First, as a few people have already pointed out, no artificial bacterium actually has been created -- Craig Venter just threw an idea at some journalists and the media decided to run with it.
Second, as a microbiologist, the major difficulty with the idea is gene regulation. To use a programming analogy -- genes are subroutines, and a program is an organism. You just can't throw a bunch of useful subroutines together and get a working program. The subroutines need to be called at the right times and and at the right amount. So do genes. We really only have a vague idea of how gene regulation works at the moment. If the gene regulation is off, the cell just won't live.
Thirdly, if an artificial bacterium gets created, Venter himself will not have have done it. He is a scientific administrator (although quite a successful one) rather than a practicing scientist. His basic purpose is to organise scientific teams to tackle different tasks, to talk to the media, and to get venture capital.
That WotC purchased TSR, which was the previous Microsoft of the gaming world. Now Hasbro, which already owns the remains of Avalon Hill will buy WotC which owns TSR which bought SPI...
There was a service in which people would purchase robotic flying robots to record them so that their descendants could watch random bits of their lives.
But seriously, it is interesting how things seem to have gone full circle. In the beginning when computers first entered into schools, "computer literacy" meant programming. Actually, everyone in my school was forced to take a course in BASIC programming. But by the late '80s, "computer literacy" had degenerated to merely being able to use WordPerfect or Visicalc
I think most Slashdot readers have a monitor bigger than their TV set, if they bother owning a TV set at all, so I would think viewing DVD videos on a PC is hardly minor.
Um, don't believe your government's propaganda -- going to a public university as an undergrad in the US is extremely cheap (I paid my own tuition from working a low paying part-time job; frankly the idea of someone in the US not being able to afford college is absurd) and graduate school (at least for doctoral programs in the sciences) is better than free -- students get paid.
Medical school isn't cheap, true. But in a land without socialized medicine, physicans earn extremely high salaries. It isn't too unreasonable to ask medicial students to take out some loans. (And student loans are easily obtainable)
But your suggestion of going to another country is not bad. I'm doing a postdoc in Canada now.
I've been very happy with my years at UIUC. However, there is of course the downside, the UC part.
True enough. I spent six years there (but my graduate work was on the other side of campus -- in microbiology). You know UC is a dull place when Waterloo, Ontario (which even Canadians consider dull) seems interesting in comparison.
Of course, unless modern physics is wrong and faster-than-light space travel really is possible, a space program isn't going to be of much use in terms of saving the human race. Nothing in our solar system appears able to support a self-sufficient colony if the Earth became uninhabitable. It really looks like one planet is all we are going to be granted.
I''ve read complete novels (freely available classics) on both my PC and Pilot. I really don't see what the problem is. Most of us spend hours each day reading text on computers with zero ill effects. Why do you think reading novels is anything different?
Namely, that Compaq might simply be trying to kill off the Alpha platform. As much as I prefer Linux to NT, the existence of NT on the Alpha is good for the platform.
I don't think you are getting the point. Rob, Jeff, and Nate are your virtual geek friends. Just like geek friends in real life, they spend large amounts of time talking about things that don't interest you, but you are supposed to tolerate them because sometimes they say interesting, or at least amusing, things, and because THEY ARE YOUR FRIENDS. But unlike real life geek friends we don't get to bore them back. Oh, wait, we can, that's what these comments are for.
I've always preferred Sterling's Shaper/Mechanic short stories to his cyberpunk novels. Personally, the problem that I have with cyberpunk is that _Neuromancer_ pretty much covered everything that could be done in a cyberpunk world. Later novels (including Gibson's own) just seemed to repeat the same themes.
Yes, as you may recall, Newton and company called themselves "Natural Philosophers" for lack of any other term.
And even today the word "scientist" hasn't been totally defined -- some people limit it to people in the big three natural sciences (physics, chemistry, and biology) and others define it more broadly to include basically any field in which the goal is to publish papers in overpriced journals.
I dunno about that. Not only geeks, but even Roger Ebert liked it. Ebert gave it an extremely positive review at the time and I believe, even featured it at a film festival of underappreciated films a couple of years ago.
