Does anyone have instructions on how to get the rage128 running with DRI? I've got it running with software rendering, but I'd love to have some zip so I can install Q3:-) Thanks.
Of course, it does raise that issue, but the reality of it is that people aren't going to go about chucking a kid for parts. One thing that I forsee in the future in cases like this is more along the lines of gene therapy and genetic screening. There's already a lot of screening being done for Taysach's disease (spelling, anyone?) and the like. That's where the real benefit comes in, so you don't have to go about even thinking of having a child for "spare parts."
The problem is, as you say, drawing the line. But how do you actually do that? Unfortunately, even in your argument you can see the difficulty in separating "medical" from "personal." After all, couldn't resistance to disease be classified as either?
If the child was screened for, say, color-blindness, then how is this wrong? How does dealing with color-blindness help someone? Granted, diversity is necessary (although the simple nature of DNA will take care of that just fine) but why does having the gene for color blindness help a man or even mankind? After all, it seems to me that color blindness can't help anyone, but remains so common simply because it doesn't hurt your chances of reproductive success very much to have the trait.
Now, I'm not trying to say that we should screen out color blindness in embryos at all. On the contrary, I think that people shouldn't have their embryos screened unless there is a history of some genetic disease (the "medical" reasons you refer to) but I think it's truly hard to actually say to a person "No, you can't have your child screened for color blindness because it's morally wrong!" Why is it wrong? I really can't say for sure. That's what makes the whole thing so difficult.
The important thing here is for the parents to make the boy feel loved, so that it isn't an issue of who loves who more, but whether or not he is loved, which is the parents' job in the end, not the kids'.
While this could cause problems for the boy down the line, the damage could be minimalized or even non-existent if the parents truly love the boy, and treat him like they love him just as they would treat the daughter.
This problem doesn't have anything to do with genetic screening, but simple affection and genuine universal parenting problems. Witness middle child syndrome, where in a family of three, the middle child feels that the oldest gets all the privledges while the youngest is the baby, and the middle one feels rejected. This isn't about genetics but parenting, and if the parents truly love the boy, then this issue will be moot.
I think this is a wonderful thing personally. Not only does genetic screening save their next child from having anemia (and I assume other major genetic disorders) but it also allows them to save the life of their other child.
The moralists may contend that it's unethical to bring a child in to the world simply for parts, but that isn't really what happened here. They wanted a healthy child, and the ability to save their other child doesn't mean that they won't love or care for the baby as well. This is just one of those things that really makes me proud to be a student of biology, because we're actually seeing the benefits of all of this, and there are many more to come. Despite all the scares and potential for wrongdoing, the ability to save a child from leukemia with a birth is worth all the scares from the moralists.
So why is it that they can avoid distributing the Solaris source? I haven't looked at the tool itself, but if it has to alter the source don't they have to distribute that as well?
And if it just compiles all the changes at runtime without altering the code, then how is RMS going to change this GPL 3?
Perhaps a better example of a bazaar is UNIX itself. It forked from UNIX to BSD and then to Solaris (which came back to SysV) and now Linux has taken it by storm because it's considered the best option by a large community. No one talks about the "glory days of UNIX fragmentation" though, which gives a lot of weight to Connel's argument.
So what does this say about GNOME security? Realistically, with all the debate we've been hearing about GNOME vs. KDE, is GNOME going to be as vulnerable to these kind of component based bugs as MS stuff? I mean, we keep hearing Miguel praise MS and the component model idea, but will it just create more problems? And if so, would there be any way to really provide a lot of background security for each component?
I don't use GNOME, but I happen to like it, and I would really like to see them be a secure desktop and not fall prey to the kind of attacks that we all know and love in Windows;-)
Who knows? I bet if they do bring out a handheld aol linux client they may just do it for regular linux.
