I'll definitely grant you that gel electrophoresis is not a useless or obsolete technology at all. I think characterizing it as dated and limited is still accurate. But I stand by my original point, that it does not represent, as the article seems to imply, that leading edge biotechnology is leaking into the hands of the average inventor. I don't think this is the case.
Of course, any statement on what the world is going to be like in 50 years is purest speculation. This story, however, is even pushing that characterization a bit, as it contains several exceptionally questionable assumptions.
Foremost is the idea that people will soon be effortlessly tinkering with genetic modification in their garages in the near future. The evidence of the availablity of home-made DNA sequencing techniques like gel electrophoresis is cited. This is a very dated and limited technology, available as a kit to any high-school biology teacher well over a decade ago. It is an incredible far cry from the kind of DNA analysis on a chip that is in current play in the research sets. The question is, are the powerful corporations who are staking their existence on capitalizing on genetic information going to quietly watch this kind of technology get domesticated, or are they going to fiercely lobby to keep access restricted to the government and corporate level, most likely argument that the dangers of making genetic modification avvailable at the consumer level are simply too great because of the potential for use in terrorism (i.e. biological warfare).
If that's a bit too conspiracy for you, consider the fact that the corporations are far ahead of the curve in the development and posession of these patented technologies. What are they doing with this power? Why, they're deducing functional bits of DNA... and patenting them as fast as they possibly can, usually with some pretty spurious uses attached to justify what is essentially gene-squatting. An Open Source model in genetics is well into the process destroyed by an ignorant, corrupt and complacent government and the fast actions of dozens of greedy corporate giants and hungry start-ups.
This is to say nothing of the incredibly optimistic timeline and assumptions this article makes about how effective "hacking" biology for useful industrial processes is going to be.
My favorite part is the examples given of garage technologies- automobiles and computers. Ah yes... It sure is great living in this capitalistic paradise where cars and computers are being innovated by thousands of inventors using a non-proprietary, open intellectual property model. Think of the horror of living in a world where a handful of corporate monoliths produced the vast majority of vehicles and microprocessors, enforcing proprietary ownership of their technologies through international patent laws!
""Ethically I don't see the issue - You can put another person's heart in someone's chest, but not an organelle in an egg? "
Well, you moron, the issue is that when you put a new heart in someone's chest, they don't pass it on to their children. When you put new mitochondria in a zygote, it may very well be passed on to the children. Since it is unknown what the consequences of this is, one might suggest that it was pretty fucking risky. If the children grow up, and die when they're 12 years old because of some flaky interaction with the third party mitochondria, do you think maybe then there might have been an ethical lapse at some point?"
As much as I'm loathe to affirm a person who's this rude, and an anonymous coward to boot, this is a good point - I was being a devil's advocate, I confess, in suggesting there were no ethical issues. Although this is a fairly distinct track, to my mind, from engineering the genome in the human germ cell that most anti- comments seem to be alluding to, (the main thrust of my comment) the fact remains that this is a potentially inheritable modification to the human germ cell - and that is a caution. One thing this does have in common with genetic engineering is the rather blithe assumption that it will not have any long term impact. I'm not sufficiently informed to say whether it seems likely or not that transplanted mitochondria would result in any serious side effects...
I didn't make it sound an awful lot like "midichlorians," George Lucas made midichlorians sound an awful lot like mitochondria. A concept, incidentally, which he "borrowed" from Madeleine L'Engle.
Nobody is sure yet of the impact of using the force to sell tacos.
I like the idea of open source but wonder how reliable the various open license models are. I'm concerned someone could release a program with an open license, then change their mind about its value, and start legally pursuing end users with the claim they never intended to release the program freely. Alternatively, an open license statement could get slapped on proprietary software in an attempt to avoid end-user liability for piracy. Are open source licenses legally robust enough to withstand these kinds of potential misuses?
Bugg is correct, I stated this point incorectly. Although the picture of how more modern cellular life-forms such as ourselves got started is a very fuzzy one, it's clear we were predated by prokaryotes. I was thinking only of us eukaryotes. Yes, yes, that's very anthropocentric of me, yes, yes, we'd all be dead without prokaryotes... Ah, but screw 'em anyway - they're still just a bunch of filthy germs.
On a serious note, it's good to see someone on slashdot with more biological savvy than me, considering I'm just a chemist...
This has nothing to do with human DNA as in the genome, the double helix we all think of. This is our main source of genetic information and defines the majority of our genetic characteristics.
Mitochondria are organelles (subcellular organisms) which are necessary for our cells to produce energy. Without them we would die. Mitochondria are stand-alone units in our cells. Our cells' DNA cannot produce mitochodria. When we are conceived, there are mitochondria in our mother's egg cell. When the zygote divides, the mitochondria divide too. All the billions of mitochondria in our cells are descended from those which come from our mothers eggs.
Because of the mitochodria's relatively autonomous existence and reproduction, many scientists believe they are actually a seperate life form (something similar to a bacteria, for example) which "moved in" to our cells, creating a symbiotic relationship and resulting in the basis for cellular life on earth.
It appears to me that what these scientists have done is take genetically unaltered, presumably healthy mitochondria out of an individual's cell and implanted them into the egg cell of a mother who's mitochondria are presumably defective. This is not, to my mind, genetic modification, although the resulting children do have some genetic material in their cells that their mothers don't have.
What's causing the ruckus is these are the first children born with modified "germ" cells (i.e. sperm or egg). The changes should change every cell in the body - if succesful they will all contain the healthy donor mitochondria. Ethically I don't see the issue - You can put another person's heart in someone's chest, but not an organelle in an egg? Mitochondria are probably alien to our cells anyway, so to me the ethics of this is a pretty grey area. Anyway, it's a long long way from Gattaca in anything but abstract conception.
