Guy comes into an ER unconscious. Has a high fever, complained of general aches and pains beforehand. No idea what's going on. I'm sure there's an SOP doctors follow to determine what could be wrong with the guy, I'm not a doctor so I don't know what that is, but I'd wager that whatever it is, this could be really useful for that.
You take a blood sample, you feed it through this machine or something like it. You would be able to identify some problems that may arise from his genome. You could identify if he had any virus or bacteria circulating in his blood and what it was. Maybe you could even do some reverse transcription and sequence that to determine what genes if any were above or below normal. Maybe you find that he has 10,000x the normal amount of a gene that's upregulated during liver stress. Minutes obviously matter in such a situation.
Maybe a bit more realistic in the near future, you have a brain tumor, surgeons open you up, remove the tumor and feed part of it into this machine, and while your head is still open, determine from the genome that it's unlikely to have spread, so they spare you a little more gray matter than they would have otherwise, and likely won't have to drill into your skull a second time.
It always annoys me how here, on slashdot, for nerds, we love technology and advances EXCEPT WHEN IT COMES TO BIOLOGY. Then it's nothing but "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" or GATTACA, or I am legend or zombies.
Yes, technology has downsides and dangers. All technology does. Always. Yes, you need to be aware of it. No, it is not going to cause a dystopian future or apocalypse just because that was the premise of a movie. A lot of other things would have to fail for us to reach gattaca. For example, we'd have to be dumb enough to allow discrimination based on genetics, and we'd have to for some reason decide that nature was all that matters when it comes to nature vs nurture. But given the patriot act and other current events, I'd say we can create a dystopian future for ourselves even if we stopped all scientific progress.
Instantaneous sequencing would be extremely useful in medicine. There's no way to quantify it, but I'm going to say this technology is approximately a billion times more likely to save your life than it is to cause you to be a discriminated underclass of people who are outcasts due to genetics. Anyway its a billion times a billion times more likely this will amount to nothing more than marketing hype. I'm still waiting on this to show up in my lab.
But bigger point: either don't fear biotech advances, or at least be equal: every article about faster or better computer components, how about we fret about the Matrix or Skynet or a million other scifi dystopian works of fiction that involve computers rather than biotech.
Back in the 50's and 60's it was much easier for a kid to pop the hood and learn to tear down and rebuild an engine. Now it requires specialized tools. You don't see as many self taught gearheads.
I'd argue that's largely because all the kids who love to take things apart and put them back together, the tinkerers, we all taught ourselves computers instead of cars. I think it would have happened independent of cars getting more complex: there's so much more you can do with a computer than a car, especially when you factor in budgets.
Context is important. The context here is that he had, in the same speech, called Obama a "fake" president, said Eric Holder was "rabidly un-american," and that Hillary Clinton was actively trying to abolish the second amendment along with the UN.
Whether you think those things are true is beside the point: he was pretty clearly suggesting that we were bordering on tyranny and people should be prepared to fight back, potentially against the current government, with weapons. You can't honestly tell me he meant "train people to use weapons so they can fight tyranny in foreign countries." He meant the US.
It really is amazing how long that train wreck has been going on without anyone driving the engine realizing they are in fact wrecking. With most of the passengers telling them they're wrecking. And people standing by the side of the track. And the guys shoveling coal into the... uh... fireplace? Trains have conductors, right? I guess the conductor would be Balmer. Or the engineer, which I think are on the train itself for some reason.
I... I don't really know how trains work, but I'm refusing to admit I've made a mistake with this metaphor. Which I feel is probably a better metaphor for the MS situation.
You assume janeuner was talking "too little too late" and referring to the market as a whole, rather than janeuner talking about janeuner's nook. This is odd to me. Granted, not as strange as how everyone here assumes that everyone is a lawyer talking in legal terms, but still.
New slashdot rule: if in doubt, assume someone is expressing an unprofessional opinion, is referring to him or herself, is making a normative statement rather than a factual statement, and/or is drunk.
