Scientists are using adult stem cells in clinical trials. Kind of interesting that the cures which show the most progress are the least morally problematic.
I've always wondered why, embrionic stem cell research advocates remain so adamant about pushing a morally questionable practice when adult stem cell research show much more promise of creating cures today. Sure, the theoretical possibility of curing paralysis 20 years from now is a nice thought, but how does it help someone who will be dead by then? Or is it that they are more concerned with the research than with actually producing something beneficial?
Actually, most factories are already temperature controlled environments. Industrial processes like steel smelting, injection molding, etc... generate quite a bit more heat than even the largest datacenters.
That the rest of the world regards them as something undesirable?
One of the fundamental moral objections to cloning is that it would create a world in which people were genetically engineered to conform to their expected role in society. Nobody wants a geek. Instead, we would have a monoculture in which everyone had "optimal" characteristics - i.e., non-geeky, sports-loving, beer-swilling, do-as-your-told types. The geek would become even more marginalized as an outcast.
And the other primary objection is the matter of creating human life only to destroy it. Our nation has a history of exploiting the weaker classes in inhumane and cruel ways; imagine how cruel we would become if we grew people for no reason other than "harvesting" of their organs to prolong the lives of the wealthy. At what point is a human not a human? If we can arbitrarily draw the line at the embryo stage, what is to prevent us from making additional qualifications? For example, at first, to qualify as a human, one would have to be past the embryo stage. But as soon as scientists believe that fetuses could contain the secrets to life-saving cures, fetuses would be considered non-human. And then, children - but only defective children, that is, those with some illness so debilitating they would surely thank us for ending their lives early. And soon it would progress to the point where anyone who didn't meet arbitrary genetic criteria would be considered better off dead. And humanity would suffer for it.
There's an interesting verse in the Bible: Jeremiah 32:35, "They built high places to Baal in the Valley of Ben-hinnom, and immolated their sons and daughters to Molech, bringing sin upon Judah; this I never commanded them, nor did it even enter my mind that they should practice such abominations." Apparently, the notion of sacrificing the young for the sake of prolonging the lives of the old is not new; it was a part of pagan religious practice nearly 3 millenia ago. And, interestingly, those who support the cloning of embryos have the same fanatical belief that sacrificing the young will somehow make our lives better. Just like the pagans, they can't explain how, but they are sure that cures are just around the corner. And this in spite of the fact that adult stem cell therapies are being used now to treat diseases such as Parkinsons.
But, I suppose if the stem cell cloners want to sacrifice humans to their pagan god of eternal life, they will find a way to do it. The truly unfortunate part is that they are killing some humans for a remote chance at curing others. Who gets to decide who is worthy to be cured, and who is a research subject? Are humans even qualified to decide who deserves to live, and who doesn't?
What you can do with the Materials: Authorization and Limited Licence
Access Copyright grants you a limited, royalty-free, non-exclusive and non-transferable right and licence to view and display the Materials on your computer or network of computers within a single entity, and download and print the Materials for your own personal internal use or educational use in educational institutions located in Canada, subject to the following conditions
i. You are not permitted to modify the Materials;
ii. You must include and display on each copy of the Materials the associated Copyright Notice set out below, at the end of this Notice;
iii. Except as otherwise expressly permitted herein, you are not permitted to make any commercial use of the Materials;
and
iv. You are not permitted to copy or cut from any page or its HTML source code to the Windows(TM) clipboard (or equivalent on other platforms) onto any other website.
To obtain access to the Captain Copyright website you must first register on-line with Access Copyright , the Captain Copyright website is available for the use of those who agree to all the terms contained in these Terms of Use[emphasis mine]
IANAL, but I'm not sure if most of these are even legally enforceable, even in Canada. I'm not quite sure where to begin:
I have to register to view a publicly available website?!
I'm not allowed to copy and paste?
I'm not allowed to modify the files on my own PC? As if they have any right!
The whole internet isn't governed by Canadian law, nor US law for that matter...
Seems like Captain Copyright lost his Magic Cluestick(TM).
Actually, I'm not in group 2 or group 1. I'm group 3 - professional engineers. I produce high quality software because I know I'm not perfect, not in spite of it. Because I recognize my own imperfections; the fact that change is inevitable; that no project can ever be completely specified; I am able to design software which minimize the negative consequences of such. I am a professional - I don't just throw up my hands and quit when difficulty arises. The fact that writing good software is difficult does not mean that it is impossible. It simply requires a willingness to learn, and a little discipline to apply what you've learned.
I recently completed a rather large project which works flawlessly. It has been in production for quite some time now. Producing bug-free code isn't impossible; just impossible for some people.
Of course, you are going to have to deal with deadlines, with unrealistic managers and customers who expect the world of you. But, I think the key is in correct design. If you get the design right, adding additional features or making deadlines is relatively easy. But, if your process produces buggy code, it is almost impossible to add features or make deadlines, because your process or design is flawed. It isn't so much that you need more time, but that you can't make substantial progress with the time you have.
One thing which immediately struck me was that the author seems unaware of a key software engineering principle: Reducing design complexity reduces the number and severity of bugs. By now, we all know that there are tradeoffs between complexity, time, and features. However, all other things being equal, some people and organizations consistently produce better software than others. Consider, for example, Linux and Windows. The key reason Linux is more stable and more reliable than Windows is that the process which produced Linux is inherently better at catching and correcting flaws than the one used to produce Windows. Anyone who has ever had to commit a patch to the kernel team knows that design changes are thoroughly vetted before being accepted into the source tree.
