I agree with all your points... I can't remember if I intended to put a "not" in that sentence, but I didn't word it well.... I should have stated that the issue is the specific "type" of modification not the fact that genes are modified. In Monsanto's case, conveying resistance to an herbicide which they own all the IP and manufacturing base for. The issue is not modifying the genes, it's why, and to what purpose.
The university of Hawaii modified the genes of a Papaya to convey direct resistance to a disease (ringspot virus) that was threatening the entire species of crop on the island. That modification adds more value and has less chance of harm than the Monsanto modification. ( Side story... crazy eco-terrorists have destroyed Papaya crops in Hawaii due to their ignorance on the topic. )
I didn't mean a single committee in a literal sense. I was more implying an approval process for the release of genetic modifications. Similar to how the FDA has a drug approval process now. That said... the FDA process is currently not ideal and is ripe with corruption. Perhaps we can use the conversation on GMO approval to re-build both processes and begin to rein in some of the corrupt actors. No approval process will be perfect and exempt from corruption, but that's not a reason to not try. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
I don't "religiously believe" anything, being a scientist, atheist, and a skeptic... You have brought up an entirely different corporate overreach that goes beyond this single issue. Allowing corporations to legally protect genes ( and other designs ) as IP is a big detriment to innovation in general. This is true not only in the GMO space.
I do think that regulations are appropriate and somewhat effective. Like any common rule of civilization, those rules will be open to corruption and manipulation. I am not ignorant of that. I agree that liability for harm is also a tool that can be used to change corporate behaviour. However, that tool comes with its own disadvantages. Primarily, it is fundamentally reactive, and not proactive. Harm must be caused and suffering must occur at some scale before liability is great enough to prompt a change in behaviour.
One example of a simple yet effective change in Intellectual Property law that helps innovation is disallowing certain things from being patentable. In Europe, software patents are not allowed. Simple and effective. I believe we should not allow GMO sequences to be patentable. Simple, and transformative. I'm not saying it's a perfect solution, but it would stop Monsanto from being able to sue farmers. Instead they would have to actually provide value to farmers for them to buy and use their farming products.
The largest issue with GM crops right now is the modification itself. Its highly unlikely the gene that coveys resistance to âoeround-upâ is dangerous.... what is dangerous is dumping hundreds of tons of round-up herbicide on everything!!
We just need an approval committee for GM work. Story 1) âoeHi committee , we at Monsanto would like to release a GM crop that is resistant to an herbicide. Oh and by the way we have a patent on the herbicide too...
Story 2) âoeHi committee, we here at the university of Hawaii have created a GM papaya that conveys a direct resistance to a virus that is wiping out crops.â
Genetic Modification is a powerful tool. It can be used responsibly. We as a society need to regulate and ensure responsible use over dangerous corporate greed.
Polonium, the element used to poison a former KGB guy is a beta emitter, which famously was why it was so hard to detect originally.
That's not true. The KGB guy, Alexander Litvinenko, was poisoned with Polonium 210, which is a near pure alpha emitter with a small bit of gamma. He died from acute alpha radiation poisoning. The gamma is very detectable, you just have to know enough to look for it. After they figured that out they were able to accurately estimate the intake dosage from a gamma ray measurement.
Really? That is pretty petty. There is a bug here with posting from an iPhone on safari dealing with quotes. I did not know about it until I posted. I guess that makes all my other thoughts invalid..... harsh world.
This design seems like DRM for personal data. Which is fine for things I would never share, like a TODO list. As soon as you wish to share information the receivers need a way to decrypt it. Just like DRM is broken by design, since the purchaser needs to actually play the song, so will this.
I just donâ(TM)t think the protection of data Is the problem. Itâ(TM)s the motives of companies that provide ease of data creation, and consumption, that are the issue. For this to work, well funded, highly regulated non-profits would need to mange it, and create the interfaces. Maybe Iâ(TM)m an old cranky pessimist, but I donâ(TM)t see that happening.
The quoted and linked article with the original article explains it a bit.... Here is a summary... When we started making jet fighters we had lots and lots of crashes, but they weren't from mechanical issues, so that seemed like pilot error, but the pilots didn't really think they were doing anything wrong. The cockpit design they were using was from 1926 and based on un-adjustable controls with positioning calculated from the "average pilot". While the upper management at the military was arguing about the costs of redesigning the planes engineerings invented adjustable seats and controls and pilots stopped crashing so much.