When you say "ultraliberal" you're thinking of very specific, small places within California. Like Berkley, Hollywood, and San Francisco. And even then, you're only thinking of the most outspoken residents. The OC is very conservative by national standards. The state legislature has plenty of conservatives in it, some of whom subscribe to the "starve the beast" theory, whereby you solve the budgetary problems by refusing to raise taxes without actually cutting spending.
(Also, side note, some residents of the OC evidently hate it when you call it the OC, so call the OC "the OC" whenever you get the chance.)
Anything less than equal treatment is discrimination.
If you think that's bad, not only do I get less maternity leave than a woman would, but the men's room DOESN'T HAVE TAMPONS IN IT!!!
[/s] Lets not make overly broad declarations. It's only discrimination if the situations aren't actually equal. Which it isn't. Physically if nothing else. I went back to work a few hours two days after my kid was born (voulontarily, to keep things going in lab), my wife at that point still couldn't really walk. Postpartum depression also is a thing women have to deal with, while we don't.
I'd like to hear the reason for the discrepancy before I condemn it as sex discrimination. I know some of you are really anxious to find something about the rare female CEO in a tech company to cry foul about, but this is not necessarily discrimination.
The number of websites with ten or more scripts running seems to be increasing, and they seem to be increasing the number of scripts required to run as well. And then there's the helpful automatic redirecting AFTER the content of the page has loaded, taking you to a webpage saying "You need to turn off noscript to view this page properly!"
Has anyone seen any pages that do this with ghostery or REQUIRE facebook or google scripts to run in order to load?
You forgot the worst part of zero tolerance: that the lesson schools are teaching to kids is that heavy-handed, inflexible rules and imposing authority is normal. The next generation isn't going to overturn the patriot act or roll back arbitrary and secret no fly lists, or demand that the government abide by the constitution because they will be used to having absolutely no rights, save what the authority lets them have.
I don't know if it will actually turn out that way, I had it drilled into me up through high school that marijuana was basically heroin, that condoms didn't work, that premarital sex would destroy my life, that God hates both of those things and that homosexuality is evil. Granted, I hate being high, was unsuccessful in most attempts to get laid, and am not gay, but none of that was due to what they told me in classes. Moreover I'm agnostic now. So hopefully zero tolerance will have an opposite effect and get kids to realize from an early age that they MUST fight for their rights. Still, I'd rather us not run that experiment. If when I'm an old man, I have to submit to a prostate check every time I get on a hoverbus because these youngsters were trained with zero tolerance not to question authority, I'm gonna be pissed.
I'm guessing facebook, in contrast, would intentionally and quickly break anything that doesn't use it's messaging system to force you to use it since you would see less ads from it then. And that's one of the main things I would want from such a program: not having to use facebook's shitty app and see shitty ads.
Nobody wants to read insightful, factual stories about actual things,
No, it's like pop music. The demographic that is most profitable is idiots, therefore most of the industry is geared to compete for that idiot demographic. With music, most of the people buying has been tweens and teenagers who have nothing better to do with their time and listen to whatever shit their friends are listening too. It's convenient to the music industry too, because bands and singers which are nothing more than a face and a good producer are cheaper: you can make the next one hit wonder and pay them nothing. Musicians who you would describe as real artists with talent, they usually aren't willing to whore themselves out for 15 seconds of fame and a really small paycheck.
With news geared towards the masses, it has been discovered that people who tune in every night and spend money whatever they see ads for, those people dislike challenging journalism, they like stories that confirm their own beliefs and what they think is true. They like simple moral outrage. Which is easier and cheaper to do than real journalism anyway. They can make a better profit by going after those people, so they do.
It says nothing about the whole population, it only is an indication of profitability.
How would that be bad? He gave his patients what they wanted. People trying to force their religious beliefs on everyone else, with their strange notions of your life not being yours to end when you feel like it, that's not who I would want in charge of health services.
