The zealots, as you call them, have just as much right as anyone to voice an opinion, and the average man on the street has the same right to believe it.
I've met the "average man on the street." I'm opposed to him voicing his opinions as well, some of the things he says are terrifying.;-P
Sorry for the flame, But wow, it turns out you don't need to run the pissing matches with the pro life activists to get things done.
The base knowledge for making the IPS cells, like which genes were necessary, came from... embryonic stem cell research. Had we not done that research, we never would have made IPS cells.
This isn't "adult stem cells" technically, adult stem cells more specifically refer to natural cells in the body that are generally thought to make fewer types of cells than embryonic stem cells. These are specifically IPS cells, adult cells (as I understand it they don't seem to need to be adult STEM cells) that have been converted to a more primitive state.
The terminology is still being hammered out, but as of right now I don't think it's correct to call these adult stem cells, they're more similar to embryonic stem cells, and embryonic stem cell research lead to the discovery/invention of IPS cells.
More importantly, they do in fact very much carry the risk of tumors. One of the four genes typically used to create IPS cells is c-myc, which is a tumor-causing gene. That's a concern, although it seems you can get IPS without it.
No matter how you get them, it seems that IPS cells will in fact produce tumors if you don't instruct every last one of them to differentiate. As I said, IPS cells are pretty similar to embryonic stem cells. They reproduce and can turn into many different cell types. That's something you really don't want going on, one of your best defenses against tumor formation is that most of your cells don't reproduce and most can't make more than one cell type if they do. If you were to take your cells, make them IPS, and inject them into your brain, you would develop teratomas and die.
Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells are believed to be identical to natural pluripotent stem cells, such as embryonic stem cells in many respects, such as the expression of certain stem cell genes and proteins, chromatin methylation patterns, doubling time, embryoid body formation, teratoma formation, viable chimera formation, and potency and differentiability, but the full extent of their relation to natural pluripotent stem cells is still being assessed.
Unfortunately, one of the four genes used (namely, c-Myc) is oncogenic, and 20% of the chimeric mice developed cancer. In a later study, Yamanaka reported that one can create iPSCs even without c-Myc. The process takes longer and is not as efficient, but the resulting chimeras didn't develop cancer.
Bottom line is that IPS cells and this result, although promising, aren't quite ready to be used to their full potential, although it's quite promising. The previous papers had already evidence that neurons could be produced, but the electronic potential seems to be the gold standard for making sure you have functional neurons.
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert in the field so take that with a grain of salt. Although I get the sense that currently, no one knows as much as we need to know. It's a VERY young field.
Re:Ah, the era of homepages
on
Jurassic Web
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· Score: 1
With terrible blinking text and eyesore backgrounds.
It did make looking at porn much more annoying, but part of me misses the challenge.
Judging from 3 minutes with -this- game does seem premature. I think there are some things you could identify as racist within 10 seconds, like if the zombies had looked like they were in a minstrel show, but they didn't and you're right, that would have been premature. But as I recall, at the point he made his objections, that 3 minute clip was all that had been released, and wasn't he just saying "I'm a little worried about what I've seen so far"?
I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Have you been to Spain? They're as white as any other Europeans.
Again, that just makes the comparison to RE4 worthless.
Listen-I'm just trying to educate you, friend.
Fine, but in the future you might want to adopt a less abrasive tone when trying to educate people. If you insult someone, they don't give a shit what you're saying even if it is right.
Or maybe it's because "Spanish" is a designation of nationality, not race, Einstein.
I think that's a fairly trivial difference, as you can still be just as prejudiced against a "nationality" as you can a race, and race and nationality are pretty interchangeable terms in so many cases. Anyway, if you do think that is an important distinction, that would be another reason why the lack of reaction to RE4 matters little when talking about the reaction to RE5: there's no hint of racism there.
