So, if you could give your daughter a pill that contained a retrovirus-like agent that would fix all of the genes in her body in place, you'd object to that?
As a human being, you start off life with no concept of boundaries. In one study I saw, small children were given intense lectures on the dangers of handguns and what to do if they came across one. Then, they were allowed to play while being secretly observed. While playing, they came across realistic handguns. Invariably, they'd pick the things up and start trying to shoot each other with them.
Children don't understand limits enough to be reasonable functioning members of society. Although some people never come to understand those limits, by consensus, our society has decided that generally people achieve sufficient understanding to be allowed to have their full privileges in the 18-21 year old range.
Ironically, the fact that I'm having to explain this simple needed restriction on younger members of our society is a measure of proof of its need.
US minors are not responsible, but they can be sentenced to death. Almost no other country in the world does that. Way to go, USA!
Children who kill people in cold blood without cause are barely more than animals, and history has shown us that they're basically incorrigible. They'll continue to exhibit violent behavior for the rest of their lives.
Put them down like mad dogs, I say.
"But by doing that, we're decreasing the value of human life in our society," I often hear in response to my attitude.
Wrong, by not removing the hopelessly poisonous elements from our society, we devalue the lives of their innocent victims. Let's get to the point where in airtight cases we just kill the murders without the years of legal wrangling. Put the money that we save prosecuting or keeping them housed into education programs to prevent our production of more murderers.
One of the great strengths of America is that any clown can run for elective office. One of the great weaknesses of America is that so many clowns manage to get elected.
It's because people are mostly ignorant and stupid. Ignorance you can attack through education. Stupidity is a genetic condition. We'll either solve the stupidity problem by taking control of our genetic future, or continue to live with it for the rest of human existence.
"Inventions cannot in nature be a subject of property." - Thomas Jefferson
Oddly enough, he apparently thought that black people could in nature be a subject of property. Goes to show you how much we can rely on the opinions of our forefathers.
You forgot the part where they somehow managed to get the required PIN as well. Then you forgot the part after that where the victim simply lets authorities know that he had been robbed. Then you forgot the part where that certificate is electronically revoked so that the crook can't fool anyone.
Compare and contrast this with traditional signatures which don't even require the punch and scuffle to forge. Then, add in future possible safeguards like biometric confirmation of identity through fingerprints and retinal scans.
Learning is best done with your mouth closed. (and stop typing)
Yeah, it's free unless they consider the cost of hiring a UNIX consultant to come in and help each user set up his system. It's called TCO - Total Cost of Ownership.
Within the past month, I've set up both a RedHat 7.2 box and a Windows XP box. Being a Mac user, I have no real love for Microsoft, but I have to admit that the Windows box could hardly have been simpler to configure with all of the basic services, while the Linux box required a lot of poking and prodding to find all the right pieces to get the job done. Windows (and to an even greater extent, the Mac) is the result of a more concerted effort toward unity, while Linux is the result of many hands all pulling in different directions.
The really funny thing to me is that this is "news" to some people. Seems like common sense to me. It's a shame that there are actually people on/. who look at a study like this and feel that it's a revelation. Ah, the bitter fruits of socialism.
Next,/. will let us know about some scientific research that indicates that those students who study tend to make better grades... outrageous!
This is along the lines of perpetual motion machines.
Every once in a while, some bozo claims to achieve ridiculous compression rates on random data. It's always bullshit meant to sucker in the gullible investors, or just to get some attention for some psycho loser who usually doesn't understand more than enough math needed to copy and deform a few compression theory equations out of a text book.
Skepticism is your friend.
It's really a shame they didn't make it
on
Be Gear Up For Auction
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Yesterday, booted into BeOS for the first time in over a year.
Such a snappy OS. Everything is so amazingly responsive.
Then, I opened up a project I had been working on, an SNMP console. The APIs to the system were such a pleasure to use. Everything was an object, and every window ran in its own thread. Just from building the basic app template, you gained services and abilities that Mac, Windows, and Linux still don't have without a lot of inelegant effort.
If you love software development, as I do, the BeOS was a technological masterpiece in a world of mediocrity. Learning to develop for it was truly a joy that you'd have to experience to appreciate.
It really made me sad to think that all of that is now gone.
I played around with the interface one last time, then I rebooted into windows and wiped my BeOS partitions.
Great, so now I have a way to explicitly set my friends and foes. Unfortunately, initializing a reasonable database of friends and foes to prioritize the posts that I read is a ton of work.
What I'd like to see is the sharing of information. For example, if I mark FunkyChicken as a friend, I wouldn't mind if those one his friends and foes lists factored into my own. Naturally, I'd want a finer grain of control than to just assume that all of FunkyChicken's friends are my friends.
100% agreement. Everybody thinks that non-profits are somehow more noble in their goals, so deserve special treatment. When one calls me during dinner, it's every bit as annoying an interruption as when some phone company calls trying to get me to switch.
Before a couple of weeks ago, I never had seen the original BtVS movie. Before October, I'd never watched a single episode of the series. It just sounded stupid, and I thought that it was some dumb teen-chick show like Charmed.
Then, a few months ago, FX started airing back-to-back episodes of Buffy, and I happened to watch a couple of hours of it. I was completely amazed at how good it was, and mortified that I haven't been watching it over the years.
Thanks to my VCR, though, I'm almost all caught up. It's an excellent series, and the only scifi show I've ever seen that can so consistently give me a good laugh from the clever dialogue (in addition to when Spike makes some dread proclamation of doom, then proceeds to get zapped or falls into an open grave.)
Yeah, but the option of at least having a binary library that does what you need is usually all you would ask for. Microsoft definitely wins the business case on this bullet item.
I like the embedded Linux option in a lot of ways, but honestly, the scariest thing about it is the GPL. There are too many competitors out there who'll just blatantly use every line of your source code in a knock-off box.
I've known firmware developers personally who've copied binary driver code illegally and used it in commercial products. Open sourcing your own work is just like handing those crooks the keys. You might as well give up your whole business model and go do something else.
Just paying MS for the libraries up front is a lot wiser of a business decision in most cases, because you're dealing with known, mostly-reasonable costs.
What're you talking about? Jobs was (and continues to be) the catalyst/architect of Apple's return to respectability. If anyone did someone a favor, Jobs did it for all of Appledom.
The argument for cancelling Copland (the original MacOS 8) was that it was going to take another year to make it work
I worked at Apple before and after the Copland deal, and I've had lots of friends there over the years. Copland was a complete disaster. Apple was headed for a huge meltdown because the people at the top had absolutely no idea that Copland was in such a pathetic state.
A similar argument was advanced against BeOS
The BeOS was a lot of fun to hack on. I used it and developed on it for almost a year. However, the BeOS was horribly flawed from the beginning, due to its Fragile Base Class design. As a result, even though BeOS was young, you had to constantly be aware of every application/os version interdependency. The situation would have only worsened as the BeOS application base had matured. Every time Be released a new version of their OS, you had to scramble around to update all of your applications that might have then broken because of C++ library incompatibilities. That would have gone over like the proverbial turd in the punchbowl for the average Mac user.
The MacOS really needed a new layer underneath, but UNIX/Mach wasn't a great match
There was no "good match" between the old MacOS and any "modern" OS. Teeth pulling to get the compatibility layer to work was inevitable.
Apple desperately needed a new kernely, and it should have happened around 1992 or so, by which time all new Macs had enough hardware for a good protected-mode OS. Basically, Apple was nine years late with their new OS, which is part of why Apple tanked.
No argument here. I blame all the dumb-ass MBAs that loaded the company down after Jobs left. Jobs isn't perfect, but the Apple community is fortunate to have him at the helm, overall.
most of the people teaching newbies to use Linux are too smart and know too much?"
Yeah, that's it.
Reminds me of those "tricky" job interview questions where you lie your ass off to make your weaknesses sound like or be derived from your sources of strength
Interviewer: What's your biggest weakness?
Me: I'm just too damned focused in everything I do!
I use Linux, so I don't understand why it's so hard for most Linux users to grasp the fact that the reason Linux is unpopular is that it lacks apps and that the user experience is wildly inconsistent and unruly.
Stop looking for answers that make you feel good about yourself, and start looking for solutions that will cure the real problem
Massive objects between us and objects we're observing tend to distort light in various ways. Sometimes that distortion is a really good thing because it focuses the light for us, giving us a better picture of what we're trying to observe.
Complete agreement. Make sure to check out the Extropians. They're similarly forward-thinking. (Their site seems to be down for the moment, but it's very much worth checking out)
I enjoy Star Trek, but one of the things that really irks me is Roddenberry's persistent "natural" approach to the future of mankind. Anyone who has taken control of their genetic destiny is the villain. You need look no futher than Kahn to see it, but even in the latest 'Enterprise' series, genetic manipulation is what's done by the evil Sullians (or whatever they're called). Even TNG's brief brush with genetically engineered super-children ended up being a lesson in the "evils" of tampering with mother nature.
The problem is the DMCA is tantamount to making sidewalks illegal instead of policing for jaywalkers. But by your arguement, if we'd all quit jaywalking we could have sidewalks again.
Good point. I don't really like the DMCA, and it should be fixed or eliminated. My point was that I sympathize with the content providers, and it's somewhat understandable that the pendulum on this issue has swung too far the other way.
The solution to the problem involves not only fixing the DMCA, but also damping the pendulum by reducing copyright violations.
We need to stop the government from passing these Draconian laws and the only way they're going to listen to us is if we can show them that we can behave without regulation.
Oh, so exactly true. I'm a fairly strong libertarian in my want of freedom, but the problem with too many of my fellow libertarians is that they want all the freedoms too, but none of the responsibilities.
As much as I hate the way that copyright law is used like a club, I can't help but sympathize with content producers when I see the rampant pirating that is condoned and even encouraged on forums like this.
You want to do something about Draconian copyright law? The next time that you decide that copying a piece of music is worthwhile, don't. Go buy it instead. If your employer isn't paying for their commercial software, call them on it. If your friends or family aren't paying for their cable or satellite programming, explain to them that they're hurting all of us.
The way I interpreted the Wired article, this thing is still theoretical. They didn't even mention a working prototype. I refuse to read anything real into a Popular Electronics/Mechanics/Science article. That's all complete crap.
I'm sure a couple years will pass and we'll all wonder what happened to that "micro turbine thing". We won't be discussing it much, though, because/. will instead be discussing the latest vapor being hyped.
Re:From the "Reminds me of this classic prose" guy
on
Review: Harry Potter
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Are the Harry Potter books getting kids to read books or are they getting kids to read Harry Potter? One is great, the other is a fad. One will last them a lifetime, one will die shortly after the last book comes out. (I also submit that it is probably too early to tell the long lasting effects.)
The way to get kids to start reading regularly is to get them to realize the enjoyment that can be obtained from books.
My own love of reading really started with "The Great Brain" books when I was in 5th grade. I enjoyed them so much that when I was done with them, I eagerly looked around for more books to enjoy, so I moved on to "Tarzan" and Piers Anthony.
In order to enjoy books, you first have to get over that intimidation factor associated with reading. Early in a child's life, reading is difficult. It's so much easier to be engaged in a story by flipping on the television. Building up the proficiency at reading in order to be able to enjoy stories of an equal or greater value than what kids get on TV takes time. If HP books are providing that first step toward the realization that reading books can be more fun than watching the toob, then that's awesome.
I certainly don't understand the implication of your post that somehow a good book or two might be a negative factor in cultivating a child's love of reading.
Slashdot Mirror
So, if you could give your daughter a pill that contained a retrovirus-like agent that would fix all of the genes in her body in place, you'd object to that?
As a human being, you start off life with no concept of boundaries. In one study I saw, small children were given intense lectures on the dangers of handguns and what to do if they came across one. Then, they were allowed to play while being secretly observed. While playing, they came across realistic handguns. Invariably, they'd pick the things up and start trying to shoot each other with them.
Children don't understand limits enough to be reasonable functioning members of society. Although some people never come to understand those limits, by consensus, our society has decided that generally people achieve sufficient understanding to be allowed to have their full privileges in the 18-21 year old range.
Ironically, the fact that I'm having to explain this simple needed restriction on younger members of our society is a measure of proof of its need.
US minors are not responsible, but they can be sentenced to death. Almost no other country in the world does that. Way to go, USA!
Children who kill people in cold blood without cause are barely more than animals, and history has shown us that they're basically incorrigible. They'll continue to exhibit violent behavior for the rest of their lives.
Put them down like mad dogs, I say.
"But by doing that, we're decreasing the value of human life in our society," I often hear in response to my attitude.
Wrong, by not removing the hopelessly poisonous elements from our society, we devalue the lives of their innocent victims. Let's get to the point where in airtight cases we just kill the murders without the years of legal wrangling. Put the money that we save prosecuting or keeping them housed into education programs to prevent our production of more murderers.
One of the great strengths of America is that any clown can run for elective office. One of the great weaknesses of America is that so many clowns manage to get elected.
It's because people are mostly ignorant and stupid. Ignorance you can attack through education. Stupidity is a genetic condition. We'll either solve the stupidity problem by taking control of our genetic future, or continue to live with it for the rest of human existence.
"Inventions cannot in nature be a subject of property." - Thomas Jefferson
Oddly enough, he apparently thought that black people could in nature be a subject of property. Goes to show you how much we can rely on the opinions of our forefathers.
You forgot the part where they somehow managed to get the required PIN as well. Then you forgot the part after that where the victim simply lets authorities know that he had been robbed. Then you forgot the part where that certificate is electronically revoked so that the crook can't fool anyone.
Compare and contrast this with traditional signatures which don't even require the punch and scuffle to forge. Then, add in future possible safeguards like biometric confirmation of identity through fingerprints and retinal scans.
Learning is best done with your mouth closed. (and stop typing)
Yeah, it's free unless they consider the cost of hiring a UNIX consultant to come in and help each user set up his system. It's called TCO - Total Cost of Ownership.
Within the past month, I've set up both a RedHat 7.2 box and a Windows XP box. Being a Mac user, I have no real love for Microsoft, but I have to admit that the Windows box could hardly have been simpler to configure with all of the basic services, while the Linux box required a lot of poking and prodding to find all the right pieces to get the job done. Windows (and to an even greater extent, the Mac) is the result of a more concerted effort toward unity, while Linux is the result of many hands all pulling in different directions.
Linux's strength is also its greatest weakness.
The really funny thing to me is that this is "news" to some people. Seems like common sense to me. It's a shame that there are actually people on /. who look at a study like this and feel that it's a revelation. Ah, the bitter fruits of socialism.
/. will let us know about some scientific research that indicates that those students who study tend to make better grades... outrageous!
Next,
This is along the lines of perpetual motion machines.
Every once in a while, some bozo claims to achieve ridiculous compression rates on random data. It's always bullshit meant to sucker in the gullible investors, or just to get some attention for some psycho loser who usually doesn't understand more than enough math needed to copy and deform a few compression theory equations out of a text book.
Skepticism is your friend.
Yesterday, booted into BeOS for the first time in over a year.
Such a snappy OS. Everything is so amazingly responsive.
Then, I opened up a project I had been working on, an SNMP console. The APIs to the system were such a pleasure to use. Everything was an object, and every window ran in its own thread. Just from building the basic app template, you gained services and abilities that Mac, Windows, and Linux still don't have without a lot of inelegant effort.
If you love software development, as I do, the BeOS was a technological masterpiece in a world of mediocrity. Learning to develop for it was truly a joy that you'd have to experience to appreciate.
It really made me sad to think that all of that is now gone.
I played around with the interface one last time, then I rebooted into windows and wiped my BeOS partitions.
Very very sad.
Great, so now I have a way to explicitly set my friends and foes. Unfortunately, initializing a reasonable database of friends and foes to prioritize the posts that I read is a ton of work.
What I'd like to see is the sharing of information. For example, if I mark FunkyChicken as a friend, I wouldn't mind if those one his friends and foes lists factored into my own. Naturally, I'd want a finer grain of control than to just assume that all of FunkyChicken's friends are my friends.
or try links like this:
http://slashdot.org/~cmdrtaco/friends [slashdot.org]
Heh, notice that JonKatz isn't in CmdrTaco's friends list.
100% agreement. Everybody thinks that non-profits are somehow more noble in their goals, so deserve special treatment. When one calls me during dinner, it's every bit as annoying an interruption as when some phone company calls trying to get me to switch.
Before a couple of weeks ago, I never had seen the original BtVS movie. Before October, I'd never watched a single episode of the series. It just sounded stupid, and I thought that it was some dumb teen-chick show like Charmed.
Then, a few months ago, FX started airing back-to-back episodes of Buffy, and I happened to watch a couple of hours of it. I was completely amazed at how good it was, and mortified that I haven't been watching it over the years.
Thanks to my VCR, though, I'm almost all caught up. It's an excellent series, and the only scifi show I've ever seen that can so consistently give me a good laugh from the clever dialogue (in addition to when Spike makes some dread proclamation of doom, then proceeds to get zapped or falls into an open grave.)
Excellent stuff.
Yeah, but the option of at least having a binary library that does what you need is usually all you would ask for. Microsoft definitely wins the business case on this bullet item.
I like the embedded Linux option in a lot of ways, but honestly, the scariest thing about it is the GPL. There are too many competitors out there who'll just blatantly use every line of your source code in a knock-off box.
I've known firmware developers personally who've copied binary driver code illegally and used it in commercial products. Open sourcing your own work is just like handing those crooks the keys. You might as well give up your whole business model and go do something else.
Just paying MS for the libraries up front is a lot wiser of a business decision in most cases, because you're dealing with known, mostly-reasonable costs.
bailing out Steve Jobs and his buddies.
What're you talking about? Jobs was (and continues to be) the catalyst/architect of Apple's return to respectability. If anyone did someone a favor, Jobs did it for all of Appledom.
The argument for cancelling Copland (the original MacOS 8) was that it was going to take another year to make it work
I worked at Apple before and after the Copland deal, and I've had lots of friends there over the years. Copland was a complete disaster. Apple was headed for a huge meltdown because the people at the top had absolutely no idea that Copland was in such a pathetic state.
A similar argument was advanced against BeOS
The BeOS was a lot of fun to hack on. I used it and developed on it for almost a year. However, the BeOS was horribly flawed from the beginning, due to its Fragile Base Class design. As a result, even though BeOS was young, you had to constantly be aware of every application/os version interdependency. The situation would have only worsened as the BeOS application base had matured. Every time Be released a new version of their OS, you had to scramble around to update all of your applications that might have then broken because of C++ library incompatibilities. That would have gone over like the proverbial turd in the punchbowl for the average Mac user.
The MacOS really needed a new layer underneath, but UNIX/Mach wasn't a great match
There was no "good match" between the old MacOS and any "modern" OS. Teeth pulling to get the compatibility layer to work was inevitable.
Apple desperately needed a new kernely, and it should have happened around 1992 or so, by which time all new Macs had enough hardware for a good protected-mode OS. Basically, Apple was nine years late with their new OS, which is part of why Apple tanked.
No argument here. I blame all the dumb-ass MBAs that loaded the company down after Jobs left. Jobs isn't perfect, but the Apple community is fortunate to have him at the helm, overall.
most of the people teaching newbies to use Linux are too smart and know too much?"
Yeah, that's it.