Back up further: what do you expect of politics in general? Money buys influence in any government, no matter what form it takes. The only time that is not true is when enough people oppose the money. You can argue about this party or that party, or the number of parties, or term limits, or democracy even, but in any organization where the citizens don't care, you'll get money buying rules. Parties aren't going to do the job of the public for the public.
Actually, you can generalize that last part as well. No one is going to do any job you want them to do unless you keep on them or they have their own interests in doing it. Politicians aren't going to have our interests at heart unless you threaten to kick them out if they don't. And we're not doing that.
I did indeed come across a study refuting it, but it looked complicated, so I went with the cop out and just said it was controversial. I felt a little bad about that, but I didn't want to get off topic when my point was we'd need data for the smart guns specifically if we're going to make such statements.
If it seems at all likely cause a revival of pointless frames, unnecessary GIFs (expanded to fully utilize broadband connections) flashing text, and MIDI music, then I say we should burn them at the stake right now.
If you're looking for an enemy for science, politics is a much more suitable target than religion.
Except we can't get rid of "politics." We can educate people which helps a bit, but there will always be people scared of progress. They'll take organized religion and use it as a bat against science and progress, since it's a very effective bat. Take away religion and science has a much better chance of prevailing even though the actors have not changed. Kind of like an angry 16 year old and an adult locked in the room. If the teen is armed with a bat, the rational adult stands a much poorer chance. If the adult throws the bat out the window, the adult wins. Sure, it would be tempting to keep the bat and bash the kids brains in, but that wouldn't really be an acceptable outcome.
In practice, results get duplicated all the time as part of progression of research. A group found that inhibiting the protein Rho causes problems with making a cellular structure, if I then want to study a process that involves that cellular structure, a good first move would be to inhibit Rho to disrupt that structure and presumably that process. I will, necessarily, repeat part of their results but build off of it.
Parallel research is not necessarily a waste unless the two research projects are identical. Which, given how much area left to research there is in most fields, is unlikely. The big overarching goals are often the same, but the exact method of inquiry is usually different, the results will often be surprisingly different too. I'm reminded of the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Each set out to study the elephant through similar techniques. Each discovered a different part. The difficulty was in resolving the individual stories into a cohesive big picture, which researchers are hit and miss with, but each approach wasn't completely redundant.
Skimming through that report really makes me want to have the NSF cleaned. For example, "An Indiana University (IU) professor received a $263,281 grant from the NSF to study the social impact of tourism in the country of Norway." Funding that over cancer research?!?
Yes. You really can't judge the value of a research project based on the title like that. Cancer research is HEAVILY funded. And I say that as a cell biologist. It always could use more until we cure cancer and/or go bankrupt, but sociology comparatively is underfunded. The NIH and ACS fund cancer research and not sociology (mostly anyway). And, yes, sociology is an important line of study. Moreover, if you're going to clean the budget, I say start with weapons systems the military doesn't need anymore, and military weapons the police should never have had in the first place, not research.
The problem ISN'T guns. It's the culture of people. We have a culture of violence in the US as much as we woud like to deny it. We glorify it in so many ways -- in the media, the movies, TV shows and pop music. Without that culture, the interest in guns would decrease with the exception of those who use them as intended -- as tools and defense. And without guns, the violence would change adjust.
That's a hypothesis. You're doing the first part of research on gun violence right now. Unfortunately, it's the second part that's a lot harder, more expensive, and ultimately, worth anything at all. Without the second part, the first part is only worth the paper (or webpage) it's written on.
Slashdot Mirror
Guy comes into an ER unconscious. Has a high fever, complained of general aches and pains beforehand. No idea what's going on. I'm sure there's an SOP doctors follow to determine what could be wrong with the guy, I'm not a doctor so I don't know what that is, but I'd wager that whatever it is, this could be really useful for that.