I'd personally love it if they did bring it out. It'd be a sad binary-only release, and, if they follow their current pattern there'd be no.debs, which sucks big time. But it would be one more step in bringing linux to the desktop.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards." - Marcin
Why should you be limited to make files for this reason? Man pages often tell you exactly what files are related to a piece of software, and debian lets you tell exactly what files were installed where by what package. Plus, there's the added benefit of having all this nicely logged without having to go through each directory by hand and cleaning up if you want to delete something. While I'm not trying to bash makefiles, they're not the end all, and the ease provided by a package is usually worthwhile for many people.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards." - Marcin
I don't think this is a fair claim. All science is limited by the evidence at hand. Neuroscientists looked very very hard for things like regrowth of cells, only they simply didn't have the evidence to support that they can regenerate. The major foundation of science is that you can't make a real claim without some evidence to back it up and they simply never had the evidence to say these things. There was never evidence to show that glial cells could potentially support communication rather than just insulate (which is a critical function in itself, precluding the need for the cells to facilitate communication directly) and now there is.
Science marches on. You don't know something. You look some more and you learn something. That's how it works. Can you honestly say that physicists didn't make any assumptions when they claimed Newton's Laws were absolute? They didnt' because there was no evidence to contradict it until Einstein came along and said it was relative. Don't blame science for its self imposed limitations, because that's what makes it work.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards." - Marcin
No, this can't use quantum computing for the simple reason that they are on totally different scales. This uses chemical triggers (i.e. calcium ions) to stimulate the neurons. Quantum computers use electrons in different spin flip states to do things that simply can't be done in the regular non-quantum world, such as speed of light calculations. You can't do that with chemical transport because it relies on diffusion gradients to trigger an action potential.
It's not really thought that the brain uses quantum computing, but rather massively parallel computing to do its work. This is that tactic taken by researchers of chemical computers. This doesn't really change the idea. What it does mean is two things that I see:
The potential to find the cause of many forms of mental illness, as the wrong neurons could be stimulated due to misfunctioning glial cells.
An increased potential for the massively parallel computing model for the brain. This provides extra dimensions for a brain to process information, making it more likely that this model is correct.
All in all, this is pretty cool, although it might not mean anything. Just because you can get the cells to trigger neurons by making thenm release calcium doesn't mean they do this normally. All cells have calcium ions in them, the question is do the glial cells release them under normal conditions? That's what really needs to be investigated at this point.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards." - Marcin
I know it's kinda late, but I just had to reply to this one... As a former Mac fanatic and one who currently works on a Mac, I've got to say that this is the biggest load of crap that Steve Jobs ever threw at us. A computer can be beautiful, and it can be elegant, but that is not its purpose! Macs are pretty but they are an absolute pain in the butt sometimes, as are the users.
I bought in to the whole "rebellious individual" myth that Jobs loved to spew when hocking the Mac, but when you look at it just how much of an individual are you? An individual is defined by his uniqueness, and while you may have a bondi-blue chassis, you all have the same stupid software with the same crappy options on the inside. Example: Simpletext can't open big text files ("This document is too large to be opened by simpletext.") Why does it have this limit? Does simpletext really need some stupid dinky file size limit? Not really, but they built it in and you can't change anything there. So you use another text editor, but getting it to open it automatically requires altering each and every text file's creator code for the new app. That requires ResEdit (or a nifty droplet if you're so inclined) but there goes your user friendliness out the window simply because they hid a bunch of stuff.
Sure, the command line is ugly (although I think the look of the transparent terms alone got me to switch from Mac) it's damned effective. And if you want to put yourself up on a pedestal because you bought a new iMac and paid exorbant amounts of money for it, then be my guest. But that doesn't make you any more avante-garde than any of the other "legions of Mac Faithful" that all choose to use the same default OS theme and give up complete control of the machine to someone else.
