No mention in this article of specially reduced power consumption (beyond normal mobile chips) so I find it hard to believe that this chip will be able to outcompete the Crusoe. I don't know if the Crusoe has SMP support but if it did you should easily be able to beat the intel chips on speed as well by putting four of them in a laptop with still lower power consumption.
That raises an interesting question: Can the kind of technology which lets Transmeta optimize instruction translation on the fly be used to optimize the execution of single processer code on a dual procesor system? Just like in the translation case we would keep a software table but instead of most used instructions/jumps it would be of independent blocks of code.
Yes, but the key question is what will I play my pirated music on?
Suppose I am the RIAA what do I do? I know I can't stop digital music. I propose a new digital music format that can't be copied. This digital music format also gives me additional monopoly power in the digital music industry making sure I make barrels of cash and not some other startup distributer.
But wait there is already a free unencumbered product out there. I must tie it up in lawsuits saying it is a pirating tool and urge congresmen to pass legislation making it illegal. At the same time I offer incentive programs to those who do produce my SDMI compliant devices. Lo and behold the hardware companies (especially if im sony) make SDMI compliant devices. The consumers, not really knowing the difference, buy the heavily advertised new SDMI model.
Now everyone uses SDMI players. I copy a piece of music from my SDMI device. I can play it in my computer but I can't play it in my portable device. I can't play it in my stero etc.. etc... Thereby they guarnatee I still buy their music.
Yes they technically can (but probably won't) make a secure enough system for this purpose. The RIAA makes a master RSA key. Embed the public key in every player sign authorized RIAA music with the private key. Oops I just created a monopoly too locking out those pesky independent artists.
Its not a black hole. It is an optical black hole which just means that light gets stuck in this vortex. It will no more emit hawking radiation than a mirrored room (which hence traps light). This vortex is not gravitational does NOT slow time or any such thing.
the speed of light in vacumn is always constant. As light is just a traveling electromagnetic wave it can be retarded by a material it is travelling in
First off the issue at hand is NOT about stealing anyone else's code. It is about implementing some algorithm in code. This algorithm has (presumably) either been published in major journals or enough information is availible in the field to figure this algorithm out WITHOUT stealing anyone else's code.
Certainly from a moral standpoint (and a legal standpoint involving copyright but not patent) their is no theft occuring if I figure out hos someone else did something independently and implement this algorithm myself. (In some sense this is what DeCSS is about. Someone figured out the algorithm mapping encrypted to decrypeted files. This algorithm, being unpatented, should be perfectly within our rights to use as we see fit. No one copied their code and is distributing it.).
From a moral issue there is no reason whatsoever to assume that using someone else's idea is wrong or incorrect. They do not lose anything when you use their idea (to say they lose the rights to it is fallacious as it assumes that they have said rights in the first place) like they do when you take physical property from them. The arguments for Intellectual prooperty are ENTIERLY economic. If we did not have laws protecting IP then there would be no incentive to create works and/or new products. It is interesting to note that these laws were all originally choosen to have reasonably limited durations but that lobbying from various companies has pushed up the copyright time to a ridiculous level.
For a while after the revolution the United States had no copyright law to speak of. Of course during this period we produced little literature and became a 'pirate country' reprinting books from other countries beyond their law.
Yes I agree you don't get the banana back and probably don't get the burglary tools back. Mt point is that there appears to NEVER have been a finding by a jury or even a court of law that these items are in fact either the fruits of his crime or the tools used in his crime.
As an earlier poster pointed out it could be his grandmothers cookie recipe or lots of child porn. I agree his refusal to open it up for the authorities is sugestive but remember the excersice of his rights (in this case refusal to turn over the key) cannot be held agaisnt him. In essence his data is being taken away from him on the assertion it was used/was the product of a crime not the finding thereof.
The government has taken his stuff and asked him to prove it is not the fruits of a crime which appears to be in violation of the normal procedure of where they prove it is the fruits of a crime so they can take it.
Okay then so suppose I am accused of stealing a bannana and my car is seized as evidence (maybe it was a getaway vehicle and I left traces of bannana on the seat). Now I am convicted of bannana theft and rightly pay a fine or short jail sentence or whatever. Are you implying that I now have a burden of proof to show that the car was not stolen in order to retrieve it?
