Just like movies, videogames are an escape. We want them to be "real" in the sense that we want to suspend disbelief (and thus the drive to create more realistic looking games). But once things look real enough, I think people tend to want the gameplay to be a bit more on the fantastic side. There's certainly room for things like Splinter Cell where you have some decent realism. Sometimes you might want Clancy-style realism. However, a lot of gamers prefer the "Jerry Bruckheimer" brand of "realism".
A personal example: When I was a kid, I loved playing the original Amiga version of F-16 Falcon. It was a really fun sim and not too difficult to pick up and have a good time. It wasn't ultra-realistic, but it was just realistic enough to make you feel as though you were flying an airplane. Fast forward a few years and they released a sequel (this time for PC with 3D accelerated graphics). They had decided to make a very accurate F-16 simulator. I was so excited to try it out (being a big fkight sim fan). Finally, I would have a realistic military sim with great graphics!
It was so accurate, I found that all the fun was gone. The manual was a huge beast (a three ring binder if I remember correctly) that had all the details of how to operate the plane. I was just barely able to fly the thing. Landing? Forget it. I would crash over and over again. I've logged a lot of hours in MS Flight Simulator and other sims, so I'm sure that if I had practiced and read all the material I could have gotten better at it. That, however, sounds suspiciously like work. I realized that this was not really a game anymore. Furthermore, I realized that the truth is: I don't actually want to know how to fly a real F16. I just want to prentend I'm flying one so I can enjoy raids and dogfight. I want it to be just complex enough that I get a taste of the realism, but I don't want to have to sit there with a clipboard and go through a pre-flight checklist every time I want to take to the air.
I'm getting one too. I have never had a desire to own a Mac until about a year ago when I really got a good look at OS 10. I came super close to purchasing a G5, but backed off because it seemed an awful lot of money to plunk down for a machine to "test drive" the Mac. Now, good ol' Steve has taken away my last excuse. Nice to see someone in the computer industry with both creativity and the balls to back it up. God listen to me, I sound like a Mac fanboy already and I don't even own the damn thing.
I stilll don't understand why this works to the detriment of Microsoft. Wouldn't they love to see their apps served up from some central server via a subscription based service? I seem to remember reading that that was their plan for future versions of Office. It certainly makes piracy harder and allows for subscription based "software as a service". Sounds like more money for MS to me. I am already seeing this transition at work. We are using Citrix for Windows apps we have no desire to support on each client machine. As more clients connect we have to add more Windows servers to our Citrix farm. Plus each client is a Windows client. Looks like a lot of money for MS to me.
I don't quite understand all the hype about Google Suggests. The technique for doing it exists since at least 2 years on Mozilla (and even longer on IE). Therefore, doing something like that was possible since a long time, but maybe everyone was just scared of using JS for "serious" stuff.
Lots of technologies come along and people play with them. It's not to belittle any of the work others have done on similar projects. I am sure many of them are excellent proof of concept projects. The issue here is that Google is indicating through both GMail and this example, that they are serious about using the browser as a platform in a real high-volume enterprise setting. Furthermore, they are showing that they don't view the browser as a "dumb terminal" or a "viewer", but instead as an actual platform on which software runs. I think this is a real challenge to the current thinking about browsers. I'm not trying to be a Google fanboy here or anything, but they are major player in the industry and what they decide has an effect on trends.
Not so sure this is true. I took a look around at my setup (not that I'm assuming everyone has the same things, but I consider myself a typical geek). Most of my USB devices require a power cable: scanner, printer, Logitech Mx 700 mouse (cradle), Palm cradle, & external HDD. Then there are other devices that don't "need" a power cable: digital camera & MP3 player. The only two devices that I'd have to add a power cable to would be keyboard (could do batteries here) and webcam. Seems like I'd just have fewer cables and USB hubs sitting around, which would be nice.
I work for a huge Bioinformatics department at a major pharmaceutical company. One thing you need to understand is that the lion's share of Bioinformatics would probably be considered "run of the mill" stuff as far as the rest of computer science is concerned. The biggest problem in Bioinformatics is that our IT people lack sufficient understanding of the underlying biology. If I had to pick an ideal candidate for a position with us, I would look for the following (in order of importance):
Biology background that includes some of the following undergraduate courses: molecular biology, genetics, evolutionary biology, biochemistry/biophysics, virology, & microbiology
Computer background that includes many of the following: Perl, Java, relational databases, XML, Visual Basic (lots of stupid stuff uses it) & general UNIX skills
Preferably some kind of lab experience
Any background in statistics (the more the better)
What we really need are people capable of integrating large amounts of data (DNA sequences, protein structure info, gene expression results, biochemical pathways, clinical data, etc...). This stuff all needs to tie together somehow. While this doesn't require massive programming heroics, it does require an attention to the underlying science or else the wrong assumptions can be made and a total disaster created.