You take a blood sample, you feed it through this machine or something like it. You would be able to identify some problems that may arise from his genome. You could identify if he had any virus or bacteria circulating in his blood and what it was. Maybe you could even do some reverse transcription and sequence that to determine what genes if any were above or below normal. Maybe you find that he has 10,000x the normal amount of a gene that's upregulated during liver stress. Minutes obviously matter in such a situation.
Maybe a bit more realistic in the near future, you have a brain tumor, surgeons open you up, remove the tumor and feed part of it into this machine, and while your head is still open, determine from the genome that it's unlikely to have spread, so they spare you a little more gray matter than they would have otherwise, and likely won't have to drill into your skull a second time.
It always annoys me how here, on slashdot, for nerds, we love technology and advances EXCEPT WHEN IT COMES TO BIOLOGY. Then it's nothing but "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" or GATTACA, or I am legend or zombies.
Yes, technology has downsides and dangers. All technology does. Always. Yes, you need to be aware of it. No, it is not going to cause a dystopian future or apocalypse just because that was the premise of a movie. A lot of other things would have to fail for us to reach gattaca. For example, we'd have to be dumb enough to allow discrimination based on genetics, and we'd have to for some reason decide that nature was all that matters when it comes to nature vs nurture. But given the patriot act and other current events, I'd say we can create a dystopian future for ourselves even if we stopped all scientific progress.
Instantaneous sequencing would be extremely useful in medicine. There's no way to quantify it, but I'm going to say this technology is approximately a billion times more likely to save your life than it is to cause you to be a discriminated underclass of people who are outcasts due to genetics. Anyway its a billion times a billion times more likely this will amount to nothing more than marketing hype. I'm still waiting on this to show up in my lab.
But bigger point: either don't fear biotech advances, or at least be equal: every article about faster or better computer components, how about we fret about the Matrix or Skynet or a million other scifi dystopian works of fiction that involve computers rather than biotech.
Hypocritical Luddites...
Back in the 50's and 60's it was much easier for a kid to pop the hood and learn to tear down and rebuild an engine. Now it requires specialized tools. You don't see as many self taught gearheads.
I'd argue that's largely because all the kids who love to take things apart and put them back together, the tinkerers, we all taught ourselves computers instead of cars. I think it would have happened independent of cars getting more complex: there's so much more you can do with a computer than a car, especially when you factor in budgets.
Context is important. The context here is that he had, in the same speech, called Obama a "fake" president, said Eric Holder was "rabidly un-american," and that Hillary Clinton was actively trying to abolish the second amendment along with the UN.
Whether you think those things are true is beside the point: he was pretty clearly suggesting that we were bordering on tyranny and people should be prepared to fight back, potentially against the current government, with weapons. You can't honestly tell me he meant "train people to use weapons so they can fight tyranny in foreign countries." He meant the US.
It really is amazing how long that train wreck has been going on without anyone driving the engine realizing they are in fact wrecking. With most of the passengers telling them they're wrecking. And people standing by the side of the track. And the guys shoveling coal into the... uh... fireplace? Trains have conductors, right? I guess the conductor would be Balmer. Or the engineer, which I think are on the train itself for some reason.
I... I don't really know how trains work, but I'm refusing to admit I've made a mistake with this metaphor. Which I feel is probably a better metaphor for the MS situation.
You assume janeuner was talking "too little too late" and referring to the market as a whole, rather than janeuner talking about janeuner's nook. This is odd to me. Granted, not as strange as how everyone here assumes that everyone is a lawyer talking in legal terms, but still.
New slashdot rule: if in doubt, assume someone is expressing an unprofessional opinion, is referring to him or herself, is making a normative statement rather than a factual statement, and/or is drunk.
Wait, products must solve a tangible problem in order to catch on? Well shit, that sucks for twitter, facebook, AND the tablet market.
