At first I thought this would cover issues like the one caught on film by Genesis back in 1986. The video clearly shows Reagan getting confused and pressing the "Nuke" button by mistake when he meant to press the "Nurse" call button. That incident threatened the USSR, not the US though. Maybe Clinton nearly did the same thing when he was wanting some "Nookie" though.
I think much of it has to do with lessening chaffing, wearing a material that will let your sweat evaporate vs just absorb it, not as a fashion statement to try to catch the eyes of condescending people like you and your wife. Those who ride longer distances/more strenuous routes seem to think it is worth wearing even when having to put up with ribbing/heckling from people like you, so apparently the benefits are noticeable enough to make it worth their while to pay the extra expense of cycling gear (a T-shirt and shorts are quite a bit less expensive) along with wearing it out on a ride on public roads/paths.
It looks like Huntington's downloadable records go back a scrolling window of three years. My Huntington account dates back a bit further (I opened my savings account when I was in first grade, about 30 years ago.) I used 1900 for the starting year and the records it reported back started with September 2007.
I agree with what others have said though. If you can not remember to grab your data once every month, let alone once every three months, then apparently the data is not all that important to you. It would also be better to set up a pop-up calendar reminder or cron job than to rely on the bank to forever allow X months of history for free since they can change their record availability at any time. If some unusual event does occur where you need more of the record history from the bank I am sure you would be able to do so from any of them for a relatively reasonable fee.
It would be a bit tough to close the shade on something like this to keep the sun off your face when you wanted to take a nap since it could be coming in from any angle. The first handful of times on a transparent flight, night or day, would be quite an experience, but sadly just like normal flight today the novelty would eventually dissipate.
With unlicensed games based on movies like "The Big Lebowski" and "Men in Black" the MPAA is sure to invade with platoon after platoon of lawyers until North Korea completely backs down and turns over every piece of electronics that could possibly have been involved with creating the games or been touched by those who made the games. They may feel a bit of a conflict of interest about going after News Corp for their role, so they will probably settle out of court.
I think there are MANY uses for Google Wave, but that is part of its problem. They are all very small, niche uses, which makes it hard to give a succinct description of it to someone and tell them how it could be relevant and useful to them. Also, since Wave is for coordinating with others it doesn't help to just persuade one person to try checking it out. They have to see a use for it and convince all the others on their project to give it an honest try too.
With GMail, the brand new Google Phone, etc, I just had to see that it could possibly be useful for me and try it out on my own. If it works for me, then great, I can just go ahead and use it. I can tell friends how useful they are, and since they are fairly single purpose tools they are easy to describe and simple for others to figure out if they are likely to be useful for them or not. Google Wave is much more amorphous.
Most of my friends are fairly geeky (yes, I know, quite a shocker for a slashdotter.) Back in March we started planning a group trip to Washington D.C.. We only had three weeks to plan (a friend's cousin was getting married out there and he mentioned to the rest of us just weeks in advance about it and in passing asked if any of us would like to take some days off to join in and do some sight-seeing.) Since we had limited time and couldn't all get together easily to plan we put Wave to great use. We were able to share links to points of interest, the metro system, possible places to stay; we created a roughed out itinerary that we could modify and you could click on each entry and it would show the location on the map so we could see what locations were in the vicinity to try to reduce unnecessary traveling back and forth, we put up a couple of polls for voting on what were the most and least desired to see by the group as we had to weed down a bit on what all we could do on our five day trip, and at the end of the trip we were able to share our photos with eachother. Wave allowed us to comment during lunch breaks and after work as time allowed, so even though we were unable to meet up in person or even on-line at the same time we could have group discussions about what we would like to see and do. Our trip went VERY smoothly and with the pre-planning we were able to pack in a LOT more than we ever could have otherwise on a trip like that.
