March 2005 – Home of the Bridgers

Cloning Felix and Fido

I just shake my head.

Sometimes, I just shake my head.

Genetic Savings and Clone is willing to charge you a lot of money in order to clone your pet for you.

Genetic Savings & Clone enriches the lives of pet lovers through superior cloning technologies. Cat cloning available today; dog cloning available in 2005.

You would think this was a joke site, other than the fact that it really is a legitimate company offering what they feel is a legitimate service. Frankly (pun intended) the testimonials are a little unsettling. Talking about how “Little Gizmo” has the same mannerisms, same favorite chair, and same habits as it’s dead .. what do you call it? A relative? An ancestor certainly…. It’s self?
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Patenting Medical Facts – How Can It Be A Good Thing?

As science rushes forward, exploring the nooks and crannies of the human body, society is struggling to keep up. Science pushes boundaries often for the sake of simple exploration (with little thought to appropriateness and reasoning). Society then comes running behind trying to keep the mess created as clean as possible. A great example of putting the horse before the cart.

This race is nicely captured in the issue of Medical Facts patents – patents granted to people or corporations that concern a natural biological fact. For a good example, check out the following article from PUBPAT – a public interest group concerned with the patenting process. The article outlines the group’s position on a recently granted patent that is being appealed in the court system. The article puts it best:

The issue stems from a case that involves a patent granted by the U.S. Patent Office on diagnosing B12 or folic acid deficiency, which can cause serious human illnesses such as cancer and vascular disease, simply by knowing if a patient has an elevated homocysteine level. It is a matter of natural biology that whether someone has a B12 or folic acid insufficiency is related to whether they have a high level of homocysteine, because homocysteine is an amino acid metabolized by B12 and folic acid. Lower courts ruled that doctors who use or discuss the relationship between B12 or folic acid and homocysteine committed illegal patent infringement….

Pardon? What? Discussing a naturally occurring relationship is considered patent infringement?
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Canadian Copyright Laws To Change

It has come to my attention that the Canadian government is working on amendments to the copyright laws. After reading their announcement (available here) I have a few concerns about how they’re going about this.

From the interpretation provided by a Canadian Law Professor (available here) I’m concerned when I read things like we’ll continue to pay levies on blank media, but be unable to use that media for making personal copies of music. Reading the gov’s announcement also makes me wonder what kind of crack they’re smoking – they surveyed how many people in what year? The data they collected and used to form the basis of the needs of Canadian copyright law reform was acquired in 2001 and comprised a whopping 700 submissions? (This was found in their FAQ.) Let’s see – what was the state of technology in 2001, and who could fortell what the needs would be in 4 years, when the changes would be examined?

So naturally the laws they are going to create MUST be wishy-washy, such that they can apply to future technology while sticking to the comments made by some 700 Canadians 4 years ago. Just typing that makes me shake my head. Of course interpretation of these laws will be difficult, and will require many lawyers many hours. I guess that’s not a surprise to anyone.

But they are obviously trying to make it easier to enforce copyright law without explicitly following the U.S. and its DMCA. In the meantime they are removing some of our current rights as consumers of copyrighted material. The legislation will allow ISP (Internet Service Providers) to be forced to provide details of what their subscribers do and how often, enabling the copyright holders to pursue perople in court for breaking their copyrights.

I’m all for supporting copyrights – provided they do not stifle innovation or the creative process. But this does not seem to focus on maintaining status quo. It sounds to me like they are setting up a legal framework that can be used to actively hunt down and kill people who break copyright laws. Yes, kill.

Resistance Is Futile

Today I joined the masses – I succumbed to the alluring call of the white earbuds and the slick interface. I am now an iPod owner.

As a card-carrying member of the geek brotherhood (should that be capitalized?), I was resisting getting an iPod for a few reasons. The lack of open standards support, the proprietary software interface and the price premium for being trendy (never a good thing for a geek) were paramount on this list. But looking around at the alternatives really depressed me, as most of them are large, chunky things. In terms of usability, there really is no way of beating this wheel interface Apple has patented – try as Apple’s competitors might.

So I’ve been coveting an iPod for many a year now, though I’ve always wanted to hold back until I could afford one that was large enough to bottle up my entire music collection. Well Apple finally made my year and discontinued one of their models – meaning price cuts for all!.

So now I’m like a kid in a candy store – though it’s a Linux candy store. I’ve found out that plugging the iPod into my Linux desktop simply worked. I was able to download an OpenSource programme called gtkpod that allows me to sync up the iPod with my music collection, thereby replacing the need for iTunes. And I didn’t have to do a thing!

Bravo to the Linux Desktop people (specifically the Project Utopia team) and the developers working on gtkpod! Now leave me to my precious.

Farewell Cherry, We Hardly Knew You

Today we had a visit from an arborist, or a group thereof. What do you call a group of arborists anyways? Gaggle seems approrpiate. They spent some time climbing about our large cherry tree, trying to clean it up a little. We inherited it from the previous owner of the house who, apparently, did not see any value in pruning the tree. It now has grown so large and thick it is almost killing itself.

The arborist solemnly cleared off the top branches in anticipation of continuing the cleansing in the fall after the tree has a chance to catch its breath. Of course, the tips of the branches have all the blossoms, so I’m not sure we’ll be seeing much of a show this spring from this particular cherry tree.

Ah well, all in the name of healthy living!

Dogs vs. Cats

I was down at the beach today, nursing my swollen toe and watching Dazy running around trying frantically to catch up with one of the seagulls or ducks. Watching her have so much fun, it occurred to me why dogs are simply better pets than cats. No, I won’t hear another argument about it – the debate is finally settled.

Dogs remind us that there are simple pleasures in life. In fact, they make it so easy to let them have the time of their life that you end up feeling like a better person for inciting such joy in another living animal. Sure it’s somewhat self-centered, but I can’t see how a cat owner can compete with that sense of accomplishment. Cats by their very nature are independent and distant – looking for affection when and if it suits them. And when (if) you finally do seem to make them happy they take on the attitude that it was their due, and that you’ve simply delivered them what they had coming naturally. Dogs on the other hand are much more obvious about their gratitude.

Being able to incite joy and happiness in others is something to be proud of, and taking a dog for a walk on the beach gets you much closer to that ideal than playing with a cat and string.