Well I would say ethics is an absolute, but it does have grey areas. Would working in the Defense industry be ethical? I don't know it rather depends on for whom. I will not say that war is always unethical. In fact I will say quite the oposite, there are times when it would be unethical not to fight. When some thug Somewhere starts killing people en mass (Think Nazi Germany, Kosavo Bosnia etc) It shows a complete lack of ethics to sit on your hands and do nothing. As for biotech companies, you know many of them are working on drugs that can cure diseses or fight hunger on a massive level (The Golden rice).
As for ethics being absolute yes they are. While I make it a point to not push my ethical views on others I do beliive there are some absolutes. If every positon about ethics is equaly valid then the Marxist position that "We therefore reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatsoever as an etenal, ultimate and forever immutable moral law..." Which Karl Marx wrote in his book "Capital". Lenin said similar things. If you accept that moraltiy can be defined as such than the Stalin's Gulag and Pol Pot's killing fields (Both of which in someone's mind advanced the "Class Struggle") were a perfectly acceptable thing. I do not accept that.
No I mean ethics. The basic question is this. Is what I do with my life making the world a better place? There are any number of jobs that I'm sure pay very well and are perfectly legal (Including selling porn) that at least to my mind are not ethical. For example I would not work for a company making censor-ware. Nor would I work for a company that used sweat shops or did any number of other things.
For a large number of reasons I do not feal pornography is a healthy thing in our socity. So while I am not going to say that it should be banned, I am also not going to lift a finger to promote it. Nor would I work for a company that did.
I really think that in the last few years we as a socity have stoped talking about ethics, or when we do the debate is far to shallow. And it does hurt us in ways both large and small.
So I am standing up for ethics here on slashdot and in other places.
So I will, I'm rather glad that I have never been
is a position where I have had to consider this as I don't think that ethicaly I could work in the porn biz. Now I have no real problems with other people selling smut. But I don't think I could do it and be able to live the life that I want. I definitly could not face my friends or my family if I did. And I most certainly could not face my Rabbi. So before everyone here desides that there is no difference between selling porn and selling books think about the ethics of it.
Re:Sunday Supplement Projects
on
First Arcology?
·
· Score: 2
Well some projects do get built. And even if they don't the idea work that goes into them does get used for something at some point. Someday someone will build a building like this. It might not be in china, it might be anywhere. But having folks think about this is a good thing.
The question is not "Can we build this" for which we would have to respond yes, it would be hard but so what. Its more a question is it worth building this? And ofcourse that one will get readdressed every so often.
And its always good to dream!
Just because you can send email
on
Buried in email?
·
· Score: 2
Does not mean that you have anything of intrest to say! Actualy I don't get much junk at all, most of what I get are mailing lists that I want to get.
Well there is such a think as "Good Enough" a message client does not have to do everything it just has to be able to message. If it does that and works it is "Good Enough" Sure you could always put one more bell on it but will it make it that much better.
I've not used AOL's client but It apears to do the job that it needs to so what's wrong with it execpt that is from "Big Evil Company"?
Not everyone has to be a computer geek and a programer. Infact if everyone was we would have problems because no one would be doing all of those other things that we need in socity.
I make it a point to start watching shows 20 min late much of the time so I can fast forward the ads. But I almost always end up rewinding and watching an ad or two for something that looks interesting. If it is another show that I might watch or a movie that I might want to see or whatever. Ok I skip all the ads for things that I don't want to buy but I wasn't going to buy that stuff anyhow.
But maybe there should be. On the other hand I think that in many places what they need are "Civil Engineers without borders". I think MSF (Doctor's without Borders) is a great group who do work that makes our world a better place. But was thinking that in a lot of places there are vilages or towns that could use a good and inexpensive solutions for problems like clean drinking water and sewers. One of the reasons why life expectency in places like the US has gone up over the last 100 years is that you can more or less count on being able to turn on a tap and get drinkable water. And of course decent sewers to go with them.
We should always be looking for ways to make the world a better place.
