But even Darwin believed in a Creator God - and he said so himself.
As for objectivity, I think it's quite fair to say that there are unthinking, knee-jerk types in both camps. (If you think creationists have an exclusive on that, just keep reading this/. discussion and look at some of the anti-Christian anti-creationist hate speech below.)
It's just simply neither fair nor accurate to say that there are not deep thinking people on both sides. And evolution itself is a dogma at least as strong as that in any religion. (If you doubt this, do some good research on anomalous fossil finds (there are many) and then publish your results - anything that challenges evolution in the slightest is ridiculed in the "scientific" community, regardless of merit.)
In fact, the only people I know who have done honest, well-balanced reviews of the evidence on both sides happen to be creationists, since, unfortunately, evolutionists tend to dismiss creation as impossible before bothering to look at the facts that support that position.
Truth is what matters. The point is to seek the truth.
Actually, no, and this is one of the areas where the creationists have a very valid point, especially with the acceptance of the punctuated equilibrium theory among the evolutionists.
(Punctuated equilibrium (PE) was added to evolutionary theory to address the concern that there are a distinct lack of in-between forms in the fossil record, particularly w.r.t. the Cambrian explosion, where thousands of new species appeared at once with no transitional fossils. PE says that things remain stable for a long time, then something disturbs the equilibrium, and life rapidly adapts completely new forms.)
If this is true, then species transitions happen relatively quickly, and a very small number of the mutant species would parent an entire family tree. This should, in theory, result in in-breeding/genetic vigor problems. The fact that it doesn't is a point in the creationists favor. On the other hand, an active and perfect Creator would create a perfect example of the species, which would not (at least initially) be subject to the degradations we see as a result of in-breeding today.
I'm open-minded enough to recognize that *WE DON'T KNOW* how things came to be, and I recognize that both the evolutionists and the creationists have some very valid points. The creationists have in thier favor the fact that thier theory does gracefully explain things that otherwise present significant problems, and the universe certainly seems to show evidence of design. Keep an open mind, and you'll find that the creation theories have thier own strength areas that are different, but at least as compelling as, the evolutionary theories.
P.S.: Don't know for sure about the water for the flood came from, but you might want to check out this article from last month's New Scientist about where they may still be receding... (See, those creationists may not be so kooky as you think!)
This is ridiculous. Java and Linux are orthogonal to one another. Java can, should, and does (to an unsatisfying degree) run on Linux as well as it runs anywhere else. Java is at best a very weak argument for Solaris, especially given the fact that JVMs/JITs are generally faster on Wintel than they are on SPARC/Solaris.
Java is a language, a set of tools and APIs, and a run-time environment which can run on any OS. Linux is just one of the operating systems that can support Java. They are not equivalent in any meaningful way.
The Java model should in principle be warmly accepted by the Linux crowd - why all the hostility to Java? I think we're all agreed that portable apps and code re-use are a good thing, and that complete binary compatibility makes it possible to do things in network computing that aren't otherwise possible. (To the flamers - I realize there are other ways to do some of this, I also recognize none of them has all of Java's strengths. Whether you like it or not, you have to admit that Java is cool technology, and comes closer to realizing the "write once, run anywhere" dream than anything else. (And it's a lot better in that respect now than it was a year ago...))
Why not, instead of flaming, work to make Linux the best darn Java platform out there? It could be.
Personally, I'd love to be able to run the exact same apps on my nextgen Palm, my company-issue Windows laptop, and my home Linux box. We're not all that far away from that now.
Cowpland is Corel. Gates is Microsoft. McNealy is Sun. Ellison is Oracle. These world respected organisations would not be where they are today if it wasn't for these "personalities".
I disagree strongly, at least in the case of Sun. Sure, Scott is the visible front-man for Sun, a role that he relishes and which suits his brash style - But what Sun is is by no means Scott's vision alone, or even his principally, although he is a key player.
In fact, it's probably quite safe to say that Scott sees his job more as carrying out the vision than defining it. Sun's vision per se (the technical aspect) is far more a product of Bill Joy, John Gage, Eric Schmidt (CEO at Novell for a while now, but his imprint is still on Sun), Greg Papadopoulos (Eric's replacement as CTO), James Gosling and Bud Tribble.
