I don't know how they handle the legal/tax end of such things, but they do approximately the same thing -- the house is owned by shareholders -- Zami, in Santa Cruz, comes to mind.
A place to start, I guess, if anyone is thinking about doing such a think
What, you mean that technology is a tool, not a (god/mommy/daddy/etc)?
Woah!
Seriously, this is the truth -- tech is a tool, like (yes, way overused analogy here, but it's true) a hammer -- we can spend our time perfecting hammers, making bigger hammers, having religious wars over claw backs vs flat backs, etc etc, but ultimately, if I don't use the hammer to build the house or hang the picture, it's nothing but a waste of energy and matter.
Also, along the same lines, my gf has a serious thing for *big* hammers (in her defense, she's a former construction worker) -- but last night, when we had to hang a picture, it was to my collection of little (1' or less) hammers we went, since hers (the smallest is about 2' long and probably weighs 10 pounds or so) would probably go right through the wall...
there's a lesson about (high/electronic/digital) technology here too
Or one could point out that hammers are also technology.
But, unfortunetly, we haven't found a technological solution for the fact that people just don't think.
bah...read up on your history. People have been cheating, stealing, mudering sons (and daughters)-of-dogs since we got out of the trees (or got kicked out of the garden of eden, your call)
It's far more constructive to find ways of protecting ourselves from the assholes in life without hurting the innocent (i.e. writing code that's harder to crack, writing games that are harder to cheat in, finding ways of detecting cheaters and warning others about them, etc) than to whine about a bunch of values that never have really existed.
You know, it didn't take gender discrimination laws to allow people to be interrogated about the particulars of their personal lives. Women who have brought up rape allegations have been interrogated about their personal lives (including all sorts of things that shouldn't matter -- such as when they first had sex, how often they have had sex, whether they had sex out of marriage, who they also had sex with, what they were wearing, what they normally wear, how many kids they have, and what they like to do in bed) for decades. I'm not big on turnabout is fair play, but it occurs to me that the men are whining about the same behavior we've put up with (for much less reason) for generations.
This depends a lot on which city, where in that city and why. When I lived in seattle I had a convenience store about a block from me, a large safeway 6 blocks from me, a fred meyers department store (everything but clothes, really) six blocks from me and more clothing stores etc than anyone could want. Not to mention a *real* shoe store (as in they could resole my boots) within a few blocks. The only thing I ever had to go looking for was a good computer store -- and that, I expect, was because most computer buyers either live or work in the suburbs.
In contrast, I've lived in more than one suburb where the nearest convenience store was five miles through windy roads that all look alike (thanks to the look alike houses) and the nearest supermarket was perhaps seven miles out. There was no way to live there without a car, and my neighbors could still see through my windows.
I've also lived in some nice rural areas, where the nearest kmart was 40 miles away, and the nearest supermarket was 10mi, but the nearest road stand during the fall was only five miles down the road, and was picked-that-morning fresh besides..and my neighbors couldn't see me.
It's always struck me that suburbs are the worst of all worlds -- you're still too close to your neighbors, but if you want any real services or shopping, unless you're really lucky, you have to have a car.
But it's all about planning, suburban or urban (and to a certain extent rural as well)
> Mass transit gets tax subsidies, gasoline gets > taxed; if mass transit had to pay for itself, it > wouldn't be nearly so cheap anymor
In the U.S. gas gets subsidies too - it just happens 'up top', the companies get subsidized rather than the individual consumer. Otherwise it would be prohibitively expensive. And more taxes than just gas taxes go into building roads, not to mention the costs of commuting to communities. If individual vehical owners had to pay for all the costs of their vehical (cost of building and maintaining roads [perhaps on a per-weight toll basis -- i.e. a motorcycle would pay less than a compact car which would pay less than a station wagon which would pay less than an SUV], medical costs of people who are smogged out in cities where individual vehicals are the main form of air pollutions, the actual cost of gas, rather than the subsidized cost, etc) individual vehicals would look a hell of a lot less attractive.
