BioArts International CEO Lou Hawthorne snuggles with Mira, Chingu, and Sarang, the three clones of his deceased dog Missy.
(Credit: BioArts International)When Lou Hawthorne met Mira, the clone of his dog Missy, he couldn't have been happier. The puppy was just like Missy--and in some ways better because she mirrored Missy in her younger, more playful days.
So BioArts International, Hawthorne's biotech start-up that focuses on animal and human genomics, decided to spread the love.
Starting July 5, the highest bidders in five separate online auctions will win the opportunity to clone their own dogs.
Hawthorne, the company's CEO, said the event is the first step in making his Mill Valley, Calif.-based company's technology available to consumers.
That is, if buyers can afford the hefty price.
Each auction will run for 12 hours a day, starting at 11 a.m. PDT. The auctions will last through July 9 on live bidding Web site ProxiBid.com. The first auction has a starting bid of $100,000, and that bid will increase by $20,000 each day. Although the prices are high, Hawthorne said they would have to be considerably higher for the company to break even. Despite that fact, the company will also offer one lucky pet owner a free dog cloning.
The winners will submit DNA samples, and the company says it can guarantee a healthy cloned puppy within 3 to 12 months.
Animal cloning has come under fire since its inception. Whether based on ethical concerns or a fear of consuming products from cloned farm animals, some people adamantly oppose the practice of genetically altering animals.
But Hawthorne brushes off the naysayers, saying he's never seen a person get upset when they learned his puppies were clones. Responding to the argument that cloning pets is frivolous because so many animals wait to be adopted, he said five cloned dogs won't take a home away from the thousands upon thousdands of dogs in shelters.
"If anything this is the celebration of the mutt," he said. "This is a way to get the same mix you have in your spayed or neutered pet that you got at a shelter."
For Hawthorne, cloning Missy cost about $20 million and took 10 years of hard work. Missy died at age 15, while the cloning process was still under way.
His quest to clone his beloved family pet ended in 2007, when Hawthorne met Dr. Woo Suk Hwang.
Two years earlier, Hwang and his team of research scientists at Seoul National University claimed they had succeeded in cloning a dog. There were doubts about the authenticity, after it was reported that Hwang fabricated information in a report on stem cells.
However, it was later confirmed that "Snuppy" was a bona fide clone. Hawthorne asked if the team could help him clone Missy, who died in 2002, several years after he set out to clone her. Now, Hawthorne has three mini Missys running around: Mira, the oldest, and the younger pups, Chingu and Sarang.
That successful cloning has resulted in the partnering of BioArts and the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation outside of Seoul, South Korea, to start the "Best Friends Again" project.
Hawthorne said that the company holds the only license in the world that allows it to clone dogs and have access to the "Dolly patents." Dolly the sheep was the first mammal cloned from an adult and the Sooam facility uses that cloning process, with specific tweaks, for the canine species.
"We are the only company that can do this legally," Hawthorne said. "Once we successfully cloned Missy, we realized with our partners at the lab we had a...safe project. We have finite capacity and potentially unlimited demand."
Electronic Arts announced Tuesday it was extending its tender offer for rival game developer Take-Two Interactive Software to July 18, marking its third extension since launching its hostile bid in March.
EA, which is currently offering Take-Two investors $25.74 a share, said nearly 6.14 million shares have been tendered in, representing approximately 8 percent of Take-Two's shares.
In early morning trading, Take-Two's stock hovered at $26.35 per share.
EA's previous deadline for its tender offer was June 16, which came roughly a week after Take-Two reported better than expected quarterly earnings, thanks to its record-breaking launch of Grand Theft Auto IV.
"We congratulate Rockstar on the successful launch of GTA IV but believe our offer reflects a full and fair price based on the long-term value of Take-Two's entire operation," Owen Mahoney, EA senior vice president of corporate development, said in a statement.
