Slashdot Mirror
Data Storing Bacteria Could Last Millennia
PetManimal writes "Computerworld has a story about a new technology developed by Keio University researchers that creates artificial bacterial DNA that can carry more than 100 bits of data within the genome sequence. The researchers claimed that they encoded "e= mc2 1905!" on the common soil bacteria, Bacillius subtilis. The bacteria-based data storage method has backup and long-term archival functionality." The researchers say "While the technology would most likely first be used to track medication, it could also be used to store text and images for many millennia, thwarting the longevity issues associated with today's disk and tape storage systems ... The artificial DNA that carries the data to be preserved makes multiple copies of the DNA and inserts the original as well as identical copies into the bacterial genome sequence. The multiple copies work as backup files to counteract natural degradation of the preserved data, according to the newswire. Bacteria have particularly compact DNA, which is passed down from generation to generation. The information stored in that DNA can also be passed on for long-term preservation of large data files."
We *will* need a Beowulf cluster of these, seriously.
This is the ultimate distribution system for OSS. New distros are released every flu season.
It's also not a bad way to distribute movies. Let the RIAA sue a bunch of bugs for file sharing.
And windows could be distibuted on anthrax bacteria, so users would learn to be appropriately wary.
This really gives new meaning to the term "computer virus."
You are still innocent until proven guilty. What's changed is what they do to innocent people. - notnAP, #26891325
What about the longevity issues associated with the readers?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
It's hard enough keeping track of all these CD's and DVD's.
But how many Libraries of Congress will a bathroom drain hold?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
So, has anyone tried working out if various junk DNA already holds information that we'd be overwriting with this technique?
I mean, there are plenty of theories about "seeding" of life on earth after all... maybe we already have a wealth of untapped knowledge?
(Personally, I think it's extremely unlikely, but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be prudent to check anyway)
stories like this one, and the story earlier today about the graphene transistor, make me wonder how far off truly organic computing is - and whether or not we'll eventually be indistinguishable from computers. or they from us.
who's to say that our bodies/brains aren't some elaborate computer design ala douglas adams' design?
""Computerworld has a story about a new technology developed by Keio University researchers that creates artificial bacterial DNA that can carry more than 100 bits of data [CC] [MD] [GC] within the genome sequence. The researchers claimed that they encoded "e= mc2 1905!" on the common soil bacteria, Bacillius subtilis. The bacteria-based data storage method has backup and long-term archival functionality.""
So that's what viruses are up to.
My backup chemistry thesis mutated; granting me a degree in forensic anthropology.
My backup chemistry thesis stored on Data Storing Bacteria mutated; granting me a degree in forensic anthropology. v4sw7
So now can I consider my poop logs to be massive data centers?
So do you feed them instead of plug them in?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
now windows has a real reason to be "sick"
Well, if this goes anything like several of the other genetically modified plants, etc. forensic anthropology might be something practiced by the species that supersedes us. The "dyed in the pod" cotton has already been a huge disaster. The "modified" corn seems to be turning the normally placid corn borer beetle into something that's going to plague us until Satan hands out ice skates. Mother Nature exists in a delicate balance and we need to leave it alone until we know what we're doing. And we do *not* know what we're doing.
2 cents,
QueenB.
HDGary secures my bank
...apparently, bacteria don't die.
We wrote down important things on stone tablets... and we liked it! Up hill, both ways, in the snow...
But as always, a virus can still eat your data.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Funny how a virus will still corrupt your data.
--<Mike>--
Can you spray them with Lysol to erase them in an emergency? (The remainder of this post assumes a YES.)
This could be great for military/government intelligence archival, or, really, any situation where the data needs to be used once and destroyed.
The longevity, coupled with ease of total erasure, would be great for digital storage of any document with personal information on it, as well. I could see using these discs to submit job/credit/lease applications, recieve bills and in any dealings with the government or IRS. They'll last for as long as needed and can be completely erased before disposal.
If they're rewritable, as well, all temporary storage related to the files on the disc could be placed on the disc as well, completely keeping that sensitive data off of any other, possibly recoverable, media. If this is the case, perhaps, once these become available, any business or govenrment entity storing personal information should be required to store it on these discs and only these discs.
---
Yes, the entirity of this post, excepting this line and the first, is entirely speculative; keep that in mind when moderating (insightful?)
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
So is there a bug in the program or a program in the bug?
