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Microsoft Will 'Solve' Cancer Within The Next 10 Years By Treating It Like A Computer Virus, Says Company (independent.co.uk)
Microsoft is serious about finding a cure for cancer. In June, Microsoft researchers published a paper that shows how analyzing online activities can provide clues as to a person's chances of having cancer. They were able to identify internet users who had pancreatic cancer even before they'd been diagnosed, all from analyzing web query logs. Several months later, researchers on behalf of the company now say they will "solve" cancer within the next 10 years by treating it like a computer virus that invades and corrupts the body's cells. The goal is to monitor the bad cells and potentially reprogram them to be healthy again. The Independent reports: The company has built a "biological computation" unit that says its ultimate aim is to make cells into living computers. As such, they could be programmed and reprogrammed to treat any diseases, such as cancer. In the nearer term, the unit is using advanced computing research to try and set computers to work learning about drugs and diseases and suggesting new treatments to help cancer patients. The team hopes to be able to use machine learning technologies -- computers that can think and learn like humans -- to read through the huge amounts of cancer research and come to understand the disease and the drugs that treat it. At the moment, so much cancer research is published that it is impossible for any doctor to read it all. But since computers can read and understand so much more quickly, the systems will be able to read through all of the research and then put that to work on specific people's situations. It does that by bringing together biology, math and computing. Microsoft says the solution could be with us within the next five or ten years.
If there's one thing Microsoft has comprehensively and irrefutably established over the last 35 years of their existence, it's that they haven't the faintest clue how to identify or eradicate viruses.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
If your definition of a human is a retarded 4-year-old that can be trained to name colors with 75% accuracy, yes.
We're not there, we're not even close; "machine learning" is just the new buzzword in town, rising from the ashes of "big data".
... machine learning is the solution. And cancer is not "like a computer virus that invades and corrupts the body's cells". That is how an actual virus works, hence the analogy by which the "computer virus" term came to be. Cancer is more like when a bit randomly flips in RAM and then by pure coincidence this causes a memory leak within an infinite loop that spreads shit all over the place until everything comes crashing down.
What could possibly go wrong? After all, it's proven totally trivial to eradicate bugs in software(that's why nobody uses systems that haven't been formally verified; it's such an easy step that you'd be crazy to skip it!); so it should be easy enough to extend our victories in that field to vastly more complex biological systems that lack many of the convenient mathematical properties built into the abstractions we use for computing.
Seriously guys; I'm glad you care about curing cancer and all; but what flavor of insanity drives this level of optimism about your chances?
Researcher Translation.
https://xkcd.com/678/
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
In 2004 Bill claimed SPAM would be eradicated in 2 years. http://www.informationweek.com/spam-will-be-solved-in-2-years--gates/d/d-id/1022817?
That went very well....
2026: Microsoft is widely blamed for unleashing the vampiric zombie cancer plague that has wiped out most of humanity.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
If we can solve the problem of cancer within 10 years by treating it as a computer virus, why not treat gravity as a computer virus and come up with practical, cheap antigravity? Or that pesky light-speed limit, we need to beat that, and 10 years sounds about right
Bruce Perens.
Microsoft will 'solve' cancer within 10 years by 'reprogramming' diseased cells
I think I've seen this movie before.
It doesn't end well.
Everyone will die when Microsoft does an update, and bitches up our heart and brain drivers.
BSOD as apocalypse?
It certainly fits!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There's a longstanding history of that kind of thing. Marketers having been data mining to detect when women are pregnant for years now and their methods are creepily accurate.
The thing is, though, that pregnancy is one thing. Pancreatic cancer is one thing. Cancer *in general* is more like a mixed bag of similar phenomena. We've pretty much converted many individual types of cancers that were a death sentence twenty years ago into curable illnesses. But others remain intractable. So saying "curing cancer" is a bit like saying "curing infection". Curing *the whole category* will require a truly fundamental progress in biology.
In fact it may require multidisciplinary breakthroughs. There's lots of things that kill tumor cells, but don't work on tumors.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Nobody even knew. Chairs were thrown, we did the monkey-boy dance, and everyone had a good laugh about how ridiculous it all was.
Such hubris from a corporation that can't even get its flagship OS to keep time properly: Windows 10 will have a time-related brainfart if not connected to the internet when it tries to update system time and change the system time to some arbitrary time in the immediate past, usually several hours at a minimum. Such crap.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
And it's surprisingly simple. And they need it, because they have so many more cells than people do they would have a high risk of cancer without some sort of defense.
http://www.nature.com/news/how...
To summarize the contents of the link, elephants just have 20 copies of the p53 gene. To incite cancer, all the copies would have to be disabled, via the most common cancer generating mutation mechanism.
If you want to engineer people to be cancer resistant, it might be as simple as introducing more copies of the p53 gene into our genome.
2026: Microsoft is widely blamed for unleashing the vampiric zombie cancer plague that has wiped out most of humanity.
microsoft gets defeated in 2030 by an army led by general protection fault.
we have no records dated after that.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Not at all. Cancerous and pre-cancerous cells arise in the body all the time. It's the body's ability to eliminate such cells that protects you from cancer, but sometimes those mechanisms fail.
"Have you tried dying and being reincarnated?"
-- Tech Support
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And you definitely do not want anyone to use the backdoor Microsoft will leave in "just in case".
