Nearly no intelligent designer writes off evolution. They write off evolution being able to produce entirely new species altogether.
Exactly. We believe that tiny changes occur every once in a while, and that those changes could influence the survivability of an animal and increase the likeliness that the trait would survive in its offspring, and that over a couple million years, that would happen many, many, many, many, many, many times, we just don't believe any of those changes could possibly produce sexual incompatibility. That would be crazy.
I never read the book, I just had some familiarity with it from a few quotes that were frigging brilliant. I went in expecting greatness, and I came out wondering how it's possible to make things like "In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people angry and has widely been considered as a bad move," not funny. You have to actively want it to be not funny to kill something like that.
Get rid of the sarcasm parts and you have an excellent start. Now multiply your computer by several trillion and leave them all alone to run for millions of years. I guarantee you'll get some frigging amazing programs. I'd be shocked if you didn't get one that wondered where it came from, in some form or another.
The problem with those quotes, as with all religious texts, is that they are not immediately followed by an authoritative definitions section. There needs to be an asterisk after every "law" and "justice" that says, "No, idiot, that thing on page 726 about not overeating doesn't mean you get to justice-ize fat people."
We need a third word. There's GNU, there's the Linux kernel, and there's the wad that they make when you push them together, which I propose we call "Smapdi". But someone better at naming things should come up with a better word, but can we please accept that "GNU/Linux" is a stupid name and not use it anymore? If you really like it, please consider dropping the unnecessary filler-"G", leaving the infinitely more pronounceable "NU/Linux". You might want to consider smooshing it a little more and going with "NuLinux," which is a very pretty word.
Although, now that I look at it, the "Nu" is a bit redundant. To address that, I suggest either moving the "nu"s together to get "Linunux", or just dropping a set and going with "Linux." Which is also a very pretty word. So, yeah, let's just go with "Linux."
Don't worry. I asked for an '-omy', but they gave me an '-amy', which is like an '-omy', but it only affects your ability to spell. My defensiveness was unaffected.
God forbid your tax money is being spent on a project that won't end world hunger, cure cancer, rid us of the need of foreign oil and wipe our collective asses all at the same time.
I'm okay if we don't do that, as long as we don't waste what we have on a false sense of security.
You know, it's the slashdot way, if a tax funded project doesn't stop every potential vulnerability in a system it is a complete waste of cash and time.
Since you know the slashdot way so well, I'll explain this in slashdot terms: This is the equivalent of spending millions of dollars on physical security for your customers' credit card data but leaving the computer it's stored on on an unpatched Windows machine connected to the internet.
If we know this, then they know this, and if they're dedicated, they're not going to stop just because we've made one of the dozens of trivial attack methods harder.
and through the crowd for the guy that just got a job from Budweiser that will deliver all of the poisoned beer.
A 3-D camera improves this how?
Or they might be looking for the Cessna plane that will shower the crowd with antrax.
I'm going to go ahead and roll my eyes first, then ask how a 3-D camera would be better for this than cheap-ass radar, which I'm sure is also employed.
Or the handicapped guy in a wheelchair with the assemble and shoot machine gun.
This is the only feasible one you've listed, but you'd think he'd either build the thing in a bathroom stall, where the cameras don't reach, or be tackled by one of the thousands of people within twenty feet of him.
I imagine that everyone walking into the Super Bowl realizes that they are going to be on a camera, and I imagine that a super majority of them are glad that police, cameras, and all other manner of monitoring devices are trying to pick through the crowd to find the one crazy nut job with a bomb
Then they're idiots, because that one crazy nut job with the bomb would be hiding in plain sight with a bomb in his jacket and looking indistinguishable to a camera because it's January. And even if someone finds him or stops him to look under his jacket, no matter where he goes, he's always surrounded by dozens of people. When the cop puts his hand on him, they're all gone.
If you haven't caught him by the time he gets to the building, you lose.
Obviously I'm not discouraging security, 'cause you need that there anyway, but if anyone feels that the security presence has any hope of actually saving a life, they're just being silly.
I only skimmed the article, so maybe I missed it, but what are taxpayers paying for this system that still will not stop someone from strapping a ring of explosives under their coat?
If no one stops it. But the same can be said about my semen and Sarah Michelle Gellar's eggs*. The only difference is the probability. If it isn't a human yet (I doubt there's a point that it suddenly switches on, but if we can agree that it hasn't reached the lower threshold of starting yet [this argument not intended to oppose those who believe full humanity is attained when the sperm wriggles through an egg lining. To those I say, "Okay, but I don't see it."]) then stopping either is just zeroing the probability that it will ever become one. Although if you'll rally up majority support for my me-impregnating-Sarah plan, I'll gladly back you on the no abortions.