I've worked at a lot of companies, but never seen another where such a strong community of seriously capable people is setting the direction. Scott has the visibility - that's his role - but don't forget the other driving powers behind Sun. I don't think the other companies mentioned above have nearly the strengths that Sun has in comparable roles, which is one of the things that makes sun truly different from nearly every other company in this business.
In most cases, strong CEOs are very controlling. (Quick, who's Ellison's #2?) The interesting thing about Scott is that he (and Sun) really doesn't operate that way...
OK, folks, reality check! Linux is probably NOT the best choice here for some pretty good reasons. Let's forget the advocacy and stick to facts.
Several pretty good reasons to stick with Win98 in this situation:
1. It's already there. This is probably the best reason. Sure, you could show us all your nerdly prowess and turn your Grandfather's really cool new flatscreen PC into a Frankenstein's monster, but would that be better? Everything you need is there now, and there's little to be gained by a move as drastic as ripping out and replacing the OS.
2. Hardware Issues. The Gateway Profile, while not a laptop, uses laptop-ish hardware, and would present similar challenges to Linux on a new laptop. Linux is very good, but it still has a ways to go before it's ready for serious laptop use. Keep in mind that things like ACPI and USB won't work, and things like sound may not work for a long time, if ever. He might really enjoy a USB camera for Christmas!
3. Win98 can do what you need. Win98 can actually be made quite simple and consistent, particularly if you turn on active desktop and point it at a nicely built custom HTML page that contains launchers for the things he'll need. Although it's seldom used well, this is a really powerful feature that offers a lot of power to reside behind the scenes. Another feature of the IE/Win98 desktop can also be quite beneficial here: set it up so that it uses single-click to open things. That way there's no difference between the way the browser and the desktop work, eliminating one of the most confusing and frustrating issues for new users.
4. Suppport. If the other arguments haven't clinched it, this one should. He will actually be able to get the Gateway folks to help him so long as the software bears some resemblance to what they shipped. While quite confident of my skills in setting up a Linux box for this (and there are some benefits to that approach although they're outweighed by the point above), I would leave my own grandfather (if any were left) with the factory config. The OEMs put a LOT of work into making things work as they should (I know, I used to do it for a living), even in the Windows environment. (Why do you think VA Research has a good reason to exist? Sure you can do everythign they do, but it's hard, and it's worth something to have it done by those that know how. Generally, Gateway builds a pretty solid machine. Leverage that.
5. Software availability. This may not be an issue, but the fact is that today, I can go down to CompUSA or the like and buy a gazillion Windows apps for every Linux equivalent. Free (beer) software is nice, but we pay a knowledge tax to use it. Sometimes cheap commercial software is cheaper - autorun of setup.exe is a whole lot easier than even installing RPMs or tarballs. Also, don't forget games - my wife's grandfather, who passed away last year at nealy 102, spent all afternoon a few years back playing my brother-in law's new sub warfare game. Windows has the edge in this regard for the time being.
In general, don't change things unless there's a *good* reason, and figure out how *he* would like it to work before you start the serious twiddling.
Sure, you can do this with Linux, but unless you're trying to make a statement, where's the payback? Now if Gateway *sold* the Profile with Linux, then I might change my tune...
However, if you don't have the listed hardware, or you're trying to do something a little unusual (like use the VGA out port on a Dell Latitude CPi), it can get challenging quickly.
Not really. If you've got video working at all, then it makes no difference whether you're going to the screen or the VGA port. Once the X server is on good terms with the NeoMagic controller in the CPi, then you're set. Just use the BIOS hot key (Fn-F7 I think - anyway, it's the one with the little picture of the CRT on it) to toggle display output from screen to CRT to both. The only thing that might be tricky is finding a way to switch from LCD to CRT under software control, but this is problematic even under Windows and still requires custom software for each particular machine, since there's no standard API for making the call to change that. The BIOS hot-key is handier anyway.
Oh, and I speak with some authority on this as I was Dell's Program Manager for Software for Latitude and Inspiron when the CPi was released. So far as I know, I was the first person to ever install Linux on a CPi (a few months before it went on sale), and as a matter of fact, it was Caldera!