I would guess a lot of people are in the same boat as me - I work for a non-profit and I think I bring a lot of value to the organization. At a previous non-profit job I let myself get ground down for "the cause," working 50-60 hour weeks for a relatively small paycheck. I laid down the law right up front at my current position - I was not going to burn out on the long hours, considering the pay cut I was taking for working in the non-profit world. Now I work 40-43 hours a week, every week, and haven't worked a weekend in 2 years. It's a reasonable exchange for me.
This reminds me of the Democrats attacking Ralph Nader towards the end of the recent presidential campaign. Nothing displays weakness like attacking the underdog. It hurt Gore and this is gonna end up hurting Microsoft.
Riddle me this, Batman: If only a commercial model can create innovative software, and if innovation drives the software industry, then how is there a problem? If Open Source software cannot drive innovation, then it won't make any significant inroads, and commercial software won't be threatened.
Maybe what's really threatening the commercial software industry is a failure to grasp the nuances of LOGIC.
All the talk about technology reaching out to the truly poor is completely ludicrous. According to the FAQ this thing is gonna cost about 9000 rupees which is about $200 (USD). Of course this may seem pretty cheap to the average/.er but it is clearly FAR out of the grasp of the poorest people of the world, most of whom don't come close to earning that in a YEAR. If anything this is a computer for the "Third World" equivalent of the middle class.
Does $5Million sound like a pretty paltry sum, particularly when it's only a loan, and one with pretty agressive terms at that?!
I mean, sure, it's probably more than I'll earn in my entire lifetime (and doesn't THAT just put my 9-5 in a sickening perspective)but STILL. I know we're well out of the internet honeymoon where a million is just the office decorating fee, but I can't shake the feeling that IGN got an AWFUL deal and there's gotta be more to this whole thing than what I got out of the article.
I personally don't give a rat's ass in the end, but I can't believe that Sony couldn't or wouldn't beat this pony deal to get some exclusivity on the video game for one of the most sucessful S-F films ever made. Incidentally, to all the posts asking what the big f'in deal is, it's only 6 months - the totally restricted Internet capability is the big f'in deal, morons. Haven't you heard this is the future?
And one more thing. $20 ROYALTIES? Jesus, what's the retail gonna be on these games?! Those first 250,000 units better move fast 'cause I can't imagine Interplay is gonna be getting much out of them after that 20 buck pop.
Obsessive and compulsive behaviors are fairly well understood, although for some treatment is nothing more than saying "whoa, this is getting out of hand" and bringing the behaviour under control, while for others truly successful treatment seems nearly impossible.
The brief litany the reviewer provides of what's available on the web - sex, gambling, shopping - reveals no new arenas of obsessive/compulsive behavior. Of course, for people with problems in these arenas, the internet holds compelling benefits - most notably instant access, the perception of privacy/anonymity. There is nothing more unique about the internet, as regards these behaviors, than that.
So what exactly is the use or point of a book addressing these copiously documented and discussed topics in the particular context of the internet? None, as far as I can tell, except providing some shrink with a vehicle to cash in on his own lack of self-control and a newsy pop-culture topic. Here: read my book on obsessive internet behavior and save yourself 12 bucks: If your gaming/gambling/porno-pandering/chatting/ and/or shopping is interfering with your life and relationships, slow down or stop. If you can't stop, seek counselling. The end.
Any computer language is a highly specialized way of representing sequences of logic. The fact that these sequences can be read by a computer is irrelevant - functionally they are no different than a mathematical proof or a syllogism. They are a method of representing thought, and are hence expression.
Even though you need mathematical expressions like E=MC(2) to make a nuclear bomb, and even though nearly everyone agrees that the ability of individuals to make nuclear bombs must be restricted, noone is arguing that we must therefore ban the expression E=MC(2) because it is just a functional bit of mathematical code and not "real" expression.
"the practical applications of this are phenomenal!:) Just kidding"
Come now, show some inventiveness!
-delivering a bio-warfare pathogenic payload
-smuggling contraband
-auto-paparazzi for island-owning recluses like Brando
-flying a small nuclear payload under enemy radar
We're human beings! We'll always find wonderful uses for any technological acheivement!
Re:Gotta love governments who don't understand tec
on
Send out the Clones?
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· Score: 2
You've hit the issues but I think you're missing the point. Here's the breakdown: make no assumptions about my personal political beliefs, this is just the way it is down here in the USA.
1) Our Republican-controlled Congress does see this as an abortion-related issue. Under their mandate from the religious right (an absolutely essential component of their political victories) they are obligated, as they cannot yet sucessfully ban abortion (due to the composition of the Supreme Court), to take a stance against any issue that seems to suggest that it is okay to utilize human embryos or fetuses for any other purpose than coming to term in a human uterus and being born. This is exactly the point of the Weldon quote you list. You're talking about destroying hundreds of botched embryos in the pursuit of a single "perfect" copy - that's too much like abortion for Republicans to support.
2) Although I think the oh-so-enlightened intellectuals who make Slashdot what it is overemphasize the religious angle on this, there is little question that many Christians will object to human cloning on "playing God" grounds. The Republican Christian Right core mentioned above would almost certainly fall into this category. Their view is that the only right way of creating another human being is for a married couple to have sex. There is plenty of disoute on the degree to which science can/should intervene. But supporting cloning is bound to get these people on a politician's bad side.
