Since your only objection to this invasive information gathering seems to be about how the DNA will be used to deny you health care, I'd like to point out that there's a very simple way to address your major concern: universal healthcare.
Simple in principle but not simple to implement short of a magic political wand. And a much more simple way would just be not to do it. Like as in, don't keep DNA samples of people who have been arrested, get a damn warrant. Lastly, don't assume that I bothered to list everything that makes it a bad idea.
Not all government action is the same. Some government actions set reasonable standards for the common good. Others erode our rights. If you're unable to distinguish between the two, don't vote.
Seems like it's not just twitter. Facebook seems to be worse, despite being out for years. It still takes up half the ram on my ipad no matter what I do short of removing it. On my android, it somehow eats a third of my battery.
I know, and I did mention that. Economics currently prohibit it, but this will not remain the case for long. In fact, I'd be surprised if in the next ten years, it were not cheaper to do a full genome sequencing rather than the current techniques.
Not that law enforcement needs cost savings as a reason to intrude more into your privacy. They'll do it before it gets cheaper to do full sequencing, and point to this case as cover, even though as you pointed out the two are completely different.
Unless something's changed in the past year, forensics does not retain medically-sensitive genetic information.
Given the rapidly decreasing costs of sequencing, we shouldn't expect this to be true for very long. At some point, I'm guessing it will be cheaper to just get full genomic sequences. Full sequencing would also probably hold up in court better, for very stupid reasons.
Defense attorneys: "Is it true that you DIDN'T do the full sequencing, only small SINGLE nucleotide polymorphisms, AN OBSOLETE TECHNIQUE! Isn't it true that DNA fingerprinting has a higher false positive rate than a full sequence would!?!"
Forensic tech: "Well yes, but we're talking one in a billion to one in a trillion, I don't-"
Defense attorney: "OBSOLETE AND LESS CERTAIN! Members of the court, CLEARLY we can't accept the DNA evidence! They don't have my client's full sequence! No genome, my client GOES HOME!"
Jurors: "Oooohhh!"
If not that, I'm sure biotech companies will be interested in getting law enforcement to sign more lucrative contracts doing full sequencing rather than just SNPs. And this ruling will stand despite those changes.
To expand on that, your mug shot and finger prints can't really be used to deny you medical coverage, increase your insurance premiums, or give much insight into your medical history. Your DNA obviously can. With the cost of sequencing going down, it won't be much longer before law enforcement agencies start sequencing your genome rather than just doing the DNA profiling they do now (which wouldn't be able to, say, predict if you were going to develop Huntington's disease or were prone to cancer, while full sequencing will.)
This means that law enforcement agencies will quickly be shielded from liability for accidentally leaking your DNA sequences to health insurance agencies and subsequently causing you to lose a LOT of money. So not only will you not get restitution, this is a huge liability for you if you get arrested.
When complaints about this arise, you'll be informed that you shouldn't have been arrested, it's really your fault, law enforcement is just trying to stop rapists and murderers.
From my understanding, everything in Japan came to a stop by the end of WW2. The military industry was obviously huge at the time, and was immediately demolished. The cities were in ruins. The government was flipping inside out. Seems like the whaling would have stopped because all the men and boats were being used to fight the war, not because Japan had decided it didn't like whale meat.
And a lot of the games these days depend on being popular with a lot of people. What's the point of playing a massive multiplayer game with 3 people.
I don't know about "a lot." Most games don't seem to be MMO. The highest rated games of this generation seem to be predominantly single player mode. None of the top 100 games for the 360 on metacritic are primarily multiplayer. Left 4 dead (and its sequel) may be the closest thing to it. I'll grant you that a lot of the shooters, most people playing it seem to be playing multiplayer most of the time, but the single player games will still work.
What are you talking about? They only have the one current model of iphone! Compare that to a billion androids!
