We haven't cured cancer because we don't know how. Even moreso than in writing software, cancer cannot be cured simply by throwing money and man-years at it.
We haven't gone back to the moon because, really, we don't have a reason to go. It's a risky, irradiating trip, and getting used to LEO inside the Van Allen belts is enough technological achievement for the moment (Though we should be back on the moon by 2013, thanks to Europe and China.)
Crap like this makes me want to scream at the lab. I slave for my sh*thead supervisor, and this is what others get paid to research?! I hope all they die in trafic accident.
Hao, you need a new job. There are very few things worth slaving away at a job you hate for--and most of those involve six figure salaries.
(And you meant "I hope they all die in traffic accidents". Plural on the last word.)
I'm aware that he is supposed to have super speed, but speed is best shown in film by slowing everyone else, not speeding the rate of one person up
What makes you say that?
Obscene rates of speed can be shown effectively either from normal-speed view or accellerated-speed view. A good example of this technique, in case it's slipping your mind, is The Matrix.
It's all about the character and the focus. It's almost always better to show your focus character always moving at a "normal" speed, save for the rare exception. (_Children of Dune_ has a few nice moments like this.)
To continue with my all-ready used Spider-man example I do notice that even gravity isn't obeyed in half the scenes. Taking into account a certain amount of 'push' force at a certain altitude, Peter Parker would not fly in the air at that angle. He failed to arc in half the scenes and it gets really unrealistic when he exerts minimal force in order to actually gain ground by 'swinging' upwards.
Which scenes are you talking about? Aside from the ones that were almost totally off-camera, his physics were as fine and dandy as they could be expected. (Well, save for a bit right at the end with the cable-car.)
I find it amazing that people complain about the lack of jobs and then turn around and do work that they should be charging for and give it away for gratis.
You're exactly right. But the OSS shift isn't from "pay for coding" to "give away all code." It's a shift of authorship from amoral corporations to communities of developers. You won't get paid to write code as much as you'll be paid to use computers to do a job.
I thought people used Linux so they would not have to deal with the Windows horrid GUI?
Nope. People use Linux because they like the CLI, they like Free Software, they like Open Source, they Hate Microsoft, or they're just Cheap Ethical Bastards.
Very, very few people use Linux becaues they think that it's got a better GUI than Windows.
But seriously, the world really doesn't need more pointless, unenforceable laws regulating what adults can do by themselves (or with a loved one, as the case occasionally is) in the privacy of their own homes.
But that's just it. I specifically didn't say "ownership" or "private viewing."
If Utah doesn't like porn, they should just ban cable companies, magazines, et cetera from selling or promoting porn within Utah. Those who really want it will travel across state lines to get it. (The only bug here would be a company not in Utah mailing porno into the state--which should be legal anyway, as it falls back into "in the privacy of their own home" bit.)
And as for promotion--file this between "blocking spam" and "writing traffic tickets" in priority.
I do realize we're talking about Utah here, so something like that is unfortunately the sort of thing that could happen, but don't even those who are so obsessed with sex that they feel the need to attempt to erase any reference to its existence from their reality realize that law enforcement resources are better used hunting down murderers, rapists, and kidnappers of young girls than ordinary people who've been classified as "criminals" simply because somebody else has a serious hang-up about all things sexual?
Actually, I'm a great big fan of sex--but I don't want any mention of it except from those that I'm engaging in it with, or whom I engage in conversation with it over. And doing things that are against the law doesn't automatically make you a "criminal"--some laws are simply codes, and could result in a traffic-court like fine or a FCC-like de-licensing.
Separating the two is obviously a problem wherever you are given all of the porn that surprises you as unsolicited email. However, you have to understand the obsession that people here in Utah have with porn. Until just a couple of months ago, we (Utah citizens) were paying a "porn czar" six figures to fight porn in the state when she had no real defined objective, yet in terms of per capita consumption, Utah county has the highest rate of cable porn subscription in the nation. This is in direct opposition to the majority religion's stance on the subject and a bit of a difficulty for them given Utah counties large percentage of LDS church members.
Okay, call me silly--but why don't they just outlaw porn?
The same arguments for restricting topless bars, cigarettes, prostitution, et cetera should work for stopping the transmission, creation, or solicitation for sale of pornography in Utah.
Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.
on
Virtual PC 6 Review
·
· Score: 0, Troll
It's called economics, do they make enough money on those copies of WinXXX to justify
Hey, this is _Microsoft_ we're talking about--the company who has the bulk of their products lose money and be supported by Windows + Office.
