The story has been filtered through the oft-incomprehensible process of journalism, so who knows what's really going on, what the Prof really said or did. But I take away the point that no matter how ridiculous or simple or wrong someone's point of view may seem, if they are sincere about it, that point of view deserves respectful response and dialogue.
Additionally, that respect for someone's opinion can never be confused with respect for the opinion itself; it doesn't mean aquiesence to or approval of those who think differently. Just because I don't froth at the mouth, threaten beheading, or call you a medieval mental case doesn't mean that I think your creation belief is anywhere near rational.
And if your moral opinion is not sincere but invented in order to further financial or political ends, well then, allow me to behead you, you medieval mental case.
Absolutely. NASA already has a subtantial (40%? 60%?) part of its budget dedicated to military pursuits (some satellite launching and maintenance, for example), another way of hiding military expenditures in things that don't look like military uses to the general public (other ones are atomic energy agency funding). This looks pretty blatant on the surface - farm out research for robotic military mechanics through NASA. Has anyone seen any peripheral evidence of the intended purposes of this project?
Many types of cancer arise from the results of cumulative errors introducd in the duplication of your DNA prior to cell division.
When a cell of yours duplicates the 6 trillion base pairs in your DNA, after the duplication errors result in mistakes (average one in 10,000) and the correction mechanisms clean up as many as they can, there is an average of 1 mistake per cell per dupication. 95% of your DNA is (near as we can tell so far) non-coding; it is not used to build proteins. So every once in a while, in cells that divide often (like skin or surface cells in the gut, not nervous cells) errors accumulate. Toxins (chemicals) and mutagens can introduce still other DNA mistakes.
Over time, one of those mistakes breaks the code for a protein that the cell needs to fight cancer (or to kill itself, or to stop replication). There could be hundreds of those crucial proteins, and sometimes several of them need to be disabled serially before the function they perform goes haywire. But over time, given enough chances and over enough cells, the normal regulation functions of some small number of cells breaks down due to mutations, the cell does not commit suicide or stop replicating, and you get cancer. While it happens more often over longer periods of time, it can also happen quickly to younger people. Or some people are born with one or more mutations in a sequence and just need a single error to kill a crucial cell function and initiate cancer. Then there are the teleomeres - the repeated sequences at the end of chromosomes that delete one repetition every time the cell divides. There is enough teleomere sequence in most cells for several dozen (couple hundred?) divisions, then it doesn't divide right any more. And the genetic problems people are born with - is your code for a crucial protein faulty? Depending on the bad protein and the fault in it, you might get cystic fibrosis, an increased risk for breast cancer, etc. etc.
These things can be detected and, in theory, fixed using techniques known today. Fixing those kinds of problems may be what this dude means when he says we can dispense with the consequences of cellular "disease" and live forever. Maybe, but there's still lots of work to do.
I have speakers I use and like that I bought over 30 years ago. If I put these IP-centric things in my wall, will I be able to find and run the software that drives them 10 years from now? I also still have a small pile of 5.25" floppies with no hope of ever reading them again.
>>they just drop the model and sell a new one even if the device is perfectly able to run the new software version
Don't berate Toshiba for this - all PPCs have pretty much the same philosophy.
Palm at one time had a strategy for OS upgrades and actually offered one once (I think from V3 to V4). I think there were so few takers they realized that the average user just wants it to work, not to fiddle with versions. And don't get started on the promises of Cobalt and the implications of an upgrade on the TC and other units.
Copyright and ownership is a self-perpetuating beast. It extends itself and soon libraries are illegal, sharing anything is illegal, and ideas must be rented.
"all your thoughts are belong to us", unless you can prove they haven't been thought before.
OK, mod me troll.
>>there are Christians who believe the whole point of their religion and following Christ is that if you love your fellow person and treat people well, the future, not to mention the present, will be better.
That plus the part about smiting all the godless pagan heretics who believe differently.
I believe we should look to go off-world. I do.
But right now and for some time we have a much better chance here than on Mars or elsewhere, and so the most important thing, right now, is to ensure that here remains OK. Mars (& other places) is farther down the list.
I guess it's the "single most important" modifier that I have issue with in that statement.
Earth is important. Take care of it.
>>the single most important thing we can do to continue the human race.
Well, something more important right now would be to insure our continued survival on this planet first. Think about potential catastrophe from nuclear war, bio war, bio industry, other non-intentional environmental issues (pollution, heat, etc.), and we have the potential to pretty well f* it up here before getting anywhere else.
It's not the orders to shoot babies that are the problem. Those are obviously wrong (at least to most of us, apparently). Orders that are bad or potentially bad can be much more open to interpretation, and therefore open to action on the refusees.
What about those 18 or so folks recently who refused to go on convoy claiming they were unprepared (under-armored) and that their load was unnecessary (they were delivering contaminated fuel that had been rejected by 2 other destinations)? Is refusing that order wrong, or did people suffer from lack of the supplies they should have delivered or [other]?
But I'm perfectly fine with 200,000 teenagers armed with billions of dollars in "smart" weapons and ordered to do what they are told under penalty of courts-martial.
Slashdot Mirror
The story has been filtered through the oft-incomprehensible process of journalism, so who knows what's really going on, what the Prof really said or did.
But I take away the point that no matter how ridiculous or simple or wrong someone's point of view may seem, if they are sincere about it, that point of view deserves respectful response and dialogue.
Additionally, that respect for someone's opinion can never be confused with respect for the opinion itself; it doesn't mean aquiesence to or approval of those who think differently. Just because I don't froth at the mouth, threaten beheading, or call you a medieval mental case doesn't mean that I think your creation belief is anywhere near rational.