Sorry, couldn't resist. Yeah, I agree. I'd like to know who decided that red delicious, the worst apples, were the only type of red apples one could sell in stores. Honeycrisp and jazz were mind blowing when I first encountered them, to the point where I was angry I hadn't had them before five years ago. Corn is one thing, you don't eat it raw, and most of the time you're not eating it without a lot of processing. I can understand why there's little demand for variety in corn. But apples? I don't understand.
I'd venture a guess that given the atmosphere, temperatures, and composition of Mars, liquid water flowing is the most logical culprit. Not cold enough for liquid nitrogen or helium, not enough mercury to cause it. Maybe ammonia is unlikely for some reason? And if it were beer, fine wine, whiskey, or gasoline, we'd already be halfway to Mars by now.
Japan's reaction is ridiculous, and blatant protectionism. A tiny amount of GMO contamination in 2 billion bushels isn't a crisis.
A measured reaction along the lines of "Dear US government: please make changes to the regulation of your farm industry and monsanto," will at best make some people laugh. Maybe they could ask that the US change it's foreign policy towards Israel and eliminate carbon emissions while they're at it.
I'd guess that it would take about a minute for them to cease hostilities and ally to write a secret worldwide treaty overriding local food controls when it comes to GMOs, then start pushing it. Except that they undoubtedly began years ago.
You're only hearing the most shrill and dumbest concerns. GMOs are as healthy as natural food, yes, that appears to be the case. It's the economics that worry me. A lot of us who are opposed to monsanto find the legal bullshit to be annoying, but the real apocalypse nightmare is the monoculture.
Due to economics, and monsanto's efforts, everyone switches to one strain of a food staple, the cheapest one obviously. GMO is clearly cheaper and has a huge competitive edge over natural. If we don't regulate it, whatever strain of corn is the most robust and cheapest, only insane farmers would plant anything but that one. Everyone switches to that best strain of corn, otherwise they wouldn't be competitive and would lose the farm, to be replaced by someone who DOES use that corn. We've already switched to most of our diet coming from corn, again due to economics and business and government 69ing each other. Corn is basically all we eat, and it could be all the exact same strain of corn. It works out for everyone until a bug arises that really loves that strain of corn. Suddenly, nearly all of our food is under attack. The cost of burning all the fields out there and replacing it with a new crop would be ruinous to the economy, and depending on how fast such a problem advances, may not be sufficient to avoid food riots.
Monsanto has no financial incentive to diversify, farmers have no financial incentive to diversify, we're the ones who need to tell them to diversify, but we don't, therefore government has no incentive to make them diversify. No one is thinking long-term.
Really makes me hate the idiots whining about frankenfoods: it takes all the attention away from the important issues and focuses it on paranoia. "Mad scientists are trying to give you cancer through your veggies!" is a lot more sexy than ecology mixed with economics.
Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Those in favor of gun control side can't even use multiple national tragedy as an excuse to take away rights from American citizens. Think about how astonishing that is for a moment. This is the country wiling to throw out almost every part of the constitution with just a mention of "think of the children," but children are ACTUALLY dying, and they've got nothing.
You're worried this is an insidious plan on the part of gun control proponents? They aren't that smart.
(Full disclosure: I'd fall closer to the "pro-gun-control" side of things.)
I've also heard suggestions that a larger ball should be used, that baseball is too pitcher-centric, and that slowing down the pitches would encourage more interesting aspects of the game. Seems like reducing the importance of the pitcher would also reduce the incentive to have pitchers cheat.
I don't claim to know anything about baseball, so that could be an idiotic idea. If it is... well I'm still an idiot, but that suggestion isn't a reflection of that fact.
My wife would probably argue I have a ridiculous fixation with tinkering with my phone. Usually I end up temporarily breaking it due to flashing the latest version of cyanogenmod.
Many people have hobbies, be they sports, software, computers, or other electronics. Our hobbies just tend to be a little rarer than sports fans.
