Evolution does not have a 'goal' and as such, it can't fail or succeed. Nor do humans have some sort of obligation to 'evolution' to save 'life' from planetary destruction.
> In the long run, I'm all for genetic freedom. Change your genetics how you like. You buy specific virii-"mods" that only "infect" you, and then something in your body changes. You could change your hair color, add some starfish-genes to regrow body parts, or why not grow some decorative fairy wings if you are a girl?
> Some might really fear everything that could go wrong there. But hey, you only live once, and the gains far outweigh the negative aspects.
The problem with the whole 'genetics' thingy is that it tends to affect your offspring. I don't mind people tweaking their own bodies but I would object to changing the genetics of ones children unless it were to prevent some terrible genetic disease (Which diseases qualify as 'a terrible genetic disease' I'll leave to an exercise for the reader;) ).
> On the other hand, I find it somewhat ridiculous that you would not object to showing whatever it is you're showing, in public, to a handful of strangers, but you would suddenly object if it was shown, over the Internet, to a few more strangers.
A fair point, but I doubt many women who breastfeed their baby in public do so with the intent to show their boobs to any strangers nearby. That's merely a side-effect, and if you get any 'good' pictures of boobies by taking pictures of a breastfeeding woman it's probably because you went to the trouble of getting a good angle and waited for the right moment, not because the woman was running through the streets topless screaming "Look at me! Look at my tits!". In a way I guess it can be compared to sticking your camera under some woman's skirt and taking a picture. Surely in such a case 'there existed, from a point in a public place, a line of sight to her underwear, which was, at the moment the picture was taken, also in a public place, so why shouldn't I be allowed to take a picture and upload it to the intertubes?' is no proper defense for such an action.
> I don't know what the law should be -- it always bothered me when some video shown on TV has various faces blurred out, because they never got that person to sign some sort of waiver. On the other hand, if you're going to snap a photo of someone, and then turn that into an international ad campaign, I'd argue you should have to get their consent, and probably pay them for the privilege.
I agree it's not easy to find a good point to draw the line, but if it were to be drawn somewhere, the act of trying to take pictures of boobies of some breastfeeding woman without her consent should be on the other side on the line (IMHO).
> But regardless of what the law should be, common sense now dictates that if you are in public, you should assume that anything you do might be photographed and broadcast.
I do, but I wish to live in a world where people wouldn't have to worry about all their actions being 'photographed, stored, and indexed, for generations to come'.
Do YOU expect to get photographed and uploaded to 4chan/the pirate bay/whatever every time you leave your house? Would you find that acceptable? Personally I find the whole 'I have a right to take pictures of everyone I see on the street without their knowledge or consent and do whatever the hell I like with them, if people disagree with me then they should just not to be in public places and stay in their homes the rest of their lives'-thing ridiculous.
Let's use that number. The odds of a server failing during the 20 seconds before midnight on 31 december are 1 in 5 million. Suppose there are 50 millions servers. Simple math says the chance of your server crashing is extremely small (1 in 5 million), but there will be about 10 people who have a crashed server. That is normal (using your number there will be 10 servers crashing every 20 seconds every day of the year) but those 10 people will think it 'an awfully unlikely coincidence', while the other 15379200 server crashes during a year are ignored.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the new year can't have anything to do with the crash, I just think it's way more likely that your server crashed randomly and you see causality where none exists.
Sure, great. You hear shooting, 10 random people in random places near the shooting get out their guns and start hunting for the shooter. When you see someone with a gun, the odds are 9 out of 10 that they are not the shooter. Will you take that chance, or will you shoot anyone with a gun? Will they? Will you be fooled when the 'terrorist' points in some direction and shouts 'He went that way!'?
> For those who slept through Modern History class, I'll tell: religion. Specifically Muslims. > They are the most likely group to set off a bomb on an airplane or hijack it. We can pretend that's not the case (and continue with the current "security theatre" at airports) in order to protect the delicate sensibilities of the PC crowd, but that doesn't change facts.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that you are more than correct and ONLY muslims will ever hijack or blow up an airplane. How do you propose we do this security checkpoint thing? "Hello good sir, what is your religion? If you are a muslim you have to go to that checkpoint there but the good god-fearing christians can skip it." I doubt having to lie to airport personel is going to stop someone who plans to kill dozens of people. Are you seriously suggesting that all muslims can be recognized on sight and that it is impossible for, let's say, a white woman to be a muslim?
