Thank you for being such a good watchman. We really don't need another "gif" situation. Can you provide a dumbed-down explanation of what "RAND terms" are? (i'm -guessing- they aren't intrinsically random ;)

Did Qualcomm Inc and Huawei Technologies Co.,Ltd (the putative patent holders) sign off on that statement?

none other than Bruce Perens (Open Source champion) points us to these: https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1520/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1741/ wherein we learn that Opus is "possible royalty/fee". this is not consistent with "Fully Free" to any patent troll waiting for broad adoption before jumping.

It's renown among serious pollsters as a paid-for propaganda site.

the slippery slope of having big-pharma pay for the FDA's testing (as a "cost cutting" maneuver), which then became having the industry itself doing the testing of its own trial products, and by now the FDA is a watch-dog for the industries secrets and guarding their IP, the FDA has become essentially just contract research for the private sector. add that there are good indicators that big-pharma is behind pulling in "campaign contributions" to continue the war on drugs (there's proprietary money in xanax there's none in marijuana) and it's time to just tear down the remains and start a new agency. ...has that ever occurred? i don't think so.

in all my too many years [hack spittoo] of biochemistry bioinformatics bio-whathaveyou this is the first i've heard of the term "biocurators". and i gotta say, i don't like it. no-sir, not a bit.

"curator mid-14c., from L. curator "overseer, manager, guardian," agent noun from curatus, pp. of curare (see cure). Originally of minors, lunatics, etc.; meaning "officer in charge of a museum, library, etc." is from 1660s." so, "life + manager" or "life + officer in charge of a library" ...nah.

'geneannonator' ....maybe

before blatantly stating that a suggestion is financially unsound describe the payment and costs involved. you do know that the propane tank example was just an example of a similar market exchange and not in direct monetary proportions, yes? i really don't understand this knee-jerk resistance to a possible solution to the recharge time problem. where has gone the modicum of imagination and ingenuity that used to triumph against far greater challenges than merely swapping batteries - even fairly large ones?

exactly! just think about propane tanks. most places i go, they just take your empty tank and hand you a full one. all the rest is engineering and standardization. imagine a car-wash set-up that slips into a keyed channel on the underside of the car the charged battery in front of the depleted one that it slips out. it's not only not rocket science, it isn't brain surgery.

Just a few years ago, a Canadian study using baseball stats (because they tracked handiness closely) concluded that lefties were far more likely to die, ( http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199110033251412) this was later shown to have suffered a seemingly paradoxical sampling error (not controlling adequately for those that didn't die). Then there was another study that concluded that left-handedness was likely the result of anoxia in the womb ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/002839327390050X). It was discounted for similar sampling error problems. Neurological "wiring error"; perhaps a mutation with few consequences; advantages in the mathematical world (presumably via having a screwy mindset); Language disadvantages; Language *advantages*; high proportion of left-handed (possibly suppressed) American presidents http://www.anythingleft-handed.co.uk/presidents.html (Clinton, Bush, Obama ... ). So... run a elaborate predator/prey model applied to sports and see an advantage for the 10% that are different; sounds like rediscovery of Perato distribution to me, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution I'm just not convinced that there's been a proper scientific approach to this issue to date, and until then i'm still stuck with a twisted spine in most college classrooms.

i didn't conclude anything. the topic here is Brin attacking Facebook as a "threat to internet freedom", CISPA is a threat to internet freedom (i say), but Brin doesn't mention the fact that Facebook is supporting CISPA. i just want to know why.

...and no mention made at all of Facebook's recent scary support of the SOPA-heir: CISPA? Why wouldn't google want to tar Facebook with that one? ...might it be that google likes CISPA?

if in doubt blame the browser, but i see a change between frames #1 and #2 and then it gets 'stuck' and no more changes are seen. Firefox 14.0a1 "nightly" ("well y'see thars yer problem right char")

Yes, this is exactly my point too. As an limiting argument, let's say my window manager had some-sort of graphics interface with more bells and whistles than emacs. "ooo look! i wrote a script that resulted in a full Donkeykong game in less than 32 characters!!" of course, that was one of the features of the fancy fictitious graphics interface that there are a number of example games that could be started with the equivalent of "run('donkkong')"

The central problem with 3d-ing stuff is that it solves no problem, scratches no apparent itch, feeds no bull-dog, *and* annoys the pig. Every implementation i've been 'lucky' enough to observe comes off as a skit John Candy did where the 3d feature was made the central feature of the plot (of some silly B-movie). oh, here's a sample (forgot it was "Dr Tongue") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u4tTFEF_XE

So... "look at this crap we want you to by... *look* at it! ooo..." [moves object fitfully in/out of visual plan]

Someone should insist with (much-beloved) Professor Stroustrup that it's ok/desirable to leave it so Han Solo shoots first.