If Mac users who want to really be "artistic rebels" then they can go and make their own rebellion by working on software that they actually want. If they are such a wonderfully avante-garde community with all this rebellious artistic insight, then perhaps they can take control of their own experience rather than let Steve Jobs and his iCronies hand the experience to them. True rebellion takes action. True art takes work. By stunting the user experience for the sake of simplicity, the Mac retards opportunity for both.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards." - Marcin
Your argument only goes so far. The reason free software is better than non-free is because it is protected. If freedom is not protected, then anyone can come in and take advantage of your freedom and abuse it. Software needs to be free, like speech, not really because it is better in a sense that the software is inherently better, but because it keeps any central authority from lording power over all the rest of us. The great thing about Linux coming of age for instance, is that suddenly no one is inherently under the tight fist of Microsoft or Apple any more. It's not simply that the software is "better" (in many ways it's not) but that I, as a user, am totally free to use it without any real restrictions.
However, if freedom isn't protected, as is the case with Microsoft's "embrace and extend" policies, then suddenly we are once again under the iron fist of corporations that don't give a crap about the user except to move more product. What you are saying, is that we give up our freedom and go back to complete anarchy. It's akin to stepping back to Adam Smith's Invisible Hand system of economics after the Great Depression. Such complete freedom without protection doesn't work, becuase the overwhelming force will be towards those in power, and they will win if we don't protect our freedom now that we've got it.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards." - Marcin
Ok, I meant ORB is the underpinning of Gnome, and I know they want Bonobo to be a standard part of the system once it's all done. While it does run fine without bonobo, what about all the Gnome apps that will make use of it, and possibly require it in the future?
"I may not have morals, but I have standards." - Marcin
So what about ORB and Bonobo? These aren't exactly lightweigts. And these are really the underpinnings of Gnome, so are they going too? Do I really want a full modular component object system on my PDA? I mean, the interoperability is cool, but I don't need to embed a ton of different kinds of data in one document on a PDA. I mean, it's just a PDA. A glorified notepad. Everyone's complaining about the speed of Gnome on their desktops. The reason for that is because there's this complext object system underneath it that will slow down even a new desktop system. What'll it do to a PDA? I dread another WindowsCE coming out of this... a good system, but horribly overpowered.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards." - Marcin
The worst part about the whole Daikatana mess doesn't even have to do with Ion Storm at all, but Looking Glass. Looking Glass closed because their deal with Eidos fell through, because Eidos didn't have enough money to pay. Meanwhile, Eidos had sunk multiple millions in to a game that predictably sucked and will never ever recoup the losses. Meanwhile, the folks at Looking Glass made Thief 2, which is selling well and getting great reviews all around. This game was made under a lot of preassure, as the company had been having financial problems, but they still produced an amazing product. Their engine isn't that fantastic graphically either (the sound is awesome though) but unlike Daikatana, the gameplay itself is great. It's truly sad that something like this happened, that a piece of overbudget crap put a group of creative and well respected game designers out of a job. I hope Romero is ashamed at himself for making such garbage and for denying the folks of Looking Glass a chance to make more great games.
While it's true that MP3 compression is almost always used for illegal reasons, there are also plenty of reasons why DMCA is just wrong, playing DVDs under linux is just one of them, and it happens to be one that affects me directly:-)
The simple fact that DMCA prevents me from viewing and using a product as I see fit after buying it, out of the paranoia that I'll send it off to a few thousand of my closest friends is absurd. This whole thing really is akin to the crusade against DAT and VHS/Beta way back when. In the case of VHS/Beta (I forget which if it was one or the other) the big media companies lost and the format succeeded because it was unstifled. There was piracy, sure, but the industry did just fine because of the freedom. The model for making money simply shifted from selling movie tickets to renting the tapes. In the case of DAT, the format was stifled by the industry to such a degree that no one who isn't a music professional has a DAT player despite the inherent advantages of the medium.
The media industry needs to realize that the rules are changing again, but the basics of the game remain the same: that the product with the most freedom will succeed. Movies and music are no longer tied to the physical medium, so new methods of making money are going to have to be found. How is RedHat going to make money on a product that they make freely available? This shift in thinking: that the product isn't the product anymore is what the media companies are going to have to realize as well. Despite the fact that pirated bootleg movies are available on the internet, people still go to the theater to see them. The music industry will still make money off CD's, for those who can't download a whole MP3, as well as concerts and T-Shirt sales, the same way they always did. MP3's are merely taking some of the space away from Radio and MTV, which is just as well considering both are being overrun by massive corporations who are only content with playing the same old shit. MP3's provide a kind of advertising for the band.
