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Vir[i/ii/a/uses] As Nano-Blueprints? (Updated)
Auxon writes: "The Washington Post reports that researchers at the University of Texas "... have discovered that tiny protein-like strands on the surface of common viruses--the sort of molecules that enable germs to identify and grasp their target cells--also bind tightly and very selectively to materials widely used in high-tech electronics ..." They believe that this could be used to make templates with which they can grow circuits, in the same sort of manner that cells use calcium and other materials to produce bones, and oysters build their shells." I bet industrial sabotage could take on a whole new dimension with this as well. [Updated 9 June 3:55GMT by timothy] Pick your favorite plural of "virus" above :) All are supported by at least one comment posted below, but I concede the "ii" is probably best left to computer -- errr -- viruses.
Good point friend. I wish I could have gotten to this story sooner before timothy magically fixed it. I would've had to fix timothy!
Keeping
Look here or here to find the reasons "virii" is stupid.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
no go and do you latin homework before you talk crap again.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
Nope...sorry, I would defer to you, you having had 6 more years of latin, but I am unaware of where that second i came from. Look, heres a second declension noun: lupus(wolf) lupus in the vocative is lupe. lupus in the dative is lupo. lupus in the nominative plural is lupi Thus, virus becomes viri. Only one i. Lucius, however, becomes lucii in the plural(and the vocative, but that d/n matter). So if there was more than one lucius, you could have: lucii scripserunt insanum rem omnibus. Such as virii. Sorry, that was puerile....but basically, the -us stem BECOMES -i. Never -ii, unless there is a leading i before the -us stem(making it sort of a -ius stem, really). PJPII
why would it being rare make the normal plural rules invalid? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to be invalid for an irregular, commonly used word, as is often the case in most languages(hell, latin has tons of fun irregulars like that(eg, Fero, ferre, tuli, latus) but they're all very common words) But then again, I might just be stupid.
All right, there has been too much confusion about the plural of virus, so I feel I have to clear it up (yes I'm a Latin scholar).
(1)First of all, many believe that it should be viri, this is the most wrong - this stems from the Latin second declension masculine vir (gen. viri) which means "man".
(2)The second most wrong is vira - some seem to believe that this would be corect because the plural of bacterium is bacteria. However, bacterium is a neuter word, which means it's nominative and accusitive plural forms in Latin will end with "a". Virus not being a neuter word, it should not end with "a" in its nominitive plural form.
(3)I don't know why the ending "ii" is up there - this is probably because people hear the plural of radius being radii (that is pronounced correctly with a long i for English but for Latin it would still be short). Radius is a second declension word with a genitive stem "radi-" so adding the plural nominitive second declension ending makes it radii.
(4)The only correct form is, of course, viruses. Not only through process of elimination, but also because virus is a third declension word. The third declension nominitive and accusitive plural ending is "es" which is where we get the "s" ending for many English words we wish to pluralize. When you want to make the plural form in the nominitive (that being the only form we would use in English since nouns are non-declinable for us) the proper form is viruses. You might say, "wait, that's not complicated enough - Latin always sounds funky!" but c'est la vie!
Pardon my French.
-Leo
I'd like to know where you got viri. References, or something? The conjugation (I suppose that's what it is in Latin) of a noun in Latin doesn't mean that form is an English word.
According to Miriam-Webster's, the Oxford English Dictionary (a huge volume I have in print), dictionary.com, Brittanica, and Encarta, the plural for virus - in English now - is viruses. None of these sources have any entry or make any reference to either "viri" or "virii."
(June 8, 2000. Associated Press.)
Researchers at the University of Texas are suing McAfee and Symantec, noted anti-computer-virus companies, for restraint of trade and industrial sabotage. "We're getting horrible yields at all our domestic fabs because of those bastards," said chemist Angela M. Belcher of the University of Texas at Austin. "It just isn't fair for them to blatently interfere with our manufacturing process like this. If it doesn't stop, we'll have to take matters into our own hands, and design nanites that turn their CEO's brains into cheerios!"
McAfee and Symantec were unavailable for comment.
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
Please allow the grammar nazi to clear this up:
Specifically, we're interested in knowing whether you should refer to more than one virus as virii. Latin-lovers and viral votaries alike know that the noun virus is a borrowing from Latin. In that tongue, a virus (pronounced WEE-russ) is a venom, a poisonous emanation, a slimy liquid, or a stench. In fact, when virus first slithered its way into our language in the late 16th century, it named a "venom emitted by a poisonous animal."
The word's Latin ancestry has given some English speakers the idea that the only logical way to pluralize virus is to replace the terminal -us with the letters -ii . This idea seems especially popular among folks who are referring to more than one computer virus. But before you catch the bug for that new spelling, consider this: the notion that Latin words ending in -us must take an -ii plural is a flat-out fallacy. In fact, there is no evidence that any plural form of the classical Latin virus was ever recorded; some lexicographers even suspect the Latin virus was a mass noun (and thus needed no separate plural).
In addition, when you look at the historical record of English usage, you find viruses, not virii, as the established plural. So although virii has turned up upon recent occasions, that word is far from standard.
--this is only slightly plagerised
Keeping
I was just thinking about this reading the article and some of the comments-- here it is.
In the coming world of nanotechnology, will we really be aiming to miniaturize 'macrotechnology' to a molecular level? Or rather will we try to manipulate molecular and biological chemistry in such a way that it acheives the ends we are looking for? Are we just making little robots, or does, say, engineering a -virus- that repairs, I don't know, nerve damage, count as nanotechnology? Are we specifically limiting the term "nanotechnology" to superminiaturized electrical/mechanical technology? Or will nanotech involve elements of both mechanical and chemical engineering in the execution of the nanite's task?
Plenty of interesting questions for someone who knows more about this stuff than me to answer.
If the virus have an affinity for particular structures, I wonder if they could construct little virus collectors? An inplant could collect a particular viral infection.
kind of like a roach motel.
Enough experiments will go wrong and enough people will fight with each other that this branch of science, like others, will more or less keep up with our ability to cope.
This is an oversimpification; if you feel a need to expand upon it, do so. I'm polite to flamers :-)
it's green.
People on the 'net speak a new language called Internet. It is still very early in the development of said language, and the embyronic language has, at this point, strong ties to English. As is true in the evolution of any language, there will be traditionalists, sometimes known as pedants, who try to hold back the evolution of the new language.
Some of the earliest features of this new language are detailed in a document known as the Jargon File. The Jargon File itself, though, even occasionally fills a role as a hold-back, trying to prevent the evolution of the language (i.e. traditionalists who insist that the meaning of the term hacker hasn't evolved to include usages with negative connotations).
