Thursday, 21 November 2002

• Ooooh, bad idea

  Scientists Planning to Make New Form of Life

  But don't worry:

  "To ensure safety, Smith and Venter said the cell will be deliberately hobbled to render it incapable of infecting people; it also will be strictly confined, and designed to die if it does manage to escape into the environment."

  Hahaha - I may be a software developer now, but I was trained as a geneticist. The two fields are remarkably similar, actually. Both are based on fairly well-understood ("simple") rules that can generate a fantastic variety of outcomes - some predictable, some surprising.

  You've all experienced some of the little software "surprises" {cough - bugs - cough} we've had here at Xanga. They happen even though we do careful testing to "ensure" that they won't. They happen because Xanga has become so complex that it's almost impossible to predict (much less control) every outcome of launching a new feature into this system. And having worked in both fields I can assure you that even "simple" genetic systems can be far more complex than Xanga will ever be.

  These guys are actually planning to build a new bug without any bugs in it. I wish them luck (for all our sakes), but I won't be holding my breath (well, at least not until we hear about the new plague that they've unleashed on the world... then I'll try to hold my breath as long as possible ).

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