Hence my point about it being more important to teach a child when to lie about one's age as being more important than just how to do it.
Teach? If a child is not "grown-up" enough to lie well enough about her age and other personal details to Google etc, to get what she wants from them, then perhaps the child is not ready for those parts of the Internet?
In my opinion once she's old enough to figure that out and do that on her own (no help from parents), COPPA isn't going to protect her that much (the world might need protecting from her, but that's a different matter;) ).
But very helpful to distro maintainers who can offer a nicely customised version as a point of differentiation
Yes but it's not usually a good sign if the people designing the GUI don't have much clue about good defaults.
It's like a restaurant with chefs who lack taste. They will churn out sub-par dishes, refuse to admit they are sub-par ("tastes great to me") and distro maintainers have to "customise" the dishes so that more people would actually eat them. At that point there'd be a limit to how good the dishes can be. You'd have to cook stuff from scratch if you really want something "insanely great" (to use Steve Job's phrase).
And point 2) remains, if everyone has different "defaults" support becomes more expensive or not possible, UNLESS most agree to provide a standard "phone support" interface[1]. No support from cheap people reading scripts (one might think nobody would actually be helped by that sort of support, but the people who have "Hard Drives" with "cup holders" will).
Have you looked at Mint 12 yet?
I'm fine with using "server linux" from the CLI, and sticking to Desktop OSes that work better for me. Maybe if/when Microsoft or Apple screw things up more than the Desktop Linux people, then I'd switch. I spent a few years with KDE/SuSE and while it wasn't bad it wasn't good enough.
[1] Example standard "phone support" interface/method:
1) Phone support tell users to click the "spanner icon", then click "Yes" (instead of cancel;) ). 2) Then a big configuration window pops up, where sections (tabbed?) are marked with coloured shapes (circle, triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon), and items are marked with letters and numbers- each section has has its own unique letter to start item numbers with. The sections could be stuff like: OS, Network, Hardware, Applications,Remote Assistance (with scary warning - user-configuration of the destination could be disabled for Corporate setups). 3) Phone support tells the user to go to the "Red Triangle" (Network) section, and to read out item "B2" (IPv4 Address). If it's 169.254.x.x, phone support can get the user to click on the item "B1" (try reconfiguring from DHCP).
I'm no expert on phone support, but from what I see, something like this would be helpful - even to slashdotters proving phone support to relatives.
Then people can have whatever weird GUI or customization, and they can still be supported cheaply and efficiently:).
Configurability is nice, but defaults are very important. A good GUI has good defaults.
You could use GConf to configure ANY aspect of the interface, anything at all.
Not helpful to most users. And in theory you could use the source code to configure any aspect of the interface too.
1) Most people instead of making 1000 decisions to get a GUI that's 99% suitable for them, will make one decision to get a GUI that has defaults that are 80% suitable for them. 2) If you deviate too much from the defaults, you may have difficulty getting support. This may not be a problem for slashdotters but it is a problem for the rest of the world.
I wonder if this anecdote is true (or based on a true incident involving Asimov):
While watching Clarke's 2001, it soon became obvious that Hal was going to be a killer. Asimov complained to a friend, "They're violating the Three Laws!" His friend said, "Why don't you smite them with a thunderbolt?"
Asimov would be naive if he actually believed the laws could actually be implemented.
I claim that any entity capable of understanding the Asimov Laws AND _interpreting_ them to apply them in complex and diverse scenarios would also be capable of choosing not to follow them.
You can program stuff to not shoot when some definable condition is met or not met. But when you need the AI to realize what is "human", "orders", "action/inaction" and "harm" (and judge relative harms), you're talking about a different thing completely.
You can train (and breed) humans and other animals to do what you want, but it's not like your orders are some non-negotiable mathematical law. Same will go for the really autonomous AIs. Anyone trying to get those to strictly follow some Law of Robotics is naive.
Even humans that intentionally try to will have difficulty following the 3 Laws. Through my inaction it is possible that some child in Africa will die, or perhaps not. How many would know or even care? FWIW most humans just do what everyone else around them is doing. Only a minority are good, and another minority are evil (yes good and evil are subjective but go look up milgram experiment and stanford prison experiment for what I mean - the good people are those who choose to not do evil even when under pressure).