3) I for one think the issue of rights is a genuine and valid concern that justifies a moratorium on actually cloning human beings. These issues of cloning for "parts" or for research are sticky and there are a lot of shades of grey. I'm not an advocate of recriminalizing abortion but I admit I find the prospect of clone factories mass-producing fetuses to harvest undifferentiated cells and fetal organ cells unnerving and I'm not sure if I support it. THis brings up a huge ethical issue that's around the corner: most of the sci-fi applications of cloning would require an artificial womb, something we're still pretty far off from. But if we succeed in acheiving this technology, technically almost any embryo/fetus at any stage of development could be brought to term regardless of when it exits the womb (or if indeed it was ever in a womb). Pro-choicers don't care to talk about it much but the legality of abortion is silently but heavily invested in the fact that the aborted embryo/fetus is not viable outside the womb (this enforces the belief that the embryo/fetus is a part of the pregnant woman's body, not an autonomous being, and consequently making abortion illegal violates her civil right to control her own body). The further we push the viability of premature births and artificial gestation, the closer we come to a big can of worms. Not allowing cloning, which simply maintains the status-quo and so is much smaller and less wormy, is just a safer political stance. Sorry this took a while but I think it's a pretty fair picture of what's going on.
A lot of the protest here downplays the fact that there are serious ethical issues involved with the "whimsical" (but not outside the realm of reality) applications that CmdrTaco mentions. And trying to gloss these issues is what's going to get this kind of legislation passed.
This being said - get real. There has not been a single day (I said not one, zero, nada, not one sinlge solitary day) since commerce was invented that human beings have not been traded as commodities (we call it slavery in these parts). There are people being sold as slaves right now. Nothing about cloning is going to change this ethical situation in the world, except to possibly provide a new justification for exploitation ("ahh, he's just a damn clone anyway").
On the other hand, cloning could become totally legal and commonplace and CmdrTaco still couldn't afford to keep a brainless body on life support for several decades on the off chance he ends up needing an organ transplant. Only the ultrawealthy will benefit from any of these types of uses. We may all benefit from tissue cloning but that isn't really procribed by this sort of legislation.
Let's all look at the bright side: SDMI has made it clear that they've decided that since they are failing in the exceptionally difficult challenge of creating sucessful watermarking technology, rather than fix what's wrong they will attempt to ameliorate the failure of their technology by taking on the absolutely IMPOSSIBLE challenge of attempting to control information on how their watermarking technology can be diverted.
The Princeton research group's FAQ reads like a textbook on why these SDMI yahoos are hosed. They don't really understand what they need to achieve and they're unwilling to expose their work to a real challenge that will measure its potential effectiveness in the real world. Furthermore, if they treat scientists with this kind of contempt, it will eventually become common practice to hand a copy of any disputed/DMCA attacked paper under the table to the free information advocates, people who's lives revolve around making this kind of information available. Let them release weak protection with established divversion techniques if that's what they really want. The sooner they fall off the face of the earth.
I think the argument that this was created simply to give pirates plausible seniability is cynical and unsupported... But the argument that people will try to use it for this purpose is almost forgone conclusion.
If you look at the language of this "license" (I really question its legal status, particularly whether you could legally enforce the terms of this license under any real-world circumstances) it is not claiming to supercede any existing copyright protection. It is rather a voluntary waiving of certain copyright protections that an author can selectively apply to his or her own works. While the EFF holds a philosophical belief that it is of benefit to society to reduce or remove restrictions on the interchange of music, they do not advocate the violation of existing laws.
An attempt to use this as a way of contravening existing copyrights would fail anyway - recent cases like Napster have demonstrated that in the eyes of the law anyone providing a service of duplicating/exchanging digital information carries the burden of insuring that they are not contributing to piracy.
So while I disagree with your assessment of the intention behind this, I think that it ends up being basically worthless, partly because of that potential for misuse. Anyway, its redundant and unnecessary - people have been selectively modifying their copyrights forever with nothing more than a brief statement to the effect that others are free to duplicate and make use of the information, with whatever restrictions.
"Over the last 16 months, more than 75,500 Internet workers lost their jobs, according to research by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago-based employee outplacement firm."
Okay, I'm definitley less impressed with the dotcom meltdown now. Only seventy five thousand jobs in a year and a third? The way it gets talked about I would have expected at least a few hundred thousand.
A lot of the comments here presume that the human chess master will lose... I hardly think this is foregone conclusion. Certainly we are approaching a point where computational power and speed will insure that the best a human can acheive against state of the art chess computers is a draw. I don't know that we're there yet. But even so, I really question whether these kinds of contests say anything significant about the development of automated "intelligence."
For one thing, the power of these computer programs draw from generations of human experience with chess. Chess is one of the most studied, commented upon and recorded strategy games in existence. Show me a computer that learns from just the basic rules to play at the grnad master level and I'll really be impressed.
More to the point, playing chess isn't that impressive of an activity as games go. Certainly it is traditionally associatd with intelligence, and there is a particular kind of savant-like talent behind the grand master types. But in the end the number of potential moves in a given situation are rather limited and to a large degree the success of a chess program falls to the brute force of calculating potential moves ahead. Computer opponents have demonstrated significantly less impressive performance when playing less rigidly structured games such as Go or Backgammon.
What an unmitigated collection of garbage. Let's discuss the simple, obvious facts of this case that noone with working brain cells still firing feebly away can deny. The people who carry the primary responsibility for these crimes are the children and young adults who carry them out. it may be that these adolescents were indeed mentally deranged, which could mitigate the blame and the shame but does not absolve them of responsibility. After the perpetrators, the next most responsible parties are the families who failed so completely to be engaged in their childrens' lives that they failed to register their accumulation of an arsenal. After this there is a hodgepodge of contributing factors: the vicious and alienating atmosphere of conformity fostered by our schools, the administrators and parents who see no urgency in preventing or punishing bullying and intimidation, and yes, a culture of the glorification of violence and violent images as represented in all aspects of the media.
