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DNA-Tagging Used To Nab Counterfeit Olympic Goods
Logic Bomb writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle is running a story about the way Olympic officials are fighting counterfeit 'official' Olympic merchandise. Invisible ink containing DNA strands from an unnamed Australian athlete is used to write on almost everything sold -- that's around 50 million items. A team of 'logocops' then travels around Australia, using scanners to check merchandise at random. Over 120,000 items have already been identified as counterfeit and seized. The story has more details." Sounds like SF, but then ... flying cars aside, plenty of humans now have radio phones and organs they weren't born with. There are some other interesting applications named toward the end of the article, too.
sell blue dresses. Don't want to know what kinda DNA is on them!
Sig it.
I came real close to rolling my car the other day, and DNA tagged my underwear....
I spose that's one way to spread your seed.
Could this method of tagging things with DNA be usd for a whole bunch of other purposes to uniquely identify items? However, I dont think this would work, if something were sufficiently profitable, it would be worth the while of some underworld cartel to get the equipment needed to extract the DNA tag from an original and replicate it and tag their own couterfeit items in the same way.
Sorry, No sig!
But I coulda sworn the Olympic logo had 6 rings!
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
What is the point of authenticity in Olympic games goods? Unless you actually win a medal, the rest is just junk that will not survive the decade.
Demonstration: I still have a MOCKBA Olympic bag with Michka the cute little bear of the 80's Olympics on it. It must be in a cellar someplace. Bought it when supermarkets where overpacked of Olympic Addidas junk and every kid at school had one.
Who the *%$£ will want that??? Lot of people cause it has value, you say?
Well about that then:
Will trade for REAL Modigliani or J. Bosch painting.
I'd almost believe it if I heard the claim that the athlete lost a whole leg to the process...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Let's hope they don't sell too much merchandise - they would run out of athletes. Come on, we need three more pints of blood, the T-shirts are selling like mad today :)
How to make a sig
without having an idea
As an Atlanta resident, I bought several shirts back in '96. The problem is that everytime you wear them, folks tend to realize that you don't shop for clothes very often...
plenty of humans now have radio phones and organs they weren't born with
Heck, I even have clothes I wasn't born with...
Is this real? If so, what sort of scanner do they have that can test for a particular piece of DNA is a small, portable unit (which is certainly what they're implying)? Or do they just confiscate a sample, and analyse it in a lab at a later date?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Have we become such a greedy people that we must make sure that no one else can make money from any idea that someone or some group claims to be theirs. The Olympics have been around for ever, yet we let someone own the name, and make other people pay to say this is official. We are in such a need for money that we must tag our merchandise with DNA to insure that no one else sells it. Oh and by the way, you can duplicate DNA without having to go back and get more samples from the donor, but hey what do I know.
More DNA layin' around than in the West Wing.
Only the one person who buys a DVD will be able to watch it!
"Please supply a blood sample to start playback"
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
I forsee a tough road ahead for the sheep, as DNA tagging of the actual animal a piece of clothing comes from becomes prominent:
:-)
"Is that casmir sweater REALLY casmir? Ewe betcha!"
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
You'd think a company like this would have a site on the web, but I can't find one. According to Lycos and Google there's three companies with names like DNA technologies without such a product. It's a cool idea. But considering that there's plenty of ways one could securely tag an item, and the weakest link is the guy using the pen, I don't buy it. What's their process? They don't actually have a guy marking everything, I'm sure, but there's no mention in the article about how the tagging is done on the legit merchandise.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Remember when the olympics was about competing atheletes? Now it seems to be a New World Order Olympics, with gagged atheletes, super-corporate sponsorships, DNA tagging of merchandise, random searches and seizures of Australian citizens, dispatching of the secret police to nearby countries, etc.
Next time he or she commits a crime, there'll be no worries about the DNA evidence! I can just see it now...
"Can you explain how your unique DNA got onto this crowbar?"
"Well, not exactly, sir, but you can see it's the official crowbar of the 2000 Olympics."
- Brian
What if the counterfeiters decided to duplicate the source of the DNA instead of the tee shirt? Would we get more athletes? Is that illegal too or are tee shirts all they care about? I mean they could have their own Olympics in not too long... Maybe they should also scan all the people in Australia to be sure they are not duplicates.
