyarov to run for it.
Second off, if you are just an end user you don't have to give the BSD or GPL a second thought.
Thirdly if you are going to to tinker with the code, you have all the freedom any man/woman/child/whatever can have with a piece of GPL code. But this extends to everyone. Everyone is equally equal on the usage of GPL stuff. How much more freedom does anyone want?
You can read the code. You can learn from it(very important). You can modify it. You can put it in a blender and make a nutrious shake to make you loose weight and feel great. What every you feel is good for you.
As for this myth that Stallman/FSF/anyone else is going to beat you with the GPL stick if you don't release code upon immediately changing is all BS.
Anyone can take any GPL stuff modify to suite their needs and never need to release their changes back to anyone. Its nice to return code back to the hardworking authors(like bug fixes) but other things are meanless(like idiosyncratic stuff). Why does anyone need to know how my Linux kernel has been modified with some beta driver?
The only time you are forced to release changes back for GPL stuff is one "publish" it again. For instance I can't tinker with a GPL "Beta Video Driver 0.1" and then turn around and publish it on the web page in binary form only as "My Video Driver 1.0". That is a giant no-no.
Why would you anyway...it serves no purpose and robs the authors who worked under the GPL agreement of their rights.
Almost all of Linux and BSD was written simply because there was a giagantic need to have a flexible OS freely available and no software around to fill the void. People got together and wrote it because who else but them was going to?
These days there is still that kind of modivation present(ie. someone releases new hardware someone has to write a driver for it or its just dead weight in the box). But also present is the tinkering and experimentation. Do you want to experiment with different scheduling methods in the kernel? Go for it! Did you hear about some wacky advanced method for heap walk allocation and want to implement it? Go for it! Where else are you going to try this on? Windows? Bwahahahah! ^_^
Imagine in how a bunch of people where saying "the phone system that is out there isn't friendly and profitable to business so we need to change it!" Any company that steps out in pulbic and claims this is nutty and so is trying to the same thing to the Internet.
Companies need to stop treating the Internet like content controled media like TV and Radio. It might be possible for things like AOL and MSN but out on the open Internet? Thats as crazy as checking everyone's phone to make sure they aren't talking about how to download "illegal" mp3s.
You can make money on the Internet just not the easy way these guys want it to be.
Offtopic But Core Ethical Question The Same
on
The Immortal Cell
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· Score: 2
You are right...its not strictly about patents but the fact that people have been using "stuff" from *other people* for "fun and profit" even though it might not be intended that way.
That is a big ethical question in my mind that directly effects gene patents and that is what the article is about. Does US law really want parts of people to exist in perpatuity? Right now once something leaves your body who ever stores can "own" it forever.
As for other information take a look at
this article. Its the old story of John Moore who underwent treatment for cancer at UCLA. The doctors there found something unusual in his spleen that fought off the cancer. They took samples, made a patent, and basically made money. Moore's cells are worth a lot of money, probably worth more than any life insurance policy that Moore could get for himself. Besides he hasn't gotten much credit beyond just living.
This article shows some anicetoded stuff. Stuff from companies rediculously overcharging just to test for a gene that causes life threatening problems(just the test...not even close to a cure) to limitations on the number of tests per year in the hopes they can get a profitable business deal out of it.
Lets say you are a university researcher(you claim to be) and you want to do a study genes and breast cancer. Oops! You can't do that because according to Myriad Genetics, which holds a bunch of patents on genes responsible for breast cancer, they control that stuff. Heck even with express permission from Myriad a reasearch must run the test the way Myriad Genetics perscribes otherwise you risk going to court(ie. discovering a better test on their patented genes is a big no-no). How many mutations are possible on the same set of genes that may or may not cause cancer? Millions and yet Myriad Genetics controls every facet of anything to do with "genes" and "breast cancer".
You can't do research into why there are different shades of blue eyes or why men go bald even why some people sunburn badly. Hurm...I didn't realize that we needed to defend information on why some eyes are sky blue and others are more blue green. I really do believe this approach and this insane race to patent genes will cripple research. How many projects had to be scrapped because they by accident stumbled into a gene someone patented and couldn't get or afford permission to continue work?
