I searched for "Mekong Group" (kind of a disturbing name to Americans in light of Vietnam fighting there: "The Mekong group comprises Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and China's Yunnan province, all of which border the Mekong River.") No luck.
Nice to know your Google grepping skills are so well developed. The company, being Mexican, has a Spanish name. They are "Grupo Mekong, not "Mekong Group." Also, being a Mexican company, they are not terribly troubled by things that are "kind of a disturbing name to Americans in light of Vietnam fighting...".
Let's see... from their "Productos" page, it appears that they sell to Gauss CD, SONY, TDK, Verbatim... sounds like burnable CD-Rs that are usable for both audio mastering and data to me... I don't know if Mexican law provides for lawsuits on the basis of "malicious prosecution" or "abuse of legal process" like Anglo-American law does, but it would certainly be interesting to see what evidence APDIF would present to justify this raid.
Well, according to ussearch.com there's a Valentine M. Smith living in Fairfield, ME. The free search doesn't give gender or place of birth, though.;-)
Hackish speech generally features extremely precise diction, careful word choice, a relatively large working vocabulary, and relatively little use of contractions or street slang. Dry humor, irony, puns, and a mildly flippant attitude are highly valued -- but an underlying seriousness and intelligence are essential. One should use just enough jargon to communicate precisely and identify oneself as a member of the culture; overuse of jargon or a breathless, excessively gung-ho attitude is considered tacky and the mark of a loser.
This is not IRC and you are not under the time constraints imposed by a scrolling screen in a channel with 40 other users. Throwing in 'l33tspeak here is a good way not to be taken seriously. Especially in a discussion of this nature.
Moderators: mod me down if you wish, it's only karma.
I agree... given the differences in the state of medical technology now and in the 1940's I see little difference between human cloning research now and Mengele injecting dye into the eyes of Jewish children trying to turn their eyes blue.
Put it this way, if there was some higher conscience out there, something so advanced that humans and other animals would appear equally primitive, what do humans have that would make them a less likely target for experimentation?
So... you would throw up a straw man (look it up before you try to say this is not a straw man argument) to justify your argument? The parent poster's argument is that we should not do this to ourselves because if we treat humans as being as "disposable" as "lower animals" then the excesses of the Nazis, Stalin and Pol Pot become ethically acceptable. I find this to be a rather persuasive argument and I find your attempt to evade it by raising the straw man of a "higher consciousness" offensive. The debate is not whether a "higher consciousness" should be cloning humans (in fact, I'll even concede that such cloning might be morally justifiable), it's about whether humans should be cloning humans.
I know that it sounds solipsistic, but humans are the top of the evolutionary chain, as we understand it, therefore humans are the most complex and highly specialized creatures on the planet. We are therefore, by definition, going to have more trouble cloning ourselves than the so-called "lower animals". Since conducting research into the creation of new lives is going to have (actually, has had) terribly high failure rates the suffering and waste of life will be minimized by working with simpler animals before moving on to the more complex.
Errrm... I strongly doubt that the Raelians consider their religious beliefs to be Judaeo/Christian/Islamic in origin. Furthermore, basing the justification for any position, pro or con, on a specific religious text renders that opinion too easily evaded to be acceptable. Try again.
My personal opinion is that all this research into cloning mammals is premature.
The high failure rate and the problem of accelerated aging in most cloned mammals indicate that the researchers don't know nearly enough about what they're doing. It seems to me that there would be a much higher probability of success in cloning "higher" animals if they solved the worst of the problems by working with the less highly evolved/specialized vertebrates (i.e. fish and/or amphibians) before moving on to more complex animals.
I have no idea where they performed the cloning, but... religious purposes or not, if they performed the procedure within the United States and did not receive FDA approval of their procedure first, they violated any number of FDA regulations and, therefore, federal law.
I seriously DOUBT that the Supreme Court would uphold a First Amendment challenge to the regulations because they do NOT ban cloning, they merely require FDA approval of the procedure first.
Anybody wanna make book that the anti-cloning law George wanted from the last Congress won't FLY through this Congress? Especially on the heels of this news?