Then I doubt seriously that you've been following the tech media for more than two months.
I've been following Caldera's progress for several years now (since it was a rogue project in Novell, even), and if you'd been paying any attention, you might even have found several of the posts I made right here about the surprising quality, stability, and incredible ease of installation of the 2.2 release. It's not perfect, and Caldera (as do other Linuxes) has a long way to go, but it's really quite good, and a very solid product.
Although it's anathema to those here who take their distro choices religiously rather than seriously, a very good case can be made that Caldera is the best Linux distro for corporate deployment on either the server or desktop side.
Caldera seems to rub some folks here the wrong way because it's a well-integrated distro rather than the Linux Construction Kits favored by some of the developer community. Caldera is not for everyone (that's why we have multiple distros!), but they have an excellent chance of becoming one of (if not the) predominant mainstream distros.
Finally, I find that most of the Caldera-haters here on/. have either never tried Caldera, or they tried it quite some time ago. Give it a fair try now, and I think you'll see it's the only distro at the moment that can even attempt to seriously challenge Microsoft.
C'mon, folks, this entire post is wild speculation. The Dragonball family is used in many things other than the Palm/Visor devices, and has a number of capabilities that are not currently being leveraged.
Heck the EZ supports 640x512 LCD's, so is it reasonable to expect a big-screen Palm out soon just because the chip supports it? IRIC, the Dragonball also supports PCMCIA, but we've never seen that, either.
Just because the VZ supports color displays doesn't mean anyone's going to build a color PalmOS device. (Especially 3Com or Handspring, both of which seem to correctly recognize that color has a negative value in this application due to cost and power usage concerns.)
It's hard to have a rational and valuable discussion about entirely hypothetical flamebait.
Now,instead, if someone were to post an informative and well-researched article on the challenges involved in extending the PalmOS graphics model to support larger screens and color, we might have something worthy of News for Nerds...
t is worth noting that they do make a CDMA version, so you're not limited to PCS.
Sorry, but you seem a bit confused here. PCS (Personal Communications Service) is a generic name for the "new" 1900 MHz band authorized by the FCC for (what else?) digital personal communications services.
Within the PCS band, there are two common modulation methods, TDMA and CDMA. Qualcomm invented CDMA and only makes CDMA phones. All other CDMA phone manufacturers (Sony, Denso, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung) license the technology from Qualcomm.
TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access), allocates each user small time slice during which their phone may operate at full power to send intermittent blips of data. Note that although this can provide low-power usage (long battery life), it is not a low-power transmission.
CDMA is completely different and lets all users talk at once by relying on a "Pseudo-Noise" (PN) sequence mixed with the digital data stream to allow the reciever to separate it out, much like we can easily separate out a particular conversation in a crowded room. The PN codes within a cell are a set of "gold codes" designed to ensure that they are all orthogonal to one another - there's some cool and hairy math in there. CDMA does not use time slices, but rather transmits as needed while dynamically adjusting power to the lowest practicable level to avoid stepping on other signals. (It is this "power-agile" nature of CDMA that proved to be the hardest engineering problem, and delayed its deployment by several years.)
CDMA has several distinct advantages over TDMA: It has been shown to offer the highest bandwidth usage of any system (this was true a few years ago, I don't know if it's still true with the new pulse position/wavelet systems or not), and most importantly for mobile digital data, it offers "Soft Handoff". This is a slick byproduct of the way CDMA works: since only your code differentiates your signal, not the frequency, it's possible to be in contact with two (or even more) cell stations simultaneously, and the network has the ability to dynamically choose the best signal. This provides very smooth handoffs since there is not a single "cutover" point at which you are talking only to the "new" cell, even though a moment later, you may again have the best connectivity through the "old" one. For voice, this doesn't much matter, because we have these really cool giga-neuron analog signal processors between our ears to plug the gaps, but it's very important for data streams, where there are just finicky computers listening.
CDMA's excellent support for mobile data connectivity is the reason I and many ohters believe that CDMA must ulitmately triumph, and why Qualcomm's stock went through the roof last year, to the point that it now has a P/E of 300 - unheard of for a comms company (Cisco's is only a little over 100!)