My older sister just started up a new on-line magazine. She wanted to coordinate with others to figure out what format the magazine should take, be able to share and group edit the articles and layouts, have discussions about all of the physical, legal, IT logistics of getting the magazine started with the others involved, and asked me if I knew of something that could help them do all of that. I suggested Google Wave, and although the bulk of the people involved were from an English/Arts background they jumped in and found Wave to be indispensable since they all have "other" jobs while they are getting this off the ground so they do not have matching schedules or locations.
Wave can definitely start to get too unwieldy for large groups or very long running projects, so I agree with the "small projects" part, but I would definitely remove the "OSS" part.
You are correct, Wikipedia is not the arbiter of names, but in this case I would have to say that the US National Parks Service, which runs and maintains all of the federal memorials, is the one who would set the official name. According to the US National Parks Service it is indeed the "Lincoln Memorial".
What was his reaction to goatse videos? Actually, I think I'd rather not know. I'm sure such an experiment with a normal person would push the Emotiv beyond its capabilities.
Encryption does not really come in to play for how Google is handling the service. Once the call is set up it is phone-to-phone, it is NOT through either user's computer. You can start the call through your computer, but then it just calls your phone, when you pick up it calls the other person and takes the end user's computer out of the picture. This is VERY nice since you are not tied to your computer. You can have it call your cell or your land line, and if you have a cordless phone you are free to roam around your house/yard while on free/inexpensive long distance calls. It also adds extra perks such as if someone calls your new Google phone number it can ring your home, cell, and office phones simultaneously. The caller doesn't have to worry about figuring out which one to try to call first and if you aren't by that phone try another one of your numbers. It also lets you get a text message and e-mail when someone leaves voice mail, and you can get a text transcription of it or listen to it on-line. Listening to an voice-mail on-line is the only aspect that I guess could involve any sort of encryption.
I checked out the range of costs charged by this service. It was nice to see that Canada was free, the UK, Japan and most of Europe just $0.02/min. I was surprised that Thuraya was 18.5 times as expensive as remote, war-torn Afghanistan though ($4.99/min vs $0.27/min.) They must be suffering under horrendous political and geographical situations there. I had never heard of Thuraya before, had to look it up on Google.
None of the Nazi experiments involved creating life in order to destroy it either.
You're really doubling down on the Nazi stuff, hey?
Frozen embryo = victim of the Holocaust?
Why does my responding to your post which ONLY referred to the bit of my original post that involved the Nazi medical tests within a list of things including the question of using organs from death row inmates for transplants make me the one doubling down on the Nazi stuff? You were the one who ONLY referenced that part of my original post, with your only point between embryo research and the Nazi testing being that embryo testing being considered does not involve "creating life in order to destroy it", and in my response all I did was point out that neither did the Nazi tests.
I NEVER equated the Holocaust victims with frozen embryos. What I WAS doing was pointing out that NONE of these situations allow you to merely throw out all religious morality and come to a level headed, logical conclusion. There is HUMAN morality involved. That was my point in each of my posts, since the original post in this thread was basically saying that moral issues were getting in the way of this and useful results, just toss out any consideration of the moral issues and then all would be clear-cut and logical.
it is FAR too simplistic to just state that the ONLY statements against it are based on religious morality
Not religious morality, religious fanaticism. Morality is hard. Fanaticism is easy because your choices are already made for you. I only wish that the "pro-life" crowd was motivated by morality, because then they could be engaged in discussion. When your starting position is "there is no difference between an embryo and a human being, period" you preclude the possibility of anything like rational discussion and you're just trying to lay down the law. I have no use for people who try to lay down the law for all of us based on their religious rules.
I think we are actually fairly close on how we feel about this. Where did I ever mention forcing religious morality upon others, let alone religious fanaticism? Where did I ever say that "there is no difference between and embryo and a human being, period?" I feel that religious fanaticism plays NO useful part in discussions like this. I also feel that trying to say that NO morality of any sort should come into play is just as narrow (closed) minded though. Human morality is involved in ALL societal norms, laws, regulations. Human morality changes as society's knowledge, understanding, preferences change with time and can actually be much muddier than religious morality, but people are NOT being realistic if they feel that ALL moral issues can be removed from the discussion in order to reach a clear, logical, scientific conclusion.