Even I have completed some rather large projects without a producing a single bug. It wasn't a matter of coding skill, but rather, that I designed the software such that:
It was broken into modules with clean interfaces, so that each module could be independently tested and verified.
It was designed such that a bug in implementation would be apparent immediately (i.e. - it would crash).
It was designed to accommodate the inevitable change in requirements.
Even very complex software can be written virtually bug free if good software engineering principles are followed. Something as simple as adhering to the Unix design principles can drastically reduce the number of bugs in a shipping application.
Generally speaking, the old adage about "failing to plan is planning to fail" holds true with software as well. The core idea behind software engineering is that quality is improved not by doing more testing, but rather by improving the process by which software is written. Consider the following two, widely used approaches to software:
Define the requirements.
Design the software as a large, monolithic application with numerous interdependencies and no clean interfaces.
Customer complains that feature X isn't implemented. Requirements change; goto step 1.
Marketing adds features to product brochure. Requirements change; goto step 1.
Define the requirements.
Partition the requirements into easily tested modules separated by clean interfaces, anticipating the need to add future functionality at a later time.
Customer complains that feature X isn't implemented. Requirements change; goto step 3.
Marketing adds features to product brochure. Requirements change; goto step 3.
With the second model, changing requirements do not require a complete rewrite or complicated analysis of the entire system. It is a flexible model. The key problems is that it is a hard sell - the design requirements phase takes more time, but it ultimately provides the flexibility that management and marketing require.
One of these models addresses the fact that requirements frequently change; the other does not. One of these models takes into account the fact that complexity is hard for a single person to manage, and one does not. One model limits the amount of damage that a single, bad coder can inflict, and one does not.
Yes, we may not fix every bug, but we can at least use sound design processes to minimize the impact of bugs. BTW, the fact that Source Gear can't interoperate with other databases is not merely a bug, but a design flaw. Had it been properly designed, using a
To catch terrorists this way. By now, everyone, including the terrorists, have figured out that the phone lines are insecure. Those who have something to hide are already using different forms of communication.
The only possible effective use of this system today is to stifle the political dissent of law abiding citizens.
It has never been about catching terrorists or protecting children. Yes, occasionally such eavesdropping has helped solve criminal cases; but the primary purpose has always been the suppression of political dissent.
OK, first of all, this is Gartner, not MS making the claims. From the article:
said the new Windows Vista operating system is too complex to be able to meet Microsoft's targeted November release... [emphasis added]
Yes, this is the same Gartner that said that Linux was too complex to have been written by Linus Torvalds...
But, it gets better:
Once production starts, it usually takes between six- to eight-weeks for PC manufacturers to load the operating system onto new computers, Gartner said.
Six weeks! - and I thought I had a slow hard drive when it took two hours to install Linux.
Perhaps that should have been "six to eight weeks to begin shipping..."?
I don't mean to troll, but it seems to me that if the MPAA and RIAA had their way, we wouldn't listen to music or watch tv at all. At least not in the manner to which we've become accustomed.
Why would I bother buying an expensive recorder if it couldn't record all of the content I might like to record? Why would I watch tv or listen to the radio if I couldn't later share the experience with friends and family?
And I'm less likely to watch tv in the first place if I can't share a funny clip with friends later. Take the Simpsons, for example. Often times I'll want to replay a clip of Homer doing something stupid for a friend. But if the MPAA has their way, I wouldn't be able to do this.
Or take talk radio. My wife and I were riding along listening to talk radio when a traffic situation caused her to focus on the road. So naturally, she's lost a little bit of context and remarked that she'd like to rewind the radio to catch what she missed. Of course, you can't do this now with a car stereo, nor will you ever if the RIAA has their way.
I've noticed that my media consumption habits have changed. It used to be that I would buy several CD's a year; I don't think I've bought one in the last two years. Yes, I suppose I could easily bypass the copy protection, but why bother. If the record label is such a jerk that they attempt to keep control of what I now rightfully own, then they can keep their shiny plastic and I'll keep my money. No sense in encouraging scumbags anyway.
And why would I bother paying Hollywood for movies that I won't be able to enjoy in the future? My uncle has a few thousand decaying VHS tapes which he won't be able to play 10 years from now. And of course, with the DRM on DVDs and thanks to the DMCA, when DVDs are obsolete, you will lose your investment. At least my uncle could copy VHS to DVD. But how long would that last when the next generation players enforce DRM?
So I've kind of given up on Hollywood and Big Music. It seems that they've become to wrapped up in their own hubris to realize that crippling content doesn't add to the value of the product. And yet, their stockholders continue to buy the old mantra, "Piracy is killing our business..." It's not piracy - it's lack of value. Why would a consumer buy something they legally can't own? The **AAs haven't figured out the American vision of entertainment is much different from their own. Americans:
Want to own what they've legally purchased
Consider ownership to be something perpetual, not "for a limited time"
Like to share their culture (tv, movies, music) with others.
Like to watch good movies and hear good songs again and again.
By contrast, the RIAA and MPAA envision this model of consumer enjoyment:
The consumer pays for the content, but the RIAA/MPAA still owns it.
The consumer pays every time they enjoy the content.
The consumer re-purchases the content any time the RIAA/MPAA decide a format change is necessary.
The consumer only owns the content until it interferes with the profit made by the studio. Witness the industry's attempts to thwart re-selling used CD's.
So, even those of us who would be otherwise honest must face a decision:
We play by the RIAA/MPAA playbook and pay continuously for content we've already bought, or
Forget the RIAA/MPAA and find a different mode of entertainment.