*It must be odd to have someone you never met talking about their semen and your eggs. Sarah, if you read Slashdot, sorry about that.
I'm pro-choice, and I agree with you completely. I say this in case it has any chance of deflecting any of the flames from the "the enemy of my somewhat-friendly acquaintance is my enemy" crowd.
A ban on "creating human-animal hybrids" is more debatable but we damn sure better get a line drawn somewhere and we better do it fast or science is going to race out ahead of ethics and make one hell of a mess for someone to clean up.
A fine sentiment, but science is going to race out ahead of ethics in any case, the reason being that until science gets there, we don't know what the problem is going to be. Sure, maybe there's going to be a horse/human baby fad for a few years, but probably not. In all likelihood, whatever evils will be concocted will be entirely unpredictable at this point, making whatever lines we draw useless, and covering everything means throwing out many babies with all the bathwater.
Even if we do help them, they have no problem biting the hand that feeds them.
Because we say things like that. They're in a rough spot, and we refuse to give them any kind of dignity. Most of the time we expect something in return. I'm not saying we're sinister or anything (people generally don't enjoy having their tax dollars being used to benefit other countries with no return), just that we're never purely saintly enough for people not to eye us with suspicion. At best, we're the world's very nice husband that occasionally gets drunk and beats it. Even if we're great when we're sober, and even if it's not bad enough for them to throw away 60 years of marriage to run off with the charming and sensitive Canada, they're always going to think that the latest chunk of jewelry is just to make up for the last black eye so they'll let us sleep with them again.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess I forgot the sarcasm tag.
Nearly no intelligent designer writes off evolution. They write off evolution being able to produce entirely new species altogether.
Exactly. We believe that tiny changes occur every once in a while, and that those changes could influence the survivability of an animal and increase the likeliness that the trait would survive in its offspring, and that over a couple million years, that would happen many, many, many, many, many, many times, we just don't believe any of those changes could possibly produce sexual incompatibility. That would be crazy.
I never read the book, I just had some familiarity with it from a few quotes that were frigging brilliant. I went in expecting greatness, and I came out wondering how it's possible to make things like "In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people angry and has widely been considered as a bad move," not funny. You have to actively want it to be not funny to kill something like that.
But if fundamentalist religious zealots threaten us with violence for exercising free speech, we're okay with that.
No, but what do you propose we do about it, other than get into a "Bush is bad," "No, Islam is a violent religion," fight?
Now that some jerk actually did something bad, I'd just like to make it clear that it wasn't me.
-CL
Get rid of the sarcasm parts and you have an excellent start. Now multiply your computer by several trillion and leave them all alone to run for millions of years. I guarantee you'll get some frigging amazing programs. I'd be shocked if you didn't get one that wondered where it came from, in some form or another.
She's got a great personality. :-/
It's going to be very annoying when I have to create a character on the boss's server and play it up to his level before we can talk.
You just compared Hitler to a cartoon.
The problem with those quotes, as with all religious texts, is that they are not immediately followed by an authoritative definitions section. There needs to be an asterisk after every "law" and "justice" that says, "No, idiot, that thing on page 726 about not overeating doesn't mean you get to justice-ize fat people."
We need a third word. There's GNU, there's the Linux kernel, and there's the wad that they make when you push them together, which I propose we call "Smapdi". But someone better at naming things should come up with a better word, but can we please accept that "GNU/Linux" is a stupid name and not use it anymore? If you really like it, please consider dropping the unnecessary filler-"G", leaving the infinitely more pronounceable "NU/Linux". You might want to consider smooshing it a little more and going with "NuLinux," which is a very pretty word.
Although, now that I look at it, the "Nu" is a bit redundant. To address that, I suggest either moving the "nu"s together to get "Linunux", or just dropping a set and going with "Linux." Which is also a very pretty word. So, yeah, let's just go with "Linux."
Don't worry. I asked for an '-omy', but they gave me an '-amy', which is like an '-omy', but it only affects your ability to spell. My defensiveness was unaffected.
Ah, sorry, man. My bad. You were clear, I was overly defensive.
God forbid your tax money is being spent on a project that won't end world hunger, cure cancer, rid us of the need of foreign oil and wipe our collective asses all at the same time.
I'm okay if we don't do that, as long as we don't waste what we have on a false sense of security.