As the new language evolves, it will gradually grow away from it's English roots. As the net continues to internationalize, people from other cultures who do not primarily speak English will find their place at the table and their jargon, phrases, and colloquialisms will find their way into the new language. The new language is NOT English, and people who try to insist it is English are sorely mistaken.
The only thing that is certain at this point is that there is no turning back. Reactionary forces, i.e. spelling pedants, have no place in the future, except to serve as examples to the schoolchildren of the future of lives which have gone bad.
Your mistake is in assuming that the language spoken on the 'net is traditional English. We have evolved beyond that point. You are now acting as a force of reaction. Please desist.
Yeah - everybody wants to have a different plural for virus or virii or whatever. But for crying out loud, use an accepted syntax in your titles- after all this is "News for Nerds". We can cope with your glob expressions! We can compose sonnets using regexps! Perl is our friend and pattern matching is our first language! So it's either:
vir{i,ii,a,uses} or it's
vir(a|ii?|uses)
Thank you and good night
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
The potential for a major breakthrough in CPU developement is very exciting, but this quote is something that really gets me stoked...
"Belcher said, her team is hoping to be
able to integrate living cells and
electronic materials for neuroprosthetics
that could substitute for damaged nerve
systems..."
I have a good friend who lost his left arm beneath the elbow, and I know he will certainly be interested in this!!!
The facts expressed here belong to all, the opinions to me. The distinction between fact and opinion is yours to decide.
This gives a whole new meaning to "bugs in the hardware" --- it'll be bugs making the hardware!
|/usr/games/fortune
Um, besides the wonderful benefit of building electronics this discovery provides...couldn't we build little nano-bots that bind to viruses in the body and render them inactive? I mean, I think that would be a much more useful and obvious use. It's funny how whenever anything is discovered we immediately try to apply it to computing.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
In the hopes of putting an end to discussions of the correct Latin plural of 'virus' (as far as I'm concerned, the only plural of 'virus' is viruses): 1. No plural forms of virus ever occur in Classical Latin (i.e. in any text that we have): all that occurs is the nominative singular (virus), the accusative singular (also virus: this is a neuter noun), one occurence of the genitive singular (viri), and one occurrence of the ablative singular (viro). Check the Oxford Latin Dictionary (the standard source) for details. 2. There are two other Latin words that may be confusing some folks: vis, 'force' (plural vires, gen. sing. vis), and vir, 'man' (plural viri, gen. sing. viri). Vir is second declension masculine, so its nom. plural and its gen. sing. are the same. In Latin, the only things viri could mean are 'men' or 'of a man' (from vir and 'of a virus'. 3. Virus in Latin is indeed grammatically unusual. You would expect a neuter ending in -us to be a contracted form, with the real stem revealed only in the oblique cases (e.g. stercus, gen. stercoris: the stem is thus stercor-). We've got only two instances of oblique cases, one each of the genitive and the ablative, and they look like second-declension forms. With such a very limited base of evidence, it;s hard to know what conclusions to draw. We sometimes find more than one declensional pattern for the same Latin noun (e.g. vir occasionally has the third-declension gen. pl. virum as well as the more regular second-declension virorum. For all we know, the two oblique forms we have of virus are themselves atypical. Personally, I find 'virii' rather silly; 'viruses' works just fine in English, everybody understands it, and nobody needs to berate anyone else about correctness. I also say 'indexes' and 'syllabuses'. I don't have much sympathy with the notion that we ought to use foreign declensional forms in English; applied consistently, it would give some surprising results (what's the plural of 'nexus'? How about 'kudos'?).
Good thing that Webster is a dictionary, which is a catalog of English words.
They don't make the language, they make a book of the language. If English was defined by a dictionary, new words could never come into existance.
I WILL CONTINUE TO USE THE WORD VIRII! FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO INVENT NEW TERMS FOR NEW IDEAS!
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Virii is a proper English word. Why? It is in common usage and it is commonly known. Simple.
Languages change according to need. Trying to define rules to change them is a ridiculous error made only by academic morons who have no experience in the real world.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
First off, the OED gives nothing but viruses for the plural.
Writers who, searching for a fancy plural to virus, incorrectly write *viri are doubtless blindly applying an overreaching -us => -i rule. This mis-inflects many words. For example, status and hiatus only change the length of the final vowel; genus goes to genera; corpus goes to corpora. Others are even worse if this rule is mis-applied, like syllabus, caucus, octopus, mandamus, and rebus.
Anyway, Latin already had a word viri, but it was the nominative plural not of virus (slime, poison, or venom), but of vir (man), which as it turns out is also a 2nd declension noun. I do not believe that writers of English who write viri are intentionally speaking of men. And although there actually is a viri form for virus, it's the genitive singular[1], not the nominative plural. And we certainly don't grab for genitive singulars for the plurals when we've started out with a nominative. Such hanky panky would certainly get you talked about, and probably your hand slapped as well.
Those confused souls who write *virii are tacitly positing the existence of the non-word *virius, and declining it as though it were like filius. It's true that l/r are both linguals that sometimes get interchanged, and that f/v are just a change in voicing[2], but that's just reaching. *Virii is still completely silly, so don't do that; otherwise, everyone will know you're just a blathering script kiddie.
The crucial problem here is that, classically speaking, there appears to be no recorded use of virus in the plural. It was a 2nd declension noun ending in -us, which is rather common, but it was also a neuter, which is rather rare. I could only come up with three such 2nd declension neuters: virus (some poison), pelagus (the sea, usually poetically), and vulgus (the crowd). None appear to admit plurals. Perhaps this is because they are mass nouns, not count nouns. [3]
One citation below wonders whether these -us 2nd declension neuters might have inflected -us => -ora, the way the 3rd declension's neuter plurals for tempus and corpus do. There's really not any support for that notion--that I could find at least. If so, that would end up producing *virora. Most other citations think that these plurals just never happened at all, or that if they did, they didn't jump declensions. Perhaps they were invariant as they oddly are for the vocative and accusative cases. In any event, *virora does not fit comfortably in the mouth of an English speaker, which is a good reason to avoid it.[4]
Another theory holds that virus, being a 2nd declension neuter--which we are 100% certain of because its nominative singular is -us and its genitive singular is -i--must go to *vira in the plural as do its -um neuter brethren in the 2nd declension. However, that assumes that it works like a -um form, not as a -us form does. And it really seems to do neither. If it were a -us form (again, as a 2nd declension nominative), then its vocative would have to be *vire; but it's really only virus. You also expect an accusative form *viros, but that too is missing; it's still just virus in the accusative. And if it were a -um form, then its vocative would have to be *virum. But it's not--here again, it's only virus. (Vocative examples of virus are not particularly common. Apparently the Romans seldom addressed their slime in a personal fashion. :-)
So what we have here is something of a mixed or invariant declension. Trying to find a plural for something that didn't take a plural (possibly because it was not a count but a mass noun), or at least, one for which no plural is classically attested, is a fruitless endeavour. Best to stick with English and use viruses.