There's a theory that some chronic back pain is due to low-virulent bacterial infection, and you can cure it with a course of the right antibiotics: http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/42/12/969.full
Maybe the pain is so much you don't care if you die? Dying over years/decades in debilitating pain may not be considered to be much better than dying overnight in an overdose.
I think the doctor should find a better drug. Is there a cheap drug where the effective dose is not as close to the fatal dose?
If the prices go down and stuff like this becomes popular for Android and Apple stuff I think the portable gaming console market is going to die and be completely replaced by the phones and pads.
1) The smart phones and tablets will kill this - lots of games on them. Worse if bluetooth gaming controllers/joysticks become popular or get bundled with some games. 2) It's Sony. Many slashdotters won't buy Sony anymore.
But yeah if the price is negative USD200 I'd buy it. Call me a sell-out but the USD200 will be nice in my drive upgrade/replacement fund:).
Children are not born liking spicy food. I don't know about the Thais, but I doubt most parents would wean their babies on spicy food. By the time children start to actually like spicy food (by gradually eating more of what the adults eat - children like to copy what adults do), they'd have grown out of putting just anything in their mouths:).
Neither are children born liking temperature-hot food and drinks - if something feels hot to your fingers it's too hot for children's mouths and it's actually not that good for your mouth and throat. Most adults are just used to consuming such heat-hot foods and drinks.
If you don't give kids toys every week, they'd be less likely to break their toys.
Nowadays the toys for really young kids are quite safe even when broken. So the problem is more likely to be mixed age environments where the younger kid swallows the bits and pieces of an older kid's toys.
I believe chilli or chilli oil when used judiciously can teach children not to put just anything into their mouths, and to obey their parents when told to not put stuff in their mouths.
The "effective dose" of chilli is quite low compared to the toxic/harmful dose, so it's quite safe for such things. The kid might cry a lot, but after that they'll be more likely to believe dad or mom when they say "No!".
Most atheists are only slightly less delusional and ignorant than the average religious person.
Dawkins and many atheists (including Hitchens ) claim that religion leads to violence (some atheists even claim that religion is the main cause of violence). But that's disingenuous and misleading, it doesn't give a full and true picture of reality. Yes religion can lead to violence, but so can the many other ideologies and beliefs out there.
Go look up the stats on who is beating up/killing who and why. *** Mass killings Most of the mass killings in the 20th century were not due to religion. Mao in China. Stalin too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge Hitler. The Rwandan genocide. Leopold II of Belgium killed millions on Congo. Pol Pot killed millions. Only the Turkish-Armenian genocide is up there in the "20th Century hall of shame".
Note Mao and Stalin were atheists or using an atheistic ideology as an excuse. Any claim that the Communism and Tribalism in the above are actually religions is just using something like the "no true scotsman" logical fallacy.
*** Non-organized Most of the random beatings/killings/muggings in the world are not caused by religion. In many places alcohol + young men is a greater cause of violence. "Honor killings" are more due to culture and tradition than religion. Take away religion from those people and they'd probably still kill their daughters.
Fact is, humans are tribal in nature, most need a sense of belonging and some sort of ideology. Then it quickly becomes a Us vs Them. See those sport events, where young men are willing to abuse or beat up other young men just because they are supporting different teams. Also PETA and Greenpeace- they're not very different from religious organizations in many ways.
So even if there's no religion in the world, people will find other reasons to kill/attack each other, any ideology or excuse will do - whether it be Communism - Proletariat vs the Capitalist Bourgeoisie. Or Hutu vs Tutsi. Or soccer/football: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_hooliganism Maybe even "Save the Sea Kittens";).
Therefore a rational Atheist may conclude that the solution is not to get rid of religion and create a vacuum that will be instantly filled with some other ideology, but to instead create a superior alternative (that is of course compatible with Atheism). Basically come up with an alternative ideology/meme that: 0) promotes nonviolent behaviour among hosts (aka believers) 1) can reproduce itself efficiently and out-competes the other ideologies/religions (or at least is competitive enough). 2) compatible with Atheism;) Bonus points if it encourages altruistic behaviour too (altruism is a good thing to have for societies to scale).
Saying it's not the job of atheists or "atheism" to do so is correct, but doesn't solve the problem many Atheists complain about either.