I did get off topic but the core ethical questions is the same: the right of anyone to control their own biology. Does discovering the cure to everything that makes you ill really have to involve stomping on privacy?
Yet Another Reason Why US Patent Law Is Broken
on
The Immortal Cell
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· Score: 2
This story isn't unique. People have come forward to hospitals saying "I should be dead but I've developed an honest resistence to [nasty disease]". Doctors run said person's blood and other private bodily fluids off to some lab somewhere, make patents, write papers, and get famous while the original people who were honestly trying to selflessly save the lives of others is completely left out(although these days I don't doubt that others might not be so high minded).
I remember reading that one said person said that the money wasn't important. Its the fact that big pharma companies turned a completely selfless and charitable action into a big money, unquestionably defensable patent that irritated the hell out of him.
Any law that make it illegal to check your body, the most private property on the face of the planet, is inherrantly wrong! Why do we continue to let these pharma companies do this? They claim "..it costs money to do gene research blah blah blah.." but neglect the fact that its stomping all over the rights of everyone out there just to make a buck.
Subtile Sexual References
on
Joy of Linux
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· Score: 3
It is plainly obvious that the title and chapter titles of the book are referenced to sex and the book "Joy of Sex". The last part, Part III "GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE" is espeically sneaky about its sexual references.;-)
This has been floating around for awhile. A Kajishima (the guy who originally came up with Tenchi) interview put up on AIC's web page a while ago said in not so offical words that he was ready and wanted to do a 3rd OAV. This is just the offical icing on the cake. ^_^
In any events here is a little run down on why a 3rd OAV is need to tie up loose ends in OAV lines.
- Who are these 3 Goddess: Washu, Tsunami, and Tokimi? Why are they so interesting in our universe?
- Obviously Tenchi and Ryoko are special and critical to what ever is to come. They can generate LHW(Light Hawk Wings...what a bizzare term that just can't be translated ^_^) because Tsuanmi and Washu gave them that ability. Where is Tokimi's "avatar"?
*picks up the Magic 8 Ball(tm)* Tokimi's choosen is probably a girl. I'm sure that will make Tenchi nervious. ^_^
- Either Mihoshi is the luckiest person in the universe or the smartest. Which one is it? ^_^ There is something paculiar about her past...hurm...
- What is in store for Sasami? What is Tsunami's true modivations? Washu isn't so covert but then again it appears she might be missing some memories or something.
- Will Ryo-ohki like sauteed carrots? Okay this one isn't so critical but it might turn out to be. ^_^
Some people may think "Whoppie...what the world needs now is another Tenchi series?" Yes it does! The story was designed to leave elements open and mysteries to be solved later. A 3rd OAV if done with Kajishima's touch will bring back the wonder in the 1st OAV with a sane conclusion (hopefully ^_^).
Something has frozen over because I would have bet real money that although COWBOY BEBOP is probably one of the most influential Anime to have been released in the last 5 years, there was no possible way that it could get released on the ever popular Toonami!!!
The reason is that its just to "adult" for Toonami to handle. The Big 3(sex, drugs, and violence) are all in full force in COWBOY BEBOP which would make any one who censors squirm.
Cartoon Network/Toonami has chopped up shows that have had far less of the Big 3 than Coboy Bebop to make them presentable on their network. There are some episodes that have so much "questionable material" how much is going to be left to air?
I can't recommend COWBOY BEBOP to enough people whether they are Anime fans or not. On the other hand I'm not sure if I can recommend watching a very heavily modified verson that is more concerned with being presentable than persenting what was originally intended.
From time and memorial of console gaming, gadgets and nifty peripherals have traditionally been bombs. There are a few exceptions where a very popular game is so inherantly tied to the peripheral that playing it without just isn't playing the game(think gun games, DDR). Heck the keyboard for Dreamcast was a washout until PSO came along.
So while its nice to have a harddrive on your PS2 people are not going get it just to have a harddrive on your PS2. They need to have a "killer app" that does a "gee wiz I'm glad I have this thingy".