----
Celebrate the finer things in life
This sounds pretty cool. What if in twenty thousand years or something we develop through genetic engineering some way of building computers into our brain.
No more pre-calc, its built in. From there, the possiblities are endless. Decide you want Wolverine claws, the processor in your brain assigns the cells in your forearms to start using adamantium (which you are taking supplements of) to build those claws.
I realize this is more like, here's a new way of building circuits, but its kind of a Gibson-esque way of implementing cool tech into our bodies.
Troll Like a Champion Today
At-choo!
I would like to see this technology used in the reverse; that is, using tech-industry materials to test for and identify viruses. Potential for chemicals-free disease testing, with quick results, say, a test unit that could be used repeatedly? I wonder about the technical feasibility of something like that.
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
Yeah, I previewed, but now I would like to clarify. Sorry. When I say 'does an engineered virus count', I don't mean it in the way mentioned in the /. article (where a virus is used to 'grow' mechanic/electrical parts) but rather 'does an engineered virus that is engineered to perform a virus-like but beneficial-to-the-body task as its sole purpose count'. I hope that's a little clearer-- does the engineered virus as the end (rather than the means) count as nanotech?
This is just a new technique for creating conventional silicon (or other crystalline-material based) chips, promising to be better than laser etching.
Neural networks have nothing to do with connecting people's minds together, nor can people's minds be connected together. Consciousness is a high-level function of the brain, you can't "make a pipe" to let it flow out. Sorry.
And seeing that the comment before yours takes a similar tone, as well as comment 28, makes me wonder if there's a new wave of "neural net" trolls (wh@t 1f y0u m4k3 a n3ur41 n37 0f th353?) coming on.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Check out Project Upper/Mute, an all-around awesome compiler fra
Does this mean wheat germs, bacteria-germs, virus-germs, or what??
One thing is certain:
Domestos (aka Chlorox) kills 99% of all known germs.
... Dead..
One minor note from a first year latin student. You decline nouns and conjugate verbs.
Mark Duell
You have to look at this with a bit of skepticism.
:)
First: If this is so great why aren't we reading this in a serious science magazine or site?
Second AMD et al have already spent millions on conventional fabs. They will need a lot of convincing before they drop everything.
Chips keep getting better, they are trying to hit a moving target.
What would happen if a human would get infected by a microchip virus? Talk about a nasty cold
Just a small note from a first year latin student. vir (pronounced WEE-r) is the latin word for man.
Mark Duell
I know this is really late and most likely redundant by now, but everyone's favorite reference, www.dictionary.com, says this:
- --------------------------------
virus (vrs)
n., pl. viruses.
Any of various simple submicroscopic parasites of plants, animals, and bacteria that often cause disease and that consist essentially of a core of RNA or DNA surrounded by a protein coat. Unable to replicate without a host cell, viruses are typically not considered living organisms.
A disease caused by a virus.
Something that poisons one's soul or mind: the pernicious virus of racism.
Computer Science. A computer virus.
-----------------------------------------------
For a couple of good reasons. First of all, not many people use "viri" they use "virii" or "viruses." Secondly, in Latin, "viri" is the plural of "vir" (man), not the plural of "virus."
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
"Tommorrow is either going to be pretty cool or a nanotechnological wasteland!"
With all this talk about the correct spelling for the plural of virus I thought I would play along.
You spelled tomorrow wrong.
NEENER NEENER NEEEENER!
I know this is flamebait, I just couldn't resist.... Tee Hee...
-----
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
This circuit etched by Ebola. In addition to anti-static wristband, please wear your bio-hazard suit when handling this silicon.
Sorry for the long post but I'd like to try and explain what was actually done here.
I just read the paper and what the researchers have shown is that they can identify short peptides(<=12 amino acids) that can bind to inorganic surfaces selectively (ie bind to GaAs but not SiO2). They accomplished this feat using a technique that is widely used in the molecular biology research community...Phage Display.
Basically a bacteriophage is a virus that infects bacteria. Viruses are molecular machines that consist of an outer protein shell holding the nucleic acids which contain the instructions for making more copies of the nucleic acids and the protein shell. The Protein shell contains a few copies of the P3 coat protein (5 in the case of the virus used here). This protein recognizes the cell to be infected and triggers the process of cell entry, whereupon the virus enter the cell and hijacks the cellular macinery to produce many copies of the virus. In this way the virus replicates.
These biologists added a random sequence of 36 nucleotides (DNA bases) to the end of the DNA sequence that encodes the P3 coat protein. Now the virus will produce a P3 protein that has 12 additional random amino acids added to the end of P3 (3 DNA bases make a codon that encodes one amino acid), giving 20^12 possible unique P3 proteins (20 amino acids at each position, 12 positions).
Then they created a pool of ~10^9 phage (way fewer than the possible 20^12) and selected for phage with peptide sequences that bound to the desired material (GaAs) by affinity selection. Those viruses that bound were amplified in bacteria following elution from the material. The selection is repeated several times to identify the tightest binding peptide sequences.
Using this process, they found peptides that bound selectively to many different semiconductor surfaces and speculate that somehow this could be used to create new circuitry.
What they have done is use a standard molecular biology technique to find peptides (short polymers of amino acids) that bind selectively to inorganic surfaces of a given composition.
At the end of the article they speculate that by joining two peptides selected for binding to two different materials they can get peptides that would bind selectively at the interface between two material surfaces. I think this is the nano part of the technology as those interfaces must be created by conventional means. This method may allow finer features to be created.
Overall this is an interesting paper that opens up new possibilities but as usual in the nanotech field, it is a long way from being useful.
Hope that made sense
Cheers
no sig.
Nope! I went round and round with this
in a Usenet forum with a gentleman who
really knows his Latin and a copy of my
Cassell's Latin Dictionary. Virus is
*not* second-declension masculine, it's
second-declension neuter. Yes, I *know*
it doesn't end in -um; it's somewhat
irregular. It's a really, really, weird noun,
fairly rare, and, in fact, has never been seen
in the plural form in classic texts. Best
guess for a back-formation plural would be
"vira".
Chris Mattern
since a virus is natures equal to a cracker in that it can pentrate a system, spread itself, and take the host down if need be...what if this method of computer growth was applied by the blackhats? perhaps we might see one day nano-computers who sole purpose is viral behavior and loaded over a network or physical means.
or - if computers are built using this method, whose to say a cracker couldn't further the growth/development of these for thier own purposes....ie - the virus no longer exists in software, it lives on your motherboard and finally overtakes it physically!