Wow, and what types of things do you figure are not worth living with? Someone with Down Syndrome can not feel they are having a fulfilling life? How about ADD? What genes should be picked and chosen, which avoided, and which not allowed to exist within the human genome anymore?
None of the Nazi experiments involved creating life in order to destroy it either. Those lives were already there, and would have just been tossed away in the gas chambers anyways. I used a range of examples over a range of what people may view as "morally" appropriate, but trying to say that even at the most benign level there IS morality involved, not necessarily religious morality, but HUMAN morality. It is NOT appropriate to say that any of these decisions can be made free of ALL moral thinking.
Actually I see a LOT of truth behind both sides of whether or not already existing embryos that will otherwise be destroyed should be made available for testing, so I am staying out of that. All I am trying to say is that it is FAR too simplistic to just state that the ONLY statements against it are based on religious morality and that therefor the scientific community has no real restrictions aside from the current legal ones not to go ahead.
Why not re-open Nazi style medical tests on twins and fetuses
Clearly your "moral concerns" don't preclude you from making inappropriate Nazi comparisons.
None of the research that was funded by the federal gov't since 2008 had anything to do with "creating life in order to destroy it.
Why are the "moral" ones always the quickest to bear false witness?
So why not harvest organs from all death row inmates after euthenizing them in a humane manner that does not damage the organs?
Sperm on their own are not potential human beings. A fertilized egg is. When is it an actual person, and does it have to be a full person before it has any rights? A dog is not a person, yet it has rights protecting it from malicious harm. Is there something magical about a fetus coming through the vaginal opening that instantly makes it a human? Is there something magical about making it to the second trimesters? Is it when a sperm and egg merge DNA? Is it when there are two or more cells that will be brain cells that send the first electrical pulse between them?
Yes, it DOES have to do with morality. That does NOT mean "religious morals", but "human morals" and how we as a society currently understand and interpret them. The logistics of the death penalty are based on morals, how we determine what punishment roughly matches a crime is based on society's view of what is morally correct. How we define the point of life and death are also based on morals and not exact scientific fact. Death is no longer when you no longer have a pulse. People have been revived long after being declared dead by medical professionals.
The start of life is just one of the issues involved in this. Another is when is it viable, valuable, when does a new life equal or outweigh the value of an older life. Is life kept in a perpetually frozen, inert state without a reasonable likelihood of existing in any other manner truly life anymore? I don't see how you can answer any of those without involving morals of one form or another.
And why does that override moral concerns? Since you may face the same, why now allow doctors to stick your mother with probes, take core samples of her brain while still alive, test for levels of chemicals, amino acids, level of fat vs protein etc, which would be MUCH more accurate while still alive vs hours/days after death. Surely this would help gain insight and move forward scientific studies on how to detect Alzheimer's in a much earlier stage and more precise treatment for future sufferers. Why not re-open Nazi style medical tests on twins and fetuses, and why not lift all restrictions on live animal testing? How about using those on death row for medical research so they can at least be productive in death or force them to be organ donors? They will be dead anyways, those organs would just go to waste otherwise.
Alzheimer's has occurred on both sides of my family (grandfather on the one side, great-grandfather on the other), my mom's cousin suffered from ALS for over 10 years and even wrote a book by using nothing but moving his eyebrows, and I have already suffered a viral infection that will remain with me the rest of my life. Every time it comes out of remission (I'm currently fighting my fourth bout) it causes the lining of my brain to swell, causing a good chunk of my synapses to get destroyed, and taking years for my brain to recover to about 80-90% of where it had been before. Maybe stem cell research would find a way to fully recover from each bout and keep me from having to drop out of school/work for a handful of years each time, and having to settle for a less effective brain after each occurrence. I still don't see that as a reason to try to lessen the moral implications involved in order to try to tilt the balance in a way that could possibly improve my life of the lives of my loved ones.
