Project News for GNU-Darwin Distribution
FOSS, public health, and resveratrol: Get real Mr. Bill
Subject: GNU-Darwin: Bill Gates: "I think if you invent drugs, you should be able to charge for them"
Bill's argument is essentially; why get something for free when you can buy it.
Not only is it absurd, but it is an outrage. It is an outrage
that billionaires, that billion dollar corporations think that profits
are more important than keeping people alive.
Get real Mr. Bill. Real people have values beyond money, such as
freedom, openness and public accessiblilty. Most importantly, they
have an interest in helping poor people get medical care. I know that
it is something that you think about, and make some efforts, but your
words speak louder than your actions.As a counterpoint, here is a little story found by my web agent.
Glaxo to buy Sirtris for $720M
CNNMoney.com - USA
For example, Sirtris is testing a modified version of a red wine extract called resveratrol in people with Type 2 diabetes.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/22/news/companies/GlaxoSmithKline_Sirtris.ap/?postversion=2008042219It should be noted that resveratrol itself is virtually free with
respect to the number $720M. I recommend taking a panel of polyphenols
and flavanoids, plus a good multi, which are readily available at the
supplement outlets.Regards,
Michael L. Love Ph.D
Department of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry
School of Medicine
Johns Hopkins University
725 N. Wolfe Street
Room 608B WBSB
Baltimore MD 21205-2185Interoffice Mail: 608B WBSB, SoM
Shipping Dock: 1915 E. Madison St.office: 410-614-2267
lab: 410-614-3179
fax: 410-502-6910
cell: 443-824-3451
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/
On the loss of US credibility: conscription, death penalty
I feel that it is important to distribute this essay widely. Please
feel free.On the loss of US credibility: conscription and the death penalty
by Michael L. Love
Mon Apr 21 16:41:16 EDT 2008The thesis is simple. Given the abysmal performance of the US
government in recent years, given the fact that a non-democratically
elected executive was able to hijack the military apparatus for an
unprovoked war under a fraudulent pretext, given the complicity of the
US media in the face of valid criticism and protest, given the fact that
Bush was supported in this action by the vast majority of Americans,
given the many outrages, such as the Abu Ghraib atrocities, which are
too numerous to mention in an essay, given all this and much more,
given the notion that an all volunteer defense force has been virtually
destroyed by this misuse of the Army, given that the memory of 9/11 was
viciously exploited for these purposes and used as a pretext to curtail
civil liberties and to usurp governance in Afghanistan and Iraq: The US
has lost any credibility whatsoever, any claim to truth or lucidity, any
claim to justice, any claim to authority to carry out conscriptions or
executions at all, and this for the foreseeable future.This thesis needs little defense, as anyone who has given even
peripheral attention to the news outlets will be aware of the facts that
surround it, most of which are freely acknowledged by the perpetrators.
Nonetheless, I am anxious for any discussion regarding these matters,
and if this is not the correct forum for such discussions, then please
direct me to a forum which would be considered appropriate.Genetic evidence has demonstrated the wild tendency of the US to wrongly
execute its citizenry, and the total number of unjust executions appears
to be truly daunting, to say nothing of the racial bias in US
executions. This is consistent with the execution of the war as it
were, wherein the US has lost any moral credibility or claim to justice
because of its own gross criminality. It is also consistent with the
fact that many of the so-called terrorists were in reality wrongly
detained and even abused. There should be no more executions in or by
the US whatsoever. For these reasons, I am calling for a total
moratorium of executions in the US.It is obvious that the US should withdraw from Iraq immediately. The US
is nothing but an oppressive, wrongful invader, a foreign authoritarian
power, in a country that they have apparently purposely mired in war and
deprived of governance in order to get gain. There are several
companies close to the Administration that are profiting wildly from the
war, while the rest of the economy falters. This shows that they
selfishly care little more for fellow Americans even than Iraqis. The
fact that the fate of Iraq should be left in Iraqi hands can be easily
understood with a modicum of sympathy: What if the tables were turned?