,
faeryman
This also brings a whole new dimension to virus 'software'. I can just see it: every computer is shipped with a preinstalled bio mass that feeds on electric current; genetically engineered to exude an antivirul odor.
Also brings a whole new dimension to office angst. Imagine the loss in production solely due to the smell...;-) And of course employies hacking their boxes to turn it off...and putting all the hacked units in the boss' system
Checkout taccom my worl war II simulator
There's a book based on something relatively similar to that (and actually written pretty well! :). I read it last year and loved every page. Very Neil Stephensonesque. You can check out the author's website here
_________________________
_________________________
heLlo... myy naame issh Linush Thoralvades, and I pronounsch (hic) it, "vodka"!
Or did the expected beowulf comment stop being funny many moons ago?
It is time for something new people!
I'd say that the plural of a biological virus is "viruses" while of a computer virus is "virii". As for a biological virus that builds computers... viruses, because it's biological and not a computer program. This way, "My computer has viruses!" (as in biological things eating it) is differentiated from "My computer has virii!" (as in malicious programs).
This virus-protein binding looks like it could be useful in fabrication, but i wonder how finely they can control the binding. Could they lay out a circuit path, or would the 'wires' be too uneven and too likely to be built short circuited?
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--
perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
radius I'm guessing is of some Latin root.
We take a lot of words from Latin, and often the pluralization is wordus to wordi, radius to radii. It just happens that radius has an i before us in the singular form. Virus goes to viri.
Don't ask me what the roots are, I think vir has something to do with being very small.
There's a little more to it than wordus just being changed to wordi - there were hundreds of years that the Romans kinda spoke the language, it wasn't some arbitrary decision. The most common form of a -us word is in the second declension, where the plural happens to be -i.
Radius, I believe, is actually derived from Greek - a lot of math terms are, if you'll notice. Vir is the Latin word for man or husband. Anyway, my point is, just because radius's plural is radii, don't assume virus's is virii. Besides, I've taken Latin for four years, and I have all this pent-up-Latin-grammar-badassness in me.
thank you for your time.
Hah... At first glance I thought you said "Imagine if Natalie could reproduce once a minute".
-- Dr. Eldarion --
shouldn't the plural of radius be radiii?
No, it's radii. (only two i's)
I spent a good deal of time reviewing this issue since it has been an ongoing source of vexation. /virus/ is not a masculine noun. It is a fourth declension neuter. Looking through classical and post-classical attestations, the plural is very rare (it occurs mostly in agricultural discussions). No doubt this is owing to the ancient's inability to conceive of plural 'slime'. Since, though, /virus/ has extensive use in modern medical and computer science speech, it should take an English plural and be rendered: 'viruses'. Sit finis!
How about from now on we agree to call more then one virus as "Bob".
Just think of it:
My computer crashed because of Bob.
My network is down because someone spread Bob all over the server.
Damn, Symantech just doesn't know how to cure Bob anymore...
That silly end user just keeps on activating Bob. He needs a lesson on preventing Bob.
What do you think?
-----
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
Nice try, but "Virus" is not a Latin second declension noun with a plural in -i. It's a Latin FOURTH declension noun, and the plural is -u:s (that's -us with a long u). In other words, the Latin plural of virus is virus. With a length distinction that's lost in English. So you might as well use the English plural, "viruses." "Viri" is NOT a Latin word. Neither is "vira." "Virii" is another mistake, probably based on "radii" (which is from "radius," which IS a second declension Latin noun.) Most Latin nouns that end in -us are second declension and the plural is -i, but "virus," like "venus," is an exception. ("Venus" is 3rd declension, and has no plural, cause it's a proper noun, but if it did, the plural would be "veneres.")
radius - us = radii
...um....it doesn't exactly work like that. Changing the sufix derives from latin (virii is second declension. The full lexicon for would be: virus, -i, m.,
But as we know, virus is a neutral form too, of the 3rd group, and not the 2nd. So the plural form is:
Virorum!
By my reckoning (which coincides remarkably well with Robert Barnhart's ;), it was first recorded in 1392 in its latin sense as a venomous substance. It recorded in its modern sense as an infectious agent until 1728, although use often precedes records by a century or two. Still, I'd peg it as 17th century, not 16th century.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
i just read a post about people mimicking "natural" models...kinda makes sense when you think that nature has beeng figuring shit out for a few billion years now :)
on the off-topic side. interesting fact is that there is no known cure for a single virus on the face of this earth. Sure, we have vaccines and such (we even have a drug coctail that will prevent you from getting aids - although no one in their right mind would want to use it due to the side effects), but there isn't a single cure for a virus...why do you think people still get colds?
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Neurons don't output electrical signals. Electricity is used to spread impulses inside the neuron, but neural activity between neurons is in the form of chemicals that are released. Creating these chemicals from building blocks on one side of the neuron and generating electricity to transmit impulses on the other side are what make neurons incredibly energy-inefficient.
Neurons, biologically, are designed to grow and shrink as part of the learning process of the system. This is just one of many reasons why neurons can never be used in machines.
Neurons in you brain, as a rule, can never be pinned down to one specific function (at least, no function anyone would be interested in. Ooh, I made a neural machine to regulate reflexive breathing!). This precludes them from being tied to some ultimate computer interface.
This does open new manufacturing possibilities, but I won't hold my breath until the day we can create systems of computers (as each cell in the paste you would be spreading on the wall would have to be some kind of unit, if it were independent of the paste around it) that are able to organize to that accuracy, on that scale. Our bodies use fractal geometry and chemical gradients to organize cells; you would have to paint the wall with a pattern enabling each cell of the paste to determine its position from the cells around it and the wall below it.
It seems to me that this new process might make LCD screens of incredible density, or electron grilles for CRT monitors. For now, that's what I'll drool over.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Check out Project Upper/Mute, an all-around awesome compiler fra
When I last counted, there were at least 15 posts about "viruses" versus "virii." This has probably been hashed out more times than just about anything - barring whether or not Micros~1 sucks.
Maybe you folks at Slashdot could fix up those titles just to save yourselves some hard drive space? This is seriously pathetic...
Be nice to your friends. If it weren't for them, you'd be a complete stranger.
in spacing of 0.01 angstroms, how do we go about laying the 'path' for them to follow accurately enough so that they don't fall off?
I thought we had a problem with the wavelength of light used in current technologies being too large.
We have to be able to guide these bugs accurately for them to lay paths that are of any use to us.
---
It could also pave the way for a better version of the bionic ear as well as other biotech.
It could even lead to implants similar to those depicted in the reality of Shadowrun. Jacked reflexes, skeletal sheathing/alteration, muscular augmentation, variable frequency optical prostheses, datajacks and implanted weaponry.
