To me it seems far more like GP described an ugly hack to get around a point of failure in the free market system. I find nothing GP said to be indicative of any "good side" to gene patents, it rather looked like a soft (but very well worded) apologetic piece as to why they are necessary, with the incorrect unspoken assumption that the free market is the only route to conducting research.

Even then you could fetch the content without rendering it.

With some forethought and planning I think you could even have a secondary rendering engine underneath your display renderer that would fool any method of ad-blocking detection short of taking screenshots and sending them home for image analysis. The first engine jumps through whatever hoops the site wants a 'clean' browser to jump through and the display renderer could filter that "rendering" of the page.

None of this helps dial-up or other lower-speed users though, so I hope it doesn't come to this particular virtual arms-race.

Look man, I was just poking a little fun at your lack of effort with your little joke, you're reading entirely too much into this. There is no emotional stake involved, I'm not looking to prove anything about you or pin you with any label. These posts aren't going to be used by me (or likely anybody) to "prove" anything about you. You're fine, no one is stalking you, and no one is going to pop out of your closet with a printout and an accusation or anything like that.

All it was was me seeing someone who usually has a witty remark drop a turd. That's it. You can safely walk away and live your life as if this never happened.

As far as you thinking that I'm "stalking" you or anything like that, well, either you're overly paranoid or you don't realize that you post of slashdot with a frequency (and name) that just might lead someone to remember the general nature of your posts, in addition to the fact that you're good at being a smart-ass, frequently eliciting (from me at least) a head-shaking chuckle. That's it, that's where your "special" ends as far as I'm concerned.

And finally, if you don't want to be known as a troll, you're going to have to stop dropping snide comments and start engaging in discussions properly (I'm not saying you never do, I'm saying you don't always), something I have nothing to do with or any control over. Read your original post that I replied to again and then point out the 'non-troll' content... The "too cool/smart for you" chic doesn't work as well on slashdot because MOST (well, traditionally most) of us are smart, and MOST of us get the clever witticisms, as contrasted with 'real life' people for whom understanding such humor is a hit-and-miss proposition. I don't even know where you're getting the "shared secret" thing, unless it's completely based on the fact that I acknowledged that you're witty, and if that's the case then you need to get out more. There are plenty of witty people out there, and if you think acknowledging that means we're in some special club, well, broaden your social circles.

I don't automatically hate those I mark as foes, some of you I just think are trolls and/or assholes. In fact, I find myself agreeing with some of the stuff you say seriously.

Just because I have you marked as a foe (I happen to think you're an asshole, which is your right) doesn't mean I cannot think you're a reasonably intelligent person. I usually get a chuckle out of your trolls and thought this one was weak, so I commented on it. Calm down and put down the pepper spray, I'm not stalking you.

Well, that and the fact that filesharing is very close in concept to voluntary botnets.

We've all (well, most) seen articles describing some of the bigger botnets as some of the most powerful supercomputers on Earth. If you could break a neural-net down into discrete components (and you can, with some types of interconnectivity, like low synapse-density connections between high synapse-density clusters) you could build a quite large distributed net.

Program this neural net framework in generic C for high portability and you could have many devices being part of a big brain in their spare cycles. Port a compatible version to CUDA and watch those graphics chips shine in a familiar element. The ability of multiple instances of the program to communicate with each other (even if crudely at first, like over the localhost interface) takes care of any multi-threading or heterogeneous processor issues.

I don't think it would be too hard to build for a skilled programmer with even a basic understanding of neural nets, the biggest issue I see about the whole idea (besides, of course, getting it popular enough to be useful) would be to find a good way to balance between waiting for synapse data from a remote machine and firing without complete data, which may be a long time coming if the remote machine is being used for another purpose right now. I guess it's like designing a brain wherein any part may just shut off at random times, and (possibly) re-awaken later. I suppose with enough training (and enough nodes) the network itself could work out a redundancy path, but that would increase training time by a human-scale amount, meaning that the things WE do (like breaking network cables, saturating our bandwidth or processors with higher priority tasks, etc.) will determine how fast this thing can learn how to organize itself.

If built to establish its own redundancy the poor thing probably wouldn't be able to learn anything for years or longer, due to our randomness of resource allocation. After it did work out a scheme we could probably learn a lot about ourselves by studying its network structure, but I digress...

I think it's a neat idea with a couple of large hurdles, but it could work if people were patient enough.

Can you imagine a Brittany Spears-like (or maybe the real thing) soundtrack for eternity? I think the rm_mysoul() function would be immensely popular after a few virtual centuries.

And you think about the manner in which it was said.

The literary term we use for such a statement is called "sarcasm". I would ask you to look it up, but we both know that you're already highly adept at that particular form of communication. In fact (you can talk this as a compliment if you want, I would if I were you) you're IMHO one of the most adept users of sarcasm on slashdot.

Don't lower your normal standard of troll just for a cheap shot like this, your trolling should be (and usually is) of a much higher quality. Anything less lowers the quality of the legendary slashdot trolling community, and when that happens people will suddenly think that goatse links are actually effective trolls. Please, consider the consequences, as you ARE the bar these young lemonparty-linkers strive to attain. :-)

The coffee was so hot that the lid THEY PROVIDED for her softened enough to not hold onto the cup that they provided. It was equipment failure due to exceeding product specifications.

To me, that says all I need to know, and my conclusion is the exact opposite of yours. There was much negligence in offering a consumer equipment operating so far beyond specifications that it had a hardware failure. How in the world can you figure that she is at fault for that incident? Should every consumer be aware of the operating limits of every product they receive, before they are given it? Is every consumer expected to carry around at all times the necessary sensory and metric equipment to ensure that said product is within tolerances?

The company (or an agent thereof) made a mistake that led to her being injured. I don't know how much more simple this can get, and it always amazes me that people are so cocky as to think that it couldn't have happened to them.

The only option she had and I can think of that people like you would have accepted was for her to psychically INTUIT that the coffee was above the operating temperature of the holding device and ask the clerk to wait before it was handed to her. Seems quite unreasonable to me, but then again I don't think X-Men is a documentary.

It's nice to see someone working hard for that paycheck!

If you're actually not being paid to shill, I'd call an employment agency and see what's available, you're good at maintaining FUD.

Do you (or anyone else reading) know of an actual case in which data was recovered from a 1 or 2 pass 0 wipe on modern drives?

I don't think it's been done successfully, but would be interested in being proven wrong.

If that's the case then get rid of the articles "The Greatest Place on Earth" and "The Greenest Color", as they give the joke away too easily.

The other two you have posted as of now sound perfectly "sciency" enough to do exactly what you're talking about, if they catch on. The bit about Einstein's hair is hilarious BTW, and I can easily picture one of my acquaintances repeating such a story to me as factual.

That's because all of us (Americans) have the right to suggest legislation, or even write up a complete bill, and send it to congresspeople for consideration.

Some of us (Obama) are influential enough to create headlines when we do so.

What dictionary are you getting that definition out of? I mean, since you used quotes, I ASSUME (perhaps incorrectly?) that you actually used a dictionary.

Or, put another way... I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Just the once, and I'm never going hunting with Cheyney again.

I hate to be a party pooper, but you're really adding credence to the old dog "Libertarians are Anarchists who want just enough government to police their slaves".