Mono because its for Monopoly, or the viral disease, or a forgien language for monkey. Just tack on.ORG and you have the ultimate head scratching inside project joke name!;-)
Antiquated hardware? Antiquated software? Place have stuff like this on both sides of the Pacific but to label all of Japan as "The Land That Time Forget" for technology is wrong. After all where do almost all of the driving force for video games come from? Where have almost all of the ground breaking advancements in game/console software and hardware come from? Japan! The PS2 and Gamecube are certainly not Atari 2600.
GLP and BSD licenses only apply to those who code not those who use the software in the end. So if you never have any aspirations of modifying the code you really don't have to wrestle with any of the licensing stuff going on here (Open vs Closed) or there (GPL vs BSD).
The reason why Microsoft's "Shared Source" License is completely unfair is that is a "look but don't touch". The value of having the source is negated since you are unable to change it to suite your needs.
In the end both the GPL and BSD want to provide the coolest running software they can use. Its so unfortunate that fanatics on both sides are so hardline against each other when in the end both really want to make the coolest software possible.
If they were really serious about spreading.NET stuff out to as many platforms as possible they would just come out and say "We'll provide the CLI and C# compilers on numberous platforms for free: Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac, etc."
Instead they are trying to play up some marketing sidestep from their previous hostile statements. Instead of offering the olive branch they come with gold bars for a select few and try to make it seem like a "peace offering".
You don't need to give away the source to have a successful development platform(heck...Windows is a prime example of this). Why bother "sharing away the source" now unless one thinks there will be big fanfaire and accolades that go along with it?
Another interesting aspect to this is how will the BSD(specifically the FreeBSD) community handle this? Will they embrace it or turn it away? Beats me...it always seemed to me the point of BSD and its license isn't necessarily to foster a community growth/improvement but to get people to use cool free stuff.
Why spend all of this money to if life might exist on Jovian moons?
General advancement of chemical science. So far our only frame of reference for life is energy from the Sun + water + minerals. It is possible that something exists there that doesn't follow this chemical chain. Who knows what radically different chemistry can do?
Advancement in communications. Tracking and communicating with something that takes more than an hour to talk to isn't easy. Also sending a message back isn't exactly trivial either. Improvements in this can help improve your cell phone coverage.
Advancement in hardened semiconductors, stuff necessary to survive the huge and intense electromagnetic field that surrounds Jupiter can make stable computer parts. Not to mention power is a premium on a robot like that. Building hardened low power electronics can have applications for things where we can't afford failure(think air planes).
Its dark out there. You can't just strap a Handicam on the side of it and expect to get a decent picture. Improved techniques for taking pictures in low light might help make better digitial cameras for us here.
How about just for the sake of **doing it**? Yes we have problems here. Throwing more money at them might fix things. But you know what? Money doesn't fix everything either.
...(the previous posted topic)companies that want to make a profit are supposed to stay the hell away from GPL code. Go figure.
In 100 Words Or Less Describe ABI
on
GCC 3.0 Released
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· Score: 2
From my lazy and half hearted poking around GCC's web page I didn't find information on ABI let alone why it is important to put in the compiler/compiled binaries. So what is ABI and why should people using the 3.0 compiler care?
The server appears to be slashdotted. Time to make up conversation while it recovers. ^_^
Reguardless of whether your system/OS has multiple processors or can handle multiple process execution, writing your code to be multithreaded might be a good design choice. If nothing else it forces and enforces abstraction and "compartementalize" of the design and code.
The one huge draw back to writting code that is multithreaded is the syntax baggage you must carry around and use to keep the system sane. Even in thread friendly languages Java where the language semantics try to help users write clean multithreaded code its still a non-trival thing to support. Bug can be very obscure and extremely non trival to solve in multithreaded code not to mention tools can become cumbersome(which stack am I asking for the value of "counter" on?).
Its too bad that writing threaded code is still considered to be an "advanced coding skill".
