Well God never said cussing was a sin. You just can't use his name in vain.
Funny; I tend to think of the word "god" as being a title rather than a name. It's like "lord", "captain", "sir", "lieutenant", etc. By contrast, *names* of gods include "Aphrodite", "Loki", "Yahweh", "Kal-El", "Amaterasu", etc.
I was going to put "Papa Smurf" in the second list when I realized that's not a proper name either.
That's right: Papa Smurf. Bow down and praise him, bitches!
excellent. i'm sick of these richard dawkins-types who condescendingly think they have all the answers.
Those types never said they have all answers. (But if you have a counterexample, I would be willing to stand corrected.) And the answers that they do have tend to be pretty well substantiated. Take for example the establishment of common ancestry by comparisons of genomes. But do not mistake the kind of confidence that results from a firm grip on a specific subject for a delusion of omniscience. Also note that these people tend to promote a willingness to change their own opinions when new evidence challenges said opinions.
i'm native myself, and a bit of an animist by choice, as well as a firm believer in science...but who are you to tell me i'm wrong?
What harm do you think is done by calling bullshit? Do you think it's worse than the harm that may result from failing to face up to the nature of reality implied by observable evidence, and if so, why?
It's not defective, RMS et al: it's a CHOICE. You purport to like choice, but no one believes you anymore. Many consumers don't care, and even LIKE, the idea of being locked in to the App Store, because it introduces a significant amount of safety.
So, apparently you think the choice is between (1) being able to download software from Apple's app store and (2) having software distributed directly by 3rd parties to users (as with desktop PCs). Why not give each user the power to decide whether they will choose only (1) or only (2) or both (1) and (2)? Part of the FSF's point is that Apple has taken away some of the user's power of choice.
If we leave 1 intact, intellectual works have a far greater benefit to everyone. The challenge is to come up with a way to satisfy 3, without harming 1 and 2. The free-market solution to problems like this is to allow market participants to come up with innovative solutions. Those that solve the problem best stand to make the most profit, so there is incentive.
To me it seems you assume it's possible, under your proposed scenario, for a viable solution to exist for most copyright holders. To many of us it is not obvious that this is the case and it feels natural to assume differently.
IMO, the current system is *close* to being workable for all (or most) parties; the main problem, as I see it, is that the duration of exclusive rights has effectively become infinite when, in the age of instant global distribution, it should probably be no more than something like ten years. (And there are probably a lot of special cases that could reasonably trigger either instant release into Public Domain or a small extension of copyright.)
Also, I think you're missing an item in your list:
4. The probability of creation of a valuable intellectual work is multiplied by the extent to which the would-be creator(s) have a fair opportunity to be compensated for the act of creation.
Note that this sort of feeds into item 2: no one can benefit from a work if it's never created in the first place. So whatever we do, we really, really need something better than your personal faith in the market's ability to heal all that ails. Obviously, the market provides a lot of nice solutions to a lot of problems. I like the market for that reason. But the market does not---cannot---solve every problem. To assume that it can seems akin to assuming that natural selection *necessarily* leads to the "higher functions" of humanity (e.g. language, music, etc.) when in fact it's entirely possible for natural selection to lead many species into extinction. (And reflect on the fact that the vast majority of branches on the tree of life do not reach the present day.) So please do not underestimate the potential of the market to screw people over.
Why do I care if someone is irrationally terrified of something?
Because the set of all irrationally terrified people includes voters and some (if not most) of the policy-makers that said voters elect. It is therefore in everyone's interest for better-informed people to demonstrate and make clear the cases where an imagined threat is either (a) not real or (b) not severe enough to warrant action. And those demonstrations must be delivered to the general public, and they must come as earl early and often as possible and grab as much attention as possible.
Ok; so why do you buy into the idea that "I" was a "complete human being" at the point of genotype establishment? What are the foundations of that assertion? What evidence would you cite?
BTW JeanPaulBob, I'm not really asking about biology here; I'm asking about the foundations of why you think the life of a zygote is worth as much as the life of an adult. And merely stating that the would-be adult and the zygote have the same genotype isn't a satisfying answer. And citing the survival needs of the zygote isn't a satisfying answer. There are some drastic practical differences in form and function between zygote and infant, and I'd like to know why those differences shouldn't matter, because there's tons of evidence (particularly from neuroscience) indicating that they *do* matter .
And I don't buy the idea that at any of the stages of your development, you were less than a human organism, or that there's any distinction between human organism and human being, or between human being and "person with rights to be protected".
Ok; so why do you buy into the idea that "I" was a "complete human being" at the point of genotype establishment? What are the foundations of that assertion? What evidence would you cite?
Every time in the past that people have accepted such distinctions, we've come to realize the horror of what we were allowing, endorsing, or even praising.
Regardless of definitions of "human being", "person", and so on: I don't understand what you're talking about. What "horror"? Please describe the nature of suffering that results (potentially or actually) from the destruction of a blastocyst. Or if that's not possible, please explain why you think the horror you mention has some actual referent outside your imagination.
I'm asking because I don't merely want to verbally tear into right-to-lifers; I honestly want to understand where you're coming from, and so far your position doesn't make sense to me, and I don't even see how it makes sense to you.
Also: I recognize that you don't agree with my position (briefly: "components of brain clearly generate components of the mind; therefore 'no brain' strongly indicates 'no person', for some definition of 'person' that includes the existence of emotions, impulses, perceptions and the like"). But do you at least understand how it makes sense to me?
Or perhaps that was kind of your point? I.e. that the original idea of 'soul' grew out of a culture that knew practically nothing about biology, so we should expect the 'soul injection' argument to make little sense. It would be like trying to graft ancient peoples' beliefs involving the Greek god Helios onto what astrophysicists are now able to tell us about the solar system.