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Up until the Windows 10 free cut-off date, Windows forcefully installed itself onto some people's computers without asking. Sometimes with Windows Update turned off. Not all of the code was copied form a central server, actually any computer already with Windows 10 can be requested to send parts of the main install, or updates. Some people complained that it didn't give any preference to computers already on the internal network, I think this has been fixed in the Anniversary Update. Copying itself confirmed!
Has a detrimental effect. Windows 10 removes some features automatically like Media Center, Windows DVD Maker, DVD playing, Desktop Gadgets, Start Menu, Solitaire, Minesweeper, and Hearts. It also removes some third party software as well, or requires you to uninstall and re-install it. Some games and programs just no longer work at all. Now you can get some of these things back with third party programs, or hackers getting Solitaire, Minesweeper, and Hearts to work again, but it is the same thing with a virus, or malware. Windows 10 is both a malware and virus confirmed!
Oh, but I'm not done. "Windows 10 does not destroy or corrupt data unless Microsoft deems that it is for the user's own good." Microsoft now supports FLAC files natively, well kind of, it will read and play them until for some reason it decides to corrupt the files so that it, nor any third party software can play them anymore. Microsoft is aware of the problem, but I have not seen a fix for it, even though it has been a problem since the first release of the OS.
As for corrupting data, a common problem with Windows 10 is that it will sometimes corrupt core OS files such as the taskbar, start menu and windows update. Common problem! I have even experienced this myself. It is so common, they actually have a specific easy fix baked into the OS to solve this. The only problem being that the easy fix uses windows update, so if that is hosed, you can still fix the problem, but it is really complicated. I ended up doing a refresh instead. Aka, Windows 10 corrupts the OS making it a virus.
I'm sure some people with ASUS motherboards can tell you about their hosed systems from a Windows 10 update
How about the Anniversary Update that breaks all USB2 web cams making some completely inoperable?
As you point out, it gathers sensitive information and displays unwanted advertising in their replacement for the old games, in the start menu and in notifications. Making Windows 10 definitely malware.
As you can see, not only is Windows 10 malware, but it also meets every definition of a virus as well.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
First fundamental problem: It's viruses. In English at least. In Latin, it would not be viri either because virus is neuter and only masculine nouns on -us become -i in the second declination. Virus is of the third declination (neuter). Another example is opus. It becomes opera. Not opi. Opi may put you to sleep similar to many Opera, but it is still something different.
The Latin plural of virus is vira, by the way. Viri would be the genitive singular. Virii is ... probably a problem with your keyboard, I don't know.
This cerebral masturbation aside, you cannot solve stupid. People executing arbitrary programs is the problem. You can tell them a million times "the dancing pig application might cause harm to your computer, it sure looks suspicious!" and they'll still click ok. The user is going to choose dancing pigs over security every time.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Most users agree that Windows10 should be treated like a virus, so if M$ could rid the world of that one it would be a great service to humanity.
2026: Microsoft is widely blamed for unleashing the vampiric zombie cancer plague that has wiped out most of humanity.
Microsoft - giving "The Blue Screen Of Death" a whole new meaning.
The language is deliberately vague, because of course this is mostly a marketing stunt for Microsoft; after all, what does 'solve cancer' mean? But to be fair, we are in fact beginning to understand many of the factors that make up several cancer diseases, and sometimes it is beneficial to focus on a far away goal, even if it isn't entirely realistic in the timeframe.
Cancer, I think, will always be with us - in a snes it always IS; some would say that all of us have cancer, all the time, because there is always a certain proportion of new cells that have genetic faults, and some of them have the potential to become cancerous - what saves us is a good immune system. It makes intuitive sense, I think, because as we get older, our immune system becomes less efficient, and then we are less likely to stop all cancer cells, which explains why cancer is much more common in older people.
There is, however, reasons to hope that we can at some point find a single or a few common traits that unite all types of cancer and make them curable; I have certainly seen articles that hint at something that could give us that. But in 10 years? I don't know.
Death certificate reads: STOP: 0xDEADBEEF00000000 (ATGCCGCGAATrojan-IM.....)
You're fucking obsessed with what humans aren't doing in space. This article is about microsoft curing cancer. lol. Why the fuck are you banging on about Mars yet again?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Am I the only one who is scared about the fact that these clueless fuckwits have enough data on us to diagnose which of us has prostate cancer?
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Former Microsoft CEO Steve "developers" Ballmer says Linux is a cancer.
Former #4 guy at Microsoft, Allchin, who also headed up Vista, said Open Source is un-American, and Legislators need to be educated to the danger.
Can Microsoft get rid of cancer as effectively as it got rid of Linux and Open Source?
Try to Embrace, Extend and Extinguish cancer.
But these days Microsoft Loves Linux. Just like Sharks love Fish, and Foxes love Chickens. Maybe next: Microsoft Loves Cancer!
Maybe Microsoft can find some obscure nobody company, like SCO, and dump a bunch of money into them to start a big lawsuit against Cancer in order to destroy it.
Microsoft, just keep fighting cancer the way you fight open source. If at first you don't succeed, use a shorter bungee.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Am I the only one who is scared about the fact that these clueless fuckwits have enough data on us to diagnose which of us has prostate cancer?
Diagnosing that someone has prostate cancer because they've googled "symptoms of prostate cancer" isn't rocket surgery.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it