Reminds me of those "tricky" job interview questions where you lie your ass off to make your weaknesses sound like or be derived from your sources of strength
Interviewer: What's your biggest weakness?
Me: I'm just too damned focused in everything I do!
I use Linux, so I don't understand why it's so hard for most Linux users to grasp the fact that the reason Linux is unpopular is that it lacks apps and that the user experience is wildly inconsistent and unruly.
Stop looking for answers that make you feel good about yourself, and start looking for solutions that will cure the real problem
Massive objects between us and objects we're observing tend to distort light in various ways. Sometimes that distortion is a really good thing because it focuses the light for us, giving us a better picture of what we're trying to observe.
Whole galaxies can form the basis of such lenses.
Oh, it was worth the modding up just for sex response. Too funny.
Complete agreement. Make sure to check out the Extropians. They're similarly forward-thinking. (Their site seems to be down for the moment, but it's very much worth checking out)
I enjoy Star Trek, but one of the things that really irks me is Roddenberry's persistent "natural" approach to the future of mankind. Anyone who has taken control of their genetic destiny is the villain. You need look no futher than Kahn to see it, but even in the latest 'Enterprise' series, genetic manipulation is what's done by the evil Sullians (or whatever they're called). Even TNG's brief brush with genetically engineered super-children ended up being a lesson in the "evils" of tampering with mother nature.
The problem is the DMCA is tantamount to making sidewalks illegal instead of policing for jaywalkers. But by your arguement, if we'd all quit jaywalking we could have sidewalks again.
Good point. I don't really like the DMCA, and it should be fixed or eliminated. My point was that I sympathize with the content providers, and it's somewhat understandable that the pendulum on this issue has swung too far the other way.
The solution to the problem involves not only fixing the DMCA, but also damping the pendulum by reducing copyright violations.
We need to stop the government from passing these Draconian laws and the only way they're going to listen to us is if we can show them that we can behave without regulation.
Oh, so exactly true. I'm a fairly strong libertarian in my want of freedom, but the problem with too many of my fellow libertarians is that they want all the freedoms too, but none of the responsibilities.
As much as I hate the way that copyright law is used like a club, I can't help but sympathize with content producers when I see the rampant pirating that is condoned and even encouraged on forums like this.
You want to do something about Draconian copyright law? The next time that you decide that copying a piece of music is worthwhile, don't. Go buy it instead. If your employer isn't paying for their commercial software, call them on it. If your friends or family aren't paying for their cable or satellite programming, explain to them that they're hurting all of us.
Well, no offense to Wil, but it's not like he has much else to do besides surf the Internet and respond to fan questions.
Bruce seems like a much busier guy.
The way I interpreted the Wired article, this thing is still theoretical. They didn't even mention a working prototype. I refuse to read anything real into a Popular Electronics/Mechanics/Science article. That's all complete crap.
/. will instead be discussing the latest vapor being hyped.
I'm sure a couple years will pass and we'll all wonder what happened to that "micro turbine thing". We won't be discussing it much, though, because
Are the Harry Potter books getting kids to read books or are they getting kids to read Harry Potter? One is great, the other is a fad. One will last them a lifetime, one will die shortly after the last book comes out. (I also submit that it is probably too early to tell the long lasting effects.)
The way to get kids to start reading regularly is to get them to realize the enjoyment that can be obtained from books.
My own love of reading really started with "The Great Brain" books when I was in 5th grade. I enjoyed them so much that when I was done with them, I eagerly looked around for more books to enjoy, so I moved on to "Tarzan" and Piers Anthony.
In order to enjoy books, you first have to get over that intimidation factor associated with reading. Early in a child's life, reading is difficult. It's so much easier to be engaged in a story by flipping on the television. Building up the proficiency at reading in order to be able to enjoy stories of an equal or greater value than what kids get on TV takes time. If HP books are providing that first step toward the realization that reading books can be more fun than watching the toob, then that's awesome.
I certainly don't understand the implication of your post that somehow a good book or two might be a negative factor in cultivating a child's love of reading.