As regards soul, the greco-roman ideal was that there was an ethereal substance, soul. I don't know when they thought it arrived at the body. Hebrew (language of OT) word for soul literally meant 'that which breathes' Also, blood is equated with soul in OT.
I was not aware of the supposed equivalence to blood.:-)
I wonder if you don't mind answering me this, what, other than nourishment, oxygen, and protection (albeit in relatively unorthodox ways), does a living (as in respiring) blastocyst or embryo or fetus need from anything?
I don't know the answer; sorry. I Am Not A Developmental Biologist.
In answer to your further questions in other posts about gametes, no human beings have 1/2 genetic code of any other human beings. However, AFAIK the zygote that became "NeutralStone" had the exact same DNA that you do now.
What differentiates Humans from other great Apes? Our DNA. When does that happen? At fertilization.
Sorry; did you mean to ask, "When does *DNA* happen?" If so then I don't understand your question. I do recognize fertilization as the point where my present-day genotype was established, and since I have no twin, I understand that my genotype is unique. I also understand that my genotype resulted from a kind of fusion of chromosomes from my parents' gametes.
Were you just checking to make sure of all that?:-) Was there some point you wanted to make?
Unless I misread the article. It seems they found a way to make Adult Stem Cells behave like embryonic stem cells.
The moral issue of Stem Cells isn't the Stem Cells but the fact that if you needed Embryonic Stem Cells you needed to Abort/Terminate/Kill/(whatever verb you think best describes the process) the fetus.
Be careful with the terms! A fetus is *never* involved in *embryonic* stem cell research. Instead,
blastocysts
are employed.
An embryo left in a Petri dish has the same chance to develop into an adult as an newborn infant abandoned in the woods.
It's already a "human". It doesn't need to develop into one. It's a human organism--as opposed to sperm or unfertilized eggs, which are part of a human organism. (Even outside the body, it's still a "part" in the same way that a heart outside the body is a "part".) All it needs is nourishment and friendly environment--while sperm is a body part that has to combine with another body part in order to form a new organism.
So, for a moment let's set aside uses of the term "human", since different people want to use different definitions and that's confusing.
Are you saying that a sperm cell should not be regarded as having rights because it's not able to grow into an adult without coming into contact with an egg?
In that case, it seems you have a similar problem with blastocysts: *they* don't grow into later-state embryos (let alone adults) if they fail to bind to the uterine wall (and that failure naturally happens quite often). What is it about the difference between:
the sperm's dependence on the egg and
the blastocyst's dependence on the uterus
that it causes you to see one as "deserving rights" and not the other?
And the anti-ESCR crowd objects to said destruction because...well it's not clear. I gather that some of them think a "soul" is injected into a zygote at the moment of its formation. (Of course, the meaning of that sentence hinges on what you think a "soul" is, and I rarely get a satisfactory definition out of religious types.)
Perhaps it's based on the idea that all human beings should be protected the same way, regardless of size or level of development?
If you want the definition of the term "human being" to include blastocysts, would you also want gametes included?
If not: why not? Is it merely that each sperm and each egg only has half the genetic material of the organism that produced it? But in that case why didn't you take the position that a human being should be protected even if it only has half the genes of more "developed" human beings? [Note, I normally do not regard sperm or egg cells as human beings.]
If so: how about the cells that produced the gametes? How about skin cells? If someone gives you a paper cut, have they committed genocide?
Why is "possessing neurons" the criterion?
Because without neurons, there's none of the kind of information processing that makes a person: no concepts, no dreams, no emotion, no "instinct", no impulses, no more capacity for suffering---or for anything else---than a colony of bacteria, no perception of any kind---nothing.
(At this point some people like to say that there is *potential* for the blastocyst to grow into something else that has the biological machinery for those things. And while that is true it is somehow not compelling. Does each *potential* life have an *inalienable right* to be made *actual*? I don't know of any reasonable way to answer "yes" to that question.)
For the purpose of deciding whether a given entity has some inalienable universal right, we have to draw the line somewhere. Maybe someday we *will* recognize each bacterium as deserving said rights, and presumably around that time it would be consistent to do the same with each cell in a blastocyst. Until then, I think it's ok to say that "someone" isn't human if "they" don't have at least one iota of the hardware that makes it possible for the rest of us to exhibit the things that make us human.
The capacity to feel pain? (So if we kill someone after applying anaesthesia or while they're asleep, is that OK?)
No, it's not ok. The difference is that there's an *actual* person there (and not just a *potential* person). Not only does that entity have the *capacity* for all those wonderful mental activities, *it's actually doing many of them every minute of every day*, even while sleeping. (Though we tend not to notice the latter as much. But talk to your local neuroscientist who specializes in sleep studdies; it's fascinating stuff.) Besides: your hypothetical someone also probably wanted to go on living. That's another thing that sets him/her apart from the blastocyst out of which that person grew.
You think that while we're still developing the capacity to think, our rights are still "developing"?
I don't know. There may be a time (say, when we really understand the nature of consciousness) when our understanding permits us to apply more fine-grained rules. For now, for practical purposes, all of us demand *some* kind of boundary (whether stark or gradual, early or late) between "deserving rights" and "not deserving rights". So for now I could be content to say an embryo "deserves full rights" as soon as it has a brain (even though a housefly might have a larger and more complex brain). I'm totally open to reevaluating that stance however.
You want to classify human beings into "human beings that are persons" and "human beings that aren't".
I suppose that depends on what you think "human be
While technically true, the term "embryo" can be misleading: it could lead some to think that the thing being destroyed is something close to a fetus---i.e., something with a central nervous system and a beating heart. But typically, "Embryonic stem cell research" only involves the destruction of a blastocyst. We're talking about a tiny cluster of cells that has *no neurons*. (If left to grow into a late-stage embryo then some of the cells in a blastocyst will have been the *distant ancestors* of the first neurons.)
