Why not just distibute vitamins?
on
Golden Rice
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· Score: 1
This issue is really ridiculous. Things that are cause suffering and chronic hunger include:
Wasted food and poor food distribution
Overpopulation
Poor countries exporting monocultured plants that are meant only for rich western markets, thus using their land to grow stuff for us
Lack of available Education and Health Care
Low wages and exploitation of cheap, desperate people for labor
If we attack malnourishment problems one vitamin at a time, we will never solve real issues like lack of viable social infasturctures for countries with chronic hunger problems, (including the UNITED STATES!). The best way to solve a problem with as many causes as malnourishment has is not to throw at it an expensive, narrow soloution that will be merely a remedy for one symptom of chronic hunger...
CHECK OUT for more info: FOOD FIRST PUBLIC EDUCATION NETWORK World Health Organization
Live by new technology? Die by it too...
on
RIAA CEO Speaks
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· Score: 1
It is easy to refute the assertions that Hilary B. Rosen makes in his editorial pretaining to fair use... In a section of his essay that he calls "the Beginning of a new age", he claims to understand that the new technology proves to warrant a new way to look at recorded content. However, he still falls back on copyright law that fails to take into account the ease of copying and distribution of music provided by new technologies...Why allow the record companies to utilize the great potential of the new technologies while at the same time allow them to apply the outdated interpretations of fair use (based on old methods of music recording, for example) in order to protect themselves...?
It is really hard to get companies to not file broad patents (I know, the Biotech company I used to work for was always trying to get out broad genetics patents), but maybe the best thing you can do is lobby for an open licensing of the product (which can mean a million things)..
Maybe a good example is how developers at Sun (like Patrick Naughton) lobbied Sun to distribute Java fairly openly... It might be the best thing you can do for the time being, until the EFF gets legislative bodies to pass relevant and fair laws!!! (we hope!)
The Un-coolest thing at Linux World Expo
was what last year was called
the dot org pavilion this year was called the docking station... which reminded me of some kind of cattle pen for the non-profits and the advocacy foundations...
Did it seem wierd that the winners of the big award for best work, the Debian project, had a little pen in order to promote itself while corporations like Corel, who basically are reinventing themselves by piggybacking their desktop on top of Debian and KDE's good work?
Is VA Linux, who I heard sponsored some of these groups to be at LinuxWorld, too poor to allocate a little more space or at least more promotion for these very important organizations?
So, if the Universities own the copyrights, does anyone know how Contentville (logo looks like Sesame Street) came to aquire the rights to these published works?
Were Universities duped by corporate promises to provide a database driven outlet for perhaps difficult to find published material? Or was there some kind of fiscal transaction that was slipped under the radar of most people? Maybe someone has more information they can share...
This type of proprietary access to database information is a scary precedent...Why should access to publicly funded research information be pay-per-view?
Good... "the current telecom market is like a Malibu, Calif., hillside in late August: rich, beautiful and just waiting for the well-timed spark to set off the inevitable oxidation process."...We, as users and supporters of free software ideologies and technologies need to expand our view of what we can accomplish with organised effort.
Why? Reliable, useful, scalable technology can be developed without the presence of a monopolistic profit-hungry entity...What other tech industries and protocols will be affected next? I am really encouraged by this article. Too bad they couldn't make Iridium a free technology!
If the space program gives us all so much great technology, why don't we just spend the money on those things rather than put up expensive propaganda billboards which is what the US space program really is?
What I think is more important is why should we pay for a domain name... The free software foundation should be more concerned with keeping the net accessable to everyone rather than fitting in with the status quo of "lets add another TOP LEVEL DOMAIN so that ICANN or NET SOL can collect some kind of ridiculous fee..."
No one is gonna like a.gnu domain anyway... is.vaxvms next?... how about.eniac?
I can't wait till BlueLinx develops a chip to implant into my brain so I can block out Slashdot Troll posts about Natalie Portman...We wouldn't need a moderation system...
Actually, I would like a Q-zone that blocks out genomics patents from the Patent Office Computers!! The best part is, there are no buttons, and doctors are allowed to overide it!! Q-zone sounds like the MacOS.
I am unhappy with the way in which this author discusses PERL, a language that I believe is very useful and above all else, fun...
I can understand this person's annoyance with tools and computer applications that take a great deal of energy simply to learn and understand...He is obviously an end user who believes in the mythical standards of "elegance" and an authoritative notion of what is correct in terms of programming language syntax.
I find PERL to be amazingly elegant, at times very concise, and above all else, unbelievably useful. To me, it is a triumph of Open Source ideas. The MacOS system and attitude feels to me like a marketing concept, a billboard...a tool to provide Apple Computer with revenue.
The cathedral rarely gives me control over my computer, but it does often makes me sit through advertisements when i boot up!!!...