This seems to lead to an arbitrary abuse of government confiscatory power whereby they may take my stuff and convict me of misdemeanors asking me to prove that my stuff is rightly mine.
Given the fact that no evidence has been admitted which shows that this encrypted data actually contains stolen documents it would seem that this case is similar to the stolen bannana case. As I understand it was never even entered into evidence so no court of law deemed that this encrypted data was in fact what he stole.
Well from my inexpert standing I am still confused about something.
Sure, Kevin Mitnick was convicted (or at least plead guilty) so his penalty could quite legally have included the government not returning his files. However, as I understand it, his punishment does not say anything of the kind. This might be an oversight of the government but they can't increase his sentence once alreay convicted can they?
In a normal theft case isn't the thief specifically charged with turning over certain items? Or am I just completly full of it? Regardless of whether he is convicted of a crime or not as long as his conviction says nothing about the data isn't this an entierly new case which must be tried seperatly and hence the burden of proof once again rests on the government?
The thing about the internet is that you have a huge new market opening up and everyone knows about it. Now just because of the way word spreads and the fact that people tend to do what there friends do in each internet sector some company will probably come to dominate, or at least split with a few others, the entire market. This means, if you believe internet sales are going to become a large segment of the market, that several companies are going to balloon to absolutely incredible sizes.
We should EXPECT to see new McDonalds and so forth. Small companies whose net worth climes drasticlly. This time Wall Street isn't stupid and everyone wants a piece of that company when/if it does grow huge. So in fact the companies may not be overvalued but they are EXTREMLY risky b/c they veyr well might not corner most of the market
Most of the inventions I have seen so far improve our lives...maybe even change them to some extent but they all leave the fundamental relations between humans the same. Perhaps in 100 years after (if) we have full VR immersion and people live as brains in vats the internet will have this effect as well. But as of now these various technolgies merely allow us to do the same kind of things we did before on a larger scale and more efficently. People still buy and sell etc.. etc..
The birth control pill has changed, and is still changing, the basic way human beings relate to each other. It has allowed society to restructure away from child birth and child rearing and allowed half of the society to take a much more active role. The future effects of this invention will undoubtly be large as well.
The birth control pill is the first in a hopefully long line of advances that allow us to change who we are and reshape the human condition. Not merely get sick less or age slower actually change who we are as a species.
So there are ALOT of people who have become filthy rich off of computer hardware software and so forth (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Paul Allen etc...) and, as rich people are want to do they tend to, or at least express an interest in philanthropy.
Well here is a way to help out! It's one thing to sue Joe Schmuck for DeCSS. Even with the EFF defending him it is easy to paint him as an evil hacker/pirate and an enemy of social order/capitalism.
On the other hand if one of these big rich men were to do the same thing (supported by their own high price lawyers no doubt) it would be much more difficult to so libel them. Clearly, given there large net worth, they aren't doing this just to steal a few bucks worth of DVD's.
If anyone knows a local billionaire who is feeling genorous give him a call.
No, DeCSS makes it no easier to pirate. Right now I can go out rent a DVD download the *encrypted* image to my harddrive. Write the encrypted DVD to my DVD writer. Voila! I have an exact copy of the original DVD which, by virtue of being an exact copy, is playable by the same hardware as the original.
What they hope to gain, by scaring people into not mucking with DVD, is to retain their monopolistic control of DVD decoder technologies.
No matter what interpratation you choose the GPL is probably still good. Sure some group of people could decide to create their own private version of GPLed software without legal fault, however, they are still restricted from selling their modified code. It is this restriction on commercial transactions which saves the GPL if "group liscenses" are valid.
While we readers on slashdot feel some connection with illicit hackers, even if we personally deteste the thought of cracking into someone's box it will eventually become necessery to have serious law enforcement power to protect our machines. Sure most hackers are doing it just to see if it can be done or for the fun of it this doesn't mean there aren't malicious hackers out there. With the growth ofthe internet and the increasing commercialization *real* computer crime won't be far behind. Already we have seen examples of organized crime moving in on the action.
