The first is the obvious one: do we know enough to prevent side effects. This isn't just the we've-created-a-monster level, or even worries about creating toxins. Consider allergies. If you insert genes from a peanut strain into a corn strain, how likely are you to create corn that contains peanut allergens? Suddenly people who are allergic to peanuts have to worry about corn sending them to the emergency room. This argument boils down to the idea that we don't know enough yet to be able to make things safe for human consumption.
The second is the risk of a genetically-modified strain escaping into the wild and replacing natural strains. (The idea is that if you've engineered something to be hardier, or to have a greater yield, then it will outcompete other varieties.) Then, if you need something from one of the natural or domesticated strains, you're out of luck. This is where you run into monoculture problems like the great Irish Potato Famine, or the impending fate of our current favorite commercial variety of banana. If something comes along that turns out to kill your GMO crop very effectively, and everything around is that particular strain, you're in serious trouble. If there are still many varieties out there, at least you have more source material to work with. This argument boils down to Murphy's Law, really: somewhere, someday, something will go wrong with efforts to keep GMO crops bottled up in a particular area.
So the first objection is irrelevant for the most part, because people aren't eating it. But the second one still holds.
This reminds me of an article I read a few months ago about using corn to produce ethanol on a large scale as a renewable resource. Follow-up articles pointed out that corn (maize, specifically) isn't a particularly efficient crop, which meant that the environmental impact of drilling for oil and depleting oil reserves was just being shifted to depleting topsoil. Very much a "no free lunch" reaction.
If this biodiesel process can be applied to enough different types of plants, then it should be possible to pick and choose crops based on what does well in a given area -- after all, we don't have to worry about market pressures and what people want to eat, it's just going to be converted into fuel -- which should minimize the effects of choosing hihg-impact crops.
Nah, you don't have to *enjoy* what your partner enjoys, just accept it. My wife plays online games. I don't. I read comics. She doesn't. But there are plenty of other things that we both enjoy, so its no big deal.
You've got to have time together, and you've got to have some time to yourself.
Men have been ignoring their significant others in favor of spectator sports for decades or longer. The only thing that makes this different is that video games are interactive, where as the most interaction you can get with Monday Night Football is to scream at the ref -- who can't hear you from hundreds of miles away.
What I do find interesting is that they are going about this the "right" way rather than suing him and making a big public spectacle
It's about time they started attacking the use of a technology rather than the technology itself, and it's about time they started negotiating like civilized people instead of whipping out the legal guns at the start. The question is, is this the start of a shift in tactics, or is it just a stopped clock being correct twice a day?
It's perfectly legal and ethical to sell spammers access to a list of known working zombie PCs. After all, you're not the one who infected them, and you're not the one who'll be abusing them.
It's perfectly legal and ethical to drive the getaway car for a group of people robbing a bank. You didn't take the money, threaten anyone, or destroy any property.
These are obviously more serious crimes than copyright infringement, but you should get the point about passive participation.
I suppose it comes down to what you consider a torrent file to be. Is it more like a reference, or is it more like a ticket? If it's just a reference, as in "Yeah, so-and-so sells bootleg DVDs, and I think he has the movie you're looking for" then it's on less shaky ground. But if it's a ticket, as in "Here, give this to so-and-so and he'll give you a bootleg DVD" then it's a bit harder to justify.
Torrent files are a bit more involved than HTML links.
Compression before mixing is good, as it helps each instrument stay at a consistent level in the mix.
Are you sure you're talking about the same meaning of "compression?"
The issue with MP3s is data compression. it sounds to me like you're talking about compressing the sound wave itself. Not that I'm particularly familiar with the way music is mixed and mastered...
A USB stick is more expensive to make than a CD, whcih you can just stamp. Either is more expensive than just sending bits over the wire.
For a one-album set of songs, I don't see this working except for the novelty, unless it's billed as "128 MB USB stick (with Barenaked Ladies songs)" instead of "Barenaked Ladies songs (on a USB stick)." It reminds me of school fundraisers where you're selling tickets to an event with candy. It's always easier to sell people candy with a ticket as a bonus than to sell them a ticket with candy as a bonus.
On the other hand, for 29 songs, the cost should really be compared to a 2-CD set. At that point, $30 isn't that much more than $25.
Stats from the various sites I maintain suggest IE as #1, Mozilla/Firefox/etc. as #2, Safari as #3, and Opera as #4. Though I've got one site which is focused on alternative browsers where Firefox is #1, followed by IE, Opera, and Safari.
