The rest of the story is that coke still holds a tangible advantage (about 10 percentage points) in the US market...
My intention wasn't to say that Linux will destroy M$, but rather that in the final analysis (assuming this well-worn analogy holds true), initial size doesn't necessarily matter and it will come down to a matter of personal preference. And a "tangible" advantage of 10 points is a lot different than a near-complete monopoly.
This is just MSFT trying to act all big, oh pshaw, Linux, one can hardly muster a whim about it.
Well, it is a tried and true method. I mean, at Coca-Cola back in the day, they barely even considered a little startup called Pepsi. They mocked it internally, thinking that they were the big guy and the "P-cola" would never amount to much. Of course, when it gained steam by targeting a younger audience, they panicked and launched "New Coke". Yeah. I think we know the rest of that story.
Re:Don't always need an intact DNA
on
Cloning Mammoths
·
· Score: 1
Yes, but that's what the human genome project did- they took the genome, deliberately chopped it up into fragments, and then sequenced each fragment. You then solve the giant jigsaw on a computer.
At a cost of about a dollar a base pair (2.7 billion dollars for 3 billion base pairs)... I don't know about you, but I'm not really a big proponent of spending billions of dollars so I can look at a wooly mammoth.
Re:Sorry to be negative and all
on
Cloning Mammoths
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
a single breeding pair does not a healthy, stable population make.
Actually, this may not be true in all cases. Cheetahs, for instance, have had two points in their history at which the population has gone down to a single breeding pair, as determined by population genetics.
Of course, now it would be almost impossible for cheetahs to survive a third catastrophe of that magnitude, due to their low genetic variability, but it is possible for a single mating pair to create a new population.
Re:Don't always need an intact DNA
on
Cloning Mammoths
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Three considerations:
1) In order to PCR amplify something, you need primers which bind to the target areas and begin the replication. The primers need to have a known sequence, and we don't really know the mammoth genome, so we don't know what we're looking to amplify.
2) Mammoths have multiple chromosomes, so this isn't a one-step process. You'd need to repeatedly amplify section after section on each chromosome. Not impossible (per se), but not really feasible with todays technology due to:
3) Good day, high wind, Herculase (a PCR enzyme for long targets) can get 48,000 base pairs in one cycle with reasonable accuracy. The E. coli genome is 5.4 million base pairs. To PCR the entire E. coli genome you'd need to repeat the process 113 times to get the entire genome; if you're lucky enough to get the max every time, it'd take a lot of complex stitching to get it done. Of course, a mammoth is a lot bigger and more complex than a bacterium. The Fugu (pufferfish) genome is ~100 times bigger than E. coli (300 million), humans ~1000 times (3-4 billion). You can see the difficulty in using PCR for this type of application.
You are right, in principle, that you should be able to do all of these (eventually) but you also have to remember that each of these processes (not to mention troubleshooting!) takes materials (original DNA) in significant quantities. If we don't have a herd of mammoths, we probably don't have enough for what you suggest.
It's significantly more difficult than that. You know those nice, clean chromosome pictures that you see in textbooks? Those are actually from actively dividing cells, the only time that the chromosomes are actually large enough to see in a microscope. Most of the time they're not compacted to that extent and therefore aren't very visible. So picking pieces by any sort of visual inspection at that level is out.
You could run these out on low percent agarose gels, and you'd be able to separate on the basis of size, but you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a fragment of the X chromosome and the Y chromosome, so it'd be almost impossible to isolate based on size.
And the determination of good v. bad is much more difficult. How long should a mammoth chromosome be? Was this small one cut or that large one ligated? And when you don't know the genome, you're flying blind.
You also can't tell about base-pair damage, etc. without knowing what the sequence was originally. And to get the accurate original sequence, we need living tissue. Therefore, by definition, this is going to be our best guess as to what a wooly mammoth should be. There may be gene differences, etc. compounding the dietary differences that the mammoth will encounter.
