Well, since Virii is latin for "Manlinesses" or "Of Manliness", I think you're quite correct.
The correct plural is actually Viruses; originally "Virus" was plural without a singular form, and as it was a neuter word to begin with, it's plural would have been "vira" should it have been pluralized.
The issue is, will they, upon being introduced to an area with diverse "food sources" (this is a horrible metaphor for viruses, because they don't eat, per se, and aren't even really alive, but I'm still going to use it, blah blah) will they stick with the plan, and only "eat" what they are supposed to, or will they branch out and "eat" whatever is available?
In other biological systems, the answer is often no; the introduced organism eats whatever it wants to. It's tempting to believe, since viruses aren't like regular living things and moreover since these would be genetically modified "specialists" rather than free-range "generalists", that we could beat the problem and use them in an effective, targeted, manner, without much danger of them going nuts and spreading to things we don't want them to spread to.
Still, the possibility exists that they could evolve to do something other than what we intend them to do, and it is a near certainty that this will eventually happen, given enough different applications of the technology, and enough uses. What kind of damage would come out of that is impossible to know.
That's still a huge assumption. There is nothing special about a scientist that makes them more clever, ethical, or honorable than any other schmo. They can make mistakes, use poor judgment, or just fail to appreciate the consequences of their actions.
Adhere to a strict code of ethics. Jesus. You know, lawyers adhere to a strict code of ethics as well, they are judged by a council of their peers on their ethical conduct, and if they are found wanting they are forbidden to practice. Why does no one hold them up as shining paragons of virtue?
I'm not anti-science, but I don't automatically believe something is a good idea just because a scientist came up with it.
He probably got it from all the commercials trying to get you to disinfect yourself all the time. Sure, these guys are just scientists doing pure science, but if it's widely approved, do you really think that no company that makes it's living off selling "anti-bacterial" junk will decide to market this as the "100% effective bacteria killing wonder!" Then the stuff will be everywhere, and the odds of some bad mutation cropping up will be significantly higher.
And just because it's developed at MIT doesn't mean anything, and it certainly doesn't have any bearing on whether or not it's a good idea to start with.
According to TFA the first thing they engineered it for was an e coli biofilm. This makes perfect sense, as e coli is very well understood...Unfortunately we need e coli, which makes their discovery a bit more worrisome.
My question would be, how long do they last after they run out of food? If they are only viable for minutes or hours, maybe not such a big deal. Are they resistant to stomach acid? If not, again, no big deal...If you happened to eat some that were still viable, they wouldn't make it past the stomach. How do they spread? Finally, how likely are they to mutate into something that is nastier than the original organism?
Bioengineering is scary stuff; there is a lot of potential for unforeseen consequences.
Shrug. What if it learned to target e coli bacteria? Nice if it's on your lettuce, not so nice if it's in your intestines.
There are a lot of bacteria in our bodies that we need. There is a lot of bacteria in the world that we need. Creating a virus, a demi-organism that is indisputably capable of mutation, for the purpose of killing bacteria is scary at best.
Saying, "MIT guys wouldn't be that stupid" is way way too much faith to be putting in someone who is creating something that has serious potential for harm...We have released a lot of macro-organisms into the wild that have caused tons of problems. Micro organisms have at least as much potential for harm.
Doubt it. China basically builds their nuke subs for the same reason we do: to tell the world, "Hey, don't fuck with us. We can dump a nuke in your swimming pool."
There is no point in having them if other people don't know you have them. If they really gave a damn about secrecy they'd never leave it docked out in the open. It'd be under cover.
This is interesting in the same way that a lot of google maps stuff is interesting, but it's not any great intelligence coup.
That's the whole problem. If I count home and work, I have more than 20 linux "servers" of which one is a cluster containing twice that many machines. But I'm the only person who uses them (well, the only person who directly uses them, e.g. logs into them), so really, in terms of users that's just 1...You can't count everyone who goes to a webpage, or uses a bind, ntp, samba, squid, etc service to be a linux user.
That's why it's hard to count. Windows users are easy: it's almost all 1 to 1. I have 1 windows machine, so mark me down for 1 in the windows category as well. You can be even more specific and count windows licenses; this is misleading...My workplace has a great number of unused windows licenses...But it's a good number with documentation behind it, whereas linux can only count support contracts with big linux vendors.
Agreed. Musicmatch has always been one of those applications that is annoyingly bundled with sound cards and OEM installed widgets...I have used it, but never for very long.
Sure...Assuming that labor is SO unpopular that you've got parties like the Conservatives and the Liberal Dems forming alliances...The American equivalent would be the Republicans and the Green party.
Come right down to it, I'd think it would be a lot more likely that the Lib Dems would make a deal with Labor if a coalition government had to be formed.
