I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Blindly creating cDNA is one thing. Identifying particular cDNA that can be used for therapeutic purposes is a whole other thing and requires a lot of research. I can understand protections for the first researcher/group to identify a particular sequence that can be used for gene therapies. It's fair to address exactly what those protections should be. We need protections from people who want to patent sequences willy-nilly. There needs to be a strong reason for why the particular sequence in question has been identified for protection. Perhaps a form of copyright may be more appropriate there than patent.

It was actually good news for Myriad, not just non-terrible news. While they did lose some parts of their patent, the core test is still protected.

In addition the way the decision was stated settles the entire field of biotech patents in such a way as to give certainty that there will be lots of opportunity for patentable inventions in the field, AND that R&D activities on isolated human DNA will be able to continue without threat of patent suits.

It isn't just Myriad stock that is up today. The stock market index for the WHOLE BIOTECH INDUSTRY is up substantially.

This is really a great decision that benefits everyone, in the following ways.

1. Isolated DNA is not patentable. This allows R&D on DNA to proceed unencumbered.

2. Commercial development of technologies using synthetic DNA derivatives for useful products is encouraged by allowing patent coverage.

I'm a contractor with pre-existing conditions, and I got health insurance without any problem. I think health insurance generally runs from $3000-$12000/year depending on what you need and how big your family is. My current New York subsidized plan is about $4500/yr.

I'd wire up the speaker to the trigger for an IED. Having the poor, unsuspecting device do itself in would be deliciously ironic.

Wait.... what? Are you gloating? Time is the most valuable commodity in the universe. Travel the world and try new things. If you don't have enough money to do that, take on some side work until you do. In fact, now would be a pretty good time to look into starting your own business.

There is another paper out there that I couldn't find that discusses the measurement of the ice core temperatures at the various depths, and correlated with the average global temperature. I seem to recall that they found it accurate to within 0.1 degree, but without the actual study to cite, I wouldn't suggest you take my word on it.

I do remember seeing that there is a shift that starts to skew the older temperatures due to warming of the earth's core, making the direct readings slightly less certain once they get back something like 10,000 years ago or older.

The main point is that they demonstrated scientifically that the measurement and correlation approach is valid. They have several independent drilling sites, operated and studied by independent teams. They have cross checked their data with each other. The anomalies that were found were understood and accounted for. We know that global climate history data is preserved, available and accurate.

And 50% of people are dumber than the average person.

Frightening, isn't it?

Is really the best union.

I wish them luck with this. Maybe it will lead to more reasonable employment contracts for the rest of us.

An easy fix: apt-get install xfce4. For more thorough fix:
echo "deb http://repo.mate-desktop.org/debian wheezy main" >>/etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get install mate-desktop-environment

And for the love of Yog-Sothoth, remember to clean up the crap Gnome3 pulled in if you inadvertently installed it. Some stuff just wastes disk, some wastes memory, some (like avahi) is a security hole, some (network-manager) is just a wholesale sabotage machine.

Gnome3 Classic Mode is a bad joke: it superficially matches the appearance of Gnome2, while retaining but a small fraction of its functionality.

To me, this situation can be summed up the same way they sum up our situation. The government loves to tell you that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. I feel the same way about them.

Uhm, Windows having any resemblance of security against the local user? That's news to me.

Against remote threats (at least other that netbios), it has improved tremendously, I admit. But local root exploits? Microsoft's usual answer is that it doesn't consider it a threat.

There's a 1942s book, "Television, Today and Tomorrow", about the Baird and other rotating disk systems. At the end, there's a chapter about "electronic television", but it's dismissed as too complex and expensive. All those tubes!

Yes, I know about Zworklin and Farnsworth and Sarnoff and the progression from the iconoscope and the image dissector to the image orthicon. Then came color, which meant three of everything, including camera tubes.