Did I say we were saints today compared to in the past? No. My point was that we're not becoming more IMMORAL, in fact I think we're becoming more MORAL as a society for the aforementioned reasons and more.
Torture still does go on, but there's far more opposition to it than in the past. During the spanish inquisition, there were no protests. Today, we do tell our government we want them to stop the torture.
While all torture is inhumane, the state-sponsored torture that goes on at Guantanamo is, er, not quite as primitive at least as the state-sponsored torture that went on through history. We're not using iron maidens or hot pokers, we're using water. Not to trivialize it, torture in any form is immoral, but if I had to choose, I'd prefer the torture that is going on currently over more traditional methods.
But you do kill people in Iraq.
Our government kills people in Iraq. A lot of us were opposed to the Iraq war. There is a much higher percentage of the populace that openly opposed the Iraq war than most other pointless wars. Again going back to the crusades, polling data wasn't available, but its safe to assume there was a lot less controversey about it on the part of the public. To me, that indicates we've become more moral and more opposed to violence, not less.
Wars in the past was fairly small scale compared to industrialized death and destruction.
Iraq war casualties estimates vary widely, most sources seem to be saying below 200,000, one says 600,000, and one is up to a million. I haven't done more than glance at that page, but you can't tell me that WWII is small compared to this.
I suppose you might count WWII as a modern war, which would be fair. But the people who believe the world is in moral decline say it started around the '60s, not before WWII. Again, if we are becoming more immoral as they say, at least we're less violent.
Just out of curiosity why are so many slashdotters pro Pirate Bay. Even if they may not breaking the letter of the law they are going against the intent of the law.
This really goes for both sides then. Copyright law was not meant as life support for obsolete media formats and buisiness models. Most slashdotters are in favor of pirate bay for many reasons, but one of them is definitely that they serve to illustrate to those misusing laws that two can play at that game. Another is that big content is evil, and it's satisfying to see them fail, even if that doesn't do us any favors. And then, yes, there is the hypocrisy thing going on, just as it is for the other side, but there is mroe to it than just that.
What I don't understand is....why is yahoo now apologizing for this?!?!?
Should be obvious: they don't want to get bad PR, get targeted for an idiotic protest/boycott/letter writing campaign, lose advertisers... money.
I heard about this elsewhere, with quotes by a father who was at the event with his young daughter. I can understand not wanting his daughter to see that. There are, however, people who were -not- there who could hear about this and might be persuaded to go on some campaign against yahoo, for lacking morals or something like that. Why might someone object to this even though they weren't anywhere near taiwan? I don't fully understand their mindset, people who honestly believe the world is becoming more immoral. They seem to ignore the fact that we're no longer burning women at the stake for being witches, we no longer have slavery, we no longer go on crusades (er... as overtly anyway.) To these people, Walmart switching to saying "Happy holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas" is evidence enough that we are becoming corrupt. To combat that decline, they've gotten it in their heads that they must fight what they deem to be immoral behavior whenever they notice it.
If this story were to be picked up by, say, a certain extremely unbalanced cable news network, Yahoo could very easily have a large protest on their hands. "Sex! Sponsored by an american company! Outrageous! Call pastor bill, we need to boycott this company, whatever 'Yahoo' is selling." And that would be annoying.
Fortunately, these people are almost as easily pacified as they are riled up. A semi-sincere sounding apology will shut those people up, they say "oh, they learned their lesson."
Don't forget to put a disclaimer on your site saying "Dutch users may NOT download from this site." That'll fix their little red wagon.
I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but I'd say that's at least 300% certain to prevent the dutch from having any juristiction. Incidentally, I am also not a guy who does stuff with numbers and percents for his job.
By the way, due to libel laws, this post may not legally be read in England.
Can you assure me that there are absolutely no loopholes or ways around GINA that insurance companies could exploit? Can you assure me that insurance companies won't just disreguard GINA? If there is a loophole, insurance companies certainly have an incentive to find it and exploit it, and I know they would have no moral problem with doing so.
It's somewhat reassuring to know it won't be quite as obvious as my scenario, but one law doesn't make me trust insurance companies.
What are you talking about? The sex part of the sexbot is easy, they've even combined it with a flashlight (was going to put a link, but I'm at work, and besides, ew.)