This, this, this. A million times over. Humans are really bad at estimating real risk, are even worse at comprehending scale, and tend to fear the exotic or unknown. Nuclear power gets the triple whammy here.
Real Risk: The health/death risk of Nuclear power to the public is so vanishingly small it disappears on any graph you can create. There have been 9 or 10 deaths in the 60 odd years of civilian nuclear energy in the US. None by radiation. About half by electrocution ( they are electric plants... ) and the half by physical events, pressure explosions, heavy things falling.
Scale: 100 Nuclear power plants have produced about 20% of the entire US electric grid for the past 60 years. In contrast, 600 coal plants produce about 40% of our needs. On top of that each coal plant needs a constant supply of coal, and much more land to operate. The land use efficiency of Nuclear is much, much better. As far as the Nuclear waste argument, here again, failing at comprehending scale. The spent fuel rods consumed for the past 60 years of nuclear power would fit into a single house.
I would like to give some credit where credit is due, and where reasonable regulations apply. Airliners are extremely safe because of the NTSB doing amazing work, getting to the bottom of every major crash and then back feeding that information into actionable fixes. The same goes for the NRC. I am hugely pro-nuclear power, but also believe the NRC is an important part of that environment.
I had someone give me an iphone 4 last year where a child playing with the phone had accidentally deleted all the pictures. My task was to recover all the deleted pictures. It took me a few hours, mainly because I had never done anything with an iphone before. The process that worked invovled booting the phone with a different bootloader and breaking the encryption key. Most of the information and software to accomplish this can be found with a few minutes of searching.
Like they did before. All the professors told them it was a bad idea when the site was proposed. Someone should tell the people in charge of Yale that they have pretty smart professors. They would be more efficient and do a better job if they took their advice.
Students evaluate classes and professors in extremely bias ways. Usually based on well they did in the class. Class was too hard for some entitled rich teenager? I can see the review now... "This class sucks!" Do you remember college? Put yourself in the role of a professor. Would you really want your annual evaluation based on the thoughts of a bunch of immature emotional teenagers? The entire idea of using student evaluations is flawed. Sharing the data openly is just plain dumb.
There wouldn't be any criminal liability. The casualty would be classified as an industrial accident. The new sub department of the NTSB that handles automated cars would investigate the incident. The results would serve to change the protocols and make the self driving car industry safer. _IF_ an NTSB investigation shows gross negligence on behalf of the car manufacturer, that would open up the possibility for criminal charges against executives at the company.
As a side note. Do you think you would get criminally charged _today_ if you "accidentally" veered onto a side walk and ran over a couple of children?
The parent would be responsible for the actions of their minor children under their supervision. If the parent is not the owner of the insurance policy of the vehicle, the policy owner, or the insurance company itself, may attempt to recover damages from the parent.
Obviously each case is different, and lawyers will have some work. Your hypothetical situation is similar to the "brake shift interlock" issue that went through the courts a few years ago. Parents argued that it was unsafe to be able to shift a vehicle out of park without depressing the brake after several children were injured and caused damage by doing so. I believe the interlock is now a mandated safety device.
I think people are over complicating this to death. It doesn't matter how magic the technology is. Insurance is black, cold, flat risk assessment. Nothing more. Everything else is details, and the lawyers will _continue_ to make plenty of money on that whether we ride horses, or have automated flying cars.
The change will happen slowly, organically, over time. A self driving car will behave statistically as a very safe driver. Ownership of a self driving car should bestow upon you lower insurance rates. If the current insurance companies balk at the idea, the private market will take over and "self driving only" insurance companies will gladly take their place. Eventually, as more and more share of vehicles are self driving the size of the insurance industry will shrink significantly.
I see no reason to change the liability burden away from the "Driver". It may seem counter intuitive, but you are gaining economic advantage by using your self driving car. For that advantage, you accept the risks, and insure yourself against them. That said, operating a self driving car will/should carry significantly less risk and liability then driving yourself around does now.