When you say "ultraliberal" you're thinking of very specific, small places within California. Like Berkley, Hollywood, and San Francisco. And even then, you're only thinking of the most outspoken residents. The OC is very conservative by national standards. The state legislature has plenty of conservatives in it, some of whom subscribe to the "starve the beast" theory, whereby you solve the budgetary problems by refusing to raise taxes without actually cutting spending.
(Also, side note, some residents of the OC evidently hate it when you call it the OC, so call the OC "the OC" whenever you get the chance.)
Anything less than equal treatment is discrimination.
If you think that's bad, not only do I get less maternity leave than a woman would, but the men's room DOESN'T HAVE TAMPONS IN IT!!!
[/s] Lets not make overly broad declarations. It's only discrimination if the situations aren't actually equal. Which it isn't. Physically if nothing else. I went back to work a few hours two days after my kid was born (voulontarily, to keep things going in lab), my wife at that point still couldn't really walk. Postpartum depression also is a thing women have to deal with, while we don't.
I'd like to hear the reason for the discrepancy before I condemn it as sex discrimination. I know some of you are really anxious to find something about the rare female CEO in a tech company to cry foul about, but this is not necessarily discrimination.
No analysis on that or explanation? Just "everything sucks. forever. and it will always get worse. fuck everything."?
They say cynicism often parades as wisdom...
The number of websites with ten or more scripts running seems to be increasing, and they seem to be increasing the number of scripts required to run as well. And then there's the helpful automatic redirecting AFTER the content of the page has loaded, taking you to a webpage saying "You need to turn off noscript to view this page properly!"
Has anyone seen any pages that do this with ghostery or REQUIRE facebook or google scripts to run in order to load?
You forgot the worst part of zero tolerance: that the lesson schools are teaching to kids is that heavy-handed, inflexible rules and imposing authority is normal. The next generation isn't going to overturn the patriot act or roll back arbitrary and secret no fly lists, or demand that the government abide by the constitution because they will be used to having absolutely no rights, save what the authority lets them have.
I don't know if it will actually turn out that way, I had it drilled into me up through high school that marijuana was basically heroin, that condoms didn't work, that premarital sex would destroy my life, that God hates both of those things and that homosexuality is evil. Granted, I hate being high, was unsuccessful in most attempts to get laid, and am not gay, but none of that was due to what they told me in classes. Moreover I'm agnostic now. So hopefully zero tolerance will have an opposite effect and get kids to realize from an early age that they MUST fight for their rights. Still, I'd rather us not run that experiment. If when I'm an old man, I have to submit to a prostate check every time I get on a hoverbus because these youngsters were trained with zero tolerance not to question authority, I'm gonna be pissed.
I'm guessing facebook, in contrast, would intentionally and quickly break anything that doesn't use it's messaging system to force you to use it since you would see less ads from it then. And that's one of the main things I would want from such a program: not having to use facebook's shitty app and see shitty ads.
Nobody wants to read insightful, factual stories about actual things,
No, it's like pop music. The demographic that is most profitable is idiots, therefore most of the industry is geared to compete for that idiot demographic. With music, most of the people buying has been tweens and teenagers who have nothing better to do with their time and listen to whatever shit their friends are listening too. It's convenient to the music industry too, because bands and singers which are nothing more than a face and a good producer are cheaper: you can make the next one hit wonder and pay them nothing. Musicians who you would describe as real artists with talent, they usually aren't willing to whore themselves out for 15 seconds of fame and a really small paycheck.
With news geared towards the masses, it has been discovered that people who tune in every night and spend money whatever they see ads for, those people dislike challenging journalism, they like stories that confirm their own beliefs and what they think is true. They like simple moral outrage. Which is easier and cheaper to do than real journalism anyway. They can make a better profit by going after those people, so they do.
It says nothing about the whole population, it only is an indication of profitability.
How would that be bad? He gave his patients what they wanted. People trying to force their religious beliefs on everyone else, with their strange notions of your life not being yours to end when you feel like it, that's not who I would want in charge of health services.