The easy anonimity and facelessness of the crimes opens up the doors for criminal activity on a massive scale. While it might be slightly interesting that 300,000 credit cards were recently stolen when this escalates it will become a serious problem.
Can prevention stop this problem? Experience says no. Even big companies with expert know-how get hacked not to mention the huge difficulty getting the masses to routinely upgrade their personal computers (which will probably have permanent connections within ten years).
Can current law enforcement adequatly deal with this problem? Probably not. If I route my attack through 10 countries (which would be easy enough to do) it would take reams and reams of paper work to get the necessery warrents for all ten countries to track me down. If this is happening on a widespread scale the government could not cope.
I will mourn the free-wheeling days of the internet but like the coyboys in the old west the needs of civilazation must necesserily squash the independent gunslinging culture of the internet. (Yes gun sligning...sheriffs on the net are few and far between people are left to secure their own hardware and match their skill vs. that of the hacker).
P.S. I used hacker intentionally here so please no "use cracker" posts. It is a lost cause the rest of the nation has already adopted the new vocabulary. Besides its just a word why do you care?
Perhaps, but it doesnt require sezure of non-evidencial guns before a conviction.
Besides the ACLU is really the american civil liberal's union...just look at their stance on issues like affirmitive action (they file suits to force individuals to adopt specific hiring practices...not bery libertarian)
I think that we would all agree laughing at a student *honestly* trying to learn to his face is just mean.
However, there is a big difference between laughing at a specific individual and general stupidity. For instance most people find jokes about stupid people/blondes funny even though people that stupid really do exist.
Secondly there is no way these people are honestly trying to learn. The people who call in with these problems might be doctors or lawyers so the issue is certainly not one of ability. The difficulty is rather caused by an unwillingess to try and learn...something which SHOULD be ridiculed.
Thirdly even if tech support humor isn't funny, or is even offensive much more harm is done pointing this out then the strips do themselves. What reaction is such a comment supposed to provide? Are people who were previously enjoying UF supposed to stop reading it because they feel guilty. The human condition is such that much of our pleasure takes place at the expense of another. To insist on only bland inoffensive humor is a far worse harm then any ridicule could bring about
1) who pays for root nameservers? Is this service free? If so how do you convince people to switch.
2) Trademarks are dangerous because they are *legally* protected. Very possibly you are going to end up in court alot over this even if you shouldn't. Big dollars for lawyers.
3)Everyone wants the websites they visit now to stay that way.
Possible solution:
Don't start over create a black list (like for email spam) over really aggregious trademark abusers (for instance companies which steal private citizen's laast names etc..). This blacklist would contain the domain name in question and possibly a new forwarding address.
Individual ISP's would (hopefully) choose to add this list (distributed in proper format) to their name servers (force them to answer authoratively for these domains). Therefore punishing any company engaging in this practive.
This has little to no funding requirements and since their is no single organization to sue legal challenges become very difficult. In addition it is implemented transparantely to most users (those who use their ISP's name servers)
His *REAL* plan was probably to get a spiffy web address make a non-profitable company and then become a multi-millionare based on the hype surronding his cool word. Unfortunatly this would work currently.
On a slightly less cynical note a domain name is a companies best asset. On the internet geographical proximity isn't an issue and very few sites actually offer a service another site can't offer at a similar price. This means that the ONLY distinguishing mark of your company is your advertising and domain name. If your competitor's domain name is easier to remember he might end up with the entire buisness and you with nothing.
What is it about issues like this that make people all religious? Not to insult any slashdot posters (they are obviously all saints who give away their incomes to the poor.) but why do people who aren't bothering to devote themselves to doing good willing to tell scientists what they can and can't do in the labratory.
I respect, even if I don't agree with, the objections of religious leaders. These are men and women who really have devouted their life to doing good. But it is the height of hypocrisy to say "you shouldn't do that" when I know full well that you earn a great deal above the mean income and are keeping most of that money to make yourself happy. And no helping out once in awhile at the local community center doesn't cut it.
I don't blame you, being good is very difficult (heck im not), and maybe you think that doing this might be wrong. So post that you think it might be wrong. But posting about how man has gone to far or other such dramatic statements is really kinda ridiculous when you fail to devote yourself to this good you apparently so strongly believe in.
ohh and I apoligize beforehand to that handful of peoplel here who really are extremly good.