That does not mean that the car makers are off the hook. Just like today, if a vehicle mechanically malfunctions in a way that the car maker is found responsible, the insurance company may attempt to subrogate the claim to them.
Maybe, but I think an ASCII art is quite a bit more difficult to break, even if directly targeted. There is enough font and size variation that you would have to get an image and then use OCR. That's a lot of extra work.
I recently started getting hundreds of spam signups a day on my site. So I installed a CAPTCHA to prevent that. I setup a standard image CAPTCHA with a plugin for the CMS. More then 80% of the spam sign ups just walked right through it. Then I changed the type of CAPTCHA to an ASCII art CAPTCHA. I haven't had a spam sign up since. The ASCII art CAPTCHA is also much easier to read then weird image CAPTCHAs.
You can use a credit card without a paypal account proper if you donate less then $500. So if you actually want a phone perk, you're going to need to create a paypal account. You can however just use the paypal account on top of your credit card, no need to move money into the paypal account or anything. It's pretty simple.
Extreme claims require extreme evidence. All available facts are not in your favor. The Concorde was canceled due to combination of economic and "age" problems. I can not find one citation "against" the Concorde for "ozone worries". Due to the high operational costs of the plane, and high fuel costs, the price of the ticket did not scale linearly with the Mach number. Even if it did, I don't think large numbers of passengers would be willing to pay more for the same flight. Would you pay $3000 dollars instead of $1500 to fly to France and back in 3.5 hours instead of 9 ? That's $270 for each hour saved.... I don't think a large percentage of the population would see that as a positive cost benefit. In reality the Concorde was more like $10,000 dollars instead of $1500 dollars.
How has competition NOT been allowed? There are multiple development efforts happening right now for supersonic transportation planes. It takes a HUGE investment to design and build an SST that can compete for economics ( even at the first class level. ) with newer super fuel efficient planes.
Option (b) is correct for nano-tech. The most promising "industrializable"(scalable) nano-tech I've seen in recent years is Rice University's recent breakthrough on wet-spun carbon fibers. That is a "true" invention. It will likely be in data cables within a few years.
I won't beat on you because I don't know exactly "how" you attempted to get a job in your field, or what your requirements were. Maybe you couldn't move very far or something. Let me continue my advice for others... and maybe, maybe you, if you're looking to start over again.
I will say this. Getting a job is a very _human_ endeavor. I find a lot of younger technology oriented people, especially in technology fields, want to land a job the same way they get everything else. Online. This can work for someone with all the right experience, and just the "right" resume. sure it can. However, if you want to beat that guy with your lesser resume, you walk in the front door. You network with current employees. ( Use online information to find them. ) Build rappor. You call HR, you ask if there are any short term contract type positions available so you can see if the company would be a good fit for you. If they say no, or, we don't do that, you say, "Oh, you should ask your technology managers if they could use a program like that. You get a lot of value for your money, and it almost eliminates bad full time hires."
If you are capable of software development, why the hell are you working a job with manual labor for $10 an hour? There are lots of software development jobs open out there. Go beat the pavement. Walk right in the front door with your resume dressed up. Make it happen. I'm not sure if this article is about "IT" or "Development", the media tends to confuse those things. However, if you are capable programmer, go make a living out of it.
Now, you might have a bit of learning curve to go from "coding" to getting the skills to be a good developer. However, you can find a place that will pay you less to start since you have no real world experience. Learn fast, and move up. It's not going to happen unless you try!
Just as an aside, "Plumber" hourly wages are a little different then an employee's hourly wage. It's like a car mechanic garage's "hourly rate". It's a business rate, out of that comes expenses before anyone gets paid. That said, they make a good living.
Not really. There are just a lot schools teaching a curriculum now that they call "CS", that isn't CS. I graduated in 2002 and my experience with college appears to be similar to yours.
When I'm filtering applicants. I first make sure their degree is from a place that actually teaches CS. Then I move on to experience if it's not an entry level position. An applicant isn't likely to make it past the interview if they don't have an outside interest in technology or programming. Even with the CS degree, I need people who never stop self teaching.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with all your points... I can't remember if I intended to put a "not" in that sentence, but I didn't word it well.... I should have stated that the issue is the specific "type" of modification not the fact that genes are modified. In Monsanto's case, conveying resistance to an herbicide which they own all the IP and manufacturing base for. The issue is not modifying the genes, it's why, and to what purpose.
