i wonder if this girl (or her father) has had any contact with nutcase american missionaries?
they're a plague spreading their lunatic fundamentalist versions of christianity all over the globe. no-one else cares that much about evolution, no-one else has much difficulty reconciling their christianity with evolution, no-one else insists on such a tiny simpleton god.
That's my belief. And with that belief comes an amazing eternal perspective, a high value for life, and a strong belief that morality is handed down by God such that society needs to conform itself to that morality, not morality to society.
so morality is handed down by God, is it?
would that be the same God that commanded Ezekiel (Ezek. 9) to go into Jerusalem and mark some people so that his men could slaughter everyone else - "Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women"
the same god that sent 2 bears to rip 42 youths (male children?) to shreds for the crime of mocking (calling him "baldhead") one of his prophets? [2 Kings 2:23]
On the contrary, I think the arguments against stem cell research are mostly being pushed by pro-life people, in order to be consistent with their stated basis, where any fertilized ovum is the moral equivalent of a 'human life.' I think the argument is pretty clear;if you accept that a blastocyst is alive and equivalent to a sentient being, then you must oppose stem cell research.
not necessarily. there's a huge difference between a fertilised egg and therapeutic cloning.
the former requires contact between a sperm and an egg cell.
the latter involves removing all DNA from an egg cell, injecting the patient/donor's DNA, and using artificial means (e.g. a tiny electric shock) to trigger cell division and replication.
the former is human reproduction. the latter is cell culturing.
They call them "blastocysts, fetuses, genetic material, but never unborn children
that's because they're NOT unborn children. they're cell cultures.
What's wrong with the stem cell lines we already have? Why the push to create endless stem cell lines when a stem cell will reproduce to more and more stem cells forever?
the primary benefit of "therapeutic cloning" is that any cells produced by it are genetically identical (100% compatible) with the patient. this means that you need to use the patient's *OWN DNA* to produce cells compatible with them, not DNA from some random unrelated donor. the benefit is that there is no chance of rejection, no chance that the patient's own immune system will attack and destroy the therapy.
there are possible therapies to stem cell therapy, ranging from re-growing nerve tissue (even for severe spinal injuries) to growing new kidneys (in some animal experiments, injecting the right kind of stem cells into the abdomen resulted in several small but functioning kidneys growing and attaching themselves). these things and more have been done in animal experiments, some have even been done in humans. the potential is enormous.
and eventually, it may become possible to grow complete organs as needed, eliminating the need for both live and deceased organ donations.
some of these things can be done with the kinds of stem cells that can be harvested from bone marrow or fat cells. but adult stem cells are limited in the kinds of cells they can become, so some therapies require the "embryonic" stem cells which are capable of becoming ANY kind of cell.
Why are we wasting money, time and energy creating more stem cell lines when those resources could be spent on the actual research?
it's not about creating new stem cell "lines". it's about creating stem cells which are a genetic match for the patient.
your question is akin to asking "why should i buy a pen when i already have a pencil?" different tools for different jobs.
What's wrong with adult stem cell research?
nothing. it's just not capable of doing everything that's needed. where it is useful, it should be used - if only because it will undoubtedly be cheaper and easier to harvest and cultivate the stem cells directly if you don't need to use a rare and expensive egg cell, than indirectly (via blastocyte formation).
it's not an either/or choice. both are needed, both are useful.
this has NOTHING to do with conception or fertilisation. this is about growing a culture of cells.
conception involves sperm making contact with an egg cell resulting in fertilisation.
"therapeutic cloning" or "stem cell culturing" involves getting an egg cell (human, although animal works almost as well in theory), removing *ALL* DNA from it and injecting DNA from the patient, then giving it a little electric shock to trigger division and replication. a week or so later (long before it becomes even an embryo), the cell culture is harvested and the stem cells extracted.
in theory, this cell culture could eventually become an embryo, then a foetus, and maybe even a human being (genetically identical to the original patient/DNA donor). in practice, that isn't going to happen without many years of research and experimentation to figure out ways past all the problems that will occur, many of which haven't even been discovered yet.......the same as it took years of research to figure out the problems in each step of cloning a sheep.
now, if it's OK for me and my doctor to take some of my cells and grow them in some other (i.e. non egg cell) culture medium, then what's so wrong about this? what's the difference? i sure as hell don't see any difference, it's just a method for growing my cells for my medical needs. a necessary method if you want to grow particular kinds of cells.
why should you and your ignorant and superstitious bullshit be able to prevent me any my doctor from culturing my cells to meet my medical needs?
You seem to be woefully ignorant of the "causes of the issue" if you are imply they are economic - and remember that the 9/11 terrorists were middle-class Saudis. No poverty issue there. They were not flying into the buildings screaming "Gimme More Money", nope it was "God is Great".
actually, it is you who are ignorant of the causes. the "Allah is great" stuff is secondary (at most). what they are screaming is "Get the fuck out of our land and take your fucking puppets with you". i.e. the causes ARE economic and territorial and political, NOT religious.
the religious element only comes in as a method for extremist loonies to mobilise and radicalise moderates.
