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Comment Storage Non-Problem - Sequences Compresses to MBs (Score 5, Informative) 138

Storage is not the problem. Computational power is.

Each genetic sequence is ~3GB but since sequences between individuals are very similar it is possible to compress them by only recording the differences from a reference sequences making each genome ~20 MB. This means you could store a sequences for everybody in the world in ~132 PB or 0.05% or total worldwide data storage (295 exabytes)

Now the real challenge is more in having enough computational power to read and process the 3 billion letters genetic sequence and designing effective algorithms to process this data.

More info on compression of genomic sequences
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3074166/

Comment Re:Amazon is Giving Refunds to Opened/Installed Ga (Score 5, Informative) 511

EA ruins game. Amazon saves day.

I did this. Amazon was great. Return/refund is the only way EA will ever take a hint.

I suggest:
1. If you bought from Amazon return it. Amazon made it painless for full refund of my opened game.
2. If bought from Orgin ask for refund. EA says in press release you can do this. Though I hear problems from customer service
3. If you cannot get refund from Orgin/EA call credit card company and have them stop payment for defective product.

Maybe EA will fix if this hurts their bottom line?

If problems get fixed in a month or so you can always buy the game again. Otherwise not worth my time now to play with so many problems

Comment Apple=Evil (Score 0) 149

Everybody knows it.
Apple evangelist only qualify it as less* evil.

Most of Apples Patents are hogwash in that most individual features were already present somewhere else before they put together in a device by apple. Don't take me wrong taking the best parts from a wide array of devices and assembling them into a single product takes a lot of skill.

And really most of apples cutting edge features are invented by others but solely available from apple because they have the capital to buy an entire supply chain for a new product to delay others from making use of the new technology.

So now that other companies have caught up and are turning out products that bet apple to market on new technology all Apple can do it go to court with their bogus patents to keep their monopoly.

Comment Get a Mac - Use VoiceOver (Score 1) 47

OS X has a built in screen reader for those with visual impairments VoiceOver. The quality of this built-in software is better then expensive commercial software that needs to be added into Windows OS.

I iPhones have the the same VoiceOver visual impairment feature. Heard it works well but no personal experience here.

Comment Physical Backup? (Score 1) 239

You never said why you wanted to upload the photos but I'm assuming its for backup.

Why not go with physical backup. For 2 weeks at ~ 500 MB (2.5 MB/pic 200 pics) a day that a total of 7GB of photos. Easy to fit on a single memory card and just backup to your computer. If you are worried about loosing them memory cards are small enough to carry on person.

If it is to share your photos with people I would say stop and only upload your good shoots for the day.

Comment Cheating is Prevalent at Stanford (Score 1) 333

I can speak from my experience as a graduate student at Stanford who has TAed. Cheating among the undergrads is very prevalent and essentially impossible to prove. Stanford has a honor code and part of it is that during exams professors and TAs cannot be in the room to monitor the exam. The one person I know who has gotten caught cheating by resubmitting an exam for regrade and replacing several pages of the exam only got one quarter suspension (over the summer) and was still allowed to finish the class and receive a grade as if he never cheated.

Comment Wrong Use of the Word Efficiency (Score 1) 156

The catalyst is highly active but not to be confused with efficiency.

Ideally water oxidization would occur at 1.23 V vs RHE (higher is inefficient)
IrO2 operates at low potentials but is less active
(i.e. it requires more catalyst for the same amount of current)
This is not a bad thing more efficient but less active.

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