(Incidentally, the very sharp rise-time/fall-time edges of TDMA (and GSM, which uses TDMA modulation at a different frequency and much higher power) are suspected to have a far greater impact on biological systems than the pseudo-noise signal of CDMA. Most of the studies showing a linkage between cellphone usage and biological effects involve TDMA or GSM phones. This also may ultimately have an impact on CDMA's success, especially the next-generation broadband CDMA systems.)
I suppose I sound like a cheerleader here, but CDMA *is* cool technology.
I recently narrowly decided on the Qualcomm Thin Phone over the TouchPoint (actually made by Denso, but since no one here knows that name, they don't volunteer it.) Came down to thinness and cost (~$80 less) on the plus side, and smaller display and no vibrator on the minus side.
It also has a built-in web browser and optional data cable, which seems to be hard to get at the moment, but appears to have a DB-9 serial cable on the other end. What I'm curious about is what this thing looks like to the software - a direct serial link for PPP or CSLIP? A modem that ignores the dailing stuff? Is Sprint my wireless ISP now? To the point, what do I have to do to get a wireless inet link through the ThinPhone working on my Caldera-powered Libretto?
If anyone out there's done this, I'd love to hear about it.
Actually, I've found GHOST to be quite valuable for duplicating and relocating Linux images, too - it's much easier and faster than a clean install and rebuild. GHOST is a cool program - there's really nothing else out there that does what it does at that level of competency.
Also, it's not even a MS product, so I fail to see the relevance of your point.
I find it quite interesting that the same people who spout, "Just don't buy it, then!" when the discussion is about pornography in general, get so upset when the mayor of New York simply decides he isn't going to buy a pornographic and overtly offensive museum exhibit.
Not buying something is not censorship. Mayor Giuliani is simply not buying.
This infringes no ones rights. Forcing the taxpayers to support something they generally find repugnant definitely infringes their rights, though.
I have a problem with your arugement here. I don't belive that if God doesn't exist then all things are permissable. Also, you might want to find out what different societies feel is "right and wrong". Trust me, its not universal, as much as we'd like it to be.
I'll let Dostoevsky speak for himself. Numerous other philosophers (even atheists) have reached essentially the same conclusion. There is little difference of opinion between civilized societies about major points such as the wrongness of taking another's life.
I can come up with a stable society that allowed for the killing of children. The Roman society allowed for this through most of its rise and into its high point. That practice did decline as the years passed but it was known to happen.
Infanticide has been practiced to some degree in all societies, as has other kinds of murder. I believe your timeline is backwards. It was rare in Rome until just before the decline and fall of the empire. I maintain that the moral decay brought on by such practices hastened the demise of Rome, thus my qualifier of "stable".
Singer is niether brave nor brilliant, but I will give him credit for one thing: He points out quite clearly the conclusion a nihilistic worldview must reach. A traditional Judeo-Christian worldview has a quite different take on things. This is the real clash here - a culture clash - one of conflicting worldviews that by their very nature cannot be reconciled.
The religious argument is quite appropriate here in light of the worldview conflict. Dostoevsky said it best: "If God does not exist, then all things are permissable." But we *know* deep down in our souls and bones, that right and wrong DO exist and all things are not permissable. And that in turn demands the existence of God. And if God exists, then perhaps we should listen to what He has to say about killing. (For those of you that ask, "Which god?", I suggest you search for the one which corresponds to truth - that one will be God, not god.)
Singer's argument is perfectly logical, but that points out its fallacy, and the fact that his logical conclusions are based on false premises. If one does not believe in God, then it does not much matter what one does. Many would claim that we should all be free to do whatever we want so long as we don't hurt others, but why should even this restriction exist in the abscence of God? If it pleases me to say, kill Peter Singer because I disagree with him, and there is no God, no objective right and wrong, why shouldn't I do it? I have never found a satisfactory answer to this question outside the conclusion that the question is invalid and God must exist.
