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Sure, go in to bioinformatics research. You might even end up doing something that benefits humanity more than trying to make the next Facebook! Data is piling

by chaud 14y ago

Sure, go in to bioinformatics research. You might even end up doing something that benefits humanity more than trying to make the next Facebook! Data is piling up faster than we know what to do with it. There are a lot of problems to be solved that might benefit from computer science. De novo Protein structure and function prediction, better alignment from noisy data, drug target discovery, homology modeling in the twilight zone, better ways to share the data that we do have, better databases to store the data from high-throughput experiments, better ways to compare pathways and biochemical networks, and all of the other things that I could go on to list. There is no shortage of problems to be solved, only shortages of good people and funding.

lmm 14y ago
>You might even end up doing something that benefits humanity more than trying to make the next Facebook! Data is piling up faster than we know what to do with it. It's worth mentioning that some of the best tools for letting us do something with it come from the current facebook. I'm constantly tempted to move into academic research rather than helping people get their porn faster, but it seems like a very superficial judgement to say that would be better for humanity in the long run.
- chaud 14y ago
  Fair enough, but who is to say those tools wouldn't have been developed if those people were doing bioinformatics research instead. It is frustrating seeing all of the failed startups that thought their poorly thought out plan and execution would create a product that is actually useful. We would be much better off if someone would take the time to explain to people why their idea sucks and save them the time and money that would be wasted on executing it.
  - otoburb 14y ago
    If more people move into bioinformatics, I hope that the funding continues to keep up. The worst would be an abundance of willing bioinformaticians coupled with a dearth of funding (startup/grants/etc).

by chaud 14y ago

lmm 14y ago

>You might even end up doing something that benefits humanity more than trying to make the next Facebook! Data is piling up faster than we know what to do with it. It's worth mentioning that some of the best tools for letting us do something with it come from the current facebook. I'm constantly tempted to move into academic research rather than helping people get their porn faster, but it seems like a very superficial judgement to say that would be better for humanity in the long run.

chaud 14y ago
Fair enough, but who is to say those tools wouldn't have been developed if those people were doing bioinformatics research instead. It is frustrating seeing all of the failed startups that thought their poorly thought out plan and execution would create a product that is actually useful. We would be much better off if someone would take the time to explain to people why their idea sucks and save them the time and money that would be wasted on executing it.
- otoburb 14y ago
  If more people move into bioinformatics, I hope that the funding continues to keep up. The worst would be an abundance of willing bioinformaticians coupled with a dearth of funding (startup/grants/etc).