Silly insults like calling someone Einstein sarcastically because they weren't careful about race vs other types of nationality really don't help your case or credibility. I'm not for censorship and don't think this game is actually racist, but the angry gamer response I'm seeing to this matter makes me think we SHOULD censor the game, if only because my fellow gamers need to grow up.
"The imagery is not the same. It doesn't carry the same history, it doesn't carry the same weight." - So, since the zombies are black, and there's a different history, shooting a black zombie has much more weight than killing a white one. Under this standard, RE4 is full of racism if you look at Spanish history.
So because no Spanish person complained about RE4, no black person can complain about RE5? It's been grandfathered in? Who knows why Spaniards didn't complain. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that racism against Spanish people has historically been nowhere near as bad as racism against black people, so they don't feel the need to complain?
I don't think the game is racist, but the illogical responses from gamers are annoying me.
"Wow, clearly no one black worked on this game." - The only truly racist thing I found in the whole article, because it:
a. creates a stereotype ("all black people think like me, no non-black could possibly think like me") b. makes a wildly inaccurate assumption based on personal prejudice (see above) c. is wrong factually (anyone want to make a bet that no Capcom employees working on RE5 are black? Anyone?) d. is wrong morally (I hope I don't have to explain this)
It's a little absurd that you're claiming now the article is racist because of that one overstatement. It is an overstatement, but you're going overboard in your paranoia to prevent your games from being censored, don't try to throw racism back at those who try to bring it up. If people making these arguments are wrong, two wrong racism accusations don't make a right. If their concerns are valid, then let them say what they want.
And not that it matters (at all), but Capcom is a japanese company, right? They probably didn't do everything in house, the voices at least are probably not japanese people, but it's not like Japan is very diverse. The odds that a black person worked on anything besides voice acting seem pretty low to me. Again, though, that's just odds and is trivial anyway.
Of course, nobody cared that the first 4 games featured white zombies.
Is there much of a problem with white-on-white racism where you're from? Of course there weren't racial concerns from the first few.
Not that I have a problem with race in this game, I just think we gamers are being illogical with our reaction to this. N'gai and others raised valid concerns.
It really seems odd to me that any stories dealing with genetics, vaccines, or medicine in general get the "iamlegend" tag. This one for example: no viruses are being artificially made, nor is there much gene splicing going on. The equivalent would be be like someone tagging "BASH 4.0 Released" as "terminator2000" or "skynet."
Is it just me, or does this statement seriously underestimate the millions and millions of years necessary (during which the majority of the population must die from the flu the entire time) necessary for evolution to come up with an "antibody solution"?
I think they're talking about the current human body as opposed to one in millions of years. Your immune system as it is now appears unable to prevent all flu viruses, maybe that's because of -current- inherent limitations on it, which is of course of interest to you right now. I don't think anyone would dispute that given enough time and natural selection, the immune system would be able to find a way.
Using this logic we shouldn't have come up with vaccines for smallpox, polio or rabies either.
The body does come up with antibody solutions to those diseases... it just does it a little slower than you'd like after the first infection (IE the virus spreads and you get sick and die before your body identifies an antibody that works and starts pumping it out to make you immune.)
With the flu, you catch one and become immune to it, but the next year a different strain comes out and you're not immune to it. Your antibodies don't recognize the newer form and you're not immune. Fortunately that doesn't happen as often with smallpox, polio, or rabies. At least, I think it doesn't, I'd expect some variation in strains, but it seems like the antibodies you make against those viruses after being vaccinated are targeted against components that don't get changed enough to be unrecognizeable to the antibodies.
So either evolution is perfect and has already done it or it can't be done?
Keep in mind that every single vaccine out there merely uses your natural immune system. All vaccines do is present the immune system with a target, then the immune system does it's work. That's it. Vaccines absolutely rely on the immune system. So yes, if the immune system absolutely can't make you immune to every flu virus, then we can't make a vaccine that could.
A non-vaccine based approach might work, like the antiviral cocktails used to treat AIDS, but that's horribly inefficient, would require constant medication, and could end up making superflu. Really the best solutions all end with priming the immune system to do the dirty work.