Speaking of lasers and toys. Some crazy school here was giving out laser pointers to school children as gifts.
The brother of one of the schoolkids told me these weren't the normal < 1mW laser pointers. They're extremely unlikely to be the "Wicked Laser" ones, but I won't be surprised if they could cause permanent eye damage.
What normal kid would do that and shoot it at another person?
Many? That's why the law makes a distinction between children and adults (even though it's arbitrary it's still sillier not to) and parents aren't supposed to let their kids do anything they want.
OK let's do this more scientifically then. Do a statistically survey in terms of "net benefit to society". Define "benefit to society" and the "minuses" how you like so we can figure out what and how you're measuring. Whether it's helping the poor, feeding the starving, building/running hospitals and schools or killing people, DUI, etc.
Then take a random sampling of a large number of atheists, christians, muslims, buddhists, etc. See how many are doing the "good stuff" vs the how many doing the "bad stuff" vs how many not doing anything, per capita and net total[1].
Then figure out which belief system is best for society, by your standards. [1] Net total is also important because if a belief system is not fit and doesn't reproduce itself well, then it's not going to do very much good (or bad), so even if it is a greater net positive per capita, it's not going to benefit society as much as a belief system with much higher reproductive fitness, even if it is a smaller net positive per capita.
Lastly, any claims that atheists are less prone to irrational or delusional thinking and that's why Atheism is so great need to be backed up. 1) Rational thinking is overrated in terms of evolutionary fitness 2) There are plenty of irrational/delusional atheists. For example, Dawkins himself is being delusional when he claims "for atheism nearly always indicates a healthy independence of mind and, indeed, a healthy mind". From what I see it's unlikely that atheists "nearly always" never get mental illnesses, dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinsons... So does Dawkin's mean that atheists will stop being atheists once they get stuff like age-onset dementia? Live long enough and there's a 1/7 chance you'd get dementia, even if you're an atheist. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071030112105.htm
Given the current state of WiFi it's hard for hotels,cafes, conferences to provide WiFi access to guests and not have them able to snoop on each other's traffic.
IIRC you can use WPA2 Enterprise (the rest are crackable), but that means the guests have to login. In theory you can give all the guests the same username and password (with WPA2 Enterprise I think they won't be able to decrypt each other's traffic even if they had the same username and password but this is not true if it was the WPA2 shared key crap).
But the problem then is the guests would have to know what username and password to use. So this is where you'd need help from Microsoft, Apple, etc to set up a standard for WPA2 Enterprise guest accounts, much like the defacto "ftp" accounts for anonymous access.
Of course there would still be the problem of MITM attacks - attackers could setup an AP that pretended to be the hotel's AP, so perhaps you'd need some certs/fingerprints or other way to verify the APs.
In case you still don't understand, that study itself shows that the distribution curves for males ARE generally flatter than for women!
The authors claim the reasons for it are cultural. But they don't do a good job at proving their claim nor do they prove there's no biological factor.
Just because there is variation amongst the different countries and schools does not mean there's no biological factor. After all the variation in the numbers of world class basketball players in different countries and schools does not prove there's no biological factor. In fact there appears to be a biological factor in the basketball case- certain breeds of humans are generally taller than other breeds, and being tall is an advantage in basketball. There certainly are breeds of humans. The differences may not be as clear as they are in dogs or other animals but there certainly are differences.
Slashdot Mirror
Hence my point about it being more important to teach a child when to lie about one's age as being more important than just how to do it.
Teach? If a child is not "grown-up" enough to lie well enough about her age and other personal details to Google etc, to get what she wants from them, then perhaps the child is not ready for those parts of the Internet?
In my opinion once she's old enough to figure that out and do that on her own (no help from parents), COPPA isn't going to protect her that much (the world might need protecting from her, but that's a different matter ;) ).
But very helpful to distro maintainers who can offer a nicely customised version as a point of differentiation
Yes but it's not usually a good sign if the people designing the GUI don't have much clue about good defaults.
It's like a restaurant with chefs who lack taste. They will churn out sub-par dishes, refuse to admit they are sub-par ("tastes great to me") and distro maintainers have to "customise" the dishes so that more people would actually eat them. At that point there'd be a limit to how good the dishes can be. You'd have to cook stuff from scratch if you really want something "insanely great" (to use Steve Job's phrase).