We know Windows is bloated. So Windows has lots of bugs while it takes lots of bugs to have Windows!
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
"it could also be used to store text and images for many millennia"
Imagine a Scientist from the 37th century scanning a particular bacteria's DNA sequence and hit Goatse
geek page at KY speaks
I remember reading or watching a movie with just this plot... An ancient civilization puts information in DNA, only to be revealed when the DNA gets smart enough. There was some other book, ostensibly scientific, that proposed something similar: that we are merely carriers of DNA and other functions are secondary.
One thing they are failing to take into consideration is alteration of life. By introducing more complex data into DNA sequences it opens the possibility of AI/Self Awareness within the bacterial strains. This would be a new form of life born from a primordial sea of information and microbial DNA.
While we would not see anything change initially as it takes several hundred even thousand generations, this is a distinct possibility and needs to be addressed.
Also while I am on that note: I for one welcome our new bacterial overlords.
Support your local school shooter, give them your firearms.
Well, couldn't this be potentially dangerous? Creating random DNA molecules or changing existing bacteria could potentially create some very infectious disease. It doesn't sound like the best idea; even if the chance is remote...
-SaNo
Hmm.
1) bacteria can survive vacuum
2) bacteria from elsewhere may have started life on earth
3) DNA has large, mostly useless areas which are replicated from generation to generation
Why spend money looking for intelligence when you can create it, and give it a map home? A biological machine is no less a machine. Are bacteria manufactured self-replicating probes?
On the bright side, since I posted AC no one can blame me for paraphrasing an episode of the Next Generation.
No more burning libraries during invasions! All your dogs, cats have our data.
You will never have experience until after you needed it.
DNA that isn't functional has a high rate of change.
If it's wrong and functional it dies, and only correct copies live on. If it's just data, being wrong does nothing and just keeps degrading further. This is also how we figure out how far distant relatives or species are apart as well, the "junk" DNA will diverge at a fairly steady rate over time.
So, cute trick, but that's all.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Why not carry all my CDs & DVDs in my DNA? & hook-up/embed a DNA reader with the audio-plug in the ear, to 'play' my song whereever/whenever, with life long license embedded in my DNA to play the song.
You know what else works? ... "paper"
100 bits ought to be enough for anybody.
check the comment right above this, chief
We need to start a government-backed program or start our own so we can discover TEH TRUth!!!!111!
I haven't seen a single post by a biologist yet pointing out that if you start inserting arbitary data
into "spare" DNA then sooner or later you are going to create a lethal pathogen - purely on the basis
of probablity and statistics.
Of course you can be sure the one that wipes out all life on Earth will turn out to be an Mp3 encoding
of a Britney Spears tune.
They are talking about storing digital data on bacteria, so how are people millenia down the track meant to decode it? Like do we store pictures as Jpeg? Do we encode text as Unicode? What I would really like to see is bacteria that I could store all my pictures onto, and to look at them all I have to do is throw some bacteria on a wet floor and wait for them to appear. For a slideshow think of a Conways Game of Life effect. You could control the speed of the slide show by controlling the temperature.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
Don't tell AOL about this. I, for one, do not welcome all the envelopes full of "starter" bacteria.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
There are people who theorize that life on Earth has been "imported" by an intelligent space-faring race from a distant star (space fiction is not my element, so cut me some slack, ok), then you should better start looking for clues in our own DNA. The first few digits of pi, or the Euler constant, or a fibonacci series, that would be kinda cool.
Disclaimer: personally, I don't believe in this theory, but I am open to everything. Always keep an open mind.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Maybe all the "junk" DNA is really a message from an alien civilization? Maybe SETI should be decoding it instead of the Biologists? If we can do it, so can someone else...
It's interesting that when you apply computer science to biology at their most fundamental levels, you simply confirm the feasibility of solutions long since developed by what we believe to be completely natural evolutionary processes.
The Universe is a giant computer. Or a simulation running inside another one. Either way, it doesn't matter.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Flue is a virus and most OSS is proud to be immune to viruses...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Joe Davis did this more than 17years ago.
mutation anyone?
---- Where is my mind?
who has a problem with bacteria knowing about general relativity? We should watch what we teach these things or we might have a revolution on our hands (and in our dirt)... ;p
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
"Jimmy clean your room! Its disgusting!"
"What! And lose all my data!?"
