Depriving someone of existence?!?! Since when is that a crime?
Forget historical figures, you're looking at them with 20/20 hindsight; you know what their disability was and you know how they overcame it and you know what they did for the benefit of mankind. Such knowledge is totally unavailable to us for people being born down the road. Such knowledge has no bearing on the problem at hand.
Now, consider yourself to be a prospective parent. You have undertaken the responsibility of creating a new person and spending the next 20 years raising them to adulthood. At the beginning of this long journey, you are given two embryos. One of them has had blatantly unhealthy genetic problems removed. The other has some unfortunate genetic defects courtesy of your genome. Sure, they might overcome them and do something great, just like any fairly healthy person could. But it might just doom them to a short and miserable existence. Which do you choose?
I am well aware that people with genetic problems have made contributions, some of them extremely significant. So what? If all you know about your potential children is that you can choose between ones with lots of potential medical problems and ones with fewer of them, why would any parent choose the ones with more?
Bear in mind that a person who does not exist yet doesn't actually have a say in the matter. Of course people alive today say that they wouldn't trade themselves in, they're here to contest it. If they aren't, they can't, and the decision is left to the parents.
And I'm going to be very nice and overlook the ad hominem remarks, no matter how inappropriate they may be.
Lastly, birth control is a perfectly valid analogy. There's this potentially great and important person who will not exist because her parents did not conceive her. With screening it's because they instead conceived someone else. Do we actually prosecute Mom, Dad, and the local geneticist for the nonexistence of this person?
What slays me is that the woman who torched my house a few years ago only got 4 years. She gets out in April sometime.
What kind of fucked up world is it where copying a movie demands more punishment than destroying a family's home?
Re:If you can't copy, it's not a computer
on
SSSCA Hearing
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· Score: 2
Intel tried at the hearings. Hollings dismissed their opinion as nonsense. Because as we all know, Fritz is one of the major architects of modern computing and he would know better than they, right?
Re:The impact on Linux
on
SSSCA Hearing
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· Score: 2
MS would be able to shut down everyone, not just Linux. They have a patent on DRM OS, so if this goes through, you'd have to license it from them. If they don't want to...
I have every intention of leaving this country if they pass this piece of crap. The way I see it, the only way they can enforce the software aspect is to only allow 'trusted' parties to write any code whatsoever. I refuse to live under those kinds of restrictions.
The big question is where does one go? The EU might follow suit under pressure from Herr Hollings and his henchmen, same for Canada. Australia seems to be almost as bad in the stupid legislation department, and I'm not thrilled with the idea of going to Japan. New Zealand maybe?
My letter to him asked why on earth he thought that he knew better than Intel what the effects of the SSSCA would have on computers. They do make electronics for a living, after all.
Sure, remove the obviously bad stuff, keep the obviously good stuff. But what about the grey areas? Do we leave that choice up to the parents who will actually be raising the child or put it in the hands of some faceless bureaucracy? I can't even imagine the kind of nonsense they'd be likely to come up with. They'd also be busy being lobbied by indistries that would be hurt. For instance, getting rid of diabetes (Type I, at least) would be a Good Thing, right? Except there's good money being made in insulin production, money that would be lost if fewer people needed it. I would not put it past such a committee to do stuff like forbid screening for diabetes.
How many important people haven't been born because someone with a genetic defect was born in their place? The argument works both ways, though it's a pretty safe bet that many of those with defects have enjoyed their lives less than someone without it would have.
There have been plenty of people who have genetic defects who have made significant contributions to humanity. They would have never been born if we screened them for defects before their birth.
Oh of course. But what about the other 99% of people who had genetic defects but didn't do anything particularly amazing? Oh, well they have to live with their disability for the sake of that 1%. Gee, how kind of you to demand that of them.
there's no need to start deciding what people should be born and not born now.
Really? Funny, my girlfriend and I do that every time we have sex and use birth control. By doing so, we deny the existence of countless children. You are arguing, "Just think of all the famous people who would have been born if nobody ever used a condom." Stupid.