A quick look at the industry says that manufactured diamonds are within probably a decade or two of being honestly competative, and then another decade or two after that for them to be "accepted"
Depends on the market you are looking at. Synthetic diamond is the "Gold Standard" for many industrial applications and has been for the last 12-15 years. This is because synthetic diamonds, which are manufactured under highly controlled conditions have much more predictable properties than natural stones and they can be made in forms (e.g. polycrystalline "sheets" for facing cutters on rock bits) that just aren't available in natural diamond.
And if natural diamonds are so bloody common - why does De Beers have a monopoly on them? If they were so common, they could be dug out of the ground almost anywhere; and yet De Beers doesn't have a monopoly on real estate.
Well, gemstone-quality diamonds ARE quite rare... but diamonds are not. There are known diamond mines in (non-exhaustive list follows) the Republic of South Africa, Russia, Australia, Canada, Angola, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Syria and even Arkansas (although the mine never produced enough diamonds to be commercially viable, it's quite a popular tourist attraction). Although natural diamonds are not common, they are NOT exceptionally rare. High-quality emeralds are MUCH rarer than D-grade (investment quality (colorless, flawless under 10x magnification)) diamonds and MUCH more expensive.
The monopoly problem arises when you consider that DeBeers has a monopoly on diamond mining in the RSA, which unquestionably boasts the richest KNOWN Kimberlite pipes on earth. None of the other producers can afford to piss off DeBeers because, just like the Saudis control oil prices, nobody can undercut them for very long if they want to stay in business. DeBeers has the production capacity in place and amortized/depreciated such that they can COLLAPSE world diamond prices and keep them that way long enough to bankrupt all the other producers combined. The smaller producers go along with DeBeers prices because they HAVE to to stay alive.
In response to this portion of the parent post:
... products, in there native state (unfinished for diamonds,... ), are essentially worthless.
Nice try, but WELL off the mark. The VAST majority of diamonds mined in the world are sold for industrial use as abrasives. These diamonds are merely crushed and size-graded, and they make up the bulk of the revenue stream from a diamond mine. Gemstone-grade diamonds are such a miniscule fraction of total production that the gem-grade stones could also be crushed and the mines would still be profitable. The extra profit from supplying the jewelry trade is pure gravy.
Well, now that you've found out, write a HOWTO and contribute it to the LDP. This will undercut their revenue stream and teach them that trade secrets won't protect them in a world where they publish the source... wait... I MAY have made an unwarranted assumption that there are people who will READ a HOWTO...
Well, last time I checked CFD (especially FLUENT) was one of those borderline embarrassingly parallelizable applications that are ideal for the shared-nothing architecture of a cluster, therefore I would be surprised to hear that your SGI/NEC machines get their butts kicked by a cluster of Athlons.
SGI, with it's ccNUMA architecture excels at handling problems that need the performance boost of multiple processors but that require a single-system image because they are inherently only poorly-parallelizable. These are usually problems like 3D seismic modelling, crash test simulations for vehicle manufacturers and CAT scan visualization in medical computing. This is the sort of computing that would slag a cluster of Athlons into a puddle of glowing silicon if the Myrinet cables didn't melt first. Origins handle them with ease.
Texas does NOT require fingerprinting for a either a Driver's License or a State-Issued ID card for those who do not drive.
The Kroger testing is probably being done in Texas because it, like California, is a LARGE, relatively homogeneous, market with a significant number of Kroger stores. This allows them to get comparative cost/benefit numbers (biometric vs.their current system) from stores serving populations that are demographically comparable.
India is different! They have a lot of brain/man power over there.
Thrue. Idia is probably the only fully-functioning democratic country between Australia and Israel and it owes it's ability to function to the existence of a fairly effective public education system and the highly entrepreneurial spirit of it's people.
And they are still a very poor country.
Unfortunately, this is true for two reasons.
First, India is, historically, a poor country because the Hindu religion emphasizes spiritual gain over material gain. This has allowed India's non-Hindu rulers over the past several centuries (first the Moguls, then the British) to exploit the "lower-classes" for their own benefit. The caste system in Indian society also contributed to this problem.
Second, following India's attainment of independence from Britain, the government adopted a very socialist-oriented system of central planning and control that led to massive corruption, capital flight and near-zero foreign investment.
