Re:I'm horrified... (sperm/egg combo in a mouse?)
on
Human-Mouse Hybrids?
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· Score: 2
I understand that it could be forced to work under lab conditions (with really small tweezers...:-)), but could it happen naturally inside of a mouse? I'm not sure the human sperm would know what to do inside of a female mouse.
For organisms with such tiny heads, spermatazoa are pretty good at what they do. They swim, and swim, and swim, and swim--until they die, or smack into an ovum. They'd probably have a better shot inside a mouse uterus than a human one, just because there's a smaller volume to traverse while hunting for an egg. (Granted, mice deliver less ejaculate than humans.)
And yes, 'really small tweezers' is actually pretty close to the technique currently used for in vitro fertilization.
We recently saw this when an oil tanker collapsed just off the coast of Spain. The tanker was registerd in Bermuda (or somewhere around there).
The nation of registry of choice for many ships is currently Liberia. Just think about it the next time you consider going on one of those delightful Disney cruises.
In addition you need to turn off any other light source as even a basic light build[sic] has a refresh that can cause headaches if it is not in sync with the monitor (imagine every 10th frame being darker in one eye).
This is only an issue (mostly) for fluorescent light sources. Halogen and standard incandescent bulbs don't flicker on normal 60 Hz line AC--they emit a pretty steady glow. Fluorescent bulbs do flicker on and off, so you would get a problem with them.
Sunlight is also fine, since the sun is a pretty steady light source. Rather distracting, though.
Not when you are trying to make a political statement. I don't know if anyone has claimed responsibility for this yet, or if anyone will. But it would be a great way to scare the general public. It won't necessarily be as terrifying as hijacking planes, but it can spread some fear into many people. (mainly IT types)
Nobody has yet claimed responsibility. Makes it sound kind of noble, doesn't it? What nobody has yet done is admitted guilt. I have always taken extreme exception to the media's convention that terrorists and criminals claim responsibility for murder. It's not a prize. Confessed to slaughter or declared lack of conscience or asserted no concern for fellow human beings might be more appropriate. Criminals shouln't be allowed--or worse, invited--to claim responsibility, only admit guilt.
Maybe your Slashdot++ could include a spell-check service as well... I'm far more concerned that all the mixed-up there/their's, lose/loose's, etc, here are actually causing extreme atrophy in my ability to use those words correctly.
Ironic that your post contains two misused apostrophes--and it's 'atrophy of' not 'atrophy in'.
I imagine that they're just cutting you off because they're jealous of your excellent people skills.
Seriously, Verdi has been dead for quite a while, and the score of Rigoletto is indeed in the public domain. However, the recording that you want to download was recorded much more recently, by an orchestra and vocalists. They (or their label) very likely retains copyright of the work you attempted to download. Consequently, you were indeed participating in an act of copyright violation.
Buy your own copy of Rigoletto, or visit your campus library. Many universities have a music library of some sort, and any self-respecting music library will have the important works of Verdi. (Yes, I know--both options make you get off your ass and go outside. The music library at my school doesn't lend materials; you have to listen there. Life goes on.)
Incidentally, some of us need to use the campus pipe for more than just downloading music. My school hasn't done a very good job of crimping P2P, and in the evenings I can't even run a telnet connection at reasonable speed. (I start and monitor computational chemistry problems on the chem department's big computers as part of a senior thesis. I like to start jobs running in the evening so that I'm not competing for cycles with other researchers.) Be glad they're just shaping traffic at your school; some places have taken more radical steps.
(Hot new releases are around $20 now, and list prices are even higher... the average would apply to someone with broader tastes.) The Canadian dollar's not as weak as you suggest, is it? I thought it was at about 80%.
You're right; I gave a ballpark figure for newish release CDs. There is much to be had for less money on both sides of the border. That said, the market that the big labels care about is the one that's buying all the ridiculously-hyped 'new' music. And I know that a lot of music moves for fifteen or so British pounds, which is an absolutely absurd price.
As for the Canadian dollar, it's taken a pounding over the last few years. It's trading at around $0.63 U.S. at the moment. Really good for Canadian exporters, but it's probably hurting the record labels a bit...