On the issue of America losing its freedom because Singer feels threatened: America is a free country, and Singer is free to speak in marked and unguarded classrooms. He has chosen instead to act as a coward. Those that proclaim truth seldom do so with cowardice, those that believe it never do.
Katz further falls victim to the idea that all ideas are created equal. They are not. Singer's ideas devalue humanity and are not equal in value to say, Mother Theresa's. The press, society, and yes, even discussion groups are working properly when they supress the propagation of ideas and values that are evil or harmful.
Jesse Ventura did not "question religion" in any intelligent way, he simply exposed his bigotry and prejudice. This is not something to be celebrated whether or not you agree with the man. (And despite what the community here may think, many, if not most, Christians have thought deeply and logically about their faith and its implications.)
Furthermore, the use of terms like murder are not at all incorrect in this circumstance, and certainly do not prohibit a dialog. A quick check with m-w.com shows a definition of murder as "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought". I think most would go further and say that a component of murder would be that the person killed (and it must be a person, despite what Singer says) is not maliciously endangering the life of the person doing the killing - thus the "self-defense" exception. Disabled infants or inconvenient elders (remember, you may be one some day, especially if you haven't taught your children the value of life) may indeed cause extreme hardship and inconvenience, but there is certainly no malice in their hearts driving their condition, and so killing them would, by any reasonable standard, be murder. Killing simply for the convenience of the killer is never justifiable.
Killing another person is generally (but not always) deemed to be justified in cases of war (which can be morally defended only if one is sure one is on the right side or forced into service), self defense against a life-threatening attack, or in certain cases and within well-prescribed bounds, to enforce the law.
The killing of deformed infants, the infirm, the physically disabled, the elderly, the currently out-of-favor religious/ethnic group, and yes, even the unborn clearly do not fall into that category. Every stable (and that's a *very* important qualifier) society in history has proscribed such behavior. Many here dismiss the "slippery slope" argument, but history shows that societies that start down it inevitably wind up at the bottom.
Finally, I thought it was interesting that even Katz seems to leave open the question of knowing "whether any of these ideas have legitimacy and are worth exploring, or whether some deserve to be roundly rejected." Interestingly, Katz seems to think that only he or those that agree with him can assert that an idea should be roundly rejected.
All ideas are clearly NOT equal. If we begin to treat them as if they are, we will make some very bad choices indeed. Some ideas are worthy of a serious discussion. Peter Singer's are not that kind.
One item I've not seen raised here is a vital one, which so far as I know is not addressed in the HIPAA/Kassebaum-Kennedy legislation. (Although I have not studied it, and I could be wrong.)
In order to prevent abuses of patient data it is *absolutely essential* that it be made completely clear and unambiguous in the law that *any* data about a patient's health is the *property* of that person. If this is not done, then all the other "security" assurances are meaningless. Information should be released to providers or payers *only* with the permission of the patient, on a transaction-by-transaction basis. That means that even your own doc should not be able to go pawing through your record without your consent, unless he is willing to certify that an emergency situation exists and you are incapacitated. Even then, an non-repudiatable entry should be made in the audit log to show that access.
Not only is this not clear in the federal legislation so far as I know, but few states have any sort of law stating that patients own thier information, either. It's easier to get your medical records in many places than your credit report, and we all know that's not too difficult.
BTW: Think not only of how information on you might be misused against you, but also how it could be misused against your offspring, since it will all be available on some big server somewhere. There's really no reason to expect that your records won't still be around long after you're gone, but they could be dangerous for quite a while: Hmm, his great-grandfather had cancer, eh? "I'm sorry, we don't have any positions that are a good fit for you at this time, but we'll keep your resume (and family health history) on file."
If the patient *doesn't* own their own data, then who does? It's likely some presently powerful entity that stands to benefit greatly from the serindipitous discoveries that doubtless lay waiting to be discovered in all that data. The data *is* quite valuable, and that's the problem - it's unlikely that the insurance companies, HMOS, pharma companies, etc. would let the patient own this data, they all want to control it themselves. The new federal directions on ownership of databaases make this even scarier.
At the same time, an ideal setup would allow anonymous searching across populations, but it's notoriously hard to prevent information about a single patient from being retrieved by data mining tools. (Show me the abstracted claim info for all female VPs at XYZ Corp that live in Yuma. Oops, there's only one? Well, that abstracting didn't hide much, now did it?)