I don't mean to say that the morals in stem cell research are clear cut, they definitely are not. I see NO reason though to purposely try to tilt the balance one way or another and fudge the morals and facts due to personal fears of potential illnesses, illnesses of friends and relatives, etc.
"How did the pea roots deal with the patient's immune system? What would have happened if the situation had continued un-treated? I bet the guy has a career awaiting him in PR for a pea-growing company."
I highly doubt any company wants to use him for PR, but Monsanto may be looking into how to sue him for patent infringement, since he apparently took their patented herbicide resistant strains and modified them to be antibody resistant.
John/Jane Doe cases happen all the time. It's presumed that the identity of the person can, at some point, be established. I assume between pre-trial and actual trial, since a person has a right to defend themselves, but I'm not sure it's wise to take that on trust any more. However, all you have to do is find a way to put the case on hold indefinitely and you've a court case you can unleash on anyone at any time.
Well, as far as I was aware John/Jane Doe cases are filed for crimes already committed, but by people whose exact identity is not yet known. This goes a LARGE step farther since the crime has not yet been committed, and is not even guaranteed to be committed. This is a slick trick to get the taxpayers to provide the extra security and snooping for them. I understand John/Jane Doe cases where it is clear a crime has been committed, but to file a lawsuit before the supposed crime can even be committed let alone proven to have occurred seems to go well beyond the intent of any law and should not be permitted. Planning to commit a felony is against the law in itself, so those sorts of situations are already covered, as long as it can be proved that the plans were actually in place.
Yes, I'm sure that professional trolls infiltrated Slashdot accounts with IDs spanning the last several years, back before WikiLeaks even existed, laying in wait until just such a moment as this to come out and show fake support of the government against WikiLeaks. It can't have anything to do with people having issues with both the US government and the way WikiLeaks handled the massive amounts of documents that were posted, reading up on both sides of the issues, and deciding that although both sides handled the issue poorly that it is the way WikiLeaks handled the situation that is unnecessarily putting yet more lives at immediate risk, that enough voices are already up in arms over how the government is handling things, but that voices also need to be raised against WikiLeaks before they feel emboldened to post even more documents with even less concern as to what should be redacted first.
Quite a few customers would be upset if their USB stick/memory card was mounted as Read-Only. Many people who use those kiosks do not have their own photo editing software at home. They do their cropping, red-eye reduction, contrast adjustment, color correction, etc at the kiosk and want to save the changes.
A "friend" of mine used to always stick a copy of LoveDOS on anyone's computer in college that was left unattended. The ending comment of "Call me crazy but I love DOS" brought these "fond" memories back. It looks like someone has actually archived a copy of it, as well as putting together some screen shots and info about it: http://jeff.rainbow-100.com/?p=100 Ever since being inflicted with LoveDOS I have set up every computer I own to use a BIOS password.
Actually, seeing the http:/// can be informative. You can use ftp:// in web browsers instead of using a separate FTP program, and most (all?) browsers will display a.htm[l] file as a web page instead of just the actual text. For several years I used an FTP server as a pseudo web server by doing this. I had to tell friends to use ftp:// instead of just typing in my server's address, but it worked quite nicely, and by setting up usernames and passwords (just use ftp://:@ or leave out the ":" to have the web browser prompt you for the password so it isn't put in the address bar or history) allowed me to restrict "web pages" to specific groups of people. This was handy for allowing only family to see travel photos, only classmates working with me on a project to see the files related to the group project, etc.
Seems pretty obvious to me why they grilled you so much. Anyone crossing the boarder named "Anonymous Coward" is bound to spark suspicion, whether that name is included on the No-Fly List or not.