Slashdot Mirror
An interesting question could be can WINE be used to study virus like SirCam with a mimizing risk to the computer since its a "virtual" installation? Loosing one of your WINE installations can't nearly be as bad as loosing a real install. If the process goes run away it should be easy to kill it, erase the setup and reinstall.
Here is a chance for Bugzilla to take a quantum step beyond other bug tracking software. If any of the bugzilla maintainers are reading this please consider adding SOAP API to bugzilla as a neutral and independant way to manipulate bugzilla instalations. This way you can design any GUI you want while talking to the same server software.
It seems that usually the next step after designing a robust web server application platform is to somehow externalize functionality so that things that aren't web browsers can use it as well. Go for it Bugzilla!
The problem is that the SPL is a discriminatory license. Even though this license is pointed directly at those who try to take GFS work and make a product for profit around it, it is no better than saying "Those who are left handed must pay the licensing fee". If it is silly to require "left handed license fees", then why should people pay for "nearly free softare" because they aren't using it in a "free" manner?
What do they mean by "building a product from GFS"? If you looked at the code, gain some insight into networking from GFS, and use this knowledge to make a telnet client do you owe Sistina money? What happens if you are a contractor making a software solution internal to a private company that uses parts or all of GFS to do some of the work? Did the contractor just make a product they sold to the hiring company? Who is responsible for paying the license fee?
I really have a distaste for software that is "nearly free". The spirit of giving away software freely is that you give it to everyone not just a certain segement of the population.
This is definately newsworth to see a version of Windows ported to a 64 bit implementation. Nothing is as trivial as just porting the core/kernel. Just ask Sun how well Solaris 2.6 went.
:-)
This leads to a couple of side question: How are the Linux and BSD IA-64 ports doing? I heard something about both of them awhile back. Both camps reported stuff is going well with kernels and compilers running but then the news just died away. Anything new an interesting to report? I would be interested in how much bloat going to a pure 64 bit kernel actually is.
Didn't Intel claim that the Pentium is a 64 bit processor? Where are the 64 bit ports? *shock* Does this mean that Intel wasn't exactly truthful?
Hurm...what really bothers me is that a bunch of people are saying "This is bad! Where is the modivation for pharma company to do R&D now?!"
I am way to young to know what polio was. My grandparents tell me it was a pretty scary thing but thanks to one guy and his research team polio is very preventable and contained. I was under the impression Jonas Salk did his research into polio vacines not because there was money to be had but because polio was a nasty crippling disease. I could be wrong though...
Is it too much to expect people to look in to the cure for AIDS because they think the world would be a better place without such a horrible thing around? Do people really have that much faith in big company's bottom lines to drive R&D to cure AIDS and other nasty disease?
After playing hours of Soul Calibur, DOA2, Tekken Tag, GT3 and some other video game its name I have forgotten at this point, I was about ready to fire up Tribe 2 when I thought about checkin Slashdot for some good news about Video Games to read this! AAAAARGG!
NEED TO DESTROY RISING!
Kuhn's quote: However, programmers don't deserve any "rights" that infringe on the freedoms of others. Often in society, we decide that the right to act a certain way should be limited because it infringes on the freedom of others.
invenustus' quote: This is a path that leads to less freedom, not more, I fear. Yes, most of us believe that the government should intervene in acts of violence or acts that violate other people's rights to life or property. But Kuhn is implying here that proprietary software should be illegal, and that's dangerous....
You misunderstand. Making a license that puts *everyone* (users, creators, learners) on equal footing is the only way to be fair. This leads to more cooperation and more software and code that is free(as in bear and freedom) for everyone.
This "fear" of the GPL taking freedom and rights away from authors of code is bizare and unfounded. Why do authors instinctively want and think they deserve "more rights" than everyone else when it comes to the stuff they create to freely distribute? Trying to get more rights for a group of people takes away rights from all the rest.
The idea that one group can have more rights and more freedom over a thing that is Free is silly. That is more dangerous than you think. Its what keeps all of the players in close software like Microsoft in power.
Running away does not fix the issue(ie. a bad law was passed). I can't believe people even suggest this as a correct corse of action.