Here's the thing -- it wasn't about whether or not people should be killing animals -- it was about the inherent hypocrisy in saying 'you may not kill even virtual animals or people if you are not old enough, nor may you go about commiting 'animal cruelty' violations, but if you want a job killing animals cruelly (and is there an age limit on slaughter house jobs? Can you work there if you are under 18) we'll not only let you, but we'll subsidize it'
It's not about eating animals, it's about conditions in slaughterhouses and the hypocrisy of it all.
Several months ago the bay area BSD users group (I don't remember the name, if someone else would like to add to the details in this post, please go for it) had a meeting topic of 'BSD vs Linux' (it might have been FreeBSD vs Linux, I don't recall)
Originally it was supposed to be a head to head comparison of Linux vs (Free?)BSD -- winner take all, or so I was gathering.
What happened was that it came out that both OSes have their strengths, both have their weaknesses. Both sides often argue the 'point' with old information. Yes linux has better 'newbie support' and more hardware support, and *BSD degrades more gracefully under load and has nifty better things in the kernel. What ended up coming out was more of a sense of cooperation, than a bloody war..why this should be such a surprise I don't know.
In other words, use the right tool for the job.
Anyone who was there want to add their comments? I'll grant my memory might be fuzzy, it was a bit back.
In any case, I think that Linux popularity has been a good thing for Unixes in general and Freenixes in particular (how many Unix [of any flavor] users under the age of, say, 25, at least in the U.S., got their start on a Linux system?) and I do think that it's been a shame that *BSD has sort of been the neglected child. One would think there would be enough room for both.
One of the things I've been doing recently is ripping/copying mp3s and then sending checks directly to artists. I've only done this twice (it was a recent idea, and I don't exactly have tonnes of time..not to mention I don't even have a land line at home, high speed -- hah!) and so far no response...but I'm an amateur musician, and it's occured to me that maybe, were people willing to pay on an 'honor system' and esspecially if it were easy (not that writing a check and dropping it in an envelope and finding/writing the address and getting a stamp and dropping in the mailbox is hard, but it could be much easier) this would help indies.
A lot of blood sweat and tears goes into music, and musicians have to pay the rent, the same as the rest of us, and making music takes time which cannot be used to do other, more profitable activities. This is the reality of the situation. But by 'cutting out the middle man' (the money-hungry big record lables) and cutting out the need for physical media (not that I think CDs/tapes/etc are bad, but I personally don't need them) we could make things better for both musicians and their listeners/fans.
Out of curiousity, how would bioweapons target 'racial characteristics' -- the racial characteristics that most people speak of (skin color, facial structure) aren't really targetable, as I understand it. Certain genetic chracteristics might be in the next few years (i.e. the diseases that have genetic and environmental causes -- schizophrenia, for example) but that's not exactly the same thing..
just trying to figure out what you're talking about
However, neither of these factors explain the aggressiveness with which Americans are monolingual. In California, where there is a large population of native > Spanish speakers, bilinugal education has been > banned in public schools. Elsewhere, language > education for childern is half-hearted at best, > if it exists at all.
In part that's because so called 'bilingual' classes in some areas (not all of them) were never getting around to teaching children english at all, leaving the kids at a major disadvantage after they left school.
Not to say that all bilingual education is bad, but in this case, there was a reason behind the 'ban'.
> As one of my Spanish professors told me, the > stated purpose of most elementary foreign > language education in the US is to assist in > the teaching of English grammar and vocabulary, > not to teach for fluency.
This is true. More, all my school-language (latin, german and japanese) classes put a lot more emphasis on grammer than was useful, if I just wnated to *speak* the language (well, with latin maybe this is not as much of a concern) -- OTOH, I just took a japanese class that emphasized *communication* over technical correctness, and discovered that I *can* learn another language (for a long tiem I just thought I was a complete idiot with languages or something, because remembering stuff by rote does not come easily to me)
The whole idea that GUIs are easier to use than line based or command based interfaces is misled and misleading, at best.
