I see that you have spent some time developing deep experience with strawmen. Good for you.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and give you an A for effort. Let's play smug one liner vs. amused mockery again sometime :)

-Laxitive

Ah, I see, you must be referring to the Delhi high court's support of caste discrimination. I'm having a bit of trouble finding examples of that, though. Could you point me to some of your examples?

I tried searching for '...' in google, but it doesn't yield too much in the way of results relating to the delhi high court.

Thanks in advance!

-Laxitive

I'm sure if you lend the Indians your time machine, they can go back in time and fix that issue. Until then, I guess they'll have to just live with outlawing caste discrimination in the constitution and then slowly working to change public attitudes.

Or perhaps you've discovered a way to fix the issue with smug off-topic one-liners?

Do tell. I eagerly await your insight into the issue.

-Laxitive

In experimental science, this is not uncommon. Using different methods of analyzing the same subject is, in other words, using (relatively) independent methods to analyze that subject. Using multiple independent methods and combining their results is a good thing, because it avoids experimental error and potential systemic biases that exist in every observational setup.

That said, I don't want to get into an actual discussion about the actual paper in question because I have not read the relevant hacked personal e-mails with their full context and interpreted their significance (and I likely won't have time in the near future given the pressures of day to day life). I am not particularly inclined to start implying conclusions and accusations based off of an incomplete and shoddy reading of a few out-of-context paragraphs. I am neither willing to vouch for or defend, or attack a particular piece of research until I am reasonably well informed about how that research was conducted.

There seem to be many people, however, who are willing to do exactly that.

-Laxitive

Response from the RealClimate website, here (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/#more-1853):

This will indeed cause certain people to "wonder". Especially people who do not have the faculties to properly understand the idiomatic uses of the English language, and people who are willing to take words and phrases of out of context, as well as people who are willing to formulate their opinions without considering the actual analysis and instead relying on secondhand hysteria generated by others who are also not willing to consider the actual analysis.

So it goes.

-Laxitive

If you think that fast and cheap DNA reading applies only (or even mostly) to monitoring of individuals, you do not have a real grasp of the scope and applicability of DNA sequencing.

There are enormous resources in scientific research that goes toward generating datasets. Sequencing of humans is a significant part of it, but most of that applies to medicinal uses, such as cancer genotyping (which uses sequencing to identify specifically the genotypic characteristics of a particular tumor colony so it can be treated much more effectively than just trying to guess by looking at it "from the outside"). Also, a huge new area in medicine is going to be "personalized" medicine. Medicine that's actually tailored to the specific genetic traits that YOU have, so that the chances of side-effects are reduced and effectiveness is increased.

Then there are the thousands of researchers that need to collect sequence datasets on organisms that have NOTHING to do with humans. A big chunk of this is plant genetics: crop stress tolerance (e.g. make wheat grow more reliably in colder or dryer climates, or resist disease better), natural product optimization (e.g. make canola plants produce 10% more of the kinds of oils you care about, and less of the crap you don't). Another big chunk of this research is basic science: figuring out the specific details of how evolution has progressed, or to identify the core biological processes that make organisms tick. That's core evolutionary biology and biomechanics research.

Then there's the people trying to do constructive genomics: actually build organisms that do specific things. Like modifying yeast to produce some complex bioproduct that requires a network of potentially hundreds of genes. Or creating organisms that filter waste from water. Or building algae variants that run on sunlight and produce oil.

All of these things could desperately use robust, cheap, accessible sequencing platforms. Genetic sequencing is not all about your privacy. It's a platform which has the scope to save scientists and researchers millions, and put that towards more research and better results than towards trying to scrape out a few bases from a tissue sample.

IBM is trying big time to get into the life sciences (that's wrong actually, they actually already HAVE products they market to the life sciences, like systems for large-scale data processing). It is worth billions to them, and they want to tap it.

-Laxitive

I suspect an oil rig, a refinery, a transport truck, and a highway system to deliver the oil, and an oil distribution infrastructure were all part of your car motor too. Because without those it's just a hunk of twisted metal.

-Laxitive

"It's impossible! These cows... they..?! They DON'T FEEL A THING! They can't be stopped!"

I was happy to read this article. It reflects what has slowly become my perspective on online use of language.

Speaking as an immigrant who originally struggled with the English language for the first few years I spent in North America, I love English. I love how some parts make no sense, and how it's infused with slang from cultural experiences gathered from far and wide. Formal english is completely different from slang english, pigdin english, or online english... but I don't see the latter examples as _inferior_, simply different... wonderfully different.

People often confuse the notion of "writing English in a way that I can relate to" with "writing good English". This is not so. Language is most exciting when it is adulterated, compromised, and infused with the particulars of its speakers. I spent 3 years of adolescence in Louisiana, back in the 90s. While others were scoffing at the notion of ebonics, I was lapping up inner city slang: that beautiful, musical, profane prose. While others bemoan the so-called regression identified with online linguistic idioms, the 4-chanisms, and earlier the Jeff-K-isms, the flippant irreverence which with modern youth take ownership of their speech, I celebrate it.