I think I want color. I have bad eyes, I need displays that are as clear as possible
Me too. But you know what? The clearest screens I have ever used were the monochrome screens on early '90s NeXT workstations. Color monitors (even really good ones of today) are simply blurry compared to those. High resolution greyscale is more useful than color, but has less sex appeal, I suppose.
2) It doesn't say you can't have strategy games for a console
Maybe. But remember consoles are generally designed with great graphics chips to make DOOM-clones run well, but generally have low amounts of RAM and weak CPUs. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for strategy games of the Norm Kroger wargame sophistication to come out for consoles.
The bit about the back button having broken behavior is hardly picky; long web pages (such as slashdot comments) make the current behavior extremely annoying.
Secondly, the fact whether Mozilla renderer has new code has absolutely nothing to do with whether it is improved or not. It would be quite possible for the new code to be worse than the older code; fortunately this is not the case.
Their is a label for those who get everything they need from a government agency. If you get your paycheck from a govt entity, like a university or research agency, get your health insurance from the same, get your news from the above, you are a participant in the form of govt invented by Benito Mussolini. You are a Fascist.
Why do I get the feeling that you haven't even read the Cliff's Notes to Mussolini's "Doctrine of Fascism"? Fascism is about the supposed superiority of a government lead by single absolute leader rather than by an elected body. There is nothing there about the superiority of government funding over private enterprise; in fact the biggest supporters of both Mussolini and Hitler were the capitalist leaders of industry.
Well, considering where these guys are from, I think they can bring much more legal firepower to bear than can Canadians at Corel. I never heard of Advanced Software but I guess they are quite entrenched in the educational market...
I think you got that a little backwards -- "Beef" and "Pork" are from Norman French (the language of the the invaders who became the ruling class of England), and "cow" and "pig" are from Anglo-Saxon (the language of the native peasants).
Slashdot Mirror
Second, as a microbiologist, the major difficulty with the idea is gene regulation. To use a programming analogy -- genes are subroutines, and a program is an organism. You just can't throw a bunch of useful subroutines together and get a working program. The subroutines need to be called at the right times and and at the right amount. So do genes. We really only have a vague idea of how gene regulation works at the moment. If the gene regulation is off, the cell just won't live.
Thirdly, if an artificial bacterium gets created, Venter himself will not have have done it. He is a scientific administrator (although quite a successful one) rather than a practicing scientist. His basic purpose is to organise scientific teams to tackle different tasks, to talk to the media, and to get venture capital.
That WotC purchased TSR, which was the previous Microsoft of the gaming world. Now Hasbro, which already owns the remains of Avalon Hill will buy WotC which owns TSR which bought SPI...
There was a service in which people would purchase robotic flying robots to record them so that their descendants could watch random bits of their lives.
Hey, it worked for me in 1981....
But seriously, it is interesting how things seem to have gone full circle. In the beginning when computers first entered into schools, "computer literacy" meant programming. Actually, everyone in my school was forced to take a course in BASIC programming. But by the late '80s, "computer literacy" had degenerated to merely being able to use WordPerfect or Visicalc
I think most Slashdot readers have a monitor bigger than their TV set, if they bother owning a TV set at all, so I would think viewing DVD videos on a PC is hardly minor.
There's an article about a user group in Turkey and and article about this Ottoman PC on the very same day.
Um, don't believe your government's propaganda -- going to a public university as an undergrad in the US is extremely cheap (I paid my own tuition from working a low paying part-time job; frankly the idea of someone in the US not being able to afford college is absurd) and graduate school (at least for doctoral programs in the sciences) is better than free -- students get paid.
Medical school isn't cheap, true. But in a land without socialized medicine, physicans earn extremely high salaries. It isn't too unreasonable to ask medicial students to take out some loans. (And student loans are easily obtainable)
But your suggestion of going to another country is not bad. I'm doing a postdoc in Canada now.
I've been very happy with my years at UIUC. However, there is of course the downside, the UC part.
True enough. I spent six years there (but my graduate work was on the other side of campus -- in microbiology). You know UC is a dull place when Waterloo, Ontario (which even Canadians consider dull) seems interesting in comparison.