I know all this sounds like an advocacy for pirating, which it isn't meant to be. Everyone knows the rules have changed, but no one seems to realize that they have to change their practices along with those rules if they want to stay on top of the game. There are ways for these companies to make money despite pirating, as was the case with video rentals. It just takes a little insight and guts to go for it.
Is this really the goal of the whole protest against the DMCA? To pirate software and music and movies? The DMCA is attempting to stop this, and I sympatize with people who are simply trying to protect their property.
However, it is the manner in which they are doing it that's the problem, the fact that it prevents that legally purchased property from being used by the buyer in a legitimate fashion, such as being able to play DVD's under Linux. Every argument founded on the ability to pirate merely undermines the entire cause and gives more ammunition to proponents of the DMCA. What we have to get them to realize is that CSS isn't going to be used to pirate films, but rather to allow people to view them in any way they choose, and that the content on those DVDs has become wholly separate from the media on which it's printed, and it should be treated as such. Helping their paranoia isn't going to help the cause.
I'd second this one! I loved the original gerbils demo, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever when it first appeared. True 3D! Wow... the awe... Although I haven't played Nanosaur for more than a couple of moments on demo machines, I spent hours watching that stupid little gerbils demo:) A gerbil roller coaster! How cool is that? Now if someone got a hold of it and used Tux models instead of gerbils it'd be a fantastic demo for to show off some of Linux's fun side:)
Re:The WHY in Why is this bad?
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Planet Gattaca
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Ok, I think a few points deserve a response in this post.
Your first point is that "Mother nature does it best," according to "a book by Charles Darwin." While Darwin makes a case for Natural Selection, it does not say that what emerges is always the "best" thing (even though a concept like "best" is incredibly subjective and hard enough to pin down) but rather, what is good enough is what survives. If a phenotype harms the organism, it can still survive and breed plenty of offspring, thereby passing through the process of natural selection and passing on those genes that don't affect its reproductive success. Take color blindness for example. Color blindness is obviously not a good thing, as it makes it difficult to do many day to day things. However, it is not debilitating enough to stop the man from leaving offspring. This is not a case of "Mother Nature" doing what is best for an organism, but rather it is a common example of what is good enough to survive from generation to generation. A far more potent example is a disposition towards cancer. Cancer attacks most people in their old age, well after they have had all the children they are going to have for their lifetime. They've still passed on this disposition towards cancer, and the trait survives, but this is clearly not a trait that benefits the individual. Genetic research allows us to use what exactly has made us "stronger:" our intelligence. We can use the knowledge that no other organism has in order to help in the struggle of natural selection. And while this will obviously cause some problems down the line (as all scientific innovations do) it can be very beneficial on the whole. While the use of trains allowed the Nazis to transport millions to their deaths, do you blame the people who built the trains? It is a question that is very much related to the issue here.
Point number 2, that Intercalcating Agents can introduce foreign bodies into an entire population by selecting a particular gene. How is this really any different than spraying the entire countryside with Anthrax? You can introduce foreign bodies that will multiply and spread exponentially without genetic research. You might not be able to pinpoint an exact gene, but that is what biological warfare is all about. We live with this now, and Gattaca doesn't increase this threat at all.
All that being said, I think a lot of previous posts make good points, that genetic engineering as a means of selection is rather far away. Genes are simply the code for proteins, and while these proteins make up the system that is an organism, you must remember that the system is incredibly complex and hard to grasp. You can figure out where the proteins are made on the gene, but it's much harder to figure out what they do within the system. You can't understand "the essence of life" without understanding the system itself, and as evidenced by the difficulty in classifying viruses, "the essence of life" is a blurry thing that can't really be nailed down completely, no matter what Katz says.