Oh, and not to be alarmist, but as a former heatlhcare IT consultant, I can say that although most hospitals and docs are sincere in their intent to provoide privacy, in reality there is nearly none. The most secure systems you'll find in a hospital are the ones based on paper, and a big hospital loses thousands of charts and x-rays every year. Not like it really matters since all the most damaging info gets shuffled directly to the HMOs or insurance companies in already coded and classified form where it can *really* get misused behind closed doors. In my mind, the payers pose a far greater risk than the providers.
************************************************ * Patients must own patient data, and the providers and payers must realize they have a fiduciary responsibility to maintain the privacy of that data. ************************************************ *
Actually, a full broadcast-quality MPEG-2 video stream is only 4Mbps. You actually don't even need broadband spectrum to do full-quality TV delivery if you're OK with the idea of having your "tuner" live in the network back at the head-end/CO/etc. Some of the xDSL guys are starting to realize this (Newbridge and others showed this at N+I.) The only downside is a slightly longer than normal delay when switching channels, but then people with DSS boxes have already been conditioned to think this is normal.
Note that this means even wireless can be a real competitor to cable and especially telco copper in the future. A 6 Mbps LMDS derivative or Wideband CDMA could easily provide enough pipe to deliver a movie at full MPEG-2 resolution (even without VBR), a half dozen phone/voice/control connections, and still leave more than a T-1 available for surfing the net.
There's really very little you can do in the foreseeable future that would require more bandwidth than that, and 6Mbps bidirectional may well prove to offer a customer experience superior to a lopsided cable-like system with choked down upstream bandwidth. In the end, latency and bandwidth availability are more important than bandwidth per se. The ability to provide high bandwidth availability through a switched infrastructure is the only thing that keeps me from writing off the RBOCs entirely - now if they can just figure out how to pay for the switch upgrades as a regulated utility...
In short, a good set-top can provide serious TV quality in a reasonable amount of bandwidth. It's not going to happen with a 56K modem, though. (Has anyone ever gotten a 56K connection with one of those things? I never have...)
The fact that they appear to be going back there is enough to make one ponder a bit. I wonder what impact this has on our conjectures about the earth's history when the effect is projected back in time? Does the effect vary with time? Is there a good way to tell?
You said: "...and then build an entirely extra particle accelerator to funnel a beam of pure neutrons at your target."
Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a particle physicist, but how would one accelerate neutrons? Electrons: No problem, positive things atrract them, negative things repulse them.
Protons: Again no problem, just the inverse.
Neutrons: Dang! How the heck do you grab one of these things, anyway?
I know how neutrons can be generated by a nuclear reaction, etc., but fail to see how you could ever beam-ize the little turkeys once you've made them...
If this is possible, I'd love to know how it's done.
I'm not a database expert, but I've done a fair amount of healthcare IT consulting over the years, and run across Intersystems' Caché database quite often.
Most people aren't familiar with Caché from Intersystems, but if you're building a very large, sparsely populated transactional database (like an electronic medical record, for instance), it's at least an order of magnitude faster than Oracle, even after doing unnatural things with Oracle. (This info came directly from a major EMR vendor that benchmarked Cache and all the usual suspects and found nothing in the same league for this application. According to his tests, Caché was 30x faster than Oracle out of the box - Intersystems' website claims Caché is 20x faster than RDBMS competitors.)
The technology is quite interesting in some regards: It is very mature, having its roots in the old MUMPS or "M" system (about as old as Unix), but has been updated quite nicely as time has passed to provide quite capable SQL and object-oriented interfaces, even though it is neither an RDBMS or an OODB internally.
Another nice feature is its distributed caching protocol, which allows you to build a logically huge database server piecewise from a number of distributed servers. A number of large installations, including Boston Children's Hospital (IIRC), use this for their EMR - last I heard, BCH's database was spread over 100-150 servers. This would seem to fit nicely with the Linux way of doing things.
It runs on Linux and a free download is even available on thier website, or they'll send you a CD for the asking if you're one of the unfortunates stuck on the end of a phone line.