The optical prostheses have obvious uses as does most of the other stuff but datajacks could be used for more than they are in Shadowrun.
A person with irrepairable spinal damage or someone who has perfect cognitive function but has little or no control over their neuro-muscular system could be fitted with a datajack that could provide a degree of control over their bodies or their movement, either as a partial replacement for their spinal cord or as the control interface for a wheelchair or exoskeleton.
You could also use it for games like Q3 or UT. "You don't just play the game - you live it! (Pain is an optional extra.)"
At any rate I'd be prepared to sign up as a guinea-pig for the experiments as long as I got release equipment at the end. No way I'm getting a datajack until at least the second or thid generation. My wetware's bad enough without people poking wires in it.:)
Another application of the assembly aspect is the construction of nanobots and other nanotech.
I'm not going into a discussion of the possible evils of nanobots but I can see this image: Country A builds or grows a batch of deconstructor nanobots which are delivered to Country B.
The nanobots are programmed to reproduce themselves at a set rate until a preset limit is reached and have the ability to call others to their programmed target.
One day while one of these bots are reproducing an error creeps in. Instead of building a copy that stops reproducing at the preset limit something goes wrong and the copy doesn't have this limit and the error is not registered as such.
It continues to reproduce without stoping. Eventually they will cover the Earth if they cannot be stopped. All it would require is one nanobot to be missed and it starts over.
The severity of this depends on what the nanobots were programmed to destroy. Copper wiring? Aluminium? Steel? People?
Neal Stephenson wrote a book, the title of which I cannot remember. It was about a poor young girl who one-day found a book. Not just any book but a nanotech "Young lady's primer". Esentially it was a nanotech teaching device. The difference was in the actual construction. Instead of todays electrical circuitry it was mechanical. Kind of a vastly superior Babbage engine.
To me this seems more feasible than microscopic versions of todays computers.
In the book nanobots had been released and had propogated so much that on bad days it meant death to go outside without some kind of respiratory protection (a breathing mask).
Thats enough for now, I've spent far too long on this. When I first saw it there were 2 posts showing at a threshold of 0.
This post does contain blatant speculation and a tiny bit of scare-mongering. Any inaccuracies or mistakes are the fault of my insomnia, as is the length and any rambling that occurs.
---
"When I was a kid computers were giant walk-in wardrobes served by a priesthood with punch cards."
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Check out Project Upper/Mute, an all-around awesome compiler fra
Hmm.. well, as mentioned somewhere above, the collective [WE ARE BORG] will be created if society doesn't put in place some strict monitoring imidiately, before we get to that point. I promise you this, if someone doesn't put any guidlines in place, we will have a collective... I will make sure of that. Heh, I've still got a lot to learn, but with my availabilty of time, and correct decisions in my youth, I will (hopefully) create the first collective. Remember this: no guidlines, monitoring or restrictions will result in the assimilation of your species... ugh.. i've been watching too much StarTrek...
This is all further evidence why we should quite speaking any lanuage that is based upon a dead language!
No more English, Latin, Russian, Chinese!
The whole world should communicate with Perl!
--
My preferred plural of virus would be virus, with a long u. This is after the correct pluralisation of prospectus.
And they call Donkey Kong by that name because it was a typo for Monkey Kong, made by someone at Nintendo, and they couldn't be bothered correcting it when they released the game outside Japan.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
I like "virii" more.
See the definition here
Free Porn! or Laugh
Ever need an online dictionary?
OK, I'm not exactly a techno-geek, but with seven years of Hah-vud Law School behind me, I think that a bit of Latin has rubbed off on me. Here's the explanation:
"Virus" comes from the Latin word "Vi", meaning "crappy text editor". It is pluralised because one is creating the concept of multiple vi, adding feature after feature to create a completely bloated, horrifically crappy text editor.
To then double-pluralise it, one would be creating a concept of a text editor bloated beyond the point of reason, so that you actually question your own sanity.
I therefore submit that the plural of "Virus" is "Emacs".
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Go here: http://www.ispep .cx/dictionary.php?wordlist=viruses,virii&fulldef= 1 for the correct defintions according to M-Webster....
Enjoy!
Free Porn! or Laugh
Ever need an online dictionary?
Actually, there are several types of neurons, some of which release chemical neurotransmitters and some of which use electrical signals to communicate with each other. The electrical signals are translated much faster, so they are better for reflex actions. Chemical synapses are much slower, as well as having a longer refractory period, but they are also more plastic, so they are better for such uses as long term memory.
Right now I'm trying to research ways of transmitting messages between neurons and implantable electronic devices, maybe someone's got the links here?
If the plural of index is indeces, shouldn't the plural of Kleenex be Kleneces? If the plural of mouse is mice, what's the plural of house? If a train station is where the train stops, what happens at a workstation? If corn oil comes from corn and coconut oil comes from coconuts, how do they make baby oil?
Thanks, Gallagher...
That's not true: it's NOT in "common usage". You will not find the word in any medical journal, any major magazine or newspaper, or any other publication with reasonably well- educated editors. It was originally created as a joke--a humorous faux Latin plural intended to be silly like "Vaxen". There are no language cops for English, so you're certainly free to use it, but people who see you use it will think you're an illiterate geek.
--Lee Daniel Crocker : http://www.etceterology.com My life is in the public domain.
As for "most" nouns in -us being 2nd declension, maybe, maybe not; anybody got a Latin wordlist we can grep through? :)
And of course they weren't all masculine; I don't think I claimed they were.
If you ingested the leftover paste, would you become a Teletubbie?
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Check out Project Upper/Mute, an all-around awesome compiler fra
I personally like seeing the inane, off topic, postings that ravage this board. I enjoy seeing copies of Slashdot's front page reposted within the forum... weird, but makes me chuckle a bit at the sheer idoicy of some people out there.
Then again, you often get really interesting posts by people you might not otherwise get an opinion from...
And then there are the people who will make up eighty-two syllable words just to make themselves look smart.. ah yes, the pseudo-intellects... the ones who bicker about the correct spelling of virui (my version... there are many like it, but this one is mine..). Who the FUCK cares?
I rather like some trolls more than some of the pseudo-intellects... though the truely insightful posts shine through..
Troll on boys..
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
Webster's says that the plural of virus is viruses. However, were you an ancient Roman, you would disagree. The form of virus (L. a slimy liquid) needs to be declined as a "type 1" masculine noun: (case - singular - plural) nominative - virus - viri genative - viri - virorum dative - viro - viris accusative - virum - viros ablative - viro - viris As you can see, virii would be right out; it would be viri (given the virus was the subject of a sentence, as opposed to the direct object, etc.). However, we're talking about an English word, so it's 'viruses'. Sorry if I bored you ;-)
That depends on how you wish to argue it :)
I read one argument that stated that virus has no plaural because in latin (where it comes from, obviously) it had a very similar sense as "air". Ie there really is no plaural, it refers to all of it at once. You may talk of the air inside the house, or the air outside, but you never refer to the two differnt "airs".