About four hundred years from now, we will see a group of starships from competing civilizations warping from one planet to the next in a grand race to solve a genetic puzzle encoded in the language of life, DNA. Except this time they'll be disappointed to find that instead of finding a new source of energy, the secret of life, or an all-powerful weapon, they found the encoded archives of the Slashdot message board.
Bacteria, due to their rapid rate of replication (short generation time) are very prone to selection. There would be a fitness decrease to carry around this useless DNA, especially in redundant copies. Because of this, over time the mutants which had this "data" deleted would replicate slightly more quickly and these footprints in the sand would be washed away. This is the whole reason bacteria have compact genomes, redundancy and garbage are a waste of energy to replicate every generation making them weaker than their optimized counterparts.
It occurred to me...Could this encoding be vulnerable to a sort of 'buffer overflow' type attack? i.e., if the data encodes for the duplication of the 'data' DNA, wouldn't it be possible, by artfully crafting the data, to compel the bacterium to produce an altered copy that would do other than its designers intended? It seems like this could be very useful, or potentially very dangerous.
Scientist A: OK, lets see how the first DNA storage device has held up over the last 1000 years ...
Scientist B: Sure, let's compare the results. Original encoding written on duct tape stuck to the side of the test tube - "e=mc2"
Scientist A: Right, I'll take a look. My god! The DNA has mutated, possibly into a better and yet more powerful equation! What does it say?
Scientist B: "=3"
Scientist A:
Scientist B: Wow, duct tape can hold information for 1000 years!
Task Mangler
I believe you're referring to panspermia, which could have been accidental or deliberate. In the former case, life happens to make it from one habitable environment into another across interplanetary/interstellar distances. A situation analogous to accidental panspermia occurs on earth all the time, when a coconut floats from one island to another, or an insect is blown up in a storm and lands on another continent. For interplanetary cases to be feasible, life needs to be able to make it from, say Earth to Europa or vice-versa, which I think is entirely plausible. If there is other life in this solar system how closely related to life on Earth it is will answer some questions and clarify many new ones.
In the latter case, deliberate panspermia may be the signature of intelligence far greater than our own. Life on Earth could simply be the evidence and the result from von Neumann probes from another civilization (possibly long gone) or even another galaxy (which to me is not completely implausible).
I don't believe in this theory, but I am open to everything. Always keep an open mind.
You shouldn't "believe in" any theories; simply weigh them according to how likely they seem based on current knowledge and valid criticism, and choose the best one at this time to guide further research and actions. Indeed, an open mind is required.
The first few digits of pi, or the Euler constant, or a fibonacci series, that would be kinda cool
How about instructions coding for beings which will evolve the ability to perceive and describe such mathematical concepts? The constants themselves would degrade, but the instructions for these capabilities would confer real evolutionary advantages and would be passed on for generations, and improved over time.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
if you combined them into a RAID array, would that give you better performance, or just wipe out all your data?
This definitely brings with it some possibilities, but I think that the technology is available right now to allow any determined person to sneak data past all but the most intensive biomedical screenings.
You can fit an awful lot of data in something the size of a Tylenol gel-cap, and aside from the unpleasant recovery aspect, nothing less than a X-ray is going to detect that (maybe not even an X-ray, if you were careful about the components used). Of course, your digestive system only gives you a window of opportunity measured in (at most) days; if you wanted to go longer than that, you're talking about implants. But that would get you through most transit checkpoints.
I'm not really even sure this is a new development: spies and other folks with resources have had microfiche and microdots for years. Cement one of those to your nether regions, or swallow one, and it would take a pretty determined search to turn one up. Or if you wanted, you could probably even sprinkle them over an unwitting mule's clothes, and then recover one on the opposite end.
It doesn't seem like data theft is really something that you can realistically try to stop at any border, anymore. If someone has the data in a format that they can load on their person and take to the border, it's gone. If you can get a person across, you can get data across. Certainly if you are allowed to take any type of electronics, it should be considered information-porus; there are so many ways to disguise information using steganography, that it's not practical to try and sanitize it.
Certainly by the time that biological information storage becomes widely practical, all but the most backwards nations and companies will have realized that stopping the flow of information with physical checkpoints at the border is a losing game. At best, you might be able to make it a little easier or harder, but real information security depends on limiting hostile parties' access to information in the first place, not trying to limit their transportation of it afterwards.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
A quick spritz of Lysol isn't going to affect the DNA of the bacteria much, if at all. Denaturing the DNA is not how antiseptics kill bacteria. I think that data stored in this fashion would actually be a lot harder to destroy than magnetic storage. After all, they can extract (fragments of) DNA from fossils.