So, is tv relevant anymore? Not when I can't enjoy it. Same for music and video - I'm enjoying public domain works now and independent stuff that I glean from the Net. Yes, I can afford to pay for my content, but why would I pay if I can't own it anyway?
The RIAA/MPAA can't seem to understand that individual ownership and the rights that come with it are a fundamental part of selling content. If you don't want to give up control, don't sell the content.
Oh wait, you were using the contraction for it is - which is perfectly valid, even if it doesn't look right. Wonder how many grammer nazis impulsively wanted to correct you for using an apostrophe in its...
We have been looking for our designer in all the wrong places. It seems we owe our existence to viruses, the least of semiliving forms, and about the only thing they have in common with any sort of theological prime mover is their omnipresence and invisibility....
And, of course, their intelligent design. Few things in the biological world accomplish so much with so little complexity as a virus. Relatively speaking, they are lean and mean, optimized for their particular function. Think of them as the hand-optimized assembly code of the biological world.
I'm growing weary of psuedo-intellectuals spouting off politically correct claptrap without any regard for critical thought whatsoever. There was nothing in the article which disproved, or even significantly weakened the case for intelligent design. In fact, the key claim of Intelligent Design - that a statistically random organization of DNA sequences would not produce a viable organism isn't even discussed. If anything, the presence of viruses in the evolutionary chain would only reinforce this claim, because 1.) their DNA sequences are much more crucial to their survival than in other types of organisms, and 2.) they are not a viable organism apart from their host.
Granted, I don't like the ID argument because of its statistical basis, but this latest research does nothing to disprove intelligent design or theories of a benevolent Creator. Perhaps if the author had really thought about this critically he would have realized that as exciting as this discovery is, it does nothing to weaken the ID argument. It is science, not theology!
This was a scientific, not theological discovery. Why does the author confuse the two?
Disclaimer: I'm an engineer who develops video cameras.
I kind of hate to turn this into a shameless plug, but my company has been developing exactly what you need. We've got a linux-based network camera which would be perfect for your application. Google Ingenient Technologies.
Okay, now here's the problem: We are an engineering firm - we sell the reference design to other companies which actually manufacture and market the hardware. However, we might be able to work something out with an intermediary company if the order was large enough.
You don't go there because the beer tastes different than from in the bar next door, but because of the people who are there...
Actually, I do choose the bar based on the quality of the brew. I'm not about to drink some American Mega-Swill just so I can have a chat with the local drunks.
But, given the writing, it is clear the author thinks us just a bunch of drunken idiots anyway. Anyone who thinks everything worthwhile can be - or has to be - bought has nothing worth anything.
Actually, you need not selectively disregard those large portions of text if you allow recognition of the author's intent. Genesis was not written nor intended to be a scientifically accurate depiction of the creation of the Universe, but rather to show the relationship between God and his creation, and how mankind is supposed to relate to God and said creation. The depictions of the creation of the world were given in terms with which the reader of the time would be familiar.
In fact, it is kind of interesting that our notion of time is a relatively recent invention. Imagine having to explain the Big Bang to an audience whose shortest concept of time is the day. Does it really surprise anyone that the author of Genesis chose to relate a near instantaneous event as "God spoke..." How else would a 12th century BCE writer depict it? And why would you bother with exact notions of time if the subject of your discourse is the relationship between a supernatural deity and mankind? Does anyone really believe that the Genesis account includes everything God did when creating the world?
And the notion of religion being incompatible with rational thought is likewise bunk. It was the Church that started the university system, and the Church that funded most of the scientific endeavors before government sponsorship became widespread. Is it any surprise that the scientific research leans toward supporting atheist philosophy when funded by states which pride themselves on the "Separation of Church and State?" The sad fact of the matter is that, at least in the U.S., any scientist which endorses a theory which coincides with a religious tenet risks being ostracized by the scientific community, regardless of the merit of his claims. In the U.S. at least, there is no true science when it comes to matters such as evolution: your choice as a researcher is to either tow the atheist party line, or risk being called a creationist. There is no serious skepticism with regard to evolution, and this is a considerable weakness for a discipline that wasn't a true science until the 19th century.
In fact, it requires a suspension of critical thought to believe the philosophy of evolution. While recent research has made good strides in areas such as microevolution, the fact that the popular notion of evolution can be disproved by any competent statistician does not bode well for biology. It isn't the least bit unreasonable or irrational to be skeptical of a discipline that wasn't even a true science until the 19th century. If the early theories of evolution had been subjected to the rigorous scrutiny that physics and chemistry required:
Evolution would not be such a large embarassment to biology today, and:
We might actually have a theory of evolution which is mathematically plausible.
The problem is not religion vs. science; it is that biology has accepted theories without the rigorous scrutiny emblematic of other disciplines. It deserves to be ridiculed because it claimed to be a science while denying the healthy skepticism essential to determining truth. In short, it became the religion of materialists, and lost its true commitment to scientific truth.
What about the fact that religion of all stripes has almost always throughout history been used as a tool to fuck the many for the benefit of the few?
Actually, we call that politics. If you look at the difference between religious and atheist regimes, atheist regimes almost always commit atrocities on a scale far greater than religious ones. Consider the likes of Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, etc... Granted, they didn't sacrifice virgins to the gods (a practice which died out thousands of years ago), but they sacrificed millions of innocent lives for the "promise of a better tomorrow" Read up on communism sometime.
And your comment about humanities was assinine. As was your insistence on comparing God to a petulant 5 year old. God doesn't hide his existence from mankind - if He did, why do so many people believe in him? Do you expect us to believe that the whole world - apart from a few atheists - is really just a bunch of morons who do whatever people tell them, and believe whatever their told? Anyone who has studied history and the multitude of political revolutions in Western culture alone would know better than to think that.