And the anti-ESCR crowd objects to said destruction because...well it's not clear. I gather that some of them think a "soul" is injected into a zygote at the moment of its formation. (Of course, the meaning of that sentence hinges on what you think a "soul" is, and I rarely get a satisfactory definition out of religious types.)
But if there is such a thing as a human soul---loosely defined here as the mind of a person---then findings in neuroscience seem to suggest that a human soul is something generated by a human brain. In that case a common housefly would have greater capacity to bear a soul than a blastocyst, because at least a housefly has a brain!
So while I recognize that the anti-ESCR crowd has some deep emotional feelings about this, I also feel that the respect paid to them by policy-makers was not earned legitimately. How could it have been? The foundation of their argument is superstition.
I've never understood why religious folk have such a hard time with evolution. I mean, can't they just say "okay, fine, evolution is the process, and God is the architect". Far as I can see, that kind of solves it.
It's a solution. But it may not be a terribly satisfying one for devotees of any particular mythology: it implies that the architect could be infinitely lazy (and effectively indifferent to suffering)---almost as if the architect *isn't there at all*. Consider that modern Darwinian evolution explains the origin of all known forms of life. That means that, in order for complex life to come into existence, divine intervention is not required. It also means that if divine intervention *did* happen, then it happened in such a way as to be indistinguishable from natural phenomena.
To people who were brought up to believe in the resurrection of Jesus or the flying horse of Mohammed, that can be a hard pill to swallow, because if a *seemingly* miraculous phenomenon (like the existence a complex organism) is actually best explained through natural events *without* conscious design, then it means that the god that such people believe in---i.e., a god who performs miracles in order to make desirable things happen---doesn't *necessarily* exist. So then a religious person is faced with the idea that there might still be *a* god, but probably not the kind that performs magic tricks and talks to people.
And so if you've been praying to a personal, miracle-performing god since childhood, then the mere *idea* of a workable, rational scientific explanation for some of the biggest "miracles" (without an actual *understanding* of said explanation) could be potentially more upsetting than a death threat against a close relative. And so a natural response is denial, because otherwise you would be afraid of losing the feeling of being connected to and cared for by the universe.
(I'm not saying the religious folk are correct; I'm just saying that I consider this to be one plausible explanation for why they have a hard time with it; why they often don't even learn what Darwinian evolution is; etc.)
Another explanation probably has to do with the belief that one's personal brand of mythology was, to paraphrase Carl Sagan, dictated by the creative force of the universe to an **unerring stenographer**; and that any statement contrary to the mythology is just wrong by definition. (I still don't know why anyone would hold to that, and I would love to read more about any science on the topic.)
I don't know if fiction counts, but the armored helmets of the EVA suits in Planetes had this. With the visor of the helmet down, a display panel would be directly in front of the user's face; cameras mounted on the helmet would then feed images to that display, upon which a GUI (controllable by tapping on the exterior of the visor) was superimposed.
Still, it's nice to see someone demonstrating a real working artifact.
Every single decent sci-fi film/show/short that I've ever seen apart from 2001 has ignored the sound propagation issue.
I think Planetes was a bit better in this regard. IIRC they tried to stick to a model where you could only hear sounds from within a vessel or suit, but in general, non-propagation was observed.
It was pretty realistic in other respects though. In the DVD extras for the English version, they even got a couple of scientists from NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office to say as much (!), with the exception that it seemed unlikely that it would be practical to generate the kind of propulsion required to do debris recovery as depicted in the anime.
If only the standards committee could get off its arse and progress as quickly as BOOST does....
If the committee progressed as quickly as Boost, you would see a lot more core language and standard library defects in each release. (Bugs in a non-Standard library are much more tolerable than bugs in a language.)
Besides, the committee is rushing to meet a "feature complete" deadline this year. They *have* been getting off of their collective volunteer asses many times over during the past few years in order to make that happen.
Also note, the current Working Paper for C++0x has a lot of handy new features that are fully specified *right now*. So don't forget that some burden is now shared by the implementors of your compiler and its accompanying standard library implementation.
The big problem with C++ is Strostrup. He's in denial about the fact that the language is fundamentally broken. [...] The fundamental problem with C++ is that it has hiding ("abstraction") without memory safety.
I don't think you introduced the concept of "hiding", so I don't understand what you mean.
Also, you say that hiding is the "fundamental problem", but later you say:
The fundamental cause of the trouble comes from C's "pointer=array" equivalence.
But you say that C doesn't have "hiding", so I guess that "hiding" does not result from the implicit array-to-ptr conversion.
C++ added references to C, and should have added syntax like int read(int fd, char& buf[len], size_t len); to go along with it, so that arrays became first-class objects with sizes.
Well, that syntax probably wouldn't fly. If this feature were adopted you'd probably have to write:
int read(int fd, size_t len, char (& buf) [len] );
I.e., 'len' must be declared before it is referenced, and you must use the proper declarator syntax so that you have a "ref-to-array" as opposed to "array of references to char" (which is what you wrote).
Also note, you can almost do this in C++98/03, except that len must be a constant:
template < std::size_t len >
void f( char (&buf)[len] )// Ok in C++98/03 { // the compiler knows that in this scope, // the length of buf is len. }
You can of course further generalize this to:
template < class T, std::size_t len >
void f( T (&arr)[len] ) { //... }
But [the committee] didn't [add run-time array lengths and/or variably sized arrays to C++0x].
Well, the Evolution Working Group (which considers proposals for core language enhancements) is closed to new submissions for C++0x, but there is going to be another C++ after that ("C++13", some say). So if you think better array support is really worth pursuing, then write a proposal and submit it when EWG opens again (which should only be a couple of years from now).