Now, that's not to say that people with experience in areas such as artificial intelligence, image analysis, or natural language processing wouldn't be assets, but to be honest, we're just not at that point yet. Some actual Bioinformatics companies and organizations (TIGR, Celera, Affymetrix, Rosetta, etc...) may (and probably do) have a need for these specialized skills more than us. But do yourself a favor and take as much biology as possible. It's invaluable to my "office karma score" to be able to discuss the latest on Slashdot with our programmers, and two minutes later talk about an article from Nature with our biologists.
I think the problem here is that not everyone understands that DARPA's remit allows it to fund some of the more risky projects with the hope that maybe a handful will be promising.
From the DARPA website:
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
is the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense (DoD). It manages and directs selected basic and applied research and development projects for DoD, and pursues research and technology where risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions.
In principle, one could imagine that it would be advantageous for troops to move through the air individually. The way one does that is quite unclear and non-trivial. So, it's expected that these projects will fail and that does not necessarily mean it wasn't "useful". I'm amazed that this company did as much as it did with $5 million. It's not the same as when the government goes to a bunch of defense contractors and says, "Give me better guidance for my smart bombs" and then expects to have better smart bombs at the end of the day.
You have a point. You've got a pretty amazing transfer rate. Especially when you consider ~180 million nearly identical copies of your genome (at ~8.3 gigs a pop) get transferred in a few seconds, it makes for one hell of a RAID system!
As for MS being over and done with, I just checked their annual report for 2000. They had revenue of $22.9 billion and cash/short-term investments of 23.7 billion. So even if nobody bought a single stinking MS product this year, you would have to put up with them for yet another year!
It takes hard-core chemical usage to
manufacture photovoltaic cells
Don't forget all the hard-core chemicals you need to manufacture the damn batteries. I believe batteries are the only way to store power for use at night or in low light conditions. You can bet they are lead acid or some other tasty environmentally friendly compound.
Why is this on slashdot? I don't care if it's legal in Canada or not, it's still stealing! This is just one more example of something the media will 'attribute' to OSS and Linux.
Just because Linux is free, doesn't mean everything else has to be.
Okay there are a number of problems with these examples. One, we have laws to prevent drug companies from "cooking the books" to show that drug XYZ is better or worse than ABC. The US FDA requires REAMS of data. They pore over anything and everything. Believe me, they will see through shoddy research. But let's say they're all out to lunch. I can guarantee you that competitors will attempt to replicate the studies in order to prove that the books were cooked. Most drug companies routinely test competitors products to find out if they can claim the side effects are worse, or the drugs are ineffective...whatever. The bottom line is that even if the FDA did nothing, the truth would eventually come out.
In the second case, (arguments about global warming aside) it is in the federal government's interest to have human caused global warming be a threat just as much as it is in the oil companie's interest to have it not be. If there's global warming, and it's caused by humans, that offers a reason to have blanket federal controls over everything from lawnmowers to 747's. The natural order of government is to assert control. Therefore, if I'm a researcher with federal dollars, it is in my best interest to conclude that humans might be the cause. Of course, to find out for sure, I'd need more federal $$$, so I get my grant renwed year after year. You can bet that researchers who study global warming and conclude humans are likely not the cause probably get very crappy federal grants to study it further. In my opinion, this is no different than the "cooked" research funded by the oil companies. Both sides in this case have a political agenda.
This gets to the root of the issue here, which is that there are lots of people with research cash out there who have opposing views and interests. The competiton is a healthy part of the scientific process and ultimately benefits everyone.
Bioinformatics will be HUGE
on
Bioinformatics
·
· Score: 1
I work for one of the larger pharmaceutical companies in the world. I can see from the posts here that we have relatively few slashdotters with bioinformatics experience, so hopefully I can shed some light on a few areas.