VPC is a windows-seller, and if they can make money off of it, then they're going to keep selling it.
(The question is, really, if the not-bundled-with-windows version will suddenly be twice as expensive as the bundled-with-windows version.)
Facts are not copyrightable. Airfares are facts. There was a big case between the bells and 3rd party phonebook makers where this was determined to be the case.
If a chineese restaurant listing can be copyrightable, so can airfares on a website.
Of course, to be pendantic, the more important (IMO) aspect of this case is EULAs for web sites.
IANAL,YMMV,BYOLA.
Once again, MS gets slapped by FUD
on
Office 2003 and XML
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
From the article:
"XML and Web services use, especially for content-driven applications, is still very much limited to basic use of XML as a data-exchange mechanism between systems -- primarily for internal integration approaches," he said. "When dealing with exchanging information internally, what is most important is not to bundle all collaborative features into making for a huge, cumbersome XML file that only certain applications can process, but rather to strip out all the presentation layer features and focus on just the data to be exchanged. In this case, I don't see how Microsoft is violating that. You can choose to save a document with all the rich presentation data left in, if you choose (and that data will only be processable by Office applications), or you can choose to save the XML with just the data in it. I don't see how that cripples anything."
If MS is doing XML right, an XML export from word will only mark the text file with the necessary handles to bind to the formatting file. If you open the text file without the formatting file, you get rather plain text.
The same thing happened with MSHTML. Yes, it's got a lot of proprietary comments in it (the "" tags), but the CSS and formatting designations are as standard as the crude hacks and random idosyncracies that a human web designer may do.
Plus, it's only an "early beta." I hope that the authors of the article send their comments to MS, so MS can expand on what their XML exports can do.
Businesses charge the exact amount that will earn them the most profit
You mean "that they think will get them the most profit." Businesses are hardly universally correct.
How much they lose in theft is completely irrelevant.
No more or less irrelevant than the cost the goods that they're selling, their taxes, their rent, and how much they have to pay their employees.
Shrinkage--be it from theft or simple destruction of goods--is an expense, and every expense changes the location of the "sweet spot" which maximizes profits.
Again, i'm not saying stealing is OK; i'm saying that the whole "Our prices are high because of thieves" is a load of crap. Its one of those corporate lies.
Like most "big lies", it's not. It's an exaggeration, but not a lie.
And, for the record, I don't recall RIAA ever saying "our prices are high because of theft." I've heard "copyright piracy is costing us money" and "our prices are high because we lose a lot of money", but the second statement has always been more about failed bands than theft.
I am not saying that stealing is somehow moral. However, the idea that it has any effect on prices is simply hogwash. Businesses charge what the public is willing to pay, not what they have to.
Businesses charge what gets them the most profit. If thefts go up, they increase costs to cover the lost sales--and if thefts drop and sales drop faster, they lower prices to get the profit margin back.
There is always someone who will buy something for any price point,but the slimmer the margin, the more people buy it. The game in business is finding the sweet spot where you get the most profit from the right sales volume / margin markup ratio. Shrinkage does throw this off, and you're a fool to think that it doesn't.
Once we can perfectly replicate the functionality of every last bit of the brain, do we just have a really nifty toy, or a genuine mind?
Depends.
If they work together perfectly, then we'll have a true artificial brain (which is different from "AI" as it's commonly thought of. No software here.)
If they DON'T work together, but each part works seperately--well, then we'll know that something's missing.
Your question is sort of like "if we could turn lead into gold, would it really be gold?" It's a non-question. A perfect duplicate is a perfect duplicate--if it works, it's a mind, and if it doesn't work, it's not perfect.
Unless, as granddaddy poster said, there's a hydrogen mine somewhere, it's not the same thing at all.
That seems to be the allegation, actually. The whole "hydrogen economy" is just a way to get better effiency out of our current power sources unless there are untapped sources of hydrogen.
And, AFAIK, hydrogen is currently produced as a waste gas in a few industrial processes.
What's next? Uncoupling the calculator? The start button? Command prompt?
Oddly enough, those three are prime candidates for replacement. It's easy enough to replace the windows calc, there are still tons of explorer (start menu/taskbar) replacements, and as for the command prompt--IIRC, some of the more popular UNIX shells have been ported to Windows, either by themselves or with CYGWIN.
But despite all this--I can't replace IEHTML with Gecko.
I want to be able to control the piece of text you copied-n-pasted from the e-mail I wrote to you yesterday. The only way this can happen is if I can trust your computer.