Slashdot Mirror
At first I thought this would cover issues like the one caught on film by Genesis back in 1986. The video clearly shows Reagan getting confused and pressing the "Nuke" button by mistake when he meant to press the "Nurse" call button. That incident threatened the USSR, not the US though. Maybe Clinton nearly did the same thing when he was wanting some "Nookie" though.
By hijacking a foreign country's TLD Google has messed up World Of Goo's plans on getting goo.gl for their Greenland offices.
I think much of it has to do with lessening chaffing, wearing a material that will let your sweat evaporate vs just absorb it, not as a fashion statement to try to catch the eyes of condescending people like you and your wife. Those who ride longer distances/more strenuous routes seem to think it is worth wearing even when having to put up with ribbing/heckling from people like you, so apparently the benefits are noticeable enough to make it worth their while to pay the extra expense of cycling gear (a T-shirt and shorts are quite a bit less expensive) along with wearing it out on a ride on public roads/paths.
1. This was on his own estate. I do not know how large his estate was, but I think it is fair to assume that he knew where the river and bluff were.
2. Segways max out at 12.5mph. I don't really think that counts as "high speed."
It looks like Huntington's downloadable records go back a scrolling window of three years. My Huntington account dates back a bit further (I opened my savings account when I was in first grade, about 30 years ago.) I used 1900 for the starting year and the records it reported back started with September 2007.
I agree with what others have said though. If you can not remember to grab your data once every month, let alone once every three months, then apparently the data is not all that important to you. It would also be better to set up a pop-up calendar reminder or cron job than to rely on the bank to forever allow X months of history for free since they can change their record availability at any time. If some unusual event does occur where you need more of the record history from the bank I am sure you would be able to do so from any of them for a relatively reasonable fee.
It would be a bit tough to close the shade on something like this to keep the sun off your face when you wanted to take a nap since it could be coming in from any angle. The first handful of times on a transparent flight, night or day, would be quite an experience, but sadly just like normal flight today the novelty would eventually dissipate.
With unlicensed games based on movies like "The Big Lebowski" and "Men in Black" the MPAA is sure to invade with platoon after platoon of lawyers until North Korea completely backs down and turns over every piece of electronics that could possibly have been involved with creating the games or been touched by those who made the games. They may feel a bit of a conflict of interest about going after News Corp for their role, so they will probably settle out of court.
I think there are MANY uses for Google Wave, but that is part of its problem. They are all very small, niche uses, which makes it hard to give a succinct description of it to someone and tell them how it could be relevant and useful to them. Also, since Wave is for coordinating with others it doesn't help to just persuade one person to try checking it out. They have to see a use for it and convince all the others on their project to give it an honest try too.
With GMail, the brand new Google Phone, etc, I just had to see that it could possibly be useful for me and try it out on my own. If it works for me, then great, I can just go ahead and use it. I can tell friends how useful they are, and since they are fairly single purpose tools they are easy to describe and simple for others to figure out if they are likely to be useful for them or not. Google Wave is much more amorphous.
Most of my friends are fairly geeky (yes, I know, quite a shocker for a slashdotter.) Back in March we started planning a group trip to Washington D.C.. We only had three weeks to plan (a friend's cousin was getting married out there and he mentioned to the rest of us just weeks in advance about it and in passing asked if any of us would like to take some days off to join in and do some sight-seeing.) Since we had limited time and couldn't all get together easily to plan we put Wave to great use. We were able to share links to points of interest, the metro system, possible places to stay; we created a roughed out itinerary that we could modify and you could click on each entry and it would show the location on the map so we could see what locations were in the vicinity to try to reduce unnecessary traveling back and forth, we put up a couple of polls for voting on what were the most and least desired to see by the group as we had to weed down a bit on what all we could do on our five day trip, and at the end of the trip we were able to share our photos with eachother. Wave allowed us to comment during lunch breaks and after work as time allowed, so even though we were unable to meet up in person or even on-line at the same time we could have group discussions about what we would like to see and do. Our trip went VERY smoothly and with the pre-planning we were able to pack in a LOT more than we ever could have otherwise on a trip like that.