There are some other things that have to be done to the language to make this concept work, but this is the general idea. This is the elephant in the living room of C++, and Strostrup is in denial about it.
Try to remember a few things about the committee:
- They're all volunteers. No one gets paid directly for their committee work (although some advertise their committee involvement, and that may help them in the marketplace).
- Every committee member has very little time to actually work on C++0x. Everyone tries his or her best to squeeze that in between company work and family time. Some highly industrious members even take vacation time to show up at committee meetings.
- Almost everyone involved in Evolution and Library development has their own interests (either personal interests or interests expressed on behalf of an organization) in the two or three features that *they* want or need to see in the next revision. You think C++ desperately needs a particular feature? Join the club. (No, really, join the club. Show up at a meeting. You too can be a voting member of J16 and make your voice heard.)
- Stroustrup does *not* always get what he wants. He's the EWG chair (and puts a hell of a lot of time into both running that part of the committee as well as refining his own proposals), but it's EWG itself that decides on specific motions, not Stroustrup -- except that his vote counts as much as anyone else's. So in order for any proposal to be considered, someone needs to show up, make their case, and address question
Their latest monstrosity is move semantics, i.e. data allocated on the heap are moved around and freed by the last object that has their ownership. Move semantics work just like auto_ptr, i.e. a newly constructed object gets the ownership of the data...this guarantees disaster, because in a complex expression/statement block you will not be able to tell which destructor really destroyed the data...
You are misinformed.
Move semantics are enabled by rvalue references (i.e., references that bind to rvalues, as opposed to the existing references in C++ '98 that bind to lvalues).
Rvalue references and move semantics solve a performance problem, not a memory management problem.
The typical use case is to have a constructor (called the "move constructor", which is like a copy ctor but takes rvalues instead of lvalues) bind to the temporary class objects that are often created in a complex expression. By pilfering the resources of an object that's guaranteed to exist only until the end of the full-expression in which it's created, you can avoid successive calls to expensive allocators of resources (like heap memory).
If you want to understand this, read The Fine Paper. Note especially the std::string example. (This is an early version of the proposal; subsequent versions polished the proposed wording changes to the actual normative wording of the C++0X Working Draft.)
And all this because they deny to fix the language and put garbage collection in!
You are appallingly misinformed.
First, note that you do not get move semantics without rvalue references. And move semantics are meant to apply only to rvalues (not lvalues -- although you can explicitly force an lvalue-to-rvalue conversion and then do a move, but generally there is no need to).
Second, the performance gained from compiling existing C++ programs against rvalue-ref-enabled libraries is quite measurable, and in many cases the speed gains are close to a factor of ten over the version of the same library without move semantics.
Third, when the committee accepted the proposal for rvalue references, *nobody* claimed that it would be used as a substitute for garbage collection. They are totally separate things that solve different problems. If and when Garbage Collection is accepted, you can look forward to programs that use *both* rvalue references *and* GC (and with good reasons for using both). On the other hand, if GC ultimately does not make it into C++0x, you should be aware that
(a) it will not have been the fault of proponents of ravlue references (who are also mostly proponents of GC) and
(b) work toward GC will continue so that it can be adopted into the following C++ (probably C++13).
I have a fourth point, but first:
with GC, move semantics would not be required, as the shared data structures would be deleted only when not referenced by any code. And their excuse for not putting garbage collection in C++ is just as lame: "some people will react against it!" even if GC is totally optional!!!
Fourth: the committee has not rejected garbage collection.
Programmer-controlled GC (i.e., GC that can be explicitly disabled or explicitly enabled) is being worked on by some smart people whose names you should recognize if you really care about this stuff, and the chances of it being accepted are looking good. It's taking longer to put in than rvalue references because it's considerably more complicated than rvalue references.
There is so much more written in this thread that should be publicly corrected. Suffice to say, if you really want to know what's true about the developments of C++0x, you should honestly read about some of the topics. And if you think Stroustru
listening to and reading some of Dawkins books and interviews and such, I'd hardly say that he understands Christianity. He basically refers to them as Psychos. Please cite a specific passage or a video link. My suspicion is that you misunderstand whatever it is that he said, but I would gratefully accept any demonstration that I'm wrong.
And if something was not purposely created how can you say that it was not a random accident? One major part of the answer is natural selection, which is very non-random.
But evolutionary biologists have done a much better job of answering this question than I (or any other layperson) could; so if you really want the full answer, you'll have to read a book on evolution. (FYI, "The Blind Watchmaker" is pretty good.)
Now, people are often confused when they initially confront the idea from modern Darwinism that genes undergo some random variation while the overall process is said to be non-random. (Dawkins has referred to evolution as "the non-random survival of randomly varying codes".) To many this may seem contradictory, but it's not. It might help to think about casinos, where the role of randomness is a little bit similar to its role in Darwinian evolution. In a casino, the outcome of any individual role of the dice (or dealing of cards, etc.) is pretty much random. And yet we can be confident that the casino will consistently make a profit because the odds of its profiting in each game are in the casino's favor (a conclusion we can reach when we consider the details of each game and the probability of profiting at each iteration). So the process in a casino might be described as "the non-random accumulation of profits earned by a casino through large numbers of iterations of games where each game iteration has a random outcome".
Note, I'm not saying that evolution works like a casino. (: I'm just saying that randomness appears to play a similarly-sized role in both casinos and evolution: randomness is not the whole system, but rather it is a component of the system.
Is there a single athiest who has demonstrated a clear understanding of what Christianity actually is? Well for starters I think each of the "four horsemen" (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens & Harris) probably qualify. (At least, I'm not aware of any instance where they mischaracterized Christianity. But I would gratefully receive any corrections on that point.)
