Great New Cloning Software

[Petr Kuzmic]

Anders Gorm Pedersen wrote:
> 
> Taylor Robbins wrote:
> >
> > I have been using a program called Redasoft Plasmid for the past year to aid
> > me in my research. Redasoft recently released a beta version of their new
> > program, Visual Cloning 2000. I thought I would recommend it to you all
> > because I am really impressed by the great graphics and new features.
> > [...]
> > Dr. Taylor Robbins
> 
> Sounds to me like "Dr. Robbins" might be affiliated with Redasoft (or am
> I being paranoid?).

I don't think you are paranoid.   I think "Dr. Robbins" is somebody from
Redasoft trying not to be thrown out from Usenet for posting unsolicited
commercial material.   Why do I think so?  Identical message has been
posted to (at least) the following newsgroups, possibly more:

        bionet.biophysics
        bionet.info-theory
        bionet.journals.note
        bionet.metabolic-reg
        bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts
        bionet.molec-model

The message is written by someone based in Canada because Interlog.com
is a Canadian ISP out of Toronto.   The software vendor in question is
also based in Toronto:

             5795 Yonge Street, Suite 402
             Toronto, ON, Canada
             M2M 4J3

What got me interested is that if people are active scientists doing
current research, they give their institutional affiliation and contact
address, other than a generic email address of the Hotmail / Yahoo /
Interlog type.  I looked up "ROBBINS T + CLONING" in the Science
Citation Index and found one reference in 1993.  Nothing else in the
last seven years:

TAGGING AND CLONING OF A PETUNIA FLOWER COLOR GENE WITH 
THE MAIZE TRANSPOSABLE ELEMENT ACTIVATOR
PLANT CELL 5: (4) 371-378 APR 1993 
CHUCK G, ROBBINS T, NIJJAR C, RALSTON E, COURTNEYGUTTERSON N, 
DOONER HK
DNA PLANT TECHNOL CORP, 6701 SAN PABLO AVE, OAKLAND, CA 94608.

So I do think that "Dr. Robbins" really does not exist, it's probably a
clever marketing trick.

	-- Petr