Think of all the famous people who made great contributions to humanity who wouldn't have even been born if we do this nonsense widely in the future!
That is about the dumbest argument you can make. Just think of all the famous people who were never born because it happened to be this sperm instead of that one that fertilized the egg. By your reasoning, I am guilty of pushing all my potential fraternal siblings out of existince; shame on me! How about we all have as many kids as we possibly can because if we don't, we'll be dooming potential contributors to humanity to nonexistence.
I was rather appalled at the story of Genie and looked it up. She was kept either chained to the toilet or suited up in a strait jacket-sleeping back for nearly 13 years, beaten whenever she spoke, all based on her father's assessment when she was 11 months old that she was retarded. Mom was crippled and beaten often, Dad killed himself shortly after Genie was discovered. He left a note saying "The world will never understand." Probably the only thing he actually got right.
Fortunately, a culture in which people value women as a scarce resource yet don't want to be the one to have to raise a baby girl will have to change its ways or quickly become extinct. Problem solves itself.
For the rest, how much of this is different from parents raising their children in a certain way? It's quite amazing the degree to which parents can shape a child's future, yet there is no qualifying test to have kids. Bigots, murderers, selfish megalomaniacs, a whole panoply of unpleasantness can be found among those would be 'Mom and Dad' to someone. Yet few would dream of setting standards for those wishing to become parents. How is this different?
So I should not screen my children for the sake of letting them enjoy the experience of cancer? Or Alzheimers? Or heart disease? I'm sure that people genetically predisposed for being used car salesmen are having some fascinating experiences, but that doesn't mean it's one I want my kids to share.
Basically I mean that using this argument either way is pointless. It is just as much an experience to be in the Special Olympics as it is to formulate ground breaking theories in physics.
Nearsightedness runs in my family and I would love to be able to ensure any children I have don't get it.
I look at it this way. In the absense of government intervention, Designer Children are going to happen. The only real choice they have is whether or not to outlaw it. I doubt half measures like restricting screening for certain genes would be effective. There's so many traits that if we waited for a committee to decide on each one, and you can be sure there'd be a 10,000 page report and 10 year wait on each, we'd never get anywhere. And as you pointed out, it has the problem of 'what is a bad trait'; acceptable screening would blow with the political winds. So, if one is unable to make this decision, look at the alternative: not letting people remove undesirable, even if it means not necessarily bad, traits from their future children. Government dictation of the genomes of the next generation.
If the alternatives are unacceptable, then the decision is made for you.
Side note: That's a very interesting tidbit about the bubonic plague resistance; natural selection on humans at work. I'm curious, what are some of the other consequences of this defect?
I agree. This is potentially a good idea, but I wouldn't take it unless I get to keep the part of my income tax that otherwise goes to the various Transportation Departments.
Re:what if the "record" gets a "scratch" ;)
on
Perpetual Skislope
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· Score: 2
Yes, actually. If you manage to fall at about the same speed the disc is turning, you could just keep tumbling down. Could be kinda fun, actually...
Any fool can hold up a liquor store. People that can secretly pursue a goal for years at a time without raising any suspicions whatsoever about ulterior motives, passing up many lucrative opportunities for the sake of building a reputation and the final 'score', that takes talent. Wasted talent, to be sure, but talent nontheless. Being phony is easy. Being phony convincingly for years on end to dozens, even hundreds of people, that's hard.
Generally speaking, nobody ever makes a novel where the hero breaks into trailer park homes and steals the life savings of some half-senile retirees. Nearly every Robin Hood-esque character I can think of rips off those who are themselves criminal (either in name or in deed), highly insured, or both.
Punishment, certainly. But you're missing the point. Nobody approves of what he did, but we can certainly be impressed by the patience, planning, and skill needed to pull a stunt like that.
