How hard would it be to make an SMTP-to-RSS gateway? If you trust a server and know someone on it, subscribe to its feed using your own address to authenticate.
Granted, some stronger security would be be needed, but the basic concept is worth exploring.
I mostly agree, but for most uses I prefer Google Earth over Maps.
I don't expect it to be terribly long before Google Earth can run in a (non-IE) browser, though. The basic tech is all there; they just need to get Javascript and the Canvas optimized so that it works at a non-widget size.
Nah, Apple just needs to rent each of their employees a personal, can't-be-used-by-anyone-else computer. Then each employee does have a private i(Mac) license.
Or better yet, we could define some sort of standard bytecode that the client can compile on the fly to native code... Come up with some sort of "Web Start" technology...
Assuming you don't want to muck around with the Opera tech demo build or that Firefox plugin floating around somewhere, check out the Wii Opera SDK. It has several demos of 3D-style graphics using only JavaScript and the 2D canvas.
I don't know about the "Eclipse plugin" part, but I do suspect Microsoft has a contingency plan of that sort.
Move to a nix-y kernel, release a full.NET port; maybe fork wine, or just use some more dog-foody compatability layer.
I suspect they'd introduce/keep their own API, though. I wouldn't expect X Windows to be bundled with (let's say) "Windows X"; they likely would use the transition to more strongly push Windows Forms over the older system, though.
And of course, don't expect their addons to be Open Source, even if they do adopt the Linux kernel.
You can? There has been plenty of literature attempting to explain "the natural order" of things, but where have they succeeded in proving what one should value?
It's easy to show that say, child murder is ultimately detrimental to the species, but how can you objectively show that one should value the species' survival? How can an objective system fault the nihlist actively working toward extinction?
You seem convinced that there is a universal value system (and I do agree), but how do you justify it?
A value system without any objective basis is empty and without meaning. If you only base your morality on what "God" says, then your admitting that if God declared tomorrow that raping children was 'moral' it would, in fact, be moral. Most would respond "But God would NEVER declare such a thing moral." But you must ask: why not? If morality is arbitrary with no objective value, then the only thing separating the moral from the immoral is proclamation. Ask yourself this: Is God a moral being. He chooses the good because it is good and not arbitrarily, then God is not necessary to determine what is good. We merely need to ask the question "Why is the good good?" I pity the man who believes morality is an arbitrary thing as it strips morality altogether.
And no, you can't have it both ways either morality is
arbitrary: based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.
or it is
objective: not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts
If objective, they have an inherent and determinable value. If not, they have no real value whatsoever.
As I said earlier, an objective value system is an oxymoron. You can't have a value system rooted solely in facts, because facts are divorced from value. Objectivity deals in "was", "is", and "will". Not "should have" or "ought". Examine the world, take all the unbiased measurements you want, and you could put together a pretty comprehensive picture of how people interact, what human instinct is, perhaps even (if you consider human nature mechanistic enough) how to obtain any desired behavior from a human group by controlling stimuli. But that tells you nothing about what to do with your knowledge. Perhaps you know enough to turn the world into a psychological utopia- or a perfect dictatorship run by you. Your data won't tell you which result to work for. Your choice is thus either completely the result of your whims, or based on some absolute but subjective value system.
So yes, morality could be considered arbitrary. God is not good because "good is good"; rather, good is what God decides is good, and, being made in His image, those values are propagated to us.
Are your powers of rationality really that convoluted? A man is in a horrible accident, his head is severed. But medical break through has been made that can keep his body functioning indefinitely. Would we consider him a "human being"? Would it be murder to not provide this treatment?
Most consider the death of the brain to be the death of the being; all abortion does is kill the brain while it's still in a compressed state.
(Incidently, if the guy is an organ donor, then not preserving the body could well lead to another's death. Debatable if the connection is strong enough to be murder, but still a contributing factor.)
The fact, yes the fact, these cells have no powers of reason, no emotion, no rationality, no ability to physically feel. There is absolutely nothing about them that could be remotely considered sentient.
A person needn't know you're harming them for it to be wrong.
"Ohh, Ohhh, but what if it becomes Beethoven! Think of the potential!". If this were our measure of immorality then every man should be thrown in prison when he wastes he does not attempt to produce children with it. And every woman should be held accountable for not popping out a kid every year from the age of puberty until she is infertile. Think of the millions of potential Beethovens that were never born! Oh My!
They key difference, of course, is action. Intervening to reverse a previous intervention is not equivalent to the original intervention never happening. Not creating is not equivalent to destroying.
(And "potential" is irrelevant; the next Beethoven has just as much right to a shot at life as the next janitor, kid with Down Syndrome, or even Hitler.)