First, I see there are many who somehow feel that large pharmaceutical companies are out to rape and pillage consumers. The truth of the matter is that most of the public hasn't the foggiest ideat how freaking impossible it is to make drugs. Most drugs that are research are so spectacularly bad, they never make it to market. The main reason is that when they are tested they either have side-effects or (more likely) they just don't work. Bioinformatics is changing all this. I see it every day.
For instance, in the old days, I could develop an antibiotic and test it against all kinds of bacteria and it would work fine, but then I give it to a mouse (after spending a cool million in preliminary research) and it kills the mouse because the mouse has the same enzyme as the bug I'm trying to kill. Today, I just search the database with my bacterial protein and in less than a second I'm convinced that not only do humans and mice have this protein, but so does every other creature with so much as a partially completed genome sequence. So, with slashdot in one window, and a bacterial genome in the other, I move on and the company can put that money into a drug that has a better chance of being effective. What bioinformatics does is remove some of the guesswork from pharmaceutical research.
Most bioinformatics detractors do not see the big picture. Bioinformatics is in its infancy, much as the computer industry of the '60's. Let's face it, if I give you a handful of transistors you can't do a whole lot. I give you the number of transistors in your average year 2001 CPU, and your head spins at the possibilites. The currency of Bioinformatics is data, not transistors. One complete human genome sequence is nearly worthless. 100 complete human genome sequences is damn interesting. 10,000 human genome sequences is mind boggling. With that much data, you could easily detect the differences between individuals. A nice little relational database would be able to link all those people together by features and disease information. Orwellian concerns aside (assume all of them are volunteers), this sort of comparison allows you to learn about the smallest details that make people different. This leads directly to better drugs that have fewer side effects.
What many people don't realize is that genome sequences are going to be a dime a dozen in the future. Doctors will be able to take a swab from your sore throat, put it in a small machine, and sequence the genomes of the organisms currently inhabiting your throat. As a result, the doc gives you an antibiotic that is specifically targeted to the strain of bacteria that is causing your problem, leaving all the others alone. While it sounds far fetched now, what I have just described is an engineering problem, not a science problem. The tools to rapidly sequence DNA will get better and faster, and the sequence data will multiply exponentially. I believe that bioinformatics is at the base of an exponential curve, and that we can't even imagine what the future holds.
By the way, Perl is HUGE in bioinformatics. Nothing parses those strings of ATCG's quite the same way...besides, we biologists need results, we can't be messing with those "strict" languages like C++!:)
Oh please. Have you ever read the US Constitution? For those in slashdot audience who have not: It is interesting to note that the wording of the Constitution and Bill of Rights always focuses on limitations placed on GOVERNMENT but not PEOPLE. The whole reason for this is that the framers of the US Constitution realized that power corrupts-- even the best people are at risk. You can't expect me to believe that you trust all your elected officials to do what is right 100% of the time. It is human nature to do what is in one's best interest. That's why it's necessary for the population at large to give leaders a little zap with the cattleprod once in a while. Lest they forget whose interests they protect.
The framers recognized this need and the US Constitution goes to great lengths to protect the right to keep the government in check. I would agree with you that this may indeed be a cultural difference. But if every citizen of the UK has your blind faith that government can be left to its own devices, the whole country gets a "+5 Troll" rating as far as I'm concerned.
Yes, that's just what we need- more government controls on broadband. That way we can have a service that has the reliability of the California power grid and the speed and efficiency of the US Postal Service.
I think many of us forget just how young a technology the mainstream internet is. If you would have told a telco exec 7 years ago that the company could make a ton in high speed consumer network access, he or she would have laughed at you. Large companies don't throw billions of dollars at fads (Intel and Rambus aside). It just took them a while to "wake up" and realize the net was here for good (some are still sound asleep).
How dumb can a company be. The instant the net became huge among the average person, AT&T's revenue from long distance was assigned a death warrant. There is no such thing as long distance anymore. Wireless and the net have made DISTANCE a moot point. The money is in BANDWIDTH.
Celera has promised to release the entire sequence as soon as they are finished (much like they did with the fruit fly genome this month). They have always said that they will make the actual genome public. The press for some reason, likes to ignore this.
Celera is actually doing two things here:
1. Getting the raw sequence of the human genome and marking off all the genes we already know, as well as some "best guess" genes that are similar to other organisms that have been sequenced. This will be available from them for free to everyone.