The capatilists "live" off the backs of the third world nations b/c they are so bad off their even the sweatshop wages they pay are better then what they had before.
What is more interesting is the evolution of an "assasin" virus. What if taking a sample from a world leader's head i could engineer a virus which had no adverse effects on anyone else but killed that specific individual. Untraceable completly natural looking death.
Any Bio people out there know how difficult this would be?
Ohh and I hated the implication in jurasic park that said Chaos theory said the animals would escape. Damn that was dumb.
The garbage collector argument is a common one against genetic engineering but examine your assumptions closely. You are assuming people have just enough intelligence so people can still be garbage collectors. What would have happened if we evolved to be just a little bit smarter? Would we then fall back into the dark ages because we couldn't find garbage collectors. No!
So if the new mean IQ is 165 then those with 150 IQ's can be garbage collectors (IQ is the sum of too many factors to be ever exactly specified). And yes if I was a garbage collector i would be happier with a higher IQ.
There is a difference between bringing up points requiring discusion and being a good journalist. I could list off legalization of drugs, abortion, and the dangers of computers becoming sentient as topics which require discussion. This, however, does not make me a good journalist.
The role of a journalist is to either A) present new information to his audience (most members of slashdot are already aware of the HPG (two days ago article) and the fact that eventually there is the possibility of genetic tailored babies. B) present a new spin/argument on existing data. or C) neatly summarize a topic for the audience.
Katz clearly did not do C and at least for me, and probably for most others, the arguments katz presented were old hat or at least obvious.
I think it was an interesting issue to post on slashdot but Katz did everything in his power to obfusciate the issue and stir up emotional reaction to an issue rather than rational debate. Why couldn't we just had an Ask:Slashdot Designer babies?
In fact very often people are attractive BECAUSE they are slightly different. Anytime the population all starts to look the same people who look exotic will be prized and the balance will fix itself again.
Slashdot Mirror
No mention in this article of specially reduced power consumption (beyond normal mobile chips) so I find it hard to believe that this chip will be able to outcompete the Crusoe. I don't know if the Crusoe has SMP support but if it did you should easily be able to beat the intel chips on speed as well by putting four of them in a laptop with still lower power consumption.
That raises an interesting question: Can the kind of technology which lets Transmeta optimize instruction translation on the fly be used to optimize the execution of single processer code on a dual procesor system? Just like in the translation case we would keep a software table but instead of most used instructions/jumps it would be of independent blocks of code.
Yes, but the key question is what will I play my pirated music on?
Suppose I am the RIAA what do I do? I know I can't stop digital music. I propose a new digital music format that can't be copied. This digital music format also gives me additional monopoly power in the digital music industry making sure I make barrels of cash and not some other startup distributer.
But wait there is already a free unencumbered product out there. I must tie it up in lawsuits saying it is a pirating tool and urge congresmen to pass legislation making it illegal. At the same time I offer incentive programs to those who do produce my SDMI compliant devices. Lo and behold the hardware companies (especially if im sony) make SDMI compliant devices. The consumers, not really knowing the difference, buy the heavily advertised new SDMI model.
Now everyone uses SDMI players. I copy a piece of music from my SDMI device. I can play it in my computer but I can't play it in my portable device. I can't play it in my stero etc.. etc... Thereby they guarnatee I still buy their music.
Yes they technically can (but probably won't) make a secure enough system for this purpose. The RIAA makes a master RSA key. Embed the public key in every player sign authorized RIAA music with the private key. Oops I just created a monopoly too locking out those pesky independent artists.
Its not a black hole. It is an optical black hole which just means that light gets stuck in this vortex. It will no more emit hawking radiation than a mirrored room (which hence traps light). This vortex is not gravitational does NOT slow time or any such thing.
the speed of light in vacumn is always constant. As light is just a traveling electromagnetic wave it can be retarded by a material it is travelling in
First off the issue at hand is NOT about stealing anyone else's code. It is about implementing some algorithm in code. This algorithm has (presumably) either been published in major journals or enough information is availible in the field to figure this algorithm out WITHOUT stealing anyone else's code.
