That is too bad, Starlight worked much better than IT. Throw $700M at Starlight and they could have had a much better future in sequencing. Good job LT!

My sister dated Parveen for 3 years.

Starlight is not just "delayed". It is completely disassembled. No coming back. Ever.

SMS will come when there is a market for it.

There is a huge market for it today. Provided it could generate 100-200 base reads close to the accuracy of an Illumina HiSeq. What there isn't a market for is near-random base generators.

Ya right, like a perfectly ready starlight package is waiting to ship out. You folks live on another planet, all these groups totally decimated, even if Pac is going to die, doesn't have an inch to do with Life's future.

Life knows that a single event can disrupt anything they may invest in so there are no long term plans, oh and what about that new solid... what do you do with that POS? Has anyone got the reps to talk about the NEW and TRUE specs... how can a billion dollar company make such a huge blunder...

SMS will come when there is a market for it. PacBio is going to crash and burn. Delaying Starlight is one of the best decisions Life has made.

"then he is truly smoking some high quality chronic."

wow, flagged already. Well, at $30M + year, GL can smoke whatever he likes, till it ends, if it does.

"Also there is no more R&D at life."

So Starlight is truly dead? No single molecule system from Life forthcoming, because if GL thinks he is going to get it from IT, then he is truly smoking some high quality chronic.

I agree. I think mostly you will find ab employees who are stunned at what invitrogen brings. Also lots of invitrogen employees responding to their idiot MBA managers.

I think the biggest issue with life is they drive numbers all the way down to your very existence. Assays and PCR boxes aren't like underwear and gasoline. There is a funding cycle and projects aren't massively started and continued in a steady stream. But a stupid teenage glorified MBA doesn't know this so 'what will you do to fill that 50k that moved next quarter ? ' question is a joke. I mean come on I could write a sitcom from some of the managers talks. So lame and 10 years behind. AB has also become the biggest center of corporate lies in the industry. The mud slinging in the field is obscene. You now see scientists who are caught between legendary negative selling for a cheap tube of buffer. The image is gone. Used car salesrep never looked as bad. All these destructive actions become apparent once you step outside the box. Then you realize how obscenely disgusting life is with their staff and how they create these anxious, unhealthy, insecure and self centered employees in the chain of command. You could easily over a few years change this. What amazes me is just how clueless power has become. The more responsibility in a cv. The more clueless. You could have the same team of reps out there without any kind of management and they would do just as well if not better.

I saw my manager this week since a year. The guy looked weak, ragged and depressed. It was sad to see.

Also there is no more R&D at life.

This is without a doubt my favorite thread. Whether employees, customers or competitors, no other company seems to evoke so eviceral a response as LIFE. Why is that?

"Of course, even I can't argue that Lifetech wouldn't be better without GL.

So after all that, you think LIFE could be run better than how it's currently being run?"

Let's see the quest score indicated that less than 50% of employees would stay at Life given equal pay and benefits. And revenues are flat if not down depending on the report. I think that says it all.

2-3 resignations per week - if you are not looking do so now!!! The end of LIFE is so sweet....

Of course, even I can't argue that Lifetech wouldn't be better without GL.

So after all that, you think LIFE could be run better than how it's currently being run?

It's charming to think that there are LIFE employees out there that are still hoping for the day GL wakes up a different person, goes into HQ and announces that he's had it all wrong since he graduated from HBS.

No. What's charming is all the idiots on these boards smugly thinking that have all the answers and that they would do things better than anyone currently heading up these large companies.

Of course, even I can't argue that Lifetech wouldn't be better without GL.

It's charming to think that there are LIFE employees out there that are still hoping for the day GL wakes up a different person, goes into HQ and announces that he's had it all wrong since he graduated from HBS.

No. What's charming is all the idiots on these boards smugly thinking that have all the answers and that they would do things better than anyone currently heading up these large companies.

Of course, even I can't argue that Lifetech would be better without GL.

