Microsoft feels the heat from Linux...again - A report on Ars Technica about MS striving to gain a foothold in the flash-based laptop market - typified by the OLPC project, and by the remarkable Asus Eee (but what a silly name!). It's difficult for me to see the merits of XP on these small capacity systems, particularly since MS schedule ending support for XP next year.

What is Drosophila?

My laboratory uses the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model for biological processes, and in particular the biology of oxidative stress resistance and ageing. The value of this organism stems largely from its highly developed background of genetic research, and the sophisticated techniques of genome manipulation which are available.

 Keeping Drosophila

The Gal4-UAS system was devised by Andrea Brand and Norbert Perrimon some years ago, and it remains one of the more powerful contributions to the modern Drosophila genetic toolbox.

The system relies on a combination of two engineered P elements.  P elements are a naturally occuring transposable element in the Drosophila genome: a complete 2.9kb element encodes a transposase enzyme that catalyses the element's excision and reintergration at novel sites.  P elements were the first germline tranformation system developed for Drosophila.  An engineered P element contains a marker gene that confers an easily recognised phenotype on flies bearing the element.  Nowadays. the most common marker gene is white, which is required for the eyes of the fly to take up the red and brown pigments that give Drosophila its brick red eyes (white is so-named because mutants have white eyes due to an inability to take up pigments).  

The first element of the Gal4-UAS system carries to transgene to be expressed, downstream of several copies of the yeast Gal4 Upstream Activating Sequence (UAS).  Essentially, the UAS is a sequence to which the yeast Gal4 transcription factor binds, thereby driving transcription of the downstream sequences (in this case, the transgene of interest).  In the absence of Gal4, the transgene contained within this element is transcriptionally inactive.  We can refer to this element as the responder element.

 

When I became interested in cycling again in the late 1980s, Robert Millar was for me the big name in the professional peleton. Only being peripherally involved in cycling at that time, I was really unaware of the Millar's full career at that time. Richard Moore has written an excellent account of Robert Millar's rise from Glasgow club cyclist to arguably Britain's finest professional road cyclist.

cyclingnews.com reports that Iban Mayo's B sample has been retested and found to be EPO positive.', '

What's interesting here is that following the A test positive, the B tests performed in a lab in Gent were "inconclusive". The B samples have now been re-tested at the the French national anti-doping laboratory (LNDD) in Chatenay-Malabry. This lab is the focus of the Landis appeal - as far as I can tell not on the basis that the test results were wrong, but on procedural grounds - so i can see this one run and run. For my views on why EPO tests can be hard to interpret see my posting on EPO and EPO testing.

There are enough procedural uncertainties here that this story is very likely to run and run, particularly if Mayo is suspended or banned as a consequence. It's not good that these cases get prolonged while the protagonists argue the toss over procedural irregularities. Athletes have a capacity to lie over their guilt for a long time before evidence forces them to come clean - see for example the sad story of Birillo.

Opera tries to force IE into W3C compliance with EU complaint; Firefox's success may work against it (report at ArsTechnica) - The internet browser company Opera has filed an antitrust action against Microsoft. The complaint is about the bundling of Internet Explorer in Windows and the alleged breakage of international web standards. There's another analysis over at Groklaw, of the usual high standard.

Ars Technica's belief is that FireFox's success will undermine Opera's case somewhat- but the case seems to go beyond merely bundling IE, but the inability to remove IE should you wish to, and the well-known MS attitudes to international standards.

 

 A child's view of the $100 laptop - Here's a report on the BBC describing the first experiences of a UK 9 year-old child with the XO laptop from the OLPC project. I think what's striking here is the ease with which the laptop's software is explored, and all of a sudden he's communicating with kids on another continent!

 

Give me rice, but give me a laptop too - A very strongly worded pro-OLPC opinion piece from Bill Thompson, a journalist and regular on the BBC World service.

Dutch government threatens to sideline Microsoft - here's a report from macworld (and the original Dutch report which i cannot read). One of the important feature about open file formats is that they are open. The consequence is that the contents will always be accessible in the future, even when the software that was used to open, edit and save those formats is long gone. Now despite Microsoft naming their new file formats OpenXML, the file formats are not open. In fact despite their efforts to pack ISO committees world-wide, Microsoft have so far failed to get their 6000 page partial description of the OOXML standard approved. If you are interested in a detailed description of MS activities, and issues to do with OOXML, here is the GrokDoc Dirty Tricks page and a summary of links (Groklaw).

