Linux has traditionally not bothered very much with file type. The user generally knows what to do with the file, and does so. What look like extensions are actually just generically part of the filename; there are conventions for them, but they are no more strict than the conventions for filenames in general (Makefile is probably a makefile, README is plain text, foo.c is C source, etc.).
For the most part, you're right. But there are plenty of cases where this is violated. Every try to link against a library that wasn't named *.a or *.so? Can't easily do it. Ever try to get gcc to compile something with a weird extension or no extension at all? It won't do it. Linkers and compilers are pretty fundamental parts of UNIX, and they don't play well with arbitrary file names.
I've had one of these keyboards, the chair-mounted one, for about two years now on five different computers. I love this thing. In fact, I'm typing this comment using one.
I had some pretty bad numbness in my left arm, culminating in shooting pain from my elbow all the way up to my shoulder. After going through an evaluation of my workspace by an engineer, I did some research on the net and decided I needed a better keyboard.
This keyboard, while not perfect, has been the primary reason that I have not had any numbness or pain in my arm for about two years now, I believe.
Yes, the mouse is kind of annoying. But I don't find that it has the lack of sensitivity that the original poster mentioned. The lack of a middle mouse button is very annoying. On a Linux box it's not so bad, since I can chord. But on an SGI it's just a royal pain. Luckily I can use a combination of tools to map a middle mouse button to the "Windows" key. Heck, with the right window manager, I even move the mouse around using VI keys plus a modifier!
I haven't experienced the problem that the original poster did about the range of the chair. My experience has been that the cable is pretty darn long. I haven't had it constrain my chair at all when wheeling around my office. The two portions of the keyboard swing down next to the arms of the chair, and hitting the Scroll Lock key four times makes accidental hits of the keyboard not get sent to the computer.
Hooked up to a KVM switch so I can run 2 or 3 computers makes this thing a blast to use.
As for cost...a couple hundred dollars is chump change compared to the cost of physical therapy. If your employer is serious about ergonomics, he shouldn't even blink about getting you something like this. The seriousness of repetitive stress injuries and the shortage of computer scientists means that he should jump at the chance to keep you happy and healthy.
But when the state uses propietary software, it cannot guarantee that the aplication "leaks" the data somewhere else. So, it's a matter of National Security also, not only of publicly available data.
Interesting. I can buy that argument. In fact, my employer uses what it calls Stand-Alone, Single-User machines for times when it wants to make sure information doesn't get anwhere it's not supposed to. These machines are not hooked up to any network, do not have multiple users enabled, and can only be operated from console inside a locked vault-type room. The only way you can get data to it is to bring it in on things like CDROM. Yes, it's as extreme as it sounds.
nobody in aRgentina can prove there is not...an NSA backdoor
True. That goes back to my argument that everything that the government produces should be released in some kind of "open" fashion. If it's software, then it should be released as open source. However, I don't think that would stop the government from asking (or paying, or threatening, or whatever) Microsoft to put in this kind of back door. That's specifically going outside of what the government produces and pulling strings to get something put into a piece of commercial software.
Of course the government should be prevented from doing this sort of thing. I'm not sure it has anything to do with the governmental production of software, though.
I agree completely. The government should definitely use only open formats in the documents that it produces. I work for the government, and already give people a hard time when everything they produce is in the form of Microsoft Word or Excel.
And, BTW, thanks for your support in the "tools" vs. "the information" argument.
You're entirely missing the point. (And calling my analogy "horrid" and me "naive" doesn't exactly lend weight to your argument.)
I'll try to be more clear, and explain why the "bug in the microphone" concept, often touted as an example of why open-source software is so wonderful, doesn't quite apply in this case.
The desire for a free government has to do with the information that the government produces and manages, like you say. What's necessary to make open is this information. The citizens should have free access to all of the databases, documents, images, and such that are produced.
Now note that this means that everything that is produced should be put under some type of "open" license. Since this information contains a lot of things that are not software, it requires something more than an open-source software license like the GPL.