Forget old distros. One of my computers at work is still running MS-DOS 5. It's attached to an older scientific instrument, and all the software was written quite a while ago. Works just fine, though.
My home computer is a PII/300 running Win98. Also works just fine, as long as I don't want to play any games newer than Age of Empires. I've still got a Commodore 64 kicking around, too. They really built stuff to last in those days, didn't they?
Bottom line, don't lament your inevitable consultation requests. Help them as best you can, and then cash in the karma for appropriate favors from them. I think you'll find it comes in handy.
There are many motivations for helping friends and family with technical problems. There's not always an anticipated quid pro quo--as the parent poster states, it's sometimes worthwhile just to build up karma.
I help friends move; they help me.
One of my friends occasionally needs help--she's a smart girl, and I don't have to tell her things twice. Why should I mind? Besides, her father is a senior VP at a large corporation. I get carte blanche to use their pool in the summer, and visiting privileges at the summer home.
I'm a university student. If I help people with technical problems, they'll often help out with assignments and such. If you build enough of a reputation for providing quality support, then people will help you with other things in anticipation of potentially needing you later. Let them be the ones building good karma.
My best friend is an excellent cook. I can hold my own at main dishes, but I can't compare to her dessert work. For her chocolates, I would buy her a new laptop if I couldn't fix the old one.
Pity will sometimes do it for me. Ever see a wild animal get hit by a truck and thrown bleeding to the side of the road? Windows does that to people. You have to help them or you have to shoot them, but you can't just leave them there.
I appreciate a challenge. Sometimes I'll take on a problem just because it seems interesting, and I don't want to admit that Bill can make an OS that's more perverse than I can handle.
Yes, sometimes I have to say, "I'm sorry, I really don't have time to look at your computer right now." Most people will accept that, and move on. Be flattered that they asked. Reading some of the other replies to this post, I'm shocked at how rude some people are. There's no reason to be cruel.
This is already being done, albeit fairly quietly. The large labels have started trials that involve spreading mp3's containing a repeated 30 second intro or several minutes of silence in place of the song you were expecting. One company involved is Overpeer, based in New York. Their website seems to be down at the moment, which may be a good sign.
Incidentally, if the idea was original, you'd want to patent it, not copyright it.
3) If I didn't buy CDs, the artists would stop making music.
What if you went to their concerts? You pay for the privilege of seeing them actually making music. If they want to get paid, they have to get up and perform. I know; it's a really old revenue model. Worked for minstrels, though.
Anyone who can tell the difference between a 192kbps rip and an audio CD is really quite sad. Sorry, but it's true. 128kbps is perfectly OK for me, and actually I can't tell the difference.
Maybe they've just got good ears. I've never bothered to look for a difference between 192 and CD, but I'm sure that there are people (musicians perhaps, or audio technicians) who can hear the difference quite clearly.
I can hear the difference between CD audio and 128 kbps stuff on my crappy little speakers, but I don't mind it for most music. Usually I feed stuff out to my $300 Costco stereo, and it's perfectly acceptable, though not perfect. Classical music with a big dynamic range and a wide range of frequencies--it's a bit iffy in some cases.
I [sic] curious about the incredibly low price (IMHO) many expect for individual songs.
I don't know--albums of a dozen tracks typically run just shy of twenty dollars. When you figure that the record company is saving distribution costs, and there isn't the bricks and mortar middleman to pay, a buck a song probably isn't too far wrong for a bulk rate. Indeed, it's likely too much, since you'd probably be getting a lower bitrate (see earlier/. discussions on bandwidth caps) than that of the original CD.
Transaction costs would definitely eat most of that dollar; you're quite right. So you get billed a flat transaction fee of a couple bucks in every month when you buy music, plus a buck per song on top of that. It's like buying a lot of things from a catalog--you pay one shipping and handling charge. Sometimes that even gets waived if you make a big enough order.