Of course, unless modern physics is wrong and faster-than-light space travel really is possible, a space program isn't going to be of much use in terms of saving the human race. Nothing in our solar system appears able to support a self-sufficient colony if the Earth became uninhabitable. It really looks like one planet is all we are going to be granted.
There aren't all that many books written more than 75 years ago that I'd care to read.
Well the golden age of the novel is generally considered to be the 19th century, so there's no shortage of freely available things worth reading.
Not that I'm in favor of extending copyright, mind you.
I''ve read complete novels (freely available classics) on both my PC and Pilot. I really don't see what the problem is. Most of us spend hours each day reading text on computers with zero ill effects. Why do you think reading novels is anything different?
Namely, that Compaq might simply be trying to kill off the Alpha platform. As much as I prefer Linux to NT, the existence of NT on the Alpha is good for the platform.
I don't think you are getting the point. Rob, Jeff, and Nate are your virtual geek friends. Just like geek friends in real life, they spend large amounts of time talking about things that don't interest you, but you are supposed to tolerate them because sometimes they say interesting, or at least amusing, things, and because THEY ARE YOUR FRIENDS. But unlike real life geek friends we don't get to bore them back. Oh, wait, we can, that's what these comments are for.
Yeah, I know someone who just talked to Conway at a conference. Not only is he alive, he's not even all that old -- in his 50s I think.
I've always preferred Sterling's Shaper/Mechanic short stories to his cyberpunk novels. Personally, the problem that I have with cyberpunk is that _Neuromancer_ pretty much covered everything that could be done in a cyberpunk world. Later novels (including Gibson's own) just seemed to repeat the same themes.
Yes, as you may recall, Newton and company called themselves "Natural Philosophers" for lack of any other term.
And even today the word "scientist" hasn't been totally defined -- some people limit it to people in the big three natural sciences (physics, chemistry, and biology) and others define it more broadly to include basically any field in which the goal is to publish papers in overpriced journals.
even less actually liked it..
I dunno about that. Not only geeks, but even Roger Ebert liked it. Ebert gave it an extremely positive review at the time and I believe, even featured it at a film festival of underappreciated films a couple of years ago.
I think I want color. I have bad eyes, I need displays that are as clear as possible
Me too. But you know what? The clearest screens I have ever used were the monochrome screens on early '90s NeXT workstations. Color monitors (even really good ones of today) are simply blurry compared to those. High resolution greyscale is more useful than color, but has less sex appeal, I suppose.
But with a color screen, and a built in IP stack, now they are getting into the useful realm.
IP stack == useful, yes. But why color? Okay, it might be nice for games, but I can hardly see a real use for it.
2) It doesn't say you can't have strategy games for a console
Maybe. But remember consoles are generally designed with great graphics chips to make DOOM-clones run well, but generally have low amounts of RAM and weak CPUs. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for strategy games of the Norm Kroger wargame sophistication to come out for consoles.
The bit about the back button having broken behavior is hardly picky; long web pages (such as slashdot comments) make the current behavior extremely annoying.
Secondly, the fact whether Mozilla renderer has new code has absolutely nothing to do with whether it is improved or not. It would be quite possible for the new code to be worse than the older code; fortunately this is not the case.
That's clearly Infocom's _WITNESS_ (1983) a great Raymond Chandler-style game set in 1940's L.A. And the butler was named Phong.
Their is a label for those who get everything they need from a government agency. If you get your paycheck from a govt entity, like a university or research agency, get your health insurance from the same, get your news from the above, you are a participant in the form of govt invented by Benito Mussolini. You are a Fascist.
Why do I get the feeling that you haven't even read the Cliff's Notes to Mussolini's "Doctrine of Fascism"? Fascism is about the supposed superiority of a government lead by single absolute leader rather than by an elected body. There is nothing there about the superiority of government funding over private enterprise; in fact the biggest supporters of both Mussolini and Hitler were the capitalist leaders of industry.
Well, considering where these guys are from, I think they can bring much more legal firepower to bear than can Canadians at Corel. I never heard of Advanced Software but I guess they are quite entrenched in the educational market...
I think you got that a little backwards -- "Beef" and "Pork" are from Norman French (the language of the the invaders who became the ruling class of England), and "cow" and "pig" are from Anglo-Saxon (the language of the native peasants).