I'm sorry, but however easy it is to say that in theory there is "security through obscurity," you're ignoring the practical facts. Sure, this isn't as serious a security violation as when facebook started releasing its information to third parties, and referring to these third parties under the euphemism "Developers" in its privacy policy, and putting the opt-out option at the bottom of an already obscure difficult-to-find page. But it certainly affects people in more obvious ways that, in daily life, are probably more detrimental to them - whether it be something as pathetic as people knowing how much time you spend on facebook. Does this say bad things about our society? Probably. This isn't really about security in the technical sense; it's about comfort. And this feature is, basically, downright uncomfortable.
I find the slashdot comments thus far more fascinating than the article itself; among geeks, Google has an amazing reputation. I quote the article:
Levchin, who last year founded a multimedia company in San Francisco called Slide, said Google "still has a long wick of good will to burn off," but he added, "I'm surprised at how fast the company's reputation is changing."
Don't get me wrong; I'm a blind google fan (google homepage, gmail, picasa, google maps... weee) myself. Nevertheless, google users DO seem very hesitant to change their google ways. Google is becoming increasingly eager to take over each new market it thinks it can do so successfully, and does so with ingenious and highly manipulative marketing strategies (read: remember the gmail invites system with tons of space, how everyone wanted one?). Google isn't an underdog merely-simplified-Yahoo search engine anymore, and it does have its sights set high on all sorts of markets.
Now, is this a bad thing? With enough power, does anyone or any corporation remain "good" and not get corrupted? Will we keep supporting google, no matter what steps it takes, as long as it treats its employees nicely? Well, I'm all for it - Google, I'm still yours.
That's because we don't have the technology to physically build a bacteria cell, not because we wouldn't know how to.
And nothing wrong with calling it "life from scratch" so that people too stupid to make any sense of "synthesizing new organisms" can feel a little more educated about the goings on of the world. It's such a small question of semantics.
Yes, but now they're going beyond that. They're trying to synthetically combine nucleotides of genetic material together in new ways. No more simple two species transactions, but a genuine "synthetic" approach to creating NEW genes.
As I understand it, it's trying to make it into more of a science, where previously it had lacked order and had merely been creative guessing which genes to put where.
Seems like a much better method to me - start from the most basic (well, almost most basic... genes -> nucleotides -> atoms -> quarks... but you get the gist) elements and put them together building-block style.
Go modern science.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, but however easy it is to say that in theory there is "security through obscurity," you're ignoring the practical facts. Sure, this isn't as serious a security violation as when facebook started releasing its information to third parties, and referring to these third parties under the euphemism "Developers" in its privacy policy, and putting the opt-out option at the bottom of an already obscure difficult-to-find page. But it certainly affects people in more obvious ways that, in daily life, are probably more detrimental to them - whether it be something as pathetic as people knowing how much time you spend on facebook. Does this say bad things about our society? Probably. This isn't really about security in the technical sense; it's about comfort. And this feature is, basically, downright uncomfortable.
However, when you opt-out of a particular story, it takes it off your own mini-feed, but not the main feed on each person's homepage.
Then again, in the words of one intelligent facebooker user, "There's a difference between 'publicly available' and 'publicly announced.'"
I find the slashdot comments thus far more fascinating than the article itself; among geeks, Google has an amazing reputation. I quote the article:
Levchin, who last year founded a multimedia company in San Francisco called Slide, said Google "still has a long wick of good will to burn off," but he added, "I'm surprised at how fast the company's reputation is changing."
Don't get me wrong; I'm a blind google fan (google homepage, gmail, picasa, google maps... weee) myself. Nevertheless, google users DO seem very hesitant to change their google ways. Google is becoming increasingly eager to take over each new market it thinks it can do so successfully, and does so with ingenious and highly manipulative marketing strategies (read: remember the gmail invites system with tons of space, how everyone wanted one?). Google isn't an underdog merely-simplified-Yahoo search engine anymore, and it does have its sights set high on all sorts of markets.
Now, is this a bad thing? With enough power, does anyone or any corporation remain "good" and not get corrupted? Will we keep supporting google, no matter what steps it takes, as long as it treats its employees nicely? Well, I'm all for it - Google, I'm still yours.
That's because we don't have the technology to physically build a bacteria cell, not because we wouldn't know how to. And nothing wrong with calling it "life from scratch" so that people too stupid to make any sense of "synthesizing new organisms" can feel a little more educated about the goings on of the world. It's such a small question of semantics.
Yes, but now they're going beyond that. They're trying to synthetically combine nucleotides of genetic material together in new ways. No more simple two species transactions, but a genuine "synthetic" approach to creating NEW genes.
As I understand it, it's trying to make it into more of a science, where previously it had lacked order and had merely been creative guessing which genes to put where. Seems like a much better method to me - start from the most basic (well, almost most basic... genes -> nucleotides -> atoms -> quarks... but you get the gist) elements and put them together building-block style. Go modern science.