I don't know you can't swap Pedro Martinz for Joe pitcher and get the same results. However many people here on/. work in jobs where you can distingish yourself from the next guy. For many jobs from flying an airliner to driving a school bus there is not a lot of difference between an OK person and a great person.
Part of the thing is that I think unions work a lot better in places where people are more or less interchangeable. For example airline pilots. Now I know some airline pilots they are very highly skilled and well trained. But lets face it if you take 2 guys who are both rated in the same plane (say a 737) then there is not much difference between them. One is not going to get the plane there any faster then the other.
On the other hand a good ball player or school teacher is not replacable by another. But even in that case for every great person you have a hundred people who are good and get the job done without being amazing, they still deserve some protection.
Try to tell the stations that if they want to move into a new medium (the net) that they should share some of the procedes with the folks who make the content.
In reality if the DJ's etc have a contract with the stations then they should expect the stations to stick to it. If the stations want to move into a new market, they need to share what they are doing with the DJ's.
One thing is that Security means different things to different people. For example the NSA probably does not care much about hackers trying to break into a box. In order to hack into their box you have to get into the building past the guard with the gun and a lot of other types of security. On the other hand they are very worried that someone might take a classified document and make it not classified, or differently classified.
To you and me that does not matter at all. The guy who runs a web hosting firm has a differet set of issues and so on.
Groups like the ITU (International Telegraphy Union) control the world phone system. You need one group to say this country gets this prefix and that one gets that prefix etc. They also control radio stuff.
Because of things like this I can pick up the phone here on my desk and call just about every country in the world (With a few exceptions). There does need be a global standard for root domains so that no mater where where you are in the world when you enter a domain name everyone gets the same domain name.
Of course it should be accountable and have minimal authority, but it needs to be there.
A friend of mine (Who was ABD in Math) once told me he knew a High School Math teacher who for years had been telling her class that pi was 22/7. Didn't know it was irrational never mind transendental.
But you know the funny thing is I still win. I win every time I put on my Kippah and walk out the front door. For I can win simply by living my life as a Proud Jew in a free country. And G-d willing someday raising my children as proud Jews and thairs for the next 3313 years and beyond.
So no I will not shut up and I will not go away! Scum like you who can't even sign your name don't scare me at all. As for the world hating us, well we've lived with that for the last few thousand years we are used to it. We can live with it some more.
There was an astronomer who was blind in the film. He is actualy based on a real person who has a Ph.D. in Astronomy or Astrophysics (I don't know which) and does SETI work (Sagen knew him which is how he ended up in the book and movie). He commented that in Astro physics these days you have computeres doing all the looking at things anyway, so he just built one more set of tools to do it. I don't know that it was easy for him but he did it.
He was interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air a few years back you might be able to find it on real audio.
If you are blind and looking to be a programer I will say good luck and keep at it. This is why the Congress passed the ADA!
Well Limiting the number of formats that you accept has the major advantage that will not have problems that in 100 years people will not be able to read it. The other bad side if ASCII is that it will only do English text, If you want to archive a document in Greek, Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Russian or Chinese or whatever you can't do that with 7 bit ascii.
I would think so. Yes there is a lot of stuff going on on the net that no one cares about now and no one will care about in 50 years. On the other hand we have most of the letters people like Washington and Jefferson wrote, because they made personal copies in a diary before they sent them (which made sense in a day and age when letters might not get there). And they are of great intrest to many people. And there are many other records from that period and before including a very complete set of Several hundred years of the Cairo Jewish community in the middle ages that was found about 100 years ago. That one existed because Jewish law requires some written records (those containing G-d's name) to be stored or disposed of properly. And the community just got into the habbit of saving everything. Its literaly hundreds of volumes of stuff.
In 50 or 100 or even 500 years will historians be able to access what we have done today? I hope so but I don't really know.
I object to monitoring when it is an invation of privacy, but you don't exactly have a right to privacy when rioting in a public space. Next time maybe you should riot in private if you don't want your picture taken.