If you read the LunaCorp History and Mission statement, these corporate bastards are planning to set up a robot infrastructure that will benefit corporate interests only, i.e. using the moon as a place to launch rockets as delivery vehicles or setting up some kind of ridiculous theme-park or Mattel tie-in with their robots...
This is not about logo placement... What one should ask is why should we be allowing these few people with corporate interests to use the moon simply for profitable purposes... I mean, why spend money on space exploration anyway, when there are so many CORPORATE evils on this planet right now???!!!
What I mean by this is that Apogee (and I'm not trying to salvage this company's rep...) must have a suite of lawyers and marketing professionals, whose sole mission is to produce the kind of vomit-inducing rhetoric that we see on the Apogee site.
My wish is to personally uncouple technology (big wish) from profit minded lawyers and marketers... of course, GNU/Linux is my example, I think someone once asked Linus how he would try to capture market share, and he replied..."I'm not trying to capture anything"...
Corporate genomic and biotech companies are not beneficial to the current state of using GMOs to provide fitness for any particular purpose...WHY?...
1) Food supply issues are largely political... see: here for some reasons why.
2) The game plan at many Biotech companies include making money for shareholders and creating demand for products that aren't neccessary... check out the mission statement from my former employer, DNAP.
I was going to just copy the mission statement onto this post, but I think that got/. in trouble with microsoft once...:-).
Being a biotech guy, I am interested in the use of Beowulf-style clusters for DNA sequence alignments and searches, etc. Incyte Corp. and Volker Brendel at Iowa state already use Linux clusters, because their architecture is great for simultaneously aligning lots of different DNA sequences...I suppose forecasting gleams similar benefits. In what cases would a cluster be an inappropriate and/or inefficient soloution to a massive computational problem? When would you have to use a Cray or other big monolithic vector rig?
I hate it when people dis TRON! What the hell is wrong with you guys? MATRIX was a fun movie, but just because TRON has old-school computer graphics, doesn't make it an inferior movie, or even simply a progression toward some kind of computer graphics apex... By the way... LYNX web browser rules...
As a gene jockey at a private agrobiotech company, I want to remind everyone of two essential facts of genetic research: 1) scientists still (despite great strides in genomic and informatic research) know little about the mechanisms of genetic information flow. 2) scientists are often the most ethical, concerned and informed people you will ever meet!!! the real enemy is not the technology, it is the capitalists who know the concerned citizen will go after scientists instead of the evil buisinesspeople...why? because even smart penguinheads care more about the non-science they learn about in movies and on Dateline NBC. get a clue! GM foods are probably not that dangerous, when compared to an ignorant government and evil corporations!!!
Slashdot Mirror
This issue is really ridiculous. Things that are cause suffering and chronic hunger include:
If we attack malnourishment problems one vitamin at a time, we will never solve real issues like lack of viable social infasturctures for countries with chronic hunger problems, (including the UNITED STATES!). The best way to solve a problem with as many causes as malnourishment has is not to throw at it an expensive, narrow soloution that will be merely a remedy for one symptom of chronic hunger...
CHECK OUT for more info:
FOOD FIRST
PUBLIC EDUCATION NETWORK
World Health Organization
It is easy to refute the assertions that Hilary B. Rosen makes in his editorial pretaining to fair use... In a section of his essay that he calls "the Beginning of a new age", he claims to understand that the new technology proves to warrant a new way to look at recorded content. However, he still falls back on copyright law that fails to take into account the ease of copying and distribution of music provided by new technologies...Why allow the record companies to utilize the great potential of the new technologies while at the same time allow them to apply the outdated interpretations of fair use (based on old methods of music recording, for example) in order to protect themselves...?
It is really hard to get companies to not file broad patents (I know, the Biotech company I used to work for was always trying to get out broad genetics patents), but maybe the best thing you can do is lobby for an open licensing of the product (which can mean a million things)..
Maybe a good example is how developers at Sun (like Patrick Naughton) lobbied Sun to distribute Java fairly openly... It might be the best thing you can do for the time being, until the EFF gets legislative bodies to pass relevant and fair laws!!! (we hope!)
The Un-coolest thing at Linux World Expo was what last year was called the dot org pavilion this year was called the docking station... which reminded me of some kind of cattle pen for the non-profits and the advocacy foundations...
Did it seem wierd that the winners of the big award for best work, the Debian project, had a little pen in order to promote itself while corporations like Corel, who basically are reinventing themselves by piggybacking their desktop on top of Debian and KDE's good work?
Is VA Linux, who I heard sponsored some of these groups to be at LinuxWorld, too poor to allocate a little more space or at least more promotion for these very important organizations?
Coolest thing at the EXPO? The dot org's
So, if the Universities own the copyrights, does anyone know how Contentville (logo looks like Sesame Street) came to aquire the rights to these published works?
Were Universities duped by corporate promises to provide a database driven outlet for perhaps difficult to find published material? Or was there some kind of fiscal transaction that was slipped under the radar of most people? Maybe someone has more information they can share...