It's the -talking- to the sexbot after the sex that needs work. What are you going to talk about while you're smoking? The battery charge left? Polynomials? Sure they could program the sexbot to tell you you were the best he/she's ever had, but you'd want more variety after a little while: they need a hobby. One hobby? Skiing. If you're a skiier you probably like to talk about skiing after sex, and it will be really obvious he/she is lying if the sexbot can't actually ski. Plus maybe you like to have sex on the lift. If the sexbot can't go down the hill, it's not going to be able to go down on you on the way up.
Disclaimer: the above really wrote itself. It might sound like I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff, but I don't. I don't know if that's to or against my credit that I'm not actually trying to advance the sex toy industry, but it's not the case, I was just making a joke and then it started sounding a little too believable...
"This is a force multiplier with respect to genome-wide association studies," says Cathy Schaefer, a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente, a health-care provider based in Oakland, CA, whose patients will be involved... Kaiser Permanente is meanwhile trying to expand its collection of biological samples to 500,000 by 2013.
While the scientists running the experiment are clearly doing this to actually advance research, and it will, I'm thinking someone at Kaiser is hoping this will pave the way for "You want health insurance? We just need to sequence your genome first. Oh, sorry, you're going to get Huntingtons disease. Good luck with that."
Microsoft responded by stating they are happy IBM has found someone new, that's just great, and hey by the way MS is engaged to Dell who is hotter than IBM anyway so there.
Well you can, but you'd miss out on some -amazing- exclusive features of B&N nook that you're probably noticing on the comparison page and salivating over. Specifically:
-Free Wi-Fi in all Barnes & Noble Stores -Exclusive content when in your local Barnes & Noble store -Try reader in store before buying -Replaceable colorful back cover
I love it when marketers stuff absurd stuff in there. Really? I can't get "exclusive content" while I'm in a barnes and noble on my kindle? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
And they helped kill streetcars. Of course, that was in conjunction with general motors and many others, but they've also had around 80 years to evolve even better strategies for killing better options.
Anyone who trusts large companies to serve the public's best interest and willingly engage in competition they might lose should -put on- a tinfoil hat, one shaped like a cone that says "dunce" on it.
In that light I'm not sure it's appropriate to regard it as lost revenue, but rather a limited time opportunity which can and has been exploited.
There is the whole buisiness of "does it need to be limited." And while this perspective may seem to help, it still seems to boil down to "We don't need to feel bad about it, because it's your fault."
I don't think most people do a really good cost-benefit analysis of where they live anyway. All of us living in California for example are asking for trouble. If we might be able to prevent the "big one," we would try even though it might be extremely expensive. Maldives on the other hand we don't empathize with as much, and that's even before we have a widespread notion that they should have known better than to build 1.5 meters above water.
I realize that, your point being "I'm immature but I know I'm right and everyone who disagrees with me on anything is stupid." You've extended that point well with this post.
Of course, the people running the graduate programs are from these countries...
Citation needed. The people running the graduate programs ARE AMERICANS. Most in my experience are even born in the US, although obviously that has nothing much to do with being an American or not. You're implying they don't have an interest in keeping the best and brightest here? That's absurd. They live here. They work here. They do research here. Having the next generation of scientists moving away from the US hurts them more than it hurts you.
Case in point, my ex attends college here free, working on her PHD. In fact she said that there's so much free money he plans on getting a second masters as well.
It'd be nice when the US Government would invest in it's own citizens.
What field is your ex in? Biomedical research? Chemistry? As long as it isn't something like "theater" or "english," I'd argue the US government IS investing in it's own citizens, just not -specifically- it's own citizens. Grad students are pretty cheap compared to other researchers, if he's helping to advance the sciences, like say working on cancer, then that IS going to benefit US citizens. It's also potentially going to be cheaper than paying someone with their doctorate already in hand.
Tell me again why you're asking on slashdot instead of reading a scientific paper on the benefits of ESC research? Tell me you don't rely on/. comments for ALL your information on important subjects of the day.
Is there really a use now for embryonic stem cells now that we can do just about everything with adult stem cells?
