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from the giving-BSOD-a-whole-new-meaning dept.
Microsoft has vowed to "solve the problem of cancer" within a decade by using ground-breaking computer science to crack the code of diseased cells so they can be reprogrammed back to a healthy state.
[...] The researchers are even working on a computer made from DNA which could live inside cells and look for faults in bodily networks, like cancer. If it spotted cancerous chances it would reboot the system and clear out the diseased cells.
Chris Bishop, laboratory director at Microsoft Research, said: "I think it's a very natural thing for Microsoft to be looking at because we have tremendous expertise in computer science and what is going on in cancer is a computational problem.
[Continues...]
Dr. Lowe, from In the Pipeline, is not convinced that Microsoft is being realistic with their "molecular computer" that will cure cancer:
We're not even near understanding what's going on in normal cells or cancerous ones, so giving people the impression that you've already simulated everything important and you're busy "debugging" it is not only arrogant, it's close to irresponsible.
[...] If you remove the hubris from the Microsoft announcement, though, which takes sandblasters and water cannons, you get to something that could be interesting. It's another machine learning approach to biology, from what I can make out, and I'm not opposed in principle to that sort of thing at all. It has to be approached with caution, though, because any application of machine learning to the biology literature has to take into account that a good percentage of that literature is crap, and that negative results (which have great value for these systems) are grievously underrepresented in it as well.
[...] So if Microsoft wants to apply machine learning to cancer biology, I'm all for it. But they should just go and try it and report back when something interesting comes out of it, rather than beginning by making a big noise in the newspapers. You want to cure cancer? Go do it; don't sit around giving interviews about how you're going to cure cancer real soon now.
Note: Bold added by submitter.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/09/20/microsoft-will-solve-cancer-within-10-years-by-reprogramming-dis/
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/09/21/better-faster-more-comprehensive-manure-distribution
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Thursday September 22 2016, @11:47AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 22 2016, @01:15PM
Their findings will be available via leaked "telemetry data". They just can't help themselves.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday September 22 2016, @06:34PM
Microsoft Cured For Sure (TM)
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday September 22 2016, @07:06PM
I Am Legend
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday September 22 2016, @01:19PM
I however have a case of the opposite problem, cynicism.
"we have tremendous expertise in computer science"
*cough* LOL. Definitely not in executive decisions. That's why Microsoft tried DRM, trying to sell the public on the idea that DRM is security, got in bed with the RIAA, founded the BSA, and lobbied for even stronger intellectual property law and enforcement. If Bill Gates is so interested in improving medicine, he's going about it all wrong. Until the US reverses course on on the entire concept of intellectual "property", and the fee-for-service medical care system, medical advances will continue to be locked up. The direction the US has taken is thanks to the pushing of a few wealthy stakeholders, including Bill Gates. Who knows, maybe Bill admires Martin Shkreli and Heather Bresch, or at least thinks they got a bad rap in the press, feels for them, feels their pain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 22 2016, @03:13PM
I don't remember taking "Executive Decisions" in any of my comp sci classes, so are you just conceding they have expertise in CS?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday September 22 2016, @04:45PM
Not at all. I'm saying their CS expertise was applied far too narrowly. If they're so expert at CS, they should have realized that Digital Rights Management is nonsense on a technical level at the very least. There is no copy protection or DRM scheme that can stop others from reimplementing and recreating software functionality. Yet they tried DRM anyway, and are still trying it today, still wishing it worked better. DRM has completely failed to stop piracy of Windows and Office. Probably they knew it couldn't, but settled for slowing down piracy at the cost of annoying paying customers, seem to think that's worth the trouble of using DRM. Even less possible is that DRM could somehow prevent a project such as WINE.
They should have been working on business models. Create, implement, and set up business models that fit the realities of CS, rather than the other way around. Instead, they're sitting on their butts still peddling copies of their wares, crying about piracy, and trying to confuse the public with propaganda, while the likes of Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Humble Bundle, and other crowdfunding efforts leave them further and further behind. That moronic move is what makes their CS expertise suspect. Why they cling so hard to obsolete business models, and do their utmost to force reality to bend to their desire to do business the way they've always done it despite all the evidence, experience, and knowledge that DRM does not and cannot work, is the mystery. It says they are business people first, computer scientists second. Despite their immense wealth and success, this shows they are not particularly bright business people. They're small minded merchants of shoddy wares who think they know the secret of success and that they can just apply their "winner-fu" to a hard problem like cancer and beat it in a few years. If, that is, the whole thing isn't just a marketing ploy to get some attention.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Thursday September 22 2016, @06:58PM
Well, it has been Gates' model ever since 1976 [wikimedia.org] or even prior to that...
Why change a "winning" strategy?
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Friday September 23 2016, @03:56AM
But it did work. It was supposed to bring a huge load of money for a very rich but technologically illiterate media moguls and it did. If Microsoft wouldn't have done it someone else would have, and possibly made MS obsolete.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 22 2016, @06:16PM
Yeah! Stupid Microsoft, you'll cure cancer with computers!
How well is the SN Folding @ Home team doing these days?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 22 2016, @06:18PM
hah, damn, you'll never cure cancer with computers!
I ruined everything!
(Score: 1) by jelizondo on Thursday September 22 2016, @07:03PM
Did you forget to take your medication again?
;-)