I think this argument works better for patents on drugs, software, and data more than it does for the research papers. If I develop a great new cancer drug using a grant paid for by taxpayers, it's all fine and good if I publish the research paper on how I found it in an open access journal. But if I then turn around and patent it (or rather, my host research institution patents it) and licenses it to some big pharmecutical who gets the exclusive rights to it and sells it back to the taxpayers at a steep profit margin, well, who the fuck cares if you can access the technical details.
Open access to research is great, and I applaud California, but it seems like a small detail compared to a much larger intellectual property issue. IP from publicly funded grants should not be exclusively given, sold, or licensed unless the taxpayer directly benefits. Not sure how that would work though.
because Big Pharma isn't going to design any permanent solution, or at least, will not be marketing any permanent solution at first, for we all know that the money is made through the sales of medications and prescriptions, not in curing any diseases.
Fortunately, Big Pharma has never been essential to making cures to diseases. Government grants to basic biology is the driving force there.
Also, this is remarkably cynical about technology which hasn't even been invented yet. The outcomes of technology are nearly impossible to predict even if you put more thought into it than "pharmecutical companies are greedy."
Boring? Extremists aren't usually "boring." Annoying, dangerous, holier-than-thou, scary, offensive, disgusting, disturbing, sometimes. Talking to someone who is deeply opposed to biological research, even the biological research that I do, is likely to be less boring than someone who has strong opinions about Kim Kardashian in the latest Tyler Perry movie, but no opinion on genetic modification.
That said, I doubt such a relationship would last long, but "boring" probably wouldn't describe it.
Slashdot Mirror
Laws against homicide? I'd feel like I was cherry-picking the most ridiculous example, except you made quite the blanket statement there.
You're correct, though I think you're mixing up cause and effect.
Since your only objection to this invasive information gathering seems to be about how the DNA will be used to deny you health care, I'd like to point out that there's a very simple way to address your major concern: universal healthcare.
Simple in principle but not simple to implement short of a magic political wand. And a much more simple way would just be not to do it. Like as in, don't keep DNA samples of people who have been arrested, get a damn warrant. Lastly, don't assume that I bothered to list everything that makes it a bad idea.
Not all government action is the same. Some government actions set reasonable standards for the common good. Others erode our rights. If you're unable to distinguish between the two, don't vote.
Seems like it's not just twitter. Facebook seems to be worse, despite being out for years. It still takes up half the ram on my ipad no matter what I do short of removing it. On my android, it somehow eats a third of my battery.
I know, and I did mention that. Economics currently prohibit it, but this will not remain the case for long. In fact, I'd be surprised if in the next ten years, it were not cheaper to do a full genome sequencing rather than the current techniques.
Not that law enforcement needs cost savings as a reason to intrude more into your privacy. They'll do it before it gets cheaper to do full sequencing, and point to this case as cover, even though as you pointed out the two are completely different.
Unless something's changed in the past year, forensics does not retain medically-sensitive genetic information.
Given the rapidly decreasing costs of sequencing, we shouldn't expect this to be true for very long. At some point, I'm guessing it will be cheaper to just get full genomic sequences. Full sequencing would also probably hold up in court better, for very stupid reasons.
Defense attorneys: "Is it true that you DIDN'T do the full sequencing, only small SINGLE nucleotide polymorphisms, AN OBSOLETE TECHNIQUE! Isn't it true that DNA fingerprinting has a higher false positive rate than a full sequence would!?!"
Forensic tech: "Well yes, but we're talking one in a billion to one in a trillion, I don't-"
Defense attorney: "OBSOLETE AND LESS CERTAIN! Members of the court, CLEARLY we can't accept the DNA evidence! They don't have my client's full sequence! No genome, my client GOES HOME!"
Jurors: "Oooohhh!"
If not that, I'm sure biotech companies will be interested in getting law enforcement to sign more lucrative contracts doing full sequencing rather than just SNPs. And this ruling will stand despite those changes.