There is only one case in which your "bug in the microphone" analogy works. It is the case in which the government produces software. In that case, the software should just as open as the other information that's produced.
With this in mind, the tools that the government uses to produce its information, be it software or otherwise, does not necessarily have to be "open". Why in the world should the government be forbidden from using Microsoft Word if it's just the document (published as PDF, HTML, or some other open document standard) that is in the public interest to be "free"?
Thus, as I tried to point out in my original post, the argument that citizens must be able to examine all of its government's actions does not logically lead to the conclusion that all "tools of the trade" need to be open source.
I would argue that in order to have a free government, then one must be able to examine everything the government does. This includes software. Note that the law does not state the programs must be free beer, but only free speech.
Examining everything that the government does doesn't mean that you need the source code to all of the software that they use.
For example, examining all of the documents that the government produces, including internal ones, doesn't require that you also be able to examine the word processor that they used to produce it. Examining all of the audio that is produced by the government doesn't mean that you have to be able to take apart the microphone used to record it. The important part is the ability to examine all of the content.
Therefore, the desire for a free government does not lead to the conclusion that all software used by the government be free (speech).
Let's take the scientific method and attack this problem.
Assume for the moment that "91 degrees" is right, and the universe was created 6000 years ago. God created the universe with certains laws and principles. This is easily seen by way of experiment in physics, chemistry, any experimental science. Even the Bible mentions things like this.
So, as rational beings, we have the capability to explore these laws, figure out the rules by which the universe is put together. Isn't this what science is all about?
So if the Horsehead nebula is really an illusion, how is that illusion produced? What is it that's causing photons to be collected in a certain pattern on the receptors of the Hubble Telescope?
It's an appropriate question for science to answer, since we can make measurements, compare them with other measurements, etc. The question before us is not the age of the universe, but one of observables, tested through rigorous experiment.
.....
Believe it or not, the majority of scientists believe in God. A great number of scientists are Christian as well, and believe in the New Testament of the Bible. I happen to be one of those scientists.
For me, belief in Jesus and God enhances my exploration of science. In fact, things like the wonders that NASA discovers and publishes merely strengthen my faith.
As I understand it, in Windows Ctl-Alt-Del is always trapped by the OS, never by a user program.
Why not just have some other key combination be trapped by the OS?
The problem was that C-A-D was already firmly entrenched in people's minds as the "reboot the machine" sequence. If they were able to do it for one combination, why not come up with some completely new combination to do this?
David B. Barrett's World Christian Encyclopedia (1994 update) gives an oft-cited figure of 1.9 billion Christians (or about 33% of the
world population), and has projected that by the year 2000 there will be 2.1 billion Christians in the world.
From Encyclopedia Britannica around 1995:
Major Traditional Branches of Christianity
Branch and Number of Adherents
Roman Catholic: 968,000,000
Protestant: 395,867,000
Other Christians: 275,583,000
Orthodox: 217,948,000
Anglicans: 70,530,000
With about 6 billion people in the world, looks like 1 in 6 to me.
But should you be? You should have empathy for people being persecuted, but you don't. Look at
your history.
I don't follow this viewpoint. Because I'm Catholic, I must agree with everything that the Catholic Church has done throughout history? Obviously, that's ludicrous.
Just because I am Catholic doesn't mean that I don't care about people being persecuted. In fact, it's just the opposite.
A lot of people don't really understand the Church's position on homosexuality. It starts with the idea that our bodies and our sexuality are gifts from God. If you don't believe in this statement, skip the rest of this post.
With that in mind, God has certain ways that He teaches that we should use this gift. The use of our sexuality should only be in a committed marriage. The teaching is not that all sex should be for creating children. But all sexual acts should be open to the gift of life.
Homosexual sexual acts aren't open to that gift of life. Same with using condoms in heterosexual sex. Same with a lot of things.
Oh, and this is really important, no one has the right to judge a homosexual as being fundamentally wrong or flawed. Anyone who does so is going against what God teaches. Only God can judge other people. But we are called upon to judge actions. We're allowed (and encouraged, actually) to judge one another's actions only.