An interesting aside--albums typically cost around 20 currency units no matter where they are sold. Twenty U.S. dollars are worth about thirty Canadian dollars, but CDs are still only priced at twenty local dollars. So the 'value' of each track is exactly what we learned in ECON 101: it's what the market will bear. I will leave aside any comments about 1) price fixing by record labels and 2) inflated prices of compact dics when they were first introduced that have mysteriously failed to fall despite lower manufacturing costs.
Considering the violence and tragedy that occurs around the world every day, is the loss of a couple thousand dollars of (insured) plastic, metal and silicon really cause for such dramatics?
If there was a fire in the Louvre, and nobody was hurt, there would be no cause for concern, now would there? If the Mona Lisa was turned to ashes, why should we care? It's a hundred bucks worth of canvas and oil paint. Might be worth a bit more if it has a nice frame. On the other hand, it's pretty old, so we would have to account for depreciation.
Physical objects can have emotional and cultural significance. Some good stuff has come out of the University of Twente. Many on Slashdot know (or are) good people who have been greatly inconvenienced by this event. No, it's not the Louvre, nor is it the Tower of London, nor the Parthenon, nor even the White House. (Incidentally, soldiers from Canada burned the original President's Mansion during the War of 1812.)
But we are nerds, and our monuments happen to have a slightly different flavour--more functional than ornamental (I do include the White House in this comparision.) Why shouldn't we have something to say about it? Besides, if you read the posts, many tongues remained firmly in cheek. Lots of smiles about hot pr0n, and reference to The Register's photo collection of the World's Worst Server Rooms.
Now, put one group on each side of a balance scale.
Two questions:
Who would have more weight?
Who should have more weight?
First, let me say that I wholeheartedly condemn Verison's blatant power grab here (no surprise hearing that on/., eh?)
I'm a little leery of any argument based on the notion that the majority is always right, and that the majority's rights are the most important. Sometimes it takes the efforts of a very determined minority (and very effective lobbying) to foist good policy on a stubborn majority. Laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, and so forth come to mind. Very unpopular when introduced in certain jurisdictions. Still unpopular in some, still not even in place in others.
Yes, you're missing something. Since the pilot survived, he is now in a position to go out and destroy another plane, and he'll feel safe doing it, too.
Craig Venter and Nobel prize winner Hamilton Smith (the guys who brought you the human genome a decade earlier than expected)...
Craig Venter also very nearly brought us the patented human genome. After leaving non-profit TIGR (The Institute for Genomic Research) to form Celera Gemonics, he hoped to put the human genome into the hands of a private corporation. Because of this move, the Human Genome Project advanced its deadline for sequencing by five years. This ultimately lead to a joint announcement of the sequencing of the genome in 2000.
Craig Venter was looking for Celera to become the Microsoft of genomics--the company without whom you could not do genetic research. (Switching platforms is not an option in this case.)
Working on a minimum gene set for a surviving organism is a neat project, and I look forward to their results. I am deeply concerned about chilling effects if they patent their work, however.
Well, on my own initiave I got into the company quickbooks and found out they were so deep in the red it hurt. I gave several co-workers the warning of impeding doom.
Before I left, I grabbed a box of cat5, 2 128 meg dimms, a tone and probe kit, and some cat5 crimpers and a celeron 400mhz system.
Admit to snooping in the company books. Clever. Kind of illegal in many jurisdictions.
Admit to theft. Also clever. Very illegal, just about everywhere.
Post with a link to a website with pictures of your home and pets. Unbelievably clever. (I think it's cute that you ask people to hire you on the web page, by the way.)
Yes indeed, it's a shame that the FBI has trouble finding criminal masterminds like you.
GM crops have been found to swap genes with plants that they weren't supposed to.
Though I certainly don't deny that this is a possibility, and one worthy of serious consideration, there is a noteworthy paucity of properly-documented cases. The recent/. posting about corn and soya involved plant matter mixed together after harvest.
The Nature article a while back about genes migrating from GM to 'normal' maize in Mexico last year was later retracted by Nature's editors--an unprecedented move in the history of the journal.
Finally, if the organism escapes to the wild, and if it swaps enough genes to survive, we're still not putting anything out there that isn't already in nature. Biologists are assembling the test organism from the stripped down genome of a preexisting bacterium. There's nothing new here, and there's nothing that prevents the existing bacterium already in the wild from picking up some nasty genes of its own.