What is evident is that there are half-truths being peddled, and MS are seeking to maintain user lock-in to their popular Office suite of applications: Office 2007 uses the new OOXML formats (e.g. docx). However the Open Document Format, being open (!), does not lock the user into any specific software package. It may, of course lock some packages out until such time as the software writers add odf filters.

It is reported at cyclingnews.com that the Kazakhstan cycling federation has imposed a one year ban on Vinokourov. He'll be banned from ProTour racing for four years, though, and this seems to have forced him into retirement. Vino, you may remember was busted at the 2007 Tour de France when, after an astounding recovery from injury and some really bad days in the saddle was found to have blood doped. I, along with many others I suspect, was rooting for Vino. he was at that point the underdog, and had a track record of combative riding (though some would call it a lack of tactical sense).

It's darkly amusing that Vino is represented by Maurice Suh, who also represents Floyd Landis (stripped of Tour de France victory following a positive testosterone test)

Note also that

GRAMPS is a database software package for collating and assembling genealogy data. I have been using it since December 2006 to prepare my family tree.

Written originally for Linux systems, it's also available for Windows.

Bibus is a fully featured bibliographic application, that can integrate with OpenOffice.org. It's available as a deb installation file, which makes installation much easier than in the past. I use it on my Linux PCs, but it's also available for Windows, and can be used with Word.

I can only think of Pros (no Cons). It integrates really nicely with wordprocessors, and bibliography fomatting is very flexible. You can choose one of two databases - MySQL or SQLite. I've only ever used the latter.

The Laptop That Could Change the World - A news report from Fox, about the excellent One Laptop per Child plan...nearing reality, and if you're in the USA you can contribute by a buy one, give one programme.

MS Word edit history snares Scottish Labour on donations - In which the beleagured leader of the Scottish Labour Party is undone by invisible comments in a Word document...sadly amongst the IT-challenged among the great and not-so-good, this isn't a rare occurrence. See this example from archFUDsters SCO, in their Bleak House-style comedic legal case aimed at destabilising Linux. Check out groklaw for the whole saga.

Beautiful Design (2006, Graphics Press LLC, Cambridge USA) is Edward Tufte's fourth book in a series discussing and analysing the visual presentation of data. According to the introduction, there is a fifth volume planned.

 

Day 1: Tayport to Killin

The first day of our tour began sunny and bright, though a little cool at first. We left Tayport at about 8.30 am. Because this was the first day riding with full panniers, we decided to detour via St Michael’s crossroads, for a bit of bike practice, which turned out to be a good idea. Unfortunately the roads were quite busy at times as rush hour approached. Rather than traverse Dundee’s new traffic system, after crossing the Tay Bridge, we headed out along Riverside, and out through Invergowrie, Kingoodie and Longforgan, where we crossed the main A90 at the Longforgan underpass.

In 2006, we decided to have as change from touring, and rented a cottage in Lochcarron (View Map) on the west coast of Scotland, taking the tandem and one of my solo bikes. A chief attraction (for me, at least) was that the famous climb over to Applecross (Bealach-na-Ba) was a short ride away. This worked out more social, as our friends Will and Cath were staying within reasonable range for a walking trip. Additionally, the weather turned out on some days to be completely disgraceful!

Stage 1: Tuesday 27th May Ullapool to Lochinver

Stage 2: Wednesday 28th May Lochinver to Durness

Stage 3: Thursday 29th May Durness to Altnaharra

Stage 4: Friday 30th May Altnaharra to Ullapool

Stage 5: Saturday 31st May Drumbeg coastal circuit

Stage 6: Sunday 1st June Ullapool to Poolewe

Stage 7: Monday 2nd June Poolewe to Shieldaig

Stage 8: Tuesday 3rd June Applecross

Stage 9: Wednesday 4th June Shieldaig to Ullapool

The first ever Oor Wullie annual, first published in 1940, has just been reprinted in facsimile edition.

Another in D. C. Thomson's reissues of Dudley D. Watkins' classic comic books, which I received for my birthday this year. Thomson published The Broons and Oor Wullie strips in the weekly paper The Sunday Post, and compiled annuals from the strips - The Broons and Oor Wullie annuals appeared (and still do) on alternate years. Personally, I far prefer Oor Wullie - I think The Broons tends to use very repetitive story lines.