At least the gays aren't on a witch hunt for catholics.
You sure about that? You should hear a lot of the things that gays have to say about Catholics and Christianity in general. That's part of the persecution of religion that I'm talking about.
How about the fact that silence encourages persecution and discrimination. How about the fact that unless people realize that 1 in 10 are gay, they'll consider it freakish.
Hm, by the same token, I should trumpet the fact that I'm Roman Catholic.
Othersize, my silence would encourage religious persecution and discrimination.
Unless people realize that 1 in 6 are Catholic, they'll consider it freakish.
I have to admit that I don't quite understand the ethical hysteria that has surrounded the issue of human cloning.
Saying that you "see no ethical problems" is a different statement than "I don't quite understand". I will see if I can explain a couple of the issues so you will come to a greater understanding.
It's not as if "cloning" will produce an exact replica of a person, right down to the last sub-atomic particle. All that cloning would do is produce a being that is genetically identical to the being that it was cloned from.
Of course. I don't think the cloning issues have to do with the behaviors of the clone being the same as the behaviors of the cloned person.
In fact, if people want to see what a clone would be like, all they have to do is look at the human clones that we have all over the place: identical twins. These are people who, after they were conceived, split into two people. They are genetically identical.
So there are no issues about the genome being an issue.
The religious argument here is a non-issue.
That's a pretty strong statement to say. So you are discounting any issues that might have a basis other than in pure science?
Let me give you a couple issues that have to do with religion and society:
The first is one of the big ones. The process of cloning that has taken place so far in animals has been one that kills a lot of animals. Dolly was the only survivor of many sheep. The genetic material was inserted into many eggs, implanted into many sheep uterii, and many sheep started growing. Almost all of them died. The few of them who survived until birth died within the first few days.
That's the process that has currently been used. Many will say that there is work happening in other areas. All I can say is that that's the route that has worked so far. And no one has been able to reproduce the results that Dr. Wilmut produced.
So what we face today is the prospect of conceiving hundreds of embryos, only to have them spontaneously abort or die a couple days after birth. There isn't even a guarantee that one child will survive. Is this what we wish to do?
Since you bring God and the Soul into the picture, I want to specifically point out the life issue here. Many good people disagree on this point, but there are many in this society who believe that life begins at conception. Still others believe that life begins sometime after sustainability in the uterus. Others believe that life begins at birth. In every form of cloing that's been successful, more death happens at every stage of this new life, however you define it, than does successful life. Is this the way that we should bring a new child into the world - on the dead bodies of so many others?
You would be right in saying that this isn't a scientific issue, but it is a social, political, and religious one. And no less important at that.
Then I want you to consider the issue of the long-term effects. Dolly was produced with a genetic code that has very shortened telomeres, the ends of the nuclear code that protect it from disintegrating. (Paraphrasing greatly here.) Modern science simply does not yet know what this will do to an organism, sheep or human.
Should we bring children into the world when we have no idea whether they will even survive? When we don't even know of the rest of their life will be plagued with ailments of which we know nothing? I would think that, even if you disagree with the life issues above, you would agree that scientific prudence insists that we learn a lot more about this before we start applying it to our children.
In fact, here's an interesting quote:
"I can think of no ethical reason to apply this technique [that which cloned Dolly] to human beings, if in fact it can be applied,'' concurred Carl Feldbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, which represents about 700 companies and research centers in the United States and abroad. "The biotechnology industry exists to use genetic information to cure disease and improve agriculture. We opposed human cloning when it was a theory. Now that it may be possible, we urge that it be prohibited by law.''
Heading into theology: It is reasonable to assume that a cloned human would be the theological equivalent of a cat or an emu or other such animal. In other words, they are a living, sentient being, but because their origins are man-made instead of divine, they (by definition) cannot have a soul.
Why do you think that man-assisted conception would be any less "soulful" than a "natural" conception? With your argument, those children who were born through the process of Artificial Insemination or In Vitro Fertilization have no souls. This is obviously false.