There are two common ways to change the laws in most places in the US and at the Federal level.
- Get the lawmakers to amend the law
- Have a high court over turn the law
I would rather have courts review the law, all the way up to the Supreme Court, than to have lawmakers muck around with this issue any more. If Sklyarov flees how can the issue be pushed? It is a risk that unfortunately only Sklyarov can face but if not him who and when? Letting this horribly bad law sit on the books any longer is as a bad an idea as telling Sklyarov to run for it.
First off read the license. It never says that.
Second off, if you are just an end user you don't have to give the BSD or GPL a second thought.
Thirdly if you are going to to tinker with the code, you have all the freedom any man/woman/child/whatever can have with a piece of GPL code. But this extends to everyone. Everyone is equally equal on the usage of GPL stuff. How much more freedom does anyone want?
You can read the code. You can learn from it(very important). You can modify it. You can put it in a blender and make a nutrious shake to make you loose weight and feel great. What every you feel is good for you.
As for this myth that Stallman/FSF/anyone else is going to beat you with the GPL stick if you don't release code upon immediately changing is all BS.
Anyone can take any GPL stuff modify to suite their needs and never need to release their changes back to anyone. Its nice to return code back to the hardworking authors(like bug fixes) but other things are meanless(like idiosyncratic stuff). Why does anyone need to know how my Linux kernel has been modified with some beta driver?
The only time you are forced to release changes back for GPL stuff is one "publish" it again. For instance I can't tinker with a GPL "Beta Video Driver 0.1" and then turn around and publish it on the web page in binary form only as "My Video Driver 1.0". That is a giant no-no.
Why would you anyway...it serves no purpose and robs the authors who worked under the GPL agreement of their rights.
Almost all of Linux and BSD was written simply because there was a giagantic need to have a flexible OS freely available and no software around to fill the void. People got together and wrote it because who else but them was going to?
These days there is still that kind of modivation present(ie. someone releases new hardware someone has to write a driver for it or its just dead weight in the box). But also present is the tinkering and experimentation. Do you want to experiment with different scheduling methods in the kernel? Go for it! Did you hear about some wacky advanced method for heap walk allocation and want to implement it? Go for it! Where else are you going to try this on? Windows? Bwahahahah! ^_^
Imagine in how a bunch of people where saying "the phone system that is out there isn't friendly and profitable to business so we need to change it!" Any company that steps out in pulbic and claims this is nutty and so is trying to the same thing to the Internet.
Companies need to stop treating the Internet like content controled media like TV and Radio. It might be possible for things like AOL and MSN but out on the open Internet? Thats as crazy as checking everyone's phone to make sure they aren't talking about how to download "illegal" mp3s.
You can make money on the Internet just not the easy way these guys want it to be.
You are right...its not strictly about patents but the fact that people have been using "stuff" from *other people* for "fun and profit" even though it might not be intended that way.
That is a big ethical question in my mind that directly effects gene patents and that is what the article is about. Does US law really want parts of people to exist in perpatuity? Right now once something leaves your body who ever stores can "own" it forever.
As for other information take a look at
this article. Its the old story of John Moore who underwent treatment for cancer at UCLA. The doctors there found something unusual in his spleen that fought off the cancer. They took samples, made a patent, and basically made money. Moore's cells are worth a lot of money, probably worth more than any life insurance policy that Moore could get for himself. Besides he hasn't gotten much credit beyond just living.
This article shows some anicetoded stuff. Stuff from companies rediculously overcharging just to test for a gene that causes life threatening problems(just the test...not even close to a cure) to limitations on the number of tests per year in the hopes they can get a profitable business deal out of it.
Lets say you are a university researcher(you claim to be) and you want to do a study genes and breast cancer. Oops! You can't do that because according to Myriad Genetics, which holds a bunch of patents on genes responsible for breast cancer, they control that stuff. Heck even with express permission from Myriad a reasearch must run the test the way Myriad Genetics perscribes otherwise you risk going to court(ie. discovering a better test on their patented genes is a big no-no). How many mutations are possible on the same set of genes that may or may not cause cancer? Millions and yet Myriad Genetics controls every facet of anything to do with "genes" and "breast cancer".
