ernest at lenti.med.umn.edu (Ernest Retzel (1535 49118)) writes:
>Sorry, I tend to agree with Krasel.
>If a biologist has a question, I can't really see a reason that it not
>be discussed. And for that query, I can think of no better bioforum to
>ask it in. The serious hardware groups flame people for asking basic
>things.
Ok, agreeably, there is more to a "software" group than just discussion of
software development, or its use or its installation - but it's a standing
joke around here that about the only thing you don't see in bionet software
is things related to the problems associated with writing and using software
in the biological field. We've had rambling discussions on the up arrow key
in GCG that had nothing to do with biology, we've had in depth discussions
on the difficulty of connecting apple laser writers to ethernets - I get
more amusement from reading the list of subject lines in here than I get from
rec.humour.funny on a typical day.
You'd be really amused if I started posting bug reports for the g++ compiler
in here just because I'm using to write software for biologists - or started
a rambling discussion on why the xor operator in c++ can't be usefully
overloaded to implement exponentiation.
I believe in orthogonality - we have groups for discussing pure hardware
problems and we have groups for discussion of purely biological problems,
and the things which can't be resolved in either belong to that blissful
area in the middle which is the fascinating interaction between disciplines.
I just get annoyed that I can't see the discussion in that interface for
all the noise coming from both sides.
Why can't we have a decent discussion on something like "What issues are
involved in the automation of mapping procedures for a project like
the Human Genome Mapping". For the rest of you, there is a discussion in
comp.sys.intel going on about the various processors right now as we speak.
enough said - I will keep my mouth shut now maybe.
--
Tom J Parry.
Your reality is a figment of my imagination.