The problem with religion is, it's a belief not founded on any rationale. Beliefs differ. If you feel this way due to some religious roots, then just admit it.
Of course my religious beliefs inform my views. An objectively derivable value system is an oxymoron.
Of course, this means that you'll have no more right to impose that belief on people then you do to impose any of the other completely arbitrary and none nonsensical beliefs that are part of your religion.
So you believe. Can you justify that opinion any more strongly than I can mine?
Any law is the imposing of somebody's value system on another.
And just to toss this in, the almighty infallible Christian Bible never considered the destroying of a fetus "murder" either.
The definition of "murder" has typically meant "killing a human".
The Bible does seem to classify a fetus as human: "for I am a Nazarite, that is to say, consecrated to God from my mother's womb". Hard to consecrate a nonexistent person.
If only the good people on the right worried more about the living and less about small clumps of cells, undifferentiated from a developing rat. It is stunning how quickly they lose interest in helping other human beings just as soon as they've left the womb.
A valid criticism. Part of the reason I don't like to identify with the "right", in fact. At this point, they only pay lip service to the pro-life cause, which to a thoughtful follower, yes, covers the whole life span.
Regarding "why stop at embryos", there are three answers: First, the body intentionally produces a far larger number of gametes than even the most promiscuous individual could ever use; they are expected to die. On the other hand, the body takes very deliberate (albiet sometimes unsuccessful) efforts to keep an embryo alive.
Second, conception is the most clear-cut point to define the starting of a new individual; as all cells come from another, life tends to be very continuous at the low level, and yet at some point you end up with high-level independent organisms. Before conception, each cell can trace its lineage back to the same single stem cell as the trillions of other cells that we consider the parent's body. After conception, however, there are two immediate parent cells; the resulting line can't be considered to be part of the mother's body, as it can trace its lineage to the father, and vice-versa.
Third, there's the matter of action. Sperm and eggs will always die off unless there's *ahem* human intervention. The creation of an embryo is a deliberate act, as is destroying it.
If a rock falls on a man in the mountains and kills him, that's an accident. If somebody intentionally drops the rock, that's murder.
"kill"- to end the life process of. In the case of a multicellular organism, to end the functioning of the cells the bulk of the other cells depend on.
Whenever you start splitting hairs over what is and isn't human, you begin toeing a very fine line.
Today, it is considered obvious that race has no bearing on one's "human-ness". Back in the day however, it was used by many as criteria, as it was convenient to their purposes i.e. justifying slavery.
Is there any obvious reason why we shouldn't just consider all homo sapiens human? How are qualifiers justified?
In the many years man has been on earth, "human" has meant many things. Sometimes, it has meant "any homo sapiens individual". Other times, it has meant "only the folks in our tribe".
And as for tradition, the Spartans (among many others, just picking the iconic, though likely later, example) didn't seem too attached to their newborns, yet you implicitly condemned their practice of leaving unwanted children on hilltops.
An embryo may not be a completely developed human (a process that takes anywhere from 5 to 50 years, depending on who you talk to), but it is an individual homo sapiens.
It's hard to get a more technical definition of "human" than that.
Let's say that instead of someone beating the shit out of me, they're coming at me with a knife -- except that they're a surgeon performing a medical procedure I opted into. Is it still the police officer's job to "protect" me from something I'm doing by choice?
Of course not. But then, embryos certainly don't opt into the euphemistic "medical procedure" being performed upon them.
So it should be illegal for me to get a tumor cut out of me -- because a DNA test would show that it's human?
A tumor is a piece of a human, not a complete one- cut yours out, you live on, the rest of your cells surviving the loss.
An embryo, on the other hand, is the entire entity. Kill it, and an individual dies.
Hmm... make a hi-res model of a record, then all you need is a virtual needle. Collision detection with what is basically a heightmap shouldn't be comparatively difficult, and with a decent physics engine, you can even scratch it!
Audiophiles rejoice!
If you can remote execute code you can remote execute FTP Oh, that's what you meant. No, Windows doesn't do that. Flaws in its software might, but they're increasingly rare.
Though really, if you could remote execute code, why bother running FTP to download it? That's just redundant.
If Windows allows remote code execution, anything can be used to load and run remote code, including the built in ftp client. What???
I'm sorry, I can't even understand what you're trying to say there.
If by "remote code execution", you mean running downloaded files, any OS will do that.
Slashdot Mirror
How hard would it be to make an SMTP-to-RSS gateway? If you trust a server and know someone on it, subscribe to its feed using your own address to authenticate.
Granted, some stronger security would be be needed, but the basic concept is worth exploring.