India has GREAT potential to become an economic powerhouse rivalling, maybe even exceeding, the US, the EU and Japan if they stay on their current path.
When I read the article, I noticed that the Christian Science Monitor linked BACK to this article... could this be an attempt at "reciprocal Slashdotting"???
We don't think they're evil, we think they are greedy. Most of the RIAA's actions toward computer and consumer electronics technology have been driven by a desire to control their customers.
You contradict yourself. The RIAA's membership consists of record companies who want to sell me their products. This is not evil. However, to do so and THEN try to control what I can do with the product I now OWN violates the First Sale doctrine in that they are now trying to assert control over MY property without even having a potentially-unenforceable contract with me like an EULA. This IS evil.
Recently, they've tumbled to the fact that campaign contributions can cause legislation to skew in their favor. They've "requested" laws that make fair use illegal, and require that disabling technologies be embedded in any consumer device. Essentially, they've asked the U.S. government to create a "safe" market for them.
Actually, it goes somewhat farther than that. They are asking Congress to give them powers that exceed the powers of law enforcement agencies (under the Berman Act) AND to then to pick up the costs of enforcing their purely private rights via criminal prosecution under the DMCA.
I do not support "piracy" (although I see no connection between copyright infringement and piracy (which is a crime of violence and victimization)). However, I do, and always WILL, oppose the RIAA's and the MPAA's attempts to leverage their position as content VENDORS into making themselves America's secret police.
BBC Watchdog: 'for a report on the important issue of spam that was more intent on vilifying ISP's than educating consumers'
The Home Office: 'for the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security (ATCS) Act and continued delays associated with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA)'
Oftel: 'for (amongst a host of other things) failing to ensure expedient local loop unbundling by BT which has hindered both competition in the telco sector and the development of Broadband Britain'
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA): 'for supporting "right to hack" proposals and other unworkable solutions to curb copyright abuse'
Telecommunications analysts: 'for their substantial contribution to the meltdown in the telecommunications and Internet sector'
That really is a nasty group of suspects, but we might want to add:
John Poindexter: 'for attempting to destroy world-wide privacy.'
The United States Congress (both houses): 'for (among too many other offenses to list in detail) passing the PATRIOT Act and other privacy-invading and security-compromising legislation that will be completely ineffective in stopping terrorism.'
I don't know... I can only see the end result of all the moderations at the moment I downloaded the page with your post on it...
I know that I, personally, M2 like the hammer of God himself, because I have seen the mod points abused to eliminate "unpopular" statements from visibility, but I RARELY metamod "Unfair".
They force you to use their dialer, meaning you can't do simple dial-up networking sharing, auto-dialing. Other ISPs use these but still allow you to set up an (unsupported) PPP connection using standard tools
I'm no fan of AOL, but they have used the standard Microsoft dialup adapter since the release of AOL 7.0, so neither this point nor the next one applies any longer... in fact, the installer for AOL7 asks if you want to REMOVE the AOL dialup adapter.
It forces you to have Real Player installed (evil) and complains every time you dial in if you remove it
Again, I'm no fan of AOL OR RealMedia, and the only time I've been around (in the meat world) an AOL user for any length of time was when I had one for a roommate. I IPMasq'd her Windows box to my broadband connection, and RealPlayer wasn't allowed to call home through my iptables ruleset. Also, I'd rather deal with RealPlayer's spyware behaviors than WiMP's.
The best part of the article is down toward the end:
Ultimately, it comes down to "learning to be street smart on the Internet," said Dan Bricklin, chief technology officer and founder of Trellix Corp., a Concord, Mass., firm that makes Web site authoring and blogging tools.
Of course, I always thought Dan Bricklin had a pretty fair head on his shoulders.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Nice to know your Google grepping skills are so well developed. The company, being Mexican, has a Spanish name. They are "Grupo Mekong, not "Mekong Group." Also, being a Mexican company, they are not terribly troubled by things that are "kind of a disturbing name to Americans in light of Vietnam fighting
Let's see
Well, according to ussearch.com there's a Valentine M. Smith living in Fairfield, ME. The free search doesn't give gender or place of birth, though. ;-)
The New Hacker's Dictionary , v.4.3.3, Hacker Speech Style
This is not IRC and you are not under the time constraints imposed by a scrolling screen in a channel with 40 other users. Throwing in 'l33tspeak here is a good way not to be taken seriously. Especially in a discussion of this nature.