Well, despite having hoped for change I can't say I'm utterly surprised at this. The record companies have shown themselves to be really really paranoid about everything open that's been developing in their areas in the last year. The idea that Sony would own the domain forever is a pretty interesting distinction though, since they can't own the name of the band/artist in the same manner. It's another example of a need for clearer definitions of how domain names are linked to trademarks and the like. You can bet this is going to hurt them in the long run though.
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Does anyone have instructions on how to get the rage128 running with DRI? I've got it running with software rendering, but I'd love to have some zip so I can install Q3 :-) Thanks.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Of course, it does raise that issue, but the reality of it is that people aren't going to go about chucking a kid for parts. One thing that I forsee in the future in cases like this is more along the lines of gene therapy and genetic screening. There's already a lot of screening being done for Taysach's disease (spelling, anyone?) and the like. That's where the real benefit comes in, so you don't have to go about even thinking of having a child for "spare parts."
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
The problem is, as you say, drawing the line. But how do you actually do that? Unfortunately, even in your argument you can see the difficulty in separating "medical" from "personal." After all, couldn't resistance to disease be classified as either?
If the child was screened for, say, color-blindness, then how is this wrong? How does dealing with color-blindness help someone? Granted, diversity is necessary (although the simple nature of DNA will take care of that just fine) but why does having the gene for color blindness help a man or even mankind? After all, it seems to me that color blindness can't help anyone, but remains so common simply because it doesn't hurt your chances of reproductive success very much to have the trait.
Now, I'm not trying to say that we should screen out color blindness in embryos at all. On the contrary, I think that people shouldn't have their embryos screened unless there is a history of some genetic disease (the "medical" reasons you refer to) but I think it's truly hard to actually say to a person "No, you can't have your child screened for color blindness because it's morally wrong!" Why is it wrong? I really can't say for sure. That's what makes the whole thing so difficult.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
The important thing here is for the parents to make the boy feel loved, so that it isn't an issue of who loves who more, but whether or not he is loved, which is the parents' job in the end, not the kids'.
While this could cause problems for the boy down the line, the damage could be minimalized or even non-existent if the parents truly love the boy, and treat him like they love him just as they would treat the daughter.
This problem doesn't have anything to do with genetic screening, but simple affection and genuine universal parenting problems. Witness middle child syndrome, where in a family of three, the middle child feels that the oldest gets all the privledges while the youngest is the baby, and the middle one feels rejected. This isn't about genetics but parenting, and if the parents truly love the boy, then this issue will be moot.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Did you read the article? They screened the kid for the disease. He doesn't have it. No way no how.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
I think this is a wonderful thing personally. Not only does genetic screening save their next child from having anemia (and I assume other major genetic disorders) but it also allows them to save the life of their other child.
The moralists may contend that it's unethical to bring a child in to the world simply for parts, but that isn't really what happened here. They wanted a healthy child, and the ability to save their other child doesn't mean that they won't love or care for the baby as well. This is just one of those things that really makes me proud to be a student of biology, because we're actually seeing the benefits of all of this, and there are many more to come. Despite all the scares and potential for wrongdoing, the ability to save a child from leukemia with a birth is worth all the scares from the moralists.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
So why is it that they can avoid distributing the Solaris source? I haven't looked at the tool itself, but if it has to alter the source don't they have to distribute that as well?
And if it just compiles all the changes at runtime without altering the code, then how is RMS going to change this GPL 3?
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Perhaps a better example of a bazaar is UNIX itself. It forked from UNIX to BSD and then to Solaris (which came back to SysV) and now Linux has taken it by storm because it's considered the best option by a large community. No one talks about the "glory days of UNIX fragmentation" though, which gives a lot of weight to Connel's argument.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
There's a lesson there for gnome.
;-)
So what does this say about GNOME security? Realistically, with all the debate we've been hearing about GNOME vs. KDE, is GNOME going to be as vulnerable to these kind of component based bugs as MS stuff? I mean, we keep hearing Miguel praise MS and the component model idea, but will it just create more problems? And if so, would there be any way to really provide a lot of background security for each component?