There are. Basic research on cell biology for one. One of the best ways to study how a cell commits to whatever fate it's going to take, and maybe find ways of correcting that when it goes wrong, is to study the actual cells. Another is studying how to turn one cell into another, again by studying how cells do it normally.
One of the successes of ESC research is induced pluripotent stem cells. They were first made based off work done in embryonic stem cells. It looks like IPSC is going to be the technology that will allow us to replace tissues as needed, not ESC, but that might turn out not to be the case. With no cell technology having proven itself capable of replacing every tissue in patients without causing cancer or other problems, the race isn't over, and we should avoid the temptation to call it too early.
If we can fix the body so that it no longer ages, then we can fix the brain so that it no longer ages.
That's not automatically true. While GGP may have been joking (stem cells make human bodies all the time, that's what they are for), he/she may also have been referring to the idea that one day we may be able to grow you a new body, maybe without a brain, so then you could transplant your brain from your old body to a new one, extending your life. Not really stopping aging in the rest of your body, but resetting it every say 40 years. That doesn't seem impossible.
You'd have to keep your same brain though, and brain cells are not really immortal. While exquisitely maintained and extremely long lived compared to many other cells of the body, they do have a finite life, and after a while they are going to die. I haven't actually seen studies on this, but I've heard the rate of brain cell loss increases as you get older. We have so many brain cells that we might not really see much effect from that (as opposed to other factors that decrease your mental capacity as you get older) in 100 years, but extend that much further, and it might get exponentially worse. If you did the body transplant thing, you could be 200 and look like you were 20, but you -might- have become a vegetable at that point.
Having said that, it has been discovered and eventually universally accepted that your brain does get new brain cells. Obviously the experiments aren't easy to do, so no one is sure whether or not that would be enough to maintain your brain for over 100 years. Last I heard, no one could say what happened to those brain cells, if they integrated into the brain or if they eventually just died, or which parts of the brain they might renew. So your brain might actually be able to keep itself new for as long as it's alive, or it might be coaxed to if we could amplify that. It's kind of hard to imagine the new cells would integrate coherently into the complicated structure, but the brain always builds itself once, and more amazing things have been discovered, so who knows. Even if that were the case, I'd guess you would be a fundamentally different person, but I guess that's true no matter what. A whole lot of maybes.
Short version: "If we can fix the body so that it no longer ages, then we can fix the brain so that it no longer ages." Maybe, maybe not.
That's the asinine thing about the ID fetish that all the apparatchiki are pushing. The 9/11 perps weren't using fake IDs, even. They had genuine passports and credit cards.
Yes, but how do you think they got the legitimate IDs? That's right: by reading about it on the internet. See? CLEARLY we NEED online passports.
That was sarcasm. I point this out on the off chance that there are any lawmakers who accidentally ended up here reading this. This idea is dumber than trying to prevent child molestation by requiring all citizens to wear chastity belts. ... God, why don't I know when to shut up? For all lawmakers: that was also sarcasm.
I say this as an American: we've become barbarians.
SOME of us are barbarians. Some of us are opposed to torture, throwing everyone in jail, gang rape, social stratification, and MTV. And it's not like we're the only ones with demons among our citizens. Throw a dart at a map. There are either plenty of evil stupid people living there, or you've hit the ocean.
Anyway, I see nothing to indicate Americans are barbarians compared to non-americans. We didn't invent colonialism, torture, slavery, the gap between rich and poor, ignorance, or squandering natural resources. We did invent MTV I guess.
I also object to the "become" part: I don't see a whole lot changing, at least not for the worse. We've stopped burning women for being witches, that's a plus. We've gotten rid of most forms of slavery: improvement. Literacy is close to an all-time high, ignorance may not feel like it's much improved, but I'd bet creationism is still falling. Not nearly as rapidly as it should, but down overall.
Slashdot Mirror
No. But you do torture people in Guatanamo.
Did I say we were saints today compared to in the past? No. My point was that we're not becoming more IMMORAL, in fact I think we're becoming more MORAL as a society for the aforementioned reasons and more.
Torture still does go on, but there's far more opposition to it than in the past. During the spanish inquisition, there were no protests. Today, we do tell our government we want them to stop the torture.