To expand on that, your mug shot and finger prints can't really be used to deny you medical coverage, increase your insurance premiums, or give much insight into your medical history. Your DNA obviously can. With the cost of sequencing going down, it won't be much longer before law enforcement agencies start sequencing your genome rather than just doing the DNA profiling they do now (which wouldn't be able to, say, predict if you were going to develop Huntington's disease or were prone to cancer, while full sequencing will.)
This means that law enforcement agencies will quickly be shielded from liability for accidentally leaking your DNA sequences to health insurance agencies and subsequently causing you to lose a LOT of money. So not only will you not get restitution, this is a huge liability for you if you get arrested.
When complaints about this arise, you'll be informed that you shouldn't have been arrested, it's really your fault, law enforcement is just trying to stop rapists and murderers.
From my understanding, everything in Japan came to a stop by the end of WW2. The military industry was obviously huge at the time, and was immediately demolished. The cities were in ruins. The government was flipping inside out. Seems like the whaling would have stopped because all the men and boats were being used to fight the war, not because Japan had decided it didn't like whale meat.
This will automatically be a steaming pile of shit.
Only if your criteria for "steaming pile of shit" boils down to "isn't written by the original author." Which seems like a stupid criteria.
the gameplay was horrible, the field of play was idiotic, and it lacked any immersion into the movie storyline. It sucked.
Compared to the other Atari games? Custer's Revenge was worse, aside from issues with projection. Hit detection seemed pretty wonky with the arrows.
Plus the game was nothing aside from dodging arrows and raping a woman tied to a cactus. ET had very little rape in it.
And a lot of the games these days depend on being popular with a lot of people. What's the point of playing a massive multiplayer game with 3 people.
I don't know about "a lot." Most games don't seem to be MMO. The highest rated games of this generation seem to be predominantly single player mode. None of the top 100 games for the 360 on metacritic are primarily multiplayer. Left 4 dead (and its sequel) may be the closest thing to it. I'll grant you that a lot of the shooters, most people playing it seem to be playing multiplayer most of the time, but the single player games will still work.
What are you talking about? They only have the one current model of iphone! Compare that to a billion androids!
Sorry, couldn't resist. Yeah, I agree. I'd like to know who decided that red delicious, the worst apples, were the only type of red apples one could sell in stores. Honeycrisp and jazz were mind blowing when I first encountered them, to the point where I was angry I hadn't had them before five years ago. Corn is one thing, you don't eat it raw, and most of the time you're not eating it without a lot of processing. I can understand why there's little demand for variety in corn. But apples? I don't understand.
I'd venture a guess that given the atmosphere, temperatures, and composition of Mars, liquid water flowing is the most logical culprit. Not cold enough for liquid nitrogen or helium, not enough mercury to cause it. Maybe ammonia is unlikely for some reason? And if it were beer, fine wine, whiskey, or gasoline, we'd already be halfway to Mars by now.
Japan's reaction is ridiculous, and blatant protectionism. A tiny amount of GMO contamination in 2 billion bushels isn't a crisis.
A measured reaction along the lines of "Dear US government: please make changes to the regulation of your farm industry and monsanto," will at best make some people laugh. Maybe they could ask that the US change it's foreign policy towards Israel and eliminate carbon emissions while they're at it.
I'd guess that it would take about a minute for them to cease hostilities and ally to write a secret worldwide treaty overriding local food controls when it comes to GMOs, then start pushing it. Except that they undoubtedly began years ago.
You're only hearing the most shrill and dumbest concerns. GMOs are as healthy as natural food, yes, that appears to be the case. It's the economics that worry me. A lot of us who are opposed to monsanto find the legal bullshit to be annoying, but the real apocalypse nightmare is the monoculture.