Getting back on topic:
My not-entirely-rhetorical question was prompted by watching some very public figures saying some factually incorrect things about evolution. Take Huckabee for example: "A person either believes that god created this process, or believes that it was an accident."
And elsewhere he's made it clear that he thinks Darwinian evolution is all about random chance; again, that's utterly false. He's not the only one. And this matters a great deal, not just for the state of scientific education in the years to come, but also for policy making in general: if leaders do not take the time to really understand views with which they initially think they disagree then we (both citizens of the U.S. and people around the world) are in for yet more trouble.
Is there a single creationist who has demonstrated a clear understanding of what Darwinian evolution actually is?
Every argument I've heard from them so far contains some statement like, "it's absurd to think that life on earth formed just by random chance." And of course that's correct, but it's also the clearest sign that they need to read a book on evolution. (Among other things it doesn't seem like they've grasped the distinction between randomness playing a role in the game and randomness defining the whole game.)
Slashdot Mirror
Don't be Dirty.
Well God never said cussing was a sin. You just can't use his name in vain.
Funny; I tend to think of the word "god" as being a title rather than a name. It's like "lord", "captain", "sir", "lieutenant", etc. By contrast, *names* of gods include "Aphrodite", "Loki", "Yahweh", "Kal-El", "Amaterasu", etc.
I was going to put "Papa Smurf" in the second list when I realized that's not a proper name either.
That's right: Papa Smurf. Bow down and praise him, bitches!
excellent. i'm sick of these richard dawkins-types who condescendingly think they have all the answers.
Those types never said they have all answers. (But if you have a counterexample, I would be willing to stand corrected.) And the answers that they do have tend to be pretty well substantiated. Take for example the establishment of common ancestry by comparisons of genomes. But do not mistake the kind of confidence that results from a firm grip on a specific subject for a delusion of omniscience. Also note that these people tend to promote a willingness to change their own opinions when new evidence challenges said opinions.
i'm native myself, and a bit of an animist by choice, as well as a firm believer in science...but who are you to tell me i'm wrong?
What harm do you think is done by calling bullshit? Do you think it's worse than the harm that may result from failing to face up to the nature of reality implied by observable evidence, and if so, why?
It's not defective, RMS et al: it's a CHOICE. You purport to like choice, but no one believes you anymore. Many consumers don't care, and even LIKE, the idea of being locked in to the App Store, because it introduces a significant amount of safety.
So, apparently you think the choice is between (1) being able to download software from Apple's app store and (2) having software distributed directly by 3rd parties to users (as with desktop PCs). Why not give each user the power to decide whether they will choose only (1) or only (2) or both (1) and (2)? Part of the FSF's point is that Apple has taken away some of the user's power of choice.
If we leave 1 intact, intellectual works have a far greater benefit to everyone. The challenge is to come up with a way to satisfy 3, without harming 1 and 2. The free-market solution to problems like this is to allow market participants to come up with innovative solutions. Those that solve the problem best stand to make the most profit, so there is incentive.
To me it seems you assume it's possible, under your proposed scenario, for a viable solution to exist for most copyright holders. To many of us it is not obvious that this is the case and it feels natural to assume differently.
IMO, the current system is *close* to being workable for all (or most) parties; the main problem, as I see it, is that the duration of exclusive rights has effectively become infinite when, in the age of instant global distribution, it should probably be no more than something like ten years. (And there are probably a lot of special cases that could reasonably trigger either instant release into Public Domain or a small extension of copyright.)
Also, I think you're missing an item in your list:
4. The probability of creation of a valuable intellectual work is multiplied by the extent to which the would-be creator(s) have a fair opportunity to be compensated for the act of creation.
Note that this sort of feeds into item 2: no one can benefit from a work if it's never created in the first place. So whatever we do, we really, really need something better than your personal faith in the market's ability to heal all that ails. Obviously, the market provides a lot of nice solutions to a lot of problems. I like the market for that reason. But the market does not---cannot---solve every problem. To assume that it can seems akin to assuming that natural selection *necessarily* leads to the "higher functions" of humanity (e.g. language, music, etc.) when in fact it's entirely possible for natural selection to lead many species into extinction. (And reflect on the fact that the vast majority of branches on the tree of life do not reach the present day.) So please do not underestimate the potential of the market to screw people over.
Why do I care if someone is irrationally terrified of something?
Because the set of all irrationally terrified people includes voters and some (if not most) of the policy-makers that said voters elect. It is therefore in everyone's interest for better-informed people to demonstrate and make clear the cases where an imagined threat is either (a) not real or (b) not severe enough to warrant action. And those demonstrations must be delivered to the general public, and they must come as earl early and often as possible and grab as much attention as possible.
This is part of the reason why Sagan wrote The Demon-Haunted World.
Ok; so why do you buy into the idea that "I" was a "complete human being" at the point of genotype establishment? What are the foundations of that assertion? What evidence would you cite?
BTW JeanPaulBob, I'm not really asking about biology here; I'm asking about the foundations of why you think the life of a zygote is worth as much as the life of an adult. And merely stating that the would-be adult and the zygote have the same genotype isn't a satisfying answer. And citing the survival needs of the zygote isn't a satisfying answer. There are some drastic practical differences in form and function between zygote and infant, and I'd like to know why those differences shouldn't matter, because there's tons of evidence (particularly from neuroscience) indicating that they *do* matter .
And I don't buy the idea that at any of the stages of your development, you were less than a human organism, or that there's any distinction between human organism and human being, or between human being and "person with rights to be protected".
Ok; so why do you buy into the idea that "I" was a "complete human being" at the point of genotype establishment? What are the foundations of that assertion? What evidence would you cite?