I've found the easiest way to deal with complete newbies who don't want to learn anything more than what they have to do to write, check email, whatever is to set up a basic box, configure everything appropriately, and write up a cheatsheet doc : i.e. if you want to check your email, log in with your username and password, connect to the internet by typing 'ppp-on' (which should be a pathed script that does all the connection and gives an error if the connection fails), type 'pine' etc. Choose the simplest tools you can find that do what your user wants to do (I'm fond of pine for email and pico for editing, in most cases, even though I'm an insane vi user who woudln't be caught dead using pico myself ) etc etc, and write up cheatsheets to handle the important tasks in each of those applications.
GUIs tend to be needlessly complicated for newbies with simple needs.
> Actually, no. Soybeans that can take herbicide > that tiny, tiny amounts of would kill other > plants, and don`t affect insects or > animals at all. So you end up using far less > herbicide, and it`s not as poisonous to animals > either.
Tiny is relative -- think about the amount of land given to soybeans -- a small portion of the available land on earth, but a fairly sizeable chunk...I'm less worried about the animals there (it's bothersome, but..) and more worried about run off into water supply etc
> Where do you think seedless grapes come from?
grafting. they also aren't annuals..
> Many are. But you don`t hear about those, > because they`re not controversial enough, and > they don`t fit the agenda of the > environmentalist campaigners. For example, a > strain of rice has been engineered to contain > higher concentrations of vitamins A > and B, which are often lacking in the diet of > third-world people for whom rice is their > staple diet.
I was actually referring to the market in industrialized countries -- heck, our soda companies make high-protein nutritional drinks for third world countries that are quite cheap, but forget about being able to get them here cheaply.
That still doesn't address the problems of lack of labling (so people can at least make their own choice) which has been fought to the point where it was at least under discussion to make it illegal to say your product *didn't* have genetically altered soy in it -- and with the lack of information about allergies etc it's worth thinking about.
> Any plant that crossed with a terminator and > inherited the terminator genes would be unable > to reporduce.
hold on. think about this senerio (and I'm not saying that this happens -- to my knowledge no one has yet to prove or disprove that this could ever happen) You have two fields of corn -- one regular, one terminator -- the terminator corn pollinates the the regular corn so that the regular corn forms seeds that have the terminator genes what will germinate (hey, the original terminator seeds have to germinate) *but* this next generation (the terminator-regular hybrids) will not have seeds, but may very well pollinate any regular corn that happens to still be around, creating more of the terminator-regular hybreds, repeat ad infinitum. If, for whatever reason, the terminator genes happen to better for reproduction in some other way, it would a possibility (but only a possibility) that the terminator hybreds would eventually over run the corn, then die out themselves.
I'm not saying this is happening or will happen, I'm just saying that as of now this is still a possibility, and your post showed more ignorance of survival of the fittest and plant reproduction than the previous poster.
> People are presently making an incredible > amount of fuss over genetically modified food. > A lot of this is down to ignorance and > hyperbole (one woman was quoted as saying "I > don`t want my food to have any of that DNA in > it");
And a lot of it isn't -- especially considering that the majority of the modifications don't help anyone but the folks pushing -- soybeans that can take larger amounts of herbicide before going belly up (dumping more poisons into the water supply, yup, that's what the world needs)? Plants that no longer reproduce normally so everyone has to buy seeds from the company every year? It would, I expect, be quite different if the first genetically spliced foods to hit market were designed to have better yeild, higher nutrients or some other *useful* traits.
It doesn't give me much hope for the world -- Not to mention that suggestions that genetically altered food at least be *labled* (Hey, I can choose not to eat meat. I can choose not to eat peanuts. I can choose not to eat genetically altered soybeans) have been struck down systematically. Yes, a number of people (both anti-ge food, and in teh general public) really don't have a clue (about genetic engineering, computers or nuclear physics), but I'm not sure I'd use that as an argument that the fuss is an 'incredible amount' compared to the very real concerns.
That said, if we approach genetically modified children the way we approached genetically modified food, we'll be taken over by movie stars. ack.
*Assuming* that this (and other medical databases) are done securely (So that only authorized users can access them, which is important and should be discussed)There's another problem here: Who should have access to medical records?