In order for that to work, in any DRM scheme I've seen, you'd need to send the e-mail in DRM proprietary format that I would need to accept. If I didn't want to accept it, I could just not read your e-mail.
You have total control over your computer--"Trusted Computing" just enforces the decisions you make on it.
The plain simple fact is that technology has now made it possible to cheaply copy bits to anyone on the planet. Business models need to adapt. I'm not suggesting stealing. Business models have had to adapt to technology before. You can't make the technology go away. DRM as I understand it is simply evil. The motion picture industry adapted to the VCR, even though they feared it would be their death.
The motion picture industry adapted to the VCR because the VCR is a lossy copy mechanism, and "home movies" were a new revenue model for them. At no point did it become trivial to undercut what they offered. And, more importantly, at no point did the copyright law get fundamentally altered to squash or encourage the use of VCRs. There are, in fact, several court cases explaining copyright and exactly how it applies to VCRs.
The thing about the 'net is that isn't not just business models that you want to change--it's the law. No contract keeps me from buying a $20 CD, making a hundred copies, and selling them to people willing to pay $5 for a CDR with no liner notes. But the copyright law that establishes who has the right to make copies of any work does.
I'm all for a new copyright model--see my journal for details--but it should be done in the proper democratic fashion, not by geeks who have all the moral authority of thugs on the street. ("Hey, the technology exists for us to take the gold from that train--the business should just adapt to that fact.")
If your point was that the content providers are free to ignore technology and that people want music on their computers, pocket mp3 players, etc., then yes indeed, they are free to dig their head in the sand.
No, not the "content providers." The "copyright holders" will pick and choose whatever medium they want--but they're not the only ones who get a choice.
You can pick what art you support and what you don't, and very likely you'll be able to pick what media you use too. THAT's the important choice--if the merchants of music, movies, and art don't find a market to sell their wares, then they'll be forced to find another.
You asked how DRM could be used for good. I answered. Now, tell me why DRM is "evil."
Please enlighten me. What good will DRM be used for?
The same good that cameras in stores are used for. Heck, the same good that signatures and contracts are used for.
DRM will provide an enforcement mechanism for online transactions. Napster proved, above all else, that the current 'net will lead to online file transactions leaking like a sive.(?) If you don't like it--well, merchants still take cash, you can still get by without a car in the cities, and no one forces you to get a PC or a car.
In other words, whenever a new technology rolls out, those that don't want to embrace it can happily not embrace it for as long as they care to. This is what we call "freedom."
And in the specific case of movies, books, and music--don't expect online to replace retail and public peformance anytime soon. Even if we move to an "online-default" state, there will still be shopping centers that will take cash for physical tokens that play in dedicated music systems--also known as "stereos".
To me, that sounds like direct genetic manipulation.
That's correcting a genetic disease. Hardly noteworthy when it comes to evolution.
What the hell was Scotty thiking?
The Enterprise would be a physical object, not an abstract theory. Anthromorphising ships is a long tradition--Anthromorphising scientific concepts is nothing more than a bad teaching method.
(And it's not "persontifcation"! Learn how to use the big words, or stop using them!)
In point of fact: we cannot. The best we can do is, depending on your point of view, mix some human genes to hope to correct a disease, or be concious of our descendents. Theorteically we could "breed" ourselves the way we do animals--but AFAIK, even distinct breeds are still genetically the same species.
However, I do object to your objection to my personification of evolution for the sake of description. I think its a valid literary tool.
Anthromorphism is a valid teaching tool, but that doesn't mean that it's appropriate how you used it.
Evolution is not only not a sentient thing, it's not even a thing. The active player in all evolutionary events are the creatures that adapt the best; if you "personify" evolution, you create more abstraction than necessary to express an opinion or teach the theory or the principle.
Slashdot Mirror
Batman Forever and Batman & Robin didn't just change the actor--they changed the whole style of the movie from dark comic-like to cheesy TV-like.
No, just one really big accident
In that case, it'd be "I hope they all die in one big traffic accident" or "I hope they all die in a traffic acccident."
Man, you need a new job.
We haven't cured cancer because we don't know how. Even moreso than in writing software, cancer cannot be cured simply by throwing money and man-years at it.
We haven't gone back to the moon because, really, we don't have a reason to go. It's a risky, irradiating trip, and getting used to LEO inside the Van Allen belts is enough technological achievement for the moment (Though we should be back on the moon by 2013, thanks to Europe and China.)
Crap like this makes me want to scream at the lab. I slave for my sh*thead supervisor, and this is what others get paid to research?! I hope all they die in trafic accident.
Hao, you need a new job. There are very few things worth slaving away at a job you hate for--and most of those involve six figure salaries.
(And you meant "I hope they all die in traffic accidents". Plural on the last word.)
I'm aware that he is supposed to have super speed, but speed is best shown in film by slowing everyone else, not speeding the rate of one person up
What makes you say that?
Obscene rates of speed can be shown effectively either from normal-speed view or accellerated-speed view. A good example of this technique, in case it's slipping your mind, is The Matrix.
It's all about the character and the focus. It's almost always better to show your focus character always moving at a "normal" speed, save for the rare exception. (_Children of Dune_ has a few nice moments like this.)
To continue with my all-ready used Spider-man example I do notice that even gravity isn't obeyed in half the scenes. Taking into account a certain amount of 'push' force at a certain altitude, Peter Parker would not fly in the air at that angle. He failed to arc in half the scenes and it gets really unrealistic when he exerts minimal force in order to actually gain ground by 'swinging' upwards.
Which scenes are you talking about? Aside from the ones that were almost totally off-camera, his physics were as fine and dandy as they could be expected. (Well, save for a bit right at the end with the cable-car.)
Actually, the majority did support it.
And don't forget, the majority removed prohibition through an even clearer vehicle than the elected government.
The 21st amendment is the only amendment to the US. Constitution to be drafted through the "voter caucus" method.
I find it amazing that people complain about the lack of jobs and then turn around and do work that they should be charging for and give it away for gratis.
You're exactly right. But the OSS shift isn't from "pay for coding" to "give away all code." It's a shift of authorship from amoral corporations to communities of developers. You won't get paid to write code as much as you'll be paid to use computers to do a job.
We want to encourage these people!
Exactly. And "we" want to lower OSS's nucianse of adoption, so it's lower than most folk's nuciance level of ripping Microsoft off.
I thought people used Linux so they would not have to deal with the Windows horrid GUI?
Nope. People use Linux because they like the CLI, they like Free Software, they like Open Source, they Hate Microsoft, or they're just Cheap Ethical Bastards.
Very, very few people use Linux becaues they think that it's got a better GUI than Windows.
The easiest answer is to have a standby shuttle
Actually, the BEST answer would be to have a system wherein the shuttle can be sent supplies, thus extending their stay indefinitly.
"What? You mean that we can't get the next shuttle up for at least a month? Prep four weekly supply runs, then--no, wait, make it six, for safety."
But seriously, the world really doesn't need more pointless, unenforceable laws regulating what adults can do by themselves (or with a loved one, as the case occasionally is) in the privacy of their own homes.
But that's just it. I specifically didn't say "ownership" or "private viewing."
If Utah doesn't like porn, they should just ban cable companies, magazines, et cetera from selling or promoting porn within Utah. Those who really want it will travel across state lines to get it. (The only bug here would be a company not in Utah mailing porno into the state--which should be legal anyway, as it falls back into "in the privacy of their own home" bit.)
And as for promotion--file this between "blocking spam" and "writing traffic tickets" in priority.
I do realize we're talking about Utah here, so something like that is unfortunately the sort of thing that could happen, but don't even those who are so obsessed with sex that they feel the need to attempt to erase any reference to its existence from their reality realize that law enforcement resources are better used hunting down murderers, rapists, and kidnappers of young girls than ordinary people who've been classified as "criminals" simply because somebody else has a serious hang-up about all things sexual?
Actually, I'm a great big fan of sex--but I don't want any mention of it except from those that I'm engaging in it with, or whom I engage in conversation with it over. And doing things that are against the law doesn't automatically make you a "criminal"--some laws are simply codes, and could result in a traffic-court like fine or a FCC-like de-licensing.
Separating the two is obviously a problem wherever you are given all of the porn that surprises you as unsolicited email. However, you have to understand the obsession that people here in Utah have with porn. Until just a couple of months ago, we (Utah citizens) were paying a "porn czar" six figures to fight porn in the state when she had no real defined objective, yet in terms of per capita consumption, Utah county has the highest rate of cable porn subscription in the nation. This is in direct opposition to the majority religion's stance on the subject and a bit of a difficulty for them given Utah counties large percentage of LDS church members.
Okay, call me silly--but why don't they just outlaw porn?
The same arguments for restricting topless bars, cigarettes, prostitution, et cetera should work for stopping the transmission, creation, or solicitation for sale of pornography in Utah.
It's called economics, do they make enough money on those copies of WinXXX to justify
Hey, this is _Microsoft_ we're talking about--the company who has the bulk of their products lose money and be supported by Windows + Office.
VPC is a windows-seller, and if they can make money off of it, then they're going to keep selling it.
(The question is, really, if the not-bundled-with-windows version will suddenly be twice as expensive as the bundled-with-windows version.)
Whether it is legal or not, I do not feel that it is ethical, and may leave the company if I am pushed to do this.
Talk to the company lawyers, your own lawyer, and your boss's boss. Don't Ask Slashdot.
Facts are not copyrightable. Airfares are facts. There was a big case between the bells and 3rd party phonebook makers where this was determined to be the case.
Apparantly, that's the FEIST case from 1996.
See this document from the LOC and scroll down to section C.
If a chineese restaurant listing can be copyrightable, so can airfares on a website.
Of course, to be pendantic, the more important (IMO) aspect of this case is EULAs for web sites.
IANAL,YMMV,BYOLA.
From the article:
"XML and Web services use, especially for content-driven applications, is still very much limited to basic use of XML as a data-exchange mechanism between systems -- primarily for internal integration approaches," he said. "When dealing with exchanging information internally, what is most important is not to bundle all collaborative features into making for a huge, cumbersome XML file that only certain applications can process, but rather to strip out all the presentation layer features and focus on just the data to be exchanged. In this case, I don't see how Microsoft is violating that. You can choose to save a document with all the rich presentation data left in, if you choose (and that data will only be processable by Office applications), or you can choose to save the XML with just the data in it. I don't see how that cripples anything."
If MS is doing XML right, an XML export from word will only mark the text file with the necessary handles to bind to the formatting file. If you open the text file without the formatting file, you get rather plain text.
The same thing happened with MSHTML. Yes, it's got a lot of proprietary comments in it (the "" tags), but the CSS and formatting designations are as standard as the crude hacks and random idosyncracies that a human web designer may do.
Plus, it's only an "early beta." I hope that the authors of the article send their comments to MS, so MS can expand on what their XML exports can do.
Businesses charge the exact amount that will earn them the most profit
You mean "that they think will get them the most profit." Businesses are hardly universally correct.
How much they lose in theft is completely irrelevant.
No more or less irrelevant than the cost the goods that they're selling, their taxes, their rent, and how much they have to pay their employees.
Shrinkage--be it from theft or simple destruction of goods--is an expense, and every expense changes the location of the "sweet spot" which maximizes profits.
Again, i'm not saying stealing is OK; i'm saying that the whole "Our prices are high because of thieves" is a load of crap. Its one of those corporate lies.
Like most "big lies", it's not. It's an exaggeration, but not a lie.
And, for the record, I don't recall RIAA ever saying "our prices are high because of theft." I've heard "copyright piracy is costing us money" and "our prices are high because we lose a lot of money", but the second statement has always been more about failed bands than theft.
I am not saying that stealing is somehow moral. However, the idea that it has any effect on prices is simply hogwash. Businesses charge what the public is willing to pay, not what they have to.
Businesses charge what gets them the most profit. If thefts go up, they increase costs to cover the lost sales--and if thefts drop and sales drop faster, they lower prices to get the profit margin back.
There is always someone who will buy something for any price point,but the slimmer the margin, the more people buy it. The game in business is finding the sweet spot where you get the most profit from the right sales volume / margin markup ratio. Shrinkage does throw this off, and you're a fool to think that it doesn't.
Once we can perfectly replicate the functionality of every last bit of the brain, do we just have a really nifty toy, or a genuine mind?
Depends.
If they work together perfectly, then we'll have a true artificial brain (which is different from "AI" as it's commonly thought of. No software here.)
If they DON'T work together, but each part works seperately--well, then we'll know that something's missing.
Your question is sort of like "if we could turn lead into gold, would it really be gold?" It's a non-question. A perfect duplicate is a perfect duplicate--if it works, it's a mind, and if it doesn't work, it's not perfect.
Unless, as granddaddy poster said, there's a hydrogen mine somewhere, it's not the same thing at all.
That seems to be the allegation, actually. The whole "hydrogen economy" is just a way to get better effiency out of our current power sources unless there are untapped sources of hydrogen.
And, AFAIK, hydrogen is currently produced as a waste gas in a few industrial processes.
What's next? Uncoupling the calculator? The start button? Command prompt?