SSL v.2 is old, flawed, and IIRC already deprecated. The major browsers and certificate authorities have been using TLS (essentially SSL v.3) for years now, so dropping support for SSL v.2 is kind of like dropping support for Windows 3.1: not likely to cause many problems.
I've posted this before, in one of the threads a few weeks ago, but there was an article in American Scientist about Intelligent Design that looks at the larger picture. A key bit is this:
Intelligent Design is part of a calculated strategy that [founder Phillip] Johnson calls the "Wedge," referring to the tool used to split a solid object--in this case, the cornerstone of biological science. According to a document that appeared on the Discovery Institute's Web site in 1999, the goal of this plan is "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies." The document also makes sweeping, inaccurate claims such as "new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature." This statement is pure propaganda. (The document can still be found on the Discovery Institute's Web site by searching for "wedge," although it is now prefaced by 12 pages of insistent justification.) [Emphasis added]
Evolution is just the beginning, folks. This is about replacing science with religion.
Being beyond nature. God does not have to be beyond nature- he can choose to work within it, and since he's the one who designed the laws, one could say it's within his nature to follow the laws of nature.
Sure, He can choose to work within nature. But if He has the ability to choose, then He's not constrained by nature's laws, which means He must be able to work outside nature as well. If He can work outside nature, that places Him beyond it.
In 1918 an estimated 20-50 million people worldwide, including 675,000 in the United States bit the dust because you brilliant scientists couldn't figure out how to overcome a virus called influenza. Wow, I can rest easy putting my faith in you for sure!
And that proves what, exactly? I bet a lot of those people prayed to God to get better. He didn't save them, either. Does that mean you shouldn't put your faith in God?
Of course, Jamestown also predated the Pilgrims' arrival, and Jamestown was much more like Roanoke than it was like Plymouth. Well, except for the whole surviving thing.
Actually, the notion of America as a promised land goes back to colonial days. The Puritans who settled in new England identified often with the Old Testament persecution of the Jews, and there was an awful lot of talk about the "new world" as the New Jerusalem.
(Sorry, memories of my Colonial American Literature class cropping up.)
Slashdot Mirror
It seems like four or five articles have all appeared at once
And they're all about LEGO!
IIRC there are two main objections to GMOs.
The first is the obvious one: do we know enough to prevent side effects. This isn't just the we've-created-a-monster level, or even worries about creating toxins. Consider allergies. If you insert genes from a peanut strain into a corn strain, how likely are you to create corn that contains peanut allergens? Suddenly people who are allergic to peanuts have to worry about corn sending them to the emergency room. This argument boils down to the idea that we don't know enough yet to be able to make things safe for human consumption.
The second is the risk of a genetically-modified strain escaping into the wild and replacing natural strains. (The idea is that if you've engineered something to be hardier, or to have a greater yield, then it will outcompete other varieties.) Then, if you need something from one of the natural or domesticated strains, you're out of luck. This is where you run into monoculture problems like the great Irish Potato Famine, or the impending fate of our current favorite commercial variety of banana. If something comes along that turns out to kill your GMO crop very effectively, and everything around is that particular strain, you're in serious trouble. If there are still many varieties out there, at least you have more source material to work with. This argument boils down to Murphy's Law, really: somewhere, someday, something will go wrong with efforts to keep GMO crops bottled up in a particular area.
So the first objection is irrelevant for the most part, because people aren't eating it. But the second one still holds.
If they speed it up and it sounds like "Tekeli-li!" it's time to run.
This reminds me of an article I read a few months ago about using corn to produce ethanol on a large scale as a renewable resource. Follow-up articles pointed out that corn (maize, specifically) isn't a particularly efficient crop, which meant that the environmental impact of drilling for oil and depleting oil reserves was just being shifted to depleting topsoil. Very much a "no free lunch" reaction.
If this biodiesel process can be applied to enough different types of plants, then it should be possible to pick and choose crops based on what does well in a given area -- after all, we don't have to worry about market pressures and what people want to eat, it's just going to be converted into fuel -- which should minimize the effects of choosing hihg-impact crops.
Nah, you don't have to *enjoy* what your partner enjoys, just accept it. My wife plays online games. I don't. I read comics. She doesn't. But there are plenty of other things that we both enjoy, so its no big deal.
You've got to have time together, and you've got to have some time to yourself.
Men have been ignoring their significant others in favor of spectator sports for decades or longer. The only thing that makes this different is that video games are interactive, where as the most interaction you can get with Monday Night Football is to scream at the ref -- who can't hear you from hundreds of miles away.
I rememer when the electrically conducting plates in the light-and-sound LEGOs was a big deal. But this would be seriously cool!
