On average, the male brain is bigger than the female brain. Is Einstein's brain proof that women are less intelligent? The fact that there have been so few female Einsteins seems to support this conjecture.
I reckon that it's more to do with the fact that, in Western society (and maybe others, but I'm no sociologist), women have been treated as second-class citizens for much of history, and only in very recent years has true equality begun to surface. Before this century, women were generally treated as unpaid cooks, domestic servants, nannies and whores. There have been a few exceptions, of course, but history has generally been dominated by men because men have exercised all the power. In past centuries, women were denied proper education. I think this has a lot to do with the apparent absence of female geniuses. Even in today's world of equality, men far outnumber women in the field of science. We have a long way to go before centuries of social conditioning are undone.
I keep hearing that a BSD license is BAD because it allows for 'code forking'.
Not so - among GPL supporters, the BSD license is considered bad because it allows for code changes to be made proprietary. The GPL allows forking too - if you don't like the way the Linux kernel is being developed, fork the source and make your own kernel. You must distribute your changes though, which the official dev team may or may not decide to roll back into the official code tree.
We need to get rid of the religious disillusions that obviously is still hindering science.
There are non-religious objectors to cloning as well. Maybe we should just remove all ethical questions from the mix and say "anything goes". After all, ethics just hinder science.
No - Religious beliefs are one kind of meme. I didn't mean that all memes are religious beliefs. It's the same as the way that ducks are birds, but not all birds are ducks.
I doubt many christians would buy into the idea that a clone is a human, simply because it "wasn't made by god."
OTOH, maybe some would say that it doesn't matter whether the person was conceived naturally or in a laboratory; it has the spark of life regardless, and that spark is bestowed upon it by God, no matter how the person originated. This seems similar to the IVF debate.
What with cows being used in cloning technology, and cows being used to build that nanotech railway (see previous Slashdot story), this week seems to be a really great week for cows. They seem to be sooo versatile. And they're edible. Cows rock. Is there anything you can't do with cows? Don't answer that.
Hackers are less likely do "do something about it" than, say, crackers, which is what you are probably thinking of.
Ah, but "doing something about it" might mean "use the Received: headers to trace the message, and complain to the ISP". Hackers/geeks/nerds are technically savvy enough to know how to do this. "Average users" may not be. Hence, hackers (in the Slashdot sense of the word) are a bad choice of people to spam.
someone got their hands on an internal/. mail list.
Not necessarily. I'm guessing they just used a random spam distro list. I should think that some people who don't even know what Slashdot is got this spam and are now rather confused. If they used a Slashdot mail list, surely everyone who reads Slashdot would have got the mail? I'm betting that only a small proportion of Slashdot regulars got spammed.
with the exception of the NeXT-logo T-shirt, I neither own nor wear any article of clothing with a logo on it.
A couple of months ago, the company I work for dished out polo shirts with the corporate logo on to everyone in my department. I gave mine to a charity shop. (Not so much over the corporate logo issue; more that polo shirts don't work well when worn under long-sleeved shirts).
This is probably heresy, but I hardly ever, if at all, wear short-sleeved shirts. I feel the cold noticibly; if the sun is blazing down (rare in this country, but hey), but there is a slight breeze, I'll feel chilly because of the breeze. Therefore, I almost always wear a long-sleeved shirt (denim or twill, no polyester or anything like that) with a breast pocket for my pens. Mind you, I often wear a T-shirt under the shirt, but that's no way to show off a cool Slashdot T-shirt.
I'll have to admit I was quite surprised by this. I was rather expecting a condemnation of the Internet as a vile tool of Satan rife with pornography and atheism.
Nah; if they did that, they'd have to condemn television and the printed media for exactly the same reasons.
So? St. Mary of Magdala was a prostitute, and they canonized her. (At least, I think she's a saint. There are about a gazillion different Marys in the Bible. I might be confusing her with a different one).
www.god.com? Heaven is a commercial organization? Guess that explains where all the cash I've dropped into collection plates over the years has gone;-)
I have no idea what I would do with over 200GB of storage. Mind you, that's what we think whenever a new high-capacity technology appears. Within a few years, it's the standard size and we all wonder how we coped with our old "tiny" drives.
It's a fact of computing life that software expands to fill the available space. What did that Gates chappie say about 640KB again?:-)
How exactly do they know that you have a TV to charge you the tax.
They have vans with TV detection equipment in. I don't know how it works; I guess it can detect UHF receiving equipment somehow. If they detect a TV in your house, and you haven't paid, you can get slapped with a hefty fine.
BTW: Owners of black and white TVs are charged a lower fee, and TV receivers which don't display a picture (sound only, for blind people) aren't taxed at all.
I think European media in general is so much better because they are sponsored by the state.
You've got to be kidding me! So you're saying 'govermental' interests are better than commercial?
"State sponsorship" != "state control".
The BBC is funded by the state in that we have a "television tax", referred to as the TV licence fee. If you want to have a television, you pay a fee to the government. I forget how much it is (I direct debit all my bills:-) The revenue from this fee funds the BBC's television and radio programming. Apart from this, the state doesn't interfere. The BBC's programming isn't funded commercially at all; there are no ad breaks in BBC programmes. BBC subsidiaries (such as the excellent Radio Times magazine) are commercial, and do carry adverts.
This isn't the first time that I've heard Americans saying that they are impressed with European news reporting. If you have cable TV, see if you can get BBC News 24. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the quality of BBC TV journalism.
Slashdot Mirror
I reckon that it's more to do with the fact that, in Western society (and maybe others, but I'm no sociologist), women have been treated as second-class citizens for much of history, and only in very recent years has true equality begun to surface. Before this century, women were generally treated as unpaid cooks, domestic servants, nannies and whores. There have been a few exceptions, of course, but history has generally been dominated by men because men have exercised all the power. In past centuries, women were denied proper education. I think this has a lot to do with the apparent absence of female geniuses. Even in today's world of equality, men far outnumber women in the field of science. We have a long way to go before centuries of social conditioning are undone.
"Mom's Linux"? I could go for that, especially if it contained home_made_cookies.rpm, and kissed you goodnight every time you powered it off.
Not so - among GPL supporters, the BSD license is considered bad because it allows for code changes to be made proprietary. The GPL allows forking too - if you don't like the way the Linux kernel is being developed, fork the source and make your own kernel. You must distribute your changes though, which the official dev team may or may not decide to roll back into the official code tree.
There are non-religious objectors to cloning as well. Maybe we should just remove all ethical questions from the mix and say "anything goes". After all, ethics just hinder science.
No - Religious beliefs are one kind of meme. I didn't mean that all memes are religious beliefs. It's the same as the way that ducks are birds, but not all birds are ducks.
OTOH, maybe some would say that it doesn't matter whether the person was conceived naturally or in a laboratory; it has the spark of life regardless, and that spark is bestowed upon it by God, no matter how the person originated. This seems similar to the IVF debate.
What with cows being used in cloning technology, and cows being used to build that nanotech railway (see previous Slashdot story), this week seems to be a really great week for cows. They seem to be sooo versatile. And they're edible. Cows rock. Is there anything you can't do with cows? Don't answer that.
Speaking of women - if we men can clone ourselves, we don't need women any more. All we need is an ample supply of cows.
Ah, but "doing something about it" might mean "use the Received: headers to trace the message, and complain to the ISP". Hackers/geeks/nerds are technically savvy enough to know how to do this. "Average users" may not be. Hence, hackers (in the Slashdot sense of the word) are a bad choice of people to spam.
Not necessarily. I'm guessing they just used a random spam distro list. I should think that some people who don't even know what Slashdot is got this spam and are now rather confused. If they used a Slashdot mail list, surely everyone who reads Slashdot would have got the mail? I'm betting that only a small proportion of Slashdot regulars got spammed.
Yikes! That is the sign of a true geek. Gets out of the shower and checks Slashdot before getting dressed :-)
ESR can flame with the best of them, but I very much doubt that he'd employ childish tactics like that.
A couple of months ago, the company I work for dished out polo shirts with the corporate logo on to everyone in my department. I gave mine to a charity shop. (Not so much over the corporate logo issue; more that polo shirts don't work well when worn under long-sleeved shirts).
Denim and twill shirts in all sizes would be great, for us small geeks who prefer them to T-shirts. My shirt size is "medium". I'm little.
This is probably heresy, but I hardly ever, if at all, wear short-sleeved shirts. I feel the cold noticibly; if the sun is blazing down (rare in this country, but hey), but there is a slight breeze, I'll feel chilly because of the breeze. Therefore, I almost always wear a long-sleeved shirt (denim or twill, no polyester or anything like that) with a breast pocket for my pens. Mind you, I often wear a T-shirt under the shirt, but that's no way to show off a cool Slashdot T-shirt.
How about a Slashdot pocket protector? :-)
I'd say memes are just like religious beliefs - religious beliefs are themselves a particular sort of meme.
Nah; if they did that, they'd have to condemn television and the printed media for exactly the same reasons.
So? St. Mary of Magdala was a prostitute, and they canonized her. (At least, I think she's a saint. There are about a gazillion different Marys in the Bible. I might be confusing her with a different one).
Surely he'd be "St. Alan"? It seems that saints tend to be referred to by their first names.
www.god.com? Heaven is a commercial organization? Guess that explains where all the cash I've dropped into collection plates over the years has gone ;-)
I had a 48KB Sinclair Spectrum+ and a tape recorder. Wonder how many C90 tapes you'd need to store 216GB? :-)
I have no idea what I would do with over 200GB of storage. Mind you, that's what we think whenever a new high-capacity technology appears. Within a few years, it's the standard size and we all wonder how we coped with our old "tiny" drives.
It's a fact of computing life that software expands to fill the available space. What did that Gates chappie say about 640KB again? :-)
They have vans with TV detection equipment in. I don't know how it works; I guess it can detect UHF receiving equipment somehow. If they detect a TV in your house, and you haven't paid, you can get slapped with a hefty fine.
BTW: Owners of black and white TVs are charged a lower fee, and TV receivers which don't display a picture (sound only, for blind people) aren't taxed at all.
What if the DNA gets X-rayed and the message mutates? "Assault on target zero to begin at dawn" could become "Killer wombat found on moon" :-)
"State sponsorship" != "state control".
The BBC is funded by the state in that we have a "television tax", referred to as the TV licence fee. If you want to have a television, you pay a fee to the government. I forget how much it is (I direct debit all my bills :-) The revenue from this fee funds the BBC's television and radio programming. Apart from this, the state doesn't interfere. The BBC's programming isn't funded commercially at all; there are no ad breaks in BBC programmes. BBC subsidiaries (such as the excellent Radio Times magazine) are commercial, and do carry adverts.
This isn't the first time that I've heard Americans saying that they are impressed with European news reporting. If you have cable TV, see if you can get BBC News 24. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the quality of BBC TV journalism.