And point 2) remains, if everyone has different "defaults" support becomes more expensive or not possible, UNLESS most agree to provide a standard "phone support" interface[1]. No support from cheap people reading scripts (one might think nobody would actually be helped by that sort of support, but the people who have "Hard Drives" with "cup holders" will).
Have you looked at Mint 12 yet?
I'm fine with using "server linux" from the CLI, and sticking to Desktop OSes that work better for me. Maybe if/when Microsoft or Apple screw things up more than the Desktop Linux people, then I'd switch. I spent a few years with KDE/SuSE and while it wasn't bad it wasn't good enough.
[1] Example standard "phone support" interface/method:
1) Phone support tell users to click the "spanner icon", then click "Yes" (instead of cancel ;) ).
2) Then a big configuration window pops up, where sections (tabbed?) are marked with coloured shapes (circle, triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon), and items are marked with letters and numbers- each section has has its own unique letter to start item numbers with.
The sections could be stuff like: OS, Network, Hardware, Applications,Remote Assistance (with scary warning - user-configuration of the destination could be disabled for Corporate setups).
3) Phone support tells the user to go to the "Red Triangle" (Network) section, and to read out item "B2" (IPv4 Address). If it's 169.254.x.x, phone support can get the user to click on the item "B1" (try reconfiguring from DHCP).
I'm no expert on phone support, but from what I see, something like this would be helpful - even to slashdotters proving phone support to relatives.
Then people can have whatever weird GUI or customization, and they can still be supported cheaply and efficiently :).
Configurability is nice, but defaults are very important. A good GUI has good defaults.
You could use GConf to configure ANY aspect of the interface, anything at all.
Not helpful to most users. And in theory you could use the source code to configure any aspect of the interface too.
1) Most people instead of making 1000 decisions to get a GUI that's 99% suitable for them, will make one decision to get a GUI that has defaults that are 80% suitable for them.
2) If you deviate too much from the defaults, you may have difficulty getting support. This may not be a problem for slashdotters but it is a problem for the rest of the world.
I wonder if this anecdote is true (or based on a true incident involving Asimov):
While watching Clarke's 2001, it soon became obvious that Hal was going to
be a killer. Asimov complained to a friend, "They're violating the Three
Laws!"
His friend said, "Why don't you smite them with a thunderbolt?"
Asimov would be naive if he actually believed the laws could actually be implemented.
I claim that any entity capable of understanding the Asimov Laws AND _interpreting_ them to apply them in complex and diverse scenarios would also be capable of choosing not to follow them.
You can program stuff to not shoot when some definable condition is met or not met. But when you need the AI to realize what is "human", "orders", "action/inaction" and "harm" (and judge relative harms), you're talking about a different thing completely.
You can train (and breed) humans and other animals to do what you want, but it's not like your orders are some non-negotiable mathematical law. Same will go for the really autonomous AIs. Anyone trying to get those to strictly follow some Law of Robotics is naive.
Even humans that intentionally try to will have difficulty following the 3 Laws. Through my inaction it is possible that some child in Africa will die, or perhaps not. How many would know or even care? FWIW most humans just do what everyone else around them is doing. Only a minority are good, and another minority are evil (yes good and evil are subjective but go look up milgram experiment and stanford prison experiment for what I mean - the good people are those who choose to not do evil even when under pressure).
There's a theory that some chronic back pain is due to low-virulent bacterial infection, and you can cure it with a course of the right antibiotics: http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/42/12/969.full
I won't be surprised if that's true. Periodontal bacteria has been linked to heart disease, and antibacterial mouthwash reduces the risk of preterm deliveries ( http://www.thehealthage.com/2011/02/anti-bacterial-mouthwash-reduces-risk-of-preterm-deliveries/ ).
It took a while for people to find out and prove that helicobacter pylori was responsible for many cases of chronic gastritis and gastric ulcers.
Not all bacteria are harmful and not in all cases. It can get quite complex - the same bacteria might be fine in one person or fine when with other bacteria. Nowadays some doctors are even resorting to fecal transplants to cure certain gastrointestinal problems: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/fecal-transplants-work/
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2011/10/31/fecal-transplants-have-the-ick-factor-but-research-suggests-they-work/
Hence many of these chronic problems actually being caused by bacteria or an imbalance in bacterial ecosystems would not be surprising to me.
