Perhaps someone already brought up these clarifications, but here goes:
1. The full amount was $3.5 million, not $3 million. Thiel will be donating $500,000 in direct funds; the other $3 million is in the form of matching funds.
2. The $3.5 million will only count towards SENS research. It will not be included in the MPrize fund, which is a separate (though related) initiative. The MPrize will be awarded for creating strains of mice, or medical interventions for mice, that result in significant increases in mouse lifespan. SENS research is focussed on treating seven known contributing factors to aging. The two can go hand in hand (SENS research may produce an MPrize-winning mouse), but they are separate. Thiel's money can only be used for SENS research (conducted under the auspices of the Methuselah Foundation, the same organization that sponsors the MPrize, hence the probable basis for the confusion).
Actually, I think that the "k" stands for "kilo" (or "kibi", if you're retarded) in both of those.:o)
Actually, I think the point was, kB and kb are not the same thing: the capital B in the former means bytes, while the lowercase b in the latter means bits. 800 kB does not equal 800 kb. Don't f*ck up the capitalization is the lesson here. KHz and kHz are two very different things.
Damage caused on impact with a stationary object increases linearly with speed (well, at least, damage to you).
Wrong. Please get a grip on basic physics.
Indeed.
Going back to the person who said that damage increases linearly with speed... What? A car going 55 MPH is moving at the same speed as a car dropped from 101 feet. A car going 75 MPH, or 36% faster, hits with the same speed as a car dropped from 188 feet! Now maybe you have a different idea of what kind of damage can result in free-fall, but basically, when falling, damage caused on impact with a stationary object (the ground) increases linearly with height.
From this, we can see that going 36% faster increases the damage on impact by 87%!
I have to agree, I'm not sure how the post made it here in the first place. I kept waiting for something witty or clever as I got further in, some abstraction of physics or recent news that made it worth my time to read this, but sadly no such thing ever occurred...
The prize is for curing aging, and curing natural death is not the same thing.
Not that there's not a strong correlation, but 10-year-olds die of natural causes too. It's just that old people are just a hell of a lot more prone to die of natural causes. If we can make old people more like young people, they'll still die, but just far less often.
Wow, only 1million bucks to the person who cures natural death? No wonder why nobody is in a rush. You can make more money engineering bio weapons for the states.
The X Prize was only $10 million, yet the space tourism industry promises to be a multi-billion dollar industry in the near future. No wonder no one wanted to compete for it... Oh wait, they had at least 27 competitors, and most of them signed up before the X Prize had collected even "1million bucks".
The M Prize continues to grow rapidly. It had reached $500,000 barely five months ago! Even if the prize grows linearly (unlikely, since it's currently growing at least quadratically), that means the prize will break $10 million in just 90 more months, or 7.5 years.
However, assuming it continues its quadratic growth rate, the M Prize should reach over $10 million well before 2010! And that's assuming that another Ansari doesn't step forward and boost the prize up to where it probably needs to be, between $50 million and $100 million.
Sure, it's only $1 million today, but that number will continue to grow rapidly as people donate to the prize and try to break the death meme that holds sway over society today.
If you figure out a way to make people life forever or at least a very long time, you can only make them pay for it once. If you discover a way to make people live an extra decade, they'll pay through the nose for it, eventually die, move on and you'll have a new generation of customers.
Actually, if you read the SENS plan, you'll see that most of the interventions suggested there would have to be performed regularly, every decade or two, and some of the procedures don't look cheap (replacing the stem cells of your blood, skin, and intenstines with bone marrow transplants and surgery).
Sounds like every health provider's dream medical procedure.
No? What if your birthday is on a Monday? Nobody wants that. Everyone wants a Friday or Saturday birthday.
One word. Christmas. Christmas would be on Sunday! Christmas Eve would be on Saturday. Most places give you Christmas Day and Eve off if they are during the work week, but a lot of places don't give you two days off if Christmas is on a Sunday. At best, you get Friday or Monday off.
Screw that! July 4th? It's right in the middle of the week! Wednesday. Why not have July 4th on a Friday or Monday, so we can have a three-day weekend?
New Year's Day? Sunday again! Damn it! Who's idea was this?
Instead of having January 1st be a Sunday, why not have it be a Friday or a Tuesday? Then we'd get four day weekends for Christmas and New Year's, and three day weekends for the 4th of July.
Given the rapidly increasing lifespans of our older generations, our seniors are going to have to come to grips with the fact that Retirement is not about taking a vacation on the government dole. It's about not having to work when you're elderly, decrepit, and too feeble to work.
The problem is with people's view of life expectancy: If you're in your early 40's today, the life expectancy figures show that you have an even chance of living another 40 years.
The problem is, in 40 years, technology will be so advanced that the life expectancy tables will probably still show that you have another 20-30 years left in you. How could we even conceive of letting some "retire" at age 67 when they'll probably live another 40-50 years after retirement?
And the answer isn't to just keep raising the retirement age: some people really are old and frail at 65 and deserve to take a break. It shouldn't be an age standard alone: it should be a weighted sum of age and poor health. Poor health at 65 qualifies, moderate health at 75, and good health at 85. Or whatever: the system will need to adjust.
Once we find an effective way to measure someone's biological age, regardless of their chronological age, then we can make the system a little more fair.
But for heaven's sake, why should I pay for someone forty years older than myself and in better health than myself to take a freakin' vacation!