My older sister just started up a new on-line magazine. She wanted to coordinate with others to figure out what format the magazine should take, be able to share and group edit the articles and layouts, have discussions about all of the physical, legal, IT logistics of getting the magazine started with the others involved, and asked me if I knew of something that could help them do all of that. I suggested Google Wave, and although the bulk of the people involved were from an English/Arts background they jumped in and found Wave to be indispensable since they all have "other" jobs while they are getting this off the ground so they do not have matching schedules or locations.
Wave can definitely start to get too unwieldy for large groups or very long running projects, so I agree with the "small projects" part, but I would definitely remove the "OSS" part.
You are correct, Wikipedia is not the arbiter of names, but in this case I would have to say that the US National Parks Service, which runs and maintains all of the federal memorials, is the one who would set the official name. According to the US National Parks Service it is indeed the "Lincoln Memorial".
What was his reaction to goatse videos? Actually, I think I'd rather not know. I'm sure such an experiment with a normal person would push the Emotiv beyond its capabilities.
That is why I spray all of my USB ports with VOTiVO.
Encryption does not really come in to play for how Google is handling the service. Once the call is set up it is phone-to-phone, it is NOT through either user's computer. You can start the call through your computer, but then it just calls your phone, when you pick up it calls the other person and takes the end user's computer out of the picture. This is VERY nice since you are not tied to your computer. You can have it call your cell or your land line, and if you have a cordless phone you are free to roam around your house/yard while on free/inexpensive long distance calls. It also adds extra perks such as if someone calls your new Google phone number it can ring your home, cell, and office phones simultaneously. The caller doesn't have to worry about figuring out which one to try to call first and if you aren't by that phone try another one of your numbers. It also lets you get a text message and e-mail when someone leaves voice mail, and you can get a text transcription of it or listen to it on-line. Listening to an voice-mail on-line is the only aspect that I guess could involve any sort of encryption.
I checked out the range of costs charged by this service. It was nice to see that Canada was free, the UK, Japan and most of Europe just $0.02/min. I was surprised that Thuraya was 18.5 times as expensive as remote, war-torn Afghanistan though ($4.99/min vs $0.27/min.) They must be suffering under horrendous political and geographical situations there. I had never heard of Thuraya before, had to look it up on Google.
You're really doubling down on the Nazi stuff, hey?
Frozen embryo = victim of the Holocaust?
Why does my responding to your post which ONLY referred to the bit of my original post that involved the Nazi medical tests within a list of things including the question of using organs from death row inmates for transplants make me the one doubling down on the Nazi stuff? You were the one who ONLY referenced that part of my original post, with your only point between embryo research and the Nazi testing being that embryo testing being considered does not involve "creating life in order to destroy it", and in my response all I did was point out that neither did the Nazi tests.
I NEVER equated the Holocaust victims with frozen embryos. What I WAS doing was pointing out that NONE of these situations allow you to merely throw out all religious morality and come to a level headed, logical conclusion. There is HUMAN morality involved. That was my point in each of my posts, since the original post in this thread was basically saying that moral issues were getting in the way of this and useful results, just toss out any consideration of the moral issues and then all would be clear-cut and logical.
Not religious morality, religious fanaticism. Morality is hard. Fanaticism is easy because your choices are already made for you. I only wish that the "pro-life" crowd was motivated by morality, because then they could be engaged in discussion. When your starting position is "there is no difference between an embryo and a human being, period" you preclude the possibility of anything like rational discussion and you're just trying to lay down the law. I have no use for people who try to lay down the law for all of us based on their religious rules.