The jury is still out on that one. It is possible to create long-chain silanes similar to some structures seen with carbon. They are markedly less durable, however. In particular, the faintest trace of water (liquid or vapour) is enough to break them down into smaller bits. There's way too much water everywhere on earth. In fact, there's probably too much water on Mars.
On the bright side, if you ever did create such an organism, you'd never have to worry about it escaping from the lab.
This is actually kind of ironic. Our understanding of physics (general relativity and quantum mechanics, and all the floppy connective bits we've tried to stick in between) breaks down rather badly around singularities--black holes (if they exist). If anything, these protesters should be cheering the existence of black holes. They're sort of like God's practical joke on physicists.
The article you cite states unequivocally that preliminary investigations found no mechanical fault in the device. If the reports indicated that the robot's arms spontaneously began making stabbing motions without input from the surgeon, then it would be important for the news outlets to report this incident. Surgeons can make mistakes, whether they are working with their own hands or controlling robotic ones.
I, for one, would much prefer to be operated on using this new system--the electronics damp out tremors, and I don't have to worry about a surgeon sneezing and lacerating my intestine. The trauma of major incisions is eliminated, saving me from weeks of hospital food, pain meds, and severe scarring.
Surgeons will take time to become accustomed to this new system. Without a gaping incision, it is harder to see what's going on. There are new failure modes possible. A nick in the aorta is immediately obvious in conventional surgery, not so much so under these conditions. There may also be a 'novelty' penalty. This is a new technique, so there aren't really any experts in the field who have performed thousands of procedures with these devices. There is a learning curve.
Nevertheless, medical decisions are usually made on the basis of a risk calculation. If there are fewer overall complications and deaths, then I'll accept 10 robot-related deaths per year in exchange for the prevention of 100 lethal post-op infections due to poor wound healing.
Okay. First of all, this system is not your regular off-the-shelf PC. I'm sure it will have a "no user-serviceable parts inside" sticker, and it is designed so that tampering is difficult.
That said, if you really wanted to assassinate someone in a hospital, there are quite a few ways to do so that are already accessible to the determined murderer. Slip into the recovery room and inject a shot of potassium chloride into one of the victim's IV bags. Very effective. Or just use a pillow, if you have some privacy.
If you want them to die in surgery, tamper with the equipment that monitors vital signs. Continuously read out healthy blood pressure and pulse. Bonus points if you can deliver a small electric current across the EKG leads. Mess with the anaesthetic gas mix. Quite a few people die under general anaesthetic even when things go right.
Frankly, if you're going under the knife and you're going to be unconscious, then you're pretty vulnerable. Be glad that your surgeons are using tools to minimize the trauma to you. If you really fear assassination, then lock yourself in the basement with a bottle of Scotch, and wait for your inflamed appendix to kill you itself.
Earth's orbital velocity is about 30 km/s. The earth's radius is a little more than 6000 km. That means that an asteroid that is aimed squarely at earth will hit unless its path can be pushed aside by 6000 km. Sounds like a lot, but it helps if you have a lot of lead time. Given a delta v of 1 cm/s, 6000 km happens in about 20 years.
Pushing from in front or in back may or may not be as helpful--it depends on the relative speed of the asteroid and the earth. If the rock is travelling at a good relative speed, then it can still cover that 6000 km and clip the trailing edge of the earth (if we decelerate the rock) or arrive early and nail the leading edge of the earth (accelerating the rock). The most bang for the buck almost certainly comes from pushing approximately sideways, though the optimal push will depend on the exact circumstances. (By sideways, I mean in a direction roughly perpendicular to the path of the rock towards the earth).
Slashdot Mirror
For organisms with such tiny heads, spermatazoa are pretty good at what they do. They swim, and swim, and swim, and swim--until they die, or smack into an ovum. They'd probably have a better shot inside a mouse uterus than a human one, just because there's a smaller volume to traverse while hunting for an egg. (Granted, mice deliver less ejaculate than humans.)
And yes, 'really small tweezers' is actually pretty close to the technique currently used for in vitro fertilization.