Moderators: mod me down if you wish, it's only karma.
I agree ... given the differences in the state of medical technology now and in the 1940's I see little difference between human cloning research now and Mengele injecting dye into the eyes of Jewish children trying to turn their eyes blue.
So
I know that it sounds solipsistic, but humans are the top of the evolutionary chain, as we understand it, therefore humans are the most complex and highly specialized creatures on the planet. We are therefore, by definition, going to have more trouble cloning ourselves than the so-called "lower animals". Since conducting research into the creation of new lives is going to have (actually, has had) terribly high failure rates the suffering and waste of life will be minimized by working with simpler animals before moving on to the more complex.
Errrm ... I strongly doubt that the Raelians consider their religious beliefs to be Judaeo/Christian/Islamic in origin. Furthermore, basing the justification for any position, pro or con, on a specific religious text renders that opinion too easily evaded to be acceptable. Try again.
My personal opinion is that all this research into cloning mammals is premature.
The high failure rate and the problem of accelerated aging in most cloned mammals indicate that the researchers don't know nearly enough about what they're doing. It seems to me that there would be a much higher probability of success in cloning "higher" animals if they solved the worst of the problems by working with the less highly evolved/specialized vertebrates (i.e. fish and/or amphibians) before moving on to more complex animals.
I have no idea where they performed the cloning, but ... religious purposes or not, if they performed the procedure within the United States and did not receive FDA approval of their procedure first, they violated any number of FDA regulations and, therefore, federal law.
I seriously DOUBT that the Supreme Court would uphold a First Amendment challenge to the regulations because they do NOT ban cloning, they merely require FDA approval of the procedure first.
Anybody wanna make book that the anti-cloning law George wanted from the last Congress won't FLY through this Congress? Especially on the heels of this news?
Depends on the market you are looking at. Synthetic diamond is the "Gold Standard" for many industrial applications and has been for the last 12-15 years. This is because synthetic diamonds, which are manufactured under highly controlled conditions have much more predictable properties than natural stones and they can be made in forms (e.g. polycrystalline "sheets" for facing cutters on rock bits) that just aren't available in natural diamond.
Well, gemstone-quality diamonds ARE quite rare
The monopoly problem arises when you consider that DeBeers has a monopoly on diamond mining in the RSA, which unquestionably boasts the richest KNOWN Kimberlite pipes on earth. None of the other producers can afford to piss off DeBeers because, just like the Saudis control oil prices, nobody can undercut them for very long if they want to stay in business. DeBeers has the production capacity in place and amortized/depreciated such that they can COLLAPSE world diamond prices and keep them that way long enough to bankrupt all the other producers combined. The smaller producers go along with DeBeers prices because they HAVE to to stay alive.
In response to this portion of the parent post:
Nice try, but WELL off the mark. The VAST majority of diamonds mined in the world are sold for industrial use as abrasives. These diamonds are merely crushed and size-graded, and they make up the bulk of the revenue stream from a diamond mine. Gemstone-grade diamonds are such a miniscule fraction of total production that the gem-grade stones could also be crushed and the mines would still be profitable. The extra profit from supplying the jewelry trade is pure gravy.
Well, now that you've found out, write a HOWTO and contribute it to the LDP. This will undercut their revenue stream and teach them that trade secrets won't protect them in a world where they publish the source ... wait ... I MAY have made an unwarranted assumption that there are people who will READ a HOWTO ...
Well, last time I checked CFD (especially FLUENT) was one of those borderline embarrassingly parallelizable applications that are ideal for the shared-nothing architecture of a cluster, therefore I would be surprised to hear that your SGI/NEC machines get their butts kicked by a cluster of Athlons.
SGI, with it's ccNUMA architecture excels at handling problems that need the performance boost of multiple processors but that require a single-system image because they are inherently only poorly-parallelizable. These are usually problems like 3D seismic modelling, crash test simulations for vehicle manufacturers and CAT scan visualization in medical computing. This is the sort of computing that would slag a cluster of Athlons into a puddle of glowing silicon if the Myrinet cables didn't melt first. Origins handle them with ease.