I'm not saying they're amazing or anything, but compared to the crap we've got right now, everything seems awesome.
They seem pretty damn popular. I mean they've got, what, almost 400 seats? That's almost twice the next largest party. 'Course, I'm not big on non-coalition governments. If you don't have to compromise, all you get is crap law.
It's a significant group of legislators, as an American, I'd call that "the government", though I know that when you say "the government" in England, you mean the party in power rather than the whole machine.
Labor has been kinda annoying lately, but I'd still trade them for the crap we've got. How bizarre to have a semi-moderate party in power...How do you know who you should hate? =P
The industry isn't seeking this--it's the government. "We'll give you this thing you really really want (extended copyrights), and in return you can do us this little favor, and censor your artists." The music industry is evil, no doubt, but they'd rather be able to sell whatever the hell they want to and own the copyrights forever...Censorship is work for them, and it will alienate artists, and art isn't something that lends itself well to censorship, so they may see actual losses coming out of it, which is the last thing they want.
So what you're really saying is, "Government is returning to its roots" and that is correct.
You may not have, but a lot of people did, and playing with multiple people in the same zone was a problem unless they were friends of yours, or nothing could be looted. God forbid you kill a boss with people around, because that stuff won't have time to hit the ground before it's gone.
A lot of the core stuff in WoW is an outgrowth of Blizz's experience with D2. Hell, one of the big things that was released in the second expansion was gems and socketed items, just like in D2.
I understand that you want something with a linear storyline, but MMO's are undeniably popular. It may not be to your taste, but it's clearly popular with a lot of other people, and if they enjoy it, that's all that matters. If no one liked it, no one would play it.
Unlikely. A swarm is composed of units that are functioning individuals as well, with their own individual complex behavior patterns.
That's what makes swarm theory so interesting. if they were all working together because they were effectively cogs in the swarm "machine" then the fact that the sum is greater than the parts wouldn't be interesting at all.
I don't think it looks like vaporware...I think it looks like Diablo.
And while that was cool and all, I don't know if I really want to play it again. There has got to be more to a game than "I got super ultra mega rare item X." I've played so many games that were like that, it's just paled.
Yea, boy I'd hate to have that on my resume. Who would ever hire anyone who had "I was on the WoW development team" on their resume? Might as well say, "Head of iPhone graphical interface development team" or "Lead designer for Google search algorithms."
Am I sending people to war? No. Did I claim to be an intelligence analyst? No. I'm just a random guy on Slashdot, and I'm entitled to my opinion.
I find it amusing how you view my opinions with such extreme skepticism, but believe everything that comes out of the White House is 100% fact. Try pointing some of that nit-pickery where it will do some good.
Nothing pisses me off more than people who are convinced it sucks before they even play it, except maybe people who think it's awesome some equally bad reason.
Cobol is niche, and like a lot of niche languages, if you don't know it, it's not going to limit your job prospects very much. I haven't polished my FORTRAN in a decade, and I don't really miss it. I feel the same way about VB6, and ASP.NET I view to be on the same level. C# I still use, just because it's no mental stretch to shift back and forth between it and Java. But the day when I don't need C# anymore, I'll dump it into the mental dustbin with FORTRAN, SCHEME, PASCAL, and VB6.
And the fact that that day is getting nearer should scare the shit out of Microsoft. They absolutely depend on people being forced to learn their stuff, they absolutely depend on IE-only apps driving IE marketshare (and windows marketshare along with it). When no coder ever needs to learn C# or ASP.NET, then they will have truly become irrelevant to the internet.
Oh I know it can't be proven that they knowingly lied, though it's obvious that they were hugely incompetent, and I would be stunned if you could ever get an intelligent intelligence assessment that made a blanket statement and insisted that there were no doubts. It doesn't work that way. They lied to themselves.
As for the "war" you're referring to, I am assuming that you're talking about the titular "War on Terra" that's been going on since the 70's, is still going on today, and will be going on for generations to come.
Here is the thing: You can't win a war against an idea. You can't shoot it. You can't scare it. But we go to Iraq and we give solid proof to every Muslim in the region that what their mullahs and imam's tell them about the US is absolutely true, and we create a bumper crop of future terrorists blaming us for everything bad in their lives that stemmed from our invasion.
Make no mistake. We made things worse, and we're going to be paying for it for decades. They hold grudges forever in that part of the world; they pass them down from father to son, mother to daughter.
Slashdot Mirror
The correct plural is actually Viruses; originally "Virus" was plural without a singular form, and as it was a neuter word to begin with, it's plural would have been "vira" should it have been pluralized.
According to the article, yes.
The issue is, will they, upon being introduced to an area with diverse "food sources" (this is a horrible metaphor for viruses, because they don't eat, per se, and aren't even really alive, but I'm still going to use it, blah blah) will they stick with the plan, and only "eat" what they are supposed to, or will they branch out and "eat" whatever is available?
In other biological systems, the answer is often no; the introduced organism eats whatever it wants to. It's tempting to believe, since viruses aren't like regular living things and moreover since these would be genetically modified "specialists" rather than free-range "generalists", that we could beat the problem and use them in an effective, targeted, manner, without much danger of them going nuts and spreading to things we don't want them to spread to.
Still, the possibility exists that they could evolve to do something other than what we intend them to do, and it is a near certainty that this will eventually happen, given enough different applications of the technology, and enough uses. What kind of damage would come out of that is impossible to know.
That's still a huge assumption. There is nothing special about a scientist that makes them more clever, ethical, or honorable than any other schmo. They can make mistakes, use poor judgment, or just fail to appreciate the consequences of their actions.
Adhere to a strict code of ethics. Jesus. You know, lawyers adhere to a strict code of ethics as well, they are judged by a council of their peers on their ethical conduct, and if they are found wanting they are forbidden to practice. Why does no one hold them up as shining paragons of virtue?
I'm not anti-science, but I don't automatically believe something is a good idea just because a scientist came up with it.
He probably got it from all the commercials trying to get you to disinfect yourself all the time. Sure, these guys are just scientists doing pure science, but if it's widely approved, do you really think that no company that makes it's living off selling "anti-bacterial" junk will decide to market this as the "100% effective bacteria killing wonder!" Then the stuff will be everywhere, and the odds of some bad mutation cropping up will be significantly higher.
And just because it's developed at MIT doesn't mean anything, and it certainly doesn't have any bearing on whether or not it's a good idea to start with.
Having re-read TFA, the first thing they engineered it for was e coli. Sigh.
According to TFA the first thing they engineered it for was an e coli biofilm. This makes perfect sense, as e coli is very well understood...Unfortunately we need e coli, which makes their discovery a bit more worrisome.
My question would be, how long do they last after they run out of food? If they are only viable for minutes or hours, maybe not such a big deal. Are they resistant to stomach acid? If not, again, no big deal...If you happened to eat some that were still viable, they wouldn't make it past the stomach. How do they spread? Finally, how likely are they to mutate into something that is nastier than the original organism?
Bioengineering is scary stuff; there is a lot of potential for unforeseen consequences.
Shrug. What if it learned to target e coli bacteria? Nice if it's on your lettuce, not so nice if it's in your intestines.
There are a lot of bacteria in our bodies that we need. There is a lot of bacteria in the world that we need. Creating a virus, a demi-organism that is indisputably capable of mutation, for the purpose of killing bacteria is scary at best.
Saying, "MIT guys wouldn't be that stupid" is way way too much faith to be putting in someone who is creating something that has serious potential for harm...We have released a lot of macro-organisms into the wild that have caused tons of problems. Micro organisms have at least as much potential for harm.
Doubt it. China basically builds their nuke subs for the same reason we do: to tell the world, "Hey, don't fuck with us. We can dump a nuke in your swimming pool."
There is no point in having them if other people don't know you have them. If they really gave a damn about secrecy they'd never leave it docked out in the open. It'd be under cover.
This is interesting in the same way that a lot of google maps stuff is interesting, but it's not any great intelligence coup.
Well they're 8 years old and they passed 10 million users and a billion messages a day last year, so they're a bit more than a startup.
That's the whole problem. If I count home and work, I have more than 20 linux "servers" of which one is a cluster containing twice that many machines. But I'm the only person who uses them (well, the only person who directly uses them, e.g. logs into them), so really, in terms of users that's just 1...You can't count everyone who goes to a webpage, or uses a bind, ntp, samba, squid, etc service to be a linux user.
That's why it's hard to count. Windows users are easy: it's almost all 1 to 1. I have 1 windows machine, so mark me down for 1 in the windows category as well. You can be even more specific and count windows licenses; this is misleading...My workplace has a great number of unused windows licenses...But it's a good number with documentation behind it, whereas linux can only count support contracts with big linux vendors.
Agreed. Musicmatch has always been one of those applications that is annoyingly bundled with sound cards and OEM installed widgets...I have used it, but never for very long.
Sure...Assuming that labor is SO unpopular that you've got parties like the Conservatives and the Liberal Dems forming alliances...The American equivalent would be the Republicans and the Green party.
Come right down to it, I'd think it would be a lot more likely that the Lib Dems would make a deal with Labor if a coalition government had to be formed.
I'm not saying they're amazing or anything, but compared to the crap we've got right now, everything seems awesome.
They seem pretty damn popular. I mean they've got, what, almost 400 seats? That's almost twice the next largest party. 'Course, I'm not big on non-coalition governments. If you don't have to compromise, all you get is crap law.
It's a significant group of legislators, as an American, I'd call that "the government", though I know that when you say "the government" in England, you mean the party in power rather than the whole machine.
Labor has been kinda annoying lately, but I'd still trade them for the crap we've got. How bizarre to have a semi-moderate party in power...How do you know who you should hate? =P
The industry isn't seeking this--it's the government. "We'll give you this thing you really really want (extended copyrights), and in return you can do us this little favor, and censor your artists." The music industry is evil, no doubt, but they'd rather be able to sell whatever the hell they want to and own the copyrights forever...Censorship is work for them, and it will alienate artists, and art isn't something that lends itself well to censorship, so they may see actual losses coming out of it, which is the last thing they want.
So what you're really saying is, "Government is returning to its roots" and that is correct.
You may not have, but a lot of people did, and playing with multiple people in the same zone was a problem unless they were friends of yours, or nothing could be looted. God forbid you kill a boss with people around, because that stuff won't have time to hit the ground before it's gone.
A lot of the core stuff in WoW is an outgrowth of Blizz's experience with D2. Hell, one of the big things that was released in the second expansion was gems and socketed items, just like in D2.
I understand that you want something with a linear storyline, but MMO's are undeniably popular. It may not be to your taste, but it's clearly popular with a lot of other people, and if they enjoy it, that's all that matters. If no one liked it, no one would play it.
And Diablo II wasn't a timesink? You blow through it once, kill Baal, the end, right?
Wrong. Then begins the leveling grind, and the item grind, and the gem grind, and the rune grind.
The only difference is a persistent world, better bosses, and 15 bucks a month.
Would your body classify as a swarm of atoms?
Unlikely. A swarm is composed of units that are functioning individuals as well, with their own individual complex behavior patterns.
That's what makes swarm theory so interesting. if they were all working together because they were effectively cogs in the swarm "machine" then the fact that the sum is greater than the parts wouldn't be interesting at all.
I don't think it looks like vaporware...I think it looks like Diablo.
And while that was cool and all, I don't know if I really want to play it again. There has got to be more to a game than "I got super ultra mega rare item X." I've played so many games that were like that, it's just paled.
Yea, boy I'd hate to have that on my resume. Who would ever hire anyone who had "I was on the WoW development team" on their resume? Might as well say, "Head of iPhone graphical interface development team" or "Lead designer for Google search algorithms."
Am I sending people to war? No. Did I claim to be an intelligence analyst? No. I'm just a random guy on Slashdot, and I'm entitled to my opinion.
I find it amusing how you view my opinions with such extreme skepticism, but believe everything that comes out of the White House is 100% fact. Try pointing some of that nit-pickery where it will do some good.
Like the first two were bug free?
Nothing pisses me off more than people who are convinced it sucks before they even play it, except maybe people who think it's awesome some equally bad reason.
Cobol is niche, and like a lot of niche languages, if you don't know it, it's not going to limit your job prospects very much. I haven't polished my FORTRAN in a decade, and I don't really miss it. I feel the same way about VB6, and ASP.NET I view to be on the same level. C# I still use, just because it's no mental stretch to shift back and forth between it and Java. But the day when I don't need C# anymore, I'll dump it into the mental dustbin with FORTRAN, SCHEME, PASCAL, and VB6.
And the fact that that day is getting nearer should scare the shit out of Microsoft. They absolutely depend on people being forced to learn their stuff, they absolutely depend on IE-only apps driving IE marketshare (and windows marketshare along with it). When no coder ever needs to learn C# or ASP.NET, then they will have truly become irrelevant to the internet.
Oh I know it can't be proven that they knowingly lied, though it's obvious that they were hugely incompetent, and I would be stunned if you could ever get an intelligent intelligence assessment that made a blanket statement and insisted that there were no doubts. It doesn't work that way. They lied to themselves.
As for the "war" you're referring to, I am assuming that you're talking about the titular "War on Terra" that's been going on since the 70's, is still going on today, and will be going on for generations to come.
Here is the thing: You can't win a war against an idea. You can't shoot it. You can't scare it. But we go to Iraq and we give solid proof to every Muslim in the region that what their mullahs and imam's tell them about the US is absolutely true, and we create a bumper crop of future terrorists blaming us for everything bad in their lives that stemmed from our invasion.
Make no mistake. We made things worse, and we're going to be paying for it for decades. They hold grudges forever in that part of the world; they pass them down from father to son, mother to daughter.
Not daemons, demons. It was a joke, one anyone who has ever had to work with accountants will understand.