h3nning - Slashdot User

Submission + - John Carmack on Rage for iOS/Android (bethblog.com)

Submitted by

Andrew Smith

on Saturday October 30, 2010 @10:41AM

Andrew Smith writes: "John Carmack has an article up on the Bethesda blog discussing the iPhone/iPad version of Rage, which is said to run at an impressive 60fps. And a tweet by Carmack today suggests that an Android version of Rage is on the way too."

Submission + - US says Genes should not be patentable (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Geoffrey.landis on Friday October 29, 2010 @11:50PM

Geoffrey.landis writes: A friend-of-the-court brief filed by the U.S. Department of Justice says that genes should not be patentable.

“We acknowledge that this conclusion is contrary to the longstanding practice of the Patent and Trademark Office, as well as the practice of the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies that have in the past sought and obtained patents for isolated genomic DNA,” they wrote.

The argument that genes in themselves (as opposed to, say, tests made from genetic information, or drugs that act on proteins made by genes) should be patentable is that "genes isolated from the body are chemicals that are different from those found in the body" and therefore are eligible for patents. This argument is, of course, completely silly, and apparently the U.S. government may now actually realize that.

Comment Re:why? (Score 2, Informative) 234

by h3nning on Saturday July 31, 2010 @11:53AM (#33095660) Attached to: TI Calculator DRM Defeated

10 years ago when I was at a university they also said that they would reset to factory defaults, this never ever happened, though. Probably because senior citizens are hired to supervise exams here in Norway.

Also, even if they did, the calculator I had could store data and programs in flash, which wouldn't be affected by a factory reset.

The only way a factory reset would have affected me was that I would have had to turn RPN back on.

Comment Re:A self righteous self important prick (Score 1) 489

by h3nning on Tuesday July 27, 2010 @03:01PM (#33049112) Attached to: Interview With the Man Behind WikiLeaks

Who the hell is this guy to decide for a democratically elected government what should remain secret or not? I don't remember voting for him.

How do you know who to vote for if important information has been withheld from the public for generations? I agree that governments need secrets, but I think this leak shows that the government keeps way too many secrets.

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