Wake up - its too late for trying to talk people around, and bribe them with foreign aid. The hatred that has been bred and fed over the past 2 decades in the fundamentalist Islamist world can no longer be dealt with by appeasing it, nor by ignoring it.
the hatred can be dealt with by NOT doing the things that inspire it. for example:
- occupying Saudi Arabia and Iraq and other countries, either directly or by installing and propping up dictators
- supporting Israel no matter what they do by funding and arming them and especially by vetoing any UN proposal to impose sanctions for Israel's war crimes and terrorist activities
the most interesting thing about this thread so far is just how rabid people get whenever there is any suggestion that some people might be smarter than others. even a hint of that idea will bring out ridiculously aggressive reactions.
why? there is no such reaction when it is suggested that some people are better athletes than others, that some can run faster, some can dance better, some make better musicians, some are better at various crafts, and so on - it is ONLY when it is suggested that some are more intelligent than others that we get this lynch mob.
hey, they could hire the ex-Minister of Information from Saddam's Iraq, Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf.
he's an expert at the kind of "correction" they want....and they know he's capable of insisting that they're winning even in the face of undeniable facts to the contrary.
Also, if you can verify the count, you've effectively got verification that there aren't fraudulent votes, because that would mean displacing legitimate votes, meaning someone's vote wouldn't be counted.
that might be true if everyone voted, but not when you don't have compulsory voting...and not when you don't even get close to 100% turnout of those who are registered to vote.
electronic data is too malleable, too easy to manipulate without any trace to trust with something this important.
Again, a Luddite statement. We're debating in a void without actually knowing what this system was, but consider signatures. Surely you'll admit that a signature is important, right? You don't want someone to be able to sign checks in your name. Now, they know what your signature is by comparing it to the copy they have on file, so it would be just as easy to give them a public RSA key as a signature in that case. And a PGP signature is much harder to forge.
no, it's not a luddite statement. it's an analysis of the risks vs the benefits. an election is FAR more important than a personal signature, it matters a lot more whether it is fraudulent or not because the scale of damage is far greater.
and, just as significantly, moving from written signatures to electronic signatures isn't a significant reduction in the security of the system because written signatures aren't very secure to start with. by contrast, moving from a many-eyes manual count to an electronic count is a massive reduction in the security of the system.
the miniscule benefits of electronic counting are greatly outweighed by the risks.
because they have to (pay at least lip-service) to representing ALL the people in their electorate, not just the extremists and fanatics...because if they dont, they run the risk of pissing off enough voters that they lose the next election.
I don't get why this is important. If the apathetic masses don't want to vote, haven't done any research at all on the candidates, then their votes would be much more harmful than the votes of the extremists. At least the extremists know what they're voting for. The apathetic masses, at least in America, would end up voting much the same way they choose Coke or Pepsi -- which candidate has the coolest campaign ads? Not in terms of what was said, but in terms of production values?
because they're going to be affected by the result of the election, regardless of whether they supported the winner or not. the winning candidate is supposed to represent *everyone* in their electorate whether they voted for them or not, they are elected to do a job - to represent the people in their area. it is a peculiarly american attitude that somehow you don't count, your right to be represented is void if you don't vote, or if you didn't vote for the winning candidate.
and, no, the extremists don't know what they're voting for either. for the most part, they're just like football fans voting for their side, regardless of what their policies are. non-compulsory voting means that voting is done by those most sucked in by the hype.
in practice, with compulsory voting, what happens most of the time is that people vote for those who either a) promise to have the least damaging policies, and/or b) offer the most to them (e.g. hospitals, schools, whatever other things are needed in the local community). there's certainly potential for problems here, but it's far better than candidates simply ignoring what the majority of people in their electorate want, to concentrate exclusively on what the nutters and corporate interests want (i.e. appease the nutters to get their vote, and do what their corporate masters tell them to do).
If all of America was forced to vote, we might end up with, say, a rapper or a movie star
Giving any voter the capability to verify their own vote isn't sufficient scrutiny?
it's not as good as having thousands of scrutineers monitoring the entire process. one person may be able to verify their own vote (and i'll even take your word for it that that can be done without compromising the secrecy of the ballot for the sake of the argument), but they can NOT verify that other people's votes haven't been tampered with, or that thousands of fraudulent votes haven't been inserted into the count, or that the system hasn't been rigged to keep two sets of records - one for the count, and one for whenever a voter attempts to verify their vote. electronic data is too malleable, too easy to manipulate without any trace to trust with something this important.
No, only a majority. Also, depending on the structure, you can likely simply buy humans in strategic positions, who can affect the result of tens or hundreds of humans working under them.
and all it takes is one uncompromised observer to blow the whistle and expose the fraud.
And why's that a good thing? (Not rhetorical; I'm curious)
because they have to (pay at least lip-service) to representing ALL the people in their electorate, not just the extremists and fanatics...because if they dont, they run the risk of pissing off enough voters that they lose the next election.
also, compulsory voting gives people a direct involvement in the process - i'm sure that a big part of the reason why the public in america don't care that their last two elections were completely compromised and stolen is because they think "i didn't vote, so i have no reason to care/no right to complain". also because there's a massive conspiracy of silence on the issue from the mainstream media, but both factors together result in a big "who cares" attitude.
Again, depends on the organization. I'd want to see it -- just how open is the process? How much scrutiny is there -- and who watches the watchers?
the process is entirely open. any citizen can volunteer. who watches the watchers? the other watchers, of course. that's the point. that's why the more watchers, the better.
