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Comment Re:And this explains a lot about what happened... (Score 1) 71

Sorry that I didn't specify. By 'require accounts', I meant to interact. And so to make comments you are required to have an account attached. This wasn't the case in the past. Anonymity is gone. Why does this matter? Sometimes people reach out to each other anonymously about serious things that they are afraid to voice with a more obvious traceable identity.

Saying that everyone should use adblock plus doesn't address the point I made at all. What you provided was a band-aid to the issue I brought up. I use adblock plus, too. That's not the point.

As I said before, and for which most people with a memory can agree, Youtube is/was based on user generated content more than content from big business. When I was talking about Youtube's recent policies pushing independent artists off, I was *not* talking about copyright violations. That is a separate issue. Please read up. There's a lot that you're assuming isn't happening in your response. They truly are reducing access and producing a walled garden. You just haven't read enough lately to know about it.

Comment And this explains a lot about what happened... (Score 4, Insightful) 71

... a couple months ago. Youtube made a huge push in collaboration with the major record labels to set up deals with the major labels and de-prioritize or remove videos from independent artists. This push was questioned at the time, but Google/Youtube was wise to hide the *reason* for a couple month so as to 'disconnect' the two concepts from the non-diligent news reader.

Do no evil? How about "Do profit, f*** you". Why did youtube force all users to have accounts? Why is youtube turning into one commercial after another? Why is google more interested in the interests of big money corporate business than the interests of its viewers and its original content providers? By 'original content providers', I'm talking about how Youtube got its start (and still so up until recently) from user-generated content. Youtube made widely available the videos that used to be mass e-mailed around to friends. And now? What is this? A walled garden from the very people pretending to support the open-internet and wild-west style of the internet that surfers of the 90s are trying to remember. Google/Youtube is a liar. Money trumps 'good', and thus 'evil' prevails. They need to change their motto before they start being laughed at like Fox News - Fair and Balanced.

Comment Re:Communication? (Score 1) 70

You quoted what I said and then misinterpreted it. The word 'archaic' is about the 'contextual connotations' of the subject, the word 'communication'. And so I did not say the word 'communication' is archaic. I said that, while using the word 'communication' makes sense in describing biology, but that it thus loses its archaic contextual connotation that you and the OP seem to hold.

Again, if you remove the anthropocentrism from the word and apply a mature scientific perspective to what it means, it is a well placed word in the current discussion.

Comment Re:DNA is not "communication" (Score 2) 70

mRNA is not DNA. DNA is the instruction set. mRNA are the messenger (message) RNA transcript that is translated so as to communicate a desired piece of information/function from instructions to actions. If a book tells you how to make brownies, and you read it -- you would say that you received a communication from the author on how to make brownies.

Comment Re:Communication? (Score 2) 70

He found that the parasitic and the host plants were exchanging thousands of mRNA molecules between each other, thus creating a conversation.

I think this is a little bit of a misuse / misunderstanding of the term / concept "communication".

I think that if you were a cell biologist, you would get the message more clearly. And mRNA is *literally* a message written in a language. As that message is passed around and read, it's translation has effects. This is the basis of communication -- a message, received, having impact.

The more geeked out you get on biology/molecular-biology, the more obvious it becomes that each life form is a set of instructions that yield an explosion of self interested, self-replicating, adaptive and protective technologies -- all so long as the basic needs of the life form are met or available enough.

And so words like 'communication' can end up making perfect sense in a non anthropocentric way. Ultimately, the words make sense in describing biology, and lose their archaic contextual connotations.

Comment Re:It's true... (Score 1) 70

OMG> Your joke hit me so hard. I'm one of those guys who has hung out with people dating vegetarians/vegans that have big mouths. And so every trip to a restaurant is actually converted into a short stage-show conjured up by the special-needs-diet.... Most of the conversation among the table and restaurant staff is then forcibly centered on adhering to providing foods that have not touched grills/equipment that have also touched 'flesh'. And then the food arrives and then its line after line about 'how's your flesh?' and similar attempts at guilting... Needless to say, I do not continue to spend time with rude people by choice.

Comment Risk vs Reward (Score 3, Insightful) 218

The inherent risks in producing excessive virulence via human synthesis, not nature, are very high. The reward of studying these types of phenomenon are very low. The virulence factors can be studied in their natural forms, or individually. Studying the impact of excessive synthetic virulence may give some useful insights, but the risks are far too high. I personally would like to see an internationally agreed ban in the following way:

- It is illegal, and criminal, to knowingly increase the virulence of live or replicating versions of bacterial, fungal, or viral forms. Even under the most stringent biosafety level facilities and care, a deliberate increase in virulence is criminally punishable.

As people we should hold this very serious. A person with a mere bachelor's degree in molecular biology can initiate extremely dangerous things. I am a cell biologist and I have experience in immunity and have personally engaged in the application of individual virulence factors for research purposes. I have seen what the application of even one virulence factor can do to cell immunity. I am extremely fearful of people gluing these factors together. I consider their work ego driven and not very helpful in the scope of human health research.

Comment Re:Wonder how Elon Musk (Score 3, Insightful) 262

There is, apparently, a flapping bird game, that is, apparently, all the rage. Or was that last week? That's right, technology so amazing, you stop caring about it when it is replaced in a few weeks. Right.... :)

I'm only playing along with you. In truth, I love what technology has available for us now. Our lives are faster, easier, and possibly improved, by the tech sector. I say possibly because we may find that virtual-mindedness is detrimental to a superior lifestyle that involves less or no virtualism. Who knows. But within a realm of trying to appreciate something, technology is highly appreciable right now as compared to even 20 years ago. I think if technology development just froze as a whole, we would still grow at least a bit more, on accident, due to the momentum of what we have now. We're doing great. Imagine all of the plausible combinations of current technologies and compare that to the present; that's the spread of the most immediate technological next step that will happen in the immediate future. And so it continues.

I can tell you this.... Video Games, today, are as beautiful as I imagined they would be when I watched games develop early on, 20 years ago . They aren't more or less than I had thought -- they're right on the money. Back then it was river city ransom. Back then, F-Zero and Doom2 looked great.

Everything is having a snowball effect. Kurzweil is basically correct in his thesis of the future.

Comment Re:This is a shining example (Score 1) 327

No... it's a shining example of why the 'work form home tele-work' idea isn't always a good idea. Lets take on step back and look at what you said .... Do you really think that private enterprise is a better place for a role in which all ideas/invetions are vetted for novelty? This is a regulatory agency, so to speak. Private business could only make things worse by being private. It doesn't make sense to even have a patent office and its purposes (a government-driven protection to ideas) governed by private business. That would be like allowing a wolf to tend to sheep.

Comment Re:Don't fix the problem, treat the symptom (Score 1) 182

Wouldn't it be nice to let engineers run society by design, balanced by laws implemented by philosophers? We'd be moving forward much more slowly and carefully because money wouldn't be part of human existence, and we can fully say that how far we've come has given us enough fruits to improve us and support us while we make smartly calculated steps forward.

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