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Pimppeter2

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Dec 31, 2008
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Doug said:
Wait til PETA here this - nevermind that virii are barely more than a biochemical micro-land mine in terms of structure, they'll still whine that its 'enslavement' or some BS.
But viruses are living things too

im gonna call Pamela! and were gonna march on your ass!!
 

Doug

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Apr 23, 2008
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pimppeter2 said:
Doug said:
Wait til PETA here this - nevermind that virii are barely more than a biochemical micro-land mine in terms of structure, they'll still whine that its 'enslavement' or some BS.
But viruses are living things too

im gonna call Pamela! and were gonna march on your ass!!
Well, I'm not sure. There was scientific uncertainly if they where lifeforms or not. After all, virii don't eat, don't move themselves around, and can't reproduce by themselves. I'd think of them more like a biochemical device than a lifeform really.
 

Daniel Cygnus

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Jan 19, 2009
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This is seriously the most badass thing science has done in a while. Way to go, science-type guys!
 

Disembodied_Dave

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Feb 5, 2009
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I remember hearing about this a couple years ago. It'll be pretty cool when they get it working.

nilcypher said:
The urge to say "It's alive, it's alive!" is almost overpowering...
Viruses aren't considered "life" though. (look it up... ehhh I'll just copy/paste)

EDIT:
Genetics Encyclopedia said:
Although viruses share several features with living organisms, such as the presence of genetic material (DNA or RNA), they are not considered to be alive. Unlike cells, which contain all the structures needed for growth and reproduction, viruses are composed of only an outer coat (capsid), the genome, and, in some cases, a few enzymes. Together these make up the virion, or virus particle
 

Avatar Roku

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RougeWaveform said:
I remember hearing about this a couple years ago. It'll be pretty cool when they get it working.

nilcypher said:
The urge to say "It's alive, it's alive!" is almost overpowering...
Viruses aren't considered "life" though. (look it up)
Yep, that's true. I know that they're missing one or two of the basic components of live, but I can't remember what. Ability to reproduce self, maybe?
 

Flying-Emu

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orannis62 said:
RougeWaveform said:
I remember hearing about this a couple years ago. It'll be pretty cool when they get it working.

nilcypher said:
The urge to say "It's alive, it's alive!" is almost overpowering...
Viruses aren't considered "life" though. (look it up)
Yep, that's true. I know that they're missing one or two of the basic components of live, but I can't remember what. Ability to reproduce self, maybe?
Reproduction without outside assistance (It's impossible for them to reproduce without infecting another cell) and consuming and expelling energy. For some reason, viruses (or virii) are able to expend energy to reproduce without taking it in and processing/digesting it.
 

zoozilla

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Dec 3, 2007
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Why don't we ever know about these things until they're just ready to destroy the world?

In all seriousness, though, I'd love to see the electric car become commonplace.
 

Devilpapaya

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Apr 3, 2009
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zoozilla said:
Why don't we ever know about these things until they're just ready to destroy the world?

In all seriousness, though, I'd love to see the electric car become commonplace.
I think base-load power sources should be focused on more than cars. Even if all cars were magically switched to electric tomorrow, A large portion of our power-grid runs on fossil-fuels, coal, Natural-gas etc. So instead of your car burning the fuel for power, it would be burnt many miles away and then used to charge said car.

Sorry that was my electric car soap box.

As far as the batteries go the reduction of those toxic chemicals from our landfills would be awesome, but it better be cost effective, batteries are expensive enough as it is.
 

rohit9891

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Jan 21, 2009
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The first thing that came to my mind after reading this was resident evil...
nyways nice work by the MIT,even though I think it'll take quite some time to surface on our laptops and stuff
 

Erana

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Feb 28, 2008
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Comeon, like Resident Evil will ever happen.

This is obviously going to make our mitochondria take over the world,
Duh.
 

Skeleon

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Nov 2, 2007
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Heh, it's actually "virus" and "virus" for both singular and plural. It's one of the words of the u-declination in Latin, IIRC.

I like this idea. A real, live organic battery. It'd probably be really cheap to create once all the testing is done (you just need vats full of bacteria to grow the phages), so after an initially overpriced product, I'm sure we'll get a very inexpensive alternative for today's batteries.
 

Dommyboy

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Jul 20, 2008
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sirdanrhodes said:
YAY, UNDERGROUND RESEARCH FACILITY!!!
"Hey, Marked One. You got the documents from X-16?"


I just couldn't resist.

Is anymore information about this virus power around at all? It's very interesting.
 

Shycte

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Mar 10, 2009
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All we need now is some shitty dialog and we got some Resident evil....
 

SenseOfTumour

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Jul 11, 2008
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Firstly, they'll need to drop all mention of bacteria or viruses, if they're gonna sell batteries to idiots. you know for a fact FOX and the UK press are going to run with 'New batteries powered by AIDS, in YOUR children's toys!' I really wish I was exaggerating for comic effect, but I've actually seen Fox, and it makes the Onion look like responsible journalism.

Secondly, yay, if this works, and works in a big enough way to make electric cars a viable option to normal people, maybe we can finally quit pretending wars are about terrorism etc, as we won't be reliant on oil so much.

Although I do wonder how happy the middle east will be if we stop 'interfering' to the extent that we stop throwing billions of dollars at them for oil.