Texas does NOT require fingerprinting for a either a Driver's License or a State-Issued ID card for those who do not drive.
The Kroger testing is probably being done in Texas because it, like California, is a LARGE, relatively homogeneous, market with a significant number of Kroger stores. This allows them to get comparative cost/benefit numbers (biometric vs.their current system) from stores serving populations that are demographically comparable.
Thrue. Idia is probably the only fully-functioning democratic country between Australia and Israel and it owes it's ability to function to the existence of a fairly effective public education system and the highly entrepreneurial spirit of it's people.
Unfortunately, this is true for two reasons.
India has GREAT potential to become an economic powerhouse rivalling, maybe even exceeding, the US, the EU and Japan if they stay on their current path.
When I read the article, I noticed that the Christian Science Monitor linked BACK to this article ... could this be an attempt at "reciprocal Slashdotting"???
Would that they had ... at least THEN watching Rosen and Valenti at work would be AMUSING ...
You contradict yourself. The RIAA's membership consists of record companies who want to sell me their products. This is not evil. However, to do so and THEN try to control what I can do with the product I now OWN violates the First Sale doctrine in that they are now trying to assert control over MY property without even having a potentially-unenforceable contract with me like an EULA. This IS evil.
Actually, it goes somewhat farther than that. They are asking Congress to give them powers that exceed the powers of law enforcement agencies (under the Berman Act) AND to then to pick up the costs of enforcing their purely private rights via criminal prosecution under the DMCA.
I do not support "piracy" (although I see no connection between copyright infringement and piracy (which is a crime of violence and victimization)). However, I do, and always WILL, oppose the RIAA's and the MPAA's attempts to leverage their position as content VENDORS into making themselves America's secret police.
Oh, BTW, Merry Christmas and
The nominations are:
BBC Watchdog: 'for a report on the important issue of spam that was more intent on vilifying ISP's than educating consumers'
The Home Office: 'for the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security (ATCS) Act and continued delays associated with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA)'
Oftel: 'for (amongst a host of other things) failing to ensure expedient local loop unbundling by BT which has hindered both competition in the telco sector and the development of Broadband Britain'
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA): 'for supporting "right to hack" proposals and other unworkable solutions to curb copyright abuse'
Telecommunications analysts: 'for their substantial contribution to the meltdown in the telecommunications and Internet sector'
That really is a nasty group of suspects, but we might want to add:
John Poindexter: 'for attempting to destroy world-wide privacy.'
The United States Congress (both houses): 'for (among too many other offenses to list in detail) passing the PATRIOT Act and other privacy-invading and security-compromising legislation that will be completely ineffective in stopping terrorism.'
I don't know ... I can only see the end result of all the moderations at the moment I downloaded the page with your post on it ...
I know that I, personally, M2 like the hammer of God himself, because I have seen the mod points abused to eliminate "unpopular" statements from visibility, but I RARELY metamod "Unfair".
I wish to HELL I had mod points ... somebody treat this post to a +1 Funny ...
Excuse me ... cybersex existed LONG before there was ICQ ... my first "dirty chat" was via "private message" on CompuServe back in 1990 ...
I'm no fan of AOL, but they have used the standard Microsoft dialup adapter since the release of AOL 7.0, so neither this point nor the next one applies any longer
Again, I'm no fan of AOL OR RealMedia, and the only time I've been around (in the meat world) an AOL user for any length of time was when I had one for a roommate. I IPMasq'd her Windows box to my broadband connection, and RealPlayer wasn't allowed to call home through my iptables ruleset. Also, I'd rather deal with RealPlayer's spyware behaviors than WiMP's.
just my US$0.02
It's a Freedom of Speech thing, dude ... chill out. They have Freedom of Speech which is balanced by your Right to Be Offended.
What turns it into a Really BAD Thing(TM) is that THEY want to exercise THEIR Right to Be Offended at the expense of YOUR Freedom of Speech.
Of course, I always thought Dan Bricklin had a pretty fair head on his shoulders.