Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
General: Pwning teh Sciencez
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Coyote Sharptongue is back again and ready to tickle your funny bone and tweak your nose at the same time. In this week's article, Coyote talks about how scientists are utilizing the power of the gamer to solve the mysteries of the universe. Check out Coyote's latest column and then weigh in with your thoughts in the comments.
Gamers have solved a molecular puzzle that has stumped scientists for years, and might actually hold the key to finding the cure for HIV. I have to admit, I’m not as proud of the accomplishment as I am terrified at the implications it presents.
At first it sounds pretty amazing. Using a spatial relationship “game” developed for designing proteins, gamers were given an unsolved protein chain and told to twist, turn and warp it until it had the most stable structure with the lowest energy consumption.
Read more Coyote's Howlings: Pwning teh Sciencez.
)
Comments
not funny. at all.
I think he forgets that the egg head scientific world is plagued by arseholes also usualy egotistical pricks that think they're better than everyone else so it's kind of fitting they went to the gaming community with this!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
I for one, would welcome our community conceived hatchlings.
p.s. I choose you, second paragraph!
My brand new bloggity blog.
I am in your chromosome folding your molecules
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
Wait....there's a non-gaming community?
Wth do they do?
I know first-hand of scientists who intentionally spend their years studying "bad science" because that is where the money is... the money from grants and federal research programs etc.
... and I know first hand of bright, talented, passionate early-career scientists that have to follow in those footsteps to have any hope of landing a job to pay their bills.
Reality is a sad, cold, harsh, bitch of a whore.
I chock this up in the "win" column for science, for gamers, and for life itself. Why?
There are very few professional gamers. Most of us gamers are actually other stuff too. We have other careers, are in school, etc.
Whose to say a gamer cannot also be a scientist?
Anyways... my faith in the general asshole filled population of MMO games was somewhat lightened last night by finding a great PUG with talkative, compentant, friendly, and non-zerg/rush gamers... 'twas a huge sigh of relief and breathe of fresh air.
What's more concerning is someone doing the same thing, but to create the ultimate biological weapon...
Good job guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I always knew gaming was awsome for human kind.
Coyote, stick to whatever it is you do know, because this article points out that it sure isn't science!
Not remotely funny either.
As a fellow asshole, I'll be waiting for you behind the barn. I can hear them coming already.
TwitchTV Partnered Streamer
MMORPG.com Spotlight Blog Writer
Co-Leader of Inquisition
Youtube Channel
I'm much more worried about someone taking this to the 'next level' with the design tools. Then we get a virus that is contagious through air, touch, blood and spit, sits idle for 6 to 8 weeks while it spreads throughout your body so it infects everyone you see and then after the 6 or 8 weeks it kills you by shutting down your autonomic nervous system.
I'm not worried about gamers doing this, I'm more worried about the random nuts that would want to actually do stuff like this.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Except for the fact that you sent linked me to Fox news (which always makes me want to wipe my hardrive the same way I wipe my hands on my pants leg after touching something icky), thanks for posting this!
It shows just how far computers are from the speed and power of the human mind. Get those distributed problem solving geeks asking gamers who solved this the right questions, and maybe next time computers can do what the humans did. Now I'll be on the lookout for programs like this, I was pretty okay at Tetris. The only thing that would really creep me out would be working on stuff like this that has military applications. Those guys are scary enough without any help from gamers.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
a) The holes in the Tetris people do make it look dirty
b) I found the article shorter than normal but humerous
c) Imagine this, a high dollar CEO of a gaming company (insert blizzard,EA etc CEO) decides he wants eternal everlasting life and needs to figure out the genetic mutative formula to do so.
Said CEO has his developers make a game to figure out this formula, then gamers bring this code to life and inadvertantly make the most evil eternal being that brings about the end of life as we know it on this planet.
d) Yep.. we gamers are awsome
Work hard Play Harder
Amen, brother. Amen.
No godless person can comprehend those minute distinctions
in doctrine that provide true believers excuse for mayhem.
-Glen Cook
Now the NGE makes sense and why there was no roll back perhaps by December the 15th Smed and his forces of evil will have the information they need and by next year say December the 21st they'll be ready to switch on thier machine of eternal life?
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
The T Virus shall become a reality MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Hi, my name is DarkPony, from NBC Terrorline. Why don't you have a seat over here?
My brand new bloggity blog.
***Writer's Note***
The link to Fauxnews? Not mine. Added in editing, I'm sure.
If it WERE mine, I'd have already badly beaten MYSELF behind the barn.
I apologize to anyone who clicked it, and encourge you burn something in anger.
**end note***
-Coyote
Muahaha! I'd go set the house on fire right now, but I'm under my bed, cowering in fear of DarkPony and Kendane.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Who would want to click a link on interet anyway? jez
You should delete it.
Oh lighten up, people. Fox News simply reported a story and were one of the first to do so. For such a "terrible, awful" homophobic right wing bastion of ignorance, they bested other outlets with the news that a puzzling AIDS problem had been scientifically solved by gamers. That is what the story is about, not the link to a frickin' news outlet. Keep on topic, please.
/mother mode
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This is what scares the living hell out of me....
My take away from the breakthrough is that skills like spatial recognition and puzzle solving are actually going to be necessary in the future. And that innovation happens in the places you least expect them not in the tried and true.
Oh and that gamers rock of course.
I do see the worry in uncrontrolled gamer access to the sciences. There again if a gamer actually understood what they had discovered wouldn't that make them a scientist? Can scientists be gamers? I don't actually know any but that then brings up the question what kind of games they like? Eek are they already being influenced by quest and raid mechanics? Is WoW our future?...:)
"Doesn’t that blend the edges of reality just a little too much? Doesn’t it frighten anyone else that just by playing a videogame, we did what scientists couldn’t and advanced the possible cure of HIV by years? I’m held in the grips of terror by the seeming GOOD news that “pU$$yPWNR69” pretty much ganked the people who dedicate their lives to medical research."
What the scientists did was creating a platform that allowed to delegate the process of finding a certain solution within the solution space for a certain problem to people that have no clue about what they do but in the end are able to produce the correct result.
Isn't that scary as well?
Basically they built a haystack simulator and encouraged ppl to find the needle in it without being paid. You know, because it's quite expensive to force scientists to manually (brute force) look for needles in a haystack.
Now THIS is science!!! And ingenius. Employing the masses for brute-force-searches at no costs. And probably for the better of humanity (you see, it could have been a molecule for a penis enlargement potion or a new stock market derivative certificate nonsense, now aren't we happy now?)
The gamers are not smarter than the scientists, they are just eager enough to look for needles in a haystack.
Oh and for folks who haven't been to the actual gaming site: http://fold.it/
Just in case someone wants to help out.