The argument goes that virus originally was used in the same way, so there is no plaural.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
OK, hate to be the Latin Nerd, but if the shoe fits.... Virus-ending is "us" for plural is "i" therefore pl=viri. although most of the medical/academic comunity that I have met (including both of my Biochemist parents) say viruses.
It's the blind leading the blond. ~U2
So do you think i could sell my snot to Microsoft yet??
Boy, I think my karma just dropped pretty darn hard!
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
I can see a badly designed virii now, designed to only live very briefly and die after destroying circuitry, only to live and continue destroying stuff we don't want destroyed.
Bah, I've been up for like 36 hours now. I'm probably barely making any sense.
I'm sorry. What I meant to say was 'please excuse me.'
what came out of my mouth was 'Move or I'll kill you!'
"Hey Phil, did you leave the incubator on last night?"
"Don't think so Mike, why?"
"Well, we seem to have a supercomputer where the lab used to be."
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
It's not fourth declension at all, it's a very anomalous second declension one with no plural. As other posters have pointed out.
That'll teach me to talk without looking something up....
radius I'm guessing is of some Latin root.
We take a lot of words from Latin, and often the pluralization is wordus to wordi, radius to radii. It just happens that radius has an i before us in the singular form. Virus goes to viri.
Don't ask me what the roots are, I think vir has something to do with being very small.
Troll Like a Champion Today
This whole off topic string that is now the topic sounds like something that would show up on a Gallagher special.
To be assinine and provide another, yet wrong, answer:
Let's take the word dorkus (commonly abbreviated DORK). We all know the plural of that is dorks. So, virus in the plural is "virs."
SHOOT THE HOSTAGE!!
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
Who needs silicon for chips when we can use mice?
Hmm...
|/usr/games/fortune
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
Try reading tchrist's write-up on this.
Many other areas of development seem to be drifting closer to using natural models, the pharmaceutical industry has almost always depended on examining natural processes, earlier today slashdot posted a news item about scientists attempting to replicate the mechanism on a gecko's feet that allows it to grip. It seems only natural that electronics and micro-manufacture has a thing or two to learn for natural processes, after all, many of the things we strive for with the continuing development of technology have been done for countless years in the simplest of cells.
The relevance of this work to nanotechnology particularly interests me. If you haven't read Eric Drexler's
book 'Engines of Creation' it's something you should check out. The book discusses nanotechnology and suggests several things that should be done to prepare for it, none of which anyone has taken the slightest notice of (as far as I can tell). Does anyone else fear what may happen if true nanotechnology is developed in the near future without the slightest move to control it? Once it is here, it's far to late for control.
Virus is latin for 'poison' and it has no formal plural form. Therefore, we use the English plural form (+es) instead of what the Latin plural form might be (-us +i).
If the plural of virus is virii, shouldn't the plural of radius be radiii?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Okay, so we are talking about a physical virus that can bond to cermic/metal technology? So we are talking about a virus carrying a physical, Man Made payload? Pardon my ignorance, but how does one control the reproduction of this virus? Given mankinds responsible attitude to management of lifeforms elsewhere (rabbit/mixamatosis, and there are still fox-hunts going on in the UK, various species that have ended up in the wrong place, driving native life to extinction) isn't his just about the scraiest thing you can think of? It certainly brings a whole new meaning to Dr.Solomon!
P.S. Why do people use a P.S. on an e-mail: Couldn't they just edit it in using a text editor....Hang on....D'OH!
Are you the guy who shows up and says "There are some things man was not ment to know." at the end of movies?
I just read the paper and what the researchers have shown is that they can identify short peptides(=12 amino acids) that can bind to inorganic surfaces selectively (ie bind to GaAs but not SiO2). They accomplished this feat using a technique that is widely used in the molecular biology research community...Phage Display.
Basically a bacteriophage is a virus that infects bacteria. Viruses are molecular machines that consist of an outer protein shell holding the nucleic acids which contain the instructions for making more copies of the nucleic acids and the protein shell. The Protein shell contains a few copies of the P3 coat protein (5 in the case of the virus used here). This protein recognizes the cell to be infected and triggers the process of cell entry, whereupon the virus enter the cell and hijacks the cellular macinery to produce many copies of the virus. In this way the virus replicates.
These biologists added a random sequence of 36 nucleotides (DNA bases) to the end of the DNA sequence that encodes the P3 coat protein. Now the virus will produce a P3 protein that has 12 additional random amino acids added to the end of P3 (3 DNA bases make a codon that encodes one amino acid), giving 20^12 possible unique P3 proteins (20 amino acids at each position, 12 positions).
Then they created a pool of ~10^9 phage (way fewer than the possible 20^12) and selected for phage with peptide sequences that bound to the desired material (GaAs) by affinity selection. Those viruses that bound were amplified in bacteria following elution from the material. The selection is repeated several times to identify the tightest binding peptide sequences.
Using this process, they found peptides that bound selectively to many different semiconductor surfaces and speculate that somehow this could be used to create new circuitry.
What they have done is use a standard molecular biology technique to find peptides (short polymers of amino acids) that bind selectively to inorganic surfaces of a given composition.
At the end of the article they speculate that by joining two peptides selected for binding to two different materials they can get peptides that would bind selectively at the interface between two material surfaces. I think this is the nano part of the technology as those interfaces must be created by conventional means. This method may allow finer features to be created.
Overall this is an interesting paper that opens up new possibilities but as usual in the nanotech field, it is a long way from being useful.
In addition, I would like to note that:
Many other areas of development seem to be drifting closer to using natural models, the pharmaceutical industry has almost always depended on examining natural processes, earlier today slashdot posted a news item about scientists attempting to replicate the mechanism on a gecko's feet that allows it to grip. It seems only natural that electronics and micro-manufacture has a thing or two to learn for natural processes, after all, many of the things we strive for with the continuing development of technology have been done for countless years in the simplest of cells.
The relevance of this work to nanotechnology particularly interests me. If you haven't read Eric Drexler's
book 'Engines of Creation' it's something you should check out. The book discusses nanotechnology and suggests several things that should be done to prepare for it, none of which anyone has taken the slightest notice of (as far as I can tell). Does anyone else fear what may happen if true nanotechnology is developed in the near future without the slightest move to control it? Once it is here, it's far to late for control.