I hope that the above has brought another viewpoint to light that you might not have considered. There are a lot of issues here to resolve before we plunge headlong into the practical problems of human cloning.
This has got to be some of the neatest code I've seen!
Granted, it's not that pretty or beautiful, but it's clever, and it's not that obscure once you look at it for a bit. Basically, the code that isn't for a particular compiler is commented out in that language. The neatest part was how they figured out how to make a comment block in all seven languages!
That is why IE kills Netscape 4.x on Windows but not on the Mac, because Netscape is able to access the full potential of the MacOS's capabilities.
That turns out not to be the case On a G3 and a G4, MS IE knocks the socks off Netscape in speed. And it can't be because of some hidden API that Apple only shares with Microsoft. I think Microsoft just wrote better code than Netscape/AOL.
(I can't believe that I'm saying that about Microsoft, but in this case, it's true.)
Interesting, I suppose, but what would you do with it? You'd have to add a lot more hardware/software to the robot to make it actually interesting.
For example: Go to fridge (requires internal map of house), open it (requires arm and gripping hand), get me a beer (requires vision system), and bring it to me (requires knowledge of my location and route planning).
I suppose it's a nice basic platform for trying robotics algorithms and research. I can't see the normal person doing much more than saying "Hm. Looks cool."
I'm a little surprised to see this here now. This product has been on Handspring's web site for at least a month now. I remember checking it out several weeks ago.
I would have expected this story to have appeared a lot closer to when the product came out, considering how tech-friendly Slashdot is. Did no one submit the story until now?
The irony here is that Microsoft can wait until the money-losing Linux companies finally perfect their upstart open-source operating system. That would let Microsoft leverage -- some would say hijack -- every bit of the costly research and development done to date by the open-source software movement. Most Linux developers would probably be aghast at the notion that Microsoft will eventually be selling what they created.
This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the licenses which prohibit taking open source software and selling it as part of a commercial product. The license agreements simply don't allow this type of activity.
If Microsoft decided to create its own distribution, Microsoft Linux, it would be forced to release it under the same license agreement that the Linux kernel is released under.
Where they could start charging more is with their own applications and extensions that do not rely on open source code. In this case, they'd become just an application development house, not an OS vendor any more, at least from a financial point of view.
That's fine, but that defeats the whole idea of the article. The point was that Microsoft could dominate the OS field by putting out their own distribution - simply not dominance that can happen.
I think that having a range of options is really useful.
I have a HandspringVisor that I use for pretty much everything in my life.
I use three different ways of getting information into the PDA:
Grafitti: The built-in text recognition software that recognizes individual characters written in a special area. I can get about 25 words per minute with this method.
Fitaly Stamp: A little flexible sheet that sits in the Grafitti area that has little squares to represent letters. (See the picture in the link.) When you tap a letter, the PDA thinks that you wrote it. I can get about 40 wpm with this.
The Stowaway keyboard (as mentioned in the article): This keyboard is a fold-up one. It folds up pretty darn small (small enough to fit in my back pocket) and is a full-sized keyboard when unfolded. I can get regular typing speeds (80 wpm or more) with this.
So, depending on what I'm doing at the time, I'll use one of the three. When I'm trying to keep eye contact with someone while writing or if it's too dark to see the Fitaly letters, I'll use Grafitti. Most of the time I use Fitaly. When I need to enter a lot of text, say, at a meeting where I want to type action items or take down a paragraph or more, I'll whip out the Stowaway and enter to my heart's content.
The other place that the Stowaway is really useful is when I'm on travel and need to dial into the modem pool at work to log on and check email. There's no way that I'm gonna navigate a shell, mutt, and vile with a stylus!
So I would suggest to people to think about how they intend to use their PDA. If it's just for occasional text entry, you probably don't need a keyboard. But if you plan on putting lots of information into it, I would definitely recommend getting a keyboard.
