You can consider a notebook a PC if you want (what processor it uses is irrelevant). I wasn't specifically saying it wasn't, although the shift to notebooks does indicate that people are interested in form factors that are not the traditional PC. Personally, I can soon see being able to do everything I need to on a tablet with access to a server stored in a closet somewhere.
I don't actually understand the relevance of your second sentence.
China is second. I realize many Americans think they produce all of everything, always have and always will, but being second in the world in academic output strongly suggests China produces intellectual property. If you look instead at Chinese researchers, as opposed to research done in China, they may well already outrank the US.
Niche implies small relative to the entire market. High end gamers are a niche market. So are heavy on-your-desktop number crunchers. I realize everyone on Slashdot thinks that computers are made specifically for their use, but it ain't so.
Even computers for software development could be considered a niche market - actual developers are far outnumbered by the hordes of e-mailing, web surfing, word processor users.
Of the categories you did list, graphic designers are going to switch over to tablets in droves as soon as they're slightly more capable. Serious graphic designers already use things as close to tablets as they can get. Ditto with a lot of movie and sound editing. Mainstream gaming is already seeing a major shift from consoles and PCs to portable devices. Yes, there will be some high end gamers left, but it's most definitely a niche market. Most software developers I know have ditched their desktops if they can and moved to notebooks.
18 wheelers are silly things to start with. Trains can run quite happily on electricity for long haul transport. Electric local delivery vehicles are possible now, and will be more so in the future.
Why exactly does a battery have to pose a greater explosion risk than the same amount of energy stored in gasoline?
Yes, completely converting our civilization to non-hydrocarbon energy would be very difficult right this very moment, but there's nothing fundamentally impossible about it. If there is we're going to have to say bye bye to civilization eventually.
Non-PC computers are getting more and more capable. I got rid of my last desktop about five years ago, doing everything on a notebook, including high performance scientific computing (development on the notebook, calculation on a cluster). I'd love to have R running on my iPad, which (along with a wifi connection to a number crunching server in the closet) would let me use it for a good portion of what I do, and could completely replace a PC for a lot of scientists and corporate analysts.
It's quite possible to work on a tablet or other non-PC. A great deal of what passes for "work" for many corporate users involves a web browser, e-mail client and maybe a spreadsheet program.
Sure, and we still produce and use vacuum tubes, CRTs and all the other things he mentioned. Even buggy whips. But they're niche markets. High end gamers, heavy number crunchers, etc. are niche markets. The PC market, particularly desktops, has stopped growing and has been shrinking for a while now. More and more people (and businesses) are using netbooks, smart phones and tablets for their routine computing, and it's a trend that will likely continue in the future. The PC isn't going to disappear any time soon, but it is headed towards being a computing minority.
We'd not be using it for energy, we'd be using it to make plastic and other useful hydrocarbons (useful for things other than burning). It's perfectly possible, given a non-hydrocarbon energy source good enough to run civilization. And if you don't believe those exist....
iPhones don't store any of their data "in the cloud." There is the option to sync it with a server, which you have to pay for right now and will be free in the future.
Gold isn't worthless, but it's no more real a currency than anything else. It DOES have the property that it's somewhat more difficult to come up with more of it though.
Gold, just like any currency, is only worth what someone is willing to pay you for it. Everybody who buys gold against a coming apocalypse is an idiot - go see how much your gold is worth somewhere where food is hard to come by.
Yes, gold has been valued through most of history, but not all, and so have other things. Various people liked other shiny rocks, shells, volcanic glass, meteors... anything rare could be used as currency. We use bits of metal and paper. All only have value as long as a bunch of people think they do. Only things like food have actual, inherent value.
When a cell is infected by a virus and hijacked to produce more virus (which is when this drug is effective) that cell's days are usually numbered anyway. Yes, people are investigating using viruses that selectively infect cancer cells. You wouldn't need to use this drug in combination though.
I don't know where you got your figures from, but active viruses are very uncommon in the human body. There aren't any known which are beneficial to us. Many of us carry dormant dormant viruses (herpes simplex for example, or chicken pox), but these aren't actively reproducing and so wouldn't be targets for this drug. It only attacks cells that are actively producing viruses (and so are pretty useless to you anyway).
You're arguing from analogy without really understanding your analogy.
Penicillin interferes with the way many bacteria build cell walls, but there are lots that are naturally resistant to penicillin because they build their cell walls differently. Bacteria also love to swap genes, so eventually that minor cell wall modification got spread around. The fact that penicillin was considered a wonder drug had more to do with it being the first antibiotic discovered. And there wasn't really an "idea" with using penicillin. It's a substance made by a mould that was observed to kill some bacteria. It wasn't designed.