Not that I think you're a bad person, but I keep hearing this same anti-religious mantra repeated over and over, without any proof. Usually, when proof is offered, it is limited to a very specific time and place, ignoring the rest of recorded history. I'm not so narrow minded, and I think the dogmatic insistence of an anti-religious sentiment only shows that someone is unwilling to learn.
Actually, I kind of regard the absence of religious belief as an indicator of lack of intelligence. The willingness to arbitrarily ignore 4,000 years of human experience suggests that they lack the intelligence necessary to cope with difficult and sometimes contradictory data. Most intelligence tests are necessarily limited to solving only a narrow range of problems; typically, these problems involve relationships which are discrete, linear, and seldom go beyond anything mathematical in nature. Asking someone to explain why one painting is better visually composed than another requires a large degree of intelligence, but unfortunately, such explanations cannot be objectively rated. Thus, a large part of what constitutes human intelligence - that is, perception and judgement, and even learning, are simply not tested.
It's getting to the point where the whole science vs. religion debate is really for the infantile. Anyone with an open mind and a little dilligence can figure out the two are not opposed to each other. Rather, it is when supposedly educated people confuse a religious philosophy (naturalism) for science that things get heated. Trust me, no one in the Vatican is staying up late because someone is sequencing DNA in a lab somewhere. Rather, it is when naturalist dogma is spewed from scientists that people get all fired up:
Scientists don't like it because it isn't real science. Yes, many aspects of evolution have been shown to be true (like microevolution), but taken as a whole, evolution still does not explain the fundamental question of how we came to be. In fact, this question more properly belongs in the realm of philosophy, but small minded atheists insist on discussing it within the realm of science.
Religious nuts don't like it because they see science as a competitor for authority. It doesn't matter what science says, science is a problem because it represents an alternative authority. They don't seem to understand that the Bible writers were more concerned with the relationship between God and Man than the particulars of how we were created. It does not occur to them that the Bible can be an authority on matters religious, and science an authority on matters material.
If you had actually read Darwin's Black Box, you would find that Micheal Behe, et al, are actually very specific in defining what they mean by terms such as "intelligence", "choice", and "irreducible complexity". Within the context of these definitions, their arguments make very good sense.
But the most notable ID proponents are philosophers, not scientists, and it is disingenious to insist on treating their work as science. It is not, and those who insist on denigrating ID as if it were science only show their pedantry.
After all, who argues against teaching the works of Aristotle because it isn't science? Just because something isn't strictly scientific does not mean it is lacking in intellectual value.
but these applications should have to compete on merit and cost. They should not be given an arbitrary leg up that shuts out other vendors and forces government agencies to settle on under-performing technologies.
So, IOW, the author thinks Massachusetts shouldn't be locked into Microsoft Office formats, yet goes on to say:
We've seen government operate at its most efficient when it promotes competition. The Massachusetts policy would instead direct contracts to just a few technology providers, while many would be locked out.
But apparently embracing only one, proprietary, patent-protected format won't lock anybody out. Instead, everyone is free to compete, as long as Microsoft gives them permission, right?
Oh, I get it: we're not locking anybody out of the market, we're just locking Massachusetts in to Microsoft... Every one is free to use this wonderful standard, as long as only Microsoft gets paid.
At the risk of sounding trollish, I think it's kind of naive to expect Windows to be secured. I've been watching MS since the Windows 3.1 days, and I've never seen any improvement in regard to security. Sure, Microsoft talks a lot about it when their customers talk about it, but they don't actually do much toward that end. Why people still expect such a fundamentally flawed OS to be secure real soon now is beyond me. If Microsoft hasn't produced a secure OS in 20 years of business, what makes you think they're going to change now?
And honestly, I don't blame them. Windows was designed to put multimedia on the desktop, and turn the PC into a consumer-class appliance. And toward that end, Microsoft has been very successful. They know how to do the ease-of-use and multimedia stuff. Security isn't their strong suit. So what?
You probably know the saying about using tools for the purpose they were designed. If Windows is a tool, it was designed for games, not security, so don't expect it. If you want security, run Linux or UNIX, or perhaps an IBM mainframe. But don't install Windows on your machine and then start whining about how insecure it is. If your box gets owned, well, you've got only yourself to blame, because you knew Windows was insecure when you installed it.
If you must run Windows, just accept the fact that you're going to have to format and reinstall every year or so. This is what the rest of the world does, but here on./, there's this expectation that computers can run forever without crashing. That might have been true when the mainframes and UNIXes were king, but now, for the average person, insecure systems are a fact of life.
Why not wait until you have a solution to the security problem before disclosing the problem?
Granted, I understand that closed-source must make this difficult, but even so, a researcher who understands enough about a system to break it must surely understand enough to come up with a workaround.
I know it is a lot easier to find flaws than fix them, but unless a researcher is willing to offer a fix, disclosure of security flaws doesn't do much to help:
The fixing of security bugs pushes back new development, which may not contain the buggy code at all.
It takes time away from testing current the current codebase.
It forces users to upgrade, or face the threat of an insecure system. Those users who can't upgrade find that disclosure of security flaws lowers the effort and intellect needed to breach their systems, making it more likely, not less, that they will suffer break ins.
Sometimes I wonder if those who inappropriately post security vulnerabilities are more concerned with self-promotion than actually helping out the community.
Why can't society accept the fact that males and females are specialized for different roles? Why can't we respect those roles?