Re:Ha! Metric unit of mass is still a chunk of met
on
Uncle Sam's Funhouse
·
· Score: 2
You're a Jew. Your views are invalid and even dangerous. Please refrain from posting to Slashdot.
And you are a little shit who does not even have enough courage of your beliefs to sign your name.
Next time you want to insult me sign your name.
So many Hamens only one Purim.
Re:Do you think a recession will help RedHat/Linux
on
Ask Robert Young
·
· Score: 2
The problem is that even if you save $100 per workstation by moving to Linux the cost of retraining people to use it and the productivity they lose while they learn will be over $100 per user. (Assuming 10 hrs of ramp up time at $12/hr and that is for low level workers). And retrainint will be nessary even if you do not have formal classes if you put a totaly new type of computer infront of someone you have to assume that it will take them some time to figure out how to do all of the things that they need to do to do their jobs.
Now I think there could be some very big wins for Linux on the desktop, but the pure outlay cost is not one of them. Less downtime and better security. And being able to replace a dead workstation quicly all would be pluses for Linux however.
Re:Ha! Metric unit of mass is still a chunk of met
on
Uncle Sam's Funhouse
·
· Score: 2
Well I know of 1 place that they messure lenght in Smoots. At some point an MIT Frosh got a bit drunk and his frat brothers decided to help him with a homework assignment to messure something with a non standard unit. They used him to messure the mass ave bridge. (AKA The Smoot Bridge) if you dirve across it you can still see the smoot marks. But I'm not sure what they standard lenght of a "Smoot" is.
And Yours appears to be to assume that just because you did not need to attend lecture that the Profs had nothing to teach you. Now its true I have no idea where you went to school so I don't know. Maybe where you were this is true. When I was in school (Brandies) at least in Physics there is no way I could have done at all well without the profs. Now maybe where I went to school is harder than where you went, or you are smarter than I.
And ofcourse maybe you had a run of bad teachers I've had more than my share of them myself. And to be truthfull a University education should be about more than getting a good job when you get out. Take a lit course or history or something.
Slashdot Mirror
Well I would say ethics is an absolute, but it does have grey areas. Would working in the Defense industry be ethical? I don't know it rather depends on for whom. I will not say that war is always unethical. In fact I will say quite the oposite, there are times when it would be unethical not to fight. When some thug Somewhere starts killing people en mass (Think Nazi Germany, Kosavo Bosnia etc) It shows a complete lack of ethics to sit on your hands and do nothing. As for biotech companies, you know many of them are working on drugs that can cure diseses or fight hunger on a massive level (The Golden rice).
As for ethics being absolute yes they are. While I make it a point to not push my ethical views on others I do beliive there are some absolutes. If every positon about ethics is equaly valid then the Marxist position that "We therefore reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatsoever as an etenal, ultimate and forever immutable moral law..." Which Karl Marx wrote in his book "Capital". Lenin said similar things. If you accept that moraltiy can be defined as such than the Stalin's Gulag and Pol Pot's killing fields (Both of which in someone's mind advanced the "Class Struggle") were a perfectly acceptable thing. I do not accept that.
No I mean ethics. The basic question is this. Is what I do with my life making the world a better place? There are any number of jobs that I'm sure pay very well and are perfectly legal (Including selling porn) that at least to my mind are not ethical. For example I would not work for a company making censor-ware. Nor would I work for a company that used sweat shops or did any number of other things.
For a large number of reasons I do not feal pornography is a healthy thing in our socity. So while I am not going to say that it should be banned, I am also not going to lift a finger to promote it. Nor would I work for a company that did.
I really think that in the last few years we as a socity have stoped talking about ethics, or when we do the debate is far to shallow. And it does hurt us in ways both large and small.
So I am standing up for ethics here on slashdot and in other places.
So I will, I'm rather glad that I have never been
is a position where I have had to consider this as I don't think that ethicaly I could work in the porn biz. Now I have no real problems with other people selling smut. But I don't think I could do it and be able to live the life that I want. I definitly could not face my friends or my family if I did. And I most certainly could not face my Rabbi. So before everyone here desides that there is no difference between selling porn and selling books think about the ethics of it.