On the other hand, the public at large should fear where this might lead. The existing scanners can differentiate between ink with and without the DNA strands. How long will it be before scanners can differentiate out of a database of people? Will I need a DNA sample to open a bank account? It would be for my safety, of course....and I imagine the information would be sold, bought by companies, and my every move will be tracked by marketing departments. (I honestly wonder if the current hardware is really *that* good, or if ink with some other DNA strand would look identical).
"The girl makes Godot look punctual." -- Buffy
This brings new meaning to the marketing phrase "A little bit of us goes into everything we make."
--
And now the only thing we can do is hope that this paint is also waterproof. I'd hate to see all those crying kids who's stuffed animals are being taken away because there wasn't a trace of paint to be found in the pouring rain.
-pf
Make affiliate bucks
"I Was Impregnated By DNA From An Olympic T-Shirt!"
Nothing prevents people from taking a sample of that concoction of DNA off a T-shirt and PCR'ing it, thus making billions of copies. Now you have your own counterfeit ink to tag stuff with the same ratio of marker-DNA to red-herring-DNA. Hello! How again did they tell something was counterfeit? Sounds a bit like securety by obscurety. Hmmm.
The athlete's DNA was most likely simply 'copied' using PCR (polymerase chain reaction). This is a
h tml
standard technique that sort of mimicks the DNA
replication process that goes on in real life. It's the cornerstone of the molecular biology revolution.
See http://falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~jbrown/pcr.html
or http://www.accessexcellence.com/AB/GG/polymerase.
So how does this matter to me? Is someone going to check the DNA to see if I'm buying a counterfeit? Do I care if someone is going to check the DNA to see if I'm buying a counterfeit? It's absolutely foolproof-- all you have to do is be able to analyze DNA. Wow, those counterfeiters must be scared!
Spooon!
-N
"You've bought the Air Jordans from Nike. But, weren't they missing that extra 'umph' that we're all looking for? Well, we've fixed that problem with new Nike DNAir Jordans. That's correct, now you'll have Michael Jordan with you at all times, helping you out with his own genetic material. Buy them now."
I would like to retract this last sarcastic comment from my part...
Yes, it is pointless argueing that the 1984 LA games belt buckle I also have is a pile of worthless junk. But hold on, have we got this story wrong???
It is not the "holly" object of kitsch that will attract laughter in the future that may or may not have a value, but the DNA enclosed!
The church has been doing this admirably for years with the holly remains of St Thingy or Santa Whatever (check out any small village's church in Europe) and so might do our future generation. "Wow, it has the spunk of Elvis, let's clone him".
See what I mean? (sudden flashbacks of Jurassic Park are now engulfing my damaged brain). This will be a quite unique good to possess in the future, a curiosity that equals the life like remains found in Pompey, something of "importance".
I see a lot of money to be made here! Well in 2000 years maybe... Time to try this cryogenic pod.
Sure, I believe it. It sound like SF, San Fransisco that is.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
and the murderer leaves a hat with an "official" Olypmic logo at the murder scene.
Boy, is this anonymous athlete they used to sample DNA going to be in trouble!
EMUSE.NET
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
If they can replicate it, why can't anyone else?
I'm no DNA expert, but the general concensus is that there are no portable DNA scanners.
This whole thing sounds like a scare tactic to me. Plus, how are consumers to actually know if their vendor is legit?
Stamping 'DO NOT MAKE ILLEGAL COPIES OF THIS DISC' didn't work as well as they had planned so the next step is a DNA scanner built into every CD drive and a Little Bit of Bill wiped on every disc.
Icebox
The article says that they included junk DNA to keep people from knowing which bits to replicate.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
I suspect that the technique used to copy the athlete's DNA was most likely PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction).
..
This technique apes the human DNA replication.
For more information, read here or here
.
...but one has to wonder how they "extracted" the DNA material... and just how much of it...
BlackNova Traders
If this marker comes out in the wash, there's going to be a lot of smelly Australians (no change there :-) who daren't wash their clothes, or a lot of people being wrongly prosecuted for handling counterfeit goods.
Which is worse...
;)
Buying items of a counterfeit nature that probably have a significantly reduced cost to them.
Or...
Buying items that have been sprayed with strange chemicals containg particles of DNA from some sweaty australian athlete.
I will leave the decision in your capable hands
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
It'll destroy DNA or at least mangle it enough that it can no longer be identified yet leave the product unharmed (so long as it's made of cloth or plastic or ceramic or glass, etc.) Foil the piracy police! Microwave your olympic souvenirs today!
It's perfectly okey, as long as you don't sell it to the public for a profit. If you make it and wear it yourself, it's okey, as far as I know.