The university of Hawaii modified the genes of a Papaya to convey direct resistance to a disease (ringspot virus) that was threatening the entire species of crop on the island. That modification adds more value and has less chance of harm than the Monsanto modification. ( Side story... crazy eco-terrorists have destroyed Papaya crops in Hawaii due to their ignorance on the topic. )
I didn't mean a single committee in a literal sense. I was more implying an approval process for the release of genetic modifications. Similar to how the FDA has a drug approval process now. That said... the FDA process is currently not ideal and is ripe with corruption. Perhaps we can use the conversation on GMO approval to re-build both processes and begin to rein in some of the corrupt actors. No approval process will be perfect and exempt from corruption, but that's not a reason to not try. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
I don't "religiously believe" anything, being a scientist, atheist, and a skeptic... You have brought up an entirely different corporate overreach that goes beyond this single issue. Allowing corporations to legally protect genes ( and other designs ) as IP is a big detriment to innovation in general. This is true not only in the GMO space.
I do think that regulations are appropriate and somewhat effective. Like any common rule of civilization, those rules will be open to corruption and manipulation. I am not ignorant of that. I agree that liability for harm is also a tool that can be used to change corporate behaviour. However, that tool comes with its own disadvantages. Primarily, it is fundamentally reactive, and not proactive. Harm must be caused and suffering must occur at some scale before liability is great enough to prompt a change in behaviour.
One example of a simple yet effective change in Intellectual Property law that helps innovation is disallowing certain things from being patentable. In Europe, software patents are not allowed. Simple and effective. I believe we should not allow GMO sequences to be patentable. Simple, and transformative. I'm not saying it's a perfect solution, but it would stop Monsanto from being able to sue farmers. Instead they would have to actually provide value to farmers for them to buy and use their farming products.
The largest issue with GM crops right now is the modification itself. Its highly unlikely the gene that coveys resistance to âoeround-upâ is dangerous.... what is dangerous is dumping hundreds of tons of round-up herbicide on everything!!
We just need an approval committee for GM work.
Story 1)
âoeHi committee , we at Monsanto would like to release a GM crop that is resistant to an herbicide. Oh and by the way we have a patent on the herbicide too...
Story 2)
âoeHi committee, we here at the university of Hawaii have created a GM papaya that conveys a direct resistance to a virus that is wiping out crops.â
Genetic Modification is a powerful tool. It can be used responsibly. We as a society need to regulate and ensure responsible use over dangerous corporate greed.
Polonium, the element used to poison a former KGB guy is a beta emitter, which famously was why it was so hard to detect originally.
That's not true. The KGB guy, Alexander Litvinenko, was poisoned with Polonium 210, which is a near pure alpha emitter with a small bit of gamma. He died from acute alpha radiation poisoning. The gamma is very detectable, you just have to know enough to look for it. After they figured that out they were able to accurately estimate the intake dosage from a gamma ray measurement.
Really? That is pretty petty. There is a bug here with posting from an iPhone on safari dealing with quotes. I did not know about it until I posted. I guess that makes all my other thoughts invalid..... harsh world.
This design seems like DRM for personal data. Which is fine for things I would never share, like a TODO list. As soon as you wish to share information the receivers need a way to decrypt it. Just like DRM is broken by design, since the purchaser needs to actually play the song, so will this.
I just donâ(TM)t think the protection of data Is the problem. Itâ(TM)s the motives of companies that provide ease of data creation, and consumption, that are the issue. For this to work, well funded, highly regulated non-profits would need to mange it, and create the interfaces. Maybe Iâ(TM)m an old cranky pessimist, but I donâ(TM)t see that happening.
If you aren't reporting this fraud. You are part of the problem.
https://oig.ssa.gov/report-fraud-waste-or-abuse/fraud-waste-and-abuse
The quoted and linked article with the original article explains it a bit.... Here is a summary... When we started making jet fighters we had lots and lots of crashes, but they weren't from mechanical issues, so that seemed like pilot error, but the pilots didn't really think they were doing anything wrong. The cockpit design they were using was from 1926 and based on un-adjustable controls with positioning calculated from the "average pilot". While the upper management at the military was arguing about the costs of redesigning the planes engineerings invented adjustable seats and controls and pilots stopped crashing so much.