2. They then plan to go after genes we don't really know. A little explanation:
Genes are how the body stores the information to make proteins (which get made into enzymes, cell signalling molecules, whatever...). They also make other things, but I don't want to complicate this. Largely, it's proteins that scientists are interested in becuase they are the machinery through which the body works. Cancer, for example, is caused largely by proteins that misbehave and refuse to do their jobs.
Just knowing the sequence of the human genome tells you little about the functions of the genes. The proteins made from those genes must be studied and characterized. This is where Celera's business model kicks in. They plan to identify and characterize as many proteins as possible. This is a non-trivial task, given that some molecular biologists spend their entire lives working on one protein. Celera plans to look at the protein-protein interactions as well as their locations within the cell to get an overview of what all the genes in the human body are actually doing. It's real "big picure" stuff", meant to serve as a starting point for future research. It is likely that many of these proteins will have value as targets for drugs, and I think Celera plans to patent these genes to make money. They will at the very least charge a subscription fee to look at all the protein data they have collected. I am fairly certain that other companies have already patented human genes...without the patents, there is not a whole lot to protect a drug from being stolen by competitors.
All of Celeras research will be at an ENORMOUS cost to the company. Should they make all the info free? The bottom line is that realistically, you and I are not going to develop the cure from cancer because we ran a perl script on the human genome. It takes a Pharmaceutical company with deep pockets to pay for all the FDA trials and get the drug ready for "prime time". Celera knows this, and they know these companys will shell out wads of cash to get info about as many proteins as possible. It is possible that university researchers will not have the money to pay for this information. But there is so much research to be done, the big pharmas will likely fund projects at universities to look into some of these genes more closey, so many of them will get what they want anyway.
Re:Do we understand the implications?
on
Microsoft Loses
·
· Score: 1
How many copies of Netscape did you buy? I know I got most of mine for free....legally! This is what makes this case most absurd to me. BOTH companies essentially gave the browser away for free. Oh sure, businesses had to buy Netscape back in the old days...but it was always free for personal and educational use. Netscape was doomed from the beginning.
The problem with DNA is that it's a real pain to sequence. Sequencing large amounts of DNA is a nontrivial task. Therefore, her message would be EXTREMELY well hidden. Once sequencing technology improves, the situation changes, and you are correct that a simple analysis would find the message.
I don't want to sound like a jerk; but I seem to recall a letter in the journal Nature (sometime this summer) where several researchers encoded a message in DNA and used primers as the keys to find the message...essentially what Viviana did. Anyone else remember this?
Slashdot Mirror
Just like movies, videogames are an escape. We want them to be "real" in the sense that we want to suspend disbelief (and thus the drive to create more realistic looking games). But once things look real enough, I think people tend to want the gameplay to be a bit more on the fantastic side. There's certainly room for things like Splinter Cell where you have some decent realism. Sometimes you might want Clancy-style realism. However, a lot of gamers prefer the "Jerry Bruckheimer" brand of "realism".
A personal example:
When I was a kid, I loved playing the original Amiga version of F-16 Falcon. It was a really fun sim and not too difficult to pick up and have a good time. It wasn't ultra-realistic, but it was just realistic enough to make you feel as though you were flying an airplane. Fast forward a few years and they released a sequel (this time for PC with 3D accelerated graphics). They had decided to make a very accurate F-16 simulator. I was so excited to try it out (being a big fkight sim fan). Finally, I would have a realistic military sim with great graphics!
It was so accurate, I found that all the fun was gone. The manual was a huge beast (a three ring binder if I remember correctly) that had all the details of how to operate the plane. I was just barely able to fly the thing. Landing? Forget it. I would crash over and over again. I've logged a lot of hours in MS Flight Simulator and other sims, so I'm sure that if I had practiced and read all the material I could have gotten better at it. That, however, sounds suspiciously like work. I realized that this was not really a game anymore. Furthermore, I realized that the truth is: I don't actually want to know how to fly a real F16. I just want to prentend I'm flying one so I can enjoy raids and dogfight. I want it to be just complex enough that I get a taste of the realism, but I don't want to have to sit there with a clipboard and go through a pre-flight checklist every time I want to take to the air.