I have a good sewing machine as well as a computer driven embroidery machine. This allows me to make embroidered outfits any way I want them.
What's really neat is that I can change the logos or do my own additions to them at my will and really turn heads.
An example is when I was volunteering for the WGBH TV auction in Boston and they told us to wear school letter jackets from your college.
So, I made my own. I put the school's logo onto the brest pocket, but I used rainbow colors, instead of the school colors and embroidered under it,
WPI Supports Gay Pride This really turned heads at the studio!
Cleara
Somehow I don't understand why a forger shouldn't just copy the junk DNA along with the tag DNA.
For that matter, the "scanner" being used must be only looking at the invisible ink. If the invisible ink is not there, then a DNA test (probably an antibody reaction) can be done on the appropriate area to confirm there's no appropriate DNA there.
Gee, they're trying to prove a negative -- the assumption is that the new merchandise has not been laundered or otherwise had the markings damaged. Don't leave your T-shirts in the sun for a month while trying to sell them...
Anyone remember GATTACA?!?!!
So won't exposure to certain wavelengths of light (UV, etc.) damage the DNA? If a rack of Olympic Windbreakers are hanging in a shop window, couldn't the tags have their special ink altered by direct sunlight?
Static testing will start soon, with the prototype anchored to the ground. They have to ensure all the systems work before they can try any flight testing. Just a little longer...
Fuck them all.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Like a lot of you, I wondered how they can non-destructivly authenticate DNA in the field. Take a look at the PSA/DNA web site. This is a sports memorabilia authentication company with a gimmick. They include synthetic DNA in a special ink which is used to tag an item. A special laser can make the tagging visible. Does the laser prove which DNA lot was used to tag the item? NO way! Eventually, someone will figure out how to make an ink that glows under the special laser, and their system will be worthless. Presumably, a sample could be taken to the lab, and analyzed, but this would be expensive, slow and destructive -- the very things they claim not to be.
Probably a hoax. Detectors would be imensely expensive, slow (a DNA examination takes a few hours IIRC). Also the sample needs to be prepped,and I wouldn't be surprised if the autoinjection etc stuff makes the sequencer to big to carry
It is in the Olympics best interest to make sure there is no garbage merchandise being sold as "official." The NBA, NFL, and other leagues all have similar standards. (Try to find an official NBA product that does not have that little, shiny silver hologram sticker on it.)
Before I get my panties in a bunch over how greedy the Olympics organization is, I'd like to know how the profits are used. I doubt they go straight into some fatcat's pocket. More than likely they are used to fund the games (which, btw, costs a lot of money to run!).
Oh and by the way, you can duplicate DNA without having to go back and get more samples from the donor, but hey what do I know.
I hate to break this to you, but the people with enough money to duplicate DNA are not selling fake Olympic apparel! Sheesh!
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"And like that
"Nothing prevents people from taking a sample of that concoction of DNA off a T-shirt and PCR'ing it..."
To be able to make PCR copies, you first have to figure out what primers to use, which may not be too easy since the sequence is kept secret.
If they're smart, it will be mixed in with a lot of trash sequences as well, to serve as decoys. Since we have no way to pick out what's the real key sequence, we would have to copy them all -- and it's very easy to generate astronomical numbers of decoys.
As I did in another thread, I have to just alert you guys to a simple fact. The people that sell and make money off of fake Olympic apparel are not criminal masterminds with the know-how, skills, and money to duplicate DNA and get it on the merchandise in the same way as the official product.
Half of these people can't even spell DNA, I'm sure.
Christ, it would be cheaper just to license the products from the Olympics organization!
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"And like that
A foreign (American?) scientist wanted to test the veracity of the Japanese claims that only minke whales were killed. So he bought some of the canned whale meat in Japan, then did DNA testing on the meat. Surprise, several other whales species were identified.
Please no flames about the evil or virtue of whaling. You can make OJ jokes, although his DNA was not found in sampled whale meat.:)
I bow to your superior searching skills :-)
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Bootlegging stuff is a cornerstone of a small, but important market. It's the freedom to innovate, just like Microsoft.
But the IOC doesn't view it like that. They are just so afraid that a small-time vendor here or there might cut into their billion dollar profits! So, off to jail with you - heathen! How dare you try to make money off of our amateur sporting events!
Greed is a powerful thing.
There is an equal mix of humor, honesty and trolling in the above statements
sig not found
And in related news, the Olympic comittee has unanimously voted to begin charging athletes for the privilege of competing in the Olympiad.