Well some projects do get built. And even if they don't the idea work that goes into them does get used for something at some point. Someday someone will build a building like this. It might not be in china, it might be anywhere. But having folks think about this is a good thing.
The question is not "Can we build this" for which we would have to respond yes, it would be hard but so what. Its more a question is it worth building this? And ofcourse that one will get readdressed every so often.
And its always good to dream!
Does not mean that you have anything of intrest to say! Actualy I don't get much junk at all, most of what I get are mailing lists that I want to get.
Well there is such a think as "Good Enough" a message client does not have to do everything it just has to be able to message. If it does that and works it is "Good Enough" Sure you could always put one more bell on it but will it make it that much better.
I've not used AOL's client but It apears to do the job that it needs to so what's wrong with it execpt that is from "Big Evil Company"?
Not everyone has to be a computer geek and a programer. Infact if everyone was we would have problems because no one would be doing all of those other things that we need in socity.
I make it a point to start watching shows 20 min late much of the time so I can fast forward the ads. But I almost always end up rewinding and watching an ad or two for something that looks interesting. If it is another show that I might watch or a movie that I might want to see or whatever. Ok I skip all the ads for things that I don't want to buy but I wasn't going to buy that stuff anyhow.
But maybe there should be. On the other hand I think that in many places what they need are "Civil Engineers without borders". I think MSF (Doctor's without Borders) is a great group who do work that makes our world a better place. But was thinking that in a lot of places there are vilages or towns that could use a good and inexpensive solutions for problems like clean drinking water and sewers. One of the reasons why life expectency in places like the US has gone up over the last 100 years is that you can more or less count on being able to turn on a tap and get drinkable water. And of course decent sewers to go with them.
We should always be looking for ways to make the world a better place.
I don't know you can't swap Pedro Martinz for Joe pitcher and get the same results. However many people here on /. work in jobs where you can distingish yourself from the next guy. For many jobs from flying an airliner to driving a school bus there is not a lot of difference between an OK person and a great person.
Part of the thing is that I think unions work a lot better in places where people are more or less interchangeable. For example airline pilots. Now I know some airline pilots they are very highly skilled and well trained. But lets face it if you take 2 guys who are both rated in the same plane (say a 737) then there is not much difference between them. One is not going to get the plane there any faster then the other.
On the other hand a good ball player or school teacher is not replacable by another. But even in that case for every great person you have a hundred people who are good and get the job done without being amazing, they still deserve some protection.
Try to tell the stations that if they want to move into a new medium (the net) that they should share some of the procedes with the folks who make the content.
In reality if the DJ's etc have a contract with the stations then they should expect the stations to stick to it. If the stations want to move into a new market, they need to share what they are doing with the DJ's.
One thing is that Security means different things to different people. For example the NSA probably does not care much about hackers trying to break into a box. In order to hack into their box you have to get into the building past the guard with the gun and a lot of other types of security. On the other hand they are very worried that someone might take a classified document and make it not classified, or differently classified.
To you and me that does not matter at all. The guy who runs a web hosting firm has a differet set of issues and so on.
Groups like the ITU (International Telegraphy Union) control the world phone system. You need one group to say this country gets this prefix and that one gets that prefix etc. They also control radio stuff.
Because of things like this I can pick up the phone here on my desk and call just about every country in the world (With a few exceptions). There does need be a global standard for root domains so that no mater where where you are in the world when you enter a domain name everyone gets the same domain name.
Of course it should be accountable and have minimal authority, but it needs to be there.
A friend of mine (Who was ABD in Math) once told me he knew a High School Math teacher who for years had been telling her class that pi was 22/7. Didn't know it was irrational never mind transendental.
The mind boggles.
So much for a good day...