Yes. People are wired to see causality everywhere, even where there is none. Had your server crashed a week ago you wouldn't think anything of it (maybe 5% of all servers mysteriously crashed exactly one week ago, but because it was an 'ordinary' day nobody noticed). Anyway, since you noticed your server crashed at new year and reported it on/., and with 6 billion people on this planet we will soon hear stories about other computers that mysteriously crashed around midnight. Not because there has to be anything special, but because computers are crashing all the time and new year (and your post) made it appear special.
I doubt it has anything to do with leap seconds, if your computer ran for 6 years it survived the leap second of 2005.
Becaauuuuse, it's bad precedent. Suppose someone has raped, tortured, and murdered over a thousand children. He get charged for those crimes, and in addition gets 20 years in prison for driving 62 on a 60 mph road. You may say 'who cares such a conviction is ridiculous, the guy deserves to rot in prison for the rest of his life', but it sets bad precedent for all of us, not just the 'villains'.
That's why the cartoon-related conviction matters.
> It may even raise questions as to your diligence and motivation toward your career rather than fun.
Who cares? Honestly, would you want to work for a company that wouldn't hire you because you took half a year to come in contact with a whole different culture and grow as a person? Let them know you work to live and not the other way round.
> I've seen girls learn to type fast on their cell phones. They don't need a cell phone typing course to do that. They shouldn't be required to WASTE time learning typing on a computer when they will eventually figure that out. This is a great example of how misused computers in schools are (not to mention the waste of typing-only computer labs when 100 year old typewriters would suffice.)
My father, who has been working with computers for over 20 years, 'figured out' how to type. He still types with two fingers. I was taught typing at school, use ten fingers and don't have to look at my keyboard (which is a great advantage since I tought myself dvorak on a qwerty keyboard some time ago...*) and I am way faster than he is. Because he can type 'fast enough' there isn't much motivation to learn how to type properly, however had someone taught him to touch type waaaaay back he would easily be twice as fast.
Cell phones are different because the most obvious way to type is also the 'correct' way to do it. Not so much for keyboards, where 'hunt and peck' is the technique most people use when first confronted with a keyboard. I wholeheartedly support 'forcing' touch-typing on those poor students. They'll thank me later.
* Yes I tought myself how to type dvorak but this was AFTER I learned to touch-type qwerty, and knowing the advantages I chose to learn how to type correctly.
> This is the most important reason for control to remain in the hands of the US as long as possible. At least with the US at the helm, crazy theocracies and brutal one-party governments are at least forced to work at preventing the enlightening power of the internet from spoiling all their brainwashing.
What? Why would you care what other countries ban or don't ban under their own TLDs? Countries can already block most of the web if they'd like (just look at china). To allow countries to manage their own TLDs would change exactly nothing.
I don't really see the problem? I wouldn't mind if my parents had decided to throw my embryo away in favor of a better one, if only because I would never have existed and therefore would have been quite unable to care one way or another.
> Is it possible for a gene to map to more than just one function? > If so, now that they've eliminated this gene, isn't it possible that they might have eliminated more than just breast cancer?
They did not 'remove' the gene. No genes were altered or removed. If one of your parents has a good and a bad version of a gene, then you have a 50/50 chance of getting the good or the bad version (it depends on which chromosome you get). When you make a few embryos and then test them, you can throw out the bad ones and keep the good ones.
So no gene was removed, they merely ensured the child had a good copy of a particular gene.
> The absurdity of labeling one's own dependent offspring as parasitic in "biological" terms is blindingly absurd (if you believe in such silly things as evolutionary imperatives, continuation of the species, and all that junk, that is).
We are not slaves to evolution or the human race, so I don't see what 'evolutionary imperatives' and 'continuation of the species' have to do with any of this.
> I knew a girl that was going to be identical twins, but the two merged back together into a singe fetus.
That sounds highly unlikely, but very interesting if it is true. Can you elaborate on how this is supposed to happen? How is this kind of thing detected?
> You can't point to any one spot in an embryo's development (except fertilization) and say "There. Now it is human." With that ambiguity, is it not better to err on the side of caution?