Every time in the past that people have accepted such distinctions, we've come to realize the horror of what we were allowing, endorsing, or even praising.
Regardless of definitions of "human being", "person", and so on: I don't understand what you're talking about. What "horror"? Please describe the nature of suffering that results (potentially or actually) from the destruction of a blastocyst. Or if that's not possible, please explain why you think the horror you mention has some actual referent outside your imagination.
I'm asking because I don't merely want to verbally tear into right-to-lifers; I honestly want to understand where you're coming from, and so far your position doesn't make sense to me, and I don't even see how it makes sense to you.
Also: I recognize that you don't agree with my position (briefly: "components of brain clearly generate components of the mind; therefore 'no brain' strongly indicates 'no person', for some definition of 'person' that includes the existence of emotions, impulses, perceptions and the like"). But do you at least understand how it makes sense to me?
Or perhaps that was kind of your point? I.e. that the original idea of 'soul' grew out of a culture that knew practically nothing about biology, so we should expect the 'soul injection' argument to make little sense. It would be like trying to graft ancient peoples' beliefs involving the Greek god Helios onto what astrophysicists are now able to tell us about the solar system.
Ok; if one is into mythology I guess that's interesting, but I don't see how it's relevant to the topic being discussed.
As regards soul, the greco-roman ideal was that there was an ethereal substance, soul. I don't know when they thought it arrived at the body. Hebrew (language of OT) word for soul literally meant 'that which breathes' Also, blood is equated with soul in OT.
I was not aware of the supposed equivalence to blood. :-)
I wonder if you don't mind answering me this, what, other than nourishment, oxygen, and protection (albeit in relatively unorthodox ways), does a living (as in respiring) blastocyst or embryo or fetus need from anything?
I don't know the answer; sorry. I Am Not A Developmental Biologist.
In answer to your further questions in other posts about gametes, no human beings have 1/2 genetic code of any other human beings. However, AFAIK the zygote that became "NeutralStone" had the exact same DNA that you do now.
What differentiates Humans from other great Apes? Our DNA. When does that happen? At fertilization.
Sorry; did you mean to ask, "When does *DNA* happen?" If so then I don't understand your question. I do recognize fertilization as the point where my present-day genotype was established, and since I have no twin, I understand that my genotype is unique. I also understand that my genotype resulted from a kind of fusion of chromosomes from my parents' gametes.
Were you just checking to make sure of all that? :-) Was there some point you wanted to make?
Unless I misread the article. It seems they found a way to make Adult Stem Cells behave like embryonic stem cells. The moral issue of Stem Cells isn't the Stem Cells but the fact that if you needed Embryonic Stem Cells you needed to Abort/Terminate/Kill/(whatever verb you think best describes the process) the fetus.
Be careful with the terms! A fetus is *never* involved in *embryonic* stem cell research. Instead, blastocysts are employed.
An embryo left in a Petri dish has the same chance to develop into an adult as an newborn infant abandoned in the woods. It's already a "human". It doesn't need to develop into one. It's a human organism--as opposed to sperm or unfertilized eggs, which are part of a human organism. (Even outside the body, it's still a "part" in the same way that a heart outside the body is a "part".) All it needs is nourishment and friendly environment--while sperm is a body part that has to combine with another body part in order to form a new organism.
So, for a moment let's set aside uses of the term "human", since different people want to use different definitions and that's confusing.
Are you saying that a sperm cell should not be regarded as having rights because it's not able to grow into an adult without coming into contact with an egg?
In that case, it seems you have a similar problem with blastocysts: *they* don't grow into later-state embryos (let alone adults) if they fail to bind to the uterine wall (and that failure naturally happens quite often). What is it about the difference between:
that it causes you to see one as "deserving rights" and not the other?
Perhaps it's based on the idea that all human beings should be protected the same way, regardless of size or level of development?
If you want the definition of the term "human being" to include blastocysts, would you also want gametes included?
If not: why not? Is it merely that each sperm and each egg only has half the genetic material of the organism that produced it? But in that case why didn't you take the position that a human being should be protected even if it only has half the genes of more "developed" human beings? [Note, I normally do not regard sperm or egg cells as human beings.]
If so: how about the cells that produced the gametes? How about skin cells? If someone gives you a paper cut, have they committed genocide?
Why is "possessing neurons" the criterion?
Because without neurons, there's none of the kind of information processing that makes a person: no concepts, no dreams, no emotion, no "instinct", no impulses, no more capacity for suffering---or for anything else---than a colony of bacteria, no perception of any kind---nothing.
(At this point some people like to say that there is *potential* for the blastocyst to grow into something else that has the biological machinery for those things. And while that is true it is somehow not compelling. Does each *potential* life have an *inalienable right* to be made *actual*? I don't know of any reasonable way to answer "yes" to that question.)
For the purpose of deciding whether a given entity has some inalienable universal right, we have to draw the line somewhere. Maybe someday we *will* recognize each bacterium as deserving said rights, and presumably around that time it would be consistent to do the same with each cell in a blastocyst. Until then, I think it's ok to say that "someone" isn't human if "they" don't have at least one iota of the hardware that makes it possible for the rest of us to exhibit the things that make us human.
The capacity to feel pain? (So if we kill someone after applying anaesthesia or while they're asleep, is that OK?)
No, it's not ok. The difference is that there's an *actual* person there (and not just a *potential* person). Not only does that entity have the *capacity* for all those wonderful mental activities, *it's actually doing many of them every minute of every day*, even while sleeping. (Though we tend not to notice the latter as much. But talk to your local neuroscientist who specializes in sleep studdies; it's fascinating stuff.) Besides: your hypothetical someone also probably wanted to go on living. That's another thing that sets him/her apart from the blastocyst out of which that person grew.