The article above specifically says
> Digital credentials like those developed by > Intel help ensure that only authorized > physicians, insurers, and consumers can > access a patient's medical transcripts or > other health records.
And I would argue that the person who *most* needs to be able to access a given patient record is the patient themself. Look at credit records -- you do, as a consumer, have a right to look at your record and notate it, as well as challenge any spurious or wrong entries. To my knowledge you don't currently have the option to notate or challenge your medical records. I don't know (and I don't know if anyone knows) how common mistakes in records are, but considering the number of clearly wrong diagnoses I've heard (from an eight year old with Borderline Personality Disorder, to three friends of mine [one pregnant] who were told they had cervical cancer on the strength of one bad PAP smear [further testing showed that none of them did] etc) I'd be willing to guess that mistakes aren't unheard of, at the very least.
*Especially* if insurers also get the ability to read your medical record.
What makes me nervous is that nowhere in the rest of the article is the right of the patient's access to their own records mentioned, even though physicians are.
The other question is that will physicians who don't have your permission be allowed to access full records -- I'm not sure there would be problems with being able to pull demographic information (i.e. how many patients with AIDS/Cancer/Birth defects/etc do we have in this area) but do we really want any physician at all to be able to pull 'Who has AIDS/Cancer/etc?'
Anyway, sorry to make this so long, but no one seemed willing to bring that up.
it's not (just) about what is being taught -- it's about the power of who gets to teach what in the schools -- at a local level, in the localities I've had the opportunity to watch this debate go on in (because I've moved, not because I'm particularly interested in *this* subject over any other -- in fact, it's pretty low interest for me) in *general* the folks who are anti-teaching-the-theory-of-evolution (as opposed to people who believe god had a hand in it, which is a different issue) have two things going on -- one is that they are, by and large, the people who also wish that the bible be taught in public schools (as more than just literature), and that they don't understand that theory is just that, that there is no such thing as a scientific *fact*, just theory and observation. (granted, the second is hard for people in general to grasp, apparently). And the likely hood of both those things going on, especially the first, is related to how vocal the person is (my guess is that the strength of belief that the bible is the one true way and must be taught leads to the vocalness and not vice versa, but I could be wrong).
Part of the problem is that the really vocal christians (like the really vocal yahoos, as you say, in any debate, really) are the ones who are unwilling to consider that just because *they* believe in the St james (usually) or catholic or some other version of the christian/judeo-christian bible, it doesn't automagically mean that the rest of us think it's true, much less what we/our children should be taught as Truth.
You might not be a freakish mutant, but in 1 year of undergrad (I quit, disillusioned, and went to learn in the school of hard knocks instead) *every* one of my classes relied on multiple choice. Yes, we had short answer and essay questions too, but I bought more bubble sheets those semesters....
ditto high school. I expect it depends largely on the school and on the teacher/professor/TA.
Perhaps instead of giving us such 'vital stats' as student:teacher ratio, gender and racial break downs, clubs, etc etc, colleges, universities and other schools should work out ways to give prospective students an idea of how well they are likely to be taught.
Ah, but by being willing to 'play along' with HR and other narrow minded folks we just encourage them. Or to quote a cliche, 'if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem'. I'm aware that there are risks (i.e. not getting employment, etc) in being outspoken, and I would not cease respecting someone because of that fear. At the same time, actively supporting the interests of those in power by criticizing those who are willing to buck the trend and fight is counter-productive.
If more of us stood up for our rights, we'd have less trouble with the erosion of our rights.
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I hate to break it to you, but you do, in theory at least, require a *working* prototype in order to patent something
Which makes one wonder how M$ could hold any patents at all....
there are such things as housing coops
I don't know how they handle the legal/tax end of such things, but they do approximately the same thing -- the house is owned by shareholders -- Zami, in Santa Cruz, comes to mind.
A place to start, I guess, if anyone is thinking about doing such a think
What, you mean that technology is a tool, not a (god/mommy/daddy/etc)?
Woah!