Who wants to read things in the same way they've always written? Not to say that great writers of the past are stale - I still relish my Twain, Irving, Rushdie, and other masters of script - but I don't see the point in taking an adversarial perspective on the evolution of language.... and have no doubt, language IS evolving online. Literature is evolving online. The presentation is changing, the context is changing, the composition is changing, the references are changing... it's fucking exciting to watch.

-Laxitive

Really? I see traffic rising on my site. I have 6 servers up and running. I need 6 new servers to come up within the next 10 minutes to service my estimated needs for the next hour.

...half hour passes

Wow, access rate is going up faster than expected. I need 6 more servers.

...half hour passes

Phew. That was over. I just need 6 in total now. Why am I paying for 18? I'd like to take those down, please.

So, tell me.. who has been providing this service for decades?

-Laxitive

So the smaller cities will become like Delhi or Mumbai, with pollution, dirt, and garbage piling up everywhere.

If you don't think there will be too many people buying this thing as a status symbol, then you don't know Indians. If there's one thing I know about Indians, Northern and Southern, Rich and Poor, High Caste and Low Caste.. it's that status is everything, wealth is status, and cars are wealth. Sure, so is jewelry, and being able to pay for ridiculously overpriced weddings, and a whole bunch of other things.. but the car as a status symbol in India is across the board.

Tata is lying. This is all about making money on top of the Indian desire to keep up with the joneses.

Now, I'm not saying that's a bad desire. Ambition is good. Wanting to have a better life with better conveniences is a good thing. It's what makes India so vibrant and exciting a place. But there is always a cost for this kind of progress, and in a place like India where we really haven't gotten our largest problems sorted out, where we haven't, as a culture, figured out that throwing our garbage onto the streets and shitting in our own water supply is not sustainable in the long term, where we haven't learned that it is unwise spending your entire family fortune on lavish and gaudy weddings and jewellry when it could have been invested in the young couple's livelyhood to far better effect.. I don't think the country as a whole knows what it is getting into.

India may well be careening at breakneck pace towards a brick wall if it doesn't fix the more fundamental issues it faces. And no, cheap cars are not one of those fundamental issues.

I think Indian infrastructure is going to have a hard time coping with this.

Tried getting anywhere in New Delhi recently? A 10km ride can take HOURS. I'm not exaggerating or kidding. You will literally stand in one spot for half an hour. Nobody obeys traffic rules and gridlock is the norm.

The Indian middle class is looking to copy the west, and they want their SUVs and their tall lattes too.

In late afternoon in New Delhi (about 6:00pm or so), you can STARE AT THE SUN without feeling any queasiness in your eyes. That's how bad the pollution is.

Instead of looking to other cultures and trying to NOT make the same mistakes, India is eager to copycat them. Heh... you think Americans go a little bit overboard with the bling and the super-size-me? Just wait.. just wait.

-Laxitive

I had the same impression, except I didn't want to say it in quite the direct way you did. I'm not in crypto.. I just have a math/cs degree and work in biotech. The whole thing seemed kind of hokey to me, but I don't have the expertise to dissect it properly from a crypto perspective.

Couple notes for people who haven't read the paper:

1. Their scheme is not in-vivo (they're not actually working with DNA and proteins). It's a computational process that is based on the information transformations that occur inside a cell.

2. It's kind of cute and nifty, but not particularly applicable. They discuss weaknesses in the attack, but in a pretty handwavey way. The core problem is that their "encrypted text" will include their entire plain text, just split up into pieces. Secondly, it doesn't seem to offer anything particularly new when compared to traditional block ciphers.

3. Mathematically, this has nothing to do with biology. It's just loosely based on biological processes, and it's not really clear that these biological processes have anything particular to contribute to development of encryption. Transcription is just a mapping (from genomic DNA to mRNA), and translation is just a lossy mapping (from 3-tuples of mRNA to peptides). Mathematicians and cryptographers have been aware of generalized versions of these functions these for a long time (homomorphisms and reverse homomorphisms). There's not much new being introduced here.

-Laxitive

Let's say that Fox runs an awesome show that develops a dedicated fan following. That's bad for FOX, because they no longer have control over that market segment. Good shows take time and effort, and passion and dedication by good people who will in general expect to receive respect for their creative output. That's bad for FOX executives because they suddenly have to consider the opinions and needs of a bunch of plebes at the bottom.

It's good to keep people hooked on perpetually churning set of "hot thing of the moment" shows based on replaceable talent and commodifiable appeal.

I mean, who cares if the top star in American Idol has a beef with the producers and walks out? They'll just film it and make more money running a special "Sandra breaks down and leaves!" episode. It's beautiful.

Good TV is a craft, not an assembly line. The assembly line is more efficient, it seems, and Fox has realized it.

-Laxitive