I don't why we invented armour, our skin should have learned how to protect itself against sharp stabby knives by now.
Funny, but not really helpful. Your evolved defense against a knife is: avoid getting stabbed. That's far more effective than avoiding the flu. And also knives are a much newer thing that haven't caused much evolution yet, wheras viruses seem to have been around a lot longer and did shape evolution.
The human body is pretty smart, especially on a molecular level. We don't have machines yet that rival the efficiency of many enzymes found in your body. The old adage that the dumbest kidney is far smarter than the smartest doctor is really true.
Cop on every corner would change the nature of crime more likely than reduce it. We would probably have worse legal crime.
That's making some big assumptions that I don't agree with. The cop on the street corner would be to stop violent crimes, prostitution, and drug dealing. It wouldn't prevent 100% of any of that, but I'd bet that most people who commit those crimes aren't going to bribe cops to do so. Violent crime especially, gang members aren't going to pay off cops to do a driveby, and drunks on the street aren't going to tip the cop before fighting. Prostitution wouldn't be stopped, but again, I think most of the pimps and prostitutes on the street aren't running very sophisticated operations and aren't making huge sums of money to where they're going to be bribing the cops very well.
The drug dealers on the corner too are the ones who are not good at their job. Many are kids. They're not going to bribe. With a cop on the corner, the really dumb ones would be caught, but mostly this would just shift to slightly more sophisticated methods.
We would have more violence (unless those cops were unarmed, as civilised cops should be)
What? More violence? Explain please. If a cop is standing on a corner (and they're going to be armed, it's naive to think that cops could go unarmed in those parts of Chicago) you're not going to get into a drunken brawl, you're not going to get in a gang fight, you're not going to mug someone, you're not going to do a driveby. And police brutality is definitely not going to be as prevalent as non-police brutality is now.
Where this idea does actually fail is budgeting, there's no way Chicago is going to be able to hire enough cops.
"I was stunned to find the police were prepared to approve, ie not fight, our licence on condition that we installed CCTV capturing the head and shoulders of everyone coming into the pub, to be made available to them upon request."
Capturing the head (and shoulders?) of everyone who walked into the bar is fairly specific. Of course, you could interpret that as "The cameras must behead (and beshoulder?) everyone who walks into the bar" but I think that would be bad for buisness as well...
You could still get away with using an extremely low resolution or out of focus camera that would show heads (and shoulders) but not anything identifyable. Of course they'd remedy that quickly.
I read this when it went up on The Register, 5 days ago. Can people please check the timestamp before submitting/approving stories? The normal 2 or 3 days old news is just about passable, but 5 days is getting silly.
I'm psychic, your post is about 6 days old to me, you hypocrite.
I was under the impression that Jones Day is a law firm. Lawyers generally don't strive on the reputation of being likable.
Indeed, if I ever want to stop a website from linking to anything of mine (and I don't know why I ever would), I may call jonesday. Apparently they know how to do it. I might also key their cars on my way into and out of their offices, but I might have done that anyway just because they were lawyers.
A lot of admins, especially after the alert went out over the NANOG list
This is very off topic... but that's the first time I ever heard of "North American Network Operators Group." It's strange that apparently by coincidence that the acronym is the same as the name of one of the four transcription factors that causes de-differentiation in IPS cells. The wiki page says the transcription factor gets its name from some scottish legend.
A cop on every corner? Yeah, because cops are reliable witnesses who never lie or 'accidentally' not notice a little crime going on.
Cops are sometimes corrupt and can be bribed, but are you honestly suggesting that a cop on every corner would not reduce crime at all? Absurd. People getting in fights, vandalising, and probably most drug dealers wouldn't pay off the cops to do that.
Note that I am in no way saying that we should put a cop or camera on every street corner, just pointing out that "cops aren't 100% saints" doesn't mean that they are 100% ineffective.
