Priorities exactly.
When there are so many starving people in the world living with disease and poverty, why give money to an organisation that is looking for something that may or may not exist? Even if aliens are out there they'll be too far away to meet. What about the people on our own doorstep?
Umm. Is it just me, but even ignorant terrorists must be able to work out that creating and releasing a highly transmissible lethal flu virus is a bit stupid. Judging by most recent flu pandemics, they travel everywhere, not just the country/people/religion you hate. Not very targeted. How about a nuke instead?
Why bother making a "virtual" store that is only accessible at one physical location?? The whole point of the internet is that you can access it anywhere. Surely it makes more business sense to make barcode scanning app so that someone can walk into any store, scan the item that they are interested in and either be given a list of online stores to buy it from at a cheaper price or a list of recommended alternatives based upon their tastes?
When I started secondary school in the early 90's we had BBC Basics in our ICT suite. By the time I left we had PCs. They upgraded the computers but forgot to upgrade the teachers. Our ICT lessons consisted of training the teacher how to make text italic, how to enter data into a spreadsheet or (more frequently) how to mute the sound if he had a hangover. As a consequence none of us bothered to take ICT GCSE.
Mutate it to bring forth a strain which is tasty, and make those genes dominant. In 50 years time the goats will come around.
Alternatively mutate goats to have no sense of taste.
..... but then it won't spread so fast cos it's busy being eaten, and so unmutated strain will outcompete it leaving you back at square one....
Anything that is so undiscriminating about what it eats will probably eat everything else, posing another problem.
Well actually yes this strategy is very sensible.
I think you're not quite understanding the research. The vaccine doesn't stop you being bitten by mosquitoes, but would be designed to stop the virus infecting the mosquitoes.
This breaks the cycle of infection and prevents many other people being infected. Yes that's little consolation for you, but in the long run, less people being infected does have a direct benefit for you.
But don't let my opinion change your mind, pls continue patting yourself on the back for making profit (selling medication) which treats one of the symptoms of poverty.
Well actually malaria is a cause of poverty as well as a symptom. In Africa, the average child will have 1-6 bouts of malaria a year, not only putting them at risk of dying, but also preventing them from going to school. Coupled to the loss of manpower in the workforce, malaria does impact community productivity significantly.
As someone who researches Malaria for a living I must wholeheartedly support the funding that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is bringing to the field of Malaria research. Malaria might only be a "poor" person disease but it affects tens of millions of people a year. Even on a selfish note, with global warming creeping up on us in the next few decades, perhaps this pre-emptive strike by the West will save us all getting sick in the long run.
I think the big limitation against a robot "eating" living things at this point is that the energy required in harvesting anything that moves is far in excess of the energy that the robot will be able to extract from it. Bound to be an inefficient process.
1. Attach an object-tracking device and a harpoon to it.
so what do they taste like??
can we make them taste like bacon?
Last year I was in Korea where the streets are lined with vendors frying up silkworm pupae on the street as an, *ahem*, delicacy. The smell wafting down the road can only be described as a cross between death and pus. I would eat my fellow astronauts over silkworms.
From the article:
"Steve Bennett who heads up the University's Space Technology Laboratory, will be presenting his 58ft Nova 2 rocket at the University and will discuss how his company, Starchaser Industries plans to launch it in September 2009 with the help of school pupils from across the UK."
.
How many kids does it take to reach escape velocity??
Hi. You used to be able to unlock PDFs by uploading them to Scribd http://www.scribd.com/ and then downloading them again in text format. Don't know if they closed this loophole yet as I haven't tried in a while.
Well on my computer the update downloaded and installed itself - even though I made a point NOT to click on the install updates button.
The good news is that all you need to do is go to Add/Remove programs to get rid of the thing: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=301681&SiteID=1
I don't know anything about the credentials of this research lab but the project does seem interesting. There are lots of published papers showing that short peptide sequences (~10 amino acids (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db= pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=16 135080&query_hl=4&itool=pubmed_docsum)have potent effects on processes such as neural development, cell differentiation, cell survival etc. Whilst 10aa equates to 30 base pairs in DNA which is 3x bigger than those going to be investigated in the article, it just goes to show that there could be out there random sequences of DNA which could be translated into toxic peptides.
It's not all doom and gloom - Imagine coupling a masked "kill" sequence to an antibody targeted to cancer cells - upon reaching it's target, through proteolytic degradation it could be converted into a potential anticancer drug.
Discoveries such as these don't necessarily have to spell destruction to the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Priorities exactly. When there are so many starving people in the world living with disease and poverty, why give money to an organisation that is looking for something that may or may not exist? Even if aliens are out there they'll be too far away to meet. What about the people on our own doorstep?
A good book to read on the background to the Challenger Launch Decision. The deaths were avoidable if the management culture at the time would have listened.