Also, I'd like to know where you got viri. References, or something? The conjugation (I suppose that's what it is in Latin) of a noun in Latin doesn't mean that form is an English word.
According to Miriam-Webster's, the Oxford English Dictionary (a huge volume I have in print), dictionary.com, Brittanica, and Encarta, the plural for virus - in English now - is viruses. None of these sources have any entry or make any reference to either "viri" or "virii."
"Don't try to confuse the issue with half truths and gorilla dust."
Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman)
So there!
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
I'd give the parent +1 funny.
no sig.
Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia Computer. New and Improved! Just add water and watch it grow. Warning, Chia Computer may die if not properly cared for.
In honor of Natalie Portman's birthday I post the following story.
The love story of osm and Natalie Portman
This is version 0.1 so comments and suggestions are welcome. Help me make this better please.
Characters:
osm
Natalie Portman
James Blana NP's publicist
Kendra Dravens NP's college friend
Kendra: Hey Natalie check this out. I just installed Linux on my computer. This is really cool, Linux is so much nicer than Windows.
Natalie: Yeah Windows annoys me too. The only scripting they give you is WSH and that's only useful for writing viruses.
Kendra: Hey checkout this website they put on here. It's called Slashdot and it's got message boards. But all the comments are the same. "Linux rewls, M$ sux, give me a beowulf of those." Why would anyone want a beowulf cluster of some crappy motherboard?
Natalie: I wonder what the score means? Look at the top of this story. Let's set it to -1 highest scores first and see what it does.
They change the settings and scroll through the posts. Toward the bottom one of the posts catches Natalie's eyes.
Natalie: Look that one is about me, it's by some guy named osm, oh my, he took a bitchslapping for me. He must really be special. Look he's got a web page, I wonder what he's like.
Natalie Portman has by this time taken over the computer. She sees the Natalie Portman FAQ and decides to take a look
Natalie: This is no ordinary fan FAQ, for it was truly put together by one more devoted than any of the others.
Kendra: Natalie you're being really creepy. I hope you aren't going to try to meet him or anything.
Natalie: Let's see this is like the Unix we use in the computer labs. How do I bring up an xterm Kendra?
Kendra: Just click on the foot. Then go into the system menu.
Natalie: (typing) whois warmann.com
Oh my, he lives in Kansas City, I can take the next flight out there
(calling publicist)
James this is Natalie book me on the next flight to Kansas City and get me a driver to take me from the airport to osm's apartment.
James: But Natalie you don't know this man. How do you know he isn't old and dirty like that ESR fellow who dresses up like Obi-Wan Kenobi and tried to feel you up at that Star Wars convention?
Natalie: Oh James I read his Natalie Portman FAQ on the internet. He's special and I love him.
James: Alright just don't blame me when he turns out to be a dirty old man
Natalie hangs up and starts packing a bag with a few clothes and some tolietries. Just as she is done packing her taxi shows up
Kendra: Natalie I hope you don't regret this. There are some really weird people out there.
Natalie: I know I won't, see you later!
Natalie runs outside, gets in the taxi and takes off for the airport. A few hours later Natalie arrives in Kansas City, she finds her driver and begins the trip into the city to osm's apartment. Along the way she has the driver stop at a flower shop so she can pick up some flowers. A few minutes later Natalie reaches osm's apartment.
She goes up to the door
Natalie: I hope osm is home and that he likes my flowers.
she rings the doorbell, osm answers the door
osm: N-n-natalie?
Natalie: Yes it is I Natalie Portman. I have read your Natalie Portman FAQ and have come to see you for I am teen of age, pouting of breast, and firm of rump. And I want to make sweet sweet love to you tonight.
osm: Ummmmm...... Let me straighten up a bit.
Natalie: Ok
osm runs back into the apartment and heads stright for his bedroom. His girlfriend is there in his bed waiting for him with a Queen Amidala mask on.
osm: Get out of here bitch, I don't like you anymore
osm's girlfriend: But Warren, I thought you loved me.
osm: Sorry, but you're really ugly why do you think I make you wear that Queen Amidala mask all the time?
osm's girlfriend: (whimpering) but, but, but..........
osm's girlfriend quickly gathers her things and runs out the back of the apartment crying. osm runs to the front of the apartment and embraces Natalie
osm: Oh Natalie, I love you, I truly do.
Natalie: Quickly open source man, let us go to your bed and consumate our love.
That night osm has the best sex of his life.
The next morning osm and Natalie are lying together in bed.
osm: Natalie Natalie Natalie, I don't think I could ever get tired of saying that name. You are more wonderful than I ever imagined.
Natalie: osm last night when I got up to get some water the Natalie Portman poster behind your computer spoke to me.
osm: Wha-what did it say?
Natalie: It told me that I had made the right decision and that everything would turn out alright.
brief pause
Natalie: I want to get out of here, let's go somewhere else.
she looks around osm's bedroom and happens to see a regional map open. She points randomly to one of the spots on the map.
Natalie: Let's go there, hmmm Wichita Kansas. I've never been there before, can we leave this morning?
osm: Ummmm I have to go to work, you know to make money.
Natalie: Oh you don't have to go to work anymore, you can live with me off my Star Wars contract. My Ferrari will be here in an hour, we can leave than.
osm: You had your Ferarri delivered to Missouri?
Natalie: No silly, I called up one of the KC dealerships and ordered one this morning while I was cooking breakfast. I don't have a driver's license so you'll have to drive us there.
osm calls his boss and tells him that he quits. Then he takes a quick shower with Natalie and gets dressed. A few minutes later they are ready to go and the car shows up. They take off for Wichita. A few hours later they arrive, osm goes downtown and finds a hotel with a view of the river. They stroll around the riverfront area for a couple of hours.
Natalie: osm I want to see a movie tonight, how about Where the heart is I'm in it.
osm: I didn't know you were so vain.
Natalie: I'm not, I just like watching myself on the big screen
They go back to their hotel and find a copy of the local paper, they turn to the entertainment section and look up the movie listings
Natalie: Hey look that one's called Warren, just like you. It's showing there tonight at nine. Want to go?
osm: Of course, I love that movie. I love every movie you've ever made
Natalie: Good, let's go then
That night osm and Natalie see Where the Heart is. They both know all the lines by heart, and that night they re-enact the love scene between Novalee and Forney.
Natalie: osm last night so much fun.
osm: uh huh
Natalie: This is such a nice little city, no one recognizes me here. We could avoid all the paparazzi by moving her.
osm: You really think so?
Natalie: Yeah I do, I really do. Hey yesterday I saw a science museum north of here along the river, I wanna go see it, I hope it's not lame.
osm: Ok let's go. I think it's called Exploration something.