I suppose that you mistrust all computers because of Windows? There are other OSes than Windows, and other voting machines than Diebold, including the system I was describing. And yes, I think my ability to verify my own vote, in addition to massive scrutiny from volunteers and everyone else who cared to verify their vote, is more trustworty than just the massive scrutiny from volunteers.
no, i don't mistrust all computers because of MS Windows. however, i do distrust electronic voting because i know enough about computers and security issues to know that there are several *requirements* for trustworthy voting which are mutually exclusive when it is performed electronically. for example, a secret ballot is incompatible with the ability to verify your vote after the fact.
btw, even the system you were describing only allows you to verify your own vote - it doesn't allow you to verify that the entire vote hasn't been compromised by the addition of fraudulent vote records into the system.
if you believe that the ability to verify your own vote makes it more secure, then you are being fooled. it's just a distraction to divert your attention from a far bigger problem. it doesn't matter if your vote is recorded and counted accurately if it can be nullified by the addition of fraudulent votes.
post-ballot verification also opens up the danger of vote buying and vote extortion. no matter what safeguards are in place to make it difficult, anyone willing to go to the trouble of buying or extorting votes will have no difficulty getting around them - all they have to do is be present when the voter verifies their vote and look over their shoulder.
you can't trust machine counts - they're too easily hacked and manipulated
This may be true with all methods of machine counts that you're aware of, but that's the ludicrous statement of a luddite to claim that no machine count can ever be trusted. Humans are much more easily bribed and manipulated than machines. Humans from both parties.
no, it's true of ALL machine counts. you can't trust them because there is inherently insufficient scrutiny of them in operation - otherwise, there's no point in having the machine count it rather than humans.
yes, humans can be bribed, manipulated, blackmailed, and threatened....but to succeed, you have to compromise ALL of the humans involved in a count, and with enough people involved that is impossible to achieve - all it takes is one whistle-blower who hasn't been compromised (this is analagous to the free software dictum "with enough eyes, all bugs are shallow"...."with enough eyes, all votes are transparent"). with a machine, though, you only have to hack it once and compromise the tiny number of people who have access to audit it.
hand counting doesn't take that long, anyway.
It costs more money, though, and it does take some amount of time more. That said, I was pretty annoyed that Kerry conceded before the votes were actually counted.
no, it doesn't cost more money. it costs a LOT LESS to hand count an election. the AEC runs elections at a cost of about five or six dollars per voter - which is extraordinarily cheap. machine elections cost tens of dollar per voter
for example, the 2001 Federal election cost $67M AUD. the 2004 Federal election cost $75M to run (plus another $41M of public funding of electoral expenses for parties who got >=5% of the vote). that's cheap by any standards.
we do it that way every election here in australia
Quick Google search shows population of Australia to be 20,090,437. Population of US is 295,734,134. That's a significant difference. Now, if I could find out how many actual votes were cast...
the larger population means a larger number of votes to be counted....but also a larger pool of people available to count the votes. the votes aren't counted all at one central location, they are counted at or near the actual location where they were cast. i.e. only half a dozen (or more) people per counting site...that's not a huge ask from the hundreds or thousands of people who vote in that area.
as for the number of votes cast, australia gets a >99% voter turnout rate - we have compulsory voting here (in practice, that means compulsory attendance at a voting booth on election days to get your name crossed off the list - nobody actually monitors what you do in the booth, although most people do vote if only because they're already there at the booth)....and compulsory voting is a good thing because it forces the candidates to actually give a damn about the majority of mostly apathetic, disinterested and distracted-by-sport-and-entertainment voters, rather than just the extremists on either side.
about half the population is eligible to vote (i.e. everyone 18 years of age and over).
america would be a far better place if it had a) a federal electoral commission with universal standards for how an election is to be conducted and b) compulsory voting
with the counting done by thousands of volunteers
Which is also thousands of opportunities to make mistakes, intentional or not.
and thousands of eyes to see those mistakes, intentional or not. with enough people watching, it is almost impossible to corrupt the election process, and certainly impossible to corrupt it enough to significantly skew the results.
electronic voting machines should print a paper ballot which the voter can examine to verify that their vote is correctly recorded - and then they deposit that paper ballot into the secure vote box where it becomes the *OFFICIAL* recorded vote which will later by counted by hand with scrutineers from multiple parties observing the count (the electronic tally in the machines being just an unofficial approximation)
This is nice, but it requires a hand count every time, defeating the purpose of the machine count. Also, it's not even close to the system I descibed, because if that system works, it would become possible for the voters themselves to verify, cryptographically, that the election was a fair one.
yes, it's not even close to what you described - that was deliberate. and yes, again, it pretty much defeats the purpose of the machine count - again, that's deliberate. the ONLY way to be confident that the vote has been counted accurately is to do it by hand, with scrutineers from multiple parties conducting the count (so that any miscounting will be picked up by the opposition). you can't trust machine counts - they're too easily hacked and manipulated....so relegate it to just an unofficial quick approximation.
hand counting doesn't take that long, anyway. we do it that way every election here in australia and the results in most electorates are in within a few hours of the voting booths being closed, with the counting done by thousands of volunteers who register with the Australian Electoral Commission (who run and oversee ALL elections in Aus.). some electorates, where the results are very close or where a recount is needed take longer...but a) the results are still in within a few days at most, and b) in most cases the overall outcome (i.e. who wins enough seats to form government) is unaffected - very few elections are won by only one or two seats.
a short delay (at worst) to eliminate a potential avenue of massive electoral fraud is worth it. it's not like there's any great hurry, anyway...it'll be months before the actual handover of power to any new government.
in other words, electronic vote counting is a solution for a problem that doesn't exist.