This, this, this. A million times over. Humans are really bad at estimating real risk, are even worse at comprehending scale, and tend to fear the exotic or unknown. Nuclear power gets the triple whammy here.
Real Risk: The health/death risk of Nuclear power to the public is so vanishingly small it disappears on any graph you can create. There have been 9 or 10 deaths in the 60 odd years of civilian nuclear energy in the US. None by radiation. About half by electrocution ( they are electric plants... ) and the half by physical events, pressure explosions, heavy things falling.
Scale: 100 Nuclear power plants have produced about 20% of the entire US electric grid for the past 60 years. In contrast, 600 coal plants produce about 40% of our needs. On top of that each coal plant needs a constant supply of coal, and much more land to operate. The land use efficiency of Nuclear is much, much better. As far as the Nuclear waste argument, here again, failing at comprehending scale. The spent fuel rods consumed for the past 60 years of nuclear power would fit into a single house.
I would like to give some credit where credit is due, and where reasonable regulations apply. Airliners are extremely safe because of the NTSB doing amazing work, getting to the bottom of every major crash and then back feeding that information into actionable fixes. The same goes for the NRC. I am hugely pro-nuclear power, but also believe the NRC is an important part of that environment.
I had someone give me an iphone 4 last year where a child playing with the phone had accidentally deleted all the pictures. My task was to recover all the deleted pictures. It took me a few hours, mainly because I had never done anything with an iphone before. The process that worked invovled booting the phone with a different bootloader and breaking the encryption key. Most of the information and software to accomplish this can be found with a few minutes of searching.
Society needs a punching bag. Preferably an enormous, lard filled, squishy one.
Like they did before. All the professors told them it was a bad idea when the site was proposed. Someone should tell the people in charge of Yale that they have pretty smart professors. They would be more efficient and do a better job if they took their advice.
Students evaluate classes and professors in extremely bias ways. Usually based on well they did in the class. Class was too hard for some entitled rich teenager? I can see the review now... "This class sucks!" Do you remember college? Put yourself in the role of a professor. Would you really want your annual evaluation based on the thoughts of a bunch of immature emotional teenagers? The entire idea of using student evaluations is flawed. Sharing the data openly is just plain dumb.
There wouldn't be any criminal liability. The casualty would be classified as an industrial accident. The new sub department of the NTSB that handles automated cars would investigate the incident. The results would serve to change the protocols and make the self driving car industry safer. _IF_ an NTSB investigation shows gross negligence on behalf of the car manufacturer, that would open up the possibility for criminal charges against executives at the company.
As a side note. Do you think you would get criminally charged _today_ if you "accidentally" veered onto a side walk and ran over a couple of children?
The parent would be responsible for the actions of their minor children under their supervision. If the parent is not the owner of the insurance policy of the vehicle, the policy owner, or the insurance company itself, may attempt to recover damages from the parent.
Obviously each case is different, and lawyers will have some work. Your hypothetical situation is similar to the "brake shift interlock" issue that went through the courts a few years ago. Parents argued that it was unsafe to be able to shift a vehicle out of park without depressing the brake after several children were injured and caused damage by doing so. I believe the interlock is now a mandated safety device.
I think people are over complicating this to death. It doesn't matter how magic the technology is. Insurance is black, cold, flat risk assessment. Nothing more. Everything else is details, and the lawyers will _continue_ to make plenty of money on that whether we ride horses, or have automated flying cars.
The change will happen slowly, organically, over time. A self driving car will behave statistically as a very safe driver. Ownership of a self driving car should bestow upon you lower insurance rates. If the current insurance companies balk at the idea, the private market will take over and "self driving only" insurance companies will gladly take their place. Eventually, as more and more share of vehicles are self driving the size of the insurance industry will shrink significantly.
I see no reason to change the liability burden away from the "Driver". It may seem counter intuitive, but you are gaining economic advantage by using your self driving car. For that advantage, you accept the risks, and insure yourself against them. That said, operating a self driving car will/should carry significantly less risk and liability then driving yourself around does now.
