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Comment Re:HIV? (Score 5, Informative) 414

I'm a biophysicist that works on the flu--though not a virologist--and I'd like to mention a couple of related points. First, as another poster had stated, this does not only work for double-stranded RNA viruses. Look at table 1. The influenza virus and HIV are both very similar--class I enveloped viruses with single-stranded RNA genomes. I'd imagine this could have some effect toward HIV, as it is effective with the flu. However, it would appear that once the HIV RNA has been reverse-transcribed to cDNA and integrated into the genome, then the approach presented in this paper would not work--i.e. if you have AIDS, this won't help you.

Comment Can't beat unison (Score 2) 188

Every two years or so, I critically evaluate my options for this problem--even going through the trouble of posting an AskSlashdot on the topic--and every time, I always come back to unison. There are many DIY, non-cloud managed solutions out there; see this article for a useful comparison matrix. I've even tried using git for automated versioning and syncing. However, none seem to work as cleanly as a unison setup combined with a DynDNS IP forward to my home box. Include snapshot backups using StoreBackup--the best backup tool, IMHO--and you have a setup that is tough to beat.

Comment Chromless dead? (Score 1) 145

Why would you think chromeless was dead? It looks like a project that started last Oct with a new release every few months. It's only been a few months since their last update, and the forums have recent activity. They also have commits up until the end of last month? Are you trying to motivate the devs?

Comment Was this a wall post? (Score 5, Insightful) 548

This article and summary are unclear about how the advert was posted--presumably it was a wall post.

The article lists various places in the terms of use that he might have violated, but this excerpt seems most likely:

""We may refuse ads at any time for any reason, including our determination that they promote competing products or services or negatively affect our business or relationship with our users."

Which seems overly-broad and anti-competitive. What exactly constitutes an ad? Can I express my interest in something only if facebook isn't developing a competing product?

Comment Anti-competitive behavior (Score 4, Insightful) 722

What irks me about the price increase has nothing to do with the price of lattes or the fact that we're not necessarily getting anything more in return. It's the anti-competitive behavior. I suspect that the margins on their current pricing were set to be small enough to snuff out Blockbuster. Now, without real competition (incl Amazon's service), they can reap the fruits of their 'sacrifices.'

Comment It's a shame (Score 1) 467

For those who may not know, upskirt is the Markdown parser used and developed at GitHub under the name 'RedCarpet.' Both packages--upskirt is a fast C parser for Markdown, and pantyshot is its python wrapper--are immensely useful. Giving them those names, however, makes it difficult to integrate them into a professional software project. I find this to be the same attitude developers seem to have about users in general--library users, in this case. Some developers have a certain disdain for those whom do not conform to their notions of humor, design, aesthetics, etc. That's fine, it's their software project. Just know that you're shooting yourself in the foot. You're literally wasting your work when people avoid your project over something as trivial as a project name. And if you don't want people to use it in the first place, then why make it free in the first place?

In the case of pantyshot, the developer has associated his name to that project. If I were an prospective employer doing a search on his name, I'd seriously question his judgement.

Comment Good time to discuss alternatives (Score 1, Interesting) 113

If I may highjack this thread into an AskSlashdot, I'd like to ask others what they use. I'm in science and research, and I'd like to investigate alternatives, after having used PowerPoint through wine (crossover office) for a few years. I've had dozens too many red 'X's show up in presentations, and I'd like to have something that renders quickly, that is stable, and has good eye candy. Is Keynote decent? Are any of the png/svg based viewers for linux decent? Help!

Comment iPhones!? (Score 1) 167

How about bank ATMs?

The last time I went to change my pin at the bank, I spent the better part of the walk there (20-30 minutes) developing the perfect algorithm to calculate my pin. It changed with the date, had variables from my life, my spouse's life, my dog--you name it. At the teller, I anxiously put in my 7-digit number, and it kept refusing it. By the fourth attempt, the teller was visibly irritated that I couldn't type in my pin number the same twice in a row. After discussing it with him, he told me that I was capped at four digits--4!!! I had to truncate my number on the spot, and every time I go to the bank now, I keep screwing up the place in which I had truncated my perfect number.

Comment Beginning of the end (Score 3, Insightful) 445

This is the exact behavior that will drive users away. It's more disruptive than the KDE 4.0 debacle.

I've been a committed Firefox user for many years, using daily many plugins that I find irreplaceable (zotero, noscript). I'm now seriously considering alternatives. I find it irresponsible that Mozilla would not stand behind the major release of one of their products for more than three months.

Comment vandalism (Score 2) 397

It's a good idea, but it appears that the photos section on the facebook page has already been vandalized. More than 80% of the photos are multiple copies of photos taken by the media, and another 10-15% are random unrelated photos. I hope they're accepting photos and videos from an email address too.

Submission + - Citibank Compromised (theglobeandmail.com)

digitalderbs writes: In a recent attack on Citibank, hackers "breached the bank's network and accessed data on hundreds of thousands of bank card holders." At this stage, Citigroup has admitted that customer names, account numbers, and contact information have been compromised, but not birth dates, social security numbers and CVV security codes. News of this major breach hasn't yet been reported by major US news agencies.
Python

Submission + - Django 1.3 released (djangoproject.com)

digitalderbs writes: Django, the popular, Python-based web framework, has released version 1.3 after a year of development. This version includes support for class-based views, support for Python's logging facilities, improved management of static (media) content, and improvements to the unittest framework, which makes use of Python's new improvements to unittest. A summary of the new features can be read from the release notes.
Python

Submission + - Python 3.2 released (python.org)

digitalderbs writes: Python 3.2 was released on Feb 20th 2011 with many new improvements. New features include many useful updates to the unittest module, a stable ABI for extensions, pyc repository directories, improvements to the email and ssl modules and many others. This also marks the first release in the 3000-series that is no longer backported to the 2.0-series.

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