I think we are actually fairly close on how we feel about this. Where did I ever mention forcing religious morality upon others, let alone religious fanaticism? Where did I ever say that "there is no difference between and embryo and a human being, period?" I feel that religious fanaticism plays NO useful part in discussions like this. I also feel that trying to say that NO morality of any sort should come into play is just as narrow (closed) minded though. Human morality is involved in ALL societal norms, laws, regulations. Human morality changes as society's knowledge, understanding, preferences change with time and can actually be much muddier than religious morality, but people are NOT being realistic if they feel that ALL moral issues can be removed from the discussion in order to reach a clear, logical, scientific conclusion.
Wow, and what types of things do you figure are not worth living with? Someone with Down Syndrome can not feel they are having a fulfilling life? How about ADD? What genes should be picked and chosen, which avoided, and which not allowed to exist within the human genome anymore?
None of the Nazi experiments involved creating life in order to destroy it either. Those lives were already there, and would have just been tossed away in the gas chambers anyways. I used a range of examples over a range of what people may view as "morally" appropriate, but trying to say that even at the most benign level there IS morality involved, not necessarily religious morality, but HUMAN morality. It is NOT appropriate to say that any of these decisions can be made free of ALL moral thinking.
Actually I see a LOT of truth behind both sides of whether or not already existing embryos that will otherwise be destroyed should be made available for testing, so I am staying out of that. All I am trying to say is that it is FAR too simplistic to just state that the ONLY statements against it are based on religious morality and that therefor the scientific community has no real restrictions aside from the current legal ones not to go ahead.
Clearly your "moral concerns" don't preclude you from making inappropriate Nazi comparisons.
None of the research that was funded by the federal gov't since 2008 had anything to do with "creating life in order to destroy it.
Why are the "moral" ones always the quickest to bear false witness?
So why not harvest organs from all death row inmates after euthenizing them in a humane manner that does not damage the organs?
Sperm on their own are not potential human beings. A fertilized egg is. When is it an actual person, and does it have to be a full person before it has any rights? A dog is not a person, yet it has rights protecting it from malicious harm. Is there something magical about a fetus coming through the vaginal opening that instantly makes it a human? Is there something magical about making it to the second trimesters? Is it when a sperm and egg merge DNA? Is it when there are two or more cells that will be brain cells that send the first electrical pulse between them?
Yes, it DOES have to do with morality. That does NOT mean "religious morals", but "human morals" and how we as a society currently understand and interpret them. The logistics of the death penalty are based on morals, how we determine what punishment roughly matches a crime is based on society's view of what is morally correct. How we define the point of life and death are also based on morals and not exact scientific fact. Death is no longer when you no longer have a pulse. People have been revived long after being declared dead by medical professionals.
The start of life is just one of the issues involved in this. Another is when is it viable, valuable, when does a new life equal or outweigh the value of an older life. Is life kept in a perpetually frozen, inert state without a reasonable likelihood of existing in any other manner truly life anymore? I don't see how you can answer any of those without involving morals of one form or another.
And why does that override moral concerns? Since you may face the same, why now allow doctors to stick your mother with probes, take core samples of her brain while still alive, test for levels of chemicals, amino acids, level of fat vs protein etc, which would be MUCH more accurate while still alive vs hours/days after death. Surely this would help gain insight and move forward scientific studies on how to detect Alzheimer's in a much earlier stage and more precise treatment for future sufferers. Why not re-open Nazi style medical tests on twins and fetuses, and why not lift all restrictions on live animal testing? How about using those on death row for medical research so they can at least be productive in death or force them to be organ donors? They will be dead anyways, those organs would just go to waste otherwise.
Alzheimer's has occurred on both sides of my family (grandfather on the one side, great-grandfather on the other), my mom's cousin suffered from ALS for over 10 years and even wrote a book by using nothing but moving his eyebrows, and I have already suffered a viral infection that will remain with me the rest of my life. Every time it comes out of remission (I'm currently fighting my fourth bout) it causes the lining of my brain to swell, causing a good chunk of my synapses to get destroyed, and taking years for my brain to recover to about 80-90% of where it had been before. Maybe stem cell research would find a way to fully recover from each bout and keep me from having to drop out of school/work for a handful of years each time, and having to settle for a less effective brain after each occurrence. I still don't see that as a reason to try to lessen the moral implications involved in order to try to tilt the balance in a way that could possibly improve my life of the lives of my loved ones.