You know, it's the slashdot way, if a tax funded project doesn't stop every potential vulnerability in a system it is a complete waste of cash and time.
Since you know the slashdot way so well, I'll explain this in slashdot terms: This is the equivalent of spending millions of dollars on physical security for your customers' credit card data but leaving the computer it's stored on on an unpatched Windows machine connected to the internet.
If we know this, then they know this, and if they're dedicated, they're not going to stop just because we've made one of the dozens of trivial attack methods harder.
They are looking under cars
A 3-D camera improves this how?
and through the crowd for the guy that just got a job from Budweiser that will deliver all of the poisoned beer.
A 3-D camera improves this how?
Or they might be looking for the Cessna plane that will shower the crowd with antrax.
I'm going to go ahead and roll my eyes first, then ask how a 3-D camera would be better for this than cheap-ass radar, which I'm sure is also employed.
Or the handicapped guy in a wheelchair with the assemble and shoot machine gun.
This is the only feasible one you've listed, but you'd think he'd either build the thing in a bathroom stall, where the cameras don't reach, or be tackled by one of the thousands of people within twenty feet of him.
I imagine that everyone walking into the Super Bowl realizes that they are going to be on a camera, and I imagine that a super majority of them are glad that police, cameras, and all other manner of monitoring devices are trying to pick through the crowd to find the one crazy nut job with a bomb
Then they're idiots, because that one crazy nut job with the bomb would be hiding in plain sight with a bomb in his jacket and looking indistinguishable to a camera because it's January. And even if someone finds him or stops him to look under his jacket, no matter where he goes, he's always surrounded by dozens of people. When the cop puts his hand on him, they're all gone.
If you haven't caught him by the time he gets to the building, you lose.
Obviously I'm not discouraging security, 'cause you need that there anyway, but if anyone feels that the security presence has any hope of actually saving a life, they're just being silly.
I only skimmed the article, so maybe I missed it, but what are taxpayers paying for this system that still will not stop someone from strapping a ring of explosives under their coat?
Holy crap. I KNEW it!
If you're going to be a dishonest prick to get elected, it's a lot easier to just pretend your opponent had a black baby.
Because that fetus is going to become a person.
If no one stops it. But the same can be said about my semen and Sarah Michelle Gellar's eggs*. The only difference is the probability. If it isn't a human yet (I doubt there's a point that it suddenly switches on, but if we can agree that it hasn't reached the lower threshold of starting yet [this argument not intended to oppose those who believe full humanity is attained when the sperm wriggles through an egg lining. To those I say, "Okay, but I don't see it."]) then stopping either is just zeroing the probability that it will ever become one. Although if you'll rally up majority support for my me-impregnating-Sarah plan, I'll gladly back you on the no abortions.
*It must be odd to have someone you never met talking about their semen and your eggs. Sarah, if you read Slashdot, sorry about that.
That's not hybridization, it's symbiosis.
I'm pro-choice, and I agree with you completely. I say this in case it has any chance of deflecting any of the flames from the "the enemy of my somewhat-friendly acquaintance is my enemy" crowd.
A ban on "creating human-animal hybrids" is more debatable but we damn sure better get a line drawn somewhere and we better do it fast or science is going to race out ahead of ethics and make one hell of a mess for someone to clean up.
A fine sentiment, but science is going to race out ahead of ethics in any case, the reason being that until science gets there, we don't know what the problem is going to be. Sure, maybe there's going to be a horse/human baby fad for a few years, but probably not. In all likelihood, whatever evils will be concocted will be entirely unpredictable at this point, making whatever lines we draw useless, and covering everything means throwing out many babies with all the bathwater.
I'm all for genetically modifying humnity. The human race is so pathetic that we need to improve ourselves anyway we can.
That's exactly how I feel about GM corn. Fucking stupid corn.
Even if we do help them, they have no problem biting the hand that feeds them.
Because we say things like that. They're in a rough spot, and we refuse to give them any kind of dignity. Most of the time we expect something in return. I'm not saying we're sinister or anything (people generally don't enjoy having their tax dollars being used to benefit other countries with no return), just that we're never purely saintly enough for people not to eye us with suspicion. At best, we're the world's very nice husband that occasionally gets drunk and beats it. Even if we're great when we're sober, and even if it's not bad enough for them to throw away 60 years of marriage to run off with the charming and sensitive Canada, they're always going to think that the latest chunk of jewelry is just to make up for the last black eye so they'll let us sleep with them again.