Maybe you can't point at any specific point in a pregnancy and say 'Ha! Now it is a real human being worth protecting!', but I think we can all agree an eight cell embryo is not in that fuzzy area.
We may not agree on where your neck ends and your head begins, but we can agree anything above your eyes is part of your head, not of your neck.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYY_syndrome : Developmental delays and behavioral problems are also possible, but these characteristics vary widely among affected boys and men, are not unique to 47,XYY and are managed no differently than in 46,XY males. Aggression is not seen more frequently in 47,XYY males.
According to wikipedia XYY guys are more likely to have learning difficulties, and have lower intelligence.
Unless you were referring to YY males without an X chromosome, which is something from one of the Alien movies and AFAIK quite impossible in the real world.
> Oh, and my reaction is the reaction you could expect from a large part of the Europeans.
Maybe, but the Dutch hate their language. I for one would not mind if everything on TV were English (exception: the news). English is such a beautiful language compared to Dutch, you can say the exact same thing three times without ever using the same word.
Not that I would completely abandon Dutch, but I don't need my series in Dutch.
> Perhaps an orientation on responsible computer use and have the kids sign an acceptable use policy?
They are minors, I don't know how this is done where the submitter lives, but in my country minors cannot sign a contract (well, you are always free to write your signature whereever you want, but it isn't legally binding iirc). If that is the case them having the kids sign a policy is useless.
Resetting the bios password can either be done in software or by messing with the hardware. The former can be blocked by the OS. Most people will be reluctant to do the latter, especially when you place some sort of seal on the laptop that will indicate that it has been opened.
Remember, you succeed when you make hacking the laptops more trouble than it's worth (which will be easy since most students will already have access to an (unfiltered?) computer), making the laptops completely unhackable is pretty much impossible.
Don't be ridiculous. When one person breaks the law, that person is wrong. When everybody breaks a law, the law is wrong.
Having a rule that you know many, many people will break (and get away with?) is a good way to make those people lose respect for any other (more important?) rules you have.
Slashdot Mirror
> but evolution would have still succeeded.
Evolution does not have a 'goal' and as such, it can't fail or succeed. Nor do humans have some sort of obligation to 'evolution' to save 'life' from planetary destruction.
Posting to undo moderation. Modded parent Overrated by accident.
> In the long run, I'm all for genetic freedom. Change your genetics how you like. You buy specific virii-"mods" that only "infect" you, and then something in your body changes. You could change your hair color, add some starfish-genes to regrow body parts, or why not grow some decorative fairy wings if you are a girl? > Some might really fear everything that could go wrong there. But hey, you only live once, and the gains far outweigh the negative aspects. The problem with the whole 'genetics' thingy is that it tends to affect your offspring. I don't mind people tweaking their own bodies but I would object to changing the genetics of ones children unless it were to prevent some terrible genetic disease (Which diseases qualify as 'a terrible genetic disease' I'll leave to an exercise for the reader ;) ).
> On the other hand, I find it somewhat ridiculous that you would not object to showing whatever it is you're showing, in public, to a handful of strangers, but you would suddenly object if it was shown, over the Internet, to a few more strangers.
A fair point, but I doubt many women who breastfeed their baby in public do so with the intent to show their boobs to any strangers nearby. That's merely a side-effect, and if you get any 'good' pictures of boobies by taking pictures of a breastfeeding woman it's probably because you went to the trouble of getting a good angle and waited for the right moment, not because the woman was running through the streets topless screaming "Look at me! Look at my tits!". In a way I guess it can be compared to sticking your camera under some woman's skirt and taking a picture. Surely in such a case 'there existed, from a point in a public place, a line of sight to her underwear, which was, at the moment the picture was taken, also in a public place, so why shouldn't I be allowed to take a picture and upload it to the intertubes?' is no proper defense for such an action.
> I don't know what the law should be -- it always bothered me when some video shown on TV has various faces blurred out, because they never got that person to sign some sort of waiver. On the other hand, if you're going to snap a photo of someone, and then turn that into an international ad campaign, I'd argue you should have to get their consent, and probably pay them for the privilege.
I agree it's not easy to find a good point to draw the line, but if it were to be drawn somewhere, the act of trying to take pictures of boobies of some breastfeeding woman without her consent should be on the other side on the line (IMHO).