Funny... I was just about to submit this to the Firehose. (PR-Speak Warning; skip to this if need be.)
So, they're being given money for an explicit service? That's not subsidizing; that's contracting.
When the town hall buys office supplies, are they subsidizing paper mills?
Sounds like HTML5, except for the "bare metal" part. Hmmm... maybe you could compile Firefox with Linux as a static library?
I'm by no means a Linux guru, but couldn't you just remove all other setuid programs and make "chroot" setuid?
#1 & #2 showcase another advantage of web apps: Students can use them on their personal computers without fuss.
I mostly agree, but for most uses I prefer Google Earth over Maps.
I don't expect it to be terribly long before Google Earth can run in a (non-IE) browser, though. The basic tech is all there; they just need to get Javascript and the Canvas optimized so that it works at a non-widget size.
Even better- microfiche. In a cursive font.
Nah, Apple just needs to rent each of their employees a personal, can't-be-used-by-anyone-else computer. Then each employee does have a private i(Mac) license.
Or better yet, we could define some sort of standard bytecode that the client can compile on the fly to native code... Come up with some sort of "Web Start" technology...
Assuming you don't want to muck around with the Opera tech demo build or that Firefox plugin floating around somewhere, check out the Wii Opera SDK. It has several demos of 3D-style graphics using only JavaScript and the 2D canvas.
Despite the name, it works in Firefox 3 as well.
Opera does that; see the "preferences" section of the customize toolbar window. Or just hit F12 to bring up a pop-up menu to configure the same.
I don't know about the "Eclipse plugin" part, but I do suspect Microsoft has a contingency plan of that sort.
.NET port; maybe fork wine, or just use some more dog-foody compatability layer.
Move to a nix-y kernel, release a full
I suspect they'd introduce/keep their own API, though. I wouldn't expect X Windows to be bundled with (let's say) "Windows X"; they likely would use the transition to more strongly push Windows Forms over the older system, though.
And of course, don't expect their addons to be Open Source, even if they do adopt the Linux kernel.
In short, see OS/X.
You can? There has been plenty of literature attempting to explain "the natural order" of things, but where have they succeeded in proving what one should value?
It's easy to show that say, child murder is ultimately detrimental to the species, but how can you objectively show that one should value the species' survival? How can an objective system fault the nihlist actively working toward extinction?
You seem convinced that there is a universal value system (and I do agree), but how do you justify it?
A value system without any objective basis is empty and without meaning. If you only base your morality on what "God" says, then your admitting that if God declared tomorrow that raping children was 'moral' it would, in fact, be moral. Most would respond "But God would NEVER declare such a thing moral." But you must ask: why not? If morality is arbitrary with no objective value, then the only thing separating the moral from the immoral is proclamation. Ask yourself this: Is God a moral being. He chooses the good because it is good and not arbitrarily, then God is not necessary to determine what is good. We merely need to ask the question "Why is the good good?" I pity the man who believes morality is an arbitrary thing as it strips morality altogether.
And no, you can't have it both ways either morality is
or it is
If objective, they have an inherent and determinable value. If not, they have no real value whatsoever.
As I said earlier, an objective value system is an oxymoron. You can't have a value system rooted solely in facts, because facts are divorced from value. Objectivity deals in "was", "is", and "will". Not "should have" or "ought". Examine the world, take all the unbiased measurements you want, and you could put together a pretty comprehensive picture of how people interact, what human instinct is, perhaps even (if you consider human nature mechanistic enough) how to obtain any desired behavior from a human group by controlling stimuli. But that tells you nothing about what to do with your knowledge. Perhaps you know enough to turn the world into a psychological utopia- or a perfect dictatorship run by you. Your data won't tell you which result to work for. Your choice is thus either completely the result of your whims, or based on some absolute but subjective value system.
So yes, morality could be considered arbitrary. God is not good because "good is good"; rather, good is what God decides is good, and, being made in His image, those values are propagated to us.
Are your powers of rationality really that convoluted? A man is in a horrible accident, his head is severed. But medical break through has been made that can keep his body functioning indefinitely. Would we consider him a "human being"? Would it be murder to not provide this treatment?
Most consider the death of the brain to be the death of the being; all abortion does is kill the brain while it's still in a compressed state.
(Incidently, if the guy is an organ donor, then not preserving the body could well lead to another's death. Debatable if the connection is strong enough to be murder, but still a contributing factor.)
The fact, yes the fact, these cells have no powers of reason, no emotion, no rationality, no ability to physically feel. There is absolutely nothing about them that could be remotely considered sentient.
A person needn't know you're harming them for it to be wrong.