You can't do research into why there are different shades of blue eyes or why men go bald even why some people sunburn badly. Hurm...I didn't realize that we needed to defend information on why some eyes are sky blue and others are more blue green. I really do believe this approach and this insane race to patent genes will cripple research. How many projects had to be scrapped because they by accident stumbled into a gene someone patented and couldn't get or afford permission to continue work?
I did get off topic but the core ethical questions is the same: the right of anyone to control their own biology. Does discovering the cure to everything that makes you ill really have to involve stomping on privacy?
This story isn't unique. People have come forward to hospitals saying "I should be dead but I've developed an honest resistence to [nasty disease]". Doctors run said person's blood and other private bodily fluids off to some lab somewhere, make patents, write papers, and get famous while the original people who were honestly trying to selflessly save the lives of others is completely left out(although these days I don't doubt that others might not be so high minded).
I remember reading that one said person said that the money wasn't important. Its the fact that big pharma companies turned a completely selfless and charitable action into a big money, unquestionably defensable patent that irritated the hell out of him.
Any law that make it illegal to check your body, the most private property on the face of the planet, is inherrantly wrong! Why do we continue to let these pharma companies do this? They claim "..it costs money to do gene research blah blah blah.." but neglect the fact that its stomping all over the rights of everyone out there just to make a buck.
It is plainly obvious that the title and chapter titles of the book are referenced to sex and the book "Joy of Sex". The last part, Part III "GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE" is espeically sneaky about its sexual references. ;-)
This has been floating around for awhile. A Kajishima (the guy who originally came up with Tenchi) interview put up on AIC's web page a while ago said in not so offical words that he was ready and wanted to do a 3rd OAV. This is just the offical icing on the cake. ^_^
In any events here is a little run down on why a 3rd OAV is need to tie up loose ends in OAV lines.
- Who are these 3 Goddess: Washu, Tsunami, and Tokimi? Why are they so interesting in our universe?
- Obviously Tenchi and Ryoko are special and critical to what ever is to come. They can generate LHW(Light Hawk Wings...what a bizzare term that just can't be translated ^_^) because Tsuanmi and Washu gave them that ability. Where is Tokimi's "avatar"?
*picks up the Magic 8 Ball(tm)* Tokimi's choosen is probably a girl. I'm sure that will make Tenchi nervious. ^_^
- Either Mihoshi is the luckiest person in the universe or the smartest. Which one is it? ^_^ There is something paculiar about her past...hurm...
- What is in store for Sasami? What is Tsunami's true modivations? Washu isn't so covert but then again it appears she might be missing some memories or something.
- Will Ryo-ohki like sauteed carrots? Okay this one isn't so critical but it might turn out to be. ^_^
Some people may think "Whoppie...what the world needs now is another Tenchi series?" Yes it does! The story was designed to leave elements open and mysteries to be solved later. A 3rd OAV if done with Kajishima's touch will bring back the wonder in the 1st OAV with a sane conclusion (hopefully ^_^).
Something has frozen over because I would have bet real money that although COWBOY BEBOP is probably one of the most influential Anime to have been released in the last 5 years, there was no possible way that it could get released on the ever popular Toonami!!!
The reason is that its just to "adult" for Toonami to handle. The Big 3(sex, drugs, and violence) are all in full force in COWBOY BEBOP which would make any one who censors squirm.
Cartoon Network/Toonami has chopped up shows that have had far less of the Big 3 than Coboy Bebop to make them presentable on their network. There are some episodes that have so much "questionable material" how much is going to be left to air?
I can't recommend COWBOY BEBOP to enough people whether they are Anime fans or not. On the other hand I'm not sure if I can recommend watching a very heavily modified verson that is more concerned with being presentable than persenting what was originally intended.
From time and memorial of console gaming, gadgets and nifty peripherals have traditionally been bombs. There are a few exceptions where a very popular game is so inherantly tied to the peripheral that playing it without just isn't playing the game(think gun games, DDR). Heck the keyboard for Dreamcast was a washout until PSO came along.