I don't mean to say that the morals in stem cell research are clear cut, they definitely are not. I see NO reason though to purposely try to tilt the balance one way or another and fudge the morals and facts due to personal fears of potential illnesses, illnesses of friends and relatives, etc.
"How did the pea roots deal with the patient's immune system? What would have happened if the situation had continued un-treated? I bet the guy has a career awaiting him in PR for a pea-growing company." I highly doubt any company wants to use him for PR, but Monsanto may be looking into how to sue him for patent infringement, since he apparently took their patented herbicide resistant strains and modified them to be antibody resistant.
John/Jane Doe cases happen all the time. It's presumed that the identity of the person can, at some point, be established. I assume between pre-trial and actual trial, since a person has a right to defend themselves, but I'm not sure it's wise to take that on trust any more. However, all you have to do is find a way to put the case on hold indefinitely and you've a court case you can unleash on anyone at any time.
Well, as far as I was aware John/Jane Doe cases are filed for crimes already committed, but by people whose exact identity is not yet known. This goes a LARGE step farther since the crime has not yet been committed, and is not even guaranteed to be committed. This is a slick trick to get the taxpayers to provide the extra security and snooping for them. I understand John/Jane Doe cases where it is clear a crime has been committed, but to file a lawsuit before the supposed crime can even be committed let alone proven to have occurred seems to go well beyond the intent of any law and should not be permitted. Planning to commit a felony is against the law in itself, so those sorts of situations are already covered, as long as it can be proved that the plans were actually in place.
Yes, I'm sure that professional trolls infiltrated Slashdot accounts with IDs spanning the last several years, back before WikiLeaks even existed, laying in wait until just such a moment as this to come out and show fake support of the government against WikiLeaks. It can't have anything to do with people having issues with both the US government and the way WikiLeaks handled the massive amounts of documents that were posted, reading up on both sides of the issues, and deciding that although both sides handled the issue poorly that it is the way WikiLeaks handled the situation that is unnecessarily putting yet more lives at immediate risk, that enough voices are already up in arms over how the government is handling things, but that voices also need to be raised against WikiLeaks before they feel emboldened to post even more documents with even less concern as to what should be redacted first.
Quite a few customers would be upset if their USB stick/memory card was mounted as Read-Only. Many people who use those kiosks do not have their own photo editing software at home. They do their cropping, red-eye reduction, contrast adjustment, color correction, etc at the kiosk and want to save the changes.
A "friend" of mine used to always stick a copy of LoveDOS on anyone's computer in college that was left unattended. The ending comment of "Call me crazy but I love DOS" brought these "fond" memories back. It looks like someone has actually archived a copy of it, as well as putting together some screen shots and info about it: http://jeff.rainbow-100.com/?p=100 Ever since being inflicted with LoveDOS I have set up every computer I own to use a BIOS password.
Actually, seeing the http:/// can be informative. You can use ftp:// in web browsers instead of using a separate FTP program, and most (all?) browsers will display a .htm[l] file as a web page instead of just the actual text. For several years I used an FTP server as a pseudo web server by doing this. I had to tell friends to use ftp:// instead of just typing in my server's address, but it worked quite nicely, and by setting up usernames and passwords (just use ftp://:@ or leave out the ":" to have the web browser prompt you for the password so it isn't put in the address bar or history) allowed me to restrict "web pages" to specific groups of people. This was handy for allowing only family to see travel photos, only classmates working with me on a project to see the files related to the group project, etc.
Seems pretty obvious to me why they grilled you so much. Anyone crossing the boarder named "Anonymous Coward" is bound to spark suspicion, whether that name is included on the No-Fly List or not.