While all torture is inhumane, the state-sponsored torture that goes on at Guantanamo is, er, not quite as primitive at least as the state-sponsored torture that went on through history. We're not using iron maidens or hot pokers, we're using water. Not to trivialize it, torture in any form is immoral, but if I had to choose, I'd prefer the torture that is going on currently over more traditional methods.
But you do kill people in Iraq.
Our government kills people in Iraq. A lot of us were opposed to the Iraq war. There is a much higher percentage of the populace that openly opposed the Iraq war than most other pointless wars. Again going back to the crusades, polling data wasn't available, but its safe to assume there was a lot less controversey about it on the part of the public. To me, that indicates we've become more moral and more opposed to violence, not less.
Wars in the past was fairly small scale compared to industrialized death and destruction.
No. 620,000 people died in the american civil war, over 60 million people died in world war 2.
Iraq war casualties estimates vary widely, most sources seem to be saying below 200,000, one says 600,000, and one is up to a million. I haven't done more than glance at that page, but you can't tell me that WWII is small compared to this.
I suppose you might count WWII as a modern war, which would be fair. But the people who believe the world is in moral decline say it started around the '60s, not before WWII. Again, if we are becoming more immoral as they say, at least we're less violent.
Just out of curiosity why are so many slashdotters pro Pirate Bay. Even if they may not breaking the letter of the law they are going against the intent of the law.
This really goes for both sides then. Copyright law was not meant as life support for obsolete media formats and buisiness models. Most slashdotters are in favor of pirate bay for many reasons, but one of them is definitely that they serve to illustrate to those misusing laws that two can play at that game. Another is that big content is evil, and it's satisfying to see them fail, even if that doesn't do us any favors. And then, yes, there is the hypocrisy thing going on, just as it is for the other side, but there is mroe to it than just that.
What I don't understand is....why is yahoo now apologizing for this?!?!?
Should be obvious: they don't want to get bad PR, get targeted for an idiotic protest/boycott/letter writing campaign, lose advertisers... money.
I heard about this elsewhere, with quotes by a father who was at the event with his young daughter. I can understand not wanting his daughter to see that. There are, however, people who were -not- there who could hear about this and might be persuaded to go on some campaign against yahoo, for lacking morals or something like that. Why might someone object to this even though they weren't anywhere near taiwan? I don't fully understand their mindset, people who honestly believe the world is becoming more immoral. They seem to ignore the fact that we're no longer burning women at the stake for being witches, we no longer have slavery, we no longer go on crusades (er... as overtly anyway.) To these people, Walmart switching to saying "Happy holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas" is evidence enough that we are becoming corrupt. To combat that decline, they've gotten it in their heads that they must fight what they deem to be immoral behavior whenever they notice it.
If this story were to be picked up by, say, a certain extremely unbalanced cable news network, Yahoo could very easily have a large protest on their hands. "Sex! Sponsored by an american company! Outrageous! Call pastor bill, we need to boycott this company, whatever 'Yahoo' is selling." And that would be annoying.
Fortunately, these people are almost as easily pacified as they are riled up. A semi-sincere sounding apology will shut those people up, they say "oh, they learned their lesson."
For further reading on this subject
Don't forget to put a disclaimer on your site saying "Dutch users may NOT download from this site." That'll fix their little red wagon.
I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but I'd say that's at least 300% certain to prevent the dutch from having any juristiction. Incidentally, I am also not a guy who does stuff with numbers and percents for his job.
By the way, due to libel laws, this post may not legally be read in England.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times.
That sound you hear is thousands of bus drivers screaming "DON'T GIVE THEM ANY IDEAS!!!"
Ah, sorry, I was reading stuff that wasn't there...
Can you assure me that there are absolutely no loopholes or ways around GINA that insurance companies could exploit? Can you assure me that insurance companies won't just disreguard GINA? If there is a loophole, insurance companies certainly have an incentive to find it and exploit it, and I know they would have no moral problem with doing so.
It's somewhat reassuring to know it won't be quite as obvious as my scenario, but one law doesn't make me trust insurance companies.
At least for this group, doesn't matter.
Right, they do a pilot program first to determine how useful this will be before they do it on a widescale. Or they could.
What are you talking about? The sex part of the sexbot is easy, they've even combined it with a flashlight (was going to put a link, but I'm at work, and besides, ew.)