You can find Intersystems at http://www.intersys.com, not exactly the world's most intuitive URL, so I thought I should include it here...
I am amazed at the number of people here who seem to think that moral decisions are influenced by economic or other concerns. Allow me to ilustrate:
My killing you would be wrong. (I think we are all in agreement here.)
My killing you would be just as wrong if I were paid $10 million for the act. (Some would claim this is worse, since I am now guilty of covetous greed as well as murder.)
The act would *still* be just as wrong if it netted the entire wealth of the planet, to be used solely for the purpose of helping others and eliminating human suffering worldwide. (Any disagreement on this point is an implicit agreement that "the end justifies the means", and ultimately nullifies any claim of the existence of right and wrong.)
The "unclear on the concept" problem prevalent here at/. is also revealed in another way - the numerous attempts to detract from Singer's ridiculous proposition through arguments such as, "what about Hawking?" While I have great respect for the contributions of this theorist (so far as I am able to understand his thinking), his contributions to society (and many would argue his contributions are minor) are entirely irrelevant.
From the only logically consistent moral point of view, Hawking has no more or less worth than you, I, a German Jew, a Sudanese Christian, or even a deformed infant. (I would argue, counter to Singer, that all of the above have sustantially more worth than, say, a cat or a porpoise.) If you do not believe this, then I respectfully request that you reevaluate your value system, at least to the point that you admit you are a bigot and do not hold all men to be created equal, for that is the only logical conclusion that can be reached.
Slashdot is a funny place: despite all the "expertise" in computers and logic, a logical, well-thought-out argument is quite hard to find, but wooly thinking abounds, especially if wrapped in the latest trendiness.
THINK, people!
Finally, has it occured to none of the morallly challenged here that because of the gravity of the issues at debate, it might be best to fall on the "safe" side, and grant life the benfit of the doubt? Surely those who are not entirely sure (and I think if they are honest, most of Singer's supporters fall into this camp) should realize that life and death decisions are final, and if there is even the slightest chance they are wrong, the only morally correct thing to do is to support the position that grants and affirms life, for there is no reprieve from death.
This is the most immature point of view possible. What you are saying is that you are unwilling to be responsible for your imperfect offspring unless someone else foots the bill. Which is to say, really, that you just refuse to be responsible for your actions at all.
I have it on good authority that He was at Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth recently:
Despite several "attempts" to walk up the aisles to where most of the people were, the gunman by all reports was unable to do so. Police claim this is responsible for the much smaller number of deaths that would ordinarily be expected in such a circumstance.
porkchop wrote: People are getting really upset with this professor, but that just begs the question: What, exactly, is the difference between abortion and infanticide?
Well, that's kind of the point. There isn't any. Nor is is possible to draw any sort of meaningful distiction. Partial Birth abortion makes this abundantly clear: the baby is completely viable, but abortionists stretch legality to ridiculous extremes by letting the baby be "mostly born" and then suctioning out its brain while the head is still inside the mother. What exactly *is* the difference between this and sucking the brains out of a baby after it's born? Nothing at all, and any claims to the contrary do not stand up to even the most cursory examination, but are reduced to "It's OK for me to kill this other person because I simply want to". The absurdity of that claim falls on its own.
At issue here is not simply Singer's complete disregard for the value of human life (which should be enough in itself, and should greatly concern everyone here), but also the fact that Princeton still (in claim if not in fact) is a Presbyterian institution, and Singer's views are anathema with the stated goals and values of Princeton and the Presbyterian reformed theology worldview it ostensibly represents.
It is completely right and appropriate to protest Singer and his appointment, and Princeton should be ostracized as an aberration because of Singer's hideous views. Furthermore, it is *completely* appropriate to fund "higher learning" and place bounds on what is consistent with the values of the institution. Under your logic, the *only* thing that can be taught is that there are no values at all (no objective truth, or as Dostoevsky put it, "If God does not exist, then all things are permissable"), which of course points out the implicit logical fallacy: It cannot be objectively true that there is no objective truth.
It's amazing to me that the folks here are so willing to bash Sun mercilessly for taking a bold and quite significant step here.