Why do you think there are so many movies and books, some of them quite good, where criminals are the protagonists? We may not like what they do, but "the highest level of performance in any field of human endeavor is indistuishable from art". [Mike Resnick, Santiago]
Probably a moot point in this case though, since they think he had some gambling debts and needed lots of cash quick.
Very poor analogy. Software is not a person. I buy the software, your employer only rents you. You signed a contract outlining the terms of that rental. And if your boss starts treating you like a slave at work, why don't you quit?
Really, the notion of treating software as something that I do not buy but rather rent is a stupid one. I pay a onetime fee for it, same as actually buying it. I can purchase it anonymously, without having to give my name and address, same as actually buying it. I never have to return it and don't have to pay any more to keep it, same as actually buying it. I can (sometimes) return it for a full refund, same as actually buying it. Software is bought and sold, plain and simple. Treating it as a rental is a trick the sellers came up with to try and make more money.
You can't get energy for nothing, just not possible.
And where did I say otherwise? I'm as familiar with the 1st Law of Thermodynamics as the next guy. Use one unit of energy to create antimatter, recombine it with normal matter, and you get the energy from the antimatter back as well as turning the normal matter into pure energy. The books are balanced.
And when you transform energy into matter, you don't just get the half you want. Producing 1 gram of antimatter would simultaniously produce 1 gram of normal matter.
Now there you are correct. But such is the state of things today. If (yes, big 'if') it were possible to generate antimatter without its normal counterpart, then the books would still be balanced. The energy gained from an efficient antimatter power plant would come from the normal matter used, since it is commonly found and wouldn't have to be created.
If, however, such a development never happens then antimatter would be 'only' an extremely compact means of storing energy.
In principle, yes, you are correct. You must have the other gram of ordinary matter to combine with the antimatter to then convert into energy. Thus conservation of matter and energy is maintained.
But why would I need to 'create' ordinary matter? As you may have noticed, it is rather naturally abundant.
Easy. You want to make a gram of antimatter, you have to spend a gram's worth of energy to do it. But the thing is, when you recombine it, you get two grams worth of energy. Slight gain there.
Of course, that's assuming you make the stuff with perfect efficiency, which we are nowhere near. But anything above 50% efficiency (that is, making a gram of antimatter for less than two grams of energy), then you come out ahead and can use the net surplus to make still more antimatter...
Err, not quite. An antimatter warhead would, when released, combine with any surrounding normal matter and release energy equivalent to 100% of their combined masses. It's like a battery bomb; you stick the energy into it here, you release it way over there. But in this case the yield is orders of magnitude greater than any fision/fusion weapon and it's much easier to scale it up; that is, you just include more antimatter. Detonating it is just a matter of turning off the containment field.
The fun part is in manufacturing all the antimatter in the first place. In a perfect system, to generate 1 gram of antimatter, you have to spend 1 gram's worth of energy to do it. Particle accelerators don't do this very efficiently; it takes many times more energy to make antimatter than they get out of recombining it.
But, if they found a way to generate it with >50% efficiency, then there's no problem. I start with 1 gram of antimatter, combine it with another gram of normal matter and thus get 2 grams of energy. As long as I can use that to generate more than one new gram of antimatter, then I have a loop that takes in any kind of normal matter and gives out energy.
Slashdot Mirror
v= v0 + a*t
right?
The final velocity, v, is 2000 m/s, so t=2000/a.
The final distance is 3m, initial velocity and distance 0, so 3 = 1/2*a*t^2, substituting in what we know for t...
The acceleration is six hundred and sixty-six thousand gees. From this I concur with your estimate that the 2kps story is in part a load of bullshit.
Forget historical figures, you're looking at them with 20/20 hindsight; you know what their disability was and you know how they overcame it and you know what they did for the benefit of mankind. Such knowledge is totally unavailable to us for people being born down the road. Such knowledge has no bearing on the problem at hand.