1. Encode pop singles into viruses gnome sequence and get sick 3. Distribute the disease 4. Get sued by RIAA 5. ? 6. Profit
Good grief. It takes long enough to restore data from a tape backup. I have a hunch that it could take the resources of a "CSI: Las Vegas" crime lab to approach a reasonable restoration rate.
"The bad news is that the flooded data center is covered in black mold. The good news is that the DNA of the mold contains our backup so we'll have the center up and running in a year or two! Less if you're willing to put up with some minor upper respiratory issues."
Well I guess you need alot of error checking and all that, and lets simplfiy it by saying that all of those 100b can be used to store data. That would mean about 7 Terbytes of data stored in 2^40 (10^24) bacteria, if you put these bacterias in a long single line you will get something that's 11 kilometers long.
;-)
Bacteria diameter: 0.1 micrometer
Sequence ID (SID): 40 bits
Databits (D): 60 bits
Maxstorage: 2^SID*D about 7680 Gigabytes
this is not even pseudoscience..
Cleaner mistakes the bacteria store for some mold and sprays it with a disinfectant....
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
a datadump?
Yes, I am the one with the legendary sig.
And people wonder how WE got all of our non-essential DNA elements added.
On USENET binary groups you see lots of incomplete and degraded parts of data, but they're reconstructed with par2. Can't something like that be adapted to this situation as well?
...has detected Amoxycylin.w64 in this email attachment!
Pretty soon we're gonna find out that human DNA was just supposed be storage for Alien pornography.
I collect spores, mold, and fungus. -Dr. Spengler
Moore's law is not a law. Theory, yes; Predictable trend, certainly; Law, no.
"Alignment-Based Approach for Durable Data Storage into Living Organisms" Yachie N, Sekiyama K, Sugahara J, Ohashi Y, Tomita M.; Biotechnol Prog. 2007 Jan 25; http://pubs3.acs.org/acs/journals/doilookup?in_doi =10.1021/bp060261y
sappcm
Newsflash! String theory put to the test in a petri dish with other competing theories. Funding pulled from the Large Hadron Collider and put toward damp sponges.
In other news, Scientists recently discovered the phrase "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US" encoded in a pattern found in the DNA of The Humane Genome Project.
Executable data in DNA is life.
And not to worry; we'll have that well cracked soon enough.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Evolution of data
If you delay pleasure infinitely, the pleasure will be infinite. (YM)
As far as I can see there is only one problem with this as a long term storage media. Presumably the researchers use some protocol to encode the data into the CGTA format of DNA. Where will they store this protocol so that future generations (in Millenia) can un-encode the data?
America, Home of the Brave.
I think this could be made to work if genetically defective mutants are identified and killed by some kind of maintenance immune system (the way cancerous cells are killed in most healthy animals). Of course, it's debatable how long the immune system could carry on the task until some unidentifiable/pathological mutations occur (in the immune system itself, too). Most humans don't seem to be able to last much beyond about 90 years and stay cancer free.
It becomes schlock!
OK, that being on topic kind of scared me.
Copyright 2008, All Rights Reserved
Copying Illegal.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
All your base pairs are belong to us!
stuff |
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This idea was already proposed by (at least) Jaron Lanier of Virtual Reality fame. In 1999 The New York TImes asked for submissions by various tech-notables and others to design a "time capsule" that would be filled on Jan 1 2000 and opened (hopefully not before then) on Jan 1 3000. I believe the winner would see the design actually built.
Anyway Mr. Lanier proposed only party tongue-in-cheek that they encode the data in the most indestuctrable, pervasive, consipcuous organism around (at least in New York): Cockroaches. When one considers their extreme adaptability, resistance to pesticides, traps, radiation, predators etc. and the large size of their genmoe to carry data, it might be even be better than bacteria (you might have a lot of microscopic strains to look through before finding the right one, maybe the cockroaches could engineered to have a distinctive visual marking... but I digress.
