Unfortunately, because the results of many pathogen sequencing projects, the human genome and various crops are open source, your favourite baddie is just as able to play around with the data as your favourite goodie. Working out what bad things can be done is a good idea if it gives you a handle on how to deal with the very real prospect of bioengineered weapons. I would agree if all military everywhere in the world were going to stay away from this kind of research, but I think that is a smidgen unlikely.
There's a more pernicious problem: biotech needs a combination of boring, run of the mill CS that does a difficult job reliably and efficiently, as well as novel techniques and algorithms. The trouble is the first type of thing does not appeal to CS researchers, and the second doesn't appeal to software developers (often). Generally, academic research is more interesting than building guis, WebApps and sticking together relational databases, so academics are prepared to get paid less. Funding bodies are reluctant to admit this, so they won't pay the money required to get the software developers everybody needs to put together reliable platforms, and the CS researchers don't want to spend their time doing it (and probably don't have the practical experience either).
The end result is lots of apps that are interesting from a CS point of view but completely useless to the people that paid for it. Or alternatively, dreadful from a CS perspective, but actually useful to the biologists that wrote them.
This is, no doubt, a general problem in the experimental sciences, which increasingly rely on information technology for data analysis and programming.
It's a great system, but I don't much like being a nomad.
I don't get the motivation behind hot-desking - it seems a really good way of demoralisng your entire workforce for very little gain. We're naturally territorial - as are most living things. The first thing anybody ever does is to define a bit of sapce in the world as their own by putting up pictures, unpacking their favourite coffee cup/stuffed lizard/electric pencil sharpner. Living in hotel rooms is miserable (even if your significant other is there too) simply because it's impersonal and dehuminising. Hot-desking is, for this reason alone, a really bad idea.
Interesting you're at Sun - another thing that didn't quite work out was the diskless computer. I wonder if part of this is for the same reason - I know you get your filestore, desktop and so on, but its still not your computer with its own local drive, humming power-supply fan, and (goddam it), smell.
Do these ethernet installed trains play streaming audio - that way you could hear mobile phones ringing continuously, cries of 'I'm on the train', announcements describing in tortuous detail the entire contents of the buffet carriage, and the sounds of muffled screams as customers (who were quite happy being referred to merely as passengers) have their lives interrupted once again with an annoucement listing every station the train has ever been through. If you put your head in the right place you can even get all of this with astounding doppler-shift as the train careers past you at a scale 30mph on the verge of shattering another broken rail as it rounds that bend... What excitement.
Errm yes, but that should be an implementation note in the documentation.
I agree that there is NO SUCH THING as a completely black box - I have spent a fair amount of time wading around, for example, in the Swing source. Most of the time though, that is either to learn how to do things better, or because some of the documentation is crap.
The trouble with your sort example, is that, as the API supplier I am not bound to keep the same implementation. Your example's not a bad one because it doesn't really break encapsulation too much. It's the kind of hacks that expose underlying data-types (in unsafe languages such as C) and do horrible things with an ADT's innards. That (which I know you weren't advocating) is not a good idea...
"knowing the parts list doesn't tell you how to put a thing together together." Ahh, a decidedly non-Newtonian, non-mechanistic world view, in that the whole is much more than the sum of its parts. Twaddle. If I dump a very large sack at your feet and say 'here's an Volkswagen Golf' you've got a hell of a job working out what screws go where, what order to put the bits together in, and so on. That's just a plain fact: it has nothing to do with whether you have a mechanistic world view or not.
The phrase 'the whole is greater than the sum of the parts' means nothing until you define whole, greater and sum. It's a nice soundbite, (or soundbyte?), but it seems a silly thing to get involved in arguing about because most people don't actually know exactly what they mean when they say it.
The problem is in the arrows. Lots of other stuff happens. so it's more like:
gene-> lots of different mRNA -> even more different proteins -> more different proteins
...for a start. Secondly, one protein != one function.
Thirdly, knowing the parts list doesn't tell you how to put a thing together together.
Fourthly, even if 30,000 genes means 30,000 proteins, this gives a potential 450,000,000 pair wise interactions. But interactions aren't necessarily pairwise.