Don't women understand that when they try to be "just like men" that they are denigrating the role that women play in society? By lifting up the corporate success as the ideal to which we should aspire, society is teaching women that it's ok to be a woman, but better to be a man. Where is the respect due motherhood? Why does our society denigrate as "old-fashioned" women who commit their entire lives to their families?
Do women really believe they'll make a better contribution to society by getting a corporate job as opposed to raising children?
As religion has studied the full spectrum of mankind's endeavors, it only makes sense that they would be the best qualified to determine "what it means to be human." While science can inform us about the material aspects, it does not possess the ability, nor the intention, to tackle this particular question. But this does not keep atheist philosophers from treating science as if it were the gospel truth, and insisting on belittling any dissension as "religious dogma" - as if such was irrelevant to the discussion.
The interesting thing to me is that there's a greater consensus on the existence of God among theologians than there is global warming among scientists, yet some treat the existence of God as unproven and global warming as fact!
I think it is not so much to foil organized religion, but rather to assert science as the dominating factor in public policy. Perhaps the scientists themselves do research merely out of curiosity, but the other proponents of embrionic stem cell research are very much interested in removing the political power of religion. In order to convince the average person that religion has no place in public policy, these people must find an issue which can be distorted to fit their agenda:
The first step is to convince people that embrionic stem cells possess the cures for numerous diseases.
The second step is to downplay the whole destruction of human life issue and instead emphasize the quality of life issue for those already born. The goal is to foment sympathy for real people living with real diseases, and deny any dignity to the unborn.
The final step is to seize power by portraying religion as opposed to healing because of their stance on the stem cell issue. Once religion has fallen out of public favor, there will be no politically significant objection to using government power to suppress minorities, etc, as neither science nor secular philosophy have established authority in the matter of ethics. Thus, it becomes easier to justify corporate sweatshops, monopolies, etc...
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Scientists are using adult stem cells in clinical trials. Kind of interesting that the cures which show the most progress are the least morally problematic.
I've always wondered why, embrionic stem cell research advocates remain so adamant about pushing a morally questionable practice when adult stem cell research show much more promise of creating cures today. Sure, the theoretical possibility of curing paralysis 20 years from now is a nice thought, but how does it help someone who will be dead by then? Or is it that they are more concerned with the research than with actually producing something beneficial?
Actually, most factories are already temperature controlled environments. Industrial processes like steel smelting, injection molding, etc... generate quite a bit more heat than even the largest datacenters.
That the rest of the world regards them as something undesirable?
One of the fundamental moral objections to cloning is that it would create a world in which people were genetically engineered to conform to their expected role in society. Nobody wants a geek. Instead, we would have a monoculture in which everyone had "optimal" characteristics - i.e., non-geeky, sports-loving, beer-swilling, do-as-your-told types. The geek would become even more marginalized as an outcast.
And the other primary objection is the matter of creating human life only to destroy it. Our nation has a history of exploiting the weaker classes in inhumane and cruel ways; imagine how cruel we would become if we grew people for no reason other than "harvesting" of their organs to prolong the lives of the wealthy. At what point is a human not a human? If we can arbitrarily draw the line at the embryo stage, what is to prevent us from making additional qualifications? For example, at first, to qualify as a human, one would have to be past the embryo stage. But as soon as scientists believe that fetuses could contain the secrets to life-saving cures, fetuses would be considered non-human. And then, children - but only defective children, that is, those with some illness so debilitating they would surely thank us for ending their lives early. And soon it would progress to the point where anyone who didn't meet arbitrary genetic criteria would be considered better off dead. And humanity would suffer for it.
There's an interesting verse in the Bible: Jeremiah 32:35, "They built high places to Baal in the Valley of Ben-hinnom, and immolated their sons and daughters to Molech, bringing sin upon Judah; this I never commanded them, nor did it even enter my mind that they should practice such abominations." Apparently, the notion of sacrificing the young for the sake of prolonging the lives of the old is not new; it was a part of pagan religious practice nearly 3 millenia ago. And, interestingly, those who support the cloning of embryos have the same fanatical belief that sacrificing the young will somehow make our lives better. Just like the pagans, they can't explain how, but they are sure that cures are just around the corner. And this in spite of the fact that adult stem cell therapies are being used now to treat diseases such as Parkinsons.
But, I suppose if the stem cell cloners want to sacrifice humans to their pagan god of eternal life, they will find a way to do it. The truly unfortunate part is that they are killing some humans for a remote chance at curing others. Who gets to decide who is worthy to be cured, and who is a research subject? Are humans even qualified to decide who deserves to live, and who doesn't?
From their Terms of Use page:
What you can do with the Materials: Authorization and Limited Licence Access Copyright grants you a limited, royalty-free, non-exclusive and non-transferable right and licence to view and display the Materials on your computer or network of computers within a single entity, and download and print the Materials for your own personal internal use or educational use in educational institutions located in Canada, subject to the following conditionsi. You are not permitted to modify the Materials; ii. You must include and display on each copy of the Materials the associated Copyright Notice set out below, at the end of this Notice; iii. Except as otherwise expressly permitted herein, you are not permitted to make any commercial use of the Materials; and iv. You are not permitted to copy or cut from any page or its HTML source code to the Windows(TM) clipboard (or equivalent on other platforms) onto any other website.
To obtain access to the Captain Copyright website you must first register on-line with Access Copyright , the Captain Copyright website is available for the use of those who agree to all the terms contained in these Terms of Use[emphasis mine]
IANAL, but I'm not sure if most of these are even legally enforceable, even in Canada. I'm not quite sure where to begin:
Seems like Captain Copyright lost his Magic Cluestick(TM).