Now, consider yourself to be a prospective parent. You have undertaken the responsibility of creating a new person and spending the next 20 years raising them to adulthood. At the beginning of this long journey, you are given two embryos. One of them has had blatantly unhealthy genetic problems removed. The other has some unfortunate genetic defects courtesy of your genome. Sure, they might overcome them and do something great, just like any fairly healthy person could. But it might just doom them to a short and miserable existence. Which do you choose?
I am well aware that people with genetic problems have made contributions, some of them extremely significant. So what? If all you know about your potential children is that you can choose between ones with lots of potential medical problems and ones with fewer of them, why would any parent choose the ones with more?
Bear in mind that a person who does not exist yet doesn't actually have a say in the matter. Of course people alive today say that they wouldn't trade themselves in, they're here to contest it. If they aren't, they can't, and the decision is left to the parents.
And I'm going to be very nice and overlook the ad hominem remarks, no matter how inappropriate they may be.
Lastly, birth control is a perfectly valid analogy. There's this potentially great and important person who will not exist because her parents did not conceive her. With screening it's because they instead conceived someone else. Do we actually prosecute Mom, Dad, and the local geneticist for the nonexistence of this person?
What kind of fucked up world is it where copying a movie demands more punishment than destroying a family's home?
Intel tried at the hearings. Hollings dismissed their opinion as nonsense. Because as we all know, Fritz is one of the major architects of modern computing and he would know better than they, right?
MS would be able to shut down everyone, not just Linux. They have a patent on DRM OS, so if this goes through, you'd have to license it from them. If they don't want to...
The big question is where does one go? The EU might follow suit under pressure from Herr Hollings and his henchmen, same for Canada. Australia seems to be almost as bad in the stupid legislation department, and I'm not thrilled with the idea of going to Japan. New Zealand maybe?
My letter to him asked why on earth he thought that he knew better than Intel what the effects of the SSSCA would have on computers. They do make electronics for a living, after all.
Sure, remove the obviously bad stuff, keep the obviously good stuff. But what about the grey areas? Do we leave that choice up to the parents who will actually be raising the child or put it in the hands of some faceless bureaucracy? I can't even imagine the kind of nonsense they'd be likely to come up with. They'd also be busy being lobbied by indistries that would be hurt. For instance, getting rid of diabetes (Type I, at least) would be a Good Thing, right? Except there's good money being made in insulin production, money that would be lost if fewer people needed it. I would not put it past such a committee to do stuff like forbid screening for diabetes.
There have been plenty of people who have genetic defects who have made significant contributions to humanity. They would have never been born if we screened them for defects before their birth.
Oh of course. But what about the other 99% of people who had genetic defects but didn't do anything particularly amazing? Oh, well they have to live with their disability for the sake of that 1%. Gee, how kind of you to demand that of them.
there's no need to start deciding what people should be born and not born now.
Really? Funny, my girlfriend and I do that every time we have sex and use birth control. By doing so, we deny the existence of countless children. You are arguing, "Just think of all the famous people who would have been born if nobody ever used a condom." Stupid.
Jaywalking, right. Punishable by several years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines. No problem there.
That is about the dumbest argument you can make. Just think of all the famous people who were never born because it happened to be this sperm instead of that one that fertilized the egg. By your reasoning, I am guilty of pushing all my potential fraternal siblings out of existince; shame on me! How about we all have as many kids as we possibly can because if we don't, we'll be dooming potential contributors to humanity to nonexistence.
I was rather appalled at the story of Genie and looked it up. She was kept either chained to the toilet or suited up in a strait jacket-sleeping back for nearly 13 years, beaten whenever she spoke, all based on her father's assessment when she was 11 months old that she was retarded. Mom was crippled and beaten often, Dad killed himself shortly after Genie was discovered. He left a note saying "The world will never understand." Probably the only thing he actually got right.
For the rest, how much of this is different from parents raising their children in a certain way? It's quite amazing the degree to which parents can shape a child's future, yet there is no qualifying test to have kids. Bigots, murderers, selfish megalomaniacs, a whole panoply of unpleasantness can be found among those would be 'Mom and Dad' to someone. Yet few would dream of setting standards for those wishing to become parents. How is this different?