Mahoney said its offer price is a "substantial premium" to where Take-Two's stock traded at prior to its offer. Prior to going hostile with a tender offer directly to investors, EA had given Take-Two a bear hug by publicly announcing its unsolicited offer in February. Take-Two had closed at $17.36 a share, prior to EA's public announcement of its unsolicited bid.
EA, should it keep its tender offer alive, may have to add another extension beyond its July 18 deadline. That's because it's working on supplying the FTC with its requested information, at which point the FTC will then have 45 days to review it. If the FTC takes all 45 days, that would surpass EA's new extension deadline which is now set to expire in 32 days.
Video game maker Take-Two Interactive Software announced better-than-expected earnings on Thursday thanks to recording-setting sales of Grand Theft Auto IV.
For the second quarter ended April 30, net profit was $98.2 million, or $1.29 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $51.3 million, or 71 cents per share, in the second quarter of fiscal 2007. Sales were up more than 160 percent to $539.8 million for the period, blowing away analyst estimates of $499.1 million.
The company also raised its forecast for the remainder of the fiscal year.
Take-Two said it expects to earn 45 cents to 55 cents per share, excluding special items, on revenue of between $325 million and $375 million in its current, third fiscal quarter.
In May, Take-Two announced that the new game had raked in all-time records of $310 million on its launch day of April 29 and $500 million during its first week. The single-day figure shattered the previous record, set last September by Halo 3, of $170 million.
The company, which has rejected a $2 billion buyout offer from rival game maker Electronic Arts, is also having " formal discussions" with other parties about strategic alternatives, Chief Executive Ben Feder told Reuters.
"The board remains committed to exploring strategic alternatives and we're actively engaged in that process now," Feder said. "We have had and are having formal discussions with a number of interested parties."
EA, which offered $25.74 a share for Take-Two in April, is undaunted in its takeover bid. The company recently announced another extension of its merger offer.
Shares of Take-Two were up 34 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $27.65 in after-hours trading.
It's a simple fact that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (the "USPTO") is inundated with patent applications. Given the sheer volume of applications, patent examiners can only spend a limited amount of time examining those applications. Further, given the fact that an applicant for a patent does not have to conduct a "prior art" search before filing, it is virtually impossible for an examiner to turn up all of the prior art that is relevant to a patent application.
Unbeknownst to many patent practitioners, however, the USPTO is getting ready to wrap up a yearlong pilot project directed at giving the examiners a little help in turning up prior art.
Last year the USPTO, in conjunction with the New York Law School, launched a program titled "Peer to Patent." This pilot project enables the public to comment on and submit prior art that may be relevant to pending patent applications. The project is somewhat limited in scope as only patent applications that relate to computer architecture, software, and information security are eligible for this process and applicants must agree to submit their patent applications to this process. However, preliminary numbers reported by the organization indicate that the project may be an effective means of reviewing patent applications.
According to the "Peer to Patent" Web site, over 2,000 people have signed up to participate as reviewers of patent applications and have submitted 192 pieces of prior art on 42 patent applications.
For more information about the process, see the USPTO's description of the program here.
(Credit:
Erik Nordenankar )
A Swedish art student who claimed to have created the "biggest drawing in the world" using a GPS device and an international package delivery service has admitted that the drawing is a hoax.
Erik Nordenankar had claimed that he placed a GPS device in a briefcase on March 17 and then sent the case on a 55-day trip around the world with DHL. He originally stated on his Web site that he had given DHL specific travel instructions on the route that the briefcase should take to yield the drawing. After the package allegedly traveled over 6 continents and 62 countries, it was returned to him in Stockholm, Sweden, where he downloaded the GPS coordinates that were recorded by the device to his computer to generate the image.
The technique is described this way: "My pen was a briefcase containing the GPS device, being sent around the world. The paths the briefcase took around the globe became the strokes of the drawing."
His Web site included two YouTube videos purporting to show the briefcase during its journey and delivery receipts for the package during its circumnavigation of the globe.
However, many visitors to the site pointed out that the route described in the drawing was unlikely to be followed by DHL pilots.
"Were the DHL pilots on acid?" asked one visitor.