> But regardless of what the law should be, common sense now dictates that if you are in public, you should assume that anything you do might be photographed and broadcast.
I do, but I wish to live in a world where people wouldn't have to worry about all their actions being 'photographed, stored, and indexed, for generations to come'.
Do YOU expect to get photographed and uploaded to 4chan/the pirate bay/whatever every time you leave your house? Would you find that acceptable? Personally I find the whole 'I have a right to take pictures of everyone I see on the street without their knowledge or consent and do whatever the hell I like with them, if people disagree with me then they should just not to be in public places and stay in their homes the rest of their lives'-thing ridiculous.
I wasn't trying to be funny. The whole 'us versus them' mentality is ridiculous.
Let's use that number. The odds of a server failing during the 20 seconds before midnight on 31 december are 1 in 5 million. Suppose there are 50 millions servers. Simple math says the chance of your server crashing is extremely small (1 in 5 million), but there will be about 10 people who have a crashed server. That is normal (using your number there will be 10 servers crashing every 20 seconds every day of the year) but those 10 people will think it 'an awfully unlikely coincidence', while the other 15379200 server crashes during a year are ignored.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the new year can't have anything to do with the crash, I just think it's way more likely that your server crashed randomly and you see causality where none exists.
Sure, great. You hear shooting, 10 random people in random places near the shooting get out their guns and start hunting for the shooter. When you see someone with a gun, the odds are 9 out of 10 that they are not the shooter. Will you take that chance, or will you shoot anyone with a gun? Will they? Will you be fooled when the 'terrorist' points in some direction and shouts 'He went that way!'?
> For those who slept through Modern History class, I'll tell: religion. Specifically Muslims.
> They are the most likely group to set off a bomb on an airplane or hijack it. We can pretend that's not the case (and continue with the current "security theatre" at airports) in order to protect the delicate sensibilities of the PC crowd, but that doesn't change facts.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that you are more than correct and ONLY muslims will ever hijack or blow up an airplane. How do you propose we do this security checkpoint thing? "Hello good sir, what is your religion? If you are a muslim you have to go to that checkpoint there but the good god-fearing christians can skip it." I doubt having to lie to airport personel is going to stop someone who plans to kill dozens of people. Are you seriously suggesting that all muslims can be recognized on sight and that it is impossible for, let's say, a white woman to be a muslim?
> Could this be a coincidence
Yes. People are wired to see causality everywhere, even where there is none. Had your server crashed a week ago you wouldn't think anything of it (maybe 5% of all servers mysteriously crashed exactly one week ago, but because it was an 'ordinary' day nobody noticed). Anyway, since you noticed your server crashed at new year and reported it on /., and with 6 billion people on this planet we will soon hear stories about other computers that mysteriously crashed around midnight. Not because there has to be anything special, but because computers are crashing all the time and new year (and your post) made it appear special.
I doubt it has anything to do with leap seconds, if your computer ran for 6 years it survived the leap second of 2005.
Becaauuuuse, it's bad precedent. Suppose someone has raped, tortured, and murdered over a thousand children. He get charged for those crimes, and in addition gets 20 years in prison for driving 62 on a 60 mph road. You may say 'who cares such a conviction is ridiculous, the guy deserves to rot in prison for the rest of his life', but it sets bad precedent for all of us, not just the 'villains'.
That's why the cartoon-related conviction matters.
> It may even raise questions as to your diligence and motivation toward your career rather than fun.
Who cares? Honestly, would you want to work for a company that wouldn't hire you because you took half a year to come in contact with a whole different culture and grow as a person? Let them know you work to live and not the other way round.
Maybe GP should have said: 'without (known) application(s), X seems worthless to almost all children'.
> I've seen girls learn to type fast on their cell phones. They don't need a cell phone typing course to do that. They shouldn't be required to WASTE time learning typing on a computer when they will eventually figure that out. This is a great example of how misused computers in schools are (not to mention the waste of typing-only computer labs when 100 year old typewriters would suffice.)
My father, who has been working with computers for over 20 years, 'figured out' how to type. He still types with two fingers. I was taught typing at school, use ten fingers and don't have to look at my keyboard (which is a great advantage since I tought myself dvorak on a qwerty keyboard some time ago...*) and I am way faster than he is. Because he can type 'fast enough' there isn't much motivation to learn how to type properly, however had someone taught him to touch type waaaaay back he would easily be twice as fast.