Someone actually proposed an idea once that could theoretically provide a way for voters to take their receipt home and verify, over the Internet, that their vote was properly counted. In this case, no matter how much someone tries to modify the software, no significant number of votes could ever be faked.
and the problem with that is that it enables vote buying and/or vote coercion, it undermines the secrecy of the ballot.
at the moment, someone can pay for (or blackmail or extort or threaten) a voter to vote in a particular way, but there is no way to tell whether they actually voted as instructed.
electronic voting machines should print a paper ballot which the voter can examine to verify that their vote is correctly recorded - and then they deposit that paper ballot into the secure vote box where it becomes the *OFFICIAL* recorded vote which will later by counted by hand with scrutineers from multiple parties observing the count (the electronic tally in the machines being just an unofficial approximation)
- Voting machines, where you want to prevent misuse by unscrupulous folks (both end users and poll staff) - Cars and other devices where safety is a primary concern - Web kiosks, where the owner doesn't want to let folks put in a thumbdrive and reboot, starting an OS with a keylogger or worse.
the first two issues can and should be dealt with by legislation and regulation, not by DRM or other technological measures.
the third isn't relevant to GPL because no distribution is involved.
yet another example of fascists using an emotional issue (child abuse, terrorism, etc) to "justify" erosion of rights. it works because anyone who opposes it, even on perfectly reasonable grounds (like civil liberties) can easily be dressed up as a paedophile or terrorist supporter.
The manufacturers seems to be falling over themselves trying to bring flawed, faulty, and generally unfinished products to market... presumably oblivious to the possibility the first kid on the block to get one will tell all his friends about his experiences.
actually, they are fully aware of the fact that the first kid on the block wont go around bad-mouthing their product because they wont want to look like a complete fool for buying it. most of them will either shut up or will go around saying how fantastic it is.
this is the same principle that con-men rely on - e.g. nigerian 419 scammers get more and more money from their victims because they don't want to admit (even to themselves) that they've been suckered....so they keep on coughing up more money for the "fees" and "taxes" that keep cropping up before they can get their millions.
the most devout converts to a product or service are often those who have been suckered and know it (or at least have a dreadful suspicion).
If only I didn't desperately crave HD content on my TV!
huh? i don't get this. it's only TV - which means that even at its best it is brain-dead rubbish made for the majority (i.e. the stupidest people) in the country.
how can you 'desperately crave' any kind of content on your TV? sure, it might be nice to have slightly better quality than current DVD or DVB quality but it's not actually going to change your life significantly if/when you get it.
if you desperately crave this stuff, then you really need to get a life - and desperately need to be de-programmed from your mindless-consumption cult.
The entire kernel, and all contributions from hundreds or thousands of people, are explicitly licensed as GPL version 2. Even if the kernel people were rabidly enthusiastic about GPL v3, they'd have a very, very difficult time changing the license in any case; as a practical matter it'd probably be impossible. So what Torvalds, in the guise of kernel maintainer, thiks of the license is not really relevant since the licence, no matter what it looks like, would never be used by the kernel in any case.
that's true for the kernel as a whole, but i'm not sure that it's true for particular parts of the kernel. GPLv2 and GPLv3 will be compatible licenses, so i can't see any reason why the author of a particular part of the kernel can't license their work under GPLv3. if it's a crucially important part of the kernel (i.e. too big to be rewritten and replaced) then, for all practical purposes, anyone using the kernel has to comply with the terms of both GPLv2 and GPLv3.
personally, i don't see what Linus' problem is. i would have thought that prohibiting the misappropriation of GPL code via sneaky DRM mechanisms would be a good thing - after all, the point of GPL is "once free, always free". subverting that by by using DRM to make sure that no "unauthorised" version of the code can be installed is not a desirable outcome.
Heh, how about the cops that serve a warrant on the wrong house, and don't announce themselves? And then when the poor resident inside kills the first two people in the door, you charge him with murder even though he shot them INSIDE his house and he had NO WAY of knowing they were cops and had done NOTHING to expect cops at his door?
well, that is murder and the scumbag ought to be charged with it. even if you think you have some constitutional right to be a trigger-happy nutcase and like to console yourself with rugged individualist revenge fantasies just like in the movies.
trespass is not a justification for killing someone. self-defence only applies if you honestly believe that you are in immediate danger of being killed or harmed. shooting blindly (and it must have been blind, otherwise he would have noticed that they were cops) just because your door has been kicked in does not qualify.
in the case you describe, i doubt the murderer would even be charged - it's far more likely that the cops would shoot back and kill him. either immediately or in cold blood. life expectancy: negligible.
not so strange, since ebay encourage this attitude. all of their help pages and documentation refer to "winning" rather than "buying", and participating in an auction is presented as entertainment, a competition, and/or as "fun".
it makes sense for ebay to do this, and you can't really blame them for it....but you can blame the idiots who fall for it.
actually, it's a lot simpler than this. it's not about 'profit' (which is bullshit anyway, getting an item for less than the maximum you were prepared to pay is NOT "profit" - that's as dumb as calling the purchase of a rapdily depreciating asset like a car or a computer an "investment"). it's about maximising my chance of getting an item for a price that i'm willing to pay.
i snipe. i'm quite willing to pay what an item is worth or what I think it is worth (although i'm pleased to get it cheaper). i'm not, however, willing to pay what some moron thinks it is worth, and not at all willing to compete with morons in a bidding war. accordingly, i bid the maximum amount i'm willing to pay, once, just before the end of the auction. if i get the item for that price or less, then i'm happy. if not, then that means someone else was willing to pay more than i was and i was never going to get it anyway. another similar item will come along eventually and i'll have a chance at that. or i may find an alternative that does the job. or i may find that i didn't really need or want it anyway.