"Ohh, Ohhh, but what if it becomes Beethoven! Think of the potential!". If this were our measure of immorality then every man should be thrown in prison when he wastes he does not attempt to produce children with it. And every woman should be held accountable for not popping out a kid every year from the age of puberty until she is infertile. Think of the millions of potential Beethovens that were never born! Oh My!
They key difference, of course, is action. Intervening to reverse a previous intervention is not equivalent to the original intervention never happening. Not creating is not equivalent to destroying.
(And "potential" is irrelevant; the next Beethoven has just as much right to a shot at life as the next janitor, kid with Down Syndrome, or even Hitler.)
The problem with religion is, it's a belief not founded on any rationale. Beliefs differ. If you feel this way due to some religious roots, then just admit it.
Of course my religious beliefs inform my views. An objectively derivable value system is an oxymoron.
Of course, this means that you'll have no more right to impose that belief on people then you do to impose any of the other completely arbitrary and none nonsensical beliefs that are part of your religion.
So you believe. Can you justify that opinion any more strongly than I can mine?
Any law is the imposing of somebody's value system on another.
And just to toss this in, the almighty infallible Christian Bible never considered the destroying of a fetus "murder" either.
The definition of "murder" has typically meant "killing a human". The Bible does seem to classify a fetus as human: "for I am a Nazarite, that is to say, consecrated to God from my mother's womb". Hard to consecrate a nonexistent person.
If only the good people on the right worried more about the living and less about small clumps of cells, undifferentiated from a developing rat. It is stunning how quickly they lose interest in helping other human beings just as soon as they've left the womb.
A valid criticism. Part of the reason I don't like to identify with the "right", in fact. At this point, they only pay lip service to the pro-life cause, which to a thoughtful follower, yes, covers the whole life span.
Regarding "why stop at embryos", there are three answers:
First, the body intentionally produces a far larger number of gametes than even the most promiscuous individual could ever use; they are expected to die. On the other hand, the body takes very deliberate (albiet sometimes unsuccessful) efforts to keep an embryo alive.
Second, conception is the most clear-cut point to define the starting of a new individual; as all cells come from another, life tends to be very continuous at the low level, and yet at some point you end up with high-level independent organisms. Before conception, each cell can trace its lineage back to the same single stem cell as the trillions of other cells that we consider the parent's body. After conception, however, there are two immediate parent cells; the resulting line can't be considered to be part of the mother's body, as it can trace its lineage to the father, and vice-versa.
Third, there's the matter of action. Sperm and eggs will always die off unless there's *ahem* human intervention. The creation of an embryo is a deliberate act, as is destroying it.
If a rock falls on a man in the mountains and kills him, that's an accident. If somebody intentionally drops the rock, that's murder.
"kill"- to end the life process of. In the case of a multicellular organism, to end the functioning of the cells the bulk of the other cells depend on.
"individual" - an instance of a structure.
Whenever you start splitting hairs over what is and isn't human, you begin toeing a very fine line.
Today, it is considered obvious that race has no bearing on one's "human-ness". Back in the day however, it was used by many as criteria, as it was convenient to their purposes i.e. justifying slavery.
Is there any obvious reason why we shouldn't just consider all homo sapiens human? How are qualifiers justified?
In the many years man has been on earth, "human" has meant many things. Sometimes, it has meant "any homo sapiens individual". Other times, it has meant "only the folks in our tribe".
And as for tradition, the Spartans (among many others, just picking the iconic, though likely later, example) didn't seem too attached to their newborns, yet you implicitly condemned their practice of leaving unwanted children on hilltops.
An embryo may not be a completely developed human (a process that takes anywhere from 5 to 50 years, depending on who you talk to), but it is an individual homo sapiens.
It's hard to get a more technical definition of "human" than that.
Let's say that instead of someone beating the shit out of me, they're coming at me with a knife -- except that they're a surgeon performing a medical procedure I opted into. Is it still the police officer's job to "protect" me from something I'm doing by choice?
Of course not. But then, embryos certainly don't opt into the euphemistic "medical procedure" being performed upon them.
So it should be illegal for me to get a tumor cut out of me -- because a DNA test would show that it's human?
A tumor is a piece of a human, not a complete one- cut yours out, you live on, the rest of your cells surviving the loss.
An embryo, on the other hand, is the entire entity. Kill it, and an individual dies.
Hmm... make a hi-res model of a record, then all you need is a virtual needle. Collision detection with what is basically a heightmap shouldn't be comparatively difficult, and with a decent physics engine, you can even scratch it!
Audiophiles rejoice!
Though really, if you could remote execute code, why bother running FTP to download it? That's just redundant.
I'm sorry, I can't even understand what you're trying to say there.
If by "remote code execution", you mean running downloaded files, any OS will do that.