Due to economics, and monsanto's efforts, everyone switches to one strain of a food staple, the cheapest one obviously. GMO is clearly cheaper and has a huge competitive edge over natural. If we don't regulate it, whatever strain of corn is the most robust and cheapest, only insane farmers would plant anything but that one. Everyone switches to that best strain of corn, otherwise they wouldn't be competitive and would lose the farm, to be replaced by someone who DOES use that corn. We've already switched to most of our diet coming from corn, again due to economics and business and government 69ing each other. Corn is basically all we eat, and it could be all the exact same strain of corn. It works out for everyone until a bug arises that really loves that strain of corn. Suddenly, nearly all of our food is under attack. The cost of burning all the fields out there and replacing it with a new crop would be ruinous to the economy, and depending on how fast such a problem advances, may not be sufficient to avoid food riots.
Monsanto has no financial incentive to diversify, farmers have no financial incentive to diversify, we're the ones who need to tell them to diversify, but we don't, therefore government has no incentive to make them diversify. No one is thinking long-term.
It's not unprecedented that we allow a monoculture to get established and have it bite us in the ass either. GMO isn't required for such a scenario to take place, but it does help it since we've allowed monsanto to basically have a monopoly on GMO, and because GMO has such a competitive edge over natural.
Really makes me hate the idiots whining about frankenfoods: it takes all the attention away from the important issues and focuses it on paranoia. "Mad scientists are trying to give you cancer through your veggies!" is a lot more sexy than ecology mixed with economics.
Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Those in favor of gun control side can't even use multiple national tragedy as an excuse to take away rights from American citizens. Think about how astonishing that is for a moment. This is the country wiling to throw out almost every part of the constitution with just a mention of "think of the children," but children are ACTUALLY dying, and they've got nothing.
You're worried this is an insidious plan on the part of gun control proponents? They aren't that smart.
(Full disclosure: I'd fall closer to the "pro-gun-control" side of things.)
I've also heard suggestions that a larger ball should be used, that baseball is too pitcher-centric, and that slowing down the pitches would encourage more interesting aspects of the game. Seems like reducing the importance of the pitcher would also reduce the incentive to have pitchers cheat.
I don't claim to know anything about baseball, so that could be an idiotic idea. If it is... well I'm still an idiot, but that suggestion isn't a reflection of that fact.
My wife would probably argue I have a ridiculous fixation with tinkering with my phone. Usually I end up temporarily breaking it due to flashing the latest version of cyanogenmod.
Many people have hobbies, be they sports, software, computers, or other electronics. Our hobbies just tend to be a little rarer than sports fans.
I think this argument works better for patents on drugs, software, and data more than it does for the research papers. If I develop a great new cancer drug using a grant paid for by taxpayers, it's all fine and good if I publish the research paper on how I found it in an open access journal. But if I then turn around and patent it (or rather, my host research institution patents it) and licenses it to some big pharmecutical who gets the exclusive rights to it and sells it back to the taxpayers at a steep profit margin, well, who the fuck cares if you can access the technical details.
Open access to research is great, and I applaud California, but it seems like a small detail compared to a much larger intellectual property issue. IP from publicly funded grants should not be exclusively given, sold, or licensed unless the taxpayer directly benefits. Not sure how that would work though.
because Big Pharma isn't going to design any permanent solution, or at least, will not be marketing any permanent solution at first, for we all know that the money is made through the sales of medications and prescriptions, not in curing any diseases.
Fortunately, Big Pharma has never been essential to making cures to diseases. Government grants to basic biology is the driving force there.
Also, this is remarkably cynical about technology which hasn't even been invented yet. The outcomes of technology are nearly impossible to predict even if you put more thought into it than "pharmecutical companies are greedy."
Boring? Extremists aren't usually "boring." Annoying, dangerous, holier-than-thou, scary, offensive, disgusting, disturbing, sometimes. Talking to someone who is deeply opposed to biological research, even the biological research that I do, is likely to be less boring than someone who has strong opinions about Kim Kardashian in the latest Tyler Perry movie, but no opinion on genetic modification.
That said, I doubt such a relationship would last long, but "boring" probably wouldn't describe it.
From what I'm reading, if the judge doesn't believe him, he'd just find him in contempt of court and detain him until he remembers.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/02/what_happens_wh.html
No, we did not.