Re:Scientists need to stop playing God!
on
The Los Alamos Bug
·
· Score: 2, Funny
But at some point we run the risk of creating a new life that will seek to perpetuate its survival at the expense of our own.
Science without restraint and wisdom is as superstitious and downright dangerous as the more irrational aspects of religion.
Religion at its worst will keep us in the dark ages, while science at its worst will lead to a runaway extinction event by means of environmental pollution or epidemic.
As I said, you're right. And no one else would step in to maintain or develop it. Oh poor GCC, the orphan child of OSS, no one but RedHat could do it justice. Oh what ever did GNU/Linux do before RedHat?
So when Windows VISTA comes out and they ram DRM so far up our butts that we can't even walk straight without getting arrested for a DMCA violation, and Linux is not there to bail us out (especially as far as video converting/processing and gaming are concerned), what will you say then?
I use Linux because I'd like to see MicroSoft destroyed. For freedom's sake.
not to mention corporate hegemony (complete domination over all hardware manufacturers that deal with MS).
That's why MicroSoft fears Linux so much - you can get the same level of security, or far better, for free, given enough (freely obtained as opposed to MSDN subscribed) knowledge.
And you would not want to pay for home security what you pay to secure a Windows PC... that and it's next to impossible to secure a Windows machine no matter how much stuff you buy.
Bush lied to the entire country and troops are dying, plus he's nominating his own personal lawyer with NO experience as a judge, to the Supreme Court. We seriously need an impeachment here.
(Hot dang, this place is thick with neo conservative mods!!)
Just so you know, malpractice premiums do not decrease for doctors in states where malpractice awards are capped to $250,000. Most lawsuits are launched when doctors maim or kill patients due to negligence, not because of highly publicized frivolous reasons. Your analogy is flawed, to say the least.
Now let's get back on topic. It's wrong for people to make excuses for bugs in code which expose my personal information to hackers, stalkers and marketers. I'd just as soon see the industry grind to a halt until they find a way to nip these miscreants in the bud. And no, I can't opt out of this dangerous system unless I stop driving (so much for being able to get food), close my bank account (yeah, hide my money under my bed so a thief has a reason to physically rob me and then kill my whole family to get rid of witnesses), declare myself dead (to retire my SSN - whoops, that's illegal, welcome to Club Fed! - or at least, welcome to joblessness) and practically move out of the country (well, actually that's a good idea if Canada is my destination).
Thanks to stupid programmers there's absolutely no way anyone can protect themselves from identity thieves. The only reason why someone hasn't hijacked you is that they don't care to.
Now please, come back after you find yourself having to fight for years to fix your credit after a hacker stole your personal information off Lexis-Nexis and then tell me they shouldn't stop the digital train for some major overhauls. Until you're a victim of the gaping flaws in the digital fortress you really don't understand the sharpness of that sword of Damocles that is swinging back and forth over your head.
Very well said... but the problem with the possibility of the desktop being relegated to gaming and video work is, consoles are currently winning the gaming tug of war with PCs (although this may change as console controllers cannot possibly handle RTS's or other more complex games that require mice and keyboards). That leaves video work, which could mean desktops get sold at a premium price because there are fewer companies involved in making them (hence less price competition). Very scary indeed.
BTW my laptop has wifi, an ethernet port, a second monitor port and 3 USB ports plus 1 firewire port. I never use the PCMCIA for anything, though I could slap in an Audigy PCMCIA card for better sound. It is almost already its own docking station, practically speaking, unless I need a stronger video card or a bigger keyboard (and I might be able to jack in a USB keyboard).
A laptop maxes out at 15 pounds for last generation's biggest and fattest. Ever been a parent with an infant over 2 months old? They're far heavier and they squirm. And they like to be held. A LOT.:D
That off-topic point aside, I would suggest you never be wired into your job when you're out with your laptop off hours. Also, I use my laptop to jot down ideas when I'm writing, and it also carries my music and quite a few anime movies. I could of course use a really expensive and high-end PDA to do this too, but I can more readily install RedHat on my laptop than my PDA. Being that my laptop is not a gaming machine it provides me with a fairly distraction-free environment to write my stories, do homework, etc.
That being said, I'd be mad pissed if desktops went away. I use a workstation styled desktop machine at home to play games, especially real time simulators (warcraft, starcraft, etc) that no console can possibly work well with (try moving a dozen individual units around different places with any level of agility with a PS2 / Xbox controller... please, do!). My desktop machine also serves as a highly agile archive system with 2 DVD burners and several terabytes of firewire HD space online. I can back up stuff off my laptop to my desktop machine and so on.
To me, the relationship between the laptop and the desktop is my laptop is my starship and my desktop is my starbase. I would not desire a computer market in which the former or the latter has been deprecated.
