They think it is another significant step to the mass production of gentically identical farm animals.
Whenever this "benefit" to cloning arises, I always wonder why this would be such a good thing. Don't scientists remember the Potato Blight? Genetic diversity is life's insurance against elimination by a single virus.
There is a further danger with genome-lego-nomics, raised by Arthur C. Clarke in Rama Revealed. The book briefly describes a race of beings that had continually altered their DNA (which was more complex than humans'). Unfortunately, an early change caused their DNA to slowly and slightly destabilize. Hundreds of years later when the mistake was manifesting itself, it had already propagated through the gene pool.
It was only then that they realized that no one kept an original copy of the species' DNA and a great, star-faring race fell extinct.
No one knows the interactions between each gene and each protien. We need to be careful that any changes made to a genome can be undone.
And I only found the Science section because if the Hemos/CmdrTaco interview too. How about an announcement, guys?
I think that's the point of Hemos's "mmm-feed-the-land-fill" tagline.
I hope the manufacturers have the good sense to charge a "deposit fee" that's refundable if the phone is sent back for recycling/recharging/remanufacturing.
More to the point, why make them truly disposable when the unit still has implicit value? A much better business model would allow a user to buy additional time if there's battery life left. When the battery's dusted, turn the phone in and get your deposit back and credit for unused time.
This looks like a very good thing. By focusing on shrinking the package as opposed to the trace size, they avoid the costs associated with building new fabs to support the shrunk designs. Additionally, by incorporating the package on the wafer and eliminating manufacturing steps, it should be very attractive to implement.
Provided that the tech can scale up, and that the market adopts it, it could be a big step towards super-small devices embedded in just about anything.
Let's see...a microcontroller, a temp sensor, and a d-a converter in a 3-pin-head size. Stick that in your shirt and you've got something that beeps when you get hot under the collar!
Of course, when they come up with a CCD and a couple megs of RAM on the head of a pin, that's when I'm going to worry.
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Whenever this "benefit" to cloning arises, I always wonder why this would be such a good thing. Don't scientists remember the Potato Blight? Genetic diversity is life's insurance against elimination by a single virus.
There is a further danger with genome-lego-nomics, raised by Arthur C. Clarke in Rama Revealed. The book briefly describes a race of beings that had continually altered their DNA (which was more complex than humans'). Unfortunately, an early change caused their DNA to slowly and slightly destabilize. Hundreds of years later when the mistake was manifesting itself, it had already propagated through the gene pool.
It was only then that they realized that no one kept an original copy of the species' DNA and a great, star-faring race fell extinct.
No one knows the interactions between each gene and each protien. We need to be careful that any changes made to a genome can be undone.
And I only found the Science section because if the Hemos/CmdrTaco interview too. How about an announcement, guys?
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Limit the outgoing phone numbers to parents' work, home, pager, etc, give it to your kid and don't worry that he'll lose it or abuse it.
Ideal.
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I think that's the point of Hemos's "mmm-feed-the-land-fill" tagline.
I hope the manufacturers have the good sense to charge a "deposit fee" that's refundable if the phone is sent back for recycling/recharging/remanufacturing.
More to the point, why make them truly disposable when the unit still has implicit value? A much better business model would allow a user to buy additional time if there's battery life left. When the battery's dusted, turn the phone in and get your deposit back and credit for unused time.
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This looks like a very good thing. By focusing on shrinking the package as opposed to the trace size, they avoid the costs associated with building new fabs to support the shrunk designs. Additionally, by incorporating the package on the wafer and eliminating manufacturing steps, it should be very attractive to implement.
Provided that the tech can scale up, and that the market adopts it, it could be a big step towards super-small devices embedded in just about anything.
Let's see...a microcontroller, a temp sensor, and a d-a converter in a 3-pin-head size. Stick that in your shirt and you've got something that beeps when you get hot under the collar!
Of course, when they come up with a CCD and a couple megs of RAM on the head of a pin, that's when I'm going to worry.
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