This antiviral appears to attack a pretty critical, and possibly difficult to modify component of many viruses. Plus it causes apoptosis, which for a virus is kind of like a nuclear bomb. Or castration. We routinely castrate cows... do you think they might evolve a resistance?
Bleach is used more widely than penicillin yet there are no bacteria that have evolved a resistance to it.
You wouldn't want to use an immunosuppressant, which just modify immune system without killing the cells. High dose chemo would wipe your immune system though, and then you could reconstruct it using stem cells, either harvested from the patient before hand, or donated. I'm working on a trial that does just that, except for multiple sclerosis, but here's a story about someone trying out the idea on HIV: http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/02/should-we-be-trying-harder-to-find-a-cure-for-aids/
From the story it seems that HIV can remain in a non-immune reservoir somewhere in the body though, so you want to use stem cells from someone with a natural immunity.
Possibly. I'm not sure how widespread an HIV infection is. If a person has a decent T cell count to start with, they might well be able to weather the interval.
Anyway, you can do just fine without your immune system for a short period of time. I'm currently working with a trial that involves completely obliterating the immune system (not just the t-cells) and then replacing it using stem cells.
Read the article. The RNA the drug targets is only found in virus infected cells. Either the viral components of our DNA are not expressed or do not cause the cell to produce the right RNA. They tested their drug against non-infected human cells as well as mice, which have similar viral sequences in their DNA.
No, your cells don't just pick up any old bit of RNA/DNA and run it. A virus infecting a cell is an invasive thing, that cells are designed to protect against, and generally makes the cell pretty useless afterwards, as far as you're concerned. Occasionally, some viral DNA might get inserted into a cell and the cell will keep functioning. If it's a germ line cell, that viral DNA gets passed on. But that doesn't happen very often.
Slashdot Mirror
You can consider a notebook a PC if you want (what processor it uses is irrelevant). I wasn't specifically saying it wasn't, although the shift to notebooks does indicate that people are interested in form factors that are not the traditional PC. Personally, I can soon see being able to do everything I need to on a tablet with access to a server stored in a closet somewhere.
I don't actually understand the relevance of your second sentence.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/mar/28/china-us-publisher-scientific-papers
China is second. I realize many Americans think they produce all of everything, always have and always will, but being second in the world in academic output strongly suggests China produces intellectual property. If you look instead at Chinese researchers, as opposed to research done in China, they may well already outrank the US.
Niche implies small relative to the entire market. High end gamers are a niche market. So are heavy on-your-desktop number crunchers. I realize everyone on Slashdot thinks that computers are made specifically for their use, but it ain't so.
Even computers for software development could be considered a niche market - actual developers are far outnumbered by the hordes of e-mailing, web surfing, word processor users.
Of the categories you did list, graphic designers are going to switch over to tablets in droves as soon as they're slightly more capable. Serious graphic designers already use things as close to tablets as they can get. Ditto with a lot of movie and sound editing. Mainstream gaming is already seeing a major shift from consoles and PCs to portable devices. Yes, there will be some high end gamers left, but it's most definitely a niche market. Most software developers I know have ditched their desktops if they can and moved to notebooks.
18 wheelers are silly things to start with. Trains can run quite happily on electricity for long haul transport. Electric local delivery vehicles are possible now, and will be more so in the future.
Why exactly does a battery have to pose a greater explosion risk than the same amount of energy stored in gasoline?
Yes, completely converting our civilization to non-hydrocarbon energy would be very difficult right this very moment, but there's nothing fundamentally impossible about it. If there is we're going to have to say bye bye to civilization eventually.
Non-PC computers are getting more and more capable. I got rid of my last desktop about five years ago, doing everything on a notebook, including high performance scientific computing (development on the notebook, calculation on a cluster). I'd love to have R running on my iPad, which (along with a wifi connection to a number crunching server in the closet) would let me use it for a good portion of what I do, and could completely replace a PC for a lot of scientists and corporate analysts.
It's quite possible to work on a tablet or other non-PC. A great deal of what passes for "work" for many corporate users involves a web browser, e-mail client and maybe a spreadsheet program.
Sure, and we still produce and use vacuum tubes, CRTs and all the other things he mentioned. Even buggy whips. But they're niche markets. High end gamers, heavy number crunchers, etc. are niche markets. The PC market, particularly desktops, has stopped growing and has been shrinking for a while now. More and more people (and businesses) are using netbooks, smart phones and tablets for their routine computing, and it's a trend that will likely continue in the future. The PC isn't going to disappear any time soon, but it is headed towards being a computing minority.
No, short term volatility is the result of silly traders trying to make a fast buck by trading on... short term volatility.
Longer term changes reflect confidence in a company, and a prediction of it's future.
We'd not be using it for energy, we'd be using it to make plastic and other useful hydrocarbons (useful for things other than burning). It's perfectly possible, given a non-hydrocarbon energy source good enough to run civilization. And if you don't believe those exist....
You are aware that Apple makes and sells rather a lot, right?
iPhones don't store any of their data "in the cloud." There is the option to sync it with a server, which you have to pay for right now and will be free in the future.
I imagine China would LOVE that. Direct control over your currency instead of indirect. Perfect.
You need to travel. Please try and listen more than you talk when you do.
Gold isn't worthless, but it's no more real a currency than anything else. It DOES have the property that it's somewhat more difficult to come up with more of it though.
Gold, just like any currency, is only worth what someone is willing to pay you for it. Everybody who buys gold against a coming apocalypse is an idiot - go see how much your gold is worth somewhere where food is hard to come by.
Yes, gold has been valued through most of history, but not all, and so have other things. Various people liked other shiny rocks, shells, volcanic glass, meteors... anything rare could be used as currency. We use bits of metal and paper. All only have value as long as a bunch of people think they do. Only things like food have actual, inherent value.
I hate to tell you, but China is set to pass the US in quantity of published research output.
You might argue that the quality isn't quite the same, but clearly China does produce intellectual property.
Fortunately viruses are not at all similar to human cells.
Bone marrow is highly vascular. It's not a problem getting a drug into it.
When a cell is infected by a virus and hijacked to produce more virus (which is when this drug is effective) that cell's days are usually numbered anyway. Yes, people are investigating using viruses that selectively infect cancer cells. You wouldn't need to use this drug in combination though.
I don't know where you got your figures from, but active viruses are very uncommon in the human body. There aren't any known which are beneficial to us. Many of us carry dormant dormant viruses (herpes simplex for example, or chicken pox), but these aren't actively reproducing and so wouldn't be targets for this drug. It only attacks cells that are actively producing viruses (and so are pretty useless to you anyway).
I think when your mouse gets sick you just get a new mouse.
You're arguing from analogy without really understanding your analogy.
Penicillin interferes with the way many bacteria build cell walls, but there are lots that are naturally resistant to penicillin because they build their cell walls differently. Bacteria also love to swap genes, so eventually that minor cell wall modification got spread around. The fact that penicillin was considered a wonder drug had more to do with it being the first antibiotic discovered. And there wasn't really an "idea" with using penicillin. It's a substance made by a mould that was observed to kill some bacteria. It wasn't designed.
This antiviral appears to attack a pretty critical, and possibly difficult to modify component of many viruses. Plus it causes apoptosis, which for a virus is kind of like a nuclear bomb. Or castration. We routinely castrate cows... do you think they might evolve a resistance?
Bleach is used more widely than penicillin yet there are no bacteria that have evolved a resistance to it.
You wouldn't want to use an immunosuppressant, which just modify immune system without killing the cells. High dose chemo would wipe your immune system though, and then you could reconstruct it using stem cells, either harvested from the patient before hand, or donated. I'm working on a trial that does just that, except for multiple sclerosis, but here's a story about someone trying out the idea on HIV: http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/02/should-we-be-trying-harder-to-find-a-cure-for-aids/
From the story it seems that HIV can remain in a non-immune reservoir somewhere in the body though, so you want to use stem cells from someone with a natural immunity.
Possibly. I'm not sure how widespread an HIV infection is. If a person has a decent T cell count to start with, they might well be able to weather the interval.
Anyway, you can do just fine without your immune system for a short period of time. I'm currently working with a trial that involves completely obliterating the immune system (not just the t-cells) and then replacing it using stem cells.
Read the article. The RNA the drug targets is only found in virus infected cells. Either the viral components of our DNA are not expressed or do not cause the cell to produce the right RNA. They tested their drug against non-infected human cells as well as mice, which have similar viral sequences in their DNA.
No, your cells don't just pick up any old bit of RNA/DNA and run it. A virus infecting a cell is an invasive thing, that cells are designed to protect against, and generally makes the cell pretty useless afterwards, as far as you're concerned. Occasionally, some viral DNA might get inserted into a cell and the cell will keep functioning. If it's a germ line cell, that viral DNA gets passed on. But that doesn't happen very often.
You're right, you're not an immunologist.
There's a rather big difference between T-cells, which is what HIV infects, and "the whole human."