It's the -talking- to the sexbot after the sex that needs work. What are you going to talk about while you're smoking? The battery charge left? Polynomials? Sure they could program the sexbot to tell you you were the best he/she's ever had, but you'd want more variety after a little while: they need a hobby. One hobby? Skiing. If you're a skiier you probably like to talk about skiing after sex, and it will be really obvious he/she is lying if the sexbot can't actually ski. Plus maybe you like to have sex on the lift. If the sexbot can't go down the hill, it's not going to be able to go down on you on the way up.
Disclaimer: the above really wrote itself. It might sound like I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff, but I don't. I don't know if that's to or against my credit that I'm not actually trying to advance the sex toy industry, but it's not the case, I was just making a joke and then it started sounding a little too believable...
Don't consider yourself safe just yet:
"This is a force multiplier with respect to genome-wide association studies," says Cathy Schaefer, a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente, a health-care provider based in Oakland, CA, whose patients will be involved...
Kaiser Permanente is meanwhile trying to expand its collection of biological samples to 500,000 by 2013.
While the scientists running the experiment are clearly doing this to actually advance research, and it will, I'm thinking someone at Kaiser is hoping this will pave the way for "You want health insurance? We just need to sequence your genome first. Oh, sorry, you're going to get Huntingtons disease. Good luck with that."
thinks that the corporate equivalent of Rosie O'Donnell is way hotter than than the corporate equivalent of Rosanne Barr?
She is!
What are you all staring at? I stand by my statement! You know you were thinking it as well!
Microsoft responded by stating they are happy IBM has found someone new, that's just great, and hey by the way MS is engaged to Dell who is hotter than IBM anyway so there.
Well you can, but you'd miss out on some -amazing- exclusive features of B&N nook that you're probably noticing on the comparison page and salivating over. Specifically:
-Free Wi-Fi in all Barnes & Noble Stores
-Exclusive content when in your local Barnes & Noble store
-Try reader in store before buying
-Replaceable colorful back cover
I love it when marketers stuff absurd stuff in there. Really? I can't get "exclusive content" while I'm in a barnes and noble on my kindle? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
And they helped kill streetcars. Of course, that was in conjunction with general motors and many others, but they've also had around 80 years to evolve even better strategies for killing better options.
Anyone who trusts large companies to serve the public's best interest and willingly engage in competition they might lose should -put on- a tinfoil hat, one shaped like a cone that says "dunce" on it.
In soviet russia, ultracapacitor bus recharges YOU!
In that light I'm not sure it's appropriate to regard it as lost revenue, but rather a limited time opportunity which can and has been exploited.
There is the whole buisiness of "does it need to be limited." And while this perspective may seem to help, it still seems to boil down to "We don't need to feel bad about it, because it's your fault."
I don't think most people do a really good cost-benefit analysis of where they live anyway. All of us living in California for example are asking for trouble. If we might be able to prevent the "big one," we would try even though it might be extremely expensive. Maldives on the other hand we don't empathize with as much, and that's even before we have a widespread notion that they should have known better than to build 1.5 meters above water.
To illustrate a point, you stupid ass.
I realize that, your point being "I'm immature but I know I'm right and everyone who disagrees with me on anything is stupid." You've extended that point well with this post.
Of course, the people running the graduate programs are from these countries...
Citation needed. The people running the graduate programs ARE AMERICANS. Most in my experience are even born in the US, although obviously that has nothing much to do with being an American or not. You're implying they don't have an interest in keeping the best and brightest here? That's absurd. They live here. They work here. They do research here. Having the next generation of scientists moving away from the US hurts them more than it hurts you.
Case in point, my ex attends college here free, working on her PHD. In fact she said that there's so much free money he plans on getting a second masters as well.
It'd be nice when the US Government would invest in it's own citizens.
What field is your ex in? Biomedical research? Chemistry? As long as it isn't something like "theater" or "english," I'd argue the US government IS investing in it's own citizens, just not -specifically- it's own citizens. Grad students are pretty cheap compared to other researchers, if he's helping to advance the sciences, like say working on cancer, then that IS going to benefit US citizens. It's also potentially going to be cheaper than paying someone with their doctorate already in hand.