I'm getting one too. I have never had a desire to own a Mac until about a year ago when I really got a good look at OS 10. I came super close to purchasing a G5, but backed off because it seemed an awful lot of money to plunk down for a machine to "test drive" the Mac. Now, good ol' Steve has taken away my last excuse. Nice to see someone in the computer industry with both creativity and the balls to back it up. God listen to me, I sound like a Mac fanboy already and I don't even own the damn thing.
I stilll don't understand why this works to the detriment of Microsoft. Wouldn't they love to see their apps served up from some central server via a subscription based service? I seem to remember reading that that was their plan for future versions of Office. It certainly makes piracy harder and allows for subscription based "software as a service". Sounds like more money for MS to me. I am already seeing this transition at work. We are using Citrix for Windows apps we have no desire to support on each client machine. As more clients connect we have to add more Windows servers to our Citrix farm. Plus each client is a Windows client. Looks like a lot of money for MS to me.
I don't quite understand all the hype about Google Suggests. The technique for doing it exists since at least 2 years on Mozilla (and even longer on IE). Therefore, doing something like that was possible since a long time, but maybe everyone was just scared of using JS for "serious" stuff.
Lots of technologies come along and people play with them. It's not to belittle any of the work others have done on similar projects. I am sure many of them are excellent proof of concept projects. The issue here is that Google is indicating through both GMail and this example, that they are serious about using the browser as a platform in a real high-volume enterprise setting. Furthermore, they are showing that they don't view the browser as a "dumb terminal" or a "viewer", but instead as an actual platform on which software runs. I think this is a real challenge to the current thinking about browsers. I'm not trying to be a Google fanboy here or anything, but they are major player in the industry and what they decide has an effect on trends.
To borrow a phrase from the old Mellon Bank Pins they handed out before Ohio State games:
"IE don't think so!"
Class of '00
We are...
...Penn State
Not so sure this is true. I took a look around at my setup (not that I'm assuming everyone has the same things, but I consider myself a typical geek). Most of my USB devices require a power cable: scanner, printer, Logitech Mx 700 mouse (cradle), Palm cradle, & external HDD. Then there are other devices that don't "need" a power cable: digital camera & MP3 player. The only two devices that I'd have to add a power cable to would be keyboard (could do batteries here) and webcam. Seems like I'd just have fewer cables and USB hubs sitting around, which would be nice.
No... you troll! What we really need is a vi live CD, forget Emacs! Just boot into vi!
I work for a huge Bioinformatics department at a major pharmaceutical company. One thing you need to understand is that the lion's share of Bioinformatics would probably be considered "run of the mill" stuff as far as the rest of computer science is concerned. The biggest problem in Bioinformatics is that our IT people lack sufficient understanding of the underlying biology. If I had to pick an ideal candidate for a position with us, I would look for the following (in order of importance):
Biology background that includes some of the following undergraduate courses: molecular biology, genetics, evolutionary biology, biochemistry/biophysics, virology, & microbiology
Computer background that includes many of the following: Perl, Java, relational databases, XML, Visual Basic (lots of stupid stuff uses it) & general UNIX skills
Preferably some kind of lab experience
Any background in statistics (the more the better)
What we really need are people capable of integrating large amounts of data (DNA sequences, protein structure info, gene expression results, biochemical pathways, clinical data, etc...). This stuff all needs to tie together somehow. While this doesn't require massive programming heroics, it does require an attention to the underlying science or else the wrong assumptions can be made and a total disaster created.
Now, that's not to say that people with experience in areas such as artificial intelligence, image analysis, or natural language processing wouldn't be assets, but to be honest, we're just not at that point yet. Some actual Bioinformatics companies and organizations (TIGR, Celera, Affymetrix, Rosetta, etc...) may (and probably do) have a need for these specialized skills more than us. But do yourself a favor and take as much biology as possible. It's invaluable to my "office karma score" to be able to discuss the latest on Slashdot with our programmers, and two minutes later talk about an article from Nature with our biologists.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense (DoD). It manages and directs selected basic and applied research and development projects for DoD, and pursues research and technology where risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions.
In principle, one could imagine that it would be advantageous for troops to move through the air individually. The way one does that is quite unclear and non-trivial. So, it's expected that these projects will fail and that does not necessarily mean it wasn't "useful". I'm amazed that this company did as much as it did with $5 million. It's not the same as when the government goes to a bunch of defense contractors and says, "Give me better guidance for my smart bombs" and then expects to have better smart bombs at the end of the day.