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps someone already brought up these clarifications, but here goes:
1. The full amount was $3.5 million, not $3 million. Thiel will be donating $500,000 in direct funds; the other $3 million is in the form of matching funds.
2. The $3.5 million will only count towards SENS research. It will not be included in the MPrize fund, which is a separate (though related) initiative. The MPrize will be awarded for creating strains of mice, or medical interventions for mice, that result in significant increases in mouse lifespan. SENS research is focussed on treating seven known contributing factors to aging. The two can go hand in hand (SENS research may produce an MPrize-winning mouse), but they are separate. Thiel's money can only be used for SENS research (conducted under the auspices of the Methuselah Foundation, the same organization that sponsors the MPrize, hence the probable basis for the confusion).
More information about SENS can be found here:
http://sens.org/
Seriously, I almost want to boycott it on principle. I can't see it as anything other than an attempt to cash in on the HDTV marketing efforts.
Wrong. Please get a grip on basic physics.
Indeed.
Going back to the person who said that damage increases linearly with speed... What? A car going 55 MPH is moving at the same speed as a car dropped from 101 feet. A car going 75 MPH, or 36% faster, hits with the same speed as a car dropped from 188 feet! Now maybe you have a different idea of what kind of damage can result in free-fall, but basically, when falling, damage caused on impact with a stationary object (the ground) increases linearly with height .
From this, we can see that going 36% faster increases the damage on impact by 87%!
I have to agree, I'm not sure how the post made it here in the first place. I kept waiting for something witty or clever as I got further in, some abstraction of physics or recent news that made it worth my time to read this, but sadly no such thing ever occurred...
The prize is for curing aging, and curing natural death is not the same thing.
Not that there's not a strong correlation, but 10-year-olds die of natural causes too. It's just that old people are just a hell of a lot more prone to die of natural causes. If we can make old people more like young people, they'll still die, but just far less often.
Wow, only 1million bucks to the person who cures natural death? No wonder why nobody is in a rush. You can make more money engineering bio weapons for the states.
The X Prize was only $10 million, yet the space tourism industry promises to be a multi-billion dollar industry in the near future. No wonder no one wanted to compete for it... Oh wait, they had at least 27 competitors, and most of them signed up before the X Prize had collected even "1million bucks".
The M Prize continues to grow rapidly. It had reached $500,000 barely five months ago! Even if the prize grows linearly (unlikely, since it's currently growing at least quadratically), that means the prize will break $10 million in just 90 more months, or 7.5 years.
However, assuming it continues its quadratic growth rate, the M Prize should reach over $10 million well before 2010! And that's assuming that another Ansari doesn't step forward and boost the prize up to where it probably needs to be, between $50 million and $100 million.
Sure, it's only $1 million today, but that number will continue to grow rapidly as people donate to the prize and try to break the death meme that holds sway over society today.
If you figure out a way to make people life forever or at least a very long time, you can only make them pay for it once. If you discover a way to make people live an extra decade, they'll pay through the nose for it, eventually die, move on and you'll have a new generation of customers.
Actually, if you read the SENS plan, you'll see that most of the interventions suggested there would have to be performed regularly, every decade or two, and some of the procedures don't look cheap (replacing the stem cells of your blood, skin, and intenstines with bone marrow transplants and surgery).
Sounds like every health provider's dream medical procedure.
I've got adult ADD, you insensitive clod! I can't prusue my own interests for a week, let long 935 years!
What, you think we could cure aging, currently seen as one of the most immutable biological processes, but not be able to cure ADD?
No? What if your birthday is on a Monday? Nobody wants that. Everyone wants a Friday or Saturday birthday.
One word. Christmas. Christmas would be on Sunday! Christmas Eve would be on Saturday. Most places give you Christmas Day and Eve off if they are during the work week, but a lot of places don't give you two days off if Christmas is on a Sunday. At best, you get Friday or Monday off.
Screw that! July 4th? It's right in the middle of the week! Wednesday. Why not have July 4th on a Friday or Monday, so we can have a three-day weekend?
New Year's Day? Sunday again! Damn it! Who's idea was this?
Instead of having January 1st be a Sunday, why not have it be a Friday or a Tuesday? Then we'd get four day weekends for Christmas and New Year's, and three day weekends for the 4th of July.
Given the rapidly increasing lifespans of our older generations, our seniors are going to have to come to grips with the fact that Retirement is not about taking a vacation on the government dole. It's about not having to work when you're elderly, decrepit, and too feeble to work.
The problem is with people's view of life expectancy: If you're in your early 40's today, the life expectancy figures show that you have an even chance of living another 40 years.
The problem is, in 40 years, technology will be so advanced that the life expectancy tables will probably still show that you have another 20-30 years left in you. How could we even conceive of letting some "retire" at age 67 when they'll probably live another 40-50 years after retirement?
And the answer isn't to just keep raising the retirement age: some people really are old and frail at 65 and deserve to take a break. It shouldn't be an age standard alone: it should be a weighted sum of age and poor health. Poor health at 65 qualifies, moderate health at 75, and good health at 85. Or whatever: the system will need to adjust.
Once we find an effective way to measure someone's biological age, regardless of their chronological age, then we can make the system a little more fair.
But for heaven's sake, why should I pay for someone forty years older than myself and in better health than myself to take a freakin' vacation!