The best scenario is to isolate one intact nucleus. Why? Well, if over the course of time the nucleus managed to remain intact, then the cell was probably fairly protected. If the cell was protected to a significant extent, then you're good with most major chromosomal damage and any ones with significant minor base pair damage will be nixed (i.e., the pregancy won't take).
This sort of thing happens every day, every experiment whether you're in academia or commercial industries. Of course, with research, you have to submit to peer-reviewed journals, which adds another aspect to your dollars (quick) and sense (correct) equation.
The trick is usually finding a balance. Do the quick and dirty, show it as proof-of-principle, and then (or concurrently) do it the right way. It's really the only way to please everyone.
the Redstone Rocket, the Saturn V, and lots of other space technologies came out of Huntsville, AL
I think you might have just proven his point. When that many space vehicles come out of one place, I'd be searching there for other-worldly creatures, too.
The link says "Consumer-Backed Anti-Spam Bill Passes", but the actual page is titled "Consumer-Backed Anti-Spam Bill Fails". Other links talk about an anti-spam measure passing, but that's the M$ one, not the consumer-backed one.
So, basically, they've created this huge database of verified phone numbers which they're distributing to non-exempt businesses (which, considering the number of exemptions, means 'both of them').
Is this list readily accessible to anyone (say, politicians) who want to phone-spam their constituents? What about corporations that have exempt and non-exempt segments? Couldn't they apply for the list for their non-exempt businesses and give it to their exempt one? Will this really eliminate telemarketers, or increase the number exponentially?
Probably not. The majority of the trip is done just through sheer momentum, which requires no extra fuel. And a launch is such a large, complicated event that you couldn't really make do with less than two full teams (one per rocket), so you wouldn't have any savings in terms of fuel or personnel.
No, because then they'd get sued for providing the concrete that was used to bash someone's skull open. I would say something along the lines of a flame-retardant foam...
Slashdot Mirror
The rest of the story is that coke still holds a tangible advantage (about 10 percentage points) in the US market...
My intention wasn't to say that Linux will destroy M$, but rather that in the final analysis (assuming this well-worn analogy holds true), initial size doesn't necessarily matter and it will come down to a matter of personal preference. And a "tangible" advantage of 10 points is a lot different than a near-complete monopoly.
This is just MSFT trying to act all big, oh pshaw, Linux, one can hardly muster a whim about it. Well, it is a tried and true method. I mean, at Coca-Cola back in the day, they barely even considered a little startup called Pepsi. They mocked it internally, thinking that they were the big guy and the "P-cola" would never amount to much. Of course, when it gained steam by targeting a younger audience, they panicked and launched "New Coke". Yeah. I think we know the rest of that story.
Yes, but that's what the human genome project did- they took the genome, deliberately chopped it up into fragments, and then sequenced each fragment. You then solve the giant jigsaw on a computer.
At a cost of about a dollar a base pair (2.7 billion dollars for 3 billion base pairs)... I don't know about you, but I'm not really a big proponent of spending billions of dollars so I can look at a wooly mammoth.
a single breeding pair does not a healthy, stable population make.
Actually, this may not be true in all cases. Cheetahs, for instance, have had two points in their history at which the population has gone down to a single breeding pair, as determined by population genetics.
Of course, now it would be almost impossible for cheetahs to survive a third catastrophe of that magnitude, due to their low genetic variability, but it is possible for a single mating pair to create a new population.
Three considerations:
1) In order to PCR amplify something, you need primers which bind to the target areas and begin the replication. The primers need to have a known sequence, and we don't really know the mammoth genome, so we don't know what we're looking to amplify.
