sequence bashing

Pulling the power cord on my laptop this weekend during shutdown has resulted in two visible issues. Firefox bookmarks are toast and the toolbar for my invitrogen sequence program is gone. In theory, tools on the toolbar are accessed also from the pulldown menus, but this is hard so far. This software is quite useful, and free to academics, until right about now. Apparently my license to use it will expire any day, and the cost of the reup is 500 a year. Great.

http://proflikesubstance.blogspot.com/ points out geneious, which would be $250 a year. I will have to learn that hyperlink thingyding. Occurs now that feeling of a startup company which I am enjoying more and more. this job involves more self reliance and direction than most, and you get to make more executive decisions as time goes on. Working without a comprehensive piece of software, like the postdocs in the lab, is untenable. Too slow for someone who wants to mark up large swaths of genome at a time. Why is this software so expensive? A great deal of work went into making it, and there is not enough competition. I find the latter to be a reason for the overall ridiculous expense involved in molecular biology, and if anyone wants to buy a 30$ piece of molded plastic I know where to point you.

So do I use a cracked version of the software. An illegally torrented, sinfully manipulated, terrorist supporting (according to the previous administration) 2.3Mb installation file. Probably.