I don't use GNOME, but I happen to like it, and I would really like to see them be a secure desktop and not fall prey to the kind of attacks that we all know and love in Windows
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Actually, I think they are, at least a while ago they were:
.debs, which sucks big time. But it would be one more step in bringing linux to the desktop.
AOL Considers Linux?
Who knows? I bet if they do bring out a handheld aol linux client they may just do it for regular linux.
I'd personally love it if they did bring it out. It'd be a sad binary-only release, and, if they follow their current pattern there'd be no
"I may not have morals, but I have standards." - Marcin
Why should you be limited to make files for this reason? Man pages often tell you exactly what files are related to a piece of software, and debian lets you tell exactly what files were installed where by what package. Plus, there's the added benefit of having all this nicely logged without having to go through each directory by hand and cleaning up if you want to delete something. While I'm not trying to bash makefiles, they're not the end all, and the ease provided by a package is usually worthwhile for many people.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards." - Marcin
I don't think this is a fair claim. All science is limited by the evidence at hand. Neuroscientists looked very very hard for things like regrowth of cells, only they simply didn't have the evidence to support that they can regenerate. The major foundation of science is that you can't make a real claim without some evidence to back it up and they simply never had the evidence to say these things. There was never evidence to show that glial cells could potentially support communication rather than just insulate (which is a critical function in itself, precluding the need for the cells to facilitate communication directly) and now there is.
Science marches on. You don't know something. You look some more and you learn something. That's how it works. Can you honestly say that physicists didn't make any assumptions when they claimed Newton's Laws were absolute? They didnt' because there was no evidence to contradict it until Einstein came along and said it was relative. Don't blame science for its self imposed limitations, because that's what makes it work.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards." - Marcin
It's not really thought that the brain uses quantum computing, but rather massively parallel computing to do its work. This is that tactic taken by researchers of chemical computers. This doesn't really change the idea. What it does mean is two things that I see:
All in all, this is pretty cool, although it might not mean anything. Just because you can get the cells to trigger neurons by making thenm release calcium doesn't mean they do this normally. All cells have calcium ions in them, the question is do the glial cells release them under normal conditions? That's what really needs to be investigated at this point.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards." - Marcin
I know it's kinda late, but I just had to reply to this one...
As a former Mac fanatic and one who currently works on a Mac, I've got to say that this is the biggest load of crap that Steve Jobs ever threw at us. A computer can be beautiful, and it can be elegant, but that is not its purpose! Macs are pretty but they are an absolute pain in the butt sometimes, as are the users.
I bought in to the whole "rebellious individual" myth that Jobs loved to spew when hocking the Mac, but when you look at it just how much of an individual are you? An individual is defined by his uniqueness, and while you may have a bondi-blue chassis, you all have the same stupid software with the same crappy options on the inside. Example: Simpletext can't open big text files ("This document is too large to be opened by simpletext.") Why does it have this limit? Does simpletext really need some stupid dinky file size limit? Not really, but they built it in and you can't change anything there. So you use another text editor, but getting it to open it automatically requires altering each and every text file's creator code for the new app. That requires ResEdit (or a nifty droplet if you're so inclined) but there goes your user friendliness out the window simply because they hid a bunch of stuff.
Sure, the command line is ugly (although I think the look of the transparent terms alone got me to switch from Mac) it's damned effective. And if you want to put yourself up on a pedestal because you bought a new iMac and paid exorbant amounts of money for it, then be my guest. But that doesn't make you any more avante-garde than any of the other "legions of Mac Faithful" that all choose to use the same default OS theme and give up complete control of the machine to someone else.