2) Mammoths have multiple chromosomes, so this isn't a one-step process. You'd need to repeatedly amplify section after section on each chromosome. Not impossible (per se), but not really feasible with todays technology due to:
3) Good day, high wind, Herculase (a PCR enzyme for long targets) can get 48,000 base pairs in one cycle with reasonable accuracy. The E. coli genome is 5.4 million base pairs. To PCR the entire E. coli genome you'd need to repeat the process 113 times to get the entire genome; if you're lucky enough to get the max every time, it'd take a lot of complex stitching to get it done. Of course, a mammoth is a lot bigger and more complex than a bacterium. The Fugu (pufferfish) genome is ~100 times bigger than E. coli (300 million), humans ~1000 times (3-4 billion). You can see the difficulty in using PCR for this type of application.
You are right, in principle, that you should be able to do all of these (eventually) but you also have to remember that each of these processes (not to mention troubleshooting!) takes materials (original DNA) in significant quantities. If we don't have a herd of mammoths, we probably don't have enough for what you suggest.
It's significantly more difficult than that. You know those nice, clean chromosome pictures that you see in textbooks? Those are actually from actively dividing cells, the only time that the chromosomes are actually large enough to see in a microscope. Most of the time they're not compacted to that extent and therefore aren't very visible. So picking pieces by any sort of visual inspection at that level is out.
You could run these out on low percent agarose gels, and you'd be able to separate on the basis of size, but you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a fragment of the X chromosome and the Y chromosome, so it'd be almost impossible to isolate based on size.
And the determination of good v. bad is much more difficult. How long should a mammoth chromosome be? Was this small one cut or that large one ligated? And when you don't know the genome, you're flying blind.
You also can't tell about base-pair damage, etc. without knowing what the sequence was originally. And to get the accurate original sequence, we need living tissue. Therefore, by definition, this is going to be our best guess as to what a wooly mammoth should be. There may be gene differences, etc. compounding the dietary differences that the mammoth will encounter.
The best scenario is to isolate one intact nucleus. Why? Well, if over the course of time the nucleus managed to remain intact, then the cell was probably fairly protected. If the cell was protected to a significant extent, then you're good with most major chromosomal damage and any ones with significant minor base pair damage will be nixed (i.e., the pregancy won't take).
This sort of thing happens every day, every experiment whether you're in academia or commercial industries. Of course, with research, you have to submit to peer-reviewed journals, which adds another aspect to your dollars (quick) and sense (correct) equation.
The trick is usually finding a balance. Do the quick and dirty, show it as proof-of-principle, and then (or concurrently) do it the right way. It's really the only way to please everyone.
the Redstone Rocket, the Saturn V, and lots of other space technologies came out of Huntsville, AL
I think you might have just proven his point. When that many space vehicles come out of one place, I'd be searching there for other-worldly creatures, too.
I've still got some moderator points; can I mark this story as redundant?
The link says "Consumer-Backed Anti-Spam Bill Passes", but the actual page is titled "Consumer-Backed Anti-Spam Bill Fails". Other links talk about an anti-spam measure passing, but that's the M$ one, not the consumer-backed one.
So, basically, they've created this huge database of verified phone numbers which they're distributing to non-exempt businesses (which, considering the number of exemptions, means 'both of them').
Is this list readily accessible to anyone (say, politicians) who want to phone-spam their constituents? What about corporations that have exempt and non-exempt segments? Couldn't they apply for the list for their non-exempt businesses and give it to their exempt one? Will this really eliminate telemarketers, or increase the number exponentially?
Probably not. The majority of the trip is done just through sheer momentum, which requires no extra fuel. And a launch is such a large, complicated event that you couldn't really make do with less than two full teams (one per rocket), so you wouldn't have any savings in terms of fuel or personnel.
Built for Mac OS X Jaguar So, basically, it'll be outdated by the time Panther is debuted at the WWDC?
No, because then they'd get sued for providing the concrete that was used to bash someone's skull open. I would say something along the lines of a flame-retardant foam...
"I wonder if people will notice the subliminal "OBEY", "CONSUME" and "REPRODUCE" messages from MS.."
Well, if they're "subliminal", then... No, they wouldn't be able to notice it.
That they left out the part about the large burlap sack with the dollar sign on the front of it.