You have a point. You've got a pretty amazing transfer rate. Especially when you consider ~180 million nearly identical copies of your genome (at ~8.3 gigs a pop) get transferred in a few seconds, it makes for one hell of a RAID system!
As for MS being over and done with, I just checked their annual report for 2000. They had revenue of $22.9 billion and cash/short-term investments of 23.7 billion. So even if nobody bought a single stinking MS product this year, you would have to put up with them for yet another year!
It takes hard-core chemical usage to manufacture photovoltaic cells
Don't forget all the hard-core chemicals you need to manufacture the damn batteries. I believe batteries are the only way to store power for use at night or in low light conditions. You can bet they are lead acid or some other tasty environmentally friendly compound.
Why is this on slashdot? I don't care if it's legal in Canada or not, it's still stealing! This is just one more example of something the media will 'attribute' to OSS and Linux.
Just because Linux is free, doesn't mean everything else has to be.
In the second case, (arguments about global warming aside) it is in the federal government's interest to have human caused global warming be a threat just as much as it is in the oil companie's interest to have it not be. If there's global warming, and it's caused by humans, that offers a reason to have blanket federal controls over everything from lawnmowers to 747's. The natural order of government is to assert control. Therefore, if I'm a researcher with federal dollars, it is in my best interest to conclude that humans might be the cause. Of course, to find out for sure, I'd need more federal $$$, so I get my grant renwed year after year. You can bet that researchers who study global warming and conclude humans are likely not the cause probably get very crappy federal grants to study it further. In my opinion, this is no different than the "cooked" research funded by the oil companies. Both sides in this case have a political agenda.
This gets to the root of the issue here, which is that there are lots of people with research cash out there who have opposing views and interests. The competiton is a healthy part of the scientific process and ultimately benefits everyone.
First, I see there are many who somehow feel that large pharmaceutical companies are out to rape and pillage consumers. The truth of the matter is that most of the public hasn't the foggiest ideat how freaking impossible it is to make drugs. Most drugs that are research are so spectacularly bad, they never make it to market. The main reason is that when they are tested they either have side-effects or (more likely) they just don't work. Bioinformatics is changing all this. I see it every day.
For instance, in the old days, I could develop an antibiotic and test it against all kinds of bacteria and it would work fine, but then I give it to a mouse (after spending a cool million in preliminary research) and it kills the mouse because the mouse has the same enzyme as the bug I'm trying to kill. Today, I just search the database with my bacterial protein and in less than a second I'm convinced that not only do humans and mice have this protein, but so does every other creature with so much as a partially completed genome sequence. So, with slashdot in one window, and a bacterial genome in the other, I move on and the company can put that money into a drug that has a better chance of being effective. What bioinformatics does is remove some of the guesswork from pharmaceutical research.
Most bioinformatics detractors do not see the big picture. Bioinformatics is in its infancy, much as the computer industry of the '60's. Let's face it, if I give you a handful of transistors you can't do a whole lot. I give you the number of transistors in your average year 2001 CPU, and your head spins at the possibilites. The currency of Bioinformatics is data, not transistors. One complete human genome sequence is nearly worthless. 100 complete human genome sequences is damn interesting. 10,000 human genome sequences is mind boggling. With that much data, you could easily detect the differences between individuals. A nice little relational database would be able to link all those people together by features and disease information. Orwellian concerns aside (assume all of them are volunteers), this sort of comparison allows you to learn about the smallest details that make people different. This leads directly to better drugs that have fewer side effects.
What many people don't realize is that genome sequences are going to be a dime a dozen in the future. Doctors will be able to take a swab from your sore throat, put it in a small machine, and sequence the genomes of the organisms currently inhabiting your throat. As a result, the doc gives you an antibiotic that is specifically targeted to the strain of bacteria that is causing your problem, leaving all the others alone. While it sounds far fetched now, what I have just described is an engineering problem, not a science problem. The tools to rapidly sequence DNA will get better and faster, and the sequence data will multiply exponentially. I believe that bioinformatics is at the base of an exponential curve, and that we can't even imagine what the future holds.
