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Synthetic DNA About To Yield New Life Forms
mlimber sends along a Washington Post story about the immanence of completely artificial life: "The cobbling together of life from synthetic DNA, scientists and philosophers agree, will be a watershed event, blurring the line between biological and artificial — and forcing a rethinking of what it means for a thing to be alive... Some experts are worried that a few maverick companies are already gaining monopoly control over the core 'operating system' for artificial life and are poised to become the Microsofts of synthetic biology. That could stifle competition, they say, and place enormous power in a few people's hands."
Okay it's a crappy knock off of a classic novel but don't they see the potential for turning us all into a bunch of lame CG vampires?
What is it with you losers showing up lately, spamming every forum in creation with your pathetic, viral attempts at tricking people into clicking on your useless damned links? You people are internet parasites, gaining momentary whizzing contest bragging rights at the expense of the wasted time and disappointment of everyone who think that you might have had something interesting to see at the end of that link.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Right. Off topic.
This is probably the funniest damned post in the entire thread, spot on-topic for both patents and artificial life forms, and you get modded "offtopic."
See, here's the deal, mods: *I'm* offtopic. The parent post was *funny.* See the difference? His was filled with relevant, smart, funny information. Mine is mere whining about mods and the way they waste their points. HUGE FUCKING DIFFERENCE!
Mr. MillionthMonkey, Sir, you may not have writ the works of Shakespeare, but your post made me throw up laughing.
Thank you.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
i don't have testicles, you insensitive clod!
FYI: I don't know what you guys are talking about half the time.
Have we met before?
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
with my real doll and make cylon babies? ...yeah I went there...
Ave Molech Setting
This is seriously funny, thanks. You certainly did not deserve the offtopic mod.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
I think the problem here may be that you have to dumb it down a bit.
/.
I'd give you an example involving a car analogy, but... err, well you seem to be the master in that subject.
Its a sad day in
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
Mod parent up.
What *is* that "myminicity.com" link? I can't make much out of this Source Code:
//<![CDATA[
//]]>
..... why would someone set document.location.href = document.location.href ? What is it doing?
<html>
<head>
<title>MyMiniCity</title>
</head>
<body>
<noscript>
This site needs JavaScript.
</noscript>
<script type="text/javascript">
var d = new Date();
d.setTime(d.getTime()+47994);
var exp = d.toGMTString();
if( document.referrer != null )
document.cookie = "X-MV-Referer="+encodeURIComponent(document.referrer);
document.cookie = "X-Ref-Ok=1;expires="+exp+";path=/"
document.location.href = document.location.href;
</script>
<p><em>Please wait a few moments...</em></p>
</body>
</html>
I mean
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
This is seriously funny, thanks. You certainly did not deserve the offtopic mod.
Ok, I hate looking stupid, but I spent 10 minutes on Wikipedia looking up stuff, but I still don't see the funny. I'd rather admit being ignorant and learn something that remaining ignorant, so - Someone feel like hitting me with a cluestick?
Describes something already existing? Sci-fi literary/movie reference? A biology experiment everyone but me did in high-school, or...?
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Agreed. However, say you forget to take it along, because scurvy hasn't existed in your "spare faring world nation" (all conspiracy theories aside, lets just presume so)... you've "cured" all disease, "cured" all the malcontents, and have a thoroughly borgified nation.
But this nation of organic "borg" have one big flaw. As they get further and further from home, eating processed this or that, they discover that... oops, they're developing unknown disease once they land on some new planet and begin to consume dry rations. But why, its got all the protein they need? Ooops, after countless die on alien worlds, and "alien pathogens" are blamed, nobody remembers that not enough (not just absence, but not enough) Ascorbic Acid (to be precise) is quite important to the human body, essential in fact. Foods may be substituted, even cardboard or protein powder can keep one alive, but the vitamins are essential, and in the case of C, vital, and unavailable without a steady outside source.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
Actually no, he takes food, vitamins, and the means to make more out of available materials, otherwise he dies when his supply runs out or his supply chain is cut off.
The questions I posed, however, (before I got caught up in the fun endeavor of arguing with you people) were these:
Why is it, that out of ALL the animals out there, only TWO mammalian species (a marsupial rat and homo sapiens) display this lack of capacity for synthesizing internal ascorbate from internal sugars? Seems to me that this would be a bigger concern than externally mounted testicles, which, aside from what the parent poster to mine said, is a "survival" concern?
So it seems to me like the failure to synthesize ascorbate internally (its lack develops the fatal condition known as scurvy, fatal if left with an uncorrected diet, that is), would be an intentional flaw, if the "intelligent" design folks be believed. This is whether one believes there is are gods, or merely an intelligent process of "evolution". Whatever the case, it seems to me, a FAR more serious flaw than externally mounted testicles, which don't really cause that much trouble for survival, whereas extended travel at sea centuries ago was lethal to many sailors until it was discovered that carrying lemons aboard (and eating them) was the cure. Now the question to ask is this. Is this a flaw introduced to keep humanity on this nursery world until some of its members mature enough to "make it out there" independently of the "seed stock", or is it a mere "coincidence"?
As long as I've lived, I've stopped believing in coincidence... every single experience and event, good or bad, leads to every other single experience and event, though I wouldn't go so far as to say there is a god (or many) I would wager to say that there's always another veil to be moved aside, more to see, more to understand.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler