is approximately when DNA becomes junk. It doesn't matter whether you can extract DNA or not, because even under ideal conditions DNA degrades so anything you manage to recover will be nonsensical and useless. We will never, repeat never, be able to clone anything as old as T. rex.
Jurasic Park and the idiot that wrote it have a lot to answer for when it comes to my annoyance and stress levels!
I saw this article on the front page and wondered to myself if there would be yet another stream of comments denying that there is evidence of climate change or that it could have any deletarious impact. Of course there was.
I am a scientist, not working directly on how anthropogenic activities are effecting the atmosphere but on what the predicted effects may have on vegetation.
As a scientist I look at all the available evidence for a question and come to some conclusion based on that evidence. There is no other sensible way to make a decisison. Where the evidence is lacking, I would try and do some work that would provide evidence one way or another.
Virtually all available evidence points to anthropogenic emmisions causing climate change and there is plenty of evidence as to what those changes may be and what the effects of those changes on the biosphere may be.
Consequently, what I wonder about the, extremely predictable, Slashdot response to an article such as this is whether it reflects the attitude of the US or whether it reflects the attiude of the predominently young, middle-class and technical readership of Slashdot?
Either way, I'm fearful of the general ignorance and lack of logical thought.
I love the logic of these guys. You're all going to lose your jobs because the world is going down the pan. However, I'm not going to risk a single job in order to stop you all losing your jobs.
I realise the second sentence (you can count, right?) is an exageration but it doesn't change my point.
The alternative explanation is: 'I don't believe in climate change, la la la' *buries head in nearest sand dune*
Why is that creationists only have this kind of influence in the US? Sure they exist in the rest of the world, but there isn't any other western nation that would take this debate seriously. Even on Slashdot, I have never seen so much misquoted crap. Presumably it's something to do with the education system?
Not just are political parties here exempt from anti-spam lawas but they're also exempt from data protection/privacy laws because Labor and Liberals conived to vote the exeption through. They can legally collect any information they like about you and use it for political purposes and you have no way of doing anything about it.
Everyone wants to simplify this argument (on both sides), GM can be used for exactly the same process as breeding & vice versa eg, introducing more copies of a gene for a vitamin producing protein into a crop or for purposes which breeding cannot do, eg introducing genes from a totally different organism with no natural contact. You can't give a simple argument which covers all possibilities, some uses of GM are low risk and some are high whatever your opinion on the ethics.
Don't get too excited. Monsanto are using their data to do exactly this for exactly the same reasons and have been for years now. I used to work on potatoes and saw a Monsanto presentation at a conference several years ago where they were talking about this as a way around the misconceptions and occasional genuine fears of the EC (note I am a European).
Who do you think is liekly to get the most profit from this? Monsanto with their breeding systems and 'closed source' knowledge or less well funded groups with access to less information?
I find it astounding that so many, presumably intelligent, people are suggesting here that the global warming is some plot hatched by leftie commie greenies. Wake up. Global warming is occurring, and yes we were heading towards the next ice-age, doesn't that show how big a deal this warming is? CO2 in the atmosphere is higher than at any point in modern geolical times, global mean temperature is above any in modern geological times. Both these things have oscillated over the last few hundred thousand years on a fairly regular cycle but are now above the highest point of that oscillation and have acheived this in 150 years or so - not 50,000. The IPCC third assessment report is the work of THOUSANDS of scientists, who roughly agree. The reports denying these events are by a few scientists outside the mainstream of science. If you don't believe in mainstream science have a think what led to the development of the computer you are now reading this with.
However, the various models used in reports such as this one in Nature rarely take sufficient acount of the ability of species to adapt, at least not plants (I am a plant physiologist) and assign temperature responses that are based on simple maths rather than facts. I doubt the situation will be anywhere near as bad as this report makes out.
because I've been using Smoothwall v1 now for quite a while and have had absolutely no problems whatsoever. It currently has an uptime of something like 60 days and the only time I've had to reboot it in over a year has been when security updates have been installed (and it tells you when they are available and installs them from the web interface).
Well I already have some software called WinFX, it's for getting data from a LiCor Infra-Red Gas Analyser to a PC - wonder if they've trademarked the name?
Yeah, it's a moot point as to what is an organiser and a PDA, but even the mid-eighties Psions had a programing language and the Series 3 was in every respect a PDA and it also came out before the Newton.
Why do you people complain about the clamshell design and compare it to a laptop? Psion practically invented the PDA and many Psion 5's/Revo's (including mine) are still in use because no one has yet made a better PDA. Possibly excepting this Zaurus (can't afford one so not about to find out).
It's not like a laptop it's virtually the same size as a palm. But more useful because you can type on it.
I can't believe how people were brainwashed into thinking that the Palm design IS a PDA. Even the article talks about generic PDA when they mean a palm type design.
Canberra is in the process of becomming the first Australian city to be fully set up for cable (it's due to Canberra's quirks that this is possible), so much of Canberra can already dump Telstra totally and use Transact (www.transact.com.au) for all phone calls + TV + broadband internet and the rest is due in a couple of years. However, we still have to pay way to much for downloads as Australia seems to get screwed for international traffic irrespective of the ISP. Local traffic on Transact is free though so we just need people to set up more mirrors here in Canberra!
Don't forget to compare manufacturing in this. Printing ciruit boards and chips leads to a lot of nasties as waste, not just the heavy metals actually in the chips (as already mentioned), most of which are never recycled. Furthermore, some of these metals are in short supply and (like oil) aren't really priced at their true cost (in that getting them back from landfill when we run out of natural sources will be very expensive).
Finally, manufacturing paper leads to various chlorine bleaches going into the environment, but if plantation wood or recycled paper is used wasteing paper isn't actually that bad a thing environmentally, dumping paper into landfill removes CO2 from the atmosphere (so long as a sustainable source of wood is used) and that can only be a good thing.
You know I really couldn't care less what happens in the US, I never intend to visit the place and the more riduculous laws they subject themselves to to, well you 'voted' the guys in, so you have to live with them.
My problem is that now that the US has officially told the rest of the world you do what we say or else (not that it was much different previously, just a bit more hidden), we find that our governments are doing whatever the US wants. Now I didn't vote for the US government so why do they get jurisdiction over me? Perhaps the whole world should vote for the US government and perhaps the world would be a better place.
This is bullshit. Not only was DDT very useful as pointed out in the previous reply, but the potatoes fed to mice produced a toxin from snowdrops not pesticide. The point of that experiment was that it was supposed to prove that GM's could be inherently harmful, and it didn't.
I cannot think of another subject (except possibly religion) about which so much crap is talked. There is nothing inately dangerous in genetic engineering. The fact that a crop is genetically engineered does not make it any more dangerous than the fact that your childs genes are a mix of yours and your partners.
Slightly more informed talk suggests that moving genes from one organism to another is in itself dangerous. Yet the mitochondria that are in every cell of your body (and carry DNA that is seperate to that in the cell nucleus and only inherited from your mother) are probably the remnants of a symbiotic relationship with a bacteria! A heap of genes present in humans and other animals have been shown to have originated in bacteria.
All plants already produce their own pesticides. For instance potatoes produce a toxin (a glycoalkaloid) that is as toxic as strychnine and arsenic. This is in every potato you eat.
The real question here is not that there is anything dangerous about genetic engineering per se but the possible effects of using it in individual situations. For instance, if you take a gene from corn that codes for vitamin C and then put it back in corn 400 times so that the corn produces twice as much vitamin C as normal, there is very little risk and with adequate testing of the crop I see no reason why it shouldn't be grown anywhere. But if you take a gene that codes for aflatoxin and put that in corn it could be dangerous. Testing of that crop would have to prove beyond any doubt that the aflatoxin was not produced in any part of the plant that could be eaten. Not to mention what would happen to the aflatoxin in plant residues etc. It would be difficult to prove that such a plant was safe.
Of course there is also a risk that genes would spread to surrounded (related) plants. However, there are many techniques that can prevent this. Furthermore, is it a real problem? Most mutations in plants (they occur constantly) are deletarious in one way or another. If a gene isn't useful to a plant then it won't be maintained in the wild. Even the overproduction of vitamin C may not be retained in wild plants. It could affect a plants water balance, or represent a drain on the plants carbon balance which mean that it is outcompeted in the wild.
This is a long post, but my point is that a blanket ban (or acceptance for that matter) of genetic engineering fails to understand the reality of what can be done, or is likely to happen. People may not like it, but all cases need to be looked at on an indiviual basis. Without testing you get no answers. Every day in every organism there is mutation occurring, genes moving from one organism to another, and new organisms appearing. Do you see any apocolapse?
Mars would be far easier for man to exist on. Venus has something like 100 times the atmospheric pressure of eart, rains hydrofluoric acid and has temperatures over 200 degrees C. Compare that to average temperatures of -70, atmosphere 100 times less than sealevel on earth and no rain! You should read more science fiction!
Slashdot Mirror
idea's
Agghhhh, put an apostrophe in by accident - I hate bad use of apostrophes.
F*cking h*ll I can't believe the ire on herre and it's just a spoof!
is approximately when DNA becomes junk. It doesn't matter whether you can extract DNA or not, because even under ideal conditions DNA degrades so anything you manage to recover will be nonsensical and useless. We will never, repeat never, be able to clone anything as old as T. rex.
Jurasic Park and the idiot that wrote it have a lot to answer for when it comes to my annoyance and stress levels!
I saw this article on the front page and wondered to myself if there would be yet another stream of comments denying that there is evidence of climate change or that it could have any deletarious impact. Of course there was.
I am a scientist, not working directly on how anthropogenic activities are effecting the atmosphere but on what the predicted effects may have on vegetation.
As a scientist I look at all the available evidence for a question and come to some conclusion based on that evidence. There is no other sensible way to make a decisison. Where the evidence is lacking, I would try and do some work that would provide evidence one way or another.
Virtually all available evidence points to anthropogenic emmisions causing climate change and there is plenty of evidence as to what those changes may be and what the effects of those changes on the biosphere may be.
Consequently, what I wonder about the, extremely predictable, Slashdot response to an article such as this is whether it reflects the attitude of the US or whether it reflects the attiude of the predominently young, middle-class and technical readership of Slashdot?
Either way, I'm fearful of the general ignorance and lack of logical thought.
I love the logic of these guys. You're all going to lose your jobs because the world is going down the pan. However, I'm not going to risk a single job in order to stop you all losing your jobs.
I realise the second sentence (you can count, right?) is an exageration but it doesn't change my point.
The alternative explanation is: 'I don't believe in climate change, la la la' *buries head in nearest sand dune*
There's nothing like a Slashdot story on climate change to produce hot air.
Why is that creationists only have this kind of influence in the US? Sure they exist in the rest of the world, but there isn't any other western nation that would take this debate seriously. Even on Slashdot, I have never seen so much misquoted crap. Presumably it's something to do with the education system?
Not just are political parties here exempt from anti-spam lawas but they're also exempt from data protection/privacy laws because Labor and Liberals conived to vote the exeption through. They can legally collect any information they like about you and use it for political purposes and you have no way of doing anything about it.
Everyone wants to simplify this argument (on both sides), GM can be used for exactly the same process as breeding & vice versa eg, introducing more copies of a gene for a vitamin producing protein into a crop or for purposes which breeding cannot do, eg introducing genes from a totally different organism with no natural contact. You can't give a simple argument which covers all possibilities, some uses of GM are low risk and some are high whatever your opinion on the ethics.
Don't get too excited. Monsanto are using their data to do exactly this for exactly the same reasons and have been for years now. I used to work on potatoes and saw a Monsanto presentation at a conference several years ago where they were talking about this as a way around the misconceptions and occasional genuine fears of the EC (note I am a European).
Who do you think is liekly to get the most profit from this? Monsanto with their breeding systems and 'closed source' knowledge or less well funded groups with access to less information?
I find it astounding that so many, presumably intelligent, people are suggesting here that the global warming is some plot hatched by leftie commie greenies. Wake up. Global warming is occurring, and yes we were heading towards the next ice-age, doesn't that show how big a deal this warming is? CO2 in the atmosphere is higher than at any point in modern geolical times, global mean temperature is above any in modern geological times. Both these things have oscillated over the last few hundred thousand years on a fairly regular cycle but are now above the highest point of that oscillation and have acheived this in 150 years or so - not 50,000. The IPCC third assessment report is the work of THOUSANDS of scientists, who roughly agree. The reports denying these events are by a few scientists outside the mainstream of science. If you don't believe in mainstream science have a think what led to the development of the computer you are now reading this with.
However, the various models used in reports such as this one in Nature rarely take sufficient acount of the ability of species to adapt, at least not plants (I am a plant physiologist) and assign temperature responses that are based on simple maths rather than facts. I doubt the situation will be anywhere near as bad as this report makes out.
My family has a (loose) connection with his family and the guy is actually a total prat as most of the posters here seem to be working out....
because I've been using Smoothwall v1 now for quite a while and have had absolutely no problems whatsoever. It currently has an uptime of something like 60 days and the only time I've had to reboot it in over a year has been when security updates have been installed (and it tells you when they are available and installs them from the web interface).
Well I already have some software called WinFX, it's for getting data from a LiCor Infra-Red Gas Analyser to a PC - wonder if they've trademarked the name?
Yeah, it's a moot point as to what is an organiser and a PDA, but even the mid-eighties Psions had a programing language and the Series 3 was in every respect a PDA and it also came out before the Newton.
Hardly, although apple coined the term PDA the first psion palmtops predated apple's newton by almost TEN years.
Sorry, that should have said palm design is THE PDA, I wasn't inplying that the Palm isn't a PDA! Huh, preview is for wusses.
Why do you people complain about the clamshell design and compare it to a laptop? Psion practically invented the PDA and many Psion 5's/Revo's (including mine) are still in use because no one has yet made a better PDA. Possibly excepting this Zaurus (can't afford one so not about to find out).
It's not like a laptop it's virtually the same size as a palm. But more useful because you can type on it.
I can't believe how people were brainwashed into thinking that the Palm design IS a PDA. Even the article talks about generic PDA when they mean a palm type design.
Canberra is in the process of becomming the first Australian city to be fully set up for cable (it's due to Canberra's quirks that this is possible), so much of Canberra can already dump Telstra totally and use Transact (www.transact.com.au) for all phone calls + TV + broadband internet and the rest is due in a couple of years. However, we still have to pay way to much for downloads as Australia seems to get screwed for international traffic irrespective of the ISP. Local traffic on Transact is free though so we just need people to set up more mirrors here in Canberra!
Don't forget to compare manufacturing in this. Printing ciruit boards and chips leads to a lot of nasties as waste, not just the heavy metals actually in the chips (as already mentioned), most of which are never recycled. Furthermore, some of these metals are in short supply and (like oil) aren't really priced at their true cost (in that getting them back from landfill when we run out of natural sources will be very expensive).
Finally, manufacturing paper leads to various chlorine bleaches going into the environment, but if plantation wood or recycled paper is used wasteing paper isn't actually that bad a thing environmentally, dumping paper into landfill removes CO2 from the atmosphere (so long as a sustainable source of wood is used) and that can only be a good thing.
You know I really couldn't care less what happens in the US, I never intend to visit the place and the more riduculous laws they subject themselves to to, well you 'voted' the guys in, so you have to live with them.
My problem is that now that the US has officially told the rest of the world you do what we say or else (not that it was much different previously, just a bit more hidden), we find that our governments are doing whatever the US wants. Now I didn't vote for the US government so why do they get jurisdiction over me? Perhaps the whole world should vote for the US government and perhaps the world would be a better place.
This is bullshit. Not only was DDT very useful as pointed out in the previous reply, but the potatoes fed to mice produced a toxin from snowdrops not pesticide. The point of that experiment was that it was supposed to prove that GM's could be inherently harmful, and it didn't.
I cannot think of another subject (except possibly religion) about which so much crap is talked. There is nothing inately dangerous in genetic engineering. The fact that a crop is genetically engineered does not make it any more dangerous than the fact that your childs genes are a mix of yours and your partners.
Slightly more informed talk suggests that moving genes from one organism to another is in itself dangerous. Yet the mitochondria that are in every cell of your body (and carry DNA that is seperate to that in the cell nucleus and only inherited from your mother) are probably the remnants of a symbiotic relationship with a bacteria! A heap of genes present in humans and other animals have been shown to have originated in bacteria.
All plants already produce their own pesticides. For instance potatoes produce a toxin (a glycoalkaloid) that is as toxic as strychnine and arsenic. This is in every potato you eat.
The real question here is not that there is anything dangerous about genetic engineering per se but the possible effects of using it in individual situations. For instance, if you take a gene from corn that codes for vitamin C and then put it back in corn 400 times so that the corn produces twice as much vitamin C as normal, there is very little risk and with adequate testing of the crop I see no reason why it shouldn't be grown anywhere. But if you take a gene that codes for aflatoxin and put that in corn it could be dangerous. Testing of that crop would have to prove beyond any doubt that the aflatoxin was not produced in any part of the plant that could be eaten. Not to mention what would happen to the aflatoxin in plant residues etc. It would be difficult to prove that such a plant was safe.
Of course there is also a risk that genes would spread to surrounded (related) plants. However, there are many techniques that can prevent this. Furthermore, is it a real problem? Most mutations in plants (they occur constantly) are deletarious in one way or another. If a gene isn't useful to a plant then it won't be maintained in the wild. Even the overproduction of vitamin C may not be retained in wild plants. It could affect a plants water balance, or represent a drain on the plants carbon balance which mean that it is outcompeted in the wild.
This is a long post, but my point is that a blanket ban (or acceptance for that matter) of genetic engineering fails to understand the reality of what can be done, or is likely to happen. People may not like it, but all cases need to be looked at on an indiviual basis. Without testing you get no answers. Every day in every organism there is mutation occurring, genes moving from one organism to another, and new organisms appearing. Do you see any apocolapse?
Mars would be far easier for man to exist on. Venus has something like 100 times the atmospheric pressure of eart, rains hydrofluoric acid and has temperatures over 200 degrees C. Compare that to average temperatures of -70, atmosphere 100 times less than sealevel on earth and no rain! You should read more science fiction!