The scientists' plan to consult religious leaders seems to me more than anything else to be a publicity stunt. Notice that the phrase is "religious leaders", which means the relgions in questions are organized religions. Why do people think that leaders in organized religion has anything to do with knowing what is the moral thing (if such a thing exists) to do? It is true that many people rely on the morals defined in their religions to guide their lives, but so what? Are the scientist going to give up the plan to create a bacterium simply because many people may be upset with it. So what is their intention? To refrain from doing a wrong thing (whatever that means), or to refrain from upsetting a large group of people? Moreover, unless the religious leaders are all experts in biology, i don't think they will fully understand the situation. If you just knock on the Pope's door and ask him if it is right to create life, how is he supposed to interpret your question? Now i would love to see the Pope's reaction if you instead ask him if it is right to create a bacterium (The Pope may be a bio PhD for all I know, but you get the point). What would be interesting would be if one day they have the power to create consciousness. Then i won't be so sure about whether religion should be involved...
Many people use Jurassic park as an example in support of consulting with religion. But in fact the novel says nothing about religion. Did all hell break loose in JP because the scientists did something immoral? Sure, it could have been prevented if religion steps in and say they must not create life, but this argument is ridiculous, for it implies that the mess in JP is a result of the act of God. I may as well claim that if Nedry is not such an asshole nothing would have happen. Now what? do the scientists perform background checks on all their computer gurus?
Umm... I agree China has not been what one would call a paradise country, but you are geting things muddled up here.
First of all, the Chinese government has officially revised its stance on the cultural Revolution quite a while ago. Using it as evidence of China's threat would be like calling Germany a threat becasue of what it did during second world war. Second, doing one particular bad thing doesn't imply one has to also commit all other bad things you can imagine. Much of what you cited were human rights violation, but how is that related to being a threat to the rest of the world?
correct me if im wrong, (IMAP issues)
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Mutt Hits 1.0
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· Score: 1
I messed around with the code last night, and it seems mutt still has a problem with IMAP. Namely, if you open an imap mail box, then change to a local mailbox, then quit. What happened is mutt closes the imap mailbox without closing the connection, then open the local mailbox. And when you hit quit, mutt thinks it is in the context of a local mailbox and wouldn't try to terminate any connection, and you end up with a pending connection to the imap server. Any comments?
better yet, make message contain names of specific ingredients of e.g. anthrax of nuclear weapons. The list you provided could be used by any news agency, but they don't usually include the specifics. I'm sure those names would not be too hard to find out.
Holy smokes, that barbie 'puter looks AWESOME (I am NOT being sarcastic). The coolest thing would be to run Linux on it. Then I would truly reach freakhood.
In Hong Kong for example, there are a lot of female programmers. At the place where i worked this summer, half of the programmers were prolly female. I don't think one should localize the problem around female 'programmers', the whole US culture seems to deter women from any technically, scientifically oriented subjects. The central question shouldn't be just 'why are so few programmers female', instead, a more general question should prove more fruitful, i.e. one can't encourage more females to be programmers, while at the same time pay no attention to the cultural environment which deter them from doing mathematics, physics, and etc...
I don't know how awesome typists some of you are, but every once in a while i do need to look at the keyboard, especially when typing on of those cramped keyboards on laptops. That's my two cents.
New Silicon Graphics logo sucks
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Tuesday Quickies
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· Score: 1
I just want to contribute to the apparently prevalent opion that the new sgi logos sucks.
To me, the old one's actually is one of the better logos in the whole industry.
Hmm... i don't know, i don't wanna be all righteous and stuff... but although i am NOT offended by the web, and am actually involuntarily amused to a certain degree, I just think the joke is in bad taste. That is all.
Slashdot Mirror
Great, now if only someone (i am not competent) can build linuxquake linked against glibc, I no longer need to keep that damn libc5 thingy on my box.
The scientists' plan to consult religious leaders seems to me more than anything else to be a publicity stunt. Notice that the phrase is "religious leaders", which means the relgions in questions are organized religions. Why do people think that leaders in organized religion has anything to do with knowing what is the moral thing (if such a thing exists) to do? It is true that many people rely on the morals defined in their religions to guide their lives, but so what? Are the scientist going to give up the plan to create a bacterium simply because many people may be upset with it. So what is their intention? To refrain from doing a wrong thing (whatever that means), or to refrain from upsetting a large group of people? Moreover, unless the religious leaders are all experts in biology, i don't think they will fully understand the situation. If you just knock on the Pope's door and ask him if it is right to create life, how is he supposed to interpret your question? Now i would love to see the Pope's reaction if you instead ask him if it is right to create a bacterium (The Pope may be a bio PhD for all I know, but you get the point). What would be interesting would be if one day they have the power to create consciousness. Then i won't be so sure about whether religion should be involved...
Many people use Jurassic park as an example in support of consulting with religion. But in fact the novel says nothing about religion. Did all hell break loose in JP because the scientists did something immoral? Sure, it could have been prevented if religion steps in and say they must not create life, but this argument is ridiculous, for it implies that the mess in JP is a result of the act of God. I may as well claim that if Nedry is not such an asshole nothing would have happen. Now what? do the scientists perform background checks on all their computer gurus?
Umm... I agree China has not been what one would call a paradise country, but you are geting things muddled up here.
First of all, the Chinese government has officially revised its stance on the cultural Revolution quite a while ago. Using it as evidence of China's threat would be like calling Germany a threat becasue of what it did during second world war. Second, doing one particular bad thing doesn't imply one has to also commit all other bad things you can imagine. Much of what you cited were human rights violation, but how is that related to being a threat to the rest of the world?
I messed around with the code last night, and it seems mutt still has a problem with IMAP. Namely, if you open an imap mail box, then change to a local mailbox, then quit. What happened is mutt closes the imap mailbox without closing the connection, then open the local mailbox. And when you hit quit, mutt thinks it is in the context of a local mailbox and wouldn't try to terminate any connection, and you end up with a pending connection to the imap server. Any comments?
better yet, make message contain names of specific ingredients of e.g. anthrax of nuclear weapons. The list you provided could be used by any news agency, but they don't usually include the specifics. I'm sure those names would not be too hard to find out.
Not necessarily... If they turned it off, then they may miss all the communication they may actually be interested in.
Holy smokes, that barbie 'puter looks AWESOME (I am NOT being sarcastic). The coolest thing would be to run Linux on it. Then I would truly reach freakhood.
In Hong Kong for example, there are a lot of female programmers. At the place where i worked this summer, half of the programmers were prolly female. I don't think one should localize the problem around female 'programmers', the whole US culture seems to deter women from any technically, scientifically oriented subjects. The central question shouldn't be just 'why are so few programmers female', instead, a more general question should prove more fruitful, i.e. one can't encourage more females to be programmers, while at the same time pay no attention to the cultural environment which deter them from doing mathematics, physics, and etc...
I don't know how awesome typists some of you are, but every once in a while i do need to look at the keyboard, especially when typing on of those cramped keyboards on laptops. That's my two cents.
I just want to contribute to the apparently prevalent opion that the new sgi logos sucks.
To me, the old one's actually is one of the better logos in the whole industry.
Maybe they should do a poll on this...
Now thats quality reading. Right on! :)
Hmm... i don't know, i don't wanna be all righteous and stuff... but although i am NOT offended by the web, and am actually involuntarily amused to a certain degree, I just think the joke is in bad taste. That is all.