Slashdot Mirror
Did anyone read the article or even summary?
I don't think I understand the question.
The zealots, as you call them, have just as much right as anyone to voice an opinion, and the average man on the street has the same right to believe it.
I've met the "average man on the street." I'm opposed to him voicing his opinions as well, some of the things he says are terrifying. ;-P
As long as you get banned from Xbox live for identifying yourself as straight too, I don't see a problem with this...
Fortunately I, as a non-sexual, can still identify myself as such just fine.
Sorry for the flame, But wow, it turns out you don't need to run the pissing matches with the pro life activists to get things done.
The base knowledge for making the IPS cells, like which genes were necessary, came from... embryonic stem cell research. Had we not done that research, we never would have made IPS cells.
This isn't "adult stem cells" technically, adult stem cells more specifically refer to natural cells in the body that are generally thought to make fewer types of cells than embryonic stem cells. These are specifically IPS cells, adult cells (as I understand it they don't seem to need to be adult STEM cells) that have been converted to a more primitive state.
The terminology is still being hammered out, but as of right now I don't think it's correct to call these adult stem cells, they're more similar to embryonic stem cells, and embryonic stem cell research lead to the discovery/invention of IPS cells.
More importantly, they do in fact very much carry the risk of tumors. One of the four genes typically used to create IPS cells is c-myc, which is a tumor-causing gene. That's a concern, although it seems you can get IPS without it.
No matter how you get them, it seems that IPS cells will in fact produce tumors if you don't instruct every last one of them to differentiate. As I said, IPS cells are pretty similar to embryonic stem cells. They reproduce and can turn into many different cell types. That's something you really don't want going on, one of your best defenses against tumor formation is that most of your cells don't reproduce and most can't make more than one cell type if they do. If you were to take your cells, make them IPS, and inject them into your brain, you would develop teratomas and die.
From the wiki page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_pluripotent_stem_cell
Bottom line is that IPS cells and this result, although promising, aren't quite ready to be used to their full potential, although it's quite promising. The previous papers had already evidence that neurons could be produced, but the electronic potential seems to be the gold standard for making sure you have functional neurons.
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert in the field so take that with a grain of salt. Although I get the sense that currently, no one knows as much as we need to know. It's a VERY young field.
With terrible blinking text and eyesore backgrounds.
It did make looking at porn much more annoying, but part of me misses the challenge.
Judging from 3 minutes with -this- game does seem premature. I think there are some things you could identify as racist within 10 seconds, like if the zombies had looked like they were in a minstrel show, but they didn't and you're right, that would have been premature. But as I recall, at the point he made his objections, that 3 minute clip was all that had been released, and wasn't he just saying "I'm a little worried about what I've seen so far"?
I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Have you been to Spain? They're as white as any other Europeans.
Again, that just makes the comparison to RE4 worthless.
Listen-I'm just trying to educate you, friend.
Fine, but in the future you might want to adopt a less abrasive tone when trying to educate people. If you insult someone, they don't give a shit what you're saying even if it is right.
Or maybe it's because "Spanish" is a designation of nationality, not race, Einstein.
I think that's a fairly trivial difference, as you can still be just as prejudiced against a "nationality" as you can a race, and race and nationality are pretty interchangeable terms in so many cases. Anyway, if you do think that is an important distinction, that would be another reason why the lack of reaction to RE4 matters little when talking about the reaction to RE5: there's no hint of racism there.
Silly insults like calling someone Einstein sarcastically because they weren't careful about race vs other types of nationality really don't help your case or credibility. I'm not for censorship and don't think this game is actually racist, but the angry gamer response I'm seeing to this matter makes me think we SHOULD censor the game, if only because my fellow gamers need to grow up.
"The imagery is not the same. It doesn't carry the same history, it doesn't carry the same weight." - So, since the zombies are black, and there's a different history, shooting a black zombie has much more weight than killing a white one. Under this standard, RE4 is full of racism if you look at Spanish history.