You think that while we're still developing the capacity to think, our rights are still "developing"?
I don't know. There may be a time (say, when we really understand the nature of consciousness) when our understanding permits us to apply more fine-grained rules. For now, for practical purposes, all of us demand *some* kind of boundary (whether stark or gradual, early or late) between "deserving rights" and "not deserving rights". So for now I could be content to say an embryo "deserves full rights" as soon as it has a brain (even though a housefly might have a larger and more complex brain). I'm totally open to reevaluating that stance however.
You want to classify human beings into "human beings that are persons" and "human beings that aren't".
I suppose that depends on what you think "human be
It's destruction of embryos.
While technically true, the term "embryo" can be misleading: it could lead some to think that the thing being destroyed is something close to a fetus---i.e., something with a central nervous system and a beating heart. But typically, "Embryonic stem cell research" only involves the destruction of a blastocyst. We're talking about a tiny cluster of cells that has *no neurons*. (If left to grow into a late-stage embryo then some of the cells in a blastocyst will have been the *distant ancestors* of the first neurons.)
And the anti-ESCR crowd objects to said destruction because...well it's not clear. I gather that some of them think a "soul" is injected into a zygote at the moment of its formation. (Of course, the meaning of that sentence hinges on what you think a "soul" is, and I rarely get a satisfactory definition out of religious types.)
But if there is such a thing as a human soul---loosely defined here as the mind of a person---then findings in neuroscience seem to suggest that a human soul is something generated by a human brain. In that case a common housefly would have greater capacity to bear a soul than a blastocyst, because at least a housefly has a brain!
So while I recognize that the anti-ESCR crowd has some deep emotional feelings about this, I also feel that the respect paid to them by policy-makers was not earned legitimately. How could it have been? The foundation of their argument is superstition.
I've never understood why religious folk have such a hard time with evolution. I mean, can't they just say "okay, fine, evolution is the process, and God is the architect". Far as I can see, that kind of solves it.
It's a solution. But it may not be a terribly satisfying one for devotees of any particular mythology: it implies that the architect could be infinitely lazy (and effectively indifferent to suffering)---almost as if the architect *isn't there at all*. Consider that modern Darwinian evolution explains the origin of all known forms of life. That means that, in order for complex life to come into existence, divine intervention is not required. It also means that if divine intervention *did* happen, then it happened in such a way as to be indistinguishable from natural phenomena.
To people who were brought up to believe in the resurrection of Jesus or the flying horse of Mohammed, that can be a hard pill to swallow, because if a *seemingly* miraculous phenomenon (like the existence a complex organism) is actually best explained through natural events *without* conscious design, then it means that the god that such people believe in---i.e., a god who performs miracles in order to make desirable things happen---doesn't *necessarily* exist. So then a religious person is faced with the idea that there might still be *a* god, but probably not the kind that performs magic tricks and talks to people.
And so if you've been praying to a personal, miracle-performing god since childhood, then the mere *idea* of a workable, rational scientific explanation for some of the biggest "miracles" (without an actual *understanding* of said explanation) could be potentially more upsetting than a death threat against a close relative. And so a natural response is denial, because otherwise you would be afraid of losing the feeling of being connected to and cared for by the universe.
(I'm not saying the religious folk are correct; I'm just saying that I consider this to be one plausible explanation for why they have a hard time with it; why they often don't even learn what Darwinian evolution is; etc.)
Another explanation probably has to do with the belief that one's personal brand of mythology was, to paraphrase Carl Sagan, dictated by the creative force of the universe to an **unerring stenographer**; and that any statement contrary to the mythology is just wrong by definition. (I still don't know why anyone would hold to that, and I would love to read more about any science on the topic.)
12. Bill Adama finally returning to his first love: teaching calculus.
[...] If this is truly novel, nice job!
I don't know if fiction counts, but the armored helmets of the EVA suits in Planetes had this. With the visor of the helmet down, a display panel would be directly in front of the user's face; cameras mounted on the helmet would then feed images to that display, upon which a GUI (controllable by tapping on the exterior of the visor) was superimposed.
Still, it's nice to see someone demonstrating a real working artifact.
I think Planetes was a bit better in this regard. IIRC they tried to stick to a model where you could only hear sounds from within a vessel or suit, but in general, non-propagation was observed.
It was pretty realistic in other respects though. In the DVD extras for the English version, they even got a couple of scientists from NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office to say as much (!), with the exception that it seemed unlikely that it would be practical to generate the kind of propulsion required to do debris recovery as depicted in the anime.
Anyway, it's good scifi.
If the committee progressed as quickly as Boost, you would see a lot more core language and standard library defects in each release. (Bugs in a non-Standard library are much more tolerable than bugs in a language.)
Besides, the committee is rushing to meet a "feature complete" deadline this year. They *have* been getting off of their collective volunteer asses many times over during the past few years in order to make that happen.
Also note, the current Working Paper for C++0x has a lot of handy new features that are fully specified *right now*. So don't forget that some burden is now shared by the implementors of your compiler and its accompanying standard library implementation.
I don't think you introduced the concept of "hiding", so I don't understand what you mean.
Also, you say that hiding is the "fundamental problem", but later you say:
But you say that C doesn't have "hiding", so I guess that "hiding" does not result from the implicit array-to-ptr conversion.
Well, that syntax probably wouldn't fly. If this feature were adopted you'd probably have to write:
// Ok in C++98/03
// the compiler knows that in this scope,
// the length of buf is len.
// ...
int read(int fd, size_t len, char (& buf) [len] );
I.e., 'len' must be declared before it is referenced, and you must use the proper declarator syntax so that you have a "ref-to-array" as opposed to "array of references to char" (which is what you wrote).