And any idiot can see thay are attacking one small, ambiguous component of this complicated tangle of culpability simply because they gots the money. The families pushing these lawsuits should be ashamed of themselves for their naked attempt to capitalize on a personal tragedy.
This, uh, "editorial" took me back, oh, all of two days ago as I watched crowds of dirty, disorganized hippies play drums while the powerful forces of capitalism and western politics gathered to insure that as the Global Economy proceeded, Nice Guys would continue to finish last. And I thought, not for the first time, I want a new party. Because dimwits like the author of this fluff trifle are not representing issues that need to be addressed.
The war on drugs, which has been operating under federal control for over seventy years and has been named a war for close to forty, is a serious problem. It has resulted in the strongest, most organized criminal conspiracies the world has ever known, it has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of completely innocent people (with what the mainstream media seems bent on erroneously referring to as a "plan crash" being the latest example), it has fostered massive corruption in political, civil and military forces worldwide, costs billions annually, pours billions of dollars into corrupt governments and into the pockets of the most vicious, amoral criminals on the planet, promotes a massive, global, illegal small-arms black market, and as its primary effect has created a world where there is a higher per-capita incidence of drug abuse than when powerful stimulants and opieates were available at the retail level essentially without control, and where drugs are in general cheaper, purer, and more available than ever before.
The answers to this problem are available for the asking but they are very difficult and politically loaded. They involve attacking the roots of drug dependency, such as poverty and depression. They involve making public funding available for treatment, under the understanding that in the final analysis this will be more cost-effective than punitive expenditures. They involve allowing doctors to prescribe drugs at maintenance doses for addicts who are unwilling or unable to quit cold turkey. And yes, they involve the selective legalization of drugs, especially drugs such as marijuana, for which the social and literal costs of prohibition so clearly exceed the costs of use.
Like many similar issues a handful of self-serving, self-righteous and bigoted hypocrites (plenty of uppers and tranqs in the medicine cabinets of congress, rest assured) are steering America down an unsustainable path in the war on drugs. The majority of people know that the war on drugs is a failure but they fail to vote for reform in this issue. One reason why is the poorly articulated and badly represented forces on the anti-prohibition movement. Do us all a favor and just keep it shut: you're only making it harder for people doing real work to reform drug laws.
Aw, but all this serious shit is just too boring to bother thinking about, ain't it?
Now if you actually came out with a beta version of the game, that would be funny. I always though Superfly would make a great game - gunplay, car chases, kung-fu... and of course the "Superfly" theme song (Pusher Man). Workin' jive jobs for chump change, day after day...
I fully agree with you, but here's the thing: I (independent, tiny, nut-job) can (and will continue to) pay for hosting my own content. It's all text, it has a microscopic presence on a friend's server, I'll pick up the registration fees etc. out of pocket. Fine. And of course, "Mr. Marketroid" can and should pay for his own content because he has a vested interest and an ulterior motive. The problem is, the former is limited (I can't work on my site full time or invest a lot of resources into it because its a hobby) and the latter is bound to be, well, the usual commercialized, homogenized shit sandwich. You shouldn't expect to pay a fee for the former, and should actively refuse to pay a fee for the latter (not that people won't swallow that kind of deal - look at how we pay for cable teevee that still has commercials!) But what I'm saying is, I think there might be a valid market for content that requires a sufficient investment by the creator and carries a sufficient value to the viewer that a fee is sensible. If you don't care for ads, some kind of running micropayment seems the alternative to every site trying to collect a monthly or annual user fee, which I'm simply not going to put up with, personally.
But there is another interesting point in what you say. People like to surf the net, and it doesn't make sense to have to pay to see something you haven't decided is worth a penny or two. Perhaps institute a policy that "the first one is free?". And if you don't feel you should have to pay for ANY content online? No problem, man, it could be set up so that when you're surfing, it was like that stuff never existed.
It's good to see this discussion getting played out because it is opening a few eyes to a simple but generally ignored fact: The real customers of mass media. It isn't the viewer/reader/listener, in most cases: It's the advertiser. We are merely consumers, with someone else footing the bill. Sort of like Daddy buying you an ice cream cone, except usually doesn't harp on you to buy a truck or a taco afterwards.
Someone has to pay for content, of course. You can visit my site for free, with no more advertising than a line of text on the bottom giving a prop to the friend who hosts me. Then again, the content on my site hasn't changed for 3 months and arguably contains nothing but the semicoherent ravings of a lunatic.
So, you want games and frolics and pretty pictures that move and pretend to love you. So let's talk banner ads:
1. The article is right. Banner ads suck and everybody knows it. I pay heed to about one in a hundred if that. And as soon as I click away from that add, it's content is forgotten.
2. But an unstated problem is that a large percentage of banner advertisers are ill-conceived, cash-hemorrhaging dotcom fuckups, and who could tell if they could succeed even if they could get the internet to strap me down in a chair with Clockwork Orange eye-restraints and make me watch flash ads for hours on end?
3. And no doubt there's still plenty of room for the well-placed, well targetted banner ad (porn site ads on teaser pages, ferinstance, or Linux gear on/.)
So banner ads are probably not a thing of the past but let's get real: they can't pay for all the groovy content on the internet.