The nation of registry of choice for many ships is currently Liberia. Just think about it the next time you consider going on one of those delightful Disney cruises.
This is only an issue (mostly) for fluorescent light sources. Halogen and standard incandescent bulbs don't flicker on normal 60 Hz line AC--they emit a pretty steady glow. Fluorescent bulbs do flicker on and off, so you would get a problem with them.
Sunlight is also fine, since the sun is a pretty steady light source. Rather distracting, though.
Nobody has yet claimed responsibility. Makes it sound kind of noble, doesn't it? What nobody has yet done is admitted guilt. I have always taken extreme exception to the media's convention that terrorists and criminals claim responsibility for murder. It's not a prize. Confessed to slaughter or declared lack of conscience or asserted no concern for fellow human beings might be more appropriate. Criminals shouln't be allowed--or worse, invited--to claim responsibility, only admit guilt.
Ironic that your post contains two misused apostrophes--and it's 'atrophy of' not 'atrophy in'.
Pot. Kettle. Blackness.
Cheers.
Seriously, Verdi has been dead for quite a while, and the score of Rigoletto is indeed in the public domain. However, the recording that you want to download was recorded much more recently, by an orchestra and vocalists. They (or their label) very likely retains copyright of the work you attempted to download. Consequently, you were indeed participating in an act of copyright violation.
Buy your own copy of Rigoletto, or visit your campus library. Many universities have a music library of some sort, and any self-respecting music library will have the important works of Verdi. (Yes, I know--both options make you get off your ass and go outside. The music library at my school doesn't lend materials; you have to listen there. Life goes on.)
Incidentally, some of us need to use the campus pipe for more than just downloading music. My school hasn't done a very good job of crimping P2P, and in the evenings I can't even run a telnet connection at reasonable speed. (I start and monitor computational chemistry problems on the chem department's big computers as part of a senior thesis. I like to start jobs running in the evening so that I'm not competing for cycles with other researchers.) Be glad they're just shaping traffic at your school; some places have taken more radical steps.
You're right; I gave a ballpark figure for newish release CDs. There is much to be had for less money on both sides of the border. That said, the market that the big labels care about is the one that's buying all the ridiculously-hyped 'new' music. And I know that a lot of music moves for fifteen or so British pounds, which is an absolutely absurd price.
As for the Canadian dollar, it's taken a pounding over the last few years. It's trading at around $0.63 U.S. at the moment. Really good for Canadian exporters, but it's probably hurting the record labels a bit...
My home computer is a PII/300 running Win98. Also works just fine, as long as I don't want to play any games newer than Age of Empires. I've still got a Commodore 64 kicking around, too. They really built stuff to last in those days, didn't they?
There are many motivations for helping friends and family with technical problems. There's not always an anticipated quid pro quo--as the parent poster states, it's sometimes worthwhile just to build up karma.
I help friends move; they help me.
One of my friends occasionally needs help--she's a smart girl, and I don't have to tell her things twice. Why should I mind? Besides, her father is a senior VP at a large corporation. I get carte blanche to use their pool in the summer, and visiting privileges at the summer home.
I'm a university student. If I help people with technical problems, they'll often help out with assignments and such. If you build enough of a reputation for providing quality support, then people will help you with other things in anticipation of potentially needing you later. Let them be the ones building good karma.
My best friend is an excellent cook. I can hold my own at main dishes, but I can't compare to her dessert work. For her chocolates, I would buy her a new laptop if I couldn't fix the old one.
Pity will sometimes do it for me. Ever see a wild animal get hit by a truck and thrown bleeding to the side of the road? Windows does that to people. You have to help them or you have to shoot them, but you can't just leave them there.
I appreciate a challenge. Sometimes I'll take on a problem just because it seems interesting, and I don't want to admit that Bill can make an OS that's more perverse than I can handle.
Yes, sometimes I have to say, "I'm sorry, I really don't have time to look at your computer right now." Most people will accept that, and move on. Be flattered that they asked. Reading some of the other replies to this post, I'm shocked at how rude some people are. There's no reason to be cruel.