Also note, you can almost do this in C++98/03, except that len must be a constant:
template < std::size_t len >
void f( char (&buf)[len] )
{
}
You can of course further generalize this to:
template < class T, std::size_t len >
void f( T (&arr)[len] )
{
}
Well, the Evolution Working Group (which considers proposals for core language enhancements) is closed to new submissions for C++0x, but there is going to be another C++ after that ("C++13", some say). So if you think better array support is really worth pursuing, then write a proposal and submit it when EWG opens again (which should only be a couple of years from now).
Try to remember a few things about the committee:
- They're all volunteers. No one gets paid directly for their committee work (although some advertise their committee involvement, and that may help them in the marketplace).
- Every committee member has very little time to actually work on C++0x. Everyone tries his or her best to squeeze that in between company work and family time. Some highly industrious members even take vacation time to show up at committee meetings.
- Almost everyone involved in Evolution and Library development has their own interests (either personal interests or interests expressed on behalf of an organization) in the two or three features that *they* want or need to see in the next revision. You think C++ desperately needs a particular feature? Join the club. (No, really, join the club. Show up at a meeting. You too can be a voting member of J16 and make your voice heard.)
- Stroustrup does *not* always get what he wants. He's the EWG chair (and puts a hell of a lot of time into both running that part of the committee as well as refining his own proposals), but it's EWG itself that decides on specific motions, not Stroustrup -- except that his vote counts as much as anyone else's. So in order for any proposal to be considered, someone needs to show up, make their case, and address question
You are misinformed.
Move semantics are enabled by rvalue references (i.e., references that bind to rvalues, as opposed to the existing references in C++ '98 that bind to lvalues).
Rvalue references and move semantics solve a performance problem, not a memory management problem.
The typical use case is to have a constructor (called the "move constructor", which is like a copy ctor but takes rvalues instead of lvalues) bind to the temporary class objects that are often created in a complex expression. By pilfering the resources of an object that's guaranteed to exist only until the end of the full-expression in which it's created, you can avoid successive calls to expensive allocators of resources (like heap memory).
If you want to understand this, read The Fine Paper. Note especially the std::string example. (This is an early version of the proposal; subsequent versions polished the proposed wording changes to the actual normative wording of the C++0X Working Draft.)
You are appallingly misinformed.
First, note that you do not get move semantics without rvalue references. And move semantics are meant to apply only to rvalues (not lvalues -- although you can explicitly force an lvalue-to-rvalue conversion and then do a move, but generally there is no need to).
Second, the performance gained from compiling existing C++ programs against rvalue-ref-enabled libraries is quite measurable, and in many cases the speed gains are close to a factor of ten over the version of the same library without move semantics.
Third, when the committee accepted the proposal for rvalue references, *nobody* claimed that it would be used as a substitute for garbage collection. They are totally separate things that solve different problems. If and when Garbage Collection is accepted, you can look forward to programs that use *both* rvalue references *and* GC (and with good reasons for using both). On the other hand, if GC ultimately does not make it into C++0x, you should be aware that
(a) it will not have been the fault of proponents of ravlue references (who are also mostly proponents of GC) and
(b) work toward GC will continue so that it can be adopted into the following C++ (probably C++13).
I have a fourth point, but first:
Fourth: the committee has not rejected garbage collection.
Programmer-controlled GC (i.e., GC that can be explicitly disabled or explicitly enabled) is being worked on by some smart people whose names you should recognize if you really care about this stuff, and the chances of it being accepted are looking good. It's taking longer to put in than rvalue references because it's considerably more complicated than rvalue references.
There is so much more written in this thread that should be publicly corrected. Suffice to say, if you really want to know what's true about the developments of C++0x, you should honestly read about some of the topics. And if you think Stroustru
But evolutionary biologists have done a much better job of answering this question than I (or any other layperson) could; so if you really want the full answer, you'll have to read a book on evolution. (FYI, "The Blind Watchmaker" is pretty good.)
Now, people are often confused when they initially confront the idea from modern Darwinism that genes undergo some random variation while the overall process is said to be non-random. (Dawkins has referred to evolution as "the non-random survival of randomly varying codes".) To many this may seem contradictory, but it's not. It might help to think about casinos, where the role of randomness is a little bit similar to its role in Darwinian evolution. In a casino, the outcome of any individual role of the dice (or dealing of cards, etc.) is pretty much random. And yet we can be confident that the casino will consistently make a profit because the odds of its profiting in each game are in the casino's favor (a conclusion we can reach when we consider the details of each game and the probability of profiting at each iteration). So the process in a casino might be described as "the non-random accumulation of profits earned by a casino through large numbers of iterations of games where each game iteration has a random outcome".
Note, I'm not saying that evolution works like a casino. (: I'm just saying that randomness appears to play a similarly-sized role in both casinos and evolution: randomness is not the whole system, but rather it is a component of the system.
Getting back on topic:
My not-entirely-rhetorical question was prompted by watching some very public figures saying some factually incorrect things about evolution. Take Huckabee for example: "A person either believes that god created this process, or believes that it was an accident."
And elsewhere he's made it clear that he thinks Darwinian evolution is all about random chance; again, that's utterly false. He's not the only one. And this matters a great deal, not just for the state of scientific education in the years to come, but also for policy making in general: if leaders do not take the time to really understand views with which they initially think they disagree then we (both citizens of the U.S. and people around the world) are in for yet more trouble.
Is there a single creationist who has demonstrated a clear understanding of what Darwinian evolution actually is?
Every argument I've heard from them so far contains some statement like, "it's absurd to think that life on earth formed just by random chance." And of course that's correct, but it's also the clearest sign that they need to read a book on evolution. (Among other things it doesn't seem like they've grasped the distinction between randomness playing a role in the game and randomness defining the whole game.)