Most people here act as if Sun wanted to control everything - look at their history:
- Bill Joy wrote Bekeley Unix, the first widespread implementation of a "source available" modern OS. One can make a good argument that without this impetus, Unix (and yes, Linux is a Unix) could not possibly exist as we know it today.
- Sun built and promoted NFS, which created the entire modern concept of reading/wrinting files over the network as if they were local. Then they did not try to make this proprietary, but made licenses available to all comers, even their competitors - unheard of at the time. This last time around, they made sure to involve many people from outside Sun in setting the NFS v3 standards.
- After falling into proprietary-think with NeWS and OpenLook/OpenWin, they realized their mistake (to their credit) and returned to the NFS model with the introduction of Java. Even that license has recently been opened up significantly, and now no longer requires improvements to be returned to Sun. (The only reason for that provision in the first place was to ensure the the entire community benefited from what anyone added, and was not a proprietary lock, but a non-proprietary lock.)
- Now, Sun is opening the source to very significant software products, Solaris and StarOffice.
It's true that Sun retains some control, but their motive, as shown repeatedly over time, is one of promoting consistency, not control. (Although the rise of Microsoft has pushed them back towards control - reasonably enough, they don't want competitors to take Sun's IP and club them over the head with it.)
In general, there may be some reasons to be wary of Sun, but their past actions show that they have been good stewards. Perhaps they should be given a chance before bashing them.
Sun's desire for "control" in each and every case can be shown to be a desire to ensure that their vision of computing can be carried out, and not co-opted by others with more proprietary intentions. Sun almost single-handedly revolutionized the computer industry by opening things up. unfortunately, most of the objectors I see speaking here are doing so from a position of arrogance and ignorance. Bother to learn the facts before you flame, and keep an open mind, for open source is no good without one.
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But even Darwin believed in a Creator God - and he said so himself.
/. discussion and look at some of the anti-Christian anti-creationist hate speech below.)
As for objectivity, I think it's quite fair to say that there are unthinking, knee-jerk types in both camps. (If you think creationists have an exclusive on that, just keep reading this
It's just simply neither fair nor accurate to say that there are not deep thinking people on both sides. And evolution itself is a dogma at least as strong as that in any religion. (If you doubt this, do some good research on anomalous fossil finds (there are many) and then publish your results - anything that challenges evolution in the slightest is ridiculed in the "scientific" community, regardless of merit.)
In fact, the only people I know who have done honest, well-balanced reviews of the evidence on both sides happen to be creationists, since, unfortunately, evolutionists tend to dismiss creation as impossible before bothering to look at the facts that support that position.
Truth is what matters. The point is to seek the truth.
Actually, no, and this is one of the areas where the creationists have a very valid point, especially with the acceptance of the punctuated equilibrium theory among the evolutionists.
(Punctuated equilibrium (PE) was added to evolutionary theory to address the concern that there are a distinct lack of in-between forms in the fossil record, particularly w.r.t. the Cambrian explosion, where thousands of new species appeared at once with no transitional fossils. PE says that things remain stable for a long time, then something disturbs the equilibrium, and life rapidly adapts completely new forms.)
If this is true, then species transitions happen relatively quickly, and a very small number of the mutant species would parent an entire family tree. This should, in theory, result in in-breeding/genetic vigor problems. The fact that it doesn't is a point in the creationists favor. On the other hand, an active and perfect Creator would create a perfect example of the species, which would not (at least initially) be subject to the degradations we see as a result of in-breeding today.
I'm open-minded enough to recognize that *WE DON'T KNOW* how things came to be, and I recognize that both the evolutionists and the creationists have some very valid points. The creationists have in thier favor the fact that thier theory does gracefully explain things that otherwise present significant problems, and the universe certainly seems to show evidence of design. Keep an open mind, and you'll find that the creation theories have thier own strength areas that are different, but at least as compelling as, the evolutionary theories.
P.S.: Don't know for sure about the water for the flood came from, but you might want to check out this article from last month's New Scientist about where they may still be receding... (See, those creationists may not be so kooky as you think!)
This is ridiculous. Java and Linux are orthogonal to one another. Java can, should, and does (