It's news that it's for some reason being called "reverse" brain drain.
I guess slashdot editors have already had too much reverse brain drain...
Tell me again why we need embryonic stem cells.
Tell me again why you're asking on slashdot instead of reading a scientific paper on the benefits of ESC research? Tell me you don't rely on /. comments for ALL your information on important subjects of the day.
Is there really a use now for embryonic stem cells now that we can do just about everything with adult stem cells?
There are. Basic research on cell biology for one. One of the best ways to study how a cell commits to whatever fate it's going to take, and maybe find ways of correcting that when it goes wrong, is to study the actual cells. Another is studying how to turn one cell into another, again by studying how cells do it normally.
One of the successes of ESC research is induced pluripotent stem cells. They were first made based off work done in embryonic stem cells. It looks like IPSC is going to be the technology that will allow us to replace tissues as needed, not ESC, but that might turn out not to be the case. With no cell technology having proven itself capable of replacing every tissue in patients without causing cancer or other problems, the race isn't over, and we should avoid the temptation to call it too early.
If we can fix the body so that it no longer ages, then we can fix the brain so that it no longer ages.
That's not automatically true. While GGP may have been joking (stem cells make human bodies all the time, that's what they are for), he/she may also have been referring to the idea that one day we may be able to grow you a new body, maybe without a brain, so then you could transplant your brain from your old body to a new one, extending your life. Not really stopping aging in the rest of your body, but resetting it every say 40 years. That doesn't seem impossible.
You'd have to keep your same brain though, and brain cells are not really immortal. While exquisitely maintained and extremely long lived compared to many other cells of the body, they do have a finite life, and after a while they are going to die. I haven't actually seen studies on this, but I've heard the rate of brain cell loss increases as you get older. We have so many brain cells that we might not really see much effect from that (as opposed to other factors that decrease your mental capacity as you get older) in 100 years, but extend that much further, and it might get exponentially worse. If you did the body transplant thing, you could be 200 and look like you were 20, but you -might- have become a vegetable at that point.
Having said that, it has been discovered and eventually universally accepted that your brain does get new brain cells. Obviously the experiments aren't easy to do, so no one is sure whether or not that would be enough to maintain your brain for over 100 years. Last I heard, no one could say what happened to those brain cells, if they integrated into the brain or if they eventually just died, or which parts of the brain they might renew. So your brain might actually be able to keep itself new for as long as it's alive, or it might be coaxed to if we could amplify that. It's kind of hard to imagine the new cells would integrate coherently into the complicated structure, but the brain always builds itself once, and more amazing things have been discovered, so who knows. Even if that were the case, I'd guess you would be a fundamentally different person, but I guess that's true no matter what. A whole lot of maybes.
Short version: "If we can fix the body so that it no longer ages, then we can fix the brain so that it no longer ages." Maybe, maybe not.
That's the asinine thing about the ID fetish that all the apparatchiki are pushing. The 9/11 perps weren't using fake IDs, even. They had genuine passports and credit cards.
Yes, but how do you think they got the legitimate IDs? That's right: by reading about it on the internet. See? CLEARLY we NEED online passports.
That was sarcasm. I point this out on the off chance that there are any lawmakers who accidentally ended up here reading this. This idea is dumber than trying to prevent child molestation by requiring all citizens to wear chastity belts.
... God, why don't I know when to shut up? For all lawmakers: that was also sarcasm.
I say this as an American: we've become barbarians.
SOME of us are barbarians. Some of us are opposed to torture, throwing everyone in jail, gang rape, social stratification, and MTV. And it's not like we're the only ones with demons among our citizens. Throw a dart at a map. There are either plenty of evil stupid people living there, or you've hit the ocean.
Anyway, I see nothing to indicate Americans are barbarians compared to non-americans. We didn't invent colonialism, torture, slavery, the gap between rich and poor, ignorance, or squandering natural resources. We did invent MTV I guess.
I also object to the "become" part: I don't see a whole lot changing, at least not for the worse. We've stopped burning women for being witches, that's a plus. We've gotten rid of most forms of slavery: improvement. Literacy is close to an all-time high, ignorance may not feel like it's much improved, but I'd bet creationism is still falling. Not nearly as rapidly as it should, but down overall.