Another visitor pointed out technical flaws in the project description.
"A GPS signal cannot penetrate dense materials," wrote a reader using the name Samppa79. "That briefcase looks dense enough to block the signal and the roof of a car or thick walls of an airplane blocks the rest."
Nordenankar has since posted this message to the bottom of the site--presumably because he doesn't want to spoil the surprise--admitting his hoax. "This is fictional work. DHL did not transport the GPS at any time."
A DHL spokesman told the Telegraph that the delivery company had allowed Nordenankar access to a warehouse in Stockholm for a school art project and that it was interested in discussing the hoax with him.
A Swedish art student has posted online what he calls the "biggest drawing in the world," though the picture would seem to be more accurately described as a drawing on a rather modest scale that came into being through a round-the-world technique.
Perhaps that's why a sort of subtitle on Erik Nordenankar's Web site, just above the image, is this: "GPS Generated Self Portrait."
The technique is described this way: "My pen was a briefcase containing the GPS device, being sent around the world. The paths the briefcase took around the globe became the strokes of the drawing."
On the "biggest drawing" Web site, details are sparse, but Nordenankar does also thank package delivery service DHL for helping to make the portrait possible.
He writes that the briefcase began a 55-day circumnavigation on March 17, ending up earlier this month back where it started in Stockholm, Sweden. He then downloaded the GPS information--the trip covered 62 countries on six continents--to his computer and made the self-portrait in a single stroke.
I've sent e-mails to both Nordenankar and DHL for more information and will update this post as I learn more.
While the briefcase's travels may (or may not) have followed the adage that the shortest route between any two points is a straight line, the drawing itself involved more than a few loop-de-loops and curlicues.
You can see Nordenankar's drawing technique in action in the video here, one of two videos on the "biggest drawing" site, along with the full self-portrait.
Is it a hoax? The little bit of evidence I've found so far in poking around the Web suggests that it is not. For instance, there's a similarly hirsute Erik Nordenankar listed as a student at Beckmans College of Design in Stockholm, Sweden--with an exam project described as none other than the "biggest drawing in the world."
Electronic Arts announced Monday that it is extending its tender offer for Take-Two Interactive Software to mid-June, marking its third extension in its hostile buyout attempt of its rival game maker.
Shortly after EA failed to make an attractive-enough offer, Take-Two's Grand Theft Auto IV shattered all-time launch sales records, lending support to Chairman Zelnick's argument that the bid undervalued the company.
(Credit: Rockstar Games)EA, which, to date, has received commitments from Take-Two investors to tender roughly 6.2 million shares, or 8 percent of the company, has extended its deadline to June 16. Previously, the deadline was set for May 16.
Taking a jab at its rival, Take-Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick issued a statement: "This is the same highly conditional proposal that EA offered Take-Two stockholders on March 13, 2008, which our board of directors thoroughly reviewed, and unanimously determined to be inadequate and contrary to the best interests of Take-Two's stockholders."
He further noted that Take-Two, in an effort to maximize shareholder value, has begun exploring strategic alternatives with interested parties, now that its record-breaking launch of Grand Theft Auto IV has wrapped up.
EA, which launched its hostile bid valued at $2 billion for Take-Two in late February, said despite the extension, its current offer remains the same.
"EA's offer price remains unchanged at $25.74 per share, and our offer is still subject to conditions that include regulatory approval. As stated earlier, we retain the right to terminate the offer, if the conditions are not satisfied," Owen Mahoney, senior vice president of EA corporate development, said in a statement.
Take-Two shares traded down 1.14 percent in Monday morning trading to $26.79 a share.
Electronic Arts' hostile bid for Grand Theft Auto producer Take-Two Interactive appears to have ended quietly this week.
Shortly after EA failed to make an attractive-enough offer, Take-Two's Grand Theft Auto IV shattered all-time launch sales records, lending support to Chairman Zelnick's argument that the bid undervalued the company.