This type of proprietary access to database information is a scary precedent...Why should access to publicly funded research information be pay-per-view?
What are the good things Gates has produced?
Good... "the current telecom market is like a Malibu, Calif., hillside in late August: rich, beautiful and just waiting for the well-timed spark to set off the inevitable oxidation process."...We, as users and supporters of free software ideologies and technologies need to expand our view of what we can accomplish with organised effort.
Why? Reliable, useful, scalable technology can be developed without the presence of a monopolistic profit-hungry entity...What other tech industries and protocols will be affected next? I am really encouraged by this article. Too bad they couldn't make Iridium a free technology!
If the space program gives us all so much great technology, why don't we just spend the money on those things rather than put up expensive propaganda billboards which is what the US space program really is?
What I think is more important is why should we pay for a domain name... The free software foundation should be more concerned with keeping the net accessable to everyone rather than fitting in with the status quo of "lets add another TOP LEVEL DOMAIN so that ICANN or NET SOL can collect some kind of ridiculous fee..."
No one is gonna like a .gnu domain anyway... is .vaxvms next?... how about .eniac?
I agree, I think this is the most ridiculous use of technology to control people's lives I've heard of in a long time...
I can't wait till BlueLinx develops a chip to implant into my brain so I can block out Slashdot Troll posts about Natalie Portman...We wouldn't need a moderation system...
Actually, I would like a Q-zone that blocks out genomics patents from the Patent Office Computers!! The best part is, there are no buttons, and doctors are allowed to overide it!! Q-zone sounds like the MacOS.
I am unhappy with the way in which this author discusses PERL, a language that I believe is very useful and above all else, fun...
I can understand this person's annoyance with tools and computer applications that take a great deal of energy simply to learn and understand...He is obviously an end user who believes in the mythical standards of "elegance" and an authoritative notion of what is correct in terms of programming language syntax.
I find PERL to be amazingly elegant, at times very concise, and above all else, unbelievably useful. To me, it is a triumph of Open Source ideas. The MacOS system and attitude feels to me like a marketing concept, a billboard...a tool to provide Apple Computer with revenue.
The cathedral rarely gives me control over my computer, but it does often makes me sit through advertisements when i boot up!!!...
If you read the LunaCorp History and Mission statement, these corporate bastards are planning to set up a robot infrastructure that will benefit corporate interests only, i.e. using the moon as a place to launch rockets as delivery vehicles or setting up some kind of ridiculous theme-park or Mattel tie-in with their robots...
This is not about logo placement... What one should ask is why should we be allowing these few people with corporate interests to use the moon simply for profitable purposes... I mean, why spend money on space exploration anyway, when there are so many CORPORATE evils on this planet right now???!!!
What I mean by this is that Apogee (and I'm not trying to salvage this company's rep...) must have a suite of lawyers and marketing professionals, whose sole mission is to produce the kind of vomit-inducing rhetoric that we see on the Apogee site.
My wish is to personally uncouple technology (big wish) from profit minded lawyers and marketers... of course, GNU/Linux is my example, I think someone once asked Linus how he would try to capture market share, and he replied..."I'm not trying to capture anything"...
Corporate genomic and biotech companies are not beneficial to the current state of using GMOs to provide fitness for any particular purpose...WHY?...
1) Food supply issues are largely political... see: here for some reasons why.
2) The game plan at many Biotech companies include making money for shareholders and creating demand for products that aren't neccessary... check out the mission statement from my former employer, DNAP.
I was going to just copy the mission statement onto this post, but I think that got /. in trouble with microsoft once... :-).
Being a biotech guy, I am interested in the use of Beowulf-style clusters for DNA sequence alignments and searches, etc. Incyte Corp. and Volker Brendel at Iowa state already use Linux clusters, because their architecture is great for simultaneously aligning lots of different DNA sequences...I suppose forecasting gleams similar benefits. In what cases would a cluster be an inappropriate and/or inefficient soloution to a massive computational problem? When would you have to use a Cray or other big monolithic vector rig?
I hate it when people dis TRON! What the hell is wrong with you guys? MATRIX was a fun movie, but just because TRON has old-school computer graphics, doesn't make it an inferior movie, or even simply a progression toward some kind of computer graphics apex... By the way... LYNX web browser rules...
As a gene jockey at a private agrobiotech company, I want to remind everyone of two essential facts of genetic research: 1) scientists still (despite great strides in genomic and informatic research) know little about the mechanisms of genetic information flow. 2) scientists are often the most ethical, concerned and informed people you will ever meet!!! the real enemy is not the technology, it is the capitalists who know the concerned citizen will go after scientists instead of the evil buisinesspeople...why? because even smart penguinheads care more about the non-science they learn about in movies and on Dateline NBC. get a clue! GM foods are probably not that dangerous, when compared to an ignorant government and evil corporations!!!