Seriously, this is the truth -- tech is a tool, like (yes, way overused analogy here, but it's true) a hammer -- we can spend our time perfecting hammers, making bigger hammers, having religious wars over claw backs vs flat backs, etc etc, but ultimately, if I don't use the hammer to build the house or hang the picture, it's nothing but a waste of energy and matter.
Also, along the same lines, my gf has a serious thing for *big* hammers (in her defense, she's a former construction worker) -- but last night, when we had to hang a picture, it was to my collection of little (1' or less) hammers we went, since hers (the smallest is about 2' long and probably weighs 10 pounds or so) would probably go right through the wall...
there's a lesson about (high/electronic/digital) technology here too
Or one could point out that hammers are also technology.
But, unfortunetly, we haven't found a technological solution for the fact that people just don't think.
bah...read up on your history. People have been cheating, stealing, mudering sons (and daughters)-of-dogs since we got out of the trees (or got kicked out of the garden of eden, your call)
It's far more constructive to find ways of protecting ourselves from the assholes in life without hurting the innocent (i.e. writing code that's harder to crack, writing games that are harder to cheat in, finding ways of detecting cheaters and warning others about them, etc) than to whine about a bunch of values that never have really existed.
You know, it didn't take gender discrimination laws to allow people to be interrogated about the particulars of their personal lives. Women who have brought up rape allegations have been interrogated about their personal lives (including all sorts of things that shouldn't matter -- such as when they first had sex, how often they have had sex, whether they had sex out of marriage, who they also had sex with, what they were wearing, what they normally wear, how many kids they have, and what they like to do in bed) for decades. I'm not big on turnabout is fair play, but it occurs to me that the men are whining about the same behavior we've put up with (for much less reason) for generations.
> there are more services than people
This depends a lot on which city, where in that city and why. When I lived in seattle I had a convenience store about a block from me, a large safeway 6 blocks from me, a fred meyers department store (everything but clothes, really) six blocks from me and more clothing stores etc than anyone could want. Not to mention a *real* shoe store (as in they could resole my boots) within a few blocks. The only thing I ever had to go looking for was a good computer store -- and that, I expect, was because most computer buyers either live or work in the suburbs.
In contrast, I've lived in more than one suburb where the nearest convenience store was five miles through windy roads that all look alike (thanks to the look alike houses) and the nearest supermarket was perhaps seven miles out. There was no way to live there without a car, and my neighbors could still see through my windows.
I've also lived in some nice rural areas, where the nearest kmart was 40 miles away, and the nearest supermarket was 10mi, but the nearest road stand during the fall was only five miles down the road, and was picked-that-morning fresh besides..and my neighbors couldn't see me.
It's always struck me that suburbs are the worst of all worlds -- you're still too close to your neighbors, but if you want any real services or shopping, unless you're really lucky, you have to have a car.
But it's all about planning, suburban or urban (and to a certain extent rural as well)
> Mass transit gets tax subsidies, gasoline gets > taxed; if mass transit had to pay for itself, it > wouldn't be nearly so cheap anymor
In the U.S. gas gets subsidies too - it just happens 'up top', the companies get subsidized rather than the individual consumer. Otherwise it would be prohibitively expensive. And more taxes than just gas taxes go into building roads, not to mention the costs of commuting to communities. If individual vehical owners had to pay for all the costs of their vehical (cost of building and maintaining roads [perhaps on a per-weight toll basis -- i.e. a motorcycle would pay less than a compact car which would pay less than a station wagon which would pay less than an SUV], medical costs of people who are smogged out in cities where individual vehicals are the main form of air pollutions, the actual cost of gas, rather than the subsidized cost, etc) individual vehicals would look a hell of a lot less attractive.
Actually, it was on topic.
Here's the thing -- it wasn't about whether or not people should be killing animals -- it was about the inherent hypocrisy in saying 'you may not kill even virtual animals or people if you are not old enough, nor may you go about commiting 'animal cruelty' violations, but if you want a job killing animals cruelly (and is there an age limit on slaughter house jobs? Can you work there if you are under 18) we'll not only let you, but we'll subsidize it'
It's not about eating animals, it's about conditions in slaughterhouses and the hypocrisy of it all.