Beginning in 2000, the ability to perform to World Class(tm) standards is still required, as is the new entry fee of "an arm and a leg".
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
If the detector just detects the presence of DNA, then doesn't this article give the counterfeitor's carte blanche to put any ol' DNA in the ink and circumvent this pathetic security measure? Whatever happened to holograms? I thought they were the best anti-counterfeiting methods. Pretty soon U.S. money is going to be encoded with Greenspan's DNA.
Listen, Sigmund, we'll discuss it in the morning.
I have a hard enough time getting DNA to survive a few days in a pH buffered solution, let alone stuck to a friggin' t-shirt. What a bunch of crap. DNA hydrolyzes faster than my kid sister drops a load in her drawers at a cheesy horror film. And as for scanners? Uh-huh. Not even worth a reply... Shamino
Butchers make the bestest meat; sugar sugar sugar beet!
Damn, I knew it was too good to be true. All these years of offering sacrifices in the temple of Nylon, only to discover that he's a counterfeit Olympic god. I'll bet Zeus is pissed.
Somewhat on-topic: is it common for Australian parents to not name children they believe will grow up to be athletes?
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
A: Lots of Dollar Signs!
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
I was really looking forward to trying and making the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake, UT, as it's not too far.
:(
:)
Given the way the IOC is acting, I do not even want to come close to giving them any money whatsoever. Too bad too
Well...hmmm...maybe if I could get some DNA from skier Donna Weinbrecht (or give some - he he he)!
Is there really a portable DNA scanner available? Does it tell whose DNA is on the object?
___________
No kidding. The Sydney Red Cross got blasted by the IOC for using the word "Olympic" for the latest Blood donation drive to get more blood donations ahead of the Olympic games.
Sheesh. I reckon Sydney hospitals should strike back by telling all Olympic officials that there is no blood available for any of them if they require any sort of transfusion.
What's so great about this olympic merchandise that it's worth more than the counterfit goods? If it's worthwhile to counterfit, it's because it costs way less to make it than people will pay for it. Why are people willing to spend so much on The Official Olympic Frob? Because some Australian jerked off on it?
Sports is cool, it gives us a place to research human improvements. Selling merchandise is cool, it helps pay for the whole thing. What I'm questioning is the margin the Olympics are getting for their merchandise.
Hmm .. so I suppose if you knew someone who worked in a molecular biology lab with a PCR machine (my boss's wife does, for example), you may be able to create some pretty good counterfeits that would pass their authenticity tests.
The usual one-upmanship battle, never ends, does it?
Except most people wait until seeing a little skin before they "submit a DNA sample"
You are all forgetting that the Olympics are now the intellectual property of whatever well-heeled mucky-mucks are able to bring them to a city. How dare you think that just anyone can draw five circles on a T-shirt and get away with selling it without paying tribute to aforementioned mucky-mucks in the form of a fat licensing fee.
Of course, I can still remember when the Olympic atheletes actually held day jobs and competed for their love of the sport. (Yah, yah, I know, how quaint.) It really is no fun at all to watch the Olympics any more.
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I just want to know how they are scanning the stuff so quickly! Or maybe it's not so quick. I mean, think about that. If they can just wave a ComCat barcode scanner (not really) over your face and determine if your DNA matches against some database, then we're a little closer to Big Brother than I'm comfy with. And I'm not talking about some lame TV show... Those mercandise scanners at the music store could scan your ass as you walk in and they start watching you if your DNA matches a known shoplifter from a database. The possibilities are endless. How about a car that recognizes it's owner by touch. Would only have to put your hand on the door handle and it opens up just for you... Okay, I'm being paranoid. I'll go eat lunch now and I'll feel better. I suppose if I actually read the article I'd feel foolish (oops, too late).
My question is, when is MS going to pick up on this for their PID cards? Have you ever looked closely to the Certificate of Authenticy that you receive with MS products? Talk about elaborate. There's even color changing ink that changes color from heat when you put your finger on it. There are more security features on a MS PID than there are on a $100 bill.
kwsNI
Intertwined Quickies, Aussie Style
.02
[ Sex ] Posted by quux26 on 12:35 PM September 14th, 2000
dagget purchases a DNA-tagged USO shirt, rufDEV ports CueCat to that $35,000 Cray up for sale on eBay, some people over at CERN started watching way too many episodes of Weird Science and a Norwegian kid is busted for owning his very own Mia Hamm clone. Coincidence? Can you blame him?? We think not.