That's because the page is full of HTML errors. The biggest error is not having </a> tags to close out the links! Also, it declares itself as an HTML 3.2 doctype, though it uses things like FRAMESET which are only part of the HTML 4.0 spec.
Granted, a good web browser (see ICab) should do its best to render the page anyway, but there's only so far that programmers can go to get around bad HTML programming.
Slashdot Mirror
For the most part, you're right. But there are plenty of cases where this is violated. Every try to link against a library that wasn't named *.a or *.so? Can't easily do it. Ever try to get gcc to compile something with a weird extension or no extension at all? It won't do it. Linkers and compilers are pretty fundamental parts of UNIX, and they don't play well with arbitrary file names.
Basically, the market share for IIS is up slightly in the last month, but is still at only about 20%. Apache is way up near 60%.
Uh, Eddie murphy played a dragon sidekick in Mulan. Yes, a bit stick-like, but still a dragon.
-Sean
I had some pretty bad numbness in my left arm, culminating in shooting pain from my elbow all the way up to my shoulder. After going through an evaluation of my workspace by an engineer, I did some research on the net and decided I needed a better keyboard.
This keyboard, while not perfect, has been the primary reason that I have not had any numbness or pain in my arm for about two years now, I believe.
Yes, the mouse is kind of annoying. But I don't find that it has the lack of sensitivity that the original poster mentioned. The lack of a middle mouse button is very annoying. On a Linux box it's not so bad, since I can chord. But on an SGI it's just a royal pain. Luckily I can use a combination of tools to map a middle mouse button to the "Windows" key. Heck, with the right window manager, I even move the mouse around using VI keys plus a modifier!
I haven't experienced the problem that the original poster did about the range of the chair. My experience has been that the cable is pretty darn long. I haven't had it constrain my chair at all when wheeling around my office. The two portions of the keyboard swing down next to the arms of the chair, and hitting the Scroll Lock key four times makes accidental hits of the keyboard not get sent to the computer.
Hooked up to a KVM switch so I can run 2 or 3 computers makes this thing a blast to use.
As for cost...a couple hundred dollars is chump change compared to the cost of physical therapy. If your employer is serious about ergonomics, he shouldn't even blink about getting you something like this. The seriousness of repetitive stress injuries and the shortage of computer scientists means that he should jump at the chance to keep you happy and healthy.
-Sean
Interesting. I can buy that argument. In fact, my employer uses what it calls Stand-Alone, Single-User machines for times when it wants to make sure information doesn't get anwhere it's not supposed to. These machines are not hooked up to any network, do not have multiple users enabled, and can only be operated from console inside a locked vault-type room. The only way you can get data to it is to bring it in on things like CDROM. Yes, it's as extreme as it sounds.
nobody in aRgentina can prove there is not...an NSA backdoor
True. That goes back to my argument that everything that the government produces should be released in some kind of "open" fashion. If it's software, then it should be released as open source. However, I don't think that would stop the government from asking (or paying, or threatening, or whatever) Microsoft to put in this kind of back door. That's specifically going outside of what the government produces and pulling strings to get something put into a piece of commercial software.
Of course the government should be prevented from doing this sort of thing. I'm not sure it has anything to do with the governmental production of software, though.
-Sean
And, BTW, thanks for your support in the "tools" vs. "the information" argument.
-Sean
I'll try to be more clear, and explain why the "bug in the microphone" concept, often touted as an example of why open-source software is so wonderful, doesn't quite apply in this case.
The desire for a free government has to do with the information that the government produces and manages, like you say. What's necessary to make open is this information. The citizens should have free access to all of the databases, documents, images, and such that are produced.
Now note that this means that everything that is produced should be put under some type of "open" license. Since this information contains a lot of things that are not software, it requires something more than an open-source software license like the GPL.
There is only one case in which your "bug in the microphone" analogy works. It is the case in which the government produces software. In that case, the software should just as open as the other information that's produced.
With this in mind, the tools that the government uses to produce its information, be it software or otherwise, does not necessarily have to be "open". Why in the world should the government be forbidden from using Microsoft Word if it's just the document (published as PDF, HTML, or some other open document standard) that is in the public interest to be "free"?