Basically I mean that using this argument either way is pointless. It is just as much an experience to be in the Special Olympics as it is to formulate ground breaking theories in physics.
Where was that said in Fight Club? It doesn't ring a bell. A deleted scene, maybe?
I look at it this way. In the absense of government intervention, Designer Children are going to happen. The only real choice they have is whether or not to outlaw it. I doubt half measures like restricting screening for certain genes would be effective. There's so many traits that if we waited for a committee to decide on each one, and you can be sure there'd be a 10,000 page report and 10 year wait on each, we'd never get anywhere. And as you pointed out, it has the problem of 'what is a bad trait'; acceptable screening would blow with the political winds. So, if one is unable to make this decision, look at the alternative: not letting people remove undesirable, even if it means not necessarily bad, traits from their future children. Government dictation of the genomes of the next generation.
If the alternatives are unacceptable, then the decision is made for you.
Side note: That's a very interesting tidbit about the bubonic plague resistance; natural selection on humans at work. I'm curious, what are some of the other consequences of this defect?
I agree. This is potentially a good idea, but I wouldn't take it unless I get to keep the part of my income tax that otherwise goes to the various Transportation Departments.
Yes, actually. If you manage to fall at about the same speed the disc is turning, you could just keep tumbling down. Could be kinda fun, actually...
Generally speaking, nobody ever makes a novel where the hero breaks into trailer park homes and steals the life savings of some half-senile retirees. Nearly every Robin Hood-esque character I can think of rips off those who are themselves criminal (either in name or in deed), highly insured, or both.
Why do you think there are so many movies and books, some of them quite good, where criminals are the protagonists? We may not like what they do, but "the highest level of performance in any field of human endeavor is indistuishable from art". [Mike Resnick, Santiago]
Probably a moot point in this case though, since they think he had some gambling debts and needed lots of cash quick.
Really, the notion of treating software as something that I do not buy but rather rent is a stupid one. I pay a onetime fee for it, same as actually buying it. I can purchase it anonymously, without having to give my name and address, same as actually buying it. I never have to return it and don't have to pay any more to keep it, same as actually buying it. I can (sometimes) return it for a full refund, same as actually buying it. Software is bought and sold, plain and simple. Treating it as a rental is a trick the sellers came up with to try and make more money.
And where did I say otherwise? I'm as familiar with the 1st Law of Thermodynamics as the next guy. Use one unit of energy to create antimatter, recombine it with normal matter, and you get the energy from the antimatter back as well as turning the normal matter into pure energy. The books are balanced.
And when you transform energy into matter, you don't just get the half you want. Producing 1 gram of antimatter would simultaniously produce 1 gram of normal matter.
Now there you are correct. But such is the state of things today. If (yes, big 'if') it were possible to generate antimatter without its normal counterpart, then the books would still be balanced. The energy gained from an efficient antimatter power plant would come from the normal matter used, since it is commonly found and wouldn't have to be created.
If, however, such a development never happens then antimatter would be 'only' an extremely compact means of storing energy.
But why would I need to 'create' ordinary matter? As you may have noticed, it is rather naturally abundant.
Of course, that's assuming you make the stuff with perfect efficiency, which we are nowhere near. But anything above 50% efficiency (that is, making a gram of antimatter for less than two grams of energy), then you come out ahead and can use the net surplus to make still more antimatter...
The fun part is in manufacturing all the antimatter in the first place. In a perfect system, to generate 1 gram of antimatter, you have to spend 1 gram's worth of energy to do it. Particle accelerators don't do this very efficiently; it takes many times more energy to make antimatter than they get out of recombining it.
But, if they found a way to generate it with >50% efficiency, then there's no problem. I start with 1 gram of antimatter, combine it with another gram of normal matter and thus get 2 grams of energy. As long as I can use that to generate more than one new gram of antimatter, then I have a loop that takes in any kind of normal matter and gives out energy.