Certainly from a moral standpoint (and a legal standpoint involving copyright but not patent) their is no theft occuring if I figure out hos someone else did something independently and implement this algorithm myself. (In some sense this is what DeCSS is about. Someone figured out the algorithm mapping encrypted to decrypeted files. This algorithm, being unpatented, should be perfectly within our rights to use as we see fit. No one copied their code and is distributing it.).
From a moral issue there is no reason whatsoever to assume that using someone else's idea is wrong or incorrect. They do not lose anything when you use their idea (to say they lose the rights to it is fallacious as it assumes that they have said rights in the first place) like they do when you take physical property from them. The arguments for Intellectual prooperty are ENTIERLY economic. If we did not have laws protecting IP then there would be no incentive to create works and/or new products. It is interesting to note that these laws were all originally choosen to have reasonably limited durations but that lobbying from various companies has pushed up the copyright time to a ridiculous level.
For a while after the revolution the United States had no copyright law to speak of. Of course during this period we produced little literature and became a 'pirate country' reprinting books from other countries beyond their law.
Yes I agree you don't get the banana back and probably don't get the burglary tools back. Mt point is that there appears to NEVER have been a finding by a jury or even a court of law that these items are in fact either the fruits of his crime or the tools used in his crime.
As an earlier poster pointed out it could be his grandmothers cookie recipe or lots of child porn. I agree his refusal to open it up for the authorities is sugestive but remember the excersice of his rights (in this case refusal to turn over the key) cannot be held agaisnt him. In essence his data is being taken away from him on the assertion it was used/was the product of a crime not the finding thereof.
The government has taken his stuff and asked him to prove it is not the fruits of a crime which appears to be in violation of the normal procedure of where they prove it is the fruits of a crime so they can take it.
Okay then so suppose I am accused of stealing a bannana and my car is seized as evidence (maybe it was a getaway vehicle and I left traces of bannana on the seat). Now I am convicted of bannana theft and rightly pay a fine or short jail sentence or whatever. Are you implying that I now have a burden of proof to show that the car was not stolen in order to retrieve it?
This seems to lead to an arbitrary abuse of government confiscatory power whereby they may take my stuff and convict me of misdemeanors asking me to prove that my stuff is rightly mine.
Given the fact that no evidence has been admitted which shows that this encrypted data actually contains stolen documents it would seem that this case is similar to the stolen bannana case. As I understand it was never even entered into evidence so no court of law deemed that this encrypted data was in fact what he stole.
Well from my inexpert standing I am still confused about something.
Sure, Kevin Mitnick was convicted (or at least plead guilty) so his penalty could quite legally have included the government not returning his files. However, as I understand it, his punishment does not say anything of the kind. This might be an oversight of the government but they can't increase his sentence once alreay convicted can they?
In a normal theft case isn't the thief specifically charged with turning over certain items? Or am I just completly full of it? Regardless of whether he is convicted of a crime or not as long as his conviction says nothing about the data isn't this an entierly new case which must be tried seperatly and hence the burden of proof once again rests on the government?
Please tell me why im wrong
The thing about the internet is that you have a huge new market opening up and everyone knows about it. Now just because of the way word spreads and the fact that people tend to do what there friends do in each internet sector some company will probably come to dominate, or at least split with a few others, the entire market. This means, if you believe internet sales are going to become a large segment of the market, that several companies are going to balloon to absolutely incredible sizes.
We should EXPECT to see new McDonalds and so forth. Small companies whose net worth climes drasticlly. This time Wall Street isn't stupid and everyone wants a piece of that company when/if it does grow huge. So in fact the companies may not be overvalued but they are EXTREMLY risky b/c they veyr well might not corner most of the market
Most of the inventions I have seen so far improve our lives...maybe even change them to some extent but they all leave the fundamental relations between humans the same. Perhaps in 100 years after (if) we have full VR immersion and people live as brains in vats the internet will have this effect as well. But as of now these various technolgies merely allow us to do the same kind of things we did before on a larger scale and more efficently. People still buy and sell etc.. etc..
The birth control pill has changed, and is still changing, the basic way human beings relate to each other. It has allowed society to restructure away from child birth and child rearing and allowed half of the society to take a much more active role. The future effects of this invention will undoubtly be large as well.
The birth control pill is the first in a hopefully long line of advances that allow us to change who we are and reshape the human condition. Not merely get sick less or age slower actually change who we are as a species.
So there are ALOT of people who have become filthy rich off of computer hardware software and so forth (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Paul Allen etc...) and, as rich people are want to do they tend to, or at least express an interest in philanthropy.
Well here is a way to help out! It's one thing to sue Joe Schmuck for DeCSS. Even with the EFF defending him it is easy to paint him as an evil hacker/pirate and an enemy of social order/capitalism.
On the other hand if one of these big rich men were to do the same thing (supported by their own high price lawyers no doubt) it would be much more difficult to so libel them. Clearly, given there large net worth, they aren't doing this just to steal a few bucks worth of DVD's.
If anyone knows a local billionaire who is feeling genorous give him a call.
No, DeCSS makes it no easier to pirate. Right now I can go out rent a DVD download the *encrypted* image to my harddrive. Write the encrypted DVD to my DVD writer. Voila! I have an exact copy of the original DVD which, by virtue of being an exact copy, is playable by the same hardware as the original.
What they hope to gain, by scaring people into not mucking with DVD, is to retain their monopolistic control of DVD decoder technologies.
No matter what interpratation you choose the GPL is probably still good. Sure some group of people could decide to create their own private version of GPLed software without legal fault, however, they are still restricted from selling their modified code. It is this restriction on commercial transactions which saves the GPL if "group liscenses" are valid.
While we readers on slashdot feel some connection with illicit hackers, even if we personally deteste the thought of cracking into someone's box it will eventually become necessery to have serious law enforcement power to protect our machines. Sure most hackers are doing it just to see if it can be done or for the fun of it this doesn't mean there aren't malicious hackers out there. With the growth ofthe internet and the increasing commercialization *real* computer crime won't be far behind. Already we have seen examples of organized crime moving in on the action.
The easy anonimity and facelessness of the crimes opens up the doors for criminal activity on a massive scale. While it might be slightly interesting that 300,000 credit cards were recently stolen when this escalates it will become a serious problem.
Can prevention stop this problem? Experience says no. Even big companies with expert know-how get hacked not to mention the huge difficulty getting the masses to routinely upgrade their personal computers (which will probably have permanent connections within ten years).
Can current law enforcement adequatly deal with this problem? Probably not. If I route my attack through 10 countries (which would be easy enough to do) it would take reams and reams of paper work to get the necessery warrents for all ten countries to track me down. If this is happening on a widespread scale the government could not cope.
I will mourn the free-wheeling days of the internet but like the coyboys in the old west the needs of civilazation must necesserily squash the independent gunslinging culture of the internet. (Yes gun sligning...sheriffs on the net are few and far between people are left to secure their own hardware and match their skill vs. that of the hacker).
P.S. I used hacker intentionally here so please no "use cracker" posts. It is a lost cause the rest of the nation has already adopted the new vocabulary. Besides its just a word why do you care?
Perhaps, but it doesnt require sezure of non-evidencial guns before a conviction.
Besides the ACLU is really the american civil liberal's union...just look at their stance on issues like affirmitive action (they file suits to force individuals to adopt specific hiring practices...not bery libertarian)
I think that we would all agree laughing at a student *honestly* trying to learn to his face is just mean.
However, there is a big difference between laughing at a specific individual and general stupidity. For instance most people find jokes about stupid people/blondes funny even though people that stupid really do exist.
Secondly there is no way these people are honestly trying to learn. The people who call in with these problems might be doctors or lawyers so the issue is certainly not one of ability. The difficulty is rather caused by an unwillingess to try and learn...something which SHOULD be ridiculed.
Thirdly even if tech support humor isn't funny, or is even offensive much more harm is done pointing this out then the strips do themselves. What reaction is such a comment supposed to provide? Are people who were previously enjoying UF supposed to stop reading it because they feel guilty. The human condition is such that much of our pleasure takes place at the expense of another. To insist on only bland inoffensive humor is a far worse harm then any ridicule could bring about
Nice idea but several problems
1) who pays for root nameservers? Is this service free? If so how do you convince people to switch.