Several months ago the bay area BSD users group (I don't remember the name, if someone else would like to add to the details in this post, please go for it) had a meeting topic of 'BSD vs Linux' (it might have been FreeBSD vs Linux, I don't recall)
Originally it was supposed to be a head to head comparison of Linux vs (Free?)BSD -- winner take all, or so I was gathering.
What happened was that it came out that both OSes have their strengths, both have their weaknesses. Both sides often argue the 'point' with old information. Yes linux has better 'newbie support' and more hardware support, and *BSD degrades more gracefully under load and has nifty better things in the kernel. What ended up coming out was more of a sense of cooperation, than a bloody war..why this should be such a surprise I don't know.
In other words, use the right tool for the job.
Anyone who was there want to add their comments? I'll grant my memory might be fuzzy, it was a bit back.
In any case, I think that Linux popularity has been a good thing for Unixes in general and Freenixes in particular (how many Unix [of any flavor] users under the age of, say, 25, at least in the U.S., got their start on a Linux system?) and I do think that it's been a shame that *BSD has sort of been the neglected child. One would think there would be enough room for both.
One of the things I've been doing recently is ripping/copying mp3s and then sending checks directly to artists. I've only done this twice (it was a recent idea, and I don't exactly have tonnes of time..not to mention I don't even have a land line at home, high speed -- hah!) and so far no response...but I'm an amateur musician, and it's occured to me that maybe, were people willing to pay on an 'honor system' and esspecially if it were easy (not that writing a check and dropping it in an envelope and finding/writing the address and getting a stamp and dropping in the mailbox is hard, but it could be much easier) this would help indies.
A lot of blood sweat and tears goes into music, and musicians have to pay the rent, the same as the rest of us, and making music takes time which cannot be used to do other, more profitable activities. This is the reality of the situation. But by 'cutting out the middle man' (the money-hungry big record lables) and cutting out the need for physical media (not that I think CDs/tapes/etc are bad, but I personally don't need them) we could make things better for both musicians and their listeners/fans.
rark
ah, but numerous studies have shown that there is no race gene, as such.
email for reference
Out of curiousity, how would bioweapons target 'racial characteristics' -- the racial characteristics that most people speak of (skin color, facial structure) aren't really targetable, as I understand it. Certain genetic chracteristics might be in the next few years (i.e. the diseases that have genetic and environmental causes -- schizophrenia, for example) but that's not exactly the same thing.. just trying to figure out what you're talking about
However, neither of these factors explain the aggressiveness with which Americans are monolingual. In California, where there is a large population of native
> Spanish speakers, bilinugal education has been > banned in public schools. Elsewhere, language
> education for childern is half-hearted at best, > if it exists at all.
In part that's because so called 'bilingual' classes in some areas (not all of them) were never getting around to teaching children english at all, leaving the kids at a major disadvantage after they left school.
Not to say that all bilingual education is bad, but in this case, there was a reason behind the 'ban'.
> As one of my Spanish professors told me, the > stated purpose of most elementary foreign > language education in the US is to assist in > the teaching of English grammar and vocabulary, > not to teach for fluency.
This is true. More, all my school-language (latin, german and japanese) classes put a lot more emphasis on grammer than was useful, if I just wnated to *speak* the language (well, with latin maybe this is not as much of a concern) -- OTOH, I just took a japanese class that emphasized *communication* over technical correctness, and discovered that I *can* learn another language (for a long tiem I just thought I was a complete idiot with languages or something, because remembering stuff by rote does not come easily to me)
Wouldn't that be a beowoof cluster
A year and a half ago I spent some time researching the least expensive licensing for SSL with Apache for a webserver running approximately 80-128 sites, and it came out that at that time, for that setup that Raven "/A> was the best option. This may well have changed, as it looks like they've raised their prices, and it depends largely on how many customers you have, because of licensing fees and such. It's probably worth a look, though.
I absolutely, positively *agree*.
The whole idea that GUIs are easier to use than line based or command based interfaces is misled and misleading, at best.
