Category: Life

Poor Americans. Everyone makes fun of them. If you’re Canadian, you may know the segment of the TV Show “This Hour Has 22 Minutes” entitled “Talking to Americans”, in which the show’s hosts attempt to convince some hapless American that Canada has a National Igloo, that our Prime Minister is some famous and deceased hockey player, that we have no electricity, etc.

Of course, I’m pretty sure the producers get the dumbest people they can. Ignorance is not an American-only thing, and I’m sure that one could easily find just as many stupid Canadians or what not. But nonetheless, the American populace are subject to yet another brush here, in a segment called “On the Streets of America” from CNNN. CNNN is a kind of parodic news network owned by ABC.

Download clip: On the Streets of America.

A new study shows that 20 percent of human genes have been patented in the United States, primarily by private firms and universities.

The study, which is reported this week in the journal Science, is the first time that a detailed map has been created to match patents to specific physical locations on the human genome.

Researchers can patent genes because they are potentially valuable research tools, useful in diagnostic tests or to discover and produce new drugs.

“It might come as a surprise to many people that in the U.S. patent system human DNA is treated like other natural chemical products,” said Fiona Murray, a business and science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and a co-author of the study.

“An isolated DNA sequence can be patented in the same manner that a new medicine, purified from a plant, could be patented if an inventor identifies a [new] application.”

Creepy huh? Full Source.

Replies on Slashdot:

Anonymous Coward: So this means that every time I spank the monkey, I’m committing hundreds of millions of acts of patent violation?

This blog is my journal. I use it to rant, and I apologise if that’s all I seem to do. But its mine – so take that :p

Anywho, today was what constitutes “a bad day”. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working hard taking these “learning at a distance” classes on behalf of one of my school courses. It’s in addition to whatever we learn in class. Anywho, I’ve spent 15-20 hours working on that thus far, and it was supposed to amount to a test we’d have in class today.

Well today, I fucked up my schedule. I thought the class was at 5:30, not 4:00PM. Needless to say, I found out (albeit late), and showed up for class at 4:25. By that time, the test had apparently finished. And I lost 10% of my final mark.

Fuck that blows. Please don’t reply to this post.

Took a walk in Gatineau Park today with my family. I added the pictures to the Gallery. You can view the pictures for this trip here.

Yet another 754 file sharers have become targets of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a group representing major record labels in the United States. The RIAA accuses the P2P users of copyright infringement while uploading songs to other users on P2P networks. This brings the total to around 14,800 targeted so far in the campaign by the major record labels who claim they are fighting for survival.

Out of the entire 14,800 lawsuits, only about 3,400 have ever been settled and not one of these cases have ever seen a proper court case to date.

Entire Newspiece

Piracy Movie News:
Still working on it whenever I can. Still am in the scripting phase, getting bit by bit done. And here I thought I would of had the whole completed by October – how naive. It’ll be released when its done. No promised due dates.