in short, it's mostly about avoiding stupid bidding wars with idiots.
that's the main reason i snipe. the other reason is that i feel morally bound to honour any bid i make - if i bid on an item and i win it, then i feel that i have no honourable option but to complete the transaction whether i still want it or not. by delaying my bid until the last minute, i am also delaying my committment to buy until the last minute. this gives me the opportunity to change my mind without inconveniencing the seller or other bidders (strictly speaking, it allows me to change my mind, period. inconveniencing the seller by changing my mind after the fact is NOT an option), and also allows me to take advantage of a sale or bargain that i might run across before the auction ends.
this 'bargain' may be another auction of the same or similar item on ebay, or it may be an item sold at a local shop or garage sale or whatever. doesn't matter. sniping allows me to take advantage of it without risking a double purchase.
if someone decides how much they are willing to pay for an item and bids exactly that at a time of their choosing, then what's the problem? it's no guarantee of success, anyone else could bid a higher amount (or the same amount, earlier). all sniping does is avoid the risk of getting carried away and bidding more than you're really willing to pay.
is there some requirement that they get into a bidding war with morons who get excited by the idea of "winning" an auction? it's not a competition, it's a transaction.
> The fact is, no debate between lay-people is going to resolve this. Discussing it on/. is essentially pointless. > Neither side wants to be swayed, and neither side really has the expertise to conclusively end the discussion.
nobody, anywhere, can end the "debate" because it isn't a debate. the vast majority of scientists accept evolution as a well-founded scientific theory that does a good job of describing and predicting observed reality. on the other side are a tiny number of blinkered lunatics who ignore evidence, make up bullshit, and demand that everyone accept their ridiculous superstition as established *fact* when really it's just extremely unlikely nonsense.
so, on the one hand, we have good science, good theory, reliable evidence, and data. on the other, we have insane ravings that bear no resemblance to reality.
that isn't a debate. that's a right-wing loony christian fundamentalist propaganda backlash. there's no possible argument that could convince the blinkered propagandists - they're not interested in facts or evidence or even being right. they're only interested in pushing their bullshit agenda on everyone.
>>Text as images has so many problems that there is no excuse for it. >If done badly, yes.
it is *always* done badly. it is a bloody stupid practice, and there is no excuse for it.
text-as-images makes the incredibly stupid assumption that the viewer's display is the exact same size and resolution as the author's display - if the viewer has a large, high-resolution display (e.g. 21" at 1920x1440) then any textual images created at, say, 1024x768 (or, worse, 800x600) will be unreadable.
this is annoying enough even when it's only used for buttons (where you can eventually learn what the buttons do by trial-and-error and remembering them - e.g. tiny little button image-text is common on forum software. often with no alt= text), but it makes the page entirely useless when used for any content text.
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i wonder if this girl (or her father) has had any contact with nutcase american missionaries?
they're a plague spreading their lunatic fundamentalist versions of christianity all over the globe. no-one else cares that much about evolution, no-one else has much difficulty reconciling their christianity with evolution, no-one else insists on such a tiny simpleton god.
so morality is handed down by God, is it?
would that be the same God that commanded Ezekiel (Ezek. 9) to go into Jerusalem and mark some people so that his men could slaughter everyone else - "Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women"
the same god that sent 2 bears to rip 42 youths (male children?) to shreds for the crime of mocking (calling him "baldhead") one of his prophets? [2 Kings 2:23]
not necessarily. there's a huge difference between a fertilised egg and therapeutic cloning.
the former requires contact between a sperm and an egg cell.
the latter involves removing all DNA from an egg cell, injecting the patient/donor's DNA, and using artificial means (e.g. a tiny electric shock) to trigger cell division and replication.
the former is human reproduction. the latter is cell culturing.
not at all the same thing.
that's because they're NOT unborn children. they're cell cultures.
the primary benefit of "therapeutic cloning" is that any cells produced by it are genetically identical (100% compatible) with the patient. this means that you need to use the patient's *OWN DNA* to produce cells compatible with them, not DNA from some random unrelated donor. the benefit is that there is no chance of rejection, no chance that the patient's own immune system will attack and destroy the therapy.
there are possible therapies to stem cell therapy, ranging from re-growing nerve tissue (even for severe spinal injuries) to growing new kidneys (in some animal experiments, injecting the right kind of stem cells into the abdomen resulted in several small but functioning kidneys growing and attaching themselves). these things and more have been done in animal experiments, some have even been done in humans. the potential is enormous.
and eventually, it may become possible to grow complete organs as needed, eliminating the need for both live and deceased organ donations.
some of these things can be done with the kinds of stem cells that can be harvested from bone marrow or fat cells. but adult stem cells are limited in the kinds of cells they can become, so some therapies require the "embryonic" stem cells which are capable of becoming ANY kind of cell.
it's not about creating new stem cell "lines". it's about creating stem cells which are a genetic match for the patient.
your question is akin to asking "why should i buy a pen when i already have a pencil?" different tools for different jobs.
nothing. it's just not capable of doing everything that's needed. where it is useful, it should be used - if only because it will undoubtedly be cheaper and easier to harvest and cultivate the stem cells directly if you don't need to use a rare and expensive egg cell, than indirectly (via blastocyte formation).
it's not an either/or choice. both are needed, both are useful.
this has NOTHING to do with conception or fertilisation. this is about growing a culture of cells.
conception involves sperm making contact with an egg cell resulting in fertilisation.