Thus, as I tried to point out in my original post, the argument that citizens must be able to examine all of its government's actions does not logically lead to the conclusion that all "tools of the trade" need to be open source.
-Sean
Examining everything that the government does doesn't mean that you need the source code to all of the software that they use.
For example, examining all of the documents that the government produces, including internal ones, doesn't require that you also be able to examine the word processor that they used to produce it. Examining all of the audio that is produced by the government doesn't mean that you have to be able to take apart the microphone used to record it. The important part is the ability to examine all of the content.
Therefore, the desire for a free government does not lead to the conclusion that all software used by the government be free (speech).
-Sean
Assume for the moment that "91 degrees" is right, and the universe was created 6000 years ago. God created the universe with certains laws and principles. This is easily seen by way of experiment in physics, chemistry, any experimental science. Even the Bible mentions things like this.
So, as rational beings, we have the capability to explore these laws, figure out the rules by which the universe is put together. Isn't this what science is all about?
So if the Horsehead nebula is really an illusion, how is that illusion produced? What is it that's causing photons to be collected in a certain pattern on the receptors of the Hubble Telescope?
It's an appropriate question for science to answer, since we can make measurements, compare them with other measurements, etc. The question before us is not the age of the universe, but one of observables, tested through rigorous experiment.
.....
Believe it or not, the majority of scientists believe in God. A great number of scientists are Christian as well, and believe in the New Testament of the Bible. I happen to be one of those scientists.
For me, belief in Jesus and God enhances my exploration of science. In fact, things like the wonders that NASA discovers and publishes merely strengthen my faith.
-Sean
Why not just have some other key combination be trapped by the OS?
The problem was that C-A-D was already firmly entrenched in people's minds as the "reboot the machine" sequence. If they were able to do it for one combination, why not come up with some completely new combination to do this?
-Sean
Okay. How about a version that's in AVI format (2.4 Megs). Or maybe just the raw images (24 Megs) directly.
-Sean
From Encyclopedia Britannica around 1995:
Major Traditional Branches of Christianity
Branch and Number of Adherents
- Roman Catholic: 968,000,000
- Protestant: 395,867,000
- Other Christians: 275,583,000
- Orthodox: 217,948,000
- Anglicans: 70,530,000
With about 6 billion people in the world, looks like 1 in 6 to me.-Sean
-Sean
I don't follow this viewpoint. Because I'm Catholic, I must agree with everything that the Catholic Church has done throughout history? Obviously, that's ludicrous.
Just because I am Catholic doesn't mean that I don't care about people being persecuted. In fact, it's just the opposite.
A lot of people don't really understand the Church's position on homosexuality. It starts with the idea that our bodies and our sexuality are gifts from God. If you don't believe in this statement, skip the rest of this post.
With that in mind, God has certain ways that He teaches that we should use this gift. The use of our sexuality should only be in a committed marriage. The teaching is not that all sex should be for creating children. But all sexual acts should be open to the gift of life.
Homosexual sexual acts aren't open to that gift of life. Same with using condoms in heterosexual sex. Same with a lot of things.
Oh, and this is really important, no one has the right to judge a homosexual as being fundamentally wrong or flawed. Anyone who does so is going against what God teaches. Only God can judge other people. But we are called upon to judge actions. We're allowed (and encouraged, actually) to judge one another's actions only.
At least the gays aren't on a witch hunt for catholics.
You sure about that? You should hear a lot of the things that gays have to say about Catholics and Christianity in general. That's part of the persecution of religion that I'm talking about.
-Sean
-Sean
How about the fact that unless people realize that 1 in 10 are gay, they'll consider it freakish.
Hm, by the same token, I should trumpet the fact that I'm Roman Catholic.
Othersize, my silence would encourage religious persecution and discrimination.
Unless people realize that 1 in 6 are Catholic, they'll consider it freakish.
