These quotes go back a long way. We have far more information at our fingertips now than any of these veteran scientists had in their lifetimes.
The sequencing of the human genome has reveal some fascinating details of the course of evolution. Apparently about 90% of the human genome does not appear to do anything, and only about 1.5% encodes for proteins (about 20,000 genes are encoded from this tiny percentage). The remaining DNA is thought to be the result of accumulated replication errors and possibly the remnants of harmless viruses. The puffer fish has 1/8 the amount of 'junk' DNA as humans but most of the same protein-encoding and regulatory genes.
You can fit the entire human genome onto a CD - but only 75 Megs of this appears to be useful. That makes it a lot smaller then MS Windows or Linux
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genome
Charles
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