(Credit: Rockstar Games)The game maker, whose reduced acquisition bid of $25.74 a share was rejected as inadequate last month, had set Friday as the extended deadline for it to buy up Take-Two's shares. The day came and went without action regarding the takeover from either company.
The updated offer, rejected by Take-Two on April 18, continued to be inadequate and undesirable, according to Chairman Strauss Zelnick at the time. "It undervalued the company at $26 per share, and it certainly undervalues Take-Two at $25.74."
Since then, the record-breaking launch of Grand Theft Auto IV has likely proven Zelnick correct, with first-week sales of $500 million. The game sold 3.6 million copies its first day on the market, shattering the previous all-time launch sales record held by Microsoft's Halo 3.
Take-Two shares were priced slightly above $27 in after-hours trading Saturday morning.
"There is nothing going on right now," Take-Two spokeswoman Meg Maise told AFP on Friday afternoon. "It is in (EA's) court."
It looks like EA has made a turn-around in response to fan outrage at its plans for a complicated DRM scheme in two high-profile PC games due out later this year.
Word came out yesterday that Spore (from Sims-meister Will Wright) and the PC version of Xbox 360 hit Mass Effect would implement a new version of the Securom DRM middleware, which not only requires you to keep a game's DVD in the drive to play it, but would need to perform an authenticity check every 10 days, which would have required your computer to be online during that time.
Electronic Arts has high expectations for its forthcoming, PC-only Spore from Sims creator Will Wright. Irritating DRM won't help.
(Credit: CNET)Amid much fan outrage and negative publicity, it appears EA and each game's respective developer has relented and will instead implement a more benign DRM strategy. Gamer's Hell reported that Mass Effect will now require a one-time online authentication, and it will reauthenticate each time you connect to the game's download servers, but that it will no longer require constant reauthentication. Kotaku reported the same decision has been made for Spore.
On the Mass Effect user forum, the community manager from developer BioWare cited its its "many friends in the armed services and internationally who expressed concerns that they would not be able reauthenticate as often as required," as one of the reasons for the change. Considering that the forum topic in which Bioware announced its original plan generated 115 pages of comments, it's probably fair to say that fan opinion had something to do with it as well.
Copy protection remains a huge issue for PC game developers and publishers. Just a few weeks ago, Cevat Yerli, the president of Crysis developer CryTek told Hungary's PC Play that his company was abandoning PC exclusives because of rampant piracy. We certainly understand that issue, but clunky DRM is not the answer if publishers want to encourage PC gamers to buy their products.
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When designing characters for Spore, players will have a wide selection of body parts to choose from.
(Credit: Electronic Arts/Maxis)
Attention gamers: If you're looking forward to the taking a hands-on role with the forthcoming Spore, you've got work to do starting June 17.
That's when Electronic Arts and Maxis plan to release the Spore Creature Creator, in both a free, downloadable demo version and a $9.99 retail version (or 9.99 euros, for buyers in much of Europe). The demo version will be available from Spore.com and also will be included with The SimCity, due to be released June 23.
The retail edition provides access to all the creature-making parts for Spore, while the demo version is limited to 25 percent of those parts. Gamers will be able to share their creations with friends, via routes including uploads to YouTube.
In Spore, a long-awaited game from Sims creator Wil Wright, gamers will get a taste of evolution, taking their characters from primordial existence to civilization. (Wright has set a high standard for success--The Sims recently logged its 100 millionth sale.) Besides the individual characters, Spore-ophiles will be able to establish tribes and conjure up buildings and vehicles, including UFOs.
The hands-on work of shaping and painting fantastical critters with Creature Creator won't be just a preliminary exercise, to be abandoned when Spore arrives in September. Gamers will be able to import their creations into the retail version of the game.
Spore for the PC and the Mac is set to debut September 5 in Europe and then two days later in North America, and a version for the Nintendo DS is also due at that time. A version for the Nintendo Wii will come sometime later--it's still in the "early prototyping phase," according to the Spore FAQ.
For more preview images of Spore, see this CNET News.com gallery: Images: Conjuring creatures in EA's 'Spore.'"
