Historically, Africa was the primary source of colonies for the European nations, typically the UK, for the purpose of raiding its natural resources such as gems. Now that colonization is 'illegal' under international treaty, there is no Western interest in Africa's well-being, since it is too unstable to have large western-owned factories (e.g. Nike or Adidas shoe factories like in Asia) or its denizens are too unskilled or there is no one that wants to deal with corrupt governments.
You want to start education at a grass-roots level. The more trickle-down bureaucracy you have, the less effective the policy and the more waste in time and resources. The effects of bureacracy in America can be seen with failed schools and high crime rate in the cities. Third world countries are primarily agricultural. With the green revolution, many more have been saved from starvation. The situation, although still ugly, has improved massively throughout the last 30 years. All the press wants to show people is the continual bloodshed, but America is one of the next most violent countries in the world today. What developing countries need is technology to sustain both agriculture and the electronic industry of the 21st century. If the Americans learn from their own socioeconomic mistakes and grass-roots non-governmental organizations get involved in promoting technology in developing countries, they will become the producers of the next generation as the first world countries are relegated to the service industry.
DNA testing nearly impossible with this invention
on
Walk-By DNA Testing
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· Score: 1
I just read through the patent and I have to say that it is nearly impossible to get any DNA extraction from this. The invention traps human skin flakes that are shed. These skin flakes are: 1. Dead. Non living cells don't contain DNA because the DNA is degraded in the environment, unless the DNA has been preserved (e.g. in tree sap). DNA preservation from dead cells doesn't occur physiologically (that is, in the human body), and thus if you trap any skin flakes coming off a person, it won't have any DNA in it. 2. Keratinized. The first 3 layers of skin cells on your body are soaked in a hard protein called keratin. Keratin water proofs your skin so that you don't swell up when you go swimming or taking a bath/shower. Keratinized Skin cells are already DEAD! so #1 is true even in skin flakes still attached to you. Also, Even if some deeper layer of skin were to be trapped by the machine (maybe the person has blisters), the DNA that can be retrieved is vanishingly small. Furthermore, you have to amplify the DNA in order to analyze it. This process takes a whole day to complete, and is prone to errors via contamination (remember OJ Simpson?), and then after this process (called PCR), you need to analyze it. No scientist would ever try to collect DNA from an air sample because it would contain too much garbage. PCR also needs to be done in a lab, there are no 'instant readings' with this. So with transportation and decontamination costs and all, it's very uneconomical. Personally, I'd be a lot more concerned with Echelon eavesdropping on my telephone, fax, and email rather than the unlikelyhood that this invention will be used to scan your DNA. My references include the Skin Physiology book used by the inventor. Evidently, he forgot to read about skin histology. My own credentials include being a cell biologist. Cowbert Out.
I completely disagree with encouraging the ban on telnet and ftp. Here are the reasons: 1. As the issue pertained to ResNets on college campuses, one of which I work at, one authentication method for internet access registration is via plain text telnet in a perl script. Basically, when the user registers for their room connection, a script telnets to the mail server to check if a valid email account exists (to authenticate the student, that s/he goes to that school). 2. The issue isn't really about breaking or rooting systems, but about access to logs. Unencrypted telnet/ftp is a very big security issue on a public server, but most traffic on a campus network is segmented usually with multiple routers. Unless you were physically on campus, and on the same supernet (which a stranger would have to hack a router to deduce the complex topology) it would be hard to intercept plaintext transmissions from off-campus. Again, the threat would be from within the university that someone would deliberately try to access logs. 3. this is all from my own limited personal experience at the University of Connecticut, so i might be wrong.
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Well stated.
Historically, Africa was the primary source of colonies for the European nations, typically the UK, for the purpose of raiding its natural resources such as gems. Now that colonization is 'illegal' under international treaty, there is no Western interest in Africa's well-being, since it is too unstable to have large western-owned factories (e.g. Nike or Adidas shoe factories like in Asia) or its denizens are too unskilled or there is no one that wants to deal with corrupt governments.
You want to start education at a grass-roots level. The more trickle-down bureaucracy you have, the less effective the policy and the more waste in time and resources. The effects of bureacracy in America can be seen with failed schools and high crime rate in the cities.
Third world countries are primarily agricultural. With the green revolution, many more have been saved from starvation. The situation, although still ugly, has improved massively throughout the last 30 years. All the press wants to show people is the continual bloodshed, but America is one of the next most violent countries in the world today.
What developing countries need is technology to sustain both agriculture and the electronic industry of the 21st century. If the Americans learn from their own socioeconomic mistakes and grass-roots non-governmental organizations get involved in promoting technology in developing countries, they will become the producers of the next generation as the first world countries are relegated to the service industry.
I just read through the patent and I have to say that it is nearly impossible to get any DNA extraction from this. The invention traps human skin flakes that are shed. These skin flakes are: 1. Dead. Non living cells don't contain DNA because the DNA is degraded in the environment, unless the DNA has been preserved (e.g. in tree sap). DNA preservation from dead cells doesn't occur physiologically (that is, in the human body), and thus if you trap any skin flakes coming off a person, it won't have any DNA in it. 2. Keratinized. The first 3 layers of skin cells on your body are soaked in a hard protein called keratin. Keratin water proofs your skin so that you don't swell up when you go swimming or taking a bath/shower. Keratinized Skin cells are already DEAD! so #1 is true even in skin flakes still attached to you. Also, Even if some deeper layer of skin were to be trapped by the machine (maybe the person has blisters), the DNA that can be retrieved is vanishingly small. Furthermore, you have to amplify the DNA in order to analyze it. This process takes a whole day to complete, and is prone to errors via contamination (remember OJ Simpson?), and then after this process (called PCR), you need to analyze it. No scientist would ever try to collect DNA from an air sample because it would contain too much garbage. PCR also needs to be done in a lab, there are no 'instant readings' with this. So with transportation and decontamination costs and all, it's very uneconomical. Personally, I'd be a lot more concerned with Echelon eavesdropping on my telephone, fax, and email rather than the unlikelyhood that this invention will be used to scan your DNA. My references include the Skin Physiology book used by the inventor. Evidently, he forgot to read about skin histology. My own credentials include being a cell biologist. Cowbert Out.
I completely disagree with encouraging the ban on telnet and ftp. Here are the reasons: 1. As the issue pertained to ResNets on college campuses, one of which I work at, one authentication method for internet access registration is via plain text telnet in a perl script. Basically, when the user registers for their room connection, a script telnets to the mail server to check if a valid email account exists (to authenticate the student, that s/he goes to that school). 2. The issue isn't really about breaking or rooting systems, but about access to logs. Unencrypted telnet/ftp is a very big security issue on a public server, but most traffic on a campus network is segmented usually with multiple routers. Unless you were physically on campus, and on the same supernet (which a stranger would have to hack a router to deduce the complex topology) it would be hard to intercept plaintext transmissions from off-campus. Again, the threat would be from within the university that someone would deliberately try to access logs. 3. this is all from my own limited personal experience at the University of Connecticut, so i might be wrong.