My
Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
They appear, however, to describe a process by which they extract the DNA directly into the ink, but with the typically press-friendly vagueness. Were it actual strands, how would a 'small portable reader' pick them up?
In the end, I can see only three options:
- The technology doesn't exist, and this is all a scare tactic. That LA company merely sells a method to frighten people into subservience.
- The technology doesn't work anything even remotely close to the way it's described (marketing people describing complex concepts - *shudder*)
- They actually have a cool technology here, light-years ahead of everything else, and are using it to stamp plush toys instead of cure cancer.
I don't know which option is most frightening.Although, now that I think about it, it would be pretty neat to have your PGP encryption code loosely based on some strands of your DNA. Completely useless, but still kinda cool.
---
Foil the piracy police! Microwave your olympic souvenirs today!
I'm sure this was meant in jest, but that wouldn't accomplish anything, as they're looking for souvenirs without the DNA, regardless if the microwave technique worked or not.
The Good Reverend
After reading their web site, I think it all boils down to this: They made some Magic Ink and some Magic Lights. Anything touched with the Magic ink will glow under a Magic Light. Nothing but their ink will glow under their lights, and only their lights will make their ink show up.
So reguardless of the actually technology used (hence my use of the word "magic") they've got a pretty good way of insuring Genuine Items as long as they have exclusive control of who gets the ink and who gets the light.
How it really works is secondary - it could be based on firefly nads, and as long as no one else has access to those nads, they win.
My first response was "Great, another way for those greedy bastards to make more money"... and that's my second response too. After I started reading about the lengths to which the IOC has gone to make sure that they get revenue for *anything* connected remotely with their games, I got a little cynical. They forced a 25-year old pizza parlor in Atlanta to change its name from "Olympic Pizza".... Grrr.
Wah!
I'd admit that you are paying a premium price for certain labels, but as a child, my mom always bought the cheapest clothes she could find. I carried on the same trend when I moved out. I occasionally tried more expensive clothes, and I discovered something: Sometimes you DO get what you pay for, if you know what you're buying. For instance, I've discovered a direct relationship between the price of a new shirt, and the number of times it can go through the wash without losing buttons.
That whole hemishphere thing is so confusing...
Our secret is gamma-irradiated cow manure
Mitsubishi ad
We apologize for the inconvenience.
The likelihood that there is a handheld DNA scanner is slim. Personally, I say impossible at the current time. In addition, PCR schmee-see-r. The process requires sufficient sample size (in comparison to noisy error material), and a device using somewhat pricey chemicals and, more importantly, plenty of time. The idea of using either radioactive or fluorescent markers is immediately possible, although these techniques can be used with much greater success using other substrates- DNA degrades relatively easily compared to other candidates, and the marker expression can certainly be provided more effectively with other possibilities as well. The idea of identifying (not merely detecting) DNA with contact or non-contact technology in a handheld package is a pretty good hoax in my opinion. Until tomorrow, maybe.
from the and-what's-the-easiest-way-to-get-DNA dept.
So you're implying that this guy stood beside an assembley line and jizzed on every single piece of "Official" Olympic Merchandise? Damn! What event is he an athelete for? I bet it's something which requires a lot of stamina.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Unless DNA technology has changed since I got my Master's last month, there is no way to "scan" a DNA sample on a surface. The idea is cool, but not yet functional. They'd have to pull ink off the sample, prep it with alcohol, isolate the DNA from the ink, run it through a PCR, and then sequence or match it with a primer. Not something you can do at a roadside vendor's stand.
Assuming that the identifying factor in the ink really was an amplified portion of someone's DNA, it wouldn't be hard to replicate simply by doing PCR on all the notable strands in the broth. If there's enough for some Olympic "official" to wave a wand over and detect, there's enough to replicate. PCR is not hard - the July 2000 issue of Scientific American has a method by which you can perform it at home with a couple hundred dollars worth of easily-obtained equipment (which they will sell you at cost). If it's worth going to the trouble of sewing in labels to counterfeit this junk clothing, it'll be just as worth brewing up a big batch of ink to spray on (in fact it'll probably be cheaper).
Further assuming they're not full of horse manure with this announcement, why would they use human DNA? Symbolic value? Any sort of plant or animal DNA would have worked, and there are probably other kinds better suited to this sort of application - but it makes a better, more mystically valid-seeming announcement if it's a human athlete.