That morning osm and Natalie visit the science museum and eat lunch at the cafe. (Which I have been to and is considerably better than the majority of museum food) The couple decides to walk along the river some more. As they come to a red bridge osm thinks he recognizes the man standing in the middle.
osm: Hey!! Are you Rob Malda?
In fact the man standing on the bridge is Rob Malda. He just happened to be in Wichita visiting his aunt and decided to take a walk with her near her house.
CmdrTaco: Yeah that's me. Do you read Slashdot, or did you just recognize my face from the many magazines I've been featured in?
osm: No, I read Slashdot, by the way my nickname is osm, recognize me and Natalie?
CmdrTaco: What!? YOU!!! I am going to kill you, I did everything but ban you, and yet you continue to make a mockery of my site, my Slashdot that I created, that I worked so hard for, you just treat like some, some, cheap happy meal toy, to just have your fun and throw away when you're done with it. I hate you, I hate your friends and I hate the way you try to control the site with your beady little fingers dancing away at your keyboard.
CmdrTaco lunges at osm and the two lock into a fight. osm is a bit stronger and starts to gain the advantage. Just then CmdrTaco knocks osm up against the railing of the bridge and begins to choke him. With a burst of energy osm pushes CmdrTaco off and knocks him off the bridge. CmdrTaco grabs at osm and pulls him off the bridge with him. CmdrTaco's aunt had called the police on her cell phone after they had begun to fight The police drag the two fighting men out of the river and place hand cuffs on both of them. After taking CmdrTaco's aunt's and Natalie's testimony they let osm go and book CmdrTaco on charges of assualt. The fight has worn osm out and he and Natalie go back to the hotel together.
Natalie: You are so brave Warren, that Slashdot guy is a real jerk. I'm glad they arrested him.
osm: I'm too, you know I haven't checked Slashdot for two whole days now. I've got to get on there and see what's happening.
After this osm and Natalie lived happily ever after
Slashdot - contra bonos mores
Antibodies in your body have a greater variance in molecule-specific binding and are far easier to raise than virii. Just inject a rabbit with pulverized silicon wafer :)
But isn't the purpose of the Doomsday machine lost if you keep it a secret!
Totally off topic but really, who doesn't want to see post at 2 or 3+am???? Please don't show yer age by the time you post :)
-1 for the first time but come on, 3+ am really cool
It's a really, really, weird noun, fairly rare, and, in fact, has never been seen in the plural form in classic texts.
Sure threw me for a loop. I started looking into it on this site about the plural of virus that someone posted earlier, which explained why I was having trouble with it--I took Latin for four years in high school so I was getting embarrassed.
Anyway, it appears there's fairly wild disagreement on what precisely it is, with some even claiming it's fourth declension. (I like the fourth declension explanation and am inclined to accept it more out of contrariness than anything.)
In any case, if it were fourth, the plural of virus would also be virus. Considering that the word meant "slime" there would be no purpose in a plural form, as in English the similar word is a collective noun without a plural. You do not speak of "slimes" (at least not unless you play D&D and fight green slimes).
Or maybe the mice are using us for grander purposes than we even know.
The answer is 42.
Troll Like a Champion Today
And you came so close to being the first person I have ever seen use the proper plural of virus (which is spelled viri; it is a latin second declension masculine noun).
But kudos to you for trying! ^_^
...in the Hitchiker's Guide, where Earth is really just a big computer finding the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything, and later to find the question.
|/usr/games/fortune
Which is why I sincerely believe the only way to avoid a Bill Joy-esque nightmare scenario of self-induced extinction is to push as rapidly as possible towards transcending the limitations of organic processing to avoid the tragic loss of the only known haven for sapience in the universe...
I can think of no worse fate than the eradication of the species by an unintelligent mechanical microbe we've created... replacement by/evolving into synthetic intelligences seems to be what will have to be our ultimate option.
:wq
I read one argument that stated that virus has no plaural because in latin (where it comes from, obviously) it had a very similar sense as "air".
The problem seems to be that we took the word virus, which meant "slime" (among other things) and then used it to describe something countable, in English.
Then, of course, pseudo-pedantic fucks came along a couple hundred years later and tried to retrofit it back into its classical form. I say "pseudo"-pedantic because they weren't pedantic enough to realize there wasn't one.
Since if there was a plural, it would probably be also "virus" and that sounds really dippy, may as well stick with the perfectly fine "viruses." Now back off, slimes! (For some reason I love totally nitpicky, absolutely pointless arguments like this.)
399 B.C.: Socrates is convicted of impiety. Despite the efforts of freesocrates.com, he is forced to kill himself by drinking hemlock.
That wasn't hemlock.
They only told him it was hemlock
to trick him into drinking it.
It was Zima.
Come on, flame me. I care.
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
This tech seems like a start of an effective nerual interface technology. Bond a few of these guys to an active nerve and wire from them to the machine and you coudl create a nerual impluse reader. I will be interested to see how finely this process can be controlled.
The other interesting part of 'growing' computers is being able to play with the base media. I can imagine going to the electronics store and buying a new viral TV.
Instructions
1. Open Box
2. Spread paste on Desired wall
3. Wait 2 Days
4. Do not ingest leftover paste
Tommorrow is either going to be pretty cool or a nanotechnological wasteland!
Stinkydog
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
Don't ask me what the roots are, I think vir has something to do with being very small.
No, that would be "micro" (or is that Greek?). Anyhow, IANAR, but I'm pretty sure the the "vi" root is the same one we find in "virile", "vital", "vitamin", "revive", "viable", &. The root can also be seen in the romance languages (which evolved in part from ancient latin), where it appears almost universally in common nouns and verbs having to do with the concept of "life".
If, as posted elswhere, "virus" is latin for "poison", then it probably had a literal meaning closer to "anti-life"--or maybe carried cultural connotations of "disease" rather than the modern concept of "poison".
Which is just my long-winded way of saying, "no, I 'm pretty sure it doesn't mean 'small'".
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
As the saying goes, science fiction will be science fact, but as with any scientific advances, great risks will go hand in hand with great benefits. The technlogy could hold promise of the entire world population being permanently connected to each other's minds 24 hours a day for the rest of their lives! As most people in this discussion have pointed out so far this echos the societies of "Ghost in the Shell", "Cyberpunk" and the fiction works of Gibson, or even the "Borg Collection" *shudder*.
Despite the enormous potential of the braipower within a planet-wide network of digitally interconnected human minds, is humanity ready for the chanllenges that comes with playing God? Will individuality and freedom continue to exist, and what of the devasting potential of hacking and viruses (both physical and digital) have on a Brave New World where body, mind and computers be fused together.
Despite looking promising in economic and industrial terms for the short term, and my own thoughts perhaps being far-fetched, I believe that human society must take great care with this new technology.
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor