Similarly we are charged admission to go to the movies. Imagine if we had to sit through ads for snacks from the lobbies or upcomming movies, let alone dotcom and Mountain Dew ads, after plunking down $8.00 for a ticket to see the movie! What sane man wouldn't demand a refund from the manager and say "Good day" to that theater?
This gave me a bit of a shock.. do you really have no ads in your cinemans in the US? Here in Australia I pay much the same as you do (in $AU) to get in, and there are generally about 10-15 minutes of ads before a movie starts. Then there are the trailers for upcoming movies, which I don't mind so much.
When Lord of the Rings came out, there were 25 minutes of ads before the film actually started. I considered complaining to the manager, but I didn't.. there were more than I expected, but ads of themselves are the norm.
Can people reply back telling me if they have ads before their movies, and what country / cinema chain it is? It woudl be interesting to find out if this is a very commmon thing.. and can someone verify that you don't have ads before a movie in the US?
Since they banned guns thei [Australia's] crime rate has steadily risen. Good job!
No. No, no, no.
I hear this way too often from Americans. As I understand it, this is something your gun lobby claims? Either way, it is false. In fact, it's something that really pisses me off: the fact this is passes off as true in your country (we hear about this occasionally Down Under and lauigh our heads off, or sigh, at the fact you could beleive it and that your gun lobby is allowed to put this in advertisements and no-one tries to stop them for lying) is incredible, and the fact that a blatant troll like yours is marked +4 is even worse.
I am an Australian citizen. Our crime rate - especially our violent crime (murder etc) rate - has fallen since the introduction of these laws.
Please, find out for yourself, don't just go believing what your US pro-gun lobby tells you. The important thing to remember is that our laws don't stop people from owning guns, they stop you owning (for example) a sub-machine gun if you don't need a sub-machine gun. If you do... you can get it. Although, when you get down to it, there really aren't many uses for one of those apart from killing lots and lots of people.
However, the point of this is: the statement the parent made is false. I find it hard to believe there are people who accept a statement like that as true (hey, if you don't believe what I'm saying, go research it yourself), and especially that it got modded up to +4.
OK. Just a few thoughts. I use my computer for a lot of graphics work and although I am not a normal artist moving to using a computer (as this person seems to be) there are a few things I think you should consider that your post doesn't really touch on.
Macs
I countered that the lousiest new iMac would cost $999
[True, yes] and the reason why "all the other artists" use them is because of brand loyalty.
No. IANAMOA (Mac-owning artist) but I do know that Macs are still superior graphic-wise. Their CPUs handle that sort of thing a lot better (find out about the vector subsets in the G3s and G4s)... and even if you counter by saying Apple's benchmarks are made using Photoshop because of all the optimisations Photoshop has built in... that's kind of the point.
I admit I don't know a great deal about Macs but there have been several other discussions about Mac vs PC over the past few months (unfortunately I haven't bookmarked any) - try and find them. Go look on graphic websites and do some research about the sort of computers these professionals use - somehow while slashdot is prabablya good place to ask about free software, it's probably not a good place to find out about what software you're going to need.
Consider your friend's requirements in a non-free-software-only light
Somehow I get the idea you don't know a great deal about using / creating graphics on a computer, and that this friend of yours has asked you to buy this computer because you know about computers, not because you know about computers and are also an artist.
...eg, Photoshop vs the Gimp
Few computer-using artists that I know would not use Photoshop. Many use other programs in addition, of course, but none would ever not use Photoshop. Sound like a blanket statement? Your friend probably has other artist friends that use computers - ask them. Or go look on the net - like I said before, I don't think/. is really the place to go for advice about what software to buy for an artist.
What I can say is that the Gimp will probably not do. I like the Gimp and I applaud the efforts of those making it. However, when you get down to the base of things, the Gimp simply doesn't have all the functionality of Photoshop. It is also a lot harder to use. This friend of yours sounds like a newbie as far as computers go: I really don't think that a Linux (or even Windows) computer running the Gimp is going to be suitable. Even running Windows, just the differences in the gui might be off-putting. It's colour support isn't too good either (as in the various ways it represents colour, rgb, cmyk and other, bits per channel... etc). Also (I don't know, but it just occurred to me you should check) does the Gimp have scanner support? From memory, I don't think so.
Other things she might need that might not fit into $1000
Another thing you might not have considered is a scanner or a printer. Is the artist going to distribute her work purely electronically? Will she want to have a photo-quality printer?
And, how is she going to get her hand-done work onto the computer? It sounds like she is an artist who is moving to using a computer, so she has, and probably will, use normal non-electronic methods for the actual drawing. You're going to have to get these onto the computer somehow. You haven't mentioned anything in your post that wasn't about software; but hardware like is also something to consider.
Rethink it...
So, investigate Macs. You could get a second-hand mac for less than a new one:) There's nothing wrong with a G3 except that it's old... like a P3 450 in the PC world. Go for a good, reasonably-priced but not cutting-edge computer, that she'll be able to use without being forced to pay for something she can manage without.
I also think that Photoshop is a must. Investigate second-hand copies, or student software (are you a student? Is your friend?)
And don't forget hardware like scanners etc as well. Somehow I think you're going to have a bit of trouble fitting this into $1000... $1500 maybe though.
I don't think/. is the place for finding out what you're going to have to buy. I think you should do some research on art sites and that kind of thing as well. Don't approach this from the perspective that free software will do just as well as commercial. That may be true for other areas like office apps, etc, but it is not true for graphics.
If you're using MS Visual C++ this is fine, but other compilers probably don't have the headers that define these values (if they're older than mid-1999 or so). I have this problem, I have to manually find the function in user32.dll and define the WS_EX_LAYERED constant myself. You'll need a bit more detail than is in the parent post to be able to use in your programs.
The function can also let you create a window with one colour completely transparent. This makes an effect similar to SetWindowRgn() but it's a lot simpler.
If you want to use this function in your programs and your compiler doesn't know the function exists, it's fairly simple - just do this:
Define constants:
WS_EX_LAYERED = $80000;// extended window value
LWA_COLORKEY = 1;// One colour completely transparent
LWA_ALPHA = 2;// Or the whole form with 256 shades of transparency.
The function is of type:
function(hWnd : HWnd; Color : DWord; Trans : Byte; TransType : DWord) : DWord; stdcall;
and you need to extract it from user32.dll. Do this however you do in your favorite language.
Call SetWindowLong(HWnd, GWL_EXSTYLE, GetWindowLong(HWnd, GWL_EXSTYLE) or WS_EX_LAYERED) where HWnd is the handle of the window you want to change. This tells Windows it's a window that can have alpha transparency.
Once you've got it and assigned it to your own function called SetLayeredWindowAttributes you can call it like this:
SetLayeredWindowAttributes(HWnd, 0, 128, LWA_ALPHA) which will set it half transparent (0-255, here it's 128) or SetLayeredWindowAttributes(hWnd, clLime, 0, LWA_COLORKEY) which sets all regions of the window (and its subwindows or controls) that are Lime (just use any normal colour variable) to completely transparent.
Only Win2K, ME and XP support this. Just try getting the function from user32.dll and if it returns null you know it doens't support it:)
For more info, see www.nowherereal.com (yes, shameless plug:) Sorry.)
Why is this comment moderated as 'Funny'? Perhaps it's because of the 30 seconds vs 10 minutes thing. Don't you believe him?
I'm a Delphi developer. Yes, this is very, very believable. I simply don't understand all the Delphi-bashing that goes on; I know of no technical reason whatsoever to use C++ over Object Pascal, and I can tell you that from a programmer's perpective it's a hell of a lot cleaner and nicer to use. It's also just as powerful, more so in some cases, and compiles instantly. For any normal application it's finished compiling before you brain has sent the message to pull your finger off the 'Build' button. I'm serious.
And yes, I know it's Object Pascal. It's a pity it's named that, Pascal has a stigma attached to it that really shouldn't apply to Delphi. Borland's Pascal is quite different to the Pascal you may have played with years ago. It has similar syntax in many cases, but it's been radically changed as far as actually writing code with it. It's the cleanest, purest, most powerful and easiest-to-use language I've ever used, and I have used Basic (don't ask), C, C++ and Java.
Not to sound like a zealot or anything, but before you see statistics like these and scoff, or see the word Pascal and look away, please investigate it for yourself.
He retired a few years back. He had to produce a new strip much too often for his comfort, he was running out of things to put in them and the company that owned Calvin and Hobbes' rights (yes, comic strip authors are screwed just as much as book authors are) wasn't giving him enough money from his effort to make it worth it to him.
Everything in the kernel, particularly video drivers and GUI. That's a bad design. PC video hardware is too crappy to stake your OSes reliability on them or the video drivers.
This is true. A little (slightly OT) note for whoever's interested: one of the issues in the breakup between Microsoft and IBM back in the days of OS-2 (apart from the fact that M$ wanted to screw IBM) was that the IBM engineers objected to the MS design of implementing UI features in the kernel(s). Stability is a lot better now in Win2K, but if some of you who've used nt ever traced the source of some of your blue screens, you might have noticed that a lot of them were caused by errors in the kernel graphics subsystem.
No. I would agree if it weren't for one thing: this information is being collected without the person's permission.
Now while I agree that it benefits both the corporation and the person if the person knows whether he/she is genetically pre-disposed to carpal tunnel syndrome, that should only happen if the employee voluntarily takes the test. They aren't.
That's why it's wrong, because it's done without permission and that's a violation of privacy.
And if you want to read more about DNA and violations of privacy, read any of the slashdot articles that talk about it. I'm not going to re-post information here.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and you haven't seen absolute power until you've seen a centralized system you HAVE to use.
And you think you don't have to use ICANN? I know there are other TLD providers out there (and a dozen posts about them here on/) but if you want a domain name the rest of the world can see, you have to go through ICANN.
That looks like a system you have to use to me.
Don't fall into the trap of 'it hasn't happened, so it won't happen' or 'something like that could never happen!' because in both cases, you'll be wrong.
Also a few people have been saying that the UN is really the world's first regulatory body.
There's one big difference between the UN and ICANN: one is worried about national-level politics, and wars, and diplomacy, and laws, and other problems... ICANN is essentially about regulating the information you have access to.
Mod this up! It's important people realise stuff like this, instead of just assuming things won't happen...
So what happens as the kids grow up?
1). This will start the nature vs nurture crowd going again - here you have someone growing up who is genetically identical to someone 30 years older - but in a very different environment. "parents [...] expect their kids to be just like them. [...] Kids need their own identity." (From previous post). This expectation will be greatly increased if the child actaully is just like them. So what do you think the effect's going to be if the child doesn't develop the same way?
2. How are the parents going to decide who's going to be cloned? Maybe they'll clone both of them, have a matched pair - this is a logical solution. So, what if you have a situation where both parents were cloned? Would the son and daughter would grow up feeling they were matched for each other... would they marry? How would they feel about having other boy/girlfriends?
3. Just because the parent didn't have a particular disease / condition doesn't mean the child won't. Some disorders are genetically encoded as 'likelihoods' - ie, the set of genes might have a 25% chance of having a heart disease, etc. (Seen Gattaca? That touched on this.) Also, a lot of problems are caused by external (non-genetic) causes, such as accidents and diseases (just because dad didn't get disease x doesn't mean jr won't). How would you, as a parent, feel if your baby clone was dropped on his/her head and developed severe brain damage?
4. As the child, how would you feel knowing you were just like your dad / mum? A lot of people see defects in their parents and think, "I hope I won't be like that'. So how would the child feel if he/she was actually just like their parent?
5. And I can see a lot of children being ostracised because of this. Just imagine:
Cloned Son: OK Mary, this is Mum, and this is Dad.
...and later... Mary: Gee, your dad's weird, isn't he?
Cloned Son: (fill in your own reply here).
Compare: The ruins of the two cities lay virtually undisturbed 30 feet beneath the surface of the bay, covered by three feet of silt and sand until a French underwater archaeologist named Franck Goddio first began probing their stones and recovering their gold nearly five years ago. (my bold) to:
Ruins of 2 Ancient Egyptian Cities Found
This title is wildly inaccurate - can't you either change it or read the article before you post it? After all, it's late at night here, and it wouldn't hurt you much to read the article first...
I think I should point out, they haven't actually discovered these two cities, they have just found some amazing artifacts in them. This is quite different from discovering two ancient Egyptian cities at one time - a very unlikely event and one which would get many more news networks humming. This is a 'news-filler' article - ie it's an ongoing thing and they could have presented the news article at any time.
When I posted this, there were only two articles there. Maybe it's not too late to change the title? I suggest something about artifacts recovered from buried Egyptian cities shedding light on the cities' destruction, or something. If you'd read the article before posting the story you'd see very similar stuff written there.
Please/. (and this is a genuine comment, not a troll) please try reading the articles before posting. At this time of night not too many people are going to miss it if you spend five extra minutes reading first...
Seven billion light years? uh, that means that even travelling at the speed of light, it was launched seven billion years ago.
NowI understand why it's NASA's oldest spacecraft...
"Chances are if this happened somewhere less liberal..."
OK. Where else exactly could this have happened? I don't know if people in the USA realise it, but their culture is surprisingly different from other "western" cultures.
I live in Australia. We are a "western" culture. We do not have homecomings (which I had never heard of before this article!), cheerleaders, proms, etc. But even if we did, something like this would not occur. The guy might get blasted by his teachers for doing this (and it's quite reasonable for them to get annoyed) but there is no way that he would get suspended.
The point is that you (this is not a personal attack, I mean "you" as in all other American citizens) should look at yourselves and your country's society. For a so-called "civilised" country, you have an amazingly high murder rate, your political system is flawed (no matter how many people actually stand for the presidency, do you really think that someone other than the nominees of your two parties is going to get elected?) your public figures publically immoral (Clinton can do whatever he likes... the problem is that that lawyer guy, I've forgotten his name now, made it public) your anti-gun-control lobby make advertisments that blatantly lie (there were some a while ago that stated that australia had a much higher gun crime rate or something... very untrue, our gun-related crime rate has dropped incredibly since our new gun laws), etc. I don't mean to rant. I'm just saying that the America you think you live in and the America you really live in are very different things. Does this, where a kid gets suspended for publicly (well, within the school community) making a non-violent, polite statement, really typify your society?
"Go down to God Fearin Amurrcan Heartland and there is a better than average chance the kid's house would've had some windows broken or worse and mom & dad could've caught some shit at work for not raisin' em up raht." My god. Do you realise what this really means about your society?
This wasn't meant to be a rant, just a few observations on US society and how this particular occurrence should not surprise people at all.
"Ford," he said [Arthur Dent]. "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."
OK, well let's assume for a moment that the above poster is correct and that the source code has been changed, to include a trojan or something (and yes, that does make a lot of sense). The nest thing to think of is, if you had access to the source code, what would you do with it and what changes would you make to it?
Here's what I would do (and if they really had access for three months, here's what I think they could have done):
1. Windows ME was only released a month or so ago. If they had access to the source before this time, what guarantee have we got that ME does not contain a trojan? Same goes for IE 5.5, etc.
2. Critical Updates. There have been quite a few of these lately, for 98, Me and 2k, and even Office. What better way of installing a trojan on someone's computer is there than patching a trojan into one of these updates?
3. Wouldn't you love to get hold of the source code to any version of windows? I would. What do you want to bet that the source to, say, 98 or 2k pro appears somewhere on the net soon?
Just a few ideas... any comments?
From someone who lives in Tassie...
on
TigerCloning
·
· Score: 1
I live in Tasmania, near Hobart to be precise which is where the museum that most of the dna they are using comes from. I have to point out a few of the inaccuracies that have been posted here:
First, no-one actually knows if thylacines are actually extinct. Although they are classified as extinct by the state government, over the years there have been several
hundred 'sightings'. This includes dozens by trustable people, including park rangers, magistrates, etc.
Second, some people have been saying 'wow, this will casue a major ethical debate'. No, sorry folks, in the six months since the project was first proposed very few people have been asking ethical questions. The main debate is, 'will they be able to extract enough viable dna?'
Third, the article makes it seem as though this is a new thing that has just been announced. It isn't. It was proposed six months or so ago, and was actually started a couple of months back now.
Fourth, people have been making comments about how stupid it is to recreate a predator that could attack humans. Tassie tigers were still alive up until the 1930's (the last known one died in 1930-something, I can't remember the exact date) and in all that time as far as I know not a single person was ever killed by a tassie tiger. Not even a child. Thylacines are very shy creatures and avoided people (which may be one of the reasons why none have been caught recently). The reason they were being killed in the first place was because sheep were killed and eaten by them, and that was only happening because the land that they used to live in were being taken over by farms. Like I said above, there are still reliable reports that they still exist, and every one of these have come from areas where there are no farms and no people apart from bushwalkers.
Lastly, it's Tasmania, not Tanzania or Tazmania or anything; the correct abbreviation is
'Tassie'. (Also Tassie devils are nothing like Warner Bros' Taz). Tasmania is an island state at the south of Australia. It has a lot of rainforest wilderness with trees that are up to two thousand years old. It is the world's only source of huon pine. There are no large predators, not even foxes. Valleys where only one or two people have ever gone are common. Don't knock it, OK? It's more than most people have ever dreamed of, especially in the USA.
Moderate this up! It contains relevant and useful information.
Slashdot Mirror
This gave me a bit of a shock.. do you really have no ads in your cinemans in the US? Here in Australia I pay much the same as you do (in $AU) to get in, and there are generally about 10-15 minutes of ads before a movie starts. Then there are the trailers for upcoming movies, which I don't mind so much.
When Lord of the Rings came out, there were 25 minutes of ads before the film actually started. I considered complaining to the manager, but I didn't.. there were more than I expected, but ads of themselves are the norm.
Can people reply back telling me if they have ads before their movies, and what country / cinema chain it is? It woudl be interesting to find out if this is a very commmon thing.. and can someone verify that you don't have ads before a movie in the US?
No. No, no, no.
I hear this way too often from Americans. As I understand it, this is something your gun lobby claims? Either way, it is false. In fact, it's something that really pisses me off: the fact this is passes off as true in your country (we hear about this occasionally Down Under and lauigh our heads off, or sigh, at the fact you could beleive it and that your gun lobby is allowed to put this in advertisements and no-one tries to stop them for lying) is incredible, and the fact that a blatant troll like yours is marked +4 is even worse.
I am an Australian citizen. Our crime rate - especially our violent crime (murder etc) rate - has fallen since the introduction of these laws.
Please, find out for yourself, don't just go believing what your US pro-gun lobby tells you. The important thing to remember is that our laws don't stop people from owning guns, they stop you owning (for example) a sub-machine gun if you don't need a sub-machine gun. If you do... you can get it. Although, when you get down to it, there really aren't many uses for one of those apart from killing lots and lots of people.
However, the point of this is: the statement the parent made is false. I find it hard to believe there are people who accept a statement like that as true (hey, if you don't believe what I'm saying, go research it yourself), and especially that it got modded up to +4.
Macs
I countered that the lousiest new iMac would cost $999
[True, yes] and the reason why "all the other artists" use them is because of brand loyalty.
No. IANAMOA (Mac-owning artist) but I do know that Macs are still superior graphic-wise. Their CPUs handle that sort of thing a lot better (find out about the vector subsets in the G3s and G4s)... and even if you counter by saying Apple's benchmarks are made using Photoshop because of all the optimisations Photoshop has built in... that's kind of the point.
I admit I don't know a great deal about Macs but there have been several other discussions about Mac vs PC over the past few months (unfortunately I haven't bookmarked any) - try and find them. Go look on graphic websites and do some research about the sort of computers these professionals use - somehow while slashdot is prabablya good place to ask about free software, it's probably not a good place to find out about what software you're going to need.
Consider your friend's requirements in a non-free-software-only light
Somehow I get the idea you don't know a great deal about using / creating graphics on a computer, and that this friend of yours has asked you to buy this computer because you know about computers, not because you know about computers and are also an artist.
Few computer-using artists that I know would not use Photoshop. Many use other programs in addition, of course, but none would ever not use Photoshop. Sound like a blanket statement? Your friend probably has other artist friends that use computers - ask them. Or go look on the net - like I said before, I don't think
What I can say is that the Gimp will probably not do. I like the Gimp and I applaud the efforts of those making it. However, when you get down to the base of things, the Gimp simply doesn't have all the functionality of Photoshop. It is also a lot harder to use. This friend of yours sounds like a newbie as far as computers go: I really don't think that a Linux (or even Windows) computer running the Gimp is going to be suitable. Even running Windows, just the differences in the gui might be off-putting. It's colour support isn't too good either (as in the various ways it represents colour, rgb, cmyk and other, bits per channel... etc). Also (I don't know, but it just occurred to me you should check) does the Gimp have scanner support? From memory, I don't think so.
Other things she might need that might not fit into $1000
Another thing you might not have considered is a scanner or a printer. Is the artist going to distribute her work purely electronically? Will she want to have a photo-quality printer?
And, how is she going to get her hand-done work onto the computer? It sounds like she is an artist who is moving to using a computer, so she has, and probably will, use normal non-electronic methods for the actual drawing. You're going to have to get these onto the computer somehow. You haven't mentioned anything in your post that wasn't about software; but hardware like is also something to consider.
Rethink it...
:) There's nothing wrong with a G3 except that it's old... like a P3 450 in the PC world. Go for a good, reasonably-priced but not cutting-edge computer, that she'll be able to use without being forced to pay for something she can manage without.
/. is the place for finding out what you're going to have to buy. I think you should do some research on art sites and that kind of thing as well. Don't approach this from the perspective that free software will do just as well as commercial. That may be true for other areas like office apps, etc, but it is not true for graphics.
So, investigate Macs. You could get a second-hand mac for less than a new one
I also think that Photoshop is a must. Investigate second-hand copies, or student software (are you a student? Is your friend?)
And don't forget hardware like scanners etc as well. Somehow I think you're going to have a bit of trouble fitting this into $1000... $1500 maybe though.
I don't think
Good luck.
If you're using MS Visual C++ this is fine, but other compilers probably don't have the headers that define these values (if they're older than mid-1999 or so). I have this problem, I have to manually find the function in user32.dll and define the WS_EX_LAYERED constant myself. You'll need a bit more detail than is in the parent post to be able to use in your programs.
// extended window value
// One colour completely transparent
// Or the whole form with 256 shades of transparency.
:)
:) Sorry.)
The function can also let you create a window with one colour completely transparent. This makes an effect similar to SetWindowRgn() but it's a lot simpler.
If you want to use this function in your programs and your compiler doesn't know the function exists, it's fairly simple - just do this:
Define constants:
WS_EX_LAYERED = $80000;
LWA_COLORKEY = 1;
LWA_ALPHA = 2;
The function is of type:
function(hWnd : HWnd; Color : DWord; Trans : Byte; TransType : DWord) : DWord; stdcall;
and you need to extract it from user32.dll. Do this however you do in your favorite language.
Call SetWindowLong(HWnd, GWL_EXSTYLE, GetWindowLong(HWnd, GWL_EXSTYLE) or WS_EX_LAYERED) where HWnd is the handle of the window you want to change. This tells Windows it's a window that can have alpha transparency.
Once you've got it and assigned it to your own function called SetLayeredWindowAttributes you can call it like this:
SetLayeredWindowAttributes(HWnd, 0, 128, LWA_ALPHA) which will set it half transparent (0-255, here it's 128) or SetLayeredWindowAttributes(hWnd, clLime, 0, LWA_COLORKEY) which sets all regions of the window (and its subwindows or controls) that are Lime (just use any normal colour variable) to completely transparent.
Only Win2K, ME and XP support this. Just try getting the function from user32.dll and if it returns null you know it doens't support it
For more info, see www.nowherereal.com (yes, shameless plug
I'm a Delphi developer. Yes, this is very, very believable. I simply don't understand all the Delphi-bashing that goes on; I know of no technical reason whatsoever to use C++ over Object Pascal, and I can tell you that from a programmer's perpective it's a hell of a lot cleaner and nicer to use. It's also just as powerful, more so in some cases, and compiles instantly. For any normal application it's finished compiling before you brain has sent the message to pull your finger off the 'Build' button. I'm serious.
And yes, I know it's Object Pascal. It's a pity it's named that, Pascal has a stigma attached to it that really shouldn't apply to Delphi. Borland's Pascal is quite different to the Pascal you may have played with years ago. It has similar syntax in many cases, but it's been radically changed as far as actually writing code with it. It's the cleanest, purest, most powerful and easiest-to-use language I've ever used, and I have used Basic (don't ask), C, C++ and Java.
Not to sound like a zealot or anything, but before you see statistics like these and scoff, or see the word Pascal and look away, please investigate it for yourself.
He retired a few years back. He had to produce a new strip much too often for his comfort, he was running out of things to put in them and the company that owned Calvin and Hobbes' rights (yes, comic strip authors are screwed just as much as book authors are) wasn't giving him enough money from his effort to make it worth it to him.
This is true. A little (slightly OT) note for whoever's interested: one of the issues in the breakup between Microsoft and IBM back in the days of OS-2 (apart from the fact that M$ wanted to screw IBM) was that the IBM engineers objected to the MS design of implementing UI features in the kernel(s). Stability is a lot better now in Win2K, but if some of you who've used nt ever traced the source of some of your blue screens, you might have noticed that a lot of them were caused by errors in the kernel graphics subsystem.
Now while I agree that it benefits both the corporation and the person if the person knows whether he/she is genetically pre-disposed to carpal tunnel syndrome, that should only happen if the employee voluntarily takes the test. They aren't.
That's why it's wrong, because it's done without permission and that's a violation of privacy.
And if you want to read more about DNA and violations of privacy, read any of the slashdot articles that talk about it. I'm not going to re-post information here.
And you think you don't have to use ICANN? I know there are other TLD providers out there (and a dozen posts about them here on /) but if you want a domain name the rest of the world can see, you have to go through ICANN.
That looks like a system you have to use to me.
Don't fall into the trap of 'it hasn't happened, so it won't happen' or 'something like that could never happen!' because in both cases, you'll be wrong.
Also a few people have been saying that the UN is really the world's first regulatory body.
There's one big difference between the UN and ICANN: one is worried about national-level politics, and wars, and diplomacy, and laws, and other problems... ICANN is essentially about regulating the information you have access to.
Mod this up! It's important people realise stuff like this, instead of just assuming things won't happen...
So what happens as the kids grow up?
1). This will start the nature vs nurture crowd going again - here you have someone growing up who is genetically identical to someone 30 years older - but in a very different environment. "parents [...] expect their kids to be just like them. [...] Kids need their own identity." (From previous post). This expectation will be greatly increased if the child actaully is just like them. So what do you think the effect's going to be if the child doesn't develop the same way?
2. How are the parents going to decide who's going to be cloned? Maybe they'll clone both of them, have a matched pair - this is a logical solution. So, what if you have a situation where both parents were cloned? Would the son and daughter would grow up feeling they were matched for each other... would they marry? How would they feel about having other boy/girlfriends?