Fifthly, genes interact with proteins that interact with small molecules that interact with other stimuli.
Sixthly, Different genes do different things at different times.
4)... (b) see how it actually works underneath, to improve your understanding of the product so you can use it more effectively.
Interesting comment - IMHO it doesn't square well with the idea of encapsulation. I agree that looking at someone else's source code is informative, educational and interesting, but is it really necessary to use their app properly? Are you describing a symptom of poor documentation, or something that is deeper and more philosphical?
According to the register, Alcatel will be releasing Linux USB drivers for its ASDL modem in the next month or so...Open source etc...
It will be here.
I remember seeing an article about nano-motors that used vaporised water to move a piston that made a shaft rotate. A friend pointed out it was a steam engine. Just very small.
Now people are talking about fibre optic delay lines as storage devices. Some of the earliest computers stored data as sound waves in mercury and
nickel wires. A speaker injected sound in one end, it was picked up my a microphone at the other, re-shaped and squirted back in.
I remember seeing an article about nano-motors that used vaporised water to move a piston that made a shaft rotate. A friend pointed out it was a steam engine. Just very small.
Now people are talking about fibre optic delay lines as storage devices. Some of the earliest computers stored data as sound waves in mercury and
nickel wires. A speaker injected sound in one end, it was picked up my a microphone at the other, re-shaped and squirted back in.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, because the results of many pathogen sequencing projects, the human genome and various crops are open source, your favourite baddie is just as able to play around with the data as your favourite goodie. Working out what bad things can be done is a good idea if it gives you a handle on how to deal with the very real prospect of bioengineered weapons. I would agree if all military everywhere in the world were going to stay away from this kind of research, but I think that is a smidgen unlikely.
Am I the only one that thinks that Palm Pilot sound like a rude epithet?
especially because in space, no one can hear your screen...
There's a more pernicious problem: biotech needs a combination of boring, run of the mill CS that does a difficult job reliably and efficiently, as well as novel techniques and algorithms. The trouble is the first type of thing does not appeal to CS researchers, and the second doesn't appeal to software developers (often). Generally, academic research is more interesting than building guis, WebApps and sticking together relational databases, so academics are prepared to get paid less. Funding bodies are reluctant to admit this, so they won't pay the money required to get the software developers everybody needs to put together reliable platforms, and the CS researchers don't want to spend their time doing it (and probably don't have the practical experience either).
The end result is lots of apps that are interesting from a CS point of view but completely useless to the people that paid for it. Or alternatively, dreadful from a CS perspective, but actually useful to the biologists that wrote them.
This is, no doubt, a general problem in the experimental sciences, which increasingly rely on information technology for data analysis and programming.
so how many Slashdotters have voted for 'Binary tree', or 'B-tree' so far?
It's a great system, but I don't much like being a nomad.
I don't get the motivation behind hot-desking - it seems a really good way of demoralisng your entire workforce for very little gain. We're naturally territorial - as are most living things. The first thing anybody ever does is to define a bit of sapce in the world as their own by putting up pictures, unpacking their favourite coffee cup/stuffed lizard/electric pencil sharpner. Living in hotel rooms is miserable (even if your significant other is there too) simply because it's impersonal and dehuminising. Hot-desking is, for this reason alone, a really bad idea.
Interesting you're at Sun - another thing that didn't quite work out was the diskless computer. I wonder if part of this is for the same reason - I know you get your filestore, desktop and so on, but its still not your computer with its own local drive, humming power-supply fan, and (goddam it), smell.
Do you try to book the same cuboid every day?
... so how does it manage that then? I would have thought an ultrasonic 'ping' will just give you a point, not a direction...
I wonder how much of this is inspired by cheap science fiction programs - all the user interfaces in Space 1999 were made out of paper too...
There's no such place as Surrey in America.
That's an intersting perception -waht sort of application are you thinking of?
...the British version runs Windows 98. Means that the trains keep crashing, you see...