Now, let's talk interruption-based flash ads or whatever of the same ilk: it's not gonna work. The internet isn't like teeveee, you don't plop down in front of it to go passive for three hours. It's active, and there are just too many ways to ignore an interruption based ad. Take the New York Times example. If I have the option, I'm going to shut the window. If I have to cycle through the ad to get to the content, I'm going to have another window open so I can do something else while it's running. Circumvention software will inevitably appear, and it is relatively hard to make ad circumvention illegal.
And even if it does work, I will be avoiding sites that have interruption based ads like the plague.
So. People are whining, "like, geez, so, what's the solution, Jath?"
Here's a thought: Make the payment structure content-independent. Meaning, your browser pays for the content, and then you pay the browser however you want. You want ads, you get ads - you have to sit through your twenty seconds before you load your content. You want to pay direct, you pay a monthly fee. The site determines the entry fee. If it exceeds your threshhold, your browser asks if you're willing to pay a premium price. You could have a monthly limit, a charge account, or a bank of funds to draw from. Niche-market content providers could put together package deals. This could solve my problem, which is that I might be willing to pay for the Times online but I don't want to have seventy different bills for my internet surfing. This way, I'd have one bill, the size of which would be essentially determined by me. I think most of us might be surprised at how little internet content might cost if we went directly to the content providers with the same deal as a banner ad company: a small per-page payment.
The browser might be enabled to block banner or interruption based ads for the paying customer. You could have a "tip jar" feature to toss a few coins to free sites you thought deserved a kudo or two. Of course, content providers could choose to advertise anyway - you could request a warning service to tell you who was going to enforce banners or interruptions regardless.
It wouldn't have to work with every site, for those choosing not to opt into the system, you would simply get a little message that you were outside the toll zone, so you get what you get. The service could double up as a micropayment system for any kind of limited license software. It's generally recognized that the problem of making small payments on the internet is interfering with the potential to unleash the power of digital duplication and transfer of data: this kills two birds with one stone.
Problems:
Paying for content that turns out to suck
Dealing with all the transitional content (already has ads, doesn't want to sign up)
Too many interruptions for service options?
Still, I think it's an interesting idea worth exploring. As the devices for viewing all kinds of content (Digital teevee recorders, computers, illegally hacked DVD players) make it easier and easier to avoid that "word from our sponsors," maybe we need to start seriously looking for alternatives to sponsorship, at least under the current model. Content providers will ultimately sell their product to anyone who pays. Either we address this issue directly or the taco and truck flacks of this world are going to force a solution down our throats. With teevee it could well mean that product placement becomes god - and programs become little more than glorified commercials (Survivor, anyone?). On the internet, who knows? in ten years there could be nothing but free but little and weird content and horrific corporate pablum.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll definitely grant you that gel electrophoresis is not a useless or obsolete technology at all. I think characterizing it as dated and limited is still accurate. But I stand by my original point, that it does not represent, as the article seems to imply, that leading edge biotechnology is leaking into the hands of the average inventor. I don't think this is the case.
Of course, any statement on what the world is going to be like in 50 years is purest speculation. This story, however, is even pushing that characterization a bit, as it contains several exceptionally questionable assumptions.
Foremost is the idea that people will soon be effortlessly tinkering with genetic modification in their garages in the near future. The evidence of the availablity of home-made DNA sequencing techniques like gel electrophoresis is cited. This is a very dated and limited technology, available as a kit to any high-school biology teacher well over a decade ago. It is an incredible far cry from the kind of DNA analysis on a chip that is in current play in the research sets. The question is, are the powerful corporations who are staking their existence on capitalizing on genetic information going to quietly watch this kind of technology get domesticated, or are they going to fiercely lobby to keep access restricted to the government and corporate level, most likely argument that the dangers of making genetic modification avvailable at the consumer level are simply too great because of the potential for use in terrorism (i.e. biological warfare).
If that's a bit too conspiracy for you, consider the fact that the corporations are far ahead of the curve in the development and posession of these patented technologies. What are they doing with this power? Why, they're deducing functional bits of DNA... and patenting them as fast as they possibly can, usually with some pretty spurious uses attached to justify what is essentially gene-squatting. An Open Source model in genetics is well into the process destroyed by an ignorant, corrupt and complacent government and the fast actions of dozens of greedy corporate giants and hungry start-ups.
This is to say nothing of the incredibly optimistic timeline and assumptions this article makes about how effective "hacking" biology for useful industrial processes is going to be.
My favorite part is the examples given of garage technologies- automobiles and computers. Ah yes... It sure is great living in this capitalistic paradise where cars and computers are being innovated by thousands of inventors using a non-proprietary, open intellectual property model. Think of the horror of living in a world where a handful of corporate monoliths produced the vast majority of vehicles and microprocessors, enforcing proprietary ownership of their technologies through international patent laws!
As much as I'm loathe to affirm a person who's this rude, and an anonymous coward to boot, this is a good point - I was being a devil's advocate, I confess, in suggesting there were no ethical issues. Although this is a fairly distinct track, to my mind, from engineering the genome in the human germ cell that most anti- comments seem to be alluding to, (the main thrust of my comment) the fact remains that this is a potentially inheritable modification to the human germ cell - and that is a caution. One thing this does have in common with genetic engineering is the rather blithe assumption that it will not have any long term impact. I'm not sufficiently informed to say whether it seems likely or not that transplanted mitochondria would result in any serious side effects...
Nobody is sure yet of the impact of using the force to sell tacos.
I like the idea of open source but wonder how reliable the various open license models are. I'm concerned someone could release a program with an open license, then change their mind about its value, and start legally pursuing end users with the claim they never intended to release the program freely. Alternatively, an open license statement could get slapped on proprietary software in an attempt to avoid end-user liability for piracy. Are open source licenses legally robust enough to withstand these kinds of potential misuses?