"therapeutic cloning" or "stem cell culturing" involves getting an egg cell (human, although animal works almost as well in theory), removing *ALL* DNA from it and injecting DNA from the patient, then giving it a little electric shock to trigger division and replication. a week or so later (long before it becomes even an embryo), the cell culture is harvested and the stem cells extracted.
in theory, this cell culture could eventually become an embryo, then a foetus, and maybe even a human being (genetically identical to the original patient/DNA donor). in practice, that isn't going to happen without many years of research and experimentation to figure out ways past all the problems that will occur, many of which haven't even been discovered yet.......the same as it took years of research to figure out the problems in each step of cloning a sheep.
now, if it's OK for me and my doctor to take some of my cells and grow them in some other (i.e. non egg cell) culture medium, then what's so wrong about this? what's the difference? i sure as hell don't see any difference, it's just a method for growing my cells for my medical needs. a necessary method if you want to grow particular kinds of cells.
why should you and your ignorant and superstitious bullshit be able to prevent me any my doctor from culturing my cells to meet my medical needs?
actually, it is you who are ignorant of the causes. the "Allah is great" stuff is secondary (at most). what they are screaming is "Get the fuck out of our land and take your fucking puppets with you". i.e. the causes ARE economic and territorial and political, NOT religious.
the religious element only comes in as a method for extremist loonies to mobilise and radicalise moderates.
the hatred can be dealt with by NOT doing the things that inspire it. for example:
- occupying Saudi Arabia and Iraq and other countries, either directly or by installing and propping up dictators
- supporting Israel no matter what they do by funding and arming them and especially by vetoing any UN proposal to impose sanctions for Israel's war crimes and terrorist activities
the most interesting thing about this thread so far is just how rabid people get whenever there is any suggestion that some people might be smarter than others. even a hint of that idea will bring out ridiculously aggressive reactions.
why? there is no such reaction when it is suggested that some people are better athletes than others, that some can run faster, some can dance better, some make better musicians, some are better at various crafts, and so on - it is ONLY when it is suggested that some are more intelligent than others that we get this lynch mob.
the correct term is "seppo" or "septic" (from "septic tank", rhyming slang for "Yank").
hey, they could hire the ex-Minister of Information from Saddam's Iraq, Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf.
he's an expert at the kind of "correction" they want....and they know he's capable of insisting that they're winning even in the face of undeniable facts to the contrary.
that might be true if everyone voted, but not when you don't have compulsory voting...and not when you don't even get close to 100% turnout of those who are registered to vote.
no, it's not a luddite statement. it's an analysis of the risks vs the benefits. an election is FAR more important than a personal signature, it matters a lot more whether it is fraudulent or not because the scale of damage is far greater.
and, just as significantly, moving from written signatures to electronic signatures isn't a significant reduction in the security of the system because written signatures aren't very secure to start with. by contrast, moving from a many-eyes manual count to an electronic count is a massive reduction in the security of the system.
the miniscule benefits of electronic counting are greatly outweighed by the risks.
because they're going to be affected by the result of the election, regardless of whether they supported the winner or not. the winning candidate is supposed to represent *everyone* in their electorate whether they voted for them or not, they are elected to do a job - to represent the people in their area. it is a peculiarly american attitude that somehow you don't count, your right to be represented is void if you don't vote, or if you didn't vote for the winning candidate.
and, no, the extremists don't know what they're voting for either. for the most part, they're just like football fans voting for their side, regardless of what their policies are. non-compulsory voting means that voting is done by those most sucked in by the hype.
in practice, with compulsory voting, what happens most of the time is that people vote for those who either a) promise to have the least damaging policies, and/or b) offer the most to them (e.g. hospitals, schools, whatever other things are needed in the local community). there's certainly potential for problems here, but it's far better than candidates simply ignoring what the majority of people in their electorate want, to concentrate exclusively on what the nutters and corporate interests want (i.e. appease the nutters to get their vote, and do what their corporate masters tell them to do).
it's not as good as having thousands of scrutineers monitoring the entire process. one person may be able to verify their own vote (and i'll even take your word for it that that can be done without compromising the secrecy of the ballot for the sake of the argument), but they can NOT verify that other people's votes haven't been tampered with, or that thousands of fraudulent votes haven't been inserted into the count, or that the system hasn't been rigged to keep two sets of records - one for the count, and one for whenever a voter attempts to verify their vote. electronic data is too malleable, too easy to manipulate without any trace to trust with something this important.
and all it takes is one uncompromised observer to blow the whistle and expose the fraud.
because they have to (pay at least lip-service) to representing ALL the people in their electorate, not just the extremists and fanatics...because if they dont, they run the risk of pissing off enough voters that they lose the next election.
also, compulsory voting gives people a direct involvement in the process - i'm sure that a big part of the reason why the public in america don't care that their last two elections were completely compromised and stolen is because they think "i didn't vote, so i have no reason to care/no right to complain". also because there's a massive conspiracy of silence on the issue from the mainstream media, but both factors together result in a big "who cares" attitude.
the process is entirely open. any citizen can volunteer. who watches the watchers? the other watchers, of course. that's the point. that's why the more watchers, the better.
no, i don't mistrust all computers because of MS Windows. however, i do distrust electronic voting because i know enough about computers and security issues to know that there are several *requirements* for trustworthy voting which are mutually exclusive when it is performed electronically. for example, a secret ballot is incompatible with the ability to verify your vote after the fact.