Oddly enough, those three are prime candidates for replacement. It's easy enough to replace the windows calc, there are still tons of explorer (start menu/taskbar) replacements, and as for the command prompt--IIRC, some of the more popular UNIX shells have been ported to Windows, either by themselves or with CYGWIN.
But despite all this--I can't replace IEHTML with Gecko.
I want to be able to control the piece of text you copied-n-pasted from the e-mail I wrote to you yesterday. The only way this can happen is if I can trust your computer.
In order for that to work, in any DRM scheme I've seen, you'd need to send the e-mail in DRM proprietary format that I would need to accept. If I didn't want to accept it, I could just not read your e-mail.
You have total control over your computer--"Trusted Computing" just enforces the decisions you make on it.
The plain simple fact is that technology has now made it possible to cheaply copy bits to anyone on the planet. Business models need to adapt. I'm not suggesting stealing. Business models have had to adapt to technology before. You can't make the technology go away. DRM as I understand it is simply evil. The motion picture industry adapted to the VCR, even though they feared it would be their death.
The motion picture industry adapted to the VCR because the VCR is a lossy copy mechanism, and "home movies" were a new revenue model for them. At no point did it become trivial to undercut what they offered. And, more importantly, at no point did the copyright law get fundamentally altered to squash or encourage the use of VCRs. There are, in fact, several court cases explaining copyright and exactly how it applies to VCRs.
The thing about the 'net is that isn't not just business models that you want to change--it's the law. No contract keeps me from buying a $20 CD, making a hundred copies, and selling them to people willing to pay $5 for a CDR with no liner notes. But the copyright law that establishes who has the right to make copies of any work does.
I'm all for a new copyright model--see my journal for details--but it should be done in the proper democratic fashion, not by geeks who have all the moral authority of thugs on the street. ("Hey, the technology exists for us to take the gold from that train--the business should just adapt to that fact.")
If your point was that the content providers are free to ignore technology and that people want music on their computers, pocket mp3 players, etc., then yes indeed, they are free to dig their head in the sand.
No, not the "content providers." The "copyright holders" will pick and choose whatever medium they want--but they're not the only ones who get a choice.
You can pick what art you support and what you don't, and very likely you'll be able to pick what media you use too. THAT's the important choice--if the merchants of music, movies, and art don't find a market to sell their wares, then they'll be forced to find another.
You asked how DRM could be used for good. I answered. Now, tell me why DRM is "evil."
Please enlighten me. What good will DRM be used for?
The same good that cameras in stores are used for. Heck, the same good that signatures and contracts are used for.
DRM will provide an enforcement mechanism for online transactions. Napster proved, above all else, that the current 'net will lead to online file transactions leaking like a sive.(?) If you don't like it--well, merchants still take cash, you can still get by without a car in the cities, and no one forces you to get a PC or a car.
In other words, whenever a new technology rolls out, those that don't want to embrace it can happily not embrace it for as long as they care to. This is what we call "freedom."
And in the specific case of movies, books, and music--don't expect online to replace retail and public peformance anytime soon. Even if we move to an "online-default" state, there will still be shopping centers that will take cash for physical tokens that play in dedicated music systems--also known as "stereos".
To me, that sounds like direct genetic manipulation.
That's correcting a genetic disease. Hardly noteworthy when it comes to evolution.
What the hell was Scotty thiking?
The Enterprise would be a physical object, not an abstract theory. Anthromorphising ships is a long tradition--Anthromorphising scientific concepts is nothing more than a bad teaching method.
(And it's not "persontifcation"! Learn how to use the big words, or stop using them!)
We can directly modify our genes.
In point of fact: we cannot. The best we can do is, depending on your point of view, mix some human genes to hope to correct a disease, or be concious of our descendents. Theorteically we could "breed" ourselves the way we do animals--but AFAIK, even distinct breeds are still genetically the same species.
However, I do object to your objection to my personification of evolution for the sake of description. I think its a valid literary tool.
Anthromorphism is a valid teaching tool, but that doesn't mean that it's appropriate how you used it.
Evolution is not only not a sentient thing, it's not even a thing. The active player in all evolutionary events are the creatures that adapt the best; if you "personify" evolution, you create more abstraction than necessary to express an opinion or teach the theory or the principle.
Yeah, I just realised I completely misinterpreted your post.
S'all right.
he shouldn't be used as an excuse to go to or not go to war.
You're right. He (and all other religions) should be used only to require a moral and ethical behavior in War.
However, I do not believe that the only way to correct these problems is to continue acting imperially.
Neither do I. But it would be irresponsible to not do anything.