Incidentally, if the idea was original, you'd want to patent it, not copyright it.
What if you went to their concerts? You pay for the privilege of seeing them actually making music. If they want to get paid, they have to get up and perform. I know; it's a really old revenue model. Worked for minstrels, though.
Maybe they've just got good ears. I've never bothered to look for a difference between 192 and CD, but I'm sure that there are people (musicians perhaps, or audio technicians) who can hear the difference quite clearly.
I can hear the difference between CD audio and 128 kbps stuff on my crappy little speakers, but I don't mind it for most music. Usually I feed stuff out to my $300 Costco stereo, and it's perfectly acceptable, though not perfect. Classical music with a big dynamic range and a wide range of frequencies--it's a bit iffy in some cases.
I don't know--albums of a dozen tracks typically run just shy of twenty dollars. When you figure that the record company is saving distribution costs, and there isn't the bricks and mortar middleman to pay, a buck a song probably isn't too far wrong for a bulk rate. Indeed, it's likely too much, since you'd probably be getting a lower bitrate (see earlier /. discussions on bandwidth caps) than that of the original CD.
Transaction costs would definitely eat most of that dollar; you're quite right. So you get billed a flat transaction fee of a couple bucks in every month when you buy music, plus a buck per song on top of that. It's like buying a lot of things from a catalog--you pay one shipping and handling charge. Sometimes that even gets waived if you make a big enough order.
An interesting aside--albums typically cost around 20 currency units no matter where they are sold. Twenty U.S. dollars are worth about thirty Canadian dollars, but CDs are still only priced at twenty local dollars. So the 'value' of each track is exactly what we learned in ECON 101: it's what the market will bear. I will leave aside any comments about 1) price fixing by record labels and 2) inflated prices of compact dics when they were first introduced that have mysteriously failed to fall despite lower manufacturing costs.
...because way back in the 1980s I never ever even so much as thought of taping something off the radio. No sir. I would never do that. Nope.
If there was a fire in the Louvre, and nobody was hurt, there would be no cause for concern, now would there? If the Mona Lisa was turned to ashes, why should we care? It's a hundred bucks worth of canvas and oil paint. Might be worth a bit more if it has a nice frame. On the other hand, it's pretty old, so we would have to account for depreciation.
Physical objects can have emotional and cultural significance. Some good stuff has come out of the University of Twente. Many on Slashdot know (or are) good people who have been greatly inconvenienced by this event. No, it's not the Louvre, nor is it the Tower of London, nor the Parthenon, nor even the White House. (Incidentally, soldiers from Canada burned the original President's Mansion during the War of 1812.)
But we are nerds, and our monuments happen to have a slightly different flavour--more functional than ornamental (I do include the White House in this comparision.) Why shouldn't we have something to say about it? Besides, if you read the posts, many tongues remained firmly in cheek. Lots of smiles about hot pr0n, and reference to The Register's photo collection of the World's Worst Server Rooms.
Two questions:
Who would have more weight?
Who should have more weight?
First, let me say that I wholeheartedly condemn Verison's blatant power grab here (no surprise hearing that on /., eh?)
I'm a little leery of any argument based on the notion that the majority is always right, and that the majority's rights are the most important. Sometimes it takes the efforts of a very determined minority (and very effective lobbying) to foist good policy on a stubborn majority. Laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, and so forth come to mind. Very unpopular when introduced in certain jurisdictions. Still unpopular in some, still not even in place in others.
Yes, you're missing something. Since the pilot survived, he is now in a position to go out and destroy another plane, and he'll feel safe doing it, too.
Yes, I'm kidding.
Craig Venter also very nearly brought us the patented human genome. After leaving non-profit TIGR (The Institute for Genomic Research) to form Celera Gemonics, he hoped to put the human genome into the hands of a private corporation. Because of this move, the Human Genome Project advanced its deadline for sequencing by five years. This ultimately lead to a joint announcement of the sequencing of the genome in 2000.
Craig Venter was looking for Celera to become the Microsoft of genomics--the company without whom you could not do genetic research. (Switching platforms is not an option in this case.)