Maybe the pain is so much you don't care if you die? Dying over years/decades in debilitating pain may not be considered to be much better than dying overnight in an overdose.
I think the doctor should find a better drug. Is there a cheap drug where the effective dose is not as close to the fatal dose?
Does stuff like this help? http://www.icontrolpad.com/
If the prices go down and stuff like this becomes popular for Android and Apple stuff I think the portable gaming console market is going to die and be completely replaced by the phones and pads.
1) The smart phones and tablets will kill this - lots of games on them. Worse if bluetooth gaming controllers/joysticks become popular or get bundled with some games.
:).
2) It's Sony. Many slashdotters won't buy Sony anymore.
But yeah if the price is negative USD200 I'd buy it. Call me a sell-out but the USD200 will be nice in my drive upgrade/replacement fund
Is not having Ubuntu's long term support really such a great loss?
Doesn't seem to for me. OK the little Linux penguin in my search results is not wearing clothes, but it appears to have its full plumage.
See also: http://www.givewell.org/
Children are not born liking spicy food. I don't know about the Thais, but I doubt most parents would wean their babies on spicy food. By the time children start to actually like spicy food (by gradually eating more of what the adults eat - children like to copy what adults do), they'd have grown out of putting just anything in their mouths :).
Neither are children born liking temperature-hot food and drinks - if something feels hot to your fingers it's too hot for children's mouths and it's actually not that good for your mouth and throat. Most adults are just used to consuming such heat-hot foods and drinks.
Not such a good idea if you ever need to open it up to do maintenance/upgrades on it.
If you don't give kids toys every week, they'd be less likely to break their toys.
Nowadays the toys for really young kids are quite safe even when broken. So the problem is more likely to be mixed age environments where the younger kid swallows the bits and pieces of an older kid's toys.
I believe chilli or chilli oil when used judiciously can teach children not to put just anything into their mouths, and to obey their parents when told to not put stuff in their mouths.
The "effective dose" of chilli is quite low compared to the toxic/harmful dose, so it's quite safe for such things. The kid might cry a lot, but after that they'll be more likely to believe dad or mom when they say "No!".
You should reread my post and use that "healthy independent mind" of yours.
I wrote:
Define "benefit to society" and the "minuses" HOW YOU LIKE so we can figure out what and how you're measuring.
Then figure out which belief system is best for society, by YOUR standards.
Emphasis in capitals added for the feeble-minded blindly-religious folk.
Most atheists are only slightly less delusional and ignorant than the average religious person.
Dawkins and many atheists (including Hitchens ) claim that religion leads to violence (some atheists even claim that religion is the main cause of violence). But that's disingenuous and misleading, it doesn't give a full and true picture of reality. Yes religion can lead to violence, but so can the many other ideologies and beliefs out there.
Go look up the stats on who is beating up/killing who and why.
*** Mass killings
Most of the mass killings in the 20th century were not due to religion.
Mao in China.
Stalin too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
Hitler.
The Rwandan genocide.
Leopold II of Belgium killed millions on Congo.
Pol Pot killed millions.
Only the Turkish-Armenian genocide is up there in the "20th Century hall of shame".
Note Mao and Stalin were atheists or using an atheistic ideology as an excuse. Any claim that the Communism and Tribalism in the above are actually religions is just using something like the "no true scotsman" logical fallacy.
*** Non-organized
Most of the random beatings/killings/muggings in the world are not caused by religion. In many places alcohol + young men is a greater cause of violence.
"Honor killings" are more due to culture and tradition than religion. Take away religion from those people and they'd probably still kill their daughters.
Fact is, humans are tribal in nature, most need a sense of belonging and some sort of ideology. Then it quickly becomes a Us vs Them. See those sport events, where young men are willing to abuse or beat up other young men just because they are supporting different teams. Also PETA and Greenpeace- they're not very different from religious organizations in many ways.
So even if there's no religion in the world, people will find other reasons to kill/attack each other, any ideology or excuse will do - whether it be Communism - Proletariat vs the Capitalist Bourgeoisie. Or Hutu vs Tutsi. Or soccer/football: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_hooliganism ;).