By the way, this proposal did not win the contest, in the end the editors decided on a beautiful, scultural object prominently located (at the grand entrance to the Musuem of Natuarl History?). Their reasoning was that such an object, being of obvious value in more ways than one, would be continuously maintained and "remembered" so that it would not fall into disrepair or oblvious. Of course this presumes there is no sort of civilzational collapse, whereas the only thing that could wipe out the cockroaches would have taken us out as well.
The New York Times Magazine millenial issue which is where this and the other ideas are presented is a great read. Find a copy and encode it into your neurons.
Have a look for yourself:
Z ips/
ftp://hgdownload.cse.ucsc.edu/goldenPath/hg18/big
I know it's offtopic, but the article reminded me of an old ST-TNG novel called "Contagion", where a genetically engineered supervirus was spreading around planets in the Federation. While Dr. Crusher was working on decoding a strange sequence in the viral DNA, they were astonished to find the phrase "HAHA YOU'RE DEAD" come up on the computer screen.
Unfortunately, junk DNA is not a place for information. Unlike most 'junk' things, junk DNA is often very clean repeated patterns that cannot contain much information. In general, smaller cells have less junk DNA, suggesting that it may have some structural purpose. The amino acid set is a nice molecular lego for bulding all sorts of shapes, as well as storing information. There may be a repository, but it isn't in junk DNA.
need I say more
Surely the encoded information (although useful to us) is completely useless in terms of increasing the likelihood of survival. So surely it would naturally decay away due to mutations etc. i.e. There would be no selection pressure for keeping the sequence.
I can see it now... (Windows install of the future!) Please insert bacterium labeled "2,635,809,792 of 3,709,551,616"
Whatever you do, don't encode the killer joke in a communicable germ!
...when it was fiction.
How do we know there isn't data already installed? Shouldn't all the wackos who hold that we are a colony from some previous great race be looking for information --- wouldn't we have a colony serial number dumped into the genome? Maybe that's what all those genes that look like filler are or the ones that appear to be vestigial!
It's great that they're finding ways to preserve data for longer periods of time. The idea of data simply disappearing because of the deterioration of the storage media is disturbing. However, what are we going to do with all that data after a millenia?
Our existing, relatively short-term storage media is replete with data that we can no longer read after only a decade or two. Certainly, not all data formats have been abandoned, but many do, and once that happens, all of that data is effectively useless.
This is not a new problem. The library where I work recently found a box of lantern slides; we were gifted several boxes of 78s and Victrola records. Presuming they are in good condition (these were), data on these storage media has lasted far longer than what current storage media can provide, but how do we get at it?
This is why microfilm and microfiche are still considered the de-facto preservation media of choice, in spite of the fact that everyone (librarians included) *hates* to use them. Stored properly, the media has an enormous life span, and all you need is a sufficiently strong lens to retrieve the data in a usable format.
put penicillin on the processor?
Are the people who annoy you the most, who are "real assholes" to everyone, are they the Alien equivalent of the Goatse website?
I am sure aliens sophisticated enough to travel the stars and populate other planets can get PI to equal a constant value in their numbering system, not a stupid, non-repeating decimal value.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Great, it isn't bad enough that the overuse of antibiotics has created resistant strains of bacteria; now we're creating them on purpose to store computer data. Am I the only one who thinks that's a bad idea?
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Any chance of this creating a new, bad, very bad, disease?
for get terror by anthrax, what if someone leaked a beta windows?
Wonderful, now instead of my myspace antics just wrecking my next job interview, they can haunt my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-gr eat-great-great-great-great-great-great-
great-great-great-grandkids, too!
I am not left-handed, either!
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20011216.html
In a few million years they will become sentient, and very violent.
Add it to the list w/ Africanized Killer Bees http://www.petmedsonline.org/killer-bees-and-other -mistakes.html
Redundant Array of Self-Replicating Pornographic Storage
25 terabytes inside, between the potato salad and the stuff in the cool whip container (whatever it once was,) and gigabyte ethernet out to the rest of the house.
got that already, all I need is to put the network card in the icemaker slot...
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
They can actually store 7 x 6 in a DNA sequence for furture generations to read? I wonder what the question would read in about 3 million years. The power of DNA is to corrupt itself slightly.
with IPv6 there would be an unique IP-Address for each baceria!
...bacteria store YOU... especially if you are addicted to the Intarhweb
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
...bugs with buffer overruns. Imagine writing DNA to somewhere one shouldn't be writing.
...data is no longer lost, it becomes extinct.
And because evolution/mutation is a myth there'd be no chance of your data ever being corrupted.