So because no Spanish person complained about RE4, no black person can complain about RE5? It's been grandfathered in? Who knows why Spaniards didn't complain. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that racism against Spanish people has historically been nowhere near as bad as racism against black people, so they don't feel the need to complain?
I don't think the game is racist, but the illogical responses from gamers are annoying me.
"Wow, clearly no one black worked on this game." - The only truly racist thing I found in the whole article, because it:
a. creates a stereotype ("all black people think like me, no non-black could possibly think like me")
b. makes a wildly inaccurate assumption based on personal prejudice (see above)
c. is wrong factually (anyone want to make a bet that no Capcom employees working on RE5 are black? Anyone?)
d. is wrong morally (I hope I don't have to explain this)
It's a little absurd that you're claiming now the article is racist because of that one overstatement. It is an overstatement, but you're going overboard in your paranoia to prevent your games from being censored, don't try to throw racism back at those who try to bring it up. If people making these arguments are wrong, two wrong racism accusations don't make a right. If their concerns are valid, then let them say what they want.
And not that it matters (at all), but Capcom is a japanese company, right? They probably didn't do everything in house, the voices at least are probably not japanese people, but it's not like Japan is very diverse. The odds that a black person worked on anything besides voice acting seem pretty low to me. Again, though, that's just odds and is trivial anyway.
Of course, nobody cared that the first 4 games featured white zombies.
Is there much of a problem with white-on-white racism where you're from? Of course there weren't racial concerns from the first few.
Not that I have a problem with race in this game, I just think we gamers are being illogical with our reaction to this. N'gai and others raised valid concerns.
It really seems odd to me that any stories dealing with genetics, vaccines, or medicine in general get the "iamlegend" tag. This one for example: no viruses are being artificially made, nor is there much gene splicing going on. The equivalent would be be like someone tagging "BASH 4.0 Released" as "terminator2000" or "skynet."
Is it just me, or does this statement seriously underestimate the millions and millions of years necessary (during which the majority of the population must die from the flu the entire time) necessary for evolution to come up with an "antibody solution"?
I think they're talking about the current human body as opposed to one in millions of years. Your immune system as it is now appears unable to prevent all flu viruses, maybe that's because of -current- inherent limitations on it, which is of course of interest to you right now. I don't think anyone would dispute that given enough time and natural selection, the immune system would be able to find a way.
Using this logic we shouldn't have come up with vaccines for smallpox, polio or rabies either.
The body does come up with antibody solutions to those diseases... it just does it a little slower than you'd like after the first infection (IE the virus spreads and you get sick and die before your body identifies an antibody that works and starts pumping it out to make you immune.)
With the flu, you catch one and become immune to it, but the next year a different strain comes out and you're not immune to it. Your antibodies don't recognize the newer form and you're not immune. Fortunately that doesn't happen as often with smallpox, polio, or rabies. At least, I think it doesn't, I'd expect some variation in strains, but it seems like the antibodies you make against those viruses after being vaccinated are targeted against components that don't get changed enough to be unrecognizeable to the antibodies.
Sure, books divided by movies do not equal real life, but I am legend was a book AND a movie.
Book + movie = totally real.
So either evolution is perfect and has already done it or it can't be done?
Keep in mind that every single vaccine out there merely uses your natural immune system. All vaccines do is present the immune system with a target, then the immune system does it's work. That's it. Vaccines absolutely rely on the immune system. So yes, if the immune system absolutely can't make you immune to every flu virus, then we can't make a vaccine that could.
A non-vaccine based approach might work, like the antiviral cocktails used to treat AIDS, but that's horribly inefficient, would require constant medication, and could end up making superflu. Really the best solutions all end with priming the immune system to do the dirty work.
Playing gods again, are we?
We kind of have been ever since we mastered fire. Humans have never gone with the natural flow. Where have you been for the last million years?
Have you seen a movie called "Terminator?" Better stop using your computer.