Or if it was made from Eggo
No, thanks, I'd rather not toast my data...
What I do find interesting is that they are going about this the "right" way rather than suing him and making a big public spectacle
It's about time they started attacking the use of a technology rather than the technology itself, and it's about time they started negotiating like civilized people instead of whipping out the legal guns at the start. The question is, is this the start of a shift in tactics, or is it just a stopped clock being correct twice a day?
Sadly, I'd bet on the latter.
OK. Let's see if I've got this right.
It's perfectly legal and ethical to sell spammers access to a list of known working zombie PCs. After all, you're not the one who infected them, and you're not the one who'll be abusing them.
It's perfectly legal and ethical to drive the getaway car for a group of people robbing a bank. You didn't take the money, threaten anyone, or destroy any property.
These are obviously more serious crimes than copyright infringement, but you should get the point about passive participation.
I suppose it comes down to what you consider a torrent file to be. Is it more like a reference, or is it more like a ticket? If it's just a reference, as in "Yeah, so-and-so sells bootleg DVDs, and I think he has the movie you're looking for" then it's on less shaky ground. But if it's a ticket, as in "Here, give this to so-and-so and he'll give you a bootleg DVD" then it's a bit harder to justify.
Torrent files are a bit more involved than HTML links.
People who stood in line to get their X-Boxes are making $500-1000 on each box they sell online.
Someone's making a profit on these.
Got it. Thanks!
Sounds like you need an alternative girlfriend.
Compression before mixing is good, as it helps each instrument stay at a consistent level in the mix.
Are you sure you're talking about the same meaning of "compression?"
The issue with MP3s is data compression. it sounds to me like you're talking about compressing the sound wave itself. Not that I'm particularly familiar with the way music is mixed and mastered...
But not a real market segment, that's cruel!
A USB stick is more expensive to make than a CD, whcih you can just stamp. Either is more expensive than just sending bits over the wire.
For a one-album set of songs, I don't see this working except for the novelty, unless it's billed as "128 MB USB stick (with Barenaked Ladies songs)" instead of "Barenaked Ladies songs (on a USB stick)." It reminds me of school fundraisers where you're selling tickets to an event with candy. It's always easier to sell people candy with a ticket as a bonus than to sell them a ticket with candy as a bonus.
On the other hand, for 29 songs, the cost should really be compared to a 2-CD set. At that point, $30 isn't that much more than $25.
Stats from the various sites I maintain suggest IE as #1, Mozilla/Firefox/etc. as #2, Safari as #3, and Opera as #4. Though I've got one site which is focused on alternative browsers where Firefox is #1, followed by IE, Opera, and Safari.
SSL v.2 is old, flawed, and IIRC already deprecated. The major browsers and certificate authorities have been using TLS (essentially SSL v.3) for years now, so dropping support for SSL v.2 is kind of like dropping support for Windows 3.1: not likely to cause many problems.
I've posted this before, in one of the threads a few weeks ago, but there was an article in American Scientist about Intelligent Design that looks at the larger picture. A key bit is this:
Evolution is just the beginning, folks. This is about replacing science with religion.Being beyond nature. God does not have to be beyond nature- he can choose to work within it, and since he's the one who designed the laws, one could say it's within his nature to follow the laws of nature.
Sure, He can choose to work within nature. But if He has the ability to choose, then He's not constrained by nature's laws, which means He must be able to work outside nature as well. If He can work outside nature, that places Him beyond it.
Ergo, supernatural.
In 1918 an estimated 20-50 million people worldwide, including 675,000 in the United States bit the dust because you brilliant scientists couldn't figure out how to overcome a virus called influenza. Wow, I can rest easy putting my faith in you for sure!
And that proves what, exactly? I bet a lot of those people prayed to God to get better. He didn't save them, either. Does that mean you shouldn't put your faith in God?
No, it just means you have a bad argument.
Of course, Jamestown also predated the Pilgrims' arrival, and Jamestown was much more like Roanoke than it was like Plymouth. Well, except for the whole surviving thing.
Is science the only discipline that matters any more? Is there no room for theology, philosophy, ethics?
Is this a false dilemma I see before me?
Yep.
Others might actually stop using their drugs.
Like Christian Scientists? Or (for some medical procedures) Jehovah's Witnesses?
Actually, now that I think about it, neither group is much of a political powerhouse, as far as I know.
Actually, the notion of America as a promised land goes back to colonial days. The Puritans who settled in new England identified often with the Old Testament persecution of the Jews, and there was an awful lot of talk about the "new world" as the New Jerusalem.
(Sorry, memories of my Colonial American Literature class cropping up.)