Actually, I'm not in group 2 or group 1. I'm group 3 - professional engineers. I produce high quality software because I know I'm not perfect, not in spite of it. Because I recognize my own imperfections; the fact that change is inevitable; that no project can ever be completely specified; I am able to design software which minimize the negative consequences of such. I am a professional - I don't just throw up my hands and quit when difficulty arises. The fact that writing good software is difficult does not mean that it is impossible. It simply requires a willingness to learn, and a little discipline to apply what you've learned.
I recently completed a rather large project which works flawlessly. It has been in production for quite some time now. Producing bug-free code isn't impossible; just impossible for some people.
Of course, you are going to have to deal with deadlines, with unrealistic managers and customers who expect the world of you. But, I think the key is in correct design. If you get the design right, adding additional features or making deadlines is relatively easy. But, if your process produces buggy code, it is almost impossible to add features or make deadlines, because your process or design is flawed. It isn't so much that you need more time, but that you can't make substantial progress with the time you have.
One thing which immediately struck me was that the author seems unaware of a key software engineering principle: Reducing design complexity reduces the number and severity of bugs. By now, we all know that there are tradeoffs between complexity, time, and features. However, all other things being equal, some people and organizations consistently produce better software than others. Consider, for example, Linux and Windows. The key reason Linux is more stable and more reliable than Windows is that the process which produced Linux is inherently better at catching and correcting flaws than the one used to produce Windows. Anyone who has ever had to commit a patch to the kernel team knows that design changes are thoroughly vetted before being accepted into the source tree.
Even I have completed some rather large projects without a producing a single bug. It wasn't a matter of coding skill, but rather, that I designed the software such that:
Even very complex software can be written virtually bug free if good software engineering principles are followed. Something as simple as adhering to the Unix design principles can drastically reduce the number of bugs in a shipping application.
Generally speaking, the old adage about "failing to plan is planning to fail" holds true with software as well. The core idea behind software engineering is that quality is improved not by doing more testing, but rather by improving the process by which software is written. Consider the following two, widely used approaches to software:
With the second model, changing requirements do not require a complete rewrite or complicated analysis of the entire system. It is a flexible model. The key problems is that it is a hard sell - the design requirements phase takes more time, but it ultimately provides the flexibility that management and marketing require.
One of these models addresses the fact that requirements frequently change; the other does not. One of these models takes into account the fact that complexity is hard for a single person to manage, and one does not. One model limits the amount of damage that a single, bad coder can inflict, and one does not.
Yes, we may not fix every bug, but we can at least use sound design processes to minimize the impact of bugs. BTW, the fact that Source Gear can't interoperate with other databases is not merely a bug, but a design flaw. Had it been properly designed, using a
To catch terrorists this way. By now, everyone, including the terrorists, have figured out that the phone lines are insecure. Those who have something to hide are already using different forms of communication.
The only possible effective use of this system today is to stifle the political dissent of law abiding citizens.
It has never been about catching terrorists or protecting children. Yes, occasionally such eavesdropping has helped solve criminal cases; but the primary purpose has always been the suppression of political dissent.
OK, first of all, this is Gartner, not MS making the claims. From the article:
said the new Windows Vista operating system is too complex to be able to meet Microsoft's targeted November release... [emphasis added]
Yes, this is the same Gartner that said that Linux was too complex to have been written by Linus Torvalds...
But, it gets better:
Once production starts, it usually takes between six- to eight-weeks for PC manufacturers to load the operating system onto new computers, Gartner said.Six weeks! - and I thought I had a slow hard drive when it took two hours to install Linux.
Perhaps that should have been "six to eight weeks to begin shipping..."?
I don't mean to troll, but it seems to me that if the MPAA and RIAA had their way, we wouldn't listen to music or watch tv at all. At least not in the manner to which we've become accustomed.
Why would I bother buying an expensive recorder if it couldn't record all of the content I might like to record? Why would I watch tv or listen to the radio if I couldn't later share the experience with friends and family?
And I'm less likely to watch tv in the first place if I can't share a funny clip with friends later. Take the Simpsons, for example. Often times I'll want to replay a clip of Homer doing something stupid for a friend. But if the MPAA has their way, I wouldn't be able to do this.
Or take talk radio. My wife and I were riding along listening to talk radio when a traffic situation caused her to focus on the road. So naturally, she's lost a little bit of context and remarked that she'd like to rewind the radio to catch what she missed. Of course, you can't do this now with a car stereo, nor will you ever if the RIAA has their way.
I've noticed that my media consumption habits have changed. It used to be that I would buy several CD's a year; I don't think I've bought one in the last two years. Yes, I suppose I could easily bypass the copy protection, but why bother. If the record label is such a jerk that they attempt to keep control of what I now rightfully own, then they can keep their shiny plastic and I'll keep my money. No sense in encouraging scumbags anyway.
And why would I bother paying Hollywood for movies that I won't be able to enjoy in the future? My uncle has a few thousand decaying VHS tapes which he won't be able to play 10 years from now. And of course, with the DRM on DVDs and thanks to the DMCA, when DVDs are obsolete, you will lose your investment. At least my uncle could copy VHS to DVD. But how long would that last when the next generation players enforce DRM?
So I've kind of given up on Hollywood and Big Music. It seems that they've become to wrapped up in their own hubris to realize that crippling content doesn't add to the value of the product. And yet, their stockholders continue to buy the old mantra, "Piracy is killing our business..." It's not piracy - it's lack of value. Why would a consumer buy something they legally can't own? The **AAs haven't figured out the American vision of entertainment is much different from their own. Americans:
By contrast, the RIAA and MPAA envision this model of consumer enjoyment:
So, even those of us who would be otherwise honest must face a decision:
So, is tv relevant anymore? Not when I can't enjoy it. Same for music and video - I'm enjoying public domain works now and independent stuff that I glean from the Net. Yes, I can afford to pay for my content, but why would I pay if I can't own it anyway?