2) Trademarks are dangerous because they are *legally* protected. Very possibly you are going to end up in court alot over this even if you shouldn't. Big dollars for lawyers.
3)Everyone wants the websites they visit now to stay that way.
Possible solution:
Don't start over create a black list (like for email spam) over really aggregious trademark abusers (for instance companies which steal private citizen's laast names etc..). This blacklist would contain the domain name in question and possibly a new forwarding address.
Individual ISP's would (hopefully) choose to add this list (distributed in proper format) to their name servers (force them to answer authoratively for these domains). Therefore punishing any company engaging in this practive.
This has little to no funding requirements and since their is no single organization to sue legal challenges become very difficult. In addition it is implemented transparantely to most users (those who use their ISP's name servers)
He was buying the domain from someone else so he did need the owner changed.
His *REAL* plan was probably to get a spiffy web address make a non-profitable company and then become a multi-millionare based on the hype surronding his cool word. Unfortunatly this would work currently.
On a slightly less cynical note a domain name is a companies best asset. On the internet geographical proximity isn't an issue and very few sites actually offer a service another site can't offer at a similar price. This means that the ONLY distinguishing mark of your company is your advertising and domain name. If your competitor's domain name is easier to remember he might end up with the entire buisness and you with nothing.
What is it about issues like this that make people all religious? Not to insult any slashdot posters (they are obviously all saints who give away their incomes to the poor.) but why do people who aren't bothering to devote themselves to doing good willing to tell scientists what they can and can't do in the labratory.
I respect, even if I don't agree with, the objections of religious leaders. These are men and women who really have devouted their life to doing good. But it is the height of hypocrisy to say "you shouldn't do that" when I know full well that you earn a great deal above the mean income and are keeping most of that money to make yourself happy. And no helping out once in awhile at the local community center doesn't cut it.
I don't blame you, being good is very difficult (heck im not), and maybe you think that doing this might be wrong. So post that you think it might be wrong. But posting about how man has gone to far or other such dramatic statements is really kinda ridiculous when you fail to devote yourself to this good you apparently so strongly believe in.
ohh and I apoligize beforehand to that handful of peoplel here who really are extremly good.
The capatilists "live" off the backs of the third world nations b/c they are so bad off their even the sweatshop wages they pay are better then what they had before.
it's not charity but its better then nothing.
What is more interesting is the evolution of an "assasin" virus. What if taking a sample from a world leader's head i could engineer a virus which had no adverse effects on anyone else but killed that specific individual. Untraceable completly natural looking death.
Any Bio people out there know how difficult this would be?
Ohh and I hated the implication in jurasic park that said Chaos theory said the animals would escape. Damn that was dumb.
The garbage collector argument is a common one against genetic engineering but examine your assumptions closely. You are assuming people have just enough intelligence so people can still be garbage collectors. What would have happened if we evolved to be just a little bit smarter? Would we then fall back into the dark ages because we couldn't find garbage collectors. No!
So if the new mean IQ is 165 then those with 150 IQ's can be garbage collectors (IQ is the sum of too many factors to be ever exactly specified). And yes if I was a garbage collector i would be happier with a higher IQ.
There is a difference between bringing up points requiring discusion and being a good journalist. I could list off legalization of drugs, abortion, and the dangers of computers becoming sentient as topics which require discussion. This, however, does not make me a good journalist.
The role of a journalist is to either A) present new information to his audience (most members of slashdot are already aware of the HPG (two days ago article) and the fact that eventually there is the possibility of genetic tailored babies. B) present a new spin/argument on existing data. or C) neatly summarize a topic for the audience.
Katz clearly did not do C and at least for me, and probably for most others, the arguments katz presented were old hat or at least obvious.
I think it was an interesting issue to post on slashdot but Katz did everything in his power to obfusciate the issue and stir up emotional reaction to an issue rather than rational debate. Why couldn't we just had an Ask:Slashdot Designer babies?
I am curious now as well how did Katz get his job
In fact very often people are attractive BECAUSE they are slightly different. Anytime the population all starts to look the same people who look exotic will be prized and the balance will fix itself again.