btw, even the system you were describing only allows you to verify your own vote - it doesn't allow you to verify that the entire vote hasn't been compromised by the addition of fraudulent vote records into the system.
if you believe that the ability to verify your own vote makes it more secure, then you are being fooled. it's just a distraction to divert your attention from a far bigger problem. it doesn't matter if your vote is recorded and counted accurately if it can be nullified by the addition of fraudulent votes.
post-ballot verification also opens up the danger of vote buying and vote extortion. no matter what safeguards are in place to make it difficult, anyone willing to go to the trouble of buying or extorting votes will have no difficulty getting around them - all they have to do is be present when the voter verifies their vote and look over their shoulder.
no, it's true of ALL machine counts. you can't trust them because there is inherently insufficient scrutiny of them in operation - otherwise, there's no point in having the machine count it rather than humans.
yes, humans can be bribed, manipulated, blackmailed, and threatened....but to succeed, you have to compromise ALL of the humans involved in a count, and with enough people involved that is impossible to achieve - all it takes is one whistle-blower who hasn't been compromised (this is analagous to the free software dictum "with enough eyes, all bugs are shallow"...."with enough eyes, all votes are transparent"). with a machine, though, you only have to hack it once and compromise the tiny number of people who have access to audit it.
no, it doesn't cost more money. it costs a LOT LESS to hand count an election. the AEC runs elections at a cost of about five or six dollars per voter - which is extraordinarily cheap. machine elections cost tens of dollar per voter
for example, the 2001 Federal election cost $67M AUD. the 2004 Federal election cost $75M to run (plus another $41M of public funding of electoral expenses for parties who got >=5% of the vote). that's cheap by any standards.
the larger population means a larger number of votes to be counted....but also a larger pool of people available to count the votes. the votes aren't counted all at one central location, they are counted at or near the actual location where they were cast. i.e. only half a dozen (or more) people per counting site...that's not a huge ask from the hundreds or thousands of people who vote in that area.
as for the number of votes cast, australia gets a >99% voter turnout rate - we have compulsory voting here (in practice, that means compulsory attendance at a voting booth on election days to get your name crossed off the list - nobody actually monitors what you do in the booth, although most people do vote if only because they're already there at the booth)....and compulsory voting is a good thing because it forces the candidates to actually give a damn about the majority of mostly apathetic, disinterested and distracted-by-sport-and-entertainment voters, rather than just the extremists on either side.
about half the population is eligible to vote (i.e. everyone 18 years of age and over).
america would be a far better place if it had a) a federal electoral commission with universal standards for how an election is to be conducted and b) compulsory voting
and thousands of eyes to see those mistakes, intentional or not. with enough people watching, it is almost impossible to corrupt the election process, and certainly impossible to corrupt it enough to significantly skew the results.
yes, it's not even close to what you described - that was deliberate. and yes, again, it pretty much defeats the purpose of the machine count - again, that's deliberate. the ONLY way to be confident that the vote has been counted accurately is to do it by hand, with scrutineers from multiple parties conducting the count (so that any miscounting will be picked up by the opposition). you can't trust machine counts - they're too easily hacked and manipulated....so relegate it to just an unofficial quick approximation.
hand counting doesn't take that long, anyway. we do it that way every election here in australia and the results in most electorates are in within a few hours of the voting booths being closed, with the counting done by thousands of volunteers who register with the Australian Electoral Commission (who run and oversee ALL elections in Aus.). some electorates, where the results are very close or where a recount is needed take longer...but a) the results are still in within a few days at most, and b) in most cases the overall outcome (i.e. who wins enough seats to form government) is unaffected - very few elections are won by only one or two seats.
a short delay (at worst) to eliminate a potential avenue of massive electoral fraud is worth it. it's not like there's any great hurry, anyway...it'll be months before the actual handover of power to any new government.
in other words, electronic vote counting is a solution for a problem that doesn't exist.
and the problem with that is that it enables vote buying and/or vote coercion, it undermines the secrecy of the ballot.
at the moment, someone can pay for (or blackmail or extort or threaten) a voter to vote in a particular way, but there is no way to tell whether they actually voted as instructed.
electronic voting machines should print a paper ballot which the voter can examine to verify that their vote is correctly recorded - and then they deposit that paper ballot into the secure vote box where it becomes the *OFFICIAL* recorded vote which will later by counted by hand with scrutineers from multiple parties observing the count (the electronic tally in the machines being just an unofficial approximation)
the first two issues can and should be dealt with by legislation and regulation, not by DRM or other technological measures.
the third isn't relevant to GPL because no distribution is involved.
yet another example of fascists using an emotional issue (child abuse, terrorism, etc) to "justify" erosion of rights. it works because anyone who opposes it, even on perfectly reasonable grounds (like civil liberties) can easily be dressed up as a paedophile or terrorist supporter.
actually, they are fully aware of the fact that the first kid on the block wont go around bad-mouthing their product because they wont want to look like a complete fool for buying it. most of them will either shut up or will go around saying how fantastic it is.
this is the same principle that con-men rely on - e.g. nigerian 419 scammers get more and more money from their victims because they don't want to admit (even to themselves) that they've been suckered....so they keep on coughing up more money for the "fees" and "taxes" that keep cropping up before they can get their millions.
the most devout converts to a product or service are often those who have been suckered and know it (or at least have a dreadful suspicion).
huh? i don't get this. it's only TV - which means that even at its best it is brain-dead rubbish made for the majority (i.e. the stupidest people) in the country.