-Sean (Catholic and proud of it)
-Sean
Saying that you "see no ethical problems" is a different statement than "I don't quite understand". I will see if I can explain a couple of the issues so you will come to a greater understanding.
It's not as if "cloning" will produce an exact replica of a person, right down to the last sub-atomic particle. All that cloning would do is produce a being that is genetically identical to the being that it was cloned from.
Of course. I don't think the cloning issues have to do with the behaviors of the clone being the same as the behaviors of the cloned person.
In fact, if people want to see what a clone would be like, all they have to do is look at the human clones that we have all over the place: identical twins. These are people who, after they were conceived, split into two people. They are genetically identical.
So there are no issues about the genome being an issue.
The religious argument here is a non-issue.
That's a pretty strong statement to say. So you are discounting any issues that might have a basis other than in pure science?
Let me give you a couple issues that have to do with religion and society:
The first is one of the big ones. The process of cloning that has taken place so far in animals has been one that kills a lot of animals. Dolly was the only survivor of many sheep. The genetic material was inserted into many eggs, implanted into many sheep uterii, and many sheep started growing. Almost all of them died. The few of them who survived until birth died within the first few days.
That's the process that has currently been used. Many will say that there is work happening in other areas. All I can say is that that's the route that has worked so far. And no one has been able to reproduce the results that Dr. Wilmut produced.
So what we face today is the prospect of conceiving hundreds of embryos, only to have them spontaneously abort or die a couple days after birth. There isn't even a guarantee that one child will survive. Is this what we wish to do?
Since you bring God and the Soul into the picture, I want to specifically point out the life issue here. Many good people disagree on this point, but there are many in this society who believe that life begins at conception. Still others believe that life begins sometime after sustainability in the uterus. Others believe that life begins at birth. In every form of cloing that's been successful, more death happens at every stage of this new life, however you define it, than does successful life. Is this the way that we should bring a new child into the world - on the dead bodies of so many others?
You would be right in saying that this isn't a scientific issue, but it is a social, political, and religious one. And no less important at that.
Then I want you to consider the issue of the long-term effects. Dolly was produced with a genetic code that has very shortened telomeres, the ends of the nuclear code that protect it from disintegrating. (Paraphrasing greatly here.) Modern science simply does not yet know what this will do to an organism, sheep or human.
Should we bring children into the world when we have no idea whether they will even survive? When we don't even know of the rest of their life will be plagued with ailments of which we know nothing? I would think that, even if you disagree with the life issues above, you would agree that scientific prudence insists that we learn a lot more about this before we start applying it to our children.
In fact, here's an interesting quote:
Heading into theology:It is reasonable to assume that a cloned human would be the theological equivalent of a cat or an emu or other such animal. In other words, they are a living, sentient being, but because their origins are man-made instead of divine, they (by definition) cannot have a soul.
Why do you think that man-assisted conception would be any less "soulful" than a "natural" conception? With your argument, those children who were born through the process of Artificial Insemination or In Vitro Fertilization have no souls. This is obviously false.
I hope that the above has brought another viewpoint to light that you might not have considered. There are a lot of issues here to resolve before we plunge headlong into the practical problems of human cloning.
-Sean
I expect that it's going to spur a lot of debate about conciousness and what it means to be alive.
My guess is that that's exactly what Spielberg and Kubrick intended...
Granted, it's not that pretty or beautiful, but it's clever, and it's not that obscure once you look at it for a bit. Basically, the code that isn't for a particular compiler is commented out in that language. The neatest part was how they figured out how to make a comment block in all seven languages!
That turns out not to be the case On a G3 and a G4, MS IE knocks the socks off Netscape in speed. And it can't be because of some hidden API that Apple only shares with Microsoft. I think Microsoft just wrote better code than Netscape/AOL.
(I can't believe that I'm saying that about Microsoft, but in this case, it's true.)
From "A Farewell to Kings", "Cygnus X-1":
In the constellation of Cygnus
There lurks a mysterious, invisible force
The Black Hole
Of Cygnus X-1
Six Stars of the Northern Cross
In mourning for their sister's loss
In a final flash of glory
Nevermore to grace the night...