Cell phones are different because the most obvious way to type is also the 'correct' way to do it. Not so much for keyboards, where 'hunt and peck' is the technique most people use when first confronted with a keyboard. I wholeheartedly support 'forcing' touch-typing on those poor students. They'll thank me later.
* Yes I tought myself how to type dvorak but this was AFTER I learned to touch-type qwerty, and knowing the advantages I chose to learn how to type correctly.
> This is the most important reason for control to remain in the hands of the US as long as possible. At least with the US at the helm, crazy theocracies and brutal one-party governments are at least forced to work at preventing the enlightening power of the internet from spoiling all their brainwashing.
What? Why would you care what other countries ban or don't ban under their own TLDs? Countries can already block most of the web if they'd like (just look at china). To allow countries to manage their own TLDs would change exactly nothing.
I don't really see the problem? I wouldn't mind if my parents had decided to throw my embryo away in favor of a better one, if only because I would never have existed and therefore would have been quite unable to care one way or another.
> Is it possible for a gene to map to more than just one function?
> If so, now that they've eliminated this gene, isn't it possible that they might have eliminated more than just breast cancer?
They did not 'remove' the gene. No genes were altered or removed. If one of your parents has a good and a bad version of a gene, then you have a 50/50 chance of getting the good or the bad version (it depends on which chromosome you get). When you make a few embryos and then test them, you can throw out the bad ones and keep the good ones.
So no gene was removed, they merely ensured the child had a good copy of a particular gene.
> The absurdity of labeling one's own dependent offspring as parasitic in "biological" terms is blindingly absurd (if you believe in such silly things as evolutionary imperatives, continuation of the species, and all that junk, that is).
We are not slaves to evolution or the human race, so I don't see what 'evolutionary imperatives' and 'continuation of the species' have to do with any of this.
> I knew a girl that was going to be identical twins, but the two merged back together into a singe fetus.
That sounds highly unlikely, but very interesting if it is true. Can you elaborate on how this is supposed to happen? How is this kind of thing detected?
> You can't point to any one spot in an embryo's development (except fertilization) and say "There. Now it is human." With that ambiguity, is it not better to err on the side of caution?
Made me think of this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki's_Wager :)
Maybe you can't point at any specific point in a pregnancy and say 'Ha! Now it is a real human being worth protecting!', but I think we can all agree an eight cell embryo is not in that fuzzy area.
We may not agree on where your neck ends and your head begins, but we can agree anything above your eyes is part of your head, not of your neck.
> I believe they are double y chromo?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYY_syndrome : Developmental delays and behavioral problems are also possible, but these characteristics vary widely among affected boys and men, are not unique to 47,XYY and are managed no differently than in 46,XY males. Aggression is not seen more frequently in 47,XYY males.
According to wikipedia XYY guys are more likely to have learning difficulties, and have lower intelligence.
Unless you were referring to YY males without an X chromosome, which is something from one of the Alien movies and AFAIK quite impossible in the real world.
> Oh, and my reaction is the reaction you could expect from a large part of the Europeans.
Maybe, but the Dutch hate their language. I for one would not mind if everything on TV were English (exception: the news). English is such a beautiful language compared to Dutch, you can say the exact same thing three times without ever using the same word.
Not that I would completely abandon Dutch, but I don't need my series in Dutch.
> Perhaps an orientation on responsible computer use and have the kids sign an acceptable use policy?
They are minors, I don't know how this is done where the submitter lives, but in my country minors cannot sign a contract (well, you are always free to write your signature whereever you want, but it isn't legally binding iirc). If that is the case them having the kids sign a policy is useless.
Resetting the bios password can either be done in software or by messing with the hardware. The former can be blocked by the OS. Most people will be reluctant to do the latter, especially when you place some sort of seal on the laptop that will indicate that it has been opened.
Remember, you succeed when you make hacking the laptops more trouble than it's worth (which will be easy since most students will already have access to an (unfiltered?) computer), making the laptops completely unhackable is pretty much impossible.
Don't be ridiculous. When one person breaks the law, that person is wrong. When everybody breaks a law, the law is wrong.
Having a rule that you know many, many people will break (and get away with?) is a good way to make those people lose respect for any other (more important?) rules you have.