Working on a minimum gene set for a surviving organism is a neat project, and I look forward to their results. I am deeply concerned about chilling effects if they patent their work, however.
Before I left, I grabbed a box of cat5, 2 128 meg dimms, a tone and probe kit, and some cat5 crimpers and a celeron 400mhz system.
Admit to snooping in the company books. Clever. Kind of illegal in many jurisdictions.
Admit to theft. Also clever. Very illegal, just about everywhere.
Post with a link to a website with pictures of your home and pets. Unbelievably clever. (I think it's cute that you ask people to hire you on the web page, by the way.)
Yes indeed, it's a shame that the FBI has trouble finding criminal masterminds like you.
Though I certainly don't deny that this is a possibility, and one worthy of serious consideration, there is a noteworthy paucity of properly-documented cases. The recent /. posting about corn and soya involved plant matter mixed together after harvest.
The Nature article a while back about genes migrating from GM to 'normal' maize in Mexico last year was later retracted by Nature's editors--an unprecedented move in the history of the journal.
Finally, if the organism escapes to the wild, and if it swaps enough genes to survive, we're still not putting anything out there that isn't already in nature. Biologists are assembling the test organism from the stripped down genome of a preexisting bacterium. There's nothing new here, and there's nothing that prevents the existing bacterium already in the wild from picking up some nasty genes of its own.
The jury is still out on that one. It is possible to create long-chain silanes similar to some structures seen with carbon. They are markedly less durable, however. In particular, the faintest trace of water (liquid or vapour) is enough to break them down into smaller bits. There's way too much water everywhere on earth. In fact, there's probably too much water on Mars.
On the bright side, if you ever did create such an organism, you'd never have to worry about it escaping from the lab.
This is actually kind of ironic. Our understanding of physics (general relativity and quantum mechanics, and all the floppy connective bits we've tried to stick in between) breaks down rather badly around singularities--black holes (if they exist). If anything, these protesters should be cheering the existence of black holes. They're sort of like God's practical joke on physicists.
I, for one, would much prefer to be operated on using this new system--the electronics damp out tremors, and I don't have to worry about a surgeon sneezing and lacerating my intestine. The trauma of major incisions is eliminated, saving me from weeks of hospital food, pain meds, and severe scarring.
Surgeons will take time to become accustomed to this new system. Without a gaping incision, it is harder to see what's going on. There are new failure modes possible. A nick in the aorta is immediately obvious in conventional surgery, not so much so under these conditions. There may also be a 'novelty' penalty. This is a new technique, so there aren't really any experts in the field who have performed thousands of procedures with these devices. There is a learning curve.
Nevertheless, medical decisions are usually made on the basis of a risk calculation. If there are fewer overall complications and deaths, then I'll accept 10 robot-related deaths per year in exchange for the prevention of 100 lethal post-op infections due to poor wound healing.
That said, if you really wanted to assassinate someone in a hospital, there are quite a few ways to do so that are already accessible to the determined murderer. Slip into the recovery room and inject a shot of potassium chloride into one of the victim's IV bags. Very effective. Or just use a pillow, if you have some privacy.
If you want them to die in surgery, tamper with the equipment that monitors vital signs. Continuously read out healthy blood pressure and pulse. Bonus points if you can deliver a small electric current across the EKG leads. Mess with the anaesthetic gas mix. Quite a few people die under general anaesthetic even when things go right.
Frankly, if you're going under the knife and you're going to be unconscious, then you're pretty vulnerable. Be glad that your surgeons are using tools to minimize the trauma to you. If you really fear assassination, then lock yourself in the basement with a bottle of Scotch, and wait for your inflamed appendix to kill you itself.
Pushing from in front or in back may or may not be as helpful--it depends on the relative speed of the asteroid and the earth. If the rock is travelling at a good relative speed, then it can still cover that 6000 km and clip the trailing edge of the earth (if we decelerate the rock) or arrive early and nail the leading edge of the earth (accelerating the rock). The most bang for the buck almost certainly comes from pushing approximately sideways, though the optimal push will depend on the exact circumstances. (By sideways, I mean in a direction roughly perpendicular to the path of the rock towards the earth).