I've found the easiest way to deal with complete newbies who don't want to learn anything more than what they have to do to write, check email, whatever is to set up a basic box, configure everything appropriately, and write up a cheatsheet doc : i.e. if you want to check your email, log in with your username and password, connect to the internet by typing 'ppp-on' (which should be a pathed script that does all the connection and gives an error if the connection fails), type 'pine' etc. Choose the simplest tools you can find that do what your user wants to do (I'm fond of pine for email and pico for editing, in most cases, even though I'm an insane vi user who woudln't be caught dead using pico myself ) etc etc, and write up cheatsheets to handle the important tasks in each of those applications.
GUIs tend to be needlessly complicated for newbies with simple needs.
It was in *my* family!
Come on, tell me someone else got their start cracking codes their daddy (or mommy) wrote on the back of the paper menus at pizza hut!
Okay, so maybe there are fewer daughters (and sons) of Analysts and Cryppies than I thought
> Actually, no. Soybeans that can take herbicide > that tiny, tiny amounts of would kill other > plants, and don`t affect insects or
> animals at all. So you end up using far less > herbicide, and it`s not as poisonous to animals > either.
Tiny is relative -- think about the amount of land given to soybeans -- a small portion of the available land on earth, but a fairly sizeable chunk...I'm less worried about the animals there (it's bothersome, but..) and more worried about run off into water supply etc
> Where do you think seedless grapes come from?
grafting. they also aren't annuals..
> Many are. But you don`t hear about those,
> because they`re not controversial enough, and
> they don`t fit the agenda of the > environmentalist campaigners. For example, a > strain of rice has been engineered to contain > higher concentrations of vitamins A
> and B, which are often lacking in the diet of > third-world people for whom rice is their > staple diet.
I was actually referring to the market in industrialized countries -- heck, our soda companies make high-protein nutritional drinks for third world countries that are quite cheap, but forget about being able to get them here cheaply.
That still doesn't address the problems of lack of labling (so people can at least make their own choice) which has been fought to the point where it was at least under discussion to make it illegal to say your product *didn't* have genetically altered soy in it -- and with the lack of information about allergies etc it's worth thinking about.
> Any plant that crossed with a terminator and
> inherited the terminator genes would be unable > to reporduce.
hold on. think about this senerio (and I'm not saying that this happens -- to my knowledge no one has yet to prove or disprove that this could ever happen) You have two fields of corn -- one regular, one terminator -- the terminator corn pollinates the the regular corn so that the regular corn forms seeds that have the terminator genes what will germinate (hey, the original terminator seeds have to germinate) *but* this next generation (the terminator-regular hybrids) will not have seeds, but may very well pollinate any regular corn that happens to still be around, creating more of the terminator-regular hybreds, repeat ad infinitum. If, for whatever reason, the terminator genes happen to better for reproduction in some other way, it would a possibility (but only a possibility) that the terminator hybreds would eventually over run the corn, then die out themselves.
I'm not saying this is happening or will happen, I'm just saying that as of now this is still a possibility, and your post showed more ignorance of survival of the fittest and plant reproduction than the previous poster.
> People are presently making an incredible
> amount of fuss over genetically modified food.
> A lot of this is down to ignorance and
> hyperbole (one woman was quoted as saying "I
> don`t want my food to have any of that DNA in
> it");
And a lot of it isn't -- especially considering that the majority of the modifications don't help anyone but the folks pushing -- soybeans that can take larger amounts of herbicide before going belly up (dumping more poisons into the water supply, yup, that's what the world needs)? Plants that no longer reproduce normally so everyone has to buy seeds from the company every year? It would, I expect, be quite different if the first genetically spliced foods to hit market were designed to have better yeild, higher nutrients or some other *useful* traits.
It doesn't give me much hope for the world -- Not to mention that suggestions that genetically altered food at least be *labled* (Hey, I can choose not to eat meat. I can choose not to eat peanuts. I can choose not to eat genetically altered soybeans) have been struck down systematically. Yes, a number of people (both anti-ge food, and in teh general public) really don't have a clue (about genetic engineering, computers or nuclear physics), but I'm not sure I'd use that as an argument that the fuss is an 'incredible amount' compared to the very real concerns.