The RIAA/MPAA can't seem to understand that individual ownership and the rights that come with it are a fundamental part of selling content. If you don't want to give up control, don't sell the content.
That Google bends over backwards when it comes to Chinese censorship, but stonewalls the U.S. Justice Department when it comes to our civil liberties?
Why do oppressive regimes get special treatment?
Oh wait, you were using the contraction for it is - which is perfectly valid, even if it doesn't look right. Wonder how many grammer nazis impulsively wanted to correct you for using an apostrophe in its...
Now I can just paint my body with this to avoid the mind control rays!
From the article:
We have been looking for our designer in all the wrong places. It seems we owe our existence to viruses, the least of semiliving forms, and about the only thing they have in common with any sort of theological prime mover is their omnipresence and invisibility....
And, of course, their intelligent design. Few things in the biological world accomplish so much with so little complexity as a virus. Relatively speaking, they are lean and mean, optimized for their particular function. Think of them as the hand-optimized assembly code of the biological world.
I'm growing weary of psuedo-intellectuals spouting off politically correct claptrap without any regard for critical thought whatsoever. There was nothing in the article which disproved, or even significantly weakened the case for intelligent design. In fact, the key claim of Intelligent Design - that a statistically random organization of DNA sequences would not produce a viable organism isn't even discussed. If anything, the presence of viruses in the evolutionary chain would only reinforce this claim, because 1.) their DNA sequences are much more crucial to their survival than in other types of organisms, and 2.) they are not a viable organism apart from their host.
Granted, I don't like the ID argument because of its statistical basis, but this latest research does nothing to disprove intelligent design or theories of a benevolent Creator. Perhaps if the author had really thought about this critically he would have realized that as exciting as this discovery is, it does nothing to weaken the ID argument. It is science, not theology!
This was a scientific, not theological discovery. Why does the author confuse the two?
Disclaimer: I'm an engineer who develops video cameras.
I kind of hate to turn this into a shameless plug, but my company has been developing exactly what you need. We've got a linux-based network camera which would be perfect for your application. Google Ingenient Technologies.
Okay, now here's the problem: We are an engineering firm - we sell the reference design to other companies which actually manufacture and market the hardware. However, we might be able to work something out with an intermediary company if the order was large enough.
From the article:
You don't go there because the beer tastes different than from in the bar next door, but because of the people who are there...
Actually, I do choose the bar based on the quality of the brew. I'm not about to drink some American Mega-Swill just so I can have a chat with the local drunks.
But, given the writing, it is clear the author thinks us just a bunch of drunken idiots anyway. Anyone who thinks everything worthwhile can be - or has to be - bought has nothing worth anything.
Actually, you need not selectively disregard those large portions of text if you allow recognition of the author's intent. Genesis was not written nor intended to be a scientifically accurate depiction of the creation of the Universe, but rather to show the relationship between God and his creation, and how mankind is supposed to relate to God and said creation. The depictions of the creation of the world were given in terms with which the reader of the time would be familiar.
In fact, it is kind of interesting that our notion of time is a relatively recent invention. Imagine having to explain the Big Bang to an audience whose shortest concept of time is the day. Does it really surprise anyone that the author of Genesis chose to relate a near instantaneous event as "God spoke..." How else would a 12th century BCE writer depict it? And why would you bother with exact notions of time if the subject of your discourse is the relationship between a supernatural deity and mankind? Does anyone really believe that the Genesis account includes everything God did when creating the world?
And the notion of religion being incompatible with rational thought is likewise bunk. It was the Church that started the university system, and the Church that funded most of the scientific endeavors before government sponsorship became widespread. Is it any surprise that the scientific research leans toward supporting atheist philosophy when funded by states which pride themselves on the "Separation of Church and State?" The sad fact of the matter is that, at least in the U.S., any scientist which endorses a theory which coincides with a religious tenet risks being ostracized by the scientific community, regardless of the merit of his claims. In the U.S. at least, there is no true science when it comes to matters such as evolution: your choice as a researcher is to either tow the atheist party line, or risk being called a creationist. There is no serious skepticism with regard to evolution, and this is a considerable weakness for a discipline that wasn't a true science until the 19th century.
In fact, it requires a suspension of critical thought to believe the philosophy of evolution. While recent research has made good strides in areas such as microevolution, the fact that the popular notion of evolution can be disproved by any competent statistician does not bode well for biology. It isn't the least bit unreasonable or irrational to be skeptical of a discipline that wasn't even a true science until the 19th century. If the early theories of evolution had been subjected to the rigorous scrutiny that physics and chemistry required:
The problem is not religion vs. science; it is that biology has accepted theories without the rigorous scrutiny emblematic of other disciplines. It deserves to be ridiculed because it claimed to be a science while denying the healthy skepticism essential to determining truth. In short, it became the religion of materialists, and lost its true commitment to scientific truth.
Actually, we call that politics. If you look at the difference between religious and atheist regimes, atheist regimes almost always commit atrocities on a scale far greater than religious ones. Consider the likes of Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, etc... Granted, they didn't sacrifice virgins to the gods (a practice which died out thousands of years ago), but they sacrificed millions of innocent lives for the "promise of a better tomorrow" Read up on communism sometime.