Maybe even "Save the Sea Kittens"
Therefore a rational Atheist may conclude that the solution is not to get rid of religion and create a vacuum that will be instantly filled with some other ideology, but to instead create a superior alternative (that is of course compatible with Atheism). Basically come up with an alternative ideology/meme that: ;)
0) promotes nonviolent behaviour among hosts (aka believers)
1) can reproduce itself efficiently and out-competes the other ideologies/religions (or at least is competitive enough).
2) compatible with Atheism
Bonus points if it encourages altruistic behaviour too (altruism is a good thing to have for societies to scale).
Saying it's not the job of atheists or "atheism" to do so is correct, but doesn't solve the problem many Atheists complain about either.
Speaking of lasers and toys. Some crazy school here was giving out laser pointers to school children as gifts.
The brother of one of the schoolkids told me these weren't the normal < 1mW laser pointers. They're extremely unlikely to be the "Wicked Laser" ones, but I won't be surprised if they could cause permanent eye damage.
What normal kid would do that and shoot it at another person?
Many? That's why the law makes a distinction between children and adults (even though it's arbitrary it's still sillier not to) and parents aren't supposed to let their kids do anything they want.
OK let's do this more scientifically then. Do a statistically survey in terms of "net benefit to society". Define "benefit to society" and the "minuses" how you like so we can figure out what and how you're measuring. Whether it's helping the poor, feeding the starving, building/running hospitals and schools or killing people, DUI, etc.
Then take a random sampling of a large number of atheists, christians, muslims, buddhists, etc. See how many are doing the "good stuff" vs the how many doing the "bad stuff" vs how many not doing anything, per capita and net total[1].
Then figure out which belief system is best for society, by your standards.
[1] Net total is also important because if a belief system is not fit and doesn't reproduce itself well, then it's not going to do very much good (or bad), so even if it is a greater net positive per capita, it's not going to benefit society as much as a belief system with much higher reproductive fitness, even if it is a smaller net positive per capita.
Lastly, any claims that atheists are less prone to irrational or delusional thinking and that's why Atheism is so great need to be backed up.
1) Rational thinking is overrated in terms of evolutionary fitness
2) There are plenty of irrational/delusional atheists. For example, Dawkins himself is being delusional when he claims "for atheism nearly always indicates a healthy independence of mind and, indeed, a healthy mind". From what I see it's unlikely that atheists "nearly always" never get mental illnesses, dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinsons... So does Dawkin's mean that atheists will stop being atheists once they get stuff like age-onset dementia? Live long enough and there's a 1/7 chance you'd get dementia, even if you're an atheist. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071030112105.htm
Not helpful from the perspective of a hotel trying to provide a better WiFi service to guests.
You can make backup copies of youtube videos.
Given the current state of WiFi it's hard for hotels,cafes, conferences to provide WiFi access to guests and not have them able to snoop on each other's traffic.
IIRC you can use WPA2 Enterprise (the rest are crackable), but that means the guests have to login. In theory you can give all the guests the same username and password (with WPA2 Enterprise I think they won't be able to decrypt each other's traffic even if they had the same username and password but this is not true if it was the WPA2 shared key crap).
But the problem then is the guests would have to know what username and password to use. So this is where you'd need help from Microsoft, Apple, etc to set up a standard for WPA2 Enterprise guest accounts, much like the defacto "ftp" accounts for anonymous access.
Of course there would still be the problem of MITM attacks - attackers could setup an AP that pretended to be the hotel's AP, so perhaps you'd need some certs/fingerprints or other way to verify the APs.
In case you still don't understand, that study itself shows that the distribution curves for males ARE generally flatter than for women!
The authors claim the reasons for it are cultural. But they don't do a good job at proving their claim nor do they prove there's no biological factor.
Just because there is variation amongst the different countries and schools does not mean there's no biological factor. After all the variation in the numbers of world class basketball players in different countries and schools does not prove there's no biological factor. In fact there appears to be a biological factor in the basketball case- certain breeds of humans are generally taller than other breeds, and being tall is an advantage in basketball. There certainly are breeds of humans. The differences may not be as clear as they are in dogs or other animals but there certainly are differences.