On a serious note, it's good to see someone on slashdot with more biological savvy than me, considering I'm just a chemist...
This has nothing to do with human DNA as in the genome, the double helix we all think of. This is our main source of genetic information and defines the majority of our genetic characteristics.
Mitochondria are organelles (subcellular organisms) which are necessary for our cells to produce energy. Without them we would die. Mitochondria are stand-alone units in our cells. Our cells' DNA cannot produce mitochodria. When we are conceived, there are mitochondria in our mother's egg cell. When the zygote divides, the mitochondria divide too. All the billions of mitochondria in our cells are descended from those which come from our mothers eggs.
Because of the mitochodria's relatively autonomous existence and reproduction, many scientists believe they are actually a seperate life form (something similar to a bacteria, for example) which "moved in" to our cells, creating a symbiotic relationship and resulting in the basis for cellular life on earth.
It appears to me that what these scientists have done is take genetically unaltered, presumably healthy mitochondria out of an individual's cell and implanted them into the egg cell of a mother who's mitochondria are presumably defective. This is not, to my mind, genetic modification, although the resulting children do have some genetic material in their cells that their mothers don't have.
What's causing the ruckus is these are the first children born with modified "germ" cells (i.e. sperm or egg). The changes should change every cell in the body - if succesful they will all contain the healthy donor mitochondria. Ethically I don't see the issue - You can put another person's heart in someone's chest, but not an organelle in an egg? Mitochondria are probably alien to our cells anyway, so to me the ethics of this is a pretty grey area. Anyway, it's a long long way from Gattaca in anything but abstract conception.
Actually, man, that sounds like it kinda sux
I personally live AT home.
j/k!
I would guess a lot of people are in the same boat as me - I work for a non-profit and I think I bring a lot of value to the organization. At a previous non-profit job I let myself get ground down for "the cause," working 50-60 hour weeks for a relatively small paycheck. I laid down the law right up front at my current position - I was not going to burn out on the long hours, considering the pay cut I was taking for working in the non-profit world. Now I work 40-43 hours a week, every week, and haven't worked a weekend in 2 years. It's a reasonable exchange for me.
Riddle me this, Batman: If only a commercial model can create innovative software, and if innovation drives the software industry, then how is there a problem? If Open Source software cannot drive innovation, then it won't make any significant inroads, and commercial software won't be threatened.
Maybe what's really threatening the commercial software industry is a failure to grasp the nuances of LOGIC.
All the talk about technology reaching out to the truly poor is completely ludicrous. According to the FAQ this thing is gonna cost about 9000 rupees which is about $200 (USD). Of course this may seem pretty cheap to the average /.er but it is clearly FAR out of the grasp of the poorest people of the world, most of whom don't come close to earning that in a YEAR. If anything this is a computer for the "Third World" equivalent of the middle class.
I mean, sure, it's probably more than I'll earn in my entire lifetime (and doesn't THAT just put my 9-5 in a sickening perspective)but STILL. I know we're well out of the internet honeymoon where a million is just the office decorating fee, but I can't shake the feeling that IGN got an AWFUL deal and there's gotta be more to this whole thing than what I got out of the article.
I personally don't give a rat's ass in the end, but I can't believe that Sony couldn't or wouldn't beat this pony deal to get some exclusivity on the video game for one of the most sucessful S-F films ever made. Incidentally, to all the posts asking what the big f'in deal is, it's only 6 months - the totally restricted Internet capability is the big f'in deal, morons. Haven't you heard this is the future?
And one more thing. $20 ROYALTIES? Jesus, what's the retail gonna be on these games?! Those first 250,000 units better move fast 'cause I can't imagine Interplay is gonna be getting much out of them after that 20 buck pop.
The brief litany the reviewer provides of what's available on the web - sex, gambling, shopping - reveals no new arenas of obsessive/compulsive behavior. Of course, for people with problems in these arenas, the internet holds compelling benefits - most notably instant access, the perception of privacy/anonymity. There is nothing more unique about the internet, as regards these behaviors, than that.
So what exactly is the use or point of a book addressing these copiously documented and discussed topics in the particular context of the internet? None, as far as I can tell, except providing some shrink with a vehicle to cash in on his own lack of self-control and a newsy pop-culture topic. Here: read my book on obsessive internet behavior and save yourself 12 bucks: If your gaming/gambling/porno-pandering/chatting/ and/or shopping is interfering with your life and relationships, slow down or stop. If you can't stop, seek counselling. The end.
Any computer language is a highly specialized way of representing sequences of logic. The fact that these sequences can be read by a computer is irrelevant - functionally they are no different than a mathematical proof or a syllogism. They are a method of representing thought, and are hence expression. Even though you need mathematical expressions like E=MC(2) to make a nuclear bomb, and even though nearly everyone agrees that the ability of individuals to make nuclear bombs must be restricted, noone is arguing that we must therefore ban the expression E=MC(2) because it is just a functional bit of mathematical code and not "real" expression.
Come now, show some inventiveness!
-delivering a bio-warfare pathogenic payload
-smuggling contraband
-auto-paparazzi for island-owning recluses like Brando
-flying a small nuclear payload under enemy radar
We're human beings! We'll always find wonderful uses for any technological acheivement!
1) Our Republican-controlled Congress does see this as an abortion-related issue. Under their mandate from the religious right (an absolutely essential component of their political victories) they are obligated, as they cannot yet sucessfully ban abortion (due to the composition of the Supreme Court), to take a stance against any issue that seems to suggest that it is okay to utilize human embryos or fetuses for any other purpose than coming to term in a human uterus and being born. This is exactly the point of the Weldon quote you list. You're talking about destroying hundreds of botched embryos in the pursuit of a single "perfect" copy - that's too much like abortion for Republicans to support.