3. Just because the parent didn't have a particular disease / condition doesn't mean the child won't. Some disorders are genetically encoded as 'likelihoods' - ie, the set of genes might have a 25% chance of having a heart disease, etc. (Seen Gattaca? That touched on this.) Also, a lot of problems are caused by external (non-genetic) causes, such as accidents and diseases (just because dad didn't get disease x doesn't mean jr won't). How would you, as a parent, feel if your baby clone was dropped on his/her head and developed severe brain damage?
4. As the child, how would you feel knowing you were just like your dad / mum? A lot of people see defects in their parents and think, "I hope I won't be like that'. So how would the child feel if he/she was actually just like their parent?
5. And I can see a lot of children being ostracised because of this. Just imagine:
The ruins of the two cities lay virtually undisturbed 30 feet beneath the surface of the bay, covered by three feet of silt and sand until a French underwater archaeologist named Franck Goddio first began probing their stones and recovering their gold nearly five years ago.
(my bold) to: Ruins of 2 Ancient Egyptian Cities Found
This title is wildly inaccurate - can't you either change it or read the article before you post it? After all, it's late at night here, and it wouldn't hurt you much to read the article first...
When I posted this, there were only two articles there. Maybe it's not too late to change the title? I suggest something about artifacts recovered from buried Egyptian cities shedding light on the cities' destruction, or something. If you'd read the article before posting the story you'd see very similar stuff written there.
Please /. (and this is a genuine comment, not a troll) please try reading the articles before posting. At this time of night not too many people are going to miss it if you spend five extra minutes reading first...
Seven billion light years? uh, that means that even travelling at the speed of light, it was launched seven billion years ago.
NowI understand why it's NASA's oldest spacecraft...
OK. Where else exactly could this have happened? I don't know if people in the USA realise it, but their culture is surprisingly different from other "western" cultures.
I live in Australia. We are a "western" culture. We do not have homecomings (which I had never heard of before this article!), cheerleaders, proms, etc. But even if we did, something like this would not occur. The guy might get blasted by his teachers for doing this (and it's quite reasonable for them to get annoyed) but there is no way that he would get suspended.
The point is that you (this is not a personal attack, I mean "you" as in all other American citizens) should look at yourselves and your country's society. For a so-called "civilised" country, you have an amazingly high murder rate, your political system is flawed (no matter how many people actually stand for the presidency, do you really think that someone other than the nominees of your two parties is going to get elected?) your public figures publically immoral (Clinton can do whatever he likes... the problem is that that lawyer guy, I've forgotten his name now, made it public) your anti-gun-control lobby make advertisments that blatantly lie (there were some a while ago that stated that australia had a much higher gun crime rate or something... very untrue, our gun-related crime rate has dropped incredibly since our new gun laws), etc. I don't mean to rant. I'm just saying that the America you think you live in and the America you really live in are very different things. Does this, where a kid gets suspended for publicly (well, within the school community) making a non-violent, polite statement, really typify your society?
"Go down to God Fearin Amurrcan Heartland and there is a better than average chance the kid's house would've had some windows broken or worse and mom & dad could've caught some shit at work for not raisin' em up raht." My god. Do you realise what this really means about your society?
This wasn't meant to be a rant, just a few observations on US society and how this particular occurrence should not surprise people at all.
"Ford," he said [Arthur Dent]. "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."
Here's what I would do (and if they really had access for three months, here's what I think they could have done):
1. Windows ME was only released a month or so ago. If they had access to the source before this time, what guarantee have we got that ME does not contain a trojan? Same goes for IE 5.5, etc.
2. Critical Updates. There have been quite a few of these lately, for 98, Me and 2k, and even Office. What better way of installing a trojan on someone's computer is there than patching a trojan into one of these updates?
3. Wouldn't you love to get hold of the source code to any version of windows? I would. What do you want to bet that the source to, say, 98 or 2k pro appears somewhere on the net soon?
Just a few ideas... any comments?