This allows the two emerging superpowers of Asia to compete in ways other than an arms race or international satellite countries. I'd like to see this culminate in a Mars race between the US, China, India, Europe, Japan, and perhaps Russia (or at least as part of another team). Competition between space programs drove them to the cutting edge so much faster than would have been possible otherwise, or as Buzz Aldrin said "it was like transplanting a decade from the 21st century into the 20th". Technology will benefit, new technologies will develop, and we just might gain the knowledge needed to get off our little cradle in case of emergency. Lord knows that if someone other than the US gets beyond the moon first we will probably get stirred into action, especially if someone like Bush is in office. With the shuttle program out of whack, we could use a good kick in the pants for our own program anyway.
It's French. Hence, most people in the US either don't care or want it renamed "liberty pound". The only people here I know who use metric on a regular basis are engineers, scientists, pharmacists, and drug dealers.
> Now granted, in order to get into a good (medical school), you still have to go through a nasty little M-CAT, something I know nothing about.
No, in order to get into any American or Caribbean medical school you need to take the MCAT. Hopkins used to take ACT scores but changed over a few years ago, and a few BS/MD programs will still do that, but most of those only admit high school students for a 6-year ride (Brown, Kansas City-Missouri, etc.; Miami-FL rolls theirs such that FL residents can apply in high school or after first year)
I'm in medical school now, having got a 32 on the MCAT. If you want an SAT equivalent of the MCAT, look at the ACT: I think that the MCAT and ACT are made by the same folks. On both tests you are tested on what you know instead of your ability to prepare for the specific test. There were people in my class who cracked 1500 on the SAT but did not get better than 30 on the ACT, and lots of folks got much higher ACT scores than SAT. Colleges are starting to figure this out, especially given that the SAT (and IMO GRE) are basically assinine exams designed to see who can think in the same way as the test-takers.
The penalties for guessing on the SAT will hamper bright students and IMO artificially deflate scores. Most of the Verbal section of the SAT is, again, a matter of test-taking: skip the hardest sections and get back to them later (use this strategy for the MCAT too) The ACT seemed to be more comprehensive and much more straight-forward, maybe that is due to my own bias and scores. Most schools take both now, if you want to answer every question then take the ACT. Note that the MCAT does not penalize you for guessing, they know that the scores will be low since the test is bell-curved nationally anyway. Averages run around 8.5 / category, 3 numerically graded categories and a writing section with a letter attached (J-T, avg = O or so), good score = 30+.
BTW, if you're getting ready to take the MCAT, remember 3 things:
1) take a prep course. I swear by Kaplan and will use them for step I, others think Princeton Review is the key.
2) leave the semester before the exam (take it in april and if need be again in august) open to a fairly light load. I took 18 hours that semester and would have done 12 in retrospect.
3) Study constantly, even over spring break. If you can do well in april it saves you a summer of grief, not to mention that everyone taking it in april has a class load to deal with.
I figure that in the near future most businesses will become more integrated with the Internet. The potential for customers to order goods without ever leaving their home is a tremndous potential market that can only grow as more people (especially Americans) get online. Given the laws of the United States concerning "security" passed in the last few years, I disagree with the author's comment that data mining will become a thing of the past. Quite the opposite, I think that with more information becoming readily available on the Internet that data mining will be used even more to attempt to forecast customer's desires before they even start actively shopping. With increased computing capacity and faster Internet access, it should only make data mining that much easier.
Certainly data mining and "buisness intelligence" can save corporations advertising dollars, but what about the people who buck the trends? Advertisers will tap into the internet thanks to small businesses who could readily advertise for much less money to the whole world, if need be. Local mini-webs for individual cities like Yahoo sets up would be perfect places for such advertising. Sadly, I also predict that AOL and Microsoft will try to merge at some point soon to facilitate their own data mining practices and to try to control most of these local webs. Their offers of integrated services from web access to web navigation to easy-to-understand web tools are already one of their biggest selling points. I say try to merge because despite current politics and recent events there are still legal limits to corporate mergers.
Regardless, I think companies will try to start integrating more of the Internet into their business. Small businesses will start using data mining as the technologies behind it become more easily exploited. And larger computer companies will probably start trying to consolidate in order to offer their own browsers, OSes (Linux derivatives for the masses seems likely to compete with Billy), and internet connection services all in one package.
How do we know that the nanotech is HIPAA-compliant? If it fixes my damaged liver, will it broadcast that information to spam providers in Utah who will tell me about the evils of drink? And what if I do like to eat steaks? Just because I have nanotech cleaning out my arteries, should I have to worry about it telling my vegan girlfriend that I'm not exactly sticking to a vegan diet when she's not around? Hmm?
First, privacy impacts should be minimal given that we're talking about particles. Machinery would be what you're talking about, and you could surround it in a biodegradable (gelatin?) capsule and make the machinery itself out of largely biodegradable materials. Perhaps then you'd be right to worry about urinary "metabolites" since that could prove tricky, especially if one or two get through there intact and go rogue.
For HIPAA compliance, use biodegradable materials and give the manufacturers their own laws/ regulations. Again, at this point we're only talking about materials, so it may not fix your liver so much as tell you where the damage specifically is. Same with damaged/clogged arteries: that's not just plaque in there, but cellular scar tissue and abnormal growth too. If you leave a medical paper around the house, your honest answer could be that you were concerned about your heart's condition and you wanted to get checked now before running into problems down the road. Seriously, with the current party system, medical privacy will be protected somehow before they allow such therapies to be used on a widespread basis.
I can't help out with the dietary issue too much, maybe you just ought to tell her that you wanted to help the struggling small farmer so you decided to eat a 24 oz. steak once a week with some Yorkshire pudding for dessert. Best of luck on that one...
Nanotechnology is key to the development of 21st century industry much as the transistor was to the latte rhalf of the 20th century. According to the paper, BASF is working on a toothpaste that has enamel built into it. Those worrying about having hydroxyapetite crystals enter the body don't seem to worry about the mercury in fillings potentially causing Minamata (methyl mercury ==> degenerative brain) disease. Nanocrystals are already being employed for medical research, one lab at Vanderbilt is already exploring their potential use as a tracking system for neurological tumors and disease since they can circumvent the blood-brain barrier.
New polymers and materials are also unlikely to enter commercial use if they disintegrate so quickly that inhaling notable quantities becomes a problem. If they're flaking off in the air they'd as likely disintegrate on cantact with water. Buckyballs could be a potential health threat but does that stop people from trying to build star ladders / space elevators out of their derivative materials? Of course not. Look at the benefits from material science over the last decade just using alloys derived from Cold War technology of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. We stand at the threshold of potential miracles in medicine (implants that don't get rejected), computing (micronized computers...imagine if today's Game Boy became tommorow's ENIAC), and many other fields.
Of course there will be toxic derivatives of some new materials, after all LSD was discovered by people looking for cold medicines and heroin was discovered when Bayer wanted a more potent pain reliever than morphine. Care should be taken not to let certain materials into the environment, but that can be done by covered, sealed hoods with gloves or mabe this is an incentive to develop better filtering systems (could work against biochem agents too...). Keep the research going and just remember to apply common sense when working with dangerous chemicals.
What sorts of changes (5-7 most important) do you think could be made to the DMCA that would provide reliable protection for intellectual property while minimally intruding on innovation?
Ouch. The last thing I'd want is a hangover with a side of caffeine poisoning. This is about as medicinal as heroin (which was actually considered a medicine for a while in early 1900s) and sounds like someone's drunken frat dare taken too seriously.
Hopefully other people out there are as skeptical of this as I am. While there is no doubt that tech fields will rapidly expand over the next 7 years, people are clammoring for good news of any kind right now. Note the "Saving Private Lynch" effect; one young girl is found alive amidst the chaos of our Gulf "War" and suddenly we hear about her ad nauseum. I support the troops and her courage under fire and capture, but hopefully the military can use some of the really wacko media folks as shock troops. In this case, we still have no decent news on the homefront worth talking about, so by the same effect the Tribune may be trying to boost confidence this way.
New programs will have to be developed for all sorts of things but in this economy the applications are not likely to be as readily profitable and hence I doubt that they will be pursued so quickly. This report sounds almost like one from about two years ago (saying that coding jobs were going to double by 2003) got dusted off and re-numbered with double the difference in between. Are there any blindingly new applications out there that will have such growth over the next few years that it could cause this? Again, it sounds as though it may be little more than propaganda du jour, especially given the number of people with coding skills still not coding because of the tech crash. What will be the net increase of coding jobs by 2010 compared to March 2001? August 2002? And how many people who have found work elsewhere will leave their current jobs and go back to coding? Many of the newest jobs will be sapped up by college kids and the unemployed, providing a ready pool of applicants regardless of jobs created. Would we even notice the increase in the first few years given their predictions?
Now if they were to include protein programmers in this category, I would agree. There is a new field of "programming" where individual DNA sequences and amino acids are going to be genetically tailered en masse for research. It is already happening in universities for research but not enough places in the ordinary world for the everyday joe to know what's going on. With protein design still in its nacesent stages, however, it will not truly take off until more consistent results in said field emerge. And in this case, proteins with as many flaws as Windows can still prove useful if only as drugs that mimic something biologically made and block its target for whatever reason (like blocking a receptor that causes blood vessels to grow as a means of treating cancer).
The United States Postal Service has announced it will stop delivering any mail from Florida, due to the large number of mail-order scams originating from that state
Don't laugh too hard on that one, there are schemes in place of trying to privatize and eliminate the whole of the US mail system including first class postage. While it might be neat to have all your mail sent by one company like UPS and while the post office does need to get its act together ASAP, my concern is that rural areas would by stuck with only one greedy private company as their only means of communication (thus making it expensive to send or recieve mail at all). Remember, the postal system in the US is a time-honored tradition that has been the envy and model for the rest of the planet. It is also in good working order, thus if AOL chooses not to accept e-mail anymore, why not just bombard them with snail mail? We could also return their bloody disks right back to them while we're at it. Maybe after they get several hundred thousand they'll get the hint.
And if you think the AOL-Time-Warner lawyers will allow their most lucrative domain to be taken from them then I have to disagree. I figure they've already got a loophole in the fine print somewhere that is as easily exploited as the pictures of children for those old Sally Struthers commercials (the ones where the kids keep starving but she kept growing). There hsa to be some reason behind this that is not yet shared, hopefully their decision has a more rational basis than some of the arguments for privatizing the US postal system.
RIAA threat to EU and a new job for Al-Sharif
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DMCA, Auf Deutsch
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· Score: 2, Interesting
It's only a matter of time before a Strausburg E-PM (European Parliament Member) passes something similar. The RIAA includes German music companies as well thus they're only seeking to protect themselves on their home turf before moving on to other areas. I'd be surprised if lesiglation is not already pending or passed in the Japanese Diet or Indian Parliament as well as all the major European countries.
That reminds me: Maybe the Iraqi foreign minister will take up his next job as the RIAA spokes person? "There are no reasons to allow people to back up their own CDS! None! Our profits no longer exist now that the Americans...er, pirates have illegally burned music onto CDs regardless of whether they own the songs or not! The RIAA will triumph and see all the pirates locked up!"
Given Microsoft's track record, this is not a total surprise. When they said they wanted their paws into everything a computer can offer (word processors, music, operating systems, etc.), they meant it. I'm surprised they haven't tried to offer a service that allows people to order groceries online and have them delivered, we had one where I am for a while but it went bust due to lack of customers.
I'll start getting worried when Micro-soft gets into fast food, energy trading, agriculture, and steelmaking. As long as they stick to things that can be bundled into windows, at least the Evil Empire of Computing remains visible.
Unfortunately the spammers are still shielded against direct lawsuits, this only allows state AGs to sue them for us. I'm not sure that this could hold up in court anyway, but the feature of mandating real return addresses would be nice. Another section of this law would require a mandatory opt-out for people who want it. I wouldn't mind spam so much if I could actually opt out of it and be able to send cease-and-desist letters to the addresses of the spammers. For the few people out there who actually use this to make money, I have little pity for them since they are well aware of how much the public loathes the spam-masters. Find another job in public relations or just hire a good lawyer and settle out of court or mve your operations to a server off of US soil (I hear Grand Cayman is nice...). Forty percent of all e-mail is now officially thought to be just spam but I'd say it was more like 75%; they also say the average American gets 2200 spam messages a year but I got 35-40 yesterday alone.
If we are serious about getting the spammer to quit but don't want to violate the first amendment, we could try crafting a law that makes the use of false return addresses equivalent to minor fraud or a misdemeanor charge. When these spammers intentionally use false e-mail addresses for return/reply boxes, they engage in deceptive practices by preventing people from saying no to unwanted e-mail. Sure, they have the right to send these things by e-mail, but their rights to send such things should not interfere with our right to privacy. People should also be allowed to sue spammers directly since a wealthy spammer could easily settle out of court with one state attorney but could they do so as easily against 5,000 private citizens in small claims court asking for $5k each? Probably not. Anyone else have ideas forh how to defeat spammers without compromising the first amendment?
I know that my Senator is opposed to extension of the Patriot Act and that the guy who ran against my representative last term was a sacrifical lamb (he barely got 20% of the vote). There are those of us who ardently oppose this legislation and whose voting districts are heavily controlled by one party or another that their voice is never really heard anyway (Republicans in Massachusetts, Democrats in parts of the South, etc.). For some of us, the SCOTUS is the only shot we have to get our voices heard and to see our ideals of this nation given a chance. Some of us got out there to register voters and see if we could make a change from the ground up. Heck, I still have questions about the Florida situation because of personal experience with one county's political situation and the fact that it was in the hands of the brother of one of the candidates.
I have written to my representative to try to get things done and get the word out concerning laws of interest to my profession. There's no way in heck he's going to lose in this district and the senator that just got elected barely won, and that was only because el presidente came down and went on the stump for him. Neither of these guys is likely to vote against the Patriot extension if it comes up for a vote, but I want to see it gone anyway, so I hope the SCOTUS intervenes.
Elections these days only concern that 5% of the people who both vote and who don't always vote with the same party. If you can control that sway vote you can win almost any given election. And in some districts (like mine) the straight-ticket voters of one party dominate so heavily that the same party has controlled the same positions in the area for years. In short, for at least a few million of us the SCOTUS us our only real shot at seeing some legislature we don't like getting eliminated. Our representatives don't always represent our interests, but their party more than anything else since they know that they will get re-elected as long as the party is kept happy.
Granted, your example concerning Taney and the SCOTUS of 1861 bears hearing out given their pro-slavery stance. Unfortunately most Americans can't tell Roger Taney from James Buchanan from Adelai Stevenson etc. I'd say the Alien and Sedition Acts rank up there for some of our worst anti-Constitutional legislation as well, perhaps the flurry of anti-Communist legislation bears major anti-Constitution violations as well. But your example is quite valid.
The PATRIOT is our most anti-constitutional act to date that most people can name. By nature of the erosion of liberties contained within it becomes quite possible to violate several aspects of the 4th amendment (among many others) to the point that they may as well negate it. Our government seems hell-bent on amassing as much power as it possibly can. With Ashcroft et al. in charge of defending our liberties, I can only hope that someone in government will wake up and propose a counter-act to this. That we stand by and have allowed this to occur is miserable, that government continues to exploit it borders on criminal. Laws are not always inherently moral, and this law is among the greatest examples of how ethics and law do not always correlate. How many "terrorists" this law has caught may never be known since the government has not authorized release of information of the people involved. Secret trials, evidence allowed based on word-of-mouth and witness testimony only, and imprisonment without due process are against the Constitution but allowed under the PATRIOT act. This fascist law must be eliminated to protect our nation's freedoms and prevent our overbearing, paternal government from becoming merely a Big Brother.
We cannot allow this to continue. I will be writing my Congressmen and saking others to do the same. Laws like this are how Hitler, Mussolini, and numerous other dictators got started. Law is built on precedence, so if we allow this to continue the envelope will be pushed until new even more intrusive laws are allowed. Seriously, if we are allowed to treat non-citizens like lawbreakers without reprisal, how long will it be before we are allowed to treat citizens like lawbreakers mere for speaking against the government? Oregon is already proposing legislature that would allow peace protestors to be arrested on terrorism charges. How long before this is carried nationwide?
Our rights are under serious threat from a government led by certain people that thirst for power. If we don't act now, it may well be illegal to act later. Call your reps and senators, spread the word, and let's try to kill this thing now before it becomes permanent law.
By innovation I didn't mean this case specifically, I meant anything that distributes music electronically (Napster, Kazaa, etc.). The student could get hit for a lack of originality charge if such a thing existed. If the RIAA had foresight, they'd have found a way to do e-distribuition themselves before Napster meant something other than a sleepy infant or a nickname.
If you think that the RIAA is not involved in practices of intellectual monopolization, please name some record labels disassociated with the RIAA that are not under extreme pressure to join and can actually compete. In Nashville my (very limited) experience was that almost all of the labels had affiliation with said organization. Most of the people distributing music online are doing so for free or with small labels that are looking for other ways to compete with the RIAA. I think they are trying to make industry-wide prohibitions on how music gets distributed electronically but haven't been successful yet and that there are agreements between labels, though I can't prove the latter and the former is thusfar based on circumstancial evidence.
Our RIAA is acting as though it were Standard Oil from ~1900. Anyone that interferes with it becomes a target for outrageous lawsuits nad public humiliation in hopes that everyone else will cease and desist. What is most concerning here is that the RIAA is a de facto trust that is likely breaking the law by monopolization of intellectual property and distribution with respect to music. Technical innovation is being stifled by the DMCA because they apparently can't keep up to date with current means of distributing music. Mostly this is about greed: both on the part of the RIAA to maintain its non-realistic profit expectations and of some people who refuse to pay for music at all. There are some people out there engaged in blatently criminal acts of intellectual property theft as currently defined by the law.
What we need to do is 1) Reform the current laws (maybe with a "DMCA Lite"?) 2) Educate incoming freshmen at major universities about what the hell can happen to you for getting involved in this crap and 3) putting the RIAA in check by either legal means or a boycott on their products. Standard Oil did the same sorts of things to potential competitors and had all kinds of legal protection before TR came along and broke it up, but GW is certainly not interested in hurting potential campaign donors nor is anyone else I can think of given the proximity of a presidential election. Certainly the RIAA does not expect to collect 0.097 trillion dollars from a student but I'll wager a Golden Dollar or two that we'll hear that exact same number used in reference to Congress on why the RIAA needs "protection" against a new technology they can not use to their benefit. Allowing this sort of corporate welfare hurts both the consumer by allowing higher prices and the entire populace by allowing a de facto trust to run into the rights of the people simply for corporate benefit. Can anyone else present potential solutions to this problems?
Are they honest or just desperate?
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Fishing for Ideas
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· Score: 5, Interesting
It seems a far cry from the days of Q-DOS in 1981 when Gates and Co were trying to sell an operating system they didn't technically own at the time to IBM. They were a much more nimble company in those days and had plenty of ideas and developments to go scour and steal. Lately, however, the Standard Oil of the Computer industry is encounrtering the same problems as its turn-of-the-previous century counterpart: government is on its back, the "innovation" that got it where it is seems to have disappeared (Rockefeller consolidating oil pipelines and refineries together), and the public at large is disgruntled but left with few alternatives.
Microsoft is not run by idiots. They realize that if they are to compete against systems like Linux they need to innovate before Linux develops a truly AOL level interface that even Joe Schmoe can use...for free. Bad press and a worse reputation have finally gotten their attention, so their asking for ideas to investigate. It would seem that their age range (based on the prize offered) is 16-25, just the right age when people are thinking way outside the box and are not limited by knowledge of what should not be possible. These (maverick?) thinkers tend to give the most innovative ideas but also the ones that need the most work to come to fruition. If Microsoft can cull this source of innovation while reaping the profits from it, they could set themselves up as a potential warehouse for new tech ideas. A wiser plan would have been to offer 5-10% of all profits made from the idea in addition to the $25k since that would get more cynical programmers and worldly people interested, but the young and nieve seem to be the most easily exploited by definition. I have to wonder if this is not a sign of desperation by the Microsoft management though since they did drag in these same sorts of innovative thinkers by the truckload even 3 years ago. Even now they tend to snap up the best of the best offered by MIT and other major tech schools, but why would they need this sort of competition when they already have the best minds? Do those folks just have really good grades but an inability to think outside the box? Again, I have to wonder if this is not desperation for truly radical ideas as much as a desire to see what talent is out there.
In reality, all y'all are partially right and partially wrong. Germany, Russia, Britian, USA, and the other great empires of history scrambled to secure resources. He who has the most toys wins, regardless of flag or allegiance. Rome won out in Italy and eventually the Mediterranean because it could commit more manpower to any conflict than its rivals. Its intercontinental (possibly global, they are now known to have reached China by 166 AD and recent excavations indicate a presence in the Yucutan and Americas even before Augustus) economy consumed vast amounts of resources and no one could stop it until they became disorganized. Germany in 1875 was just larger than Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virgina (and about as many resources) combined with a population of 50 million+. It needed land to expand into and resources for trade. Britian industrialized first and needed resources for its global economy even as the eighteeth century dawned to compensate for lack of resources at home. Venice had only sand and sea, selling salt and glass gave them enough in trade to make a massive commerical empire. Japan is like Britian only more extreme: they have almost no resources at home and have to conquer or trade to get what they need.
And so on. The same formula can be applied to every world power in history: they will do whatever it takes to secure resources even if it means resorting to dastardly acts like supporting nutcases (we propped up hussein and afghani groups in the 80s after all) or even outright annexation (poland, texas, baltic states, india...).
Unlimited spin would be nice for turntables and whatnot (imagine the mew re-mixes at ungodly RPMs) but seriously what would this be used for? I don't know much about physics, so could someone please elucidate the commercial value of this discovery?
Hitler was never elected, he was brought in by a consensus of people with the authority to put him in power that thought he could be controlled.
Soon after his rise to office, a major terrorist event occured in the primary city of Germany in which a landmark was torched and people were killed.
Following this, a new series of laws were enacted that allowed his government much more power and far fewer checks than previously permitted. This allowed for domestic security forces and monitoring of citizens records at will of the government, among other things.
Media services were organized to allow the government to control what its populace was exposed to. Dissenters were either publically ridiculed, or jailed (anyone else worried about the proposed law in Oregon that potentially puts anti-war protestors in the same categories as terrorists?)
This should all sound familiar. Expansion of government powers inevitably leads to erosion of personal liberties until one or the other becomes almost negated. Early in our country we did not even have the power to tax our own citizens and the only government most people saw was the post office. Our government is moving in the direction of power consolidation, especially when our civil liberties are being "protected" by fascists like Ashcroft. If not for the Democrats having control of the Senate around 9/11, the proposals allowing for severely intrusive laws by Republicans would certainly have passed and we would be looking at a potential police state. Even with those checks in place our civil liberties took severe blows over the last 18 months to the point that random people can now be detained without charge on charges of "terrorism".
I just got back from an international vacation on Sunday. I agree that airport security needed tightening up (and more work needs to get done; they never even checked the glovebox for my permit-toting friend during his random stop at the airport. He occasionally carries a pistol there but the security didn't even ask). Federal buildings need to be protected, without a doubt the concrete barriers and othe rmeasures mentioned elsewhere are necessary. But let's be honest: the terrorists who launched the attacks took years to plan and execute their strikes. It is not easy for them to get over here, it is even more difficult to support them while they're here, and most people who arrive in the US tend to want to stay once they get here. I wonder if the 19 that ended up planning the attack was not originally 100+ given the opinions of other Arabs I have known and how their opinions changed during our college years. Almost all are now applying for either green cards or work visas.
Nineteen people, or a hundred people, or even a thousand people are not justification for ruining the privacy of 275.000.000 others. Get with the program: there are those who would use the increased power to further their own ends. If Ms. McDonald wants to allow people to view every aspect of her life, then perhaps we should build her a house in downtown Washington with entirely translucent walls or put closed-circuit cameras throughout her hom with the promise that only the government is monitoring them. Let various people see her from every angle 24/7/365 and find out how long she supports government intrusion. Depriving people of their privacy is usually the first step on that slippery slope from free republics to police states, like what happened in Germany in 1933. If we don't act to protect our privacy, then the only measurable terror we shall have will be that from people fearful of speaking out against their government for feare of reprisals. Then the terrorists have truly won.
RNA has been demonstrated to have enzyme-like properties in many cases, in some cases even being able to cleave itself if spliced properly. There are more than a few organisms storing information on means other than DNA though few do so exclusively.
And for those who doubt, Ms. Franklin's work was most certainly pirated by Crick, Watson, and wilkins. Had this same situation occured today, Ms. Franklin could easily have defeated them in court for theft of intellectual property. Crick was a 10th year PhD student whose previous explorations into whale hemoglobin hadn't led to as much as hoped while Watson was a Harvard postdoc looking for his first breakthrough. At least Wilkins already had a working laboratory, but this does not excuse their actions. Without Franklin's picture, it would have been months or years before the structure would be correctly elucidated (remember, people like Linus Pauling were trying models at that time which included 3-part helices with nucleotides sticking away from the phosphate bonds, etc.)
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This allows the two emerging superpowers of Asia to compete in ways other than an arms race or international satellite countries. I'd like to see this culminate in a Mars race between the US, China, India, Europe, Japan, and perhaps Russia (or at least as part of another team). Competition between space programs drove them to the cutting edge so much faster than would have been possible otherwise, or as Buzz Aldrin said "it was like transplanting a decade from the 21st century into the 20th". Technology will benefit, new technologies will develop, and we just might gain the knowledge needed to get off our little cradle in case of emergency. Lord knows that if someone other than the US gets beyond the moon first we will probably get stirred into action, especially if someone like Bush is in office. With the shuttle program out of whack, we could use a good kick in the pants for our own program anyway.
It's French. Hence, most people in the US either don't care or want it renamed "liberty pound". The only people here I know who use metric on a regular basis are engineers, scientists, pharmacists, and drug dealers.
> Now granted, in order to get into a good (medical school), you still have to go through a nasty little M-CAT, something I know nothing about.
No, in order to get into any American or Caribbean medical school you need to take the MCAT. Hopkins used to take ACT scores but changed over a few years ago, and a few BS/MD programs will still do that, but most of those only admit high school students for a 6-year ride (Brown, Kansas City-Missouri, etc.; Miami-FL rolls theirs such that FL residents can apply in high school or after first year)
I'm in medical school now, having got a 32 on the MCAT. If you want an SAT equivalent of the MCAT, look at the ACT: I think that the MCAT and ACT are made by the same folks. On both tests you are tested on what you know instead of your ability to prepare for the specific test. There were people in my class who cracked 1500 on the SAT but did not get better than 30 on the ACT, and lots of folks got much higher ACT scores than SAT. Colleges are starting to figure this out, especially given that the SAT (and IMO GRE) are basically assinine exams designed to see who can think in the same way as the test-takers.
The penalties for guessing on the SAT will hamper bright students and IMO artificially deflate scores. Most of the Verbal section of the SAT is, again, a matter of test-taking: skip the hardest sections and get back to them later (use this strategy for the MCAT too) The ACT seemed to be more comprehensive and much more straight-forward, maybe that is due to my own bias and scores. Most schools take both now, if you want to answer every question then take the ACT. Note that the MCAT does not penalize you for guessing, they know that the scores will be low since the test is bell-curved nationally anyway. Averages run around 8.5 / category, 3 numerically graded categories and a writing section with a letter attached (J-T, avg = O or so), good score = 30+.
BTW, if you're getting ready to take the MCAT, remember 3 things:
1) take a prep course. I swear by Kaplan and will use them for step I, others think Princeton Review is the key.
2) leave the semester before the exam (take it in april and if need be again in august) open to a fairly light load. I took 18 hours that semester and would have done 12 in retrospect.
3) Study constantly, even over spring break. If you can do well in april it saves you a summer of grief, not to mention that everyone taking it in april has a class load to deal with.
I figure that in the near future most businesses will become more integrated with the Internet. The potential for customers to order goods without ever leaving their home is a tremndous potential market that can only grow as more people (especially Americans) get online. Given the laws of the United States concerning "security" passed in the last few years, I disagree with the author's comment that data mining will become a thing of the past. Quite the opposite, I think that with more information becoming readily available on the Internet that data mining will be used even more to attempt to forecast customer's desires before they even start actively shopping. With increased computing capacity and faster Internet access, it should only make data mining that much easier.
Certainly data mining and "buisness intelligence" can save corporations advertising dollars, but what about the people who buck the trends? Advertisers will tap into the internet thanks to small businesses who could readily advertise for much less money to the whole world, if need be. Local mini-webs for individual cities like Yahoo sets up would be perfect places for such advertising. Sadly, I also predict that AOL and Microsoft will try to merge at some point soon to facilitate their own data mining practices and to try to control most of these local webs. Their offers of integrated services from web access to web navigation to easy-to-understand web tools are already one of their biggest selling points. I say try to merge because despite current politics and recent events there are still legal limits to corporate mergers.
Regardless, I think companies will try to start integrating more of the Internet into their business. Small businesses will start using data mining as the technologies behind it become more easily exploited. And larger computer companies will probably start trying to consolidate in order to offer their own browsers, OSes (Linux derivatives for the masses seems likely to compete with Billy), and internet connection services all in one package.
This seems like Grandma asking the wolf to babysit Little Red Riding Hood.
How do we know that the nanotech is HIPAA-compliant? If it fixes my damaged liver, will it broadcast that information to spam providers in Utah who will tell me about the evils of drink? And what if I do like to eat steaks? Just because I have nanotech cleaning out my arteries, should I have to worry about it telling my vegan girlfriend that I'm not exactly sticking to a vegan diet when she's not around? Hmm?
First, privacy impacts should be minimal given that we're talking about particles. Machinery would be what you're talking about, and you could surround it in a biodegradable (gelatin?) capsule and make the machinery itself out of largely biodegradable materials. Perhaps then you'd be right to worry about urinary "metabolites" since that could prove tricky, especially if one or two get through there intact and go rogue.
For HIPAA compliance, use biodegradable materials and give the manufacturers their own laws/ regulations. Again, at this point we're only talking about materials, so it may not fix your liver so much as tell you where the damage specifically is. Same with damaged/clogged arteries: that's not just plaque in there, but cellular scar tissue and abnormal growth too. If you leave a medical paper around the house, your honest answer could be that you were concerned about your heart's condition and you wanted to get checked now before running into problems down the road. Seriously, with the current party system, medical privacy will be protected somehow before they allow such therapies to be used on a widespread basis.
I can't help out with the dietary issue too much, maybe you just ought to tell her that you wanted to help the struggling small farmer so you decided to eat a 24 oz. steak once a week with some Yorkshire pudding for dessert. Best of luck on that one...
Nanotechnology is key to the development of 21st century industry much as the transistor was to the latte rhalf of the 20th century. According to the paper, BASF is working on a toothpaste that has enamel built into it. Those worrying about having hydroxyapetite crystals enter the body don't seem to worry about the mercury in fillings potentially causing Minamata (methyl mercury ==> degenerative brain) disease. Nanocrystals are already being employed for medical research, one lab at Vanderbilt is already exploring their potential use as a tracking system for neurological tumors and disease since they can circumvent the blood-brain barrier.
New polymers and materials are also unlikely to enter commercial use if they disintegrate so quickly that inhaling notable quantities becomes a problem. If they're flaking off in the air they'd as likely disintegrate on cantact with water. Buckyballs could be a potential health threat but does that stop people from trying to build star ladders / space elevators out of their derivative materials? Of course not. Look at the benefits from material science over the last decade just using alloys derived from Cold War technology of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. We stand at the threshold of potential miracles in medicine (implants that don't get rejected), computing (micronized computers...imagine if today's Game Boy became tommorow's ENIAC), and many other fields.
Of course there will be toxic derivatives of some new materials, after all LSD was discovered by people looking for cold medicines and heroin was discovered when Bayer wanted a more potent pain reliever than morphine. Care should be taken not to let certain materials into the environment, but that can be done by covered, sealed hoods with gloves or mabe this is an incentive to develop better filtering systems (could work against biochem agents too...). Keep the research going and just remember to apply common sense when working with dangerous chemicals.
What sorts of changes (5-7 most important) do you think could be made to the DMCA that would provide reliable protection for intellectual property while minimally intruding on innovation?
Ouch. The last thing I'd want is a hangover with a side of caffeine poisoning. This is about as medicinal as heroin (which was actually considered a medicine for a while in early 1900s) and sounds like someone's drunken frat dare taken too seriously.
Hopefully other people out there are as skeptical of this as I am. While there is no doubt that tech fields will rapidly expand over the next 7 years, people are clammoring for good news of any kind right now. Note the "Saving Private Lynch" effect; one young girl is found alive amidst the chaos of our Gulf "War" and suddenly we hear about her ad nauseum. I support the troops and her courage under fire and capture, but hopefully the military can use some of the really wacko media folks as shock troops. In this case, we still have no decent news on the homefront worth talking about, so by the same effect the Tribune may be trying to boost confidence this way.
New programs will have to be developed for all sorts of things but in this economy the applications are not likely to be as readily profitable and hence I doubt that they will be pursued so quickly. This report sounds almost like one from about two years ago (saying that coding jobs were going to double by 2003) got dusted off and re-numbered with double the difference in between. Are there any blindingly new applications out there that will have such growth over the next few years that it could cause this? Again, it sounds as though it may be little more than propaganda du jour, especially given the number of people with coding skills still not coding because of the tech crash. What will be the net increase of coding jobs by 2010 compared to March 2001? August 2002? And how many people who have found work elsewhere will leave their current jobs and go back to coding? Many of the newest jobs will be sapped up by college kids and the unemployed, providing a ready pool of applicants regardless of jobs created. Would we even notice the increase in the first few years given their predictions?
Now if they were to include protein programmers in this category, I would agree. There is a new field of "programming" where individual DNA sequences and amino acids are going to be genetically tailered en masse for research. It is already happening in universities for research but not enough places in the ordinary world for the everyday joe to know what's going on. With protein design still in its nacesent stages, however, it will not truly take off until more consistent results in said field emerge. And in this case, proteins with as many flaws as Windows can still prove useful if only as drugs that mimic something biologically made and block its target for whatever reason (like blocking a receptor that causes blood vessels to grow as a means of treating cancer).
The United States Postal Service has announced it will stop delivering
any mail from Florida, due to the large number of mail-order scams originating from that state
Don't laugh too hard on that one, there are schemes in place of trying to privatize and eliminate the whole of the US mail system including first class postage. While it might be neat to have all your mail sent by one company like UPS and while the post office does need to get its act together ASAP, my concern is that rural areas would by stuck with only one greedy private company as their only means of communication (thus making it expensive to send or recieve mail at all). Remember, the postal system in the US is a time-honored tradition that has been the envy and model for the rest of the planet. It is also in good working order, thus if AOL chooses not to accept e-mail anymore, why not just bombard them with snail mail? We could also return their bloody disks right back to them while we're at it. Maybe after they get several hundred thousand they'll get the hint.
And if you think the AOL-Time-Warner lawyers will allow their most lucrative domain to be taken from them then I have to disagree. I figure they've already got a loophole in the fine print somewhere that is as easily exploited as the pictures of children for those old Sally Struthers commercials (the ones where the kids keep starving but she kept growing). There hsa to be some reason behind this that is not yet shared, hopefully their decision has a more rational basis than some of the arguments for privatizing the US postal system.
The sig says it all...
It's only a matter of time before a Strausburg E-PM (European Parliament Member) passes something similar. The RIAA includes German music companies as well thus they're only seeking to protect themselves on their home turf before moving on to other areas. I'd be surprised if lesiglation is not already pending or passed in the Japanese Diet or Indian Parliament as well as all the major European countries.
That reminds me: Maybe the Iraqi foreign minister will take up his next job as the RIAA spokes person? "There are no reasons to allow people to back up their own CDS! None! Our profits no longer exist now that the Americans...er, pirates have illegally burned music onto CDs regardless of whether they own the songs or not! The RIAA will triumph and see all the pirates locked up!"
Given Microsoft's track record, this is not a total surprise. When they said they wanted their paws into everything a computer can offer (word processors, music, operating systems, etc.), they meant it. I'm surprised they haven't tried to offer a service that allows people to order groceries online and have them delivered, we had one where I am for a while but it went bust due to lack of customers.
I'll start getting worried when Micro-soft gets into fast food, energy trading, agriculture, and steelmaking. As long as they stick to things that can be bundled into windows, at least the Evil Empire of Computing remains visible.
Unfortunately the spammers are still shielded against direct lawsuits, this only allows state AGs to sue them for us. I'm not sure that this could hold up in court anyway, but the feature of mandating real return addresses would be nice. Another section of this law would require a mandatory opt-out for people who want it. I wouldn't mind spam so much if I could actually opt out of it and be able to send cease-and-desist letters to the addresses of the spammers. For the few people out there who actually use this to make money, I have little pity for them since they are well aware of how much the public loathes the spam-masters. Find another job in public relations or just hire a good lawyer and settle out of court or mve your operations to a server off of US soil (I hear Grand Cayman is nice...). Forty percent of all e-mail is now officially thought to be just spam but I'd say it was more like 75%; they also say the average American gets 2200 spam messages a year but I got 35-40 yesterday alone.
If we are serious about getting the spammer to quit but don't want to violate the first amendment, we could try crafting a law that makes the use of false return addresses equivalent to minor fraud or a misdemeanor charge. When these spammers intentionally use false e-mail addresses for return/reply boxes, they engage in deceptive practices by preventing people from saying no to unwanted e-mail. Sure, they have the right to send these things by e-mail, but their rights to send such things should not interfere with our right to privacy. People should also be allowed to sue spammers directly since a wealthy spammer could easily settle out of court with one state attorney but could they do so as easily against 5,000 private citizens in small claims court asking for $5k each? Probably not. Anyone else have ideas forh how to defeat spammers without compromising the first amendment?
I know that my Senator is opposed to extension of the Patriot Act and that the guy who ran against my representative last term was a sacrifical lamb (he barely got 20% of the vote). There are those of us who ardently oppose this legislation and whose voting districts are heavily controlled by one party or another that their voice is never really heard anyway (Republicans in Massachusetts, Democrats in parts of the South, etc.). For some of us, the SCOTUS is the only shot we have to get our voices heard and to see our ideals of this nation given a chance. Some of us got out there to register voters and see if we could make a change from the ground up. Heck, I still have questions about the Florida situation because of personal experience with one county's political situation and the fact that it was in the hands of the brother of one of the candidates.
I have written to my representative to try to get things done and get the word out concerning laws of interest to my profession. There's no way in heck he's going to lose in this district and the senator that just got elected barely won, and that was only because el presidente came down and went on the stump for him. Neither of these guys is likely to vote against the Patriot extension if it comes up for a vote, but I want to see it gone anyway, so I hope the SCOTUS intervenes.
Elections these days only concern that 5% of the people who both vote and who don't always vote with the same party. If you can control that sway vote you can win almost any given election. And in some districts (like mine) the straight-ticket voters of one party dominate so heavily that the same party has controlled the same positions in the area for years. In short, for at least a few million of us the SCOTUS us our only real shot at seeing some legislature we don't like getting eliminated. Our representatives don't always represent our interests, but their party more than anything else since they know that they will get re-elected as long as the party is kept happy.
Granted, your example concerning Taney and the SCOTUS of 1861 bears hearing out given their pro-slavery stance. Unfortunately most Americans can't tell Roger Taney from James Buchanan from Adelai Stevenson etc. I'd say the Alien and Sedition Acts rank up there for some of our worst anti-Constitutional legislation as well, perhaps the flurry of anti-Communist legislation bears major anti-Constitution violations as well. But your example is quite valid.
The PATRIOT is our most anti-constitutional act to date that most people can name. By nature of the erosion of liberties contained within it becomes quite possible to violate several aspects of the 4th amendment (among many others) to the point that they may as well negate it. Our government seems hell-bent on amassing as much power as it possibly can. With Ashcroft et al. in charge of defending our liberties, I can only hope that someone in government will wake up and propose a counter-act to this. That we stand by and have allowed this to occur is miserable, that government continues to exploit it borders on criminal. Laws are not always inherently moral, and this law is among the greatest examples of how ethics and law do not always correlate. How many "terrorists" this law has caught may never be known since the government has not authorized release of information of the people involved. Secret trials, evidence allowed based on word-of-mouth and witness testimony only, and imprisonment without due process are against the Constitution but allowed under the PATRIOT act. This fascist law must be eliminated to protect our nation's freedoms and prevent our overbearing, paternal government from becoming merely a Big Brother.
We cannot allow this to continue. I will be writing my Congressmen and saking others to do the same. Laws like this are how Hitler, Mussolini, and numerous other dictators got started. Law is built on precedence, so if we allow this to continue the envelope will be pushed until new even more intrusive laws are allowed. Seriously, if we are allowed to treat non-citizens like lawbreakers without reprisal, how long will it be before we are allowed to treat citizens like lawbreakers mere for speaking against the government? Oregon is already proposing legislature that would allow peace protestors to be arrested on terrorism charges. How long before this is carried nationwide?
Our rights are under serious threat from a government led by certain people that thirst for power. If we don't act now, it may well be illegal to act later. Call your reps and senators, spread the word, and let's try to kill this thing now before it becomes permanent law.
By innovation I didn't mean this case specifically, I meant anything that distributes music electronically (Napster, Kazaa, etc.). The student could get hit for a lack of originality charge if such a thing existed. If the RIAA had foresight, they'd have found a way to do e-distribuition themselves before Napster meant something other than a sleepy infant or a nickname.
If you think that the RIAA is not involved in practices of intellectual monopolization, please name some record labels disassociated with the RIAA that are not under extreme pressure to join and can actually compete. In Nashville my (very limited) experience was that almost all of the labels had affiliation with said organization. Most of the people distributing music online are doing so for free or with small labels that are looking for other ways to compete with the RIAA. I think they are trying to make industry-wide prohibitions on how music gets distributed electronically but haven't been successful yet and that there are agreements between labels, though I can't prove the latter and the former is thusfar based on circumstancial evidence.
Our RIAA is acting as though it were Standard Oil from ~1900. Anyone that interferes with it becomes a target for outrageous lawsuits nad public humiliation in hopes that everyone else will cease and desist. What is most concerning here is that the RIAA is a de facto trust that is likely breaking the law by monopolization of intellectual property and distribution with respect to music. Technical innovation is being stifled by the DMCA because they apparently can't keep up to date with current means of distributing music. Mostly this is about greed: both on the part of the RIAA to maintain its non-realistic profit expectations and of some people who refuse to pay for music at all. There are some people out there engaged in blatently criminal acts of intellectual property theft as currently defined by the law.
What we need to do is 1) Reform the current laws (maybe with a "DMCA Lite"?) 2) Educate incoming freshmen at major universities about what the hell can happen to you for getting involved in this crap and 3) putting the RIAA in check by either legal means or a boycott on their products. Standard Oil did the same sorts of things to potential competitors and had all kinds of legal protection before TR came along and broke it up, but GW is certainly not interested in hurting potential campaign donors nor is anyone else I can think of given the proximity of a presidential election. Certainly the RIAA does not expect to collect 0.097 trillion dollars from a student but I'll wager a Golden Dollar or two that we'll hear that exact same number used in reference to Congress on why the RIAA needs "protection" against a new technology they can not use to their benefit. Allowing this sort of corporate welfare hurts both the consumer by allowing higher prices and the entire populace by allowing a de facto trust to run into the rights of the people simply for corporate benefit. Can anyone else present potential solutions to this problems?
It seems a far cry from the days of Q-DOS in 1981 when Gates and Co were trying to sell an operating system they didn't technically own at the time to IBM. They were a much more nimble company in those days and had plenty of ideas and developments to go scour and steal. Lately, however, the Standard Oil of the Computer industry is encounrtering the same problems as its turn-of-the-previous century counterpart: government is on its back, the "innovation" that got it where it is seems to have disappeared (Rockefeller consolidating oil pipelines and refineries together), and the public at large is disgruntled but left with few alternatives.
Microsoft is not run by idiots. They realize that if they are to compete against systems like Linux they need to innovate before Linux develops a truly AOL level interface that even Joe Schmoe can use...for free. Bad press and a worse reputation have finally gotten their attention, so their asking for ideas to investigate. It would seem that their age range (based on the prize offered) is 16-25, just the right age when people are thinking way outside the box and are not limited by knowledge of what should not be possible. These (maverick?) thinkers tend to give the most innovative ideas but also the ones that need the most work to come to fruition. If Microsoft can cull this source of innovation while reaping the profits from it, they could set themselves up as a potential warehouse for new tech ideas. A wiser plan would have been to offer 5-10% of all profits made from the idea in addition to the $25k since that would get more cynical programmers and worldly people interested, but the young and nieve seem to be the most easily exploited by definition. I have to wonder if this is not a sign of desperation by the Microsoft management though since they did drag in these same sorts of innovative thinkers by the truckload even 3 years ago. Even now they tend to snap up the best of the best offered by MIT and other major tech schools, but why would they need this sort of competition when they already have the best minds? Do those folks just have really good grades but an inability to think outside the box? Again, I have to wonder if this is not desperation for truly radical ideas as much as a desire to see what talent is out there.
In reality, all y'all are partially right and partially wrong. Germany, Russia, Britian, USA, and the other great empires of history scrambled to secure resources. He who has the most toys wins, regardless of flag or allegiance. Rome won out in Italy and eventually the Mediterranean because it could commit more manpower to any conflict than its rivals. Its intercontinental (possibly global, they are now known to have reached China by 166 AD and recent excavations indicate a presence in the Yucutan and Americas even before Augustus) economy consumed vast amounts of resources and no one could stop it until they became disorganized. Germany in 1875 was just larger than Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virgina (and about as many resources) combined with a population of 50 million+. It needed land to expand into and resources for trade. Britian industrialized first and needed resources for its global economy even as the eighteeth century dawned to compensate for lack of resources at home. Venice had only sand and sea, selling salt and glass gave them enough in trade to make a massive commerical empire. Japan is like Britian only more extreme: they have almost no resources at home and have to conquer or trade to get what they need.
And so on. The same formula can be applied to every world power in history: they will do whatever it takes to secure resources even if it means resorting to dastardly acts like supporting nutcases (we propped up hussein and afghani groups in the 80s after all) or even outright annexation (poland, texas, baltic states, india...).
Unlimited spin would be nice for turntables and whatnot (imagine the mew re-mixes at ungodly RPMs) but seriously what would this be used for? I don't know much about physics, so could someone please elucidate the commercial value of this discovery?
Hitler was never elected, he was brought in by a consensus of people with the authority to put him in power that thought he could be controlled.
Soon after his rise to office, a major terrorist event occured in the primary city of Germany in which a landmark was torched and people were killed.
Following this, a new series of laws were enacted that allowed his government much more power and far fewer checks than previously permitted. This allowed for domestic security forces and monitoring of citizens records at will of the government, among other things.
Media services were organized to allow the government to control what its populace was exposed to. Dissenters were either publically ridiculed, or jailed (anyone else worried about the proposed law in Oregon that potentially puts anti-war protestors in the same categories as terrorists?)
This should all sound familiar. Expansion of government powers inevitably leads to erosion of personal liberties until one or the other becomes almost negated. Early in our country we did not even have the power to tax our own citizens and the only government most people saw was the post office. Our government is moving in the direction of power consolidation, especially when our civil liberties are being "protected" by fascists like Ashcroft. If not for the Democrats having control of the Senate around 9/11, the proposals allowing for severely intrusive laws by Republicans would certainly have passed and we would be looking at a potential police state. Even with those checks in place our civil liberties took severe blows over the last 18 months to the point that random people can now be detained without charge on charges of "terrorism".
I just got back from an international vacation on Sunday. I agree that airport security needed tightening up (and more work needs to get done; they never even checked the glovebox for my permit-toting friend during his random stop at the airport. He occasionally carries a pistol there but the security didn't even ask). Federal buildings need to be protected, without a doubt the concrete barriers and othe rmeasures mentioned elsewhere are necessary. But let's be honest: the terrorists who launched the attacks took years to plan and execute their strikes. It is not easy for them to get over here, it is even more difficult to support them while they're here, and most people who arrive in the US tend to want to stay once they get here. I wonder if the 19 that ended up planning the attack was not originally 100+ given the opinions of other Arabs I have known and how their opinions changed during our college years. Almost all are now applying for either green cards or work visas.
Nineteen people, or a hundred people, or even a thousand people are not justification for ruining the privacy of 275.000.000 others. Get with the program: there are those who would use the increased power to further their own ends. If Ms. McDonald wants to allow people to view every aspect of her life, then perhaps we should build her a house in downtown Washington with entirely translucent walls or put closed-circuit cameras throughout her hom with the promise that only the government is monitoring them. Let various people see her from every angle 24/7/365 and find out how long she supports government intrusion. Depriving people of their privacy is usually the first step on that slippery slope from free republics to police states, like what happened in Germany in 1933. If we don't act to protect our privacy, then the only measurable terror we shall have will be that from people fearful of speaking out against their government for feare of reprisals. Then the terrorists have truly won.
RNA has been demonstrated to have enzyme-like properties in many cases, in some cases even being able to cleave itself if spliced properly. There are more than a few organisms storing information on means other than DNA though few do so exclusively. And for those who doubt, Ms. Franklin's work was most certainly pirated by Crick, Watson, and wilkins. Had this same situation occured today, Ms. Franklin could easily have defeated them in court for theft of intellectual property. Crick was a 10th year PhD student whose previous explorations into whale hemoglobin hadn't led to as much as hoped while Watson was a Harvard postdoc looking for his first breakthrough. At least Wilkins already had a working laboratory, but this does not excuse their actions. Without Franklin's picture, it would have been months or years before the structure would be correctly elucidated (remember, people like Linus Pauling were trying models at that time which included 3-part helices with nucleotides sticking away from the phosphate bonds, etc.)