I don't why we invented armour, our skin should have learned how to protect itself against sharp stabby knives by now.
Funny, but not really helpful. Your evolved defense against a knife is: avoid getting stabbed. That's far more effective than avoiding the flu. And also knives are a much newer thing that haven't caused much evolution yet, wheras viruses seem to have been around a lot longer and did shape evolution.
The human body is pretty smart, especially on a molecular level. We don't have machines yet that rival the efficiency of many enzymes found in your body. The old adage that the dumbest kidney is far smarter than the smartest doctor is really true.
Cop on every corner would change the nature of crime more likely than reduce it. We would probably have worse legal crime.
That's making some big assumptions that I don't agree with. The cop on the street corner would be to stop violent crimes, prostitution, and drug dealing. It wouldn't prevent 100% of any of that, but I'd bet that most people who commit those crimes aren't going to bribe cops to do so. Violent crime especially, gang members aren't going to pay off cops to do a driveby, and drunks on the street aren't going to tip the cop before fighting. Prostitution wouldn't be stopped, but again, I think most of the pimps and prostitutes on the street aren't running very sophisticated operations and aren't making huge sums of money to where they're going to be bribing the cops very well.
The drug dealers on the corner too are the ones who are not good at their job. Many are kids. They're not going to bribe. With a cop on the corner, the really dumb ones would be caught, but mostly this would just shift to slightly more sophisticated methods.
We would have more violence (unless those cops were unarmed, as civilised cops should be)
What? More violence? Explain please. If a cop is standing on a corner (and they're going to be armed, it's naive to think that cops could go unarmed in those parts of Chicago) you're not going to get into a drunken brawl, you're not going to get in a gang fight, you're not going to mug someone, you're not going to do a driveby. And police brutality is definitely not going to be as prevalent as non-police brutality is now.
Where this idea does actually fail is budgeting, there's no way Chicago is going to be able to hire enough cops.
FTA
"I was stunned to find the police were prepared to approve, ie not fight, our licence on condition that we installed CCTV capturing the head and shoulders of everyone coming into the pub, to be made available to them upon request."
Capturing the head (and shoulders?) of everyone who walked into the bar is fairly specific. Of course, you could interpret that as "The cameras must behead (and beshoulder?) everyone who walks into the bar" but I think that would be bad for buisness as well...
You could still get away with using an extremely low resolution or out of focus camera that would show heads (and shoulders) but not anything identifyable. Of course they'd remedy that quickly.
I read this when it went up on The Register, 5 days ago. Can people please check the timestamp before submitting/approving stories? The normal 2 or 3 days old news is just about passable, but 5 days is getting silly.
I'm psychic, your post is about 6 days old to me, you hypocrite.
I was under the impression that Jones Day is a law firm. Lawyers generally don't strive on the reputation of being likable.
Indeed, if I ever want to stop a website from linking to anything of mine (and I don't know why I ever would), I may call jonesday. Apparently they know how to do it. I might also key their cars on my way into and out of their offices, but I might have done that anyway just because they were lawyers.
A lot of admins, especially after the alert went out over the NANOG list
This is very off topic... but that's the first time I ever heard of "North American Network Operators Group." It's strange that apparently by coincidence that the acronym is the same as the name of one of the four transcription factors that causes de-differentiation in IPS cells. The wiki page says the transcription factor gets its name from some scottish legend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanog
Like I said, off topic but I thought it was interesting...
I wasted my time.
A cop on every corner? Yeah, because cops are reliable witnesses who never lie or 'accidentally' not notice a little crime going on.
Cops are sometimes corrupt and can be bribed, but are you honestly suggesting that a cop on every corner would not reduce crime at all? Absurd. People getting in fights, vandalising, and probably most drug dealers wouldn't pay off the cops to do that.
Note that I am in no way saying that we should put a cop or camera on every street corner, just pointing out that "cops aren't 100% saints" doesn't mean that they are 100% ineffective.