But you know the funny thing is I still win. I win every time I put on my Kippah and walk out the front door. For I can win simply by living my life as a Proud Jew in a free country. And G-d willing someday raising my children as proud Jews and thairs for the next 3313 years and beyond.
So no I will not shut up and I will not go away! Scum like you who can't even sign your name don't scare me at all. As for the world hating us, well we've lived with that for the last few thousand years we are used to it. We can live with it some more.
L'Shanah Habaah B'Yerushalayim! (Next year in Jerusalem!)
Thanks mate, you just made my day!
Ive been called all sorts of antisemetic stuff around here, nice to get something decent for a change.
There was an astronomer who was blind in the film. He is actualy based on a real person who has a Ph.D. in Astronomy or Astrophysics (I don't know which) and does SETI work (Sagen knew him which is how he ended up in the book and movie). He commented that in Astro physics these days you have computeres doing all the looking at things anyway, so he just built one more set of tools to do it. I don't know that it was easy for him but he did it.
He was interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air a few years back you might be able to find it on real audio.
If you are blind and looking to be a programer I will say good luck and keep at it. This is why the Congress passed the ADA!
No If G-d had intended us to fly he would have given us bigger bank acounts.
I know since I became a pilot I have a much smaller bank account, but I digress.
Well Limiting the number of formats that you accept has the major advantage that will not have problems that in 100 years people will not be able to read it. The other bad side if ASCII is that it will only do English text, If you want to archive a document in Greek, Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Russian or Chinese or whatever you can't do that with 7 bit ascii.
I would think so. Yes there is a lot of stuff going on on the net that no one cares about now and no one will care about in 50 years. On the other hand we have most of the letters people like Washington and Jefferson wrote, because they made personal copies in a diary before they sent them (which made sense in a day and age when letters might not get there). And they are of great intrest to many people. And there are many other records from that period and before including a very complete set of Several hundred years of the Cairo Jewish community in the middle ages that was found about 100 years ago. That one existed because Jewish law requires some written records (those containing G-d's name) to be stored or disposed of properly. And the community just got into the habbit of saving everything. Its literaly hundreds of volumes of stuff.
In 50 or 100 or even 500 years will historians be able to access what we have done today? I hope so but I don't really know.
I object to monitoring when it is an invation of privacy, but you don't exactly have a right to privacy when rioting in a public space. Next time maybe you should riot in private if you don't want your picture taken.
You're a Jew. Your views are invalid and even dangerous. Please refrain from posting to Slashdot.
And you are a little shit who does not even have enough courage of your beliefs to sign your name.
Next time you want to insult me sign your name.
So many Hamens only one Purim.
The problem is that even if you save $100 per workstation by moving to Linux the cost of retraining people to use it and the productivity they lose while they learn will be over $100 per user. (Assuming 10 hrs of ramp up time at $12/hr and that is for low level workers). And retrainint will be nessary even if you do not have formal classes if you put a totaly new type of computer infront of someone you have to assume that it will take them some time to figure out how to do all of the things that they need to do to do their jobs.
Now I think there could be some very big wins for Linux on the desktop, but the pure outlay cost is not one of them. Less downtime and better security. And being able to replace a dead workstation quicly all would be pluses for Linux however.
Well I know of 1 place that they messure lenght in Smoots. At some point an MIT Frosh got a bit drunk and his frat brothers decided to help him with a homework assignment to messure something with a non standard unit. They used him to messure the mass ave bridge. (AKA The Smoot Bridge) if you dirve across it you can still see the smoot marks. But I'm not sure what they standard lenght of a "Smoot" is.
And Yours appears to be to assume that just because you did not need to attend lecture that the Profs had nothing to teach you. Now its true I have no idea where you went to school so I don't know. Maybe where you were this is true. When I was in school (Brandies) at least in Physics there is no way I could have done at all well without the profs. Now maybe where I went to school is harder than where you went, or you are smarter than I.
And ofcourse maybe you had a run of bad teachers I've had more than my share of them myself. And to be truthfull a University education should be about more than getting a good job when you get out. Take a lit course or history or something.