Yep we were screwed as well by the lack of support for his research...
He reports in chapter seven of the same book of the observation of surgeon Cynthia Illingworth that a child of less than about 11 years old whose fingertip is severed beyond the outermost crease of the outmost joint will invariably regrow perfectly in around 3 months.
Looks like we humans already have some of this ability but it goes wrong around or just before puberty(my guess as to when).
It seems inextricably intertwined with cancer.
Becker suggests several experiments with regard to this at the end of chapter 12.
Well our vacuum cleaner should definitely have made the list. It's hard to imagine that practical design went into various parts of it.
Made by that well known vacuum manufacturer whose name starts with H.
It is a cannister type and the model is S3630.
First the switches:
It has a green body with two identical black rocker switches, one one either side of the top of the machine. One supposedly retracts the cord and the other switches the power. Which is which? Well that's easy: the black switches have written on them also in black which is which. Only it cannot be read in normal light when standing over the machine so you need to memorize which is which or trace the cord to see which side it goes into and then choose a switch based on that. (how many times have I pushed the wrong one?) A simple use of color would have fixed this.
Navigation #1:
there are 3 wheels on the body: two about of 4 inch diameter at the rear and one in the center up front that is about 1 inch in diameter. What's wrong with this? The front wheel diameter is so small that the wheel instead of riding over the edge of mats, rugs, etc., in its path, instead catches on them and tries to drag them along too.
Navigation #2:
the front of the body has a flat face with square corners so that unlike designs with rounded or tapered fronts, every object it ever comes into contact with stalls it on the spot. So for instance going around the edge of a couch will always stall the machine as it will collide with the edge of a couch even a dull angle is enough, because of the sharp corners, to make it catch and stop you in your tracks.
The Retractable cord:
the cord sheath is made out of material that doesn't easily bend so that although spring-loaded the retractor doesn't easily retract when you manage to press the right switch (see switches entry above) and instead find that you have to manually feed the cord back in and sometimes even then it won't go in. Lately we've been driven to winding the cord around the body to store it.
The bag holder:
when you go to replace the bag there is a complicated looking plastic piece that falls out as you take the old bag out and it is non-obvious as to where this should go when you put in the new bag. And it doesn't get better with practice. Older models had a fixed hinge in this location and there was only one way stuff would go.
The flexible hose:
is made of a material that cannot stand the stress put on it by other aspects of the 'design' so when the flat front stalls on objects in the room as it is being dragged around, or the small front wheel stalls on the edges of rugs, the hose permanently distends and after several of these stalls it becomes noticeably constricted at various places along its length.
The metal extension tubes:
the dimensional machining on these is such that only certain arrangements of the tubes may be made with certain other of the attachments as they are different sizes even though they appear identical to the naked eye.
The extension tube locking mechanism:
The combination of where the little bump on the side of the tubes that locks into a channel in the end of the flexible tube with a lever to close it in place only works for some of the otherwise apparently identical extension tubes. It seems that they didn't look at the worst case tolerances when they machined these parts and some don't match others. I measureed one pair and found that the parts that should have met were off by a quarter inch for a part that was about 3/16 in diameter. Not even in the same ballpark.
One of the tubes will not lock in place at all and has to be used in other locations as it otherwise falls out when you are in the midst of vacuuming.
There's more stupid design features but I'm tired of writing about this now except to note why I still own this vacuum? well it sucks.
"If we could figure out HOW they fold, we wouldn't have to examine each one individually. We could predict the final shape and function based on the knowledge of we have of the protein making intstructions and HOW THEY FOLD."
On the right track but knowing the shape a protein will fold to is not enough. We still need to know the structure-function relationship. Knowing how it will fold is a little closer, but it's not the holy grail either.
The holy grail is knowing directly from the sequence what the function will be. Then we can make whatever you want.
To the best of my limited knowledge knowing the shape a protein will fold into from its sequence is only part way.
You still need to know what the function is of that structure you predicted. Unless you have some magical formula that relates structure to function you still need a library of similar structure-function relationships to predict the function of a particular protein and how that might change through further modification. That last part (modification) is the key IMHO.
hmmmm. I thought that's what public and private encryption keys were for...virtual money using this system was suggested by some folks in the Netherlands in the early 90's and trialled on vending machines there then. Report on in Scientific American.
Of course, as another suggested, the fight would then be over who got what share of the fee. Kinda like who gets what cut when a plane flies touching down at a number of airports along the way or when a telecom message goes thru a whole bunch of different networks. I wonder if, just maybe, all this has already been worked out? Just needs implementation and oh yeah, agreement between the various interested parties.
"Since it is not (according to that quote) profitable to research more printers Dell's printer business will dry up leaving them with just the odd repair or replacement to go on."
You have overlooked that little money is made on the printers. It's in the consumables where the profit lies. The printers are a red-herring, often sold at a loss just to capture consumables.
If Dell sold 1 printer to each person and then quit except for repairs/replacments they would have a very very tidy high profit consumable business remaining.
And if they do capture those consumables HP is toast and HP knows it.
there are apparently some third party email providers around who can do other than port 25 for mail...that should solve your problem, although fwiw it's bound to be in contravention of their rules somehow.
However Cox should fix their servers, easy to do as you point out, it's not brain surgery!
Slashdot Mirror
Yep we were screwed as well by the lack of support for his research...
He reports in chapter seven of the same book of the observation of surgeon Cynthia Illingworth that a child of less than about 11 years old whose fingertip is severed beyond the outermost crease of the outmost joint will invariably regrow perfectly in around 3 months.
Looks like we humans already have some of this ability but it goes wrong around or just before puberty(my guess as to when).
It seems inextricably intertwined with cancer.
Becker suggests several experiments with regard to this at the end of chapter 12.
But it remains as to how to get funding for same.
Well our vacuum cleaner should definitely have made the list.
It's hard to imagine that practical design went into various parts of it. Made by that well known vacuum manufacturer whose name starts with H. It is a cannister type and the model is S3630.
First the switches:
It has a green body with two identical black rocker switches, one one either side of the top of the machine. One supposedly retracts the cord and the other switches the power. Which is which? Well that's easy: the black switches have written on them also in black which is which. Only it cannot be read in normal light when standing over the machine so you need to memorize which is which or trace the cord to see which side it goes into and then choose a switch based on that. (how many times have I pushed the wrong one?) A simple use of color would have fixed this.
Navigation #1:
there are 3 wheels on the body: two about of 4 inch diameter at the rear and one in the center up front that is about 1 inch in diameter. What's wrong with this? The front wheel diameter is so small that the wheel instead of riding over the edge of mats, rugs, etc., in its path, instead catches on them and tries to drag them along too.
Navigation #2:
the front of the body has a flat face with square corners so that unlike designs with rounded or tapered fronts, every object it ever comes into contact with stalls it on the spot. So for instance going around the edge of a couch will always stall the machine as it will collide with the edge of a couch even a dull angle is enough, because of the sharp corners, to make it catch and stop you in your tracks.
The Retractable cord:
the cord sheath is made out of material that doesn't easily bend so that although spring-loaded the retractor doesn't easily retract when you manage to press the right switch (see switches entry above) and instead find that you have to manually feed the cord back in and sometimes even then it won't go in. Lately we've been driven to winding the cord around the body to store it.
The bag holder:
when you go to replace the bag there is a complicated looking plastic piece that falls out as you take the old bag out and it is non-obvious as to where this should go when you put in the new bag. And it doesn't get better with practice. Older models had a fixed hinge in this location and there was only one way stuff would go.
The flexible hose:
is made of a material that cannot stand the stress put on it by other aspects of the 'design' so when the flat front stalls on objects in the room as it is being dragged around, or the small front wheel stalls on the edges of rugs, the hose permanently distends and after several of these stalls it becomes noticeably constricted at various places along its length.
The metal extension tubes:
the dimensional machining on these is such that only certain arrangements of the tubes may be made with certain other of the attachments as they are different sizes even though they appear identical to the naked eye.
The extension tube locking mechanism:
The combination of where the little bump on the side of the tubes that locks into a channel in the end of the flexible tube with a lever to close it in place only works for some of the otherwise apparently identical extension tubes. It seems that they didn't look at the worst case tolerances when they machined these parts and some don't match others. I measureed one pair and found that the parts that should have met were off by a quarter inch for a part that was about 3/16 in diameter. Not even in the same ballpark. One of the tubes will not lock in place at all and has to be used in other locations as it otherwise falls out when you are in the midst of vacuuming.
There's more stupid design features but I'm tired of writing about this now except to note why I still own this vacuum? well it sucks.
And if I had the inclination I
dude u might wanna read the comments already posted before u say u can't read the article. Above yr post is a link to a google cache of the article. No excuse.w ww.qbrundage.com/michaelb/pubs/essays/working_at_m icrosoft.html+&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
here it is again 'cos yr too lazy to read more than a few lines away:
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:ILiHKIGJa_oJ:
btw, wtf? how can u have an opinon about what he says w/o reading what he said
"If we could figure out HOW they fold, we wouldn't have to examine each one individually. We could predict the final shape and function based on the knowledge of we have of the protein making intstructions and HOW THEY FOLD." On the right track but knowing the shape a protein will fold to is not enough. We still need to know the structure-function relationship. Knowing how it will fold is a little closer, but it's not the holy grail either. The holy grail is knowing directly from the sequence what the function will be. Then we can make whatever you want. To the best of my limited knowledge knowing the shape a protein will fold into from its sequence is only part way. You still need to know what the function is of that structure you predicted. Unless you have some magical formula that relates structure to function you still need a library of similar structure-function relationships to predict the function of a particular protein and how that might change through further modification. That last part (modification) is the key IMHO.
hmmmm. I thought that's what public and private encryption keys were for...virtual money using this system was suggested by some folks in the Netherlands in the early 90's and trialled on vending machines there then. Report on in Scientific American.
Of course, as another suggested, the fight would then be over who got what share of the fee. Kinda like who gets what cut when a plane flies touching down at a number of airports along the way or when a telecom message goes thru a whole bunch of different networks. I wonder if, just maybe, all this has already been worked out? Just needs implementation and oh yeah, agreement between the various interested parties.
"Since it is not (according to that quote) profitable to research more printers Dell's printer business will dry up leaving them with just the odd repair or replacement to go on."
You have overlooked that little money is made on the printers. It's in the consumables where the profit lies. The printers are a red-herring, often sold at a loss just to capture consumables.
If Dell sold 1 printer to each person and then quit except for repairs/replacments they would have a very very tidy high profit consumable business remaining.
And if they do capture those consumables HP is toast and HP knows it.
actually we do...
there are apparently some third party email providers around who can do other than port 25 for mail...that should solve your problem, although fwiw it's bound to be in contravention of their rules somehow. However Cox should fix their servers, easy to do as you point out, it's not brain surgery!