>>>"Way too accurate! But how long wil the US economy support the burn and cut model of staff exploitation. The investors get way too much return from the model and the pool of suckers, way too big, to not go away any time soon."

The investors get a big return from this model FOR A WHILE. And in this model when the returns slow substantially, the business is already terminal. That is alright with the investors becasue they have already moved their money on to something else at that point. Even if they left a viable business behind when they moved on, that would be ok but that is not the way the model works. The optimized return in this model really does squeeze past the point of a viable entity. The vultures really have found the way to pocket cash at the expense of human capital.

I work at Life and love my job but, it really seems that they are losing interest in the people on the floor. It's always about cost with them.

It's charming to think that there are LIFE employees out there that are still hoping for the day GL wakes up a different person, goes into HQ and announces that he's had it all wrong since he graduated from HBS.

I agree with the comment below, however, Life has GOT to start taking better care of its employees.

I work at Life and love my job but, it really seems that they are losing interest in the people on the floor. It's always about cost with them.

Bunch of wannabe armchair investment brokers on here.

It seems that the rumor mongering trolls of Biofind have been predicting this huge failure of Life for quite some time. Starting back in the IVGN/AB days and continuing up to the current times.

And...just like the doomesday seers, when it doesn't happen - more excuses are made for why it didn't occur.

Perhaps you should go back to concentrating on your day jobs and try and better yourselves rather than sit back and hope for the failure of a company that employs thousands of people.

Way too accurate! But how long wil the US economy support the burn and cut model of staff exploitation. The investors get way too much return from the model and the pool of suckers, way too big, to not go away any time soon.

Life's business model (acquisition, reduction) and it's marketing model (retail and price point) will doom it. The third fail, is the banking model for CEO and upper management. The US simply will not sustain this scenario. Think about technology and strategy, followed by proper execution. The world is discovering that big is bad, growth is not endless and humans are not always dispensable.

Just looked at their balance which is a bubble. 60 % of the assets is intangible. Normally you should write off in 5 year, or 1.2 B per year. Compared to a profit of 400 K they really have to increase profit to remove the air bubble. Banks are stupid to continue financing them. The risk is increasing all the time

Stop publications yet bloggers run free? That wouldn't make sense.

You don't see much bad data out there because when it is generated and nearing publication, LIFE stops publication via lawsuit threats.

Time to read a manual.

Oh please educate this poor soul. I find the default de novo assembly parameters are reasonable starting point for judging data quality. So:

LIFE IT E. coli data (8 runs): N75 = 1703 bp minimum contig size; 85.7% reads are non-perfect matches to assembly.

One of many GAIIx datasets I've got (similar sized genome, barcoded, 5% of a GAIIx run): N75 = 86,212 bp minimum contig size; 8.1% reads are non-perfect matches to assembly.

Where is the massage data button on the work bench?

Do tell us the details of your analysis - oh go on - please do....

Same dataset, CLC, my analysis is well over your claims. Time to read a manual.

It's actually delivering exactly what they said it would, and way way more in the hands of decent users.

So where is this data and who are these decent users? Kudos to LIFE for making their E. coli data public without registration restrictions etc., but those 8 runs on the IT to generate just over a million reads must be close to state of the art right now. LIFE must be one of the decent users. That dataset just isn't very much better than the BGI 7 run set, so BGI must also be on the list of decent users. Likewise with Edge Bio, since LIFE has certified them as a service provider.

I've assembled datasets (CLC Workbench, since there is little or no guidance out there on k-mer size for Velvet) from all these sources and have not be overly impressed. With a contig length cutoff of 200, the latest datasets generate thousands of contigs for E. coli, where nearly half are less than 1000 bases in length. The consensus sequences have gaps every 5-10 bases, since more than half the reads have insertions or deletions relative to the consensus.

If this was the first next-gen datasets the world had ever seen, they would be impressive. But state of the art today with E. coli sized genomes is being able to set your contig cutoff at 5000 bases, and easily generate contigs 20x the size the IT is generating.