I suspect they're using some typical glow-in-the-dark chemical ink of the sort that's been in use for at least a decade, and the DNA nonsense is just misdirection. I don't believe the Olympic brownshirts running after street vendors would really have the equipment or clue to test for a particular sequence of human DNA, though they could test for the presence of any DNA (as many other not particularly remarkable chemicals). The existing special inks would probably be harder to replicate, ironically enough, because that's one of their specific design goals.
This is trendy, high-tech seeming hype. Fortunately for the Olympic committee, this clothing and paraphrenalia is destined to have it's valuelessness exposed in a few months anyway, so their "security" measures (including this obfuscation) don't have to hold up for very long anyway.
Personally I'll just watch the Special Olympics, the last bastion of what the modern Olympics were supposed to stand for before T-shirts and $#@$!ing pins took over...
I saw something about this on the discovery channel a few years back. Hana Barbera (sp?) of Flinstones fame (I think..) was using a pen, whose ink had a little bit of his DNA in it, to sign animation sells before they were sold (they used the same ink to print official stickers and stamps too). He also had a small device that he could run over his signature to find out if the ink had his DNA in it or not.
I see, sort of like the "race against piracy" with copy protection in the Commodore/Atari/Amiga days... :)
Well, it's a little different. We're not talking about something that makes it harder for the consumer to use merchandise that they've rightfully purchased. We're talking about, basically, a theft deterrent.
Just like banks used to throw ink grenades into money bags during a heist, where as now they have moved on to discrete, traceable transponders that are glued between two real dollar bills. Usually on the bottom of the money drawer.
An interesting side note... one of my friends used to work at a bank. During a holdup, they had these "transponders" on the bottom of their drawers, so she slipped them into the piles of money. The robber said, "Wait a second..." Grabbed the stack of money, leafed through it, and then pulled "one" bill out of the pile... a particularly thick bill. He threw it in her face and laughed, "Nice try."
I guess they'll come up with smaller transponders in the future...
Weird, huh kids?
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"And like that
My great grandfather was selling Olympic stuff at the 1904 St Louis Games. He didn't have the IOC permission beforehand and didn't get sued even though they knew he was doing it. They didn't even ask him to stop. So was he a counterfeiter or not?
I'm wondering if the courts would consider 96 years of not protecting your "trademark" enough to allow me to sell stuff down near the stadium.
Ugh. No, it is not "easy" to replicate DNA that is embedded in the label or anywhere else. You need time and lab equipment to do it- and yes you can do it in your sink at home if you like, but a handheld device can only detect a taggant, not identify the DNA. PCR replicates little snippets of genetic material, so the sample would have to be prepared to extract and treat any candidate DNA, then processed with appropriate restriction enzymes, then PCR'd, etc. Reporters are reporters, and what may seem like duck soup to you or I can easily be strung together incoherently when the info is meted and doled out to a reporter. This is not news....what is news is how people eat this stuff up.....
Shit yeah!! Buy some Olympics merchandise and clone a Kieran Perkins, I'm sure the Chinese will try it. Or are we not allowed to post a comment with the word Olympics in it.
If the athlete was male, maybe they just handed him a cup and a porno mag. Eh mate, fill 'er up please! hehehehe :)
Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) "Spaceballs"
Actually, I would think that replicating DNA would be a lot easier than replicating a hologram. All you'd need are the chemicals for PCR ( polymerase and the 4 respective nucleotide bases) to replicate a good batch of DNA. Then you just need to eletrophorese it out( possibly), visualize the strands with UV light, and remove what you want from the gel. Both the materials needed for PCR and gel electrophoresis can be purchased from educational supply companies.
This technology of DNA tagging wouldn't really become viable until there was a method of stopping the DNA from being replicated through PCR, but if you did that, its debatable whether you could get a large enough sample of testable DNA to analyze.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
I remember seeing this African witch doctor conduct trials in African villages - they find the truth by stabbing you , if you scream, you feel pain, the gods are punishing you and you are guilty. The cool thing is, the witch doctor looks first into your eye before he stabs you - he reads your body language and can figure out from the scan whether or not you are a liar. The stab is just to distract you from what he is doing. I am not so sure how effective all of these scanners are.. but.. an ounce of discipline is worth a pound of cure. :-)
he who has the fastest cart always has the best lie.
Next thing you know MS is going to start requiring a new CDROM that has a DNA reader in it to verify that you have a legit cd. Cant wait till the day that you license software by sending in some of your dna to be put onto a cdrom coded to your dna.
That's a good name--ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?