And your comment about humanities was assinine. As was your insistence on comparing God to a petulant 5 year old. God doesn't hide his existence from mankind - if He did, why do so many people believe in him? Do you expect us to believe that the whole world - apart from a few atheists - is really just a bunch of morons who do whatever people tell them, and believe whatever their told? Anyone who has studied history and the multitude of political revolutions in Western culture alone would know better than to think that.
Not that I think you're a bad person, but I keep hearing this same anti-religious mantra repeated over and over, without any proof. Usually, when proof is offered, it is limited to a very specific time and place, ignoring the rest of recorded history. I'm not so narrow minded, and I think the dogmatic insistence of an anti-religious sentiment only shows that someone is unwilling to learn.
Actually, I kind of regard the absence of religious belief as an indicator of lack of intelligence. The willingness to arbitrarily ignore 4,000 years of human experience suggests that they lack the intelligence necessary to cope with difficult and sometimes contradictory data. Most intelligence tests are necessarily limited to solving only a narrow range of problems; typically, these problems involve relationships which are discrete, linear, and seldom go beyond anything mathematical in nature. Asking someone to explain why one painting is better visually composed than another requires a large degree of intelligence, but unfortunately, such explanations cannot be objectively rated. Thus, a large part of what constitutes human intelligence - that is, perception and judgement, and even learning, are simply not tested.
It's getting to the point where the whole science vs. religion debate is really for the infantile. Anyone with an open mind and a little dilligence can figure out the two are not opposed to each other. Rather, it is when supposedly educated people confuse a religious philosophy (naturalism) for science that things get heated. Trust me, no one in the Vatican is staying up late because someone is sequencing DNA in a lab somewhere. Rather, it is when naturalist dogma is spewed from scientists that people get all fired up:
If you had actually read Darwin's Black Box, you would find that Micheal Behe, et al, are actually very specific in defining what they mean by terms such as "intelligence", "choice", and "irreducible complexity". Within the context of these definitions, their arguments make very good sense.
But the most notable ID proponents are philosophers, not scientists, and it is disingenious to insist on treating their work as science. It is not, and those who insist on denigrating ID as if it were science only show their pedantry.
After all, who argues against teaching the works of Aristotle because it isn't science? Just because something isn't strictly scientific does not mean it is lacking in intellectual value.
So, IOW, the author thinks Massachusetts shouldn't be locked into Microsoft Office formats, yet goes on to say:
We've seen government operate at its most efficient when it promotes competition. The Massachusetts policy would instead direct contracts to just a few technology providers, while many would be locked out.But apparently embracing only one, proprietary, patent-protected format won't lock anybody out. Instead, everyone is free to compete, as long as Microsoft gives them permission, right?
Oh, I get it: we're not locking anybody out of the market, we're just locking Massachusetts in to Microsoft... Every one is free to use this wonderful standard, as long as only Microsoft gets paid.
Could you be more hippocritical?
At the risk of sounding trollish, I think it's kind of naive to expect Windows to be secured. I've been watching MS since the Windows 3.1 days, and I've never seen any improvement in regard to security. Sure, Microsoft talks a lot about it when their customers talk about it, but they don't actually do much toward that end. Why people still expect such a fundamentally flawed OS to be secure real soon now is beyond me. If Microsoft hasn't produced a secure OS in 20 years of business, what makes you think they're going to change now?
And honestly, I don't blame them. Windows was designed to put multimedia on the desktop, and turn the PC into a consumer-class appliance. And toward that end, Microsoft has been very successful. They know how to do the ease-of-use and multimedia stuff. Security isn't their strong suit. So what?
You probably know the saying about using tools for the purpose they were designed. If Windows is a tool, it was designed for games, not security, so don't expect it. If you want security, run Linux or UNIX, or perhaps an IBM mainframe. But don't install Windows on your machine and then start whining about how insecure it is. If your box gets owned, well, you've got only yourself to blame, because you knew Windows was insecure when you installed it.
If you must run Windows, just accept the fact that you're going to have to format and reinstall every year or so. This is what the rest of the world does, but here on ./, there's this expectation that computers can run forever without crashing. That might have been true when the mainframes and UNIXes were king, but now, for the average person, insecure systems are a fact of life.
Why not wait until you have a solution to the security problem before disclosing the problem?
Granted, I understand that closed-source must make this difficult, but even so, a researcher who understands enough about a system to break it must surely understand enough to come up with a workaround.
I know it is a lot easier to find flaws than fix them, but unless a researcher is willing to offer a fix, disclosure of security flaws doesn't do much to help:
Sometimes I wonder if those who inappropriately post security vulnerabilities are more concerned with self-promotion than actually helping out the community.
Why can't society accept the fact that males and females are specialized for different roles? Why can't we respect those roles?
Don't women understand that when they try to be "just like men" that they are denigrating the role that women play in society? By lifting up the corporate success as the ideal to which we should aspire, society is teaching women that it's ok to be a woman, but better to be a man. Where is the respect due motherhood? Why does our society denigrate as "old-fashioned" women who commit their entire lives to their families?
Do women really believe they'll make a better contribution to society by getting a corporate job as opposed to raising children?
As religion has studied the full spectrum of mankind's endeavors, it only makes sense that they would be the best qualified to determine "what it means to be human." While science can inform us about the material aspects, it does not possess the ability, nor the intention, to tackle this particular question. But this does not keep atheist philosophers from treating science as if it were the gospel truth, and insisting on belittling any dissension as "religious dogma" - as if such was irrelevant to the discussion.
The interesting thing to me is that there's a greater consensus on the existence of God among theologians than there is global warming among scientists, yet some treat the existence of God as unproven and global warming as fact!