If Mac users who want to really be "artistic rebels" then they can go and make their own rebellion by working on software that they actually want. If they are such a wonderfully avante-garde community with all this rebellious artistic insight, then perhaps they can take control of their own experience rather than let Steve Jobs and his iCronies hand the experience to them. True rebellion takes action. True art takes work. By stunting the user experience for the sake of simplicity, the Mac retards opportunity for both.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards." - Marcin
Your argument only goes so far. The reason free software is better than non-free is because it is protected. If freedom is not protected, then anyone can come in and take advantage of your freedom and abuse it. Software needs to be free, like speech, not really because it is better in a sense that the software is inherently better, but because it keeps any central authority from lording power over all the rest of us. The great thing about Linux coming of age for instance, is that suddenly no one is inherently under the tight fist of Microsoft or Apple any more. It's not simply that the software is "better" (in many ways it's not) but that I, as a user, am totally free to use it without any real restrictions.
However, if freedom isn't protected, as is the case with Microsoft's "embrace and extend" policies, then suddenly we are once again under the iron fist of corporations that don't give a crap about the user except to move more product. What you are saying, is that we give up our freedom and go back to complete anarchy. It's akin to stepping back to Adam Smith's Invisible Hand system of economics after the Great Depression. Such complete freedom without protection doesn't work, becuase the overwhelming force will be towards those in power, and they will win if we don't protect our freedom now that we've got it.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards." - Marcin
Ok, I meant ORB is the underpinning of Gnome, and I know they want Bonobo to be a standard part of the system once it's all done. While it does run fine without bonobo, what about all the Gnome apps that will make use of it, and possibly require it in the future?
"I may not have morals, but I have standards." - Marcin
So what about ORB and Bonobo? These aren't exactly lightweigts. And these are really the underpinnings of Gnome, so are they going too? Do I really want a full modular component object system on my PDA? I mean, the interoperability is cool, but I don't need to embed a ton of different kinds of data in one document on a PDA. I mean, it's just a PDA. A glorified notepad. Everyone's complaining about the speed of Gnome on their desktops. The reason for that is because there's this complext object system underneath it that will slow down even a new desktop system. What'll it do to a PDA? I dread another WindowsCE coming out of this... a good system, but horribly overpowered.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards." - Marcin
The worst part about the whole Daikatana mess doesn't even have to do with Ion Storm at all, but Looking Glass. Looking Glass closed because their deal with Eidos fell through, because Eidos didn't have enough money to pay. Meanwhile, Eidos had sunk multiple millions in to a game that predictably sucked and will never ever recoup the losses. Meanwhile, the folks at Looking Glass made Thief 2, which is selling well and getting great reviews all around. This game was made under a lot of preassure, as the company had been having financial problems, but they still produced an amazing product. Their engine isn't that fantastic graphically either (the sound is awesome though) but unlike Daikatana, the gameplay itself is great. It's truly sad that something like this happened, that a piece of overbudget crap put a group of creative and well respected game designers out of a job. I hope Romero is ashamed at himself for making such garbage and for denying the folks of Looking Glass a chance to make more great games.
The simple fact that DMCA prevents me from viewing and using a product as I see fit after buying it, out of the paranoia that I'll send it off to a few thousand of my closest friends is absurd. This whole thing really is akin to the crusade against DAT and VHS/Beta way back when. In the case of VHS/Beta (I forget which if it was one or the other) the big media companies lost and the format succeeded because it was unstifled. There was piracy, sure, but the industry did just fine because of the freedom. The model for making money simply shifted from selling movie tickets to renting the tapes. In the case of DAT, the format was stifled by the industry to such a degree that no one who isn't a music professional has a DAT player despite the inherent advantages of the medium.
The media industry needs to realize that the rules are changing again, but the basics of the game remain the same: that the product with the most freedom will succeed. Movies and music are no longer tied to the physical medium, so new methods of making money are going to have to be found. How is RedHat going to make money on a product that they make freely available? This shift in thinking: that the product isn't the product anymore is what the media companies are going to have to realize as well. Despite the fact that pirated bootleg movies are available on the internet, people still go to the theater to see them. The music industry will still make money off CD's, for those who can't download a whole MP3, as well as concerts and T-Shirt sales, the same way they always did. MP3's are merely taking some of the space away from Radio and MTV, which is just as well considering both are being overrun by massive corporations who are only content with playing the same old shit. MP3's provide a kind of advertising for the band.