2) Although I think the oh-so-enlightened intellectuals who make Slashdot what it is overemphasize the religious angle on this, there is little question that many Christians will object to human cloning on "playing God" grounds. The Republican Christian Right core mentioned above would almost certainly fall into this category. Their view is that the only right way of creating another human being is for a married couple to have sex. There is plenty of disoute on the degree to which science can/should intervene. But supporting cloning is bound to get these people on a politician's bad side.
3) I for one think the issue of rights is a genuine and valid concern that justifies a moratorium on actually cloning human beings. These issues of cloning for "parts" or for research are sticky and there are a lot of shades of grey. I'm not an advocate of recriminalizing abortion but I admit I find the prospect of clone factories mass-producing fetuses to harvest undifferentiated cells and fetal organ cells unnerving and I'm not sure if I support it. THis brings up a huge ethical issue that's around the corner: most of the sci-fi applications of cloning would require an artificial womb, something we're still pretty far off from. But if we succeed in acheiving this technology, technically almost any embryo/fetus at any stage of development could be brought to term regardless of when it exits the womb (or if indeed it was ever in a womb). Pro-choicers don't care to talk about it much but the legality of abortion is silently but heavily invested in the fact that the aborted embryo/fetus is not viable outside the womb (this enforces the belief that the embryo/fetus is a part of the pregnant woman's body, not an autonomous being, and consequently making abortion illegal violates her civil right to control her own body). The further we push the viability of premature births and artificial gestation, the closer we come to a big can of worms. Not allowing cloning, which simply maintains the status-quo and so is much smaller and less wormy, is just a safer political stance. Sorry this took a while but I think it's a pretty fair picture of what's going on.
A lot of the protest here downplays the fact that there are serious ethical issues involved with the "whimsical" (but not outside the realm of reality) applications that CmdrTaco mentions. And trying to gloss these issues is what's going to get this kind of legislation passed.
This being said - get real. There has not been a single day (I said not one, zero, nada, not one sinlge solitary day) since commerce was invented that human beings have not been traded as commodities (we call it slavery in these parts). There are people being sold as slaves right now. Nothing about cloning is going to change this ethical situation in the world, except to possibly provide a new justification for exploitation ("ahh, he's just a damn clone anyway").
On the other hand, cloning could become totally legal and commonplace and CmdrTaco still couldn't afford to keep a brainless body on life support for several decades on the off chance he ends up needing an organ transplant. Only the ultrawealthy will benefit from any of these types of uses. We may all benefit from tissue cloning but that isn't really procribed by this sort of legislation.
The Princeton research group's FAQ reads like a textbook on why these SDMI yahoos are hosed. They don't really understand what they need to achieve and they're unwilling to expose their work to a real challenge that will measure its potential effectiveness in the real world. Furthermore, if they treat scientists with this kind of contempt, it will eventually become common practice to hand a copy of any disputed/DMCA attacked paper under the table to the free information advocates, people who's lives revolve around making this kind of information available. Let them release weak protection with established divversion techniques if that's what they really want. The sooner they fall off the face of the earth.
If you look at the language of this "license" (I really question its legal status, particularly whether you could legally enforce the terms of this license under any real-world circumstances) it is not claiming to supercede any existing copyright protection. It is rather a voluntary waiving of certain copyright protections that an author can selectively apply to his or her own works. While the EFF holds a philosophical belief that it is of benefit to society to reduce or remove restrictions on the interchange of music, they do not advocate the violation of existing laws.
An attempt to use this as a way of contravening existing copyrights would fail anyway - recent cases like Napster have demonstrated that in the eyes of the law anyone providing a service of duplicating/exchanging digital information carries the burden of insuring that they are not contributing to piracy.
So while I disagree with your assessment of the intention behind this, I think that it ends up being basically worthless, partly because of that potential for misuse. Anyway, its redundant and unnecessary - people have been selectively modifying their copyrights forever with nothing more than a brief statement to the effect that others are free to duplicate and make use of the information, with whatever restrictions.
Okay, I'm definitley less impressed with the dotcom meltdown now. Only seventy five thousand jobs in a year and a third? The way it gets talked about I would have expected at least a few hundred thousand.
For one thing, the power of these computer programs draw from generations of human experience with chess. Chess is one of the most studied, commented upon and recorded strategy games in existence. Show me a computer that learns from just the basic rules to play at the grnad master level and I'll really be impressed.
More to the point, playing chess isn't that impressive of an activity as games go. Certainly it is traditionally associatd with intelligence, and there is a particular kind of savant-like talent behind the grand master types. But in the end the number of potential moves in a given situation are rather limited and to a large degree the success of a chess program falls to the brute force of calculating potential moves ahead. Computer opponents have demonstrated significantly less impressive performance when playing less rigidly structured games such as Go or Backgammon.
And any idiot can see thay are attacking one small, ambiguous component of this complicated tangle of culpability simply because they gots the money. The families pushing these lawsuits should be ashamed of themselves for their naked attempt to capitalize on a personal tragedy.
The war on drugs, which has been operating under federal control for over seventy years and has been named a war for close to forty, is a serious problem. It has resulted in the strongest, most organized criminal conspiracies the world has ever known, it has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of completely innocent people (with what the mainstream media seems bent on erroneously referring to as a "plan crash" being the latest example), it has fostered massive corruption in political, civil and military forces worldwide, costs billions annually, pours billions of dollars into corrupt governments and into the pockets of the most vicious, amoral criminals on the planet, promotes a massive, global, illegal small-arms black market, and as its primary effect has created a world where there is a higher per-capita incidence of drug abuse than when powerful stimulants and opieates were available at the retail level essentially without control, and where drugs are in general cheaper, purer, and more available than ever before.
