If the anti-vaxxers were evenly distributed throughout the population, we could ignore them and go merrily on our way, safe in the knowledge that their refusal will cause no significant harm.

Unfortunately, the anti-vaccination ideology is somewhat infectious itself and these like-minded individuals end up living in clusters.

Why can't they both be wrong?
There's around 1 billion Hindus and 500 million Buddhists who think the whole "God of Abraham" is nonsense.

P.S. There's actually a bit more than 2 billion Christians disagreeing with each other over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

If you looked, they would show that for each indicator, one or two SNPs were involved. These would be identified, along with the standard values and your values.

To determine actual probability, you must multiply (not add) the probability for each indicator, remembering that not all indicators are known.

In the case of Alzheimer's, where external chemicals (aluminium being one) are involved, the indicators mean nothing until you exceed toxic levels of the chemicals. There is nothing to trigger. 100% probability with no neurotoxin is the same as 0% with no neurotoxin. Don't blame me for poor schooling given to people.

23&Me could have done a lot better, I don't consider it faultless, but when PEBKAC, there's nothing they can do.

23&Me are very slow on updating ancestry information and weren't lightning fast on health data. Nonetheless, their data was clearly presented and had clearly stated confidence levels.

Promethease are less well-known to me. I've used their service but I know nothing about the quality of their results, frequency of updates, reaction times when new studies are published, etc. If anyone could fill me in on that, that would be great.

In fact, if 23&Me just moved their health system to an external website with import facility, you'd have the same configuration as with 23&Me + Promethease but with a data set that could evolve through self-reporting. Result - no change from b before, but legal because the DNA company just provides data.

Thank you! There are indeed lots of choices, which makes things interesting. How to balance/optimize the internal and external brain fragments could be an interesting problem and may even be the basis of another generation of culture wars.

Once the consciousness is externalized, then so long as the API and real-time constraints are consistent, you could have multiple physical bodies. You want to go for a drive? Be the person, then become the car. Eliminates any need for mechanical controls (unreliable) and turns the fully networked car into something useful.

It would be interesting to fully explore the impact on the mind. Sorry, Matrix and Neuromancer - excellent fiction though they were - really didn't scratch the surface. However, to say my writing varies is like saying gravity isn't uniform. I can usually manage a decent-sized chapter before fading, but I would need help getting out either a book on the general theory of mind or a story based on such a concept.

P.S. This box contains infinite commas. Be warned, they are freshly baked and may stick to each other. []

I think they should change the "Reactive" to something like "Proactive" as Reactive has such a negative connotation.

It's late on Friday, lots of plans for the weekend, but need to hit a few stores on the way home and maybe top of the tank ...

then it hits, "Oh, you're still here we need WHUMP (massive request hits the inbox) kthxbaihavagudwkendlol" ... yuh.

George Jetson, have you been playing with the time machine at Spacely Sprockets again?

If these guys were experts in software patents, they wouldn't need anyone to testify.

Judges are not experts in anything except law. That's why they listen to other people make the case and explain the intricacies as the law applies to the subject. They do their research and they ask tough questions. That's their job.

Electrical impulses, but not actual electricity. You of course realize the body is highly conductive to electricity already.

No civil fines.
No criminal penalties.
No admission of guilt.

There's no particular reason to assume that bitcoin is the cryptocurrency that will win the future.
There are plenty of contenders and nothing to stop [large financial institution] from latching on to one of those.

Oh no! You know what that means! 100 monkeys is the critical threshold! The brains of all of humanity will now be wiped! I can feel it sta....gurhcfjgjxhhfhcCARRIER LOST

Encourage inventors rather than patent troll them into oblivion.

Just a thought, I know it would destroy much of the current economic model, but maybe - just maybe - those expensive techniques are merely the product of insufficient brains. Does the semiconductor world forget so soon that "cutting edge" in the 1970s was to melt silicon and scrape off the scum on top? Does it eve r occur to anyone that, just as we use reduction techniques to obtain silicon today because older methods were crap, there exists the potential that the expensive, low-quality techniques of today could be the rejects of tomorrow?

There are no inventors any more because silicon is a bloody expensive field to get kicked out of by patent trolls. Mind you, it's also a difficult area to get into, what with TARP being used to fund golden parachutes, bonuses and doubtless a few ladies of the night rather than business loans and venture capital. There's probably a few tens of thousands of mad scientists on Slashdot, and I'm probably one of the maddest. Give each of us 15 million and I guarantee the semiconductor market will never be the same.

(P.S. For the NSA regulars on Slashdot, and if you don't know who you are, you can look it up, feel free to post on your journals or as an article all the nifty chip ideas you've intercepted that have never been used. After all, you're either for us or for the terrorists.)