I'm learning java at the moment (nightmare darling). Somebody pays me money to program in VBA (absolutely horrible, like fingernails down a blackboard), Sometimes I need to write shell scripts, but when I need to do something quickly, and easily, if it needs to be do something to my shell, I use backticks and perl. Perl is just the best. Terse, as elegant as you want, and not too many keypresses required (particularly for emacs users). Perl is the dog's bollocks.
I used to suffer from the same problem. Now with a wife and kids, I grab every moment available for work, as I don't know when the next chunk of time is going to be available. My most productive time is now 7am to mid day now, rather than midnight to 7am. I still drink coffee, but avoid caffeine after about 2pm. I also work in an area that I'm enthusiastic about now, while in my previous life, I wasn't
A friend of mine is a consultant formerly in competition with Gartner. He has some knowledge of Linux and understands that it is becoming an important part of the market, but his workload is drying up at the moment due to as he states "the comoditisation" of IT. It makes sense for these IT consultants to support microsoft as it delays the reduction in their paychecks ever longer. My friend says that microsoft have 20 years or so left before they're just another software company. I give it 10 personally.
It depends what you mean by bioinformatics, which in itself is a broad
and fairly uninformed decision. Most of the time these days people
mean molecular biology, so for a good overview of what it means in
molecular biology have a look at this.
Then it really depends on what you want to do. Do you want to
administer the systems, identify new software and try to maintain and
improve a toolset? In that case you need some computer science.
Also it's also a hell of a lot easier to be a self taught computer
person than it is a biology person. If you want to do mainly lab
work, then you really need the biology, but doing all of your spare
classes on computers on basic algorithms, basic programming, a
management / design subject and would be good for getting into bioinformatics.
Perl has quite a strong presence in molecilar biology bioinformatics
and is a handy "glue" language, as a lots of data passing through
different specialised processes, and helps to teach you stuff about
libraries, how to use the world wide web and such like.
I'm personally more interested in the application of computers to
ecological questions, and if that's your thing, then you need GIS and
a solid statistical background, and not to be too scared of maths.
You also need to have a handle on basic biological processes like sex
and death, and evolution is very important. This becomes more of a
task of managing extremely rich data sets.
If you have a computer background already you need to study biology,
and get some hands on expreience on a good research project that will
stretch your computer skills. From a biology background it's slightly
different. Try to learn how networks work, how to read source code
and how to glue programs together.
That's my exprience so far anyway.
A lot of the molecular biology software is open source. Much of it is unlicenced. Alot of the software available is bereft of software licences. Some has weird licencing conditions, and can be difficult to obtain for non commercial purposes. Many molecular biologists have a gap in their computer literacy.
I think that there's definately a market for a knoppix style cd that includes a large suite of molecular biology tools, database software (probably postgresql) and good documentation, so that the poor molecular biologists who've been suffering from using windows all these years can return to a real scientific computing environment.
There are many good analysis tools available for unix, but few good presentation tools. A nice genome drawing package that outputs [encapsulated] postscript, as well as documentation explaining what these weird file formats are for would be really good.
The combination of a self documenting self configuring linux distribution with built in clustering support would be very well received if the scientists could be eased into changing their computing platforms.
What's the flower that has that really hudge bud, only opens like every few years, and smells of rotted flesh? If memory serves me it is from the amazon rain forest. Anyone remember the name of that thing?
Rafelasia a parasitic plant from the South East Asian rainforests (the Malay side of the Wallace line). There is some excellent footage of it on David Attenborough's Private lives of plants. Definately bigger (wider) than the Amorphophallus titanum but not as tall.
The deal is that most cells in the body lack telomerase which is an enzyme that replicates the ends of chromosomes properly (the usual DNA polymerases are 'built' to process circular molecules, so have difficulty with the linear ends of chromosomes.
Cells that are very active / replicate a lot through an organisms lifetime (eg in the small intestine, the uterus) do contain telomerase. I don't know whether anyone has tried cloning cells from one of these areas of the body.
Furthermore, are your gender politics assuming that all the rich people who go for this technology are male? I find your logic there rickety at best.
I was meerly assuming that it's a lot more obvious when a female has done some extra-currucular breeding than when a male has done. If you are regulating reproduction, it's fairly obvious when females disobey the regulations. Less so when the males get someone outside the regulated part of society knocked up.
Not to mention the cost of genetic manipulation. Restriction enzymes are expensive (like more expensive than gold or weapons grade plutionium gramme for gramme). One might envisage a speciation event, where the super rich who can afford these things become Homo sapiens ssp. arrogantetloadeditius whilst the rest of us mere mortals stay Homo sapiens. More likely the rich go extinct, except for the progeny they sire from extra-test tube liasons which hide in the normal human gene pool. However, here it seems likely that the rich people's Y chromosome would be passed on into the normal population at an equal frequency to the X chromosome rather than at half the frequency as normal
Population genetics off the top of your head is fun!
-- http://www.superbad.com
The main thing that keeps me on Linux and off Windows wherever possible is sloppy mouse focus. Is this possible in Windows XP or is control not that granular?
*Note: In case it's not obvious, I'm not knowledgable about Linux. From what little I've used it, the thought of installing a driver makes me go ewwwww. I'm spoiled by my 'Setup.exe, [Ok], [Ok], [Ok] *bam* you're up and running' expectation I've developed from using Windows 2000.
I know what you mean. However, recently I've discovered the following, under Debian at least: "su -c modconf". Amazing stuff
Rosalind Franklin was responsible for the X-Ray Crystallography. Her work was under attributed and some say plagiarised by Watson and Crick. She certainly did not get the credit for her work, and some beleive she should have shared in the nobel prize. To be fair, her boss/supervisor was implicit in this, and not just Watson/Crick, although Watson should not have bad-mouthed her the way he did.
But with compulsory voting, , strong opposition [yes, I know that the democrats are dead] leading to the upper house hobbling the lower house this isn't going to get very far. Never mind. Thank god for three year terms of office, that's what I say.
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I'm learning java at the moment (nightmare darling). Somebody pays me money to program in VBA (absolutely horrible, like fingernails down a blackboard), Sometimes I need to write shell scripts, but when I need to do something quickly, and easily, if it needs to be do something to my shell, I use backticks and perl. Perl is just the best. Terse, as elegant as you want, and not too many keypresses required (particularly for emacs users). Perl is the dog's bollocks.
I used to suffer from the same problem. Now with a wife and kids, I grab every moment available for work, as I don't know when the next chunk of time is going to be available. My most productive time is now 7am to mid day now, rather than midnight to 7am. I still drink coffee, but avoid caffeine after about 2pm. I also work in an area that I'm enthusiastic about now, while in my previous life, I wasn't
A friend of mine is a consultant formerly in competition with Gartner. He has some knowledge of Linux and understands that it is becoming an important part of the market, but his workload is drying up at the moment due to as he states "the comoditisation" of IT. It makes sense for these IT consultants to support microsoft as it delays the reduction in their paychecks ever longer. My friend says that microsoft have 20 years or so left before they're just another software company. I give it 10 personally.
True. http://abc.net.au/rn is similar, with a smaller budget. More music, much less drama and comedy than radio 4. The science show is excellent.
It depends what you mean by bioinformatics, which in itself is a broad and fairly uninformed decision. Most of the time these days people mean molecular biology, so for a good overview of what it means in molecular biology have a look at this. Then it really depends on what you want to do. Do you want to administer the systems, identify new software and try to maintain and improve a toolset? In that case you need some computer science. Also it's also a hell of a lot easier to be a self taught computer person than it is a biology person. If you want to do mainly lab work, then you really need the biology, but doing all of your spare classes on computers on basic algorithms, basic programming, a management / design subject and would be good for getting into bioinformatics. Perl has quite a strong presence in molecilar biology bioinformatics and is a handy "glue" language, as a lots of data passing through different specialised processes, and helps to teach you stuff about libraries, how to use the world wide web and such like. I'm personally more interested in the application of computers to ecological questions, and if that's your thing, then you need GIS and a solid statistical background, and not to be too scared of maths. You also need to have a handle on basic biological processes like sex and death, and evolution is very important. This becomes more of a task of managing extremely rich data sets. If you have a computer background already you need to study biology, and get some hands on expreience on a good research project that will stretch your computer skills. From a biology background it's slightly different. Try to learn how networks work, how to read source code and how to glue programs together. That's my exprience so far anyway.
A lot of the molecular biology software is open source. Much of it is unlicenced. Alot of the software available is bereft of software licences. Some has weird licencing conditions, and can be difficult to obtain for non commercial purposes. Many molecular biologists have a gap in their computer literacy. I think that there's definately a market for a knoppix style cd that includes a large suite of molecular biology tools, database software (probably postgresql) and good documentation, so that the poor molecular biologists who've been suffering from using windows all these years can return to a real scientific computing environment. There are many good analysis tools available for unix, but few good presentation tools. A nice genome drawing package that outputs [encapsulated] postscript, as well as documentation explaining what these weird file formats are for would be really good. The combination of a self documenting self configuring linux distribution with built in clustering support would be very well received if the scientists could be eased into changing their computing platforms.
Cells that are very active / replicate a lot through an organisms lifetime (eg in the small intestine, the uterus) do contain telomerase. I don't know whether anyone has tried cloning cells from one of these areas of the body.
Not to mention the cost of genetic manipulation. Restriction enzymes are expensive (like more expensive than gold or weapons grade plutionium gramme for gramme). One might envisage a speciation event, where the super rich who can afford these things become Homo sapiens ssp. arrogantetloadeditius whilst the rest of us mere mortals stay Homo sapiens. More likely the rich go extinct, except for the progeny they sire from extra-test tube liasons which hide in the normal human gene pool. However, here it seems likely that the rich people's Y chromosome would be passed on into the normal population at an equal frequency to the X chromosome rather than at half the frequency as normal Population genetics off the top of your head is fun!
--
http://www.superbad.com
The main thing that keeps me on Linux and off Windows wherever possible is sloppy mouse focus. Is this possible in Windows XP or is control not that granular?
Rosalind Franklin was responsible for the X-Ray Crystallography. Her work was under attributed and some say plagiarised by Watson and Crick. She certainly did not get the credit for her work, and some beleive she should have shared in the nobel prize. To be fair, her boss/supervisor was implicit in this, and not just Watson/Crick, although Watson should not have bad-mouthed her the way he did.
But with compulsory voting, , strong opposition [yes, I know that the democrats are dead] leading to the upper house hobbling the lower house this isn't going to get very far. Never mind. Thank god for three year terms of office, that's what I say.