1
Invisible
To telescopic eye
Infinity
The star that would not die
All who dare
To cross her course
Are swallowed by
A fearsome force
Through the void
To be destroyed
Or is there something more?
Atomized --- at the core
Or through the Astral Door ---
To soar...
2
I set a course just east of Lyra
And northwest of Pegasus
Flew into the light of Deneb
Sailed across the Milky Way
On my ship, the 'Rocinante'
Wheeling through the galaxies,
Headed for the heart of Cygnus
Headlong into mystery
The x-ray is her siren song
My ship cannot resist her long
Nearer to my deadly goal
Until the Black Hole ---
Gains control...
3
Spinning, whirling,
Still descending
Like a spiral sea,
Unending
Sound and fury
Drowns my heart
Every nerve
Is torn apart....
To be continued
Interesting, I suppose, but what would you do with it? You'd have to add a lot more hardware/software to the robot to make it actually interesting.
For example: Go to fridge (requires internal map of house), open it (requires arm and gripping hand), get me a beer (requires vision system), and bring it to me (requires knowledge of my location and route planning).
I suppose it's a nice basic platform for trying robotics algorithms and research. I can't see the normal person doing much more than saying "Hm. Looks cool."
I would have expected this story to have appeared a lot closer to when the product came out, considering how tech-friendly Slashdot is. Did no one submit the story until now?
Here are the specs from a web page I found at LLNL:
- 512 16-CPU nodes (8192 processing units)
- 375 Mhz Power3 SMP processors
- Will have 6 TB total of system memory
- 8 or 16 GB per node
- Will have 484 batch and 8 debug nodes
Data from http://www.llnl.gov/computing/tutorials/jw.lcres/If Microsoft decided to create its own distribution, Microsoft Linux, it would be forced to release it under the same license agreement that the Linux kernel is released under.
Where they could start charging more is with their own applications and extensions that do not rely on open source code. In this case, they'd become just an application development house, not an OS vendor any more, at least from a financial point of view.
That's fine, but that defeats the whole idea of the article. The point was that Microsoft could dominate the OS field by putting out their own distribution - simply not dominance that can happen.
I have a Handspring Visor that I use for pretty much everything in my life.
I use three different ways of getting information into the PDA:
- Grafitti: The built-in text recognition software that recognizes individual characters written in a special area. I can get about 25 words per minute with this method.
- Fitaly Stamp: A little flexible sheet that sits in the Grafitti area that has little squares to represent letters. (See the picture in the link.) When you tap a letter, the PDA thinks that you wrote it. I can get about 40 wpm with this.
- The Stowaway keyboard (as mentioned in the article): This keyboard is a fold-up one. It folds up pretty darn small (small enough to fit in my back pocket) and is a full-sized keyboard when unfolded. I can get regular typing speeds (80 wpm or more) with this.
So, depending on what I'm doing at the time, I'll use one of the three. When I'm trying to keep eye contact with someone while writing or if it's too dark to see the Fitaly letters, I'll use Grafitti. Most of the time I use Fitaly. When I need to enter a lot of text, say, at a meeting where I want to type action items or take down a paragraph or more, I'll whip out the Stowaway and enter to my heart's content.The other place that the Stowaway is really useful is when I'm on travel and need to dial into the modem pool at work to log on and check email. There's no way that I'm gonna navigate a shell, mutt, and vile with a stylus!
So I would suggest to people to think about how they intend to use their PDA. If it's just for occasional text entry, you probably don't need a keyboard. But if you plan on putting lots of information into it, I would definitely recommend getting a keyboard.
That's because the page is full of HTML errors. The biggest error is not having </a> tags to close out the links! Also, it declares itself as an HTML 3.2 doctype, though it uses things like FRAMESET which are only part of the HTML 4.0 spec.
Granted, a good web browser (see ICab) should do its best to render the page anyway, but there's only so far that programmers can go to get around bad HTML programming.