By the way, Perl is HUGE in bioinformatics. Nothing parses those strings of ATCG's quite the same way...besides, we biologists need results, we can't be messing with those "strict" languages like C++!:)
Oh please. Have you ever read the US Constitution? For those in slashdot audience who have not: It is interesting to note that the wording of the Constitution and Bill of Rights always focuses on limitations placed on GOVERNMENT but not PEOPLE. The whole reason for this is that the framers of the US Constitution realized that power corrupts-- even the best people are at risk. You can't expect me to believe that you trust all your elected officials to do what is right 100% of the time. It is human nature to do what is in one's best interest. That's why it's necessary for the population at large to give leaders a little zap with the cattleprod once in a while. Lest they forget whose interests they protect.
The framers recognized this need and the US Constitution goes to great lengths to protect the right to keep the government in check. I would agree with you that this may indeed be a cultural difference. But if every citizen of the UK has your blind faith that government can be left to its own devices, the whole country gets a "+5 Troll" rating as far as I'm concerned.
Yes, that's just what we need- more government controls on broadband. That way we can have a service that has the reliability of the California power grid and the speed and efficiency of the US Postal Service.
I think many of us forget just how young a technology the mainstream internet is. If you would have told a telco exec 7 years ago that the company could make a ton in high speed consumer network access, he or she would have laughed at you. Large companies don't throw billions of dollars at fads (Intel and Rambus aside). It just took them a while to "wake up" and realize the net was here for good (some are still sound asleep).
Would that be with or without James Cameron on board?
How dumb can a company be. The instant the net became huge among the average person, AT&T's revenue from long distance was assigned a death warrant. There is no such thing as long distance anymore. Wireless and the net have made DISTANCE a moot point. The money is in BANDWIDTH.
Welcome to the new economy AT&T.
Celera is actually doing two things here:
1. Getting the raw sequence of the human genome and marking off all the genes we already know, as well as some "best guess" genes that are similar to other organisms that have been sequenced. This will be available from them for free to everyone.
2. They then plan to go after genes we don't really know. A little explanation:
Genes are how the body stores the information to make proteins (which get made into enzymes, cell signalling molecules, whatever...). They also make other things, but I don't want to complicate this. Largely, it's proteins that scientists are interested in becuase they are the machinery through which the body works. Cancer, for example, is caused largely by proteins that misbehave and refuse to do their jobs.
Just knowing the sequence of the human genome tells you little about the functions of the genes. The proteins made from those genes must be studied and characterized. This is where Celera's business model kicks in. They plan to identify and characterize as many proteins as possible. This is a non-trivial task, given that some molecular biologists spend their entire lives working on one protein. Celera plans to look at the protein-protein interactions as well as their locations within the cell to get an overview of what all the genes in the human body are actually doing. It's real "big picure" stuff", meant to serve as a starting point for future research. It is likely that many of these proteins will have value as targets for drugs, and I think Celera plans to patent these genes to make money. They will at the very least charge a subscription fee to look at all the protein data they have collected. I am fairly certain that other companies have already patented human genes...without the patents, there is not a whole lot to protect a drug from being stolen by competitors.
All of Celeras research will be at an ENORMOUS cost to the company. Should they make all the info free? The bottom line is that realistically, you and I are not going to develop the cure from cancer because we ran a perl script on the human genome. It takes a Pharmaceutical company with deep pockets to pay for all the FDA trials and get the drug ready for "prime time". Celera knows this, and they know these companys will shell out wads of cash to get info about as many proteins as possible. It is possible that university researchers will not have the money to pay for this information. But there is so much research to be done, the big pharmas will likely fund projects at universities to look into some of these genes more closey, so many of them will get what they want anyway.
How many copies of Netscape did you buy? I know I got most of mine for free....legally! This is what makes this case most absurd to me. BOTH companies essentially gave the browser away for free. Oh sure, businesses had to buy Netscape back in the old days...but it was always free for personal and educational use. Netscape was doomed from the beginning.
The problem with DNA is that it's a real pain to sequence. Sequencing large amounts of DNA is a nontrivial task. Therefore, her message would be EXTREMELY well hidden. Once sequencing technology improves, the situation changes, and you are correct that a simple analysis would find the message.
Well yes, I am a jerk. :) I should've checked PubMed before opening my mouth!
WOW! Published in Nature as a HIGH SCHOOL student...boy do I feel behind the curve. I can't wait to see the papers she publishes in college.
I don't want to sound like a jerk; but I seem to recall a letter in the journal Nature (sometime this summer) where several researchers encoded a message in DNA and used primers as the keys to find the message...essentially what Viviana did. Anyone else remember this?