Do these ethernet installed trains play streaming audio - that way you could hear mobile phones ringing continuously, cries of 'I'm on the train', announcements describing in tortuous detail the entire contents of the buffet carriage, and the sounds of muffled screams as customers (who were quite happy being referred to merely as passengers) have their lives interrupted once again with an annoucement listing every station the train has ever been through. If you put your head in the right place you can even get all of this with astounding doppler-shift as the train careers past you at a scale 30mph on the verge of shattering another broken rail as it rounds that bend... What excitement.
My I suggest a nice cup of soothing camomile tea - keeps you karma than coffee, you know.
I hope they can handle recursion or the site won't be complete.
I hope they can handle recursion or the site won't be complete.
...they just descend into a state of increasing disorder.
It's a good idea to start uot looking for giant neutrinos because they're much easier to spot than ordinary ones.
Errm yes, but that should be an implementation note in the documentation.
I agree that there is NO SUCH THING as a completely black box - I have spent a fair amount of time wading around, for example, in the Swing source. Most of the time though, that is either to learn how to do things better, or because some of the documentation is crap.
The trouble with your sort example, is that, as the API supplier I am not bound to keep the same implementation. Your example's not a bad one because it doesn't really break encapsulation too much. It's the kind of hacks that expose underlying data-types (in unsafe languages such as C) and do horrible things with an ADT's innards. That (which I know you weren't advocating) is not a good idea...
"knowing the parts list doesn't tell you how to put a thing together together." Ahh, a decidedly non-Newtonian, non-mechanistic world view, in that the whole is much more than the sum of its parts.
Twaddle. If I dump a very large sack at your feet and say 'here's an Volkswagen Golf' you've got a hell of a job working out what screws go where, what order to put the bits together in, and so on. That's just a plain fact: it has nothing to do with whether you have a mechanistic world view or not.
The phrase 'the whole is greater than the sum of the parts' means nothing until you define whole, greater and sum. It's a nice soundbite, (or soundbyte?), but it seems a silly thing to get involved in arguing about because most people don't actually know exactly what they mean when they say it.
Right: First dogma of biochemistry:
gene -> mRNA -> protein
The problem is in the arrows. Lots of other stuff happens. so it's more like:
gene-> lots of different mRNA -> even more different proteins -> more different proteins
...for a start. Secondly, one protein != one function.
Thirdly, knowing the parts list doesn't tell you how to put a thing together together.
Fourthly, even if 30,000 genes means 30,000 proteins, this gives a potential 450,000,000 pair wise interactions. But interactions aren't necessarily pairwise.
Fifthly, genes interact with proteins that interact with small molecules that interact with other stimuli.
Sixthly, Different genes do different things at different times.
So it's all quite hard really...
4) ... (b) see how it actually works underneath, to improve your understanding of the product so you can use it more effectively.
Interesting comment - IMHO it doesn't square well with the idea of encapsulation. I agree that looking at someone else's source code is informative, educational and interesting, but is it really necessary to use their app properly? Are you describing a symptom of poor documentation, or something that is deeper and more philosphical?
Yup. I can't type - I'm going to join the BDA, the British Association of Dyslexics.
According to the register, Alcatel will be releasing Linux USB drivers for its ASDL modem in the next month or so...Open source etc...
It will be here.
Alright, I'm a fool. Can't even post to the right thread. Sorry.
I remember seeing an article about nano-motors that used vaporised water to move a piston that made a shaft rotate. A friend pointed out it was a steam engine. Just very small.
Now people are talking about fibre optic delay lines as storage devices. Some of the earliest computers stored data as sound waves in mercury and
nickel wires. A speaker injected sound in one end, it was picked up my a microphone at the other, re-shaped and squirted back in.
Same idea, different medium.
I remember seeing an article about nano-motors that used vaporised water to move a piston that made a shaft rotate. A friend pointed out it was a steam engine. Just very small.
Now people are talking about fibre optic delay lines as storage devices. Some of the earliest computers stored data as sound waves in mercury and
nickel wires. A speaker injected sound in one end, it was picked up my a microphone at the other, re-shaped and squirted back in.
Same idea, different medium.