I know all this sounds like an advocacy for pirating, which it isn't meant to be. Everyone knows the rules have changed, but no one seems to realize that they have to change their practices along with those rules if they want to stay on top of the game. There are ways for these companies to make money despite pirating, as was the case with video rentals. It just takes a little insight and guts to go for it.
However, it is the manner in which they are doing it that's the problem, the fact that it prevents that legally purchased property from being used by the buyer in a legitimate fashion, such as being able to play DVD's under Linux. Every argument founded on the ability to pirate merely undermines the entire cause and gives more ammunition to proponents of the DMCA. What we have to get them to realize is that CSS isn't going to be used to pirate films, but rather to allow people to view them in any way they choose, and that the content on those DVDs has become wholly separate from the media on which it's printed, and it should be treated as such. Helping their paranoia isn't going to help the cause.
I'd second this one! I loved the original gerbils demo, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever when it first appeared. True 3D! Wow... the awe... Although I haven't played Nanosaur for more than a couple of moments on demo machines, I spent hours watching that stupid little gerbils demo :) A gerbil roller coaster! How cool is that? Now if someone got a hold of it and used Tux models instead of gerbils it'd be a fantastic demo for to show off some of Linux's fun side :)
Your first point is that "Mother nature does it best," according to "a book by Charles Darwin." While Darwin makes a case for Natural Selection, it does not say that what emerges is always the "best" thing (even though a concept like "best" is incredibly subjective and hard enough to pin down) but rather, what is good enough is what survives. If a phenotype harms the organism, it can still survive and breed plenty of offspring, thereby passing through the process of natural selection and passing on those genes that don't affect its reproductive success. Take color blindness for example. Color blindness is obviously not a good thing, as it makes it difficult to do many day to day things. However, it is not debilitating enough to stop the man from leaving offspring. This is not a case of "Mother Nature" doing what is best for an organism, but rather it is a common example of what is good enough to survive from generation to generation. A far more potent example is a disposition towards cancer. Cancer attacks most people in their old age, well after they have had all the children they are going to have for their lifetime. They've still passed on this disposition towards cancer, and the trait survives, but this is clearly not a trait that benefits the individual. Genetic research allows us to use what exactly has made us "stronger:" our intelligence. We can use the knowledge that no other organism has in order to help in the struggle of natural selection. And while this will obviously cause some problems down the line (as all scientific innovations do) it can be very beneficial on the whole. While the use of trains allowed the Nazis to transport millions to their deaths, do you blame the people who built the trains? It is a question that is very much related to the issue here.
Point number 2, that Intercalcating Agents can introduce foreign bodies into an entire population by selecting a particular gene. How is this really any different than spraying the entire countryside with Anthrax? You can introduce foreign bodies that will multiply and spread exponentially without genetic research. You might not be able to pinpoint an exact gene, but that is what biological warfare is all about. We live with this now, and Gattaca doesn't increase this threat at all.
All that being said, I think a lot of previous posts make good points, that genetic engineering as a means of selection is rather far away. Genes are simply the code for proteins, and while these proteins make up the system that is an organism, you must remember that the system is incredibly complex and hard to grasp. You can figure out where the proteins are made on the gene, but it's much harder to figure out what they do within the system. You can't understand "the essence of life" without understanding the system itself, and as evidenced by the difficulty in classifying viruses, "the essence of life" is a blurry thing that can't really be nailed down completely, no matter what Katz says.
Well, despite having hoped for change I can't say I'm utterly surprised at this. The record companies have shown themselves to be really really paranoid about everything open that's been developing in their areas in the last year. The idea that Sony would own the domain forever is a pretty interesting distinction though, since they can't own the name of the band/artist in the same manner. It's another example of a need for clearer definitions of how domain names are linked to trademarks and the like. You can bet this is going to hurt them in the long run though.