The prosecution of the war in Afghanistan is similarly wrong, and the US
should withdraw immediately for similar reasons. Continued US presence
in Afghanistan demonstrates that it was also invaded under false
pretenses. Ironically, the US is making more terrorists by its actions,
when any actual terrorists would clearly have been rooted out by now, if
that were the actual objective.Given the clear ambivalence of the Democrats about doing anything
substantial to correct these problems, it is highly naive to think that
the election of a Democratic president will result in a withdrawal from
Iraq, or a restoration of lost civil liberties. For example, Bush's
actions in Iraq can be seen as a continuation and expansion of the Bill
Clinton's policy, because as everyone should remember, Clinton subjected
Iraq to repeated bombings, laid waste to their national infrastructure,
and starved their children with sanctions, as if in preparation for this
war. It now appears that this was also done under false pretenses, just
like Bush. Given this history, how can we possibly expect any better
than Bush from the Democrats, who even recently have shown little
backbone in standing up to these outrages.To think that we would yield our liberty, in the form of conscription,
to an evil war apparatus as the US has become is simply wrong and
outrageous. This will never happen, even if it becomes the law of the
land, even if there are more terrorist attacks. If there are more
attacks, we should know that the events will again be morbidly and
wrongly exploited for political gain in Washington as we have seen since
9/11, but we will not be cannon fodder for such machinations in the
future. The actual solutions to these problems lay elsewhere. If the
man knew that a divorce was coming as it were, he might have behaved
better, but the Bushies apparently are unaware of this fact. We are no
longer naive Mr. US President, and we want our country back.I do not want to be too discouraging, because these events clearly
indicate action on our part. For those of you who would like to see the
US withdraw and pull back from these outrages, I wrote some suggestions
last year about how to stop the war. I am happy to see that some people
are doing these things, which may be our only hope to turn this thing
around. Some of these suggestions require a little sacrifice on our
part, but they are clearly worth doing. Here is the link for those who
want further reading or pointers about what to do next.http://proclus.gnu-darwin.org/polaris.html
As always, I am eager for conversation and questions, so please feel
free to respond and forward this communication as you like.Regards,
--
Michael L. Love Ph.D
Department of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry
School of Medicine
Johns Hopkins University
725 N. Wolfe Street
Room 608B WBSB
Baltimore MD 21205-2185Interoffice Mail: 608B WBSB, SoM
office: 410-614-2267
lab: 410-614-3179
fax: 410-502-6910
cell: 443-824-3451
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/Visit proclus realm! http://proclus.tripod.com/
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GNU-Darwin 7th year report
In case you missed it, these stories below have gone out into the wild now. We have had a surge in pkg_add access to our package repository since that time, indicating that GNU-Darwin is far from dead as of yet ;-}. The iPhone bricking story was of particular moment.
In honor of this occasion, I am announcing a revamp of our pkg_add
system, so that 'pkg_add -r' should be working consistently for both the
ppc and the x86 platform. If you have any questions about that, be
sure and ask.Work on our AMD Phenom Quad server, darwintel, continues so that we have
a current version of the website, SpamAssassin, and squirrelmail there.
The latest version of coreutils from ftp.gnu.org compiled beautifully
and very fast, but if you try it, be sure and exclude the su utilities.
This machine is expected to be exceptional for package development.In contrast to Apple, which is distributing non-free and unusable
versions of Darwin OS, we are committed to FOSS, and will be on this
horse for as long as it will stand.As a reminder, GNU-Darwin will observe moratorium day by redirecting
our home page on December 21st, see below.Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.orgOn 30 Nov, To: proclus@gnu-darwin.org wrote:
>
> I've added the following news forums, and they will be going out on rss
> eventually as well.
>
> # Phenom system on order 2007-11-30
> http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=759988
>
> # Apple Sued for iPhone Bricking 2007-11-30
> http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=759987
>
> # GNU-Darwin to support Iraq moratorium 2007-11-30
> http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=759986
>
> Happy Friday and Cheers!
>
> Regards,
> proclus
> http://www.gnu-darwin.org/
>
>
>--
Visit proclus realm! http://proclus.tripod.com/
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Phenom Quad shell access
Effective immediately, all GNU-Darwin shell account holders have access to our Phenom Quad machine. Just log in with your GNU-Darwin.org user info. Cheers!
ssh gnu-darwin.org
ssh darwintelHere is an announcement about the machine.
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=762760
Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/--
Visit proclus realm! http://proclus.tripod.com/
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GNU-Darwin on AMD Phenom Quad CPU
Our in-house Darwin-8.0.1 works great on all four CPUs. Screen shot to appeear in the usual spot.
Darwin-7 boots, but Darwin-6 does not. We have a revision of GNU-Darwin Office for x86, which works fine on the system, and it is featured in the screenshot.
It is planned to provide access to this machine for our shell account users, and to duplicate the functionality of gd-shell-02 on darwintel, but in a new revision. More to come.
Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/
Here are some GNU-Darwin News releases going back to the very beginning. More to come.
Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/
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