"The good news is the job market is picking up and all the good performers can sing a synonmyous "F YOU" to LIFE and their 3% raises."

This year's raises were more in the 1-2% range. That's less than the inflation rate.

"It chaps their a$$ that the company they hate so much is doing well and none of their doomsday predictions have come true."

Anybody who thinks that LIFE is doing well clearly does not see the daily sales report. GL barely pulled Q1's 1% growth out of his a$$. I'd have more confidence that LIFE genetically engineered the Nazi E Coli strain purposely to get some growth for Q2 - worked so well with H1N1,let's try again. Otherwise the numbers are looking PATH-E-TIC. Losing market share in core markets faster than an amputee can bleed out!

The good news is the job market is picking up and all the good performers can sing a synonmyous "F YOU" to LIFE and their 3% raises. The mass exodus has begun!!!! We are hiring Ce-Lo to give GL a private performance on the way out!

It's actually delivering exactly what they said it would, and way way more in the hands of decent users.

Correct. There is now plenty of data out there, and it is disappointing data. Nothing to do with it being Life or Roche or Illumina. Life have spun a lot of expectation, and delivered small numbers of dreadfully poor quality short reads. I personally have nothing against Life, just the ridiculous hype they have indulged in regarding Ion Torrent, in an attempt to try and capture some market share.

the low accuracy claims are a little old. there is plenty of data out there now.

Correct - but the pathetic idiots on this rumor board desperately want Life to fail.

It chaps their a$$ that the company they hate so much is doing well and none of their doomsday predictions have come true.

Look around on this site - it seems that no company is up to the high standards of the Biofind brethren...especially Lifetech. Maybe they should all band together and form some kind of Utopian super company! But...that would probbly take too much time away from the bile and rumor mongering that seems to fill the void of their desperate lives.

Carry on.

the low accuracy claims are a little old. there is plenty of data out there now.

The market needed to be completed:

Large number of short, accurate reads = Illumina

Moderate number of moderate length, accurate reads = 454

Small number of low accuracy, very long reads = Pac Bio

Small number of low accuracy, very short reads = Ion Torrent

5- R&D support towards making and then keeping IT a viable player.

1- cannibalizing CE market
2- Selling very low price
3- High support requirements
4- At this rate it would take you 7 years to pay your investment back

There is nothing wrong with IT but Life is making it look bad by all possible means.

growth, yes....managing the growth is another story.

i read this blog the other day
the writer said to invest in LT and IT because it has more growth

in their words ILMN has reached maturity with its technology

I think the writer makes a good point.

shipped a few? you mean a few hundred...

Shipping them amongst yourselves doesn't count...

Great, a few hundred could produce as much data as a single HiSeq. Kudos to LT.

shipped a few? you mean a few hundred...

It's now like Illumina didn't have problems with their GAIIX and HiSeq. Our first GAIIX didn't work for 6 months and then they replaced it with a new instrument.

They shipped a few and cannot support them. Kit shortages, lack of trained FAS and FSE staff. They oversold their abilities and with users having so much trouble, they need to hide in the background and whimper until they improve it enough to be a viable instrument or move the team back to Starlight/SOLiD or give up the sequencing market and focus on something else in the Life Tech Portfolio.

Well I always liked the PC guy better than the Mac guy, who seemed a snooty little sheet.

Interesting that those YouTube films with the MiSeq vs PGM guy have stopped. Could it possibly be that now actual ion data is out there in the wild, people can see just how poor it is, and even the hubris displayed by Mr Rothberg and Life cannot justify any further You Tube fun? Or maybe they got feedback that people quite liked the Miseq guy?

By major workforce reduction, I here a wave is coming in the next few days.

mkt cap of Life decrease with an almost $700M purchase of another company with little sales? How will it work if IT doesn't make milestones?

ILMN is a well run company so the mkt cap relfect that. No surprise here.

Market cap of ILMN just about to surpass that of LIFE according to Google Finance. Had not expected this tipping point to be reached until Q4 2011.