That said, if we approach genetically modified children the way we approached genetically modified food, we'll be taken over by movie stars. ack.
*Assuming* that this (and other medical databases) are done securely (So that only authorized users can access them, which is important and should be discussed)There's another problem here: Who should have access to medical records?
The article above specifically says
> Digital credentials like those developed by
> Intel help ensure that only authorized > physicians, insurers, and consumers can
> access a patient's medical transcripts or
> other health records.
And I would argue that the person who *most* needs to be able to access a given patient record is the patient themself. Look at credit records -- you do, as a consumer, have a right to look at your record and notate it, as well as challenge any spurious or wrong entries. To my knowledge you don't currently have the option to notate or challenge your medical records. I don't know (and I don't know if anyone knows) how common mistakes in records are, but considering the number of clearly wrong diagnoses I've heard (from an eight year old with Borderline Personality Disorder, to three friends of mine [one pregnant] who were told they had cervical cancer on the strength of one bad PAP smear [further testing showed that none of them did] etc) I'd be willing to guess that mistakes aren't unheard of, at the very least.
*Especially* if insurers also get the ability to read your medical record.
What makes me nervous is that nowhere in the rest of the article is the right of the patient's access to their own records mentioned, even though physicians are.
The other question is that will physicians who don't have your permission be allowed to access full records -- I'm not sure there would be problems with being able to pull demographic information (i.e. how many patients with AIDS/Cancer/Birth defects/etc do we have in this area) but do we really want any physician at all to be able to pull 'Who has AIDS/Cancer/etc?'
Anyway, sorry to make this so long, but no one seemed willing to bring that up.
possibly, but I hold myself up to higher standards than I hold the rest of the world to. I don't see a problem with that
I think a lot of people are missing the point
it's not (just) about what is being taught -- it's about the power of who gets to teach what in the schools -- at a local level, in the localities I've had the opportunity to watch this debate go on in (because I've moved, not because I'm particularly interested in *this* subject over any other -- in fact, it's pretty low interest for me) in *general* the folks who are anti-teaching-the-theory-of-evolution (as opposed to people who believe god had a hand in it, which is a different issue) have two things going on -- one is that they are, by and large, the people who also wish that the bible be taught in public schools (as more than just literature), and that they don't understand that theory is just that, that there is no such thing as a scientific *fact*, just theory and observation. (granted, the second is hard for people in general to grasp, apparently). And the likely hood of both those things going on, especially the first, is related to how vocal the person is (my guess is that the strength of belief that the bible is the one true way and must be taught leads to the vocalness and not vice versa, but I could be wrong).
Part of the problem is that the really vocal christians (like the really vocal yahoos, as you say, in any debate, really) are the ones who are unwilling to consider that just because *they* believe in the St james (usually) or catholic or some other version of the christian/judeo-christian bible, it doesn't automagically mean that the rest of us think it's true, much less what we/our children should be taught as Truth.
You might not be a freakish mutant, but in 1 year of undergrad (I quit, disillusioned, and went to learn in the school of hard knocks instead) *every* one of my classes relied on multiple choice. Yes, we had short answer and essay questions too, but I bought more bubble sheets those semesters....
ditto high school. I expect it depends largely on the school and on the teacher/professor/TA.
Perhaps instead of giving us such 'vital stats' as student:teacher ratio, gender and racial break downs, clubs, etc etc, colleges, universities and other schools should work out ways to give prospective students an idea of how well they are likely to be taught.
it's complex, though.
Ah, but by being willing to 'play along' with HR and other narrow minded folks we just encourage them. Or to quote a cliche, 'if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem'. I'm aware that there are risks (i.e. not getting employment, etc) in being outspoken, and I would not cease respecting someone because of that fear. At the same time, actively supporting the interests of those in power by criticizing those who are willing to buck the trend and fight is counter-productive.
If more of us stood up for our rights, we'd have less trouble with the erosion of our rights.