The answers to this problem are available for the asking but they are very difficult and politically loaded. They involve attacking the roots of drug dependency, such as poverty and depression. They involve making public funding available for treatment, under the understanding that in the final analysis this will be more cost-effective than punitive expenditures. They involve allowing doctors to prescribe drugs at maintenance doses for addicts who are unwilling or unable to quit cold turkey. And yes, they involve the selective legalization of drugs, especially drugs such as marijuana, for which the social and literal costs of prohibition so clearly exceed the costs of use.
Like many similar issues a handful of self-serving, self-righteous and bigoted hypocrites (plenty of uppers and tranqs in the medicine cabinets of congress, rest assured) are steering America down an unsustainable path in the war on drugs. The majority of people know that the war on drugs is a failure but they fail to vote for reform in this issue. One reason why is the poorly articulated and badly represented forces on the anti-prohibition movement. Do us all a favor and just keep it shut: you're only making it harder for people doing real work to reform drug laws.
Aw, but all this serious shit is just too boring to bother thinking about, ain't it? Now if you actually came out with a beta version of the game, that would be funny. I always though Superfly would make a great game - gunplay, car chases, kung-fu... and of course the "Superfly" theme song (Pusher Man). Workin' jive jobs for chump change, day after day...
But there is another interesting point in what you say. People like to surf the net, and it doesn't make sense to have to pay to see something you haven't decided is worth a penny or two. Perhaps institute a policy that "the first one is free?". And if you don't feel you should have to pay for ANY content online? No problem, man, it could be set up so that when you're surfing, it was like that stuff never existed.
Someone has to pay for content, of course. You can visit my site for free, with no more advertising than a line of text on the bottom giving a prop to the friend who hosts me. Then again, the content on my site hasn't changed for 3 months and arguably contains nothing but the semicoherent ravings of a lunatic.
So, you want games and frolics and pretty pictures that move and pretend to love you. So let's talk banner ads:
1. The article is right. Banner ads suck and everybody knows it. I pay heed to about one in a hundred if that. And as soon as I click away from that add, it's content is forgotten.
2. But an unstated problem is that a large percentage of banner advertisers are ill-conceived, cash-hemorrhaging dotcom fuckups, and who could tell if they could succeed even if they could get the internet to strap me down in a chair with Clockwork Orange eye-restraints and make me watch flash ads for hours on end?
3. And no doubt there's still plenty of room for the well-placed, well targetted banner ad (porn site ads on teaser pages, ferinstance, or Linux gear on /.)
So banner ads are probably not a thing of the past but let's get real: they can't pay for all the groovy content on the internet.
Now, let's talk interruption-based flash ads or whatever of the same ilk: it's not gonna work. The internet isn't like teeveee, you don't plop down in front of it to go passive for three hours. It's active, and there are just too many ways to ignore an interruption based ad. Take the New York Times example. If I have the option, I'm going to shut the window. If I have to cycle through the ad to get to the content, I'm going to have another window open so I can do something else while it's running. Circumvention software will inevitably appear, and it is relatively hard to make ad circumvention illegal.
And even if it does work, I will be avoiding sites that have interruption based ads like the plague.
So. People are whining, "like, geez, so, what's the solution, Jath?"
Here's a thought: Make the payment structure content-independent. Meaning, your browser pays for the content, and then you pay the browser however you want. You want ads, you get ads - you have to sit through your twenty seconds before you load your content. You want to pay direct, you pay a monthly fee. The site determines the entry fee. If it exceeds your threshhold, your browser asks if you're willing to pay a premium price. You could have a monthly limit, a charge account, or a bank of funds to draw from. Niche-market content providers could put together package deals. This could solve my problem, which is that I might be willing to pay for the Times online but I don't want to have seventy different bills for my internet surfing. This way, I'd have one bill, the size of which would be essentially determined by me. I think most of us might be surprised at how little internet content might cost if we went directly to the content providers with the same deal as a banner ad company: a small per-page payment.
The browser might be enabled to block banner or interruption based ads for the paying customer. You could have a "tip jar" feature to toss a few coins to free sites you thought deserved a kudo or two. Of course, content providers could choose to advertise anyway - you could request a warning service to tell you who was going to enforce banners or interruptions regardless.
It wouldn't have to work with every site, for those choosing not to opt into the system, you would simply get a little message that you were outside the toll zone, so you get what you get. The service could double up as a micropayment system for any kind of limited license software. It's generally recognized that the problem of making small payments on the internet is interfering with the potential to unleash the power of digital duplication and transfer of data: this kills two birds with one stone.
Problems:
Paying for content that turns out to suck
Dealing with all the transitional content (already has ads, doesn't want to sign up)
Too many interruptions for service options?
Still, I think it's an interesting idea worth exploring. As the devices for viewing all kinds of content (Digital teevee recorders, computers, illegally hacked DVD players) make it easier and easier to avoid that "word from our sponsors," maybe we need to start seriously looking for alternatives to sponsorship, at least under the current model. Content providers will ultimately sell their product to anyone who pays. Either we address this issue directly or the taco and truck flacks of this world are going to force a solution down our throats. With teevee it could well mean that product placement becomes god - and programs become little more than glorified commercials (Survivor, anyone?). On the internet, who knows? in ten years there could be nothing but free but little and weird content and horrific corporate pablum.