That does not mean that the car makers are off the hook. Just like today, if a vehicle mechanically malfunctions in a way that the car maker is found responsible, the insurance company may attempt to subrogate the claim to them.
Your sudden wheat allergy is probably a nocebo effect....
Maybe, but I think an ASCII art is quite a bit more difficult to break, even if directly targeted. There is enough font and size variation that you would have to get an image and then use OCR. That's a lot of extra work.
I recently started getting hundreds of spam signups a day on my site. So I installed a CAPTCHA to prevent that. I setup a standard image CAPTCHA with a plugin for the CMS. More then 80% of the spam sign ups just walked right through it. Then I changed the type of CAPTCHA to an ASCII art CAPTCHA. I haven't had a spam sign up since. The ASCII art CAPTCHA is also much easier to read then weird image CAPTCHAs.
You can use a credit card without a paypal account proper if you donate less then $500. So if you actually want a phone perk, you're going to need to create a paypal account. You can however just use the paypal account on top of your credit card, no need to move money into the paypal account or anything. It's pretty simple.
http://support.indiegogo.com/entries/20501786-How-to-Contribute-via-PayPal-without-a-PayPal-Account
Extreme claims require extreme evidence. All available facts are not in your favor. The Concorde was canceled due to combination of economic and "age" problems. I can not find one citation "against" the Concorde for "ozone worries". Due to the high operational costs of the plane, and high fuel costs, the price of the ticket did not scale linearly with the Mach number. Even if it did, I don't think large numbers of passengers would be willing to pay more for the same flight. Would you pay $3000 dollars instead of $1500 to fly to France and back in 3.5 hours instead of 9 ? That's $270 for each hour saved.... I don't think a large percentage of the population would see that as a positive cost benefit. In reality the Concorde was more like $10,000 dollars instead of $1500 dollars.
How has competition NOT been allowed? There are multiple development efforts happening right now for supersonic transportation planes. It takes a HUGE investment to design and build an SST that can compete for economics ( even at the first class level. ) with newer super fuel efficient planes.
Option (b) is correct for nano-tech. The most promising "industrializable"(scalable) nano-tech I've seen in recent years is Rice University's recent breakthrough on wet-spun carbon fibers. That is a "true" invention. It will likely be in data cables within a few years.
I won't beat on you because I don't know exactly "how" you attempted to get a job in your field, or what your requirements were. Maybe you couldn't move very far or something. Let me continue my advice for others... and maybe, maybe you, if you're looking to start over again.
I will say this. Getting a job is a very _human_ endeavor. I find a lot of younger technology oriented people, especially in technology fields, want to land a job the same way they get everything else. Online. This can work for someone with all the right experience, and just the "right" resume. sure it can. However, if you want to beat that guy with your lesser resume, you walk in the front door. You network with current employees. ( Use online information to find them. ) Build rappor. You call HR, you ask if there are any short term contract type positions available so you can see if the company would be a good fit for you. If they say no, or, we don't do that, you say, "Oh, you should ask your technology managers if they could use a program like that. You get a lot of value for your money, and it almost eliminates bad full time hires."
If you are capable of software development, why the hell are you working a job with manual labor for $10 an hour? There are lots of software development jobs open out there. Go beat the pavement. Walk right in the front door with your resume dressed up. Make it happen. I'm not sure if this article is about "IT" or "Development", the media tends to confuse those things. However, if you are capable programmer, go make a living out of it.
Now, you might have a bit of learning curve to go from "coding" to getting the skills to be a good developer. However, you can find a place that will pay you less to start since you have no real world experience. Learn fast, and move up. It's not going to happen unless you try!
Just as an aside, "Plumber" hourly wages are a little different then an employee's hourly wage. It's like a car mechanic garage's "hourly rate". It's a business rate, out of that comes expenses before anyone gets paid. That said, they make a good living.
Not really. There are just a lot schools teaching a curriculum now that they call "CS", that isn't CS. I graduated in 2002 and my experience with college appears to be similar to yours.
When I'm filtering applicants. I first make sure their degree is from a place that actually teaches CS. Then I move on to experience if it's not an entry level position. An applicant isn't likely to make it past the interview if they don't have an outside interest in technology or programming. Even with the CS degree, I need people who never stop self teaching.
Is that you're programming in Ruby on Rails...