Umm. Is it just me, but even ignorant terrorists must be able to work out that creating and releasing a highly transmissible lethal flu virus is a bit stupid. Judging by most recent flu pandemics, they travel everywhere, not just the country/people/religion you hate. Not very targeted. How about a nuke instead?
Why bother making a "virtual" store that is only accessible at one physical location?? The whole point of the internet is that you can access it anywhere. Surely it makes more business sense to make barcode scanning app so that someone can walk into any store, scan the item that they are interested in and either be given a list of online stores to buy it from at a cheaper price or a list of recommended alternatives based upon their tastes?
When I started secondary school in the early 90's we had BBC Basics in our ICT suite. By the time I left we had PCs. They upgraded the computers but forgot to upgrade the teachers. Our ICT lessons consisted of training the teacher how to make text italic, how to enter data into a spreadsheet or (more frequently) how to mute the sound if he had a hangover. As a consequence none of us bothered to take ICT GCSE.
Mutate it to bring forth a strain which is tasty, and make those genes dominant. In 50 years time the goats will come around. Alternatively mutate goats to have no sense of taste.
..... but then it won't spread so fast cos it's busy being eaten, and so unmutated strain will outcompete it leaving you back at square one.... Anything that is so undiscriminating about what it eats will probably eat everything else, posing another problem.
Well actually yes this strategy is very sensible. I think you're not quite understanding the research. The vaccine doesn't stop you being bitten by mosquitoes, but would be designed to stop the virus infecting the mosquitoes. This breaks the cycle of infection and prevents many other people being infected. Yes that's little consolation for you, but in the long run, less people being infected does have a direct benefit for you.
But don't let my opinion change your mind, pls continue patting yourself on the back for making profit (selling medication) which treats one of the symptoms of poverty.
Well actually malaria is a cause of poverty as well as a symptom. In Africa, the average child will have 1-6 bouts of malaria a year, not only putting them at risk of dying, but also preventing them from going to school. Coupled to the loss of manpower in the workforce, malaria does impact community productivity significantly.
As someone who researches Malaria for a living I must wholeheartedly support the funding that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is bringing to the field of Malaria research. Malaria might only be a "poor" person disease but it affects tens of millions of people a year. Even on a selfish note, with global warming creeping up on us in the next few decades, perhaps this pre-emptive strike by the West will save us all getting sick in the long run.
I think the big limitation against a robot "eating" living things at this point is that the energy required in harvesting anything that moves is far in excess of the energy that the robot will be able to extract from it. Bound to be an inefficient process.
1. Attach an object-tracking device and a harpoon to it.
2. Reel in the prey.
3. Put prey in a big sealed container.
4. Time/Standby mode.
5. Lots of biogas.
6. Dung heap.
7. GOTO 1.
Nothing to it.
so what do they taste like?? can we make them taste like bacon?
Last year I was in Korea where the streets are lined with vendors frying up silkworm pupae on the street as an, *ahem*, delicacy. The smell wafting down the road can only be described as a cross between death and pus. I would eat my fellow astronauts over silkworms.
.
How many kids does it take to reach escape velocity??
Can anyone recommend a (good) UK broadband supplier that doesn't intrude on your privacy then?
Hi. You used to be able to unlock PDFs by uploading them to Scribd http://www.scribd.com/ and then downloading them again in text format. Don't know if they closed this loophole yet as I haven't tried in a while.
Well on my computer the update downloaded and installed itself - even though I made a point NOT to click on the install updates button. The good news is that all you need to do is go to Add/Remove programs to get rid of the thing: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=301681&SiteID=1
I don't know anything about the credentials of this research lab but the project does seem interesting. There are lots of published papers showing that short peptide sequences (~10 amino acids (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db= pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=16 135080&query_hl=4&itool=pubmed_docsum)have potent effects on processes such as neural development, cell differentiation, cell survival etc. Whilst 10aa equates to 30 base pairs in DNA which is 3x bigger than those going to be investigated in the article, it just goes to show that there could be out there random sequences of DNA which could be translated into toxic peptides.
It's not all doom and gloom - Imagine coupling a masked "kill" sequence to an antibody targeted to cancer cells - upon reaching it's target, through proteolytic degradation it could be converted into a potential anticancer drug.
Discoveries such as these don't necessarily have to spell destruction to the world.
If anyone's interested there's a really good book discussing the Challenger Disaster and the events leading up to the launch decision: The Challenger Launch Decision : Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA by Diane Vaughan http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226851761/sr=1-1 /qid=1138365479/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-5178379-4555812?_ encoding=UTF8
Sorry but a little OT. Does anyone know how much it would cost to use GoogleSMS in the UK?? Would it be more than the cost of a regular text message??
Oh I didn't know that. Well it doesn't seem to make any difference anyway.
That should be without the space in "privateer": http://www.filerush.com/download.php?target=privat eer1.0.exe
http://www.filerush.com/download.php?target=privat eer1.0.exe