So while its nice to have a harddrive on your PS2 people are not going get it just to have a harddrive on your PS2. They need to have a "killer app" that does a "gee wiz I'm glad I have this thingy".
Mono because its for Monopoly, or the viral disease, or a forgien language for monkey. Just tack on .ORG and you have the ultimate head scratching inside project joke name! ;-)
Antiquated hardware? Antiquated software? Place have stuff like this on both sides of the Pacific but to label all of Japan as "The Land That Time Forget" for technology is wrong. After all where do almost all of the driving force for video games come from? Where have almost all of the ground breaking advancements in game/console software and hardware come from? Japan! The PS2 and Gamecube are certainly not Atari 2600.
GLP and BSD licenses only apply to those who code not those who use the software in the end. So if you never have any aspirations of modifying the code you really don't have to wrestle with any of the licensing stuff going on here (Open vs Closed) or there (GPL vs BSD).
The reason why Microsoft's "Shared Source" License is completely unfair is that is a "look but don't touch". The value of having the source is negated since you are unable to change it to suite your needs.
In the end both the GPL and BSD want to provide the coolest running software they can use. Its so unfortunate that fanatics on both sides are so hardline against each other when in the end both really want to make the coolest software possible.
If they were really serious about spreading .NET stuff out to as many platforms as possible they would just come out and say "We'll provide the CLI and C# compilers on numberous platforms for free: Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac, etc."
Instead they are trying to play up some marketing sidestep from their previous hostile statements. Instead of offering the olive branch they come with gold bars for a select few and try to make it seem like a "peace offering".
You don't need to give away the source to have a successful development platform(heck...Windows is a prime example of this). Why bother "sharing away the source" now unless one thinks there will be big fanfaire and accolades that go along with it?
Another interesting aspect to this is how will the BSD(specifically the FreeBSD) community handle this? Will they embrace it or turn it away? Beats me...it always seemed to me the point of BSD and its license isn't necessarily to foster a community growth/improvement but to get people to use cool free stuff.
Why spend all of this money to if life might exist on Jovian moons?
General advancement of chemical science. So far our only frame of reference for life is energy from the Sun + water + minerals. It is possible that something exists there that doesn't follow this chemical chain. Who knows what radically different chemistry can do?
Advancement in communications. Tracking and communicating with something that takes more than an hour to talk to isn't easy. Also sending a message back isn't exactly trivial either. Improvements in this can help improve your cell phone coverage.
Advancement in hardened semiconductors, stuff necessary to survive the huge and intense electromagnetic field that surrounds Jupiter can make stable computer parts. Not to mention power is a premium on a robot like that. Building hardened low power electronics can have applications for things where we can't afford failure(think air planes).
Its dark out there. You can't just strap a Handicam on the side of it and expect to get a decent picture. Improved techniques for taking pictures in low light might help make better digitial cameras for us here.
How about just for the sake of **doing it**? Yes we have problems here. Throwing more money at them might fix things. But you know what? Money doesn't fix everything either.
...(the previous posted topic)companies that want to make a profit are supposed to stay the hell away from GPL code. Go figure.
From my lazy and half hearted poking around GCC's web page I didn't find information on ABI let alone why it is important to put in the compiler/compiled binaries. So what is ABI and why should people using the 3.0 compiler care?
The server appears to be slashdotted. Time to make up conversation while it recovers. ^_^
Reguardless of whether your system/OS has multiple processors or can handle multiple process execution, writing your code to be multithreaded might be a good design choice. If nothing else it forces and enforces abstraction and "compartementalize" of the design and code.
The one huge draw back to writting code that is multithreaded is the syntax baggage you must carry around and use to keep the system sane. Even in thread friendly languages Java where the language semantics try to help users write clean multithreaded code its still a non-trival thing to support. Bug can be very obscure and extremely non trival to solve in multithreaded code not to mention tools can become cumbersome(which stack am I asking for the value of "counter" on?).
Its too bad that writing threaded code is still considered to be an "advanced coding skill".