Back up further: what do you expect of politics in general? Money buys influence in any government, no matter what form it takes. The only time that is not true is when enough people oppose the money. You can argue about this party or that party, or the number of parties, or term limits, or democracy even, but in any organization where the citizens don't care, you'll get money buying rules. Parties aren't going to do the job of the public for the public.
Actually, you can generalize that last part as well. No one is going to do any job you want them to do unless you keep on them or they have their own interests in doing it. Politicians aren't going to have our interests at heart unless you threaten to kick them out if they don't. And we're not doing that.
I've heard windows 9 is planned to cede even more ground on the general purpose front.
To do otherwise would admit that what they were doing is wrong, which is for some reason worse than annoying customers.
I do, actually, think we should get rid of guns, so you're comparing my argument to another argument I agree with.
LATFP: look at the fucking picture. Because that's about it.
I did indeed come across a study refuting it, but it looked complicated, so I went with the cop out and just said it was controversial. I felt a little bad about that, but I didn't want to get off topic when my point was we'd need data for the smart guns specifically if we're going to make such statements.
What?!? That's crazy talk! CLEARLY it was the syrian army:
1. Hack the guardian twitter
2. Post false stuff there and gather other twitter accounts
3. ????
4. THE REBELLION SURRENDERS!!!
(/s) In all honesty, a false flag makes sense to me, while I can't see a real motive for the actual Syrian Army to do this.
If it seems at all likely cause a revival of pointless frames, unnecessary GIFs (expanded to fully utilize broadband connections) flashing text, and MIDI music, then I say we should burn them at the stake right now.
If you're looking for an enemy for science, politics is a much more suitable target than religion.
Except we can't get rid of "politics." We can educate people which helps a bit, but there will always be people scared of progress. They'll take organized religion and use it as a bat against science and progress, since it's a very effective bat. Take away religion and science has a much better chance of prevailing even though the actors have not changed. Kind of like an angry 16 year old and an adult locked in the room. If the teen is armed with a bat, the rational adult stands a much poorer chance. If the adult throws the bat out the window, the adult wins. Sure, it would be tempting to keep the bat and bash the kids brains in, but that wouldn't really be an acceptable outcome.
Parallel research is not necessarily a waste unless the two research projects are identical. Which, given how much area left to research there is in most fields, is unlikely. The big overarching goals are often the same, but the exact method of inquiry is usually different, the results will often be surprisingly different too. I'm reminded of the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Each set out to study the elephant through similar techniques. Each discovered a different part. The difficulty was in resolving the individual stories into a cohesive big picture, which researchers are hit and miss with, but each approach wasn't completely redundant.
Skimming through that report really makes me want to have the NSF cleaned. For example, "An Indiana University (IU) professor received a $263,281 grant from the NSF to study the social impact of tourism in the country of Norway." Funding that over cancer research?!?
Yes. You really can't judge the value of a research project based on the title like that. Cancer research is HEAVILY funded. And I say that as a cell biologist. It always could use more until we cure cancer and/or go bankrupt, but sociology comparatively is underfunded. The NIH and ACS fund cancer research and not sociology (mostly anyway). And, yes, sociology is an important line of study. Moreover, if you're going to clean the budget, I say start with weapons systems the military doesn't need anymore, and military weapons the police should never have had in the first place, not research.
The problem ISN'T guns. It's the culture of people. We have a culture of violence in the US as much as we woud like to deny it. We glorify it in so many ways -- in the media, the movies, TV shows and pop music. Without that culture, the interest in guns would decrease with the exception of those who use them as intended -- as tools and defense. And without guns, the violence would change adjust.
That's a hypothesis. You're doing the first part of research on gun violence right now. Unfortunately, it's the second part that's a lot harder, more expensive, and ultimately, worth anything at all. Without the second part, the first part is only worth the paper (or webpage) it's written on.