how can you 'desperately crave' any kind of content on your TV? sure, it might be nice to have slightly better quality than current DVD or DVB quality but it's not actually going to change your life significantly if/when you get it.
if you desperately crave this stuff, then you really need to get a life - and desperately need to be de-programmed from your mindless-consumption cult.
that's true for the kernel as a whole, but i'm not sure that it's true for particular parts of the kernel. GPLv2 and GPLv3 will be compatible licenses, so i can't see any reason why the author of a particular part of the kernel can't license their work under GPLv3. if it's a crucially important part of the kernel (i.e. too big to be rewritten and replaced) then, for all practical purposes, anyone using the kernel has to comply with the terms of both GPLv2 and GPLv3.
personally, i don't see what Linus' problem is. i would have thought that prohibiting the misappropriation of GPL code via sneaky DRM mechanisms would be a good thing - after all, the point of GPL is "once free, always free". subverting that by by using DRM to make sure that no "unauthorised" version of the code can be installed is not a desirable outcome.
well, that is murder and the scumbag ought to be charged with it. even if you think you have some constitutional right to be a trigger-happy nutcase and like to console yourself with rugged individualist revenge fantasies just like in the movies.
trespass is not a justification for killing someone. self-defence only applies if you honestly believe that you are in immediate danger of being killed or harmed. shooting blindly (and it must have been blind, otherwise he would have noticed that they were cops) just because your door has been kicked in does not qualify.
in the case you describe, i doubt the murderer would even be charged - it's far more likely that the cops would shoot back and kill him. either immediately or in cold blood. life expectancy: negligible.
> Strange and irrational, indeed...
not so strange, since ebay encourage this attitude. all of their help pages and documentation refer to "winning" rather than "buying", and participating in an auction is presented as entertainment, a competition, and/or as "fun".
it makes sense for ebay to do this, and you can't really blame them for it....but you can blame the idiots who fall for it.
actually, it's a lot simpler than this. it's not about 'profit' (which is bullshit anyway, getting an item for less than the maximum you were prepared to pay is NOT "profit" - that's as dumb as calling the purchase of a rapdily depreciating asset like a car or a computer an "investment"). it's about maximising my chance of getting an item for a price that i'm willing to pay.
i snipe. i'm quite willing to pay what an item is worth or what I think it is worth (although i'm pleased to get it cheaper). i'm not, however, willing to pay what some moron thinks it is worth, and not at all willing to compete with morons in a bidding war. accordingly, i bid the maximum amount i'm willing to pay, once, just before the end of the auction. if i get the item for that price or less, then i'm happy. if not, then that means someone else was willing to pay more than i was and i was never going to get it anyway. another similar item will come along eventually and i'll have a chance at that. or i may find an alternative that does the job. or i may find that i didn't really need or want it anyway.
in short, it's mostly about avoiding stupid bidding wars with idiots.
that's the main reason i snipe. the other reason is that i feel morally bound to honour any bid i make - if i bid on an item and i win it, then i feel that i have no honourable option but to complete the transaction whether i still want it or not. by delaying my bid until the last minute, i am also delaying my committment to buy until the last minute. this gives me the opportunity to change my mind without inconveniencing the seller or other bidders (strictly speaking, it allows me to change my mind, period. inconveniencing the seller by changing my mind after the fact is NOT an option), and also allows me to take advantage of a sale or bargain that i might run across before the auction ends.
this 'bargain' may be another auction of the same or similar item on ebay, or it may be an item sold at a local shop or garage sale or whatever. doesn't matter. sniping allows me to take advantage of it without risking a double purchase.
why is sniping a problem?
if someone decides how much they are willing to pay for an item and bids exactly that at a time of their choosing, then what's the problem? it's no guarantee of success, anyone else could bid a higher amount (or the same amount, earlier). all sniping does is avoid the risk of getting carried away and bidding more than you're really willing to pay.
is there some requirement that they get into a bidding war with morons who get excited by the idea of "winning" an auction? it's not a competition, it's a transaction.
> The fact is, no debate between lay-people is going to resolve this. Discussing it on /. is essentially pointless.
> Neither side wants to be swayed, and neither side really has the expertise to conclusively end the discussion.
nobody, anywhere, can end the "debate" because it isn't a debate. the vast majority of scientists accept evolution as a well-founded scientific theory that does a good job of describing and predicting observed reality. on the other side are a tiny number of blinkered lunatics who ignore evidence, make up bullshit, and demand that everyone accept their ridiculous superstition as established *fact* when really it's just extremely unlikely nonsense.
so, on the one hand, we have good science, good theory, reliable evidence, and data.
on the other, we have insane ravings that bear no resemblance to reality.
that isn't a debate. that's a right-wing loony christian fundamentalist propaganda backlash. there's no possible argument that could convince the blinkered propagandists - they're not interested in facts or evidence or even being right. they're only interested in pushing their bullshit agenda on everyone.
>>Text as images has so many problems that there is no excuse for it.
>If done badly, yes.
it is *always* done badly. it is a bloody stupid practice, and there is no excuse for it.
text-as-images makes the incredibly stupid assumption that the viewer's display is the exact same size and resolution as the author's display - if the viewer has a large, high-resolution display (e.g. 21" at 1920x1440) then any textual images created at, say, 1024x768 (or, worse, 800x600) will be unreadable.
this is annoying enough even when it's only used for buttons (where you can eventually learn what the buttons do by trial-and-error and remembering them - e.g. tiny little button image-text is common on forum software. often with no alt= text), but it makes the page entirely useless when used for any content text.