And if your moral opinion is not sincere but invented in order to further financial or political ends, well then, allow me to behead you, you medieval mental case.
Absolutely.
NASA already has a subtantial (40%? 60%?) part of its budget dedicated to military pursuits (some satellite launching and maintenance, for example), another way of hiding military expenditures in things that don't look like military uses to the general public (other ones are atomic energy agency funding).
This looks pretty blatant on the surface - farm out research for robotic military mechanics through NASA.
Has anyone seen any peripheral evidence of the intended purposes of this project?
Now he just needs to make them self-replicating and he can harvest them at sea using the remains of the soviet/japanese whaling fleets.
Whew! Glad the power issue is finally fixed.
Many types of cancer arise from the results of cumulative errors introducd in the duplication of your DNA prior to cell division.
When a cell of yours duplicates the 6 trillion base pairs in your DNA, after the duplication errors result in mistakes (average one in 10,000) and the correction mechanisms clean up as many as they can, there is an average of 1 mistake per cell per dupication. 95% of your DNA is (near as we can tell so far) non-coding; it is not used to build proteins. So every once in a while, in cells that divide often (like skin or surface cells in the gut, not nervous cells) errors accumulate. Toxins (chemicals) and mutagens can introduce still other DNA mistakes.
Over time, one of those mistakes breaks the code for a protein that the cell needs to fight cancer (or to kill itself, or to stop replication). There could be hundreds of those crucial proteins, and sometimes several of them need to be disabled serially before the function they perform goes haywire. But over time, given enough chances and over enough cells, the normal regulation functions of some small number of cells breaks down due to mutations, the cell does not commit suicide or stop replicating, and you get cancer. While it happens more often over longer periods of time, it can also happen quickly to younger people. Or some people are born with one or more mutations in a sequence and just need a single error to kill a crucial cell function and initiate cancer.
Then there are the teleomeres - the repeated sequences at the end of chromosomes that delete one repetition every time the cell divides. There is enough teleomere sequence in most cells for several dozen (couple hundred?) divisions, then it doesn't divide right any more.
And the genetic problems people are born with - is your code for a crucial protein faulty? Depending on the bad protein and the fault in it, you might get cystic fibrosis, an increased risk for breast cancer, etc. etc.
These things can be detected and, in theory, fixed using techniques known today. Fixing those kinds of problems may be what this dude means when he says we can dispense with the consequences of cellular "disease" and live forever. Maybe, but there's still lots of work to do.
I have speakers I use and like that I bought over 30 years ago.
If I put these IP-centric things in my wall, will I be able to find and run the software that drives them 10 years from now?
I also still have a small pile of 5.25" floppies with no hope of ever reading them again.
HP 45. I still have it, but the batteries are of course shot. I quickly grew to love RPN.
We're an Outlook shop.
Bill already lets anyone monitor our email.
(Thank you! I'll be here all week!)
do they come in flourescent red?
Could someone post the link to the project for episode 7?
>>they just drop the model and sell a new one even if the device is perfectly able to run the new software version
Don't berate Toshiba for this - all PPCs have pretty much the same philosophy.
Palm at one time had a strategy for OS upgrades and actually offered one once (I think from V3 to V4). I think there were so few takers they realized that the average user just wants it to work, not to fiddle with versions. And don't get started on the promises of Cobalt and the implications of an upgrade on the TC and other units.
Missing a signal, the analog TVs won't of course go dark.
The TVs will be the color of sky, tuned to a dead lifestyle.
Copyright and ownership is a self-perpetuating beast. It extends itself and soon libraries are illegal, sharing anything is illegal, and ideas must be rented. "all your thoughts are belong to us", unless you can prove they haven't been thought before. OK, mod me troll.
....metric conversions.
>>there are Christians who believe the whole point of their religion and following Christ is that if you love your fellow person and treat people well, the future, not to mention the present, will be better.
That plus the part about smiting all the godless pagan heretics who believe differently.
Does a smart phone count?
The killer app is voice.
The reverse is sort of the point:
Imagine a cluster of buttons on your mouse. Thanks to the architecture, you won't ever need to.
I think it's down to about 150 euros by now.
What happens when you ride to a dead spot or the bike's batteries die and you can't logically 'give the bike back'?
I believe we should look to go off-world. I do. But right now and for some time we have a much better chance here than on Mars or elsewhere, and so the most important thing, right now, is to ensure that here remains OK. Mars (& other places) is farther down the list. I guess it's the "single most important" modifier that I have issue with in that statement. Earth is important. Take care of it.
>>the single most important thing we can do to continue the human race.
Well, something more important right now would be to insure our continued survival on this planet first. Think about potential catastrophe from nuclear war, bio war, bio industry, other non-intentional environmental issues (pollution, heat, etc.), and we have the potential to pretty well f* it up here before getting anywhere else.
It's not the orders to shoot babies that are the problem. Those are obviously wrong (at least to most of us, apparently). Orders that are bad or potentially bad can be much more open to interpretation, and therefore open to action on the refusees.
What about those 18 or so folks recently who refused to go on convoy claiming they were unprepared (under-armored) and that their load was unnecessary (they were delivering contaminated fuel that had been rejected by 2 other destinations)? Is refusing that order wrong, or did people suffer from lack of the supplies they should have delivered or [other]?
Maybe getting off-topic from armed robots.
>> "...robots with shotguns scare me."
But I'm perfectly fine with 200,000 teenagers armed with billions of dollars in "smart" weapons and ordered to do what they are told under penalty of courts-martial.
2*(wrongs)~=(right)
As my eyes get weaker I may look to buy the consumer version of this thing to read by at night.
Kind of puts a new spin on the Anti-virus program.