In other news, what was presumed to be junk DNA in the human genome has been decoded. It turns out it contains a message: "Help - I'm trapped in a creature factory."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
A thousand years from now, some scientist will find a bacteria colony buried in the ruins of New New York, and it'll turn out to be a fucking episode of Big Brother.
The God's Script
Peter
I am far from a mathematician or a geneticist, but would it be possible to use this natural mutation function as a means of processing information?
Encoding values into the DNA, then using natural processes within the critter (hormone/nervous feedback loop, as an example)to demonstrate changes made to the values by mutation? Is there technology to manipulate mutations in any meaningful sense, possibly creating "commands" or "filters"?
Its a thought..........
they stored "e= mc2 1905!", which happens to be a fine random pattern of bits, but it turns out that "e!=mc2 1964!" is the DNA pattern for the 1907 flu!
Behold, the first open-source virus.
Have you read my journal today?
"All your base(pairs) are belong to us!"
So now if your hard drive gets a virus, will it start sneezing?
... in the biological world.
Yes in a computer system you can make genes that are truly adaptively neutral. Even so they are subject to genetic drift.
But in a biological system the organism must expend energy to maintain and duplicate DNA. Therefore every codon has a small but implicit fitness cost. If the benefit of the gene does not overcome the fitness cost of carrying it around and copying it, natural selection will quickly eliminate it.
Junk DNA isn't "junk". It has a purpose, otherwise we would have gotten rid of it. In many cases we even now understand the purpose. The only identifying feature of junk DNA is that it does not directly code for proteins via the normal transcription and translation.
Bacteria are much more parsimonious about their chromosomes than eukaryotes. They generally have very small and efficient genomes; I wouldn't hold much stock in long-term data storage with this system.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Filesharing becomes as easy as sneezing!
XaNk: now I remember why I hated the girls in high school
XaNk: because none of them would talk to me
well, this is not news really. joe davis (MIT) suceeded doing this several years ago. he recoded E.COLI bacteria - taken off of space detritus. read more: Scientific American
dont wanna click: here is some nice info about him:
* Expelled from three high schools and two colleges: for writing about atheism, refusing a haircut, making a still (which exploded), being elected student body president on a "free marijuana" platform and working on an underground anti-war newspaper.
* Walked into the M.I.T. Center for Advanced Visual Studies uninvited in 1982. Secretary called the cops. Forty-five minutes later, Davis walked out with an appointment as a research fellow. (TRUE)
* Latest project is to build a biomechanical ornithopter powered by electrically stimulated frogs legs and to fly it across the Charles river. (it worked and he ate the frogs legs.)
* Uses hollow steel peg leg to open beer bottles, to accompany the band (bugle-style) at his local bar, and to charm curious women at parties. (TRUE, but he can do more...)
"My Klingon elder conducted ruthless intergalactic warfare and all I got was this lousy junk DNA"
...will know that all their base are belong to us.
It would sure suck though if your data was just the right set of bits to create Bacterizilla...
Read Philip K. Dick's story "The Preserving Machine" to see what he made of a similar idea.
So how do you protect your system from a virus when your system *is* a virus?
Do we worry that our anti-virus software now kills the system?
"Oops, did I just spread all your data on my sandwich?"
(yes, I know the diff between bacterian & virus, but have used the same name for the sake of the jokes... ;-)
Great,now the right virus written to memory can create a real deadly virus. "What do you mean my corrupt file caused the extinction of the whales?"
How about storing hints to help engineer an antidote to this specific strain and scaring the shit out of the people 5000 years ahead when they analyze the bacteria to find a cure to the disease that wiped out 90% of humanity?
It has been eons since I was so truly excited about a Slashdot news. Think of the possibilities after the technology gest adapted from bacterias into human beens. The word "heritage" will change forever. About the long term capabity of bacteria, it does have the potential, but I get that new bio-storage media would need even more delicate handling than current optical storage.
our bacteria computer caught a virus.
- Meh, just give it two aspirin and it'll be as good as new
funny pics
The long term storage has a bigger problem and that is file format longevity. Computer software makers abandon users when they abandon old formats. Data formats should be supported forever and this article points it out so well.
Wasn't this an episode of star trek next gen?
Picard and co discover that the first humanoid species encoded a message in the dna of different species.
http//www.polycinease.com
http//www.polycinease.com