[So what you're saying is that your wife doesn't love you, but you make her feel comfortable and secure so she'll do anything to keep you around? And do you know poor people have sex too? Quite a bit more than rich people, I hear that's been going on for many many years. It has some thing to do with two people enjoying sex, coming together, liking each other, thinking the other person is attractive or whatever, and somehow they end up having sex. Money doesn't usually enter it unless the person is shallow and just looking for money, then it becomes important.]
Well said, very well said. And very underrated, moderation-wise.
This is how I would make a profit off of Linux, if I were of the mindset to do so.
Linux of any sort is pretty much free (as in GPL'd), so it's hard if not impossible for me to sell you the uncompiled version. This is a given.
But I can sell service instead. I could sell you the hard work I did to compile everything and make sure it works fine together. That saves a lot of people time, and in business time means money. To compile it for the 64bit systems, I could assert that it's twice as difficult, ergo twice as expensive.
But then that pricing model is endangered the moment someone hand compiles their own version of the source code, puts it out in the wild, and has it polished by a million other contributors into a fork distribution that can be passed around via bittorrent for free.
Countering that, I can imply my version is more stable than those "garage hack" distros, and the phb's and store managers might be dum^H^H^Hconvinced enough to believe me and purchase my boxed laminated product.
Mononoke's story line does not resemble Spirited Away does not resemble Porco Rosso does not resemble Castle in the Sky does not resemble Totoro does not resemble Kiki's Delivery Service.
The one thing that many Miyazaki cartoons have in common, though, is that kids can watch them. This is especially true for Kiki's Delivery Service, Totoro, Spirited Away, and Castle in the Sky Laputa.
This is why I say Miyazaki reminds me of the old Disney in that he's creating stories that people will remember.
Slashdot Mirror
But at some point we run the risk of creating a new life that will seek to perpetuate its survival at the expense of our own.
Science without restraint and wisdom is as superstitious and downright dangerous as the more irrational aspects of religion.
Religion at its worst will keep us in the dark ages, while science at its worst will lead to a runaway extinction event by means of environmental pollution or epidemic.
There has to be a balance.
A single, neutered cat? Or all cats of the same gender? No problemo there.
Send a buncha cats out to find that rat.
Trust me, they'll find the bugger...
Greenpeace Crolis?
(This ain't offtopic or a troll... old school Anime fans might know why I say that, lol!)
that low end and high end tech jobs are moving overseas and that plenty of graduates today are out of work and changing careers?
THIS is why tech careers are so unpopular as a major in college now.
This might be the future of VeriSign:
www.paypalwarning.com (notice that this site hasn't been taken down due to libel)
www.paypalsucks.com (ditto)
Habitual VeriSign customers using VeriSign to collect payments may be wise to abandon ship.
Judges do not cost all that much any more.
As I said, you're right. And no one else would step in to maintain or develop it. Oh poor GCC, the orphan child of OSS, no one but RedHat could do it justice. Oh what ever did GNU/Linux do before RedHat?
[sarcasm off]
Before RedHat came along, there was no GCC.
So when Windows VISTA comes out and they ram DRM so far up our butts that we can't even walk straight without getting arrested for a DMCA violation, and Linux is not there to bail us out (especially as far as video converting/processing and gaming are concerned), what will you say then?
I use Linux because I'd like to see MicroSoft destroyed. For freedom's sake.
Does natural selection not lead to intelligent design? :)
not to mention corporate hegemony (complete domination over all hardware manufacturers that deal with MS).
That's why MicroSoft fears Linux so much - you can get the same level of security, or far better, for free, given enough (freely obtained as opposed to MSDN subscribed) knowledge.
And you would not want to pay for home security what you pay to secure a Windows PC... that and it's next to impossible to secure a Windows machine no matter how much stuff you buy.
Clinton was impeached for a blowjob.
Bush lied to the entire country and troops are dying, plus he's nominating his own personal lawyer with NO experience as a judge, to the Supreme Court. We seriously need an impeachment here.
(Hot dang, this place is thick with neo conservative mods!!)
I don't care if it's a huge corporation or the joe next door, I demand the right to redress when their product doesn't work.
I will do everything I can to prevent America from descending back to the state of yankee capitalism caveat emptor that your post obviously envisions.
Ultimately it's also bad for business because if no one can trust their crap then they will all lose business, not just the miscreant company.
Just so you know, malpractice premiums do not decrease for doctors in states where malpractice awards are capped to $250,000. Most lawsuits are launched when doctors maim or kill patients due to negligence, not because of highly publicized frivolous reasons. Your analogy is flawed, to say the least.
Now let's get back on topic. It's wrong for people to make excuses for bugs in code which expose my personal information to hackers, stalkers and marketers. I'd just as soon see the industry grind to a halt until they find a way to nip these miscreants in the bud. And no, I can't opt out of this dangerous system unless I stop driving (so much for being able to get food), close my bank account (yeah, hide my money under my bed so a thief has a reason to physically rob me and then kill my whole family to get rid of witnesses), declare myself dead (to retire my SSN - whoops, that's illegal, welcome to Club Fed! - or at least, welcome to joblessness) and practically move out of the country (well, actually that's a good idea if Canada is my destination).
Thanks to stupid programmers there's absolutely no way anyone can protect themselves from identity thieves. The only reason why someone hasn't hijacked you is that they don't care to.
Now please, come back after you find yourself having to fight for years to fix your credit after a hacker stole your personal information off Lexis-Nexis and then tell me they shouldn't stop the digital train for some major overhauls. Until you're a victim of the gaping flaws in the digital fortress you really don't understand the sharpness of that sword of Damocles that is swinging back and forth over your head.
This is supposed to mean what? That it's a good thing because it's happening already?
Very well said... but the problem with the possibility of the desktop being relegated to gaming and video work is, consoles are currently winning the gaming tug of war with PCs (although this may change as console controllers cannot possibly handle RTS's or other more complex games that require mice and keyboards). That leaves video work, which could mean desktops get sold at a premium price because there are fewer companies involved in making them (hence less price competition). Very scary indeed.
BTW my laptop has wifi, an ethernet port, a second monitor port and 3 USB ports plus 1 firewire port. I never use the PCMCIA for anything, though I could slap in an Audigy PCMCIA card for better sound. It is almost already its own docking station, practically speaking, unless I need a stronger video card or a bigger keyboard (and I might be able to jack in a USB keyboard).
A laptop maxes out at 15 pounds for last generation's biggest and fattest. Ever been a parent with an infant over 2 months old? They're far heavier and they squirm. And they like to be held. A LOT. :D
That off-topic point aside, I would suggest you never be wired into your job when you're out with your laptop off hours. Also, I use my laptop to jot down ideas when I'm writing, and it also carries my music and quite a few anime movies. I could of course use a really expensive and high-end PDA to do this too, but I can more readily install RedHat on my laptop than my PDA. Being that my laptop is not a gaming machine it provides me with a fairly distraction-free environment to write my stories, do homework, etc.
That being said, I'd be mad pissed if desktops went away. I use a workstation styled desktop machine at home to play games, especially real time simulators (warcraft, starcraft, etc) that no console can possibly work well with (try moving a dozen individual units around different places with any level of agility with a PS2 / Xbox controller... please, do!). My desktop machine also serves as a highly agile archive system with 2 DVD burners and several terabytes of firewire HD space online. I can back up stuff off my laptop to my desktop machine and so on.
To me, the relationship between the laptop and the desktop is my laptop is my starship and my desktop is my starbase. I would not desire a computer market in which the former or the latter has been deprecated.
[So what you're saying is that your wife doesn't love you, but you make her feel comfortable and secure so she'll do anything to keep you around? And do you know poor people have sex too? Quite a bit more than rich people, I hear that's been going on for many many years. It has some thing to do with two people enjoying sex, coming together, liking each other, thinking the other person is attractive or whatever, and somehow they end up having sex. Money doesn't usually enter it unless the person is shallow and just looking for money, then it becomes important.]
Well said, very well said. And very underrated, moderation-wise.
How long before they make nanites that can find cancerous cells and destroy them with extreme prejudice?
There was more story line in the opening sentence of episode 1 of Babylon 5 than all of the new Galactica combined.
SG-1 and Babylon 5 are the two best sci-fi series EVER. Oh well, at least they placed in the top ten...
This is how I would make a profit off of Linux, if I were of the mindset to do so.
Linux of any sort is pretty much free (as in GPL'd), so it's hard if not impossible for me to sell you the uncompiled version. This is a given.
But I can sell service instead. I could sell you the hard work I did to compile everything and make sure it works fine together. That saves a lot of people time, and in business time means money. To compile it for the 64bit systems, I could assert that it's twice as difficult, ergo twice as expensive.
But then that pricing model is endangered the moment someone hand compiles their own version of the source code, puts it out in the wild, and has it polished by a million other contributors into a fork distribution that can be passed around via bittorrent for free.
Countering that, I can imply my version is more stable than those "garage hack" distros, and the phb's and store managers might be dum^H^H^Hconvinced enough to believe me and purchase my boxed laminated product.
Mononoke's story line does not resemble Spirited Away does not resemble Porco Rosso does not resemble Castle in the Sky does not resemble Totoro does not resemble Kiki's Delivery Service.
The one thing that many Miyazaki cartoons have in common, though, is that kids can watch them. This is especially true for Kiki's Delivery Service, Totoro, Spirited Away, and Castle in the Sky Laputa.
This is why I say Miyazaki reminds me of the old Disney in that he's creating stories that people will remember.
Every time I see a Miyazaki movie I'm reminded of what Disney used to be.
How about something as simple as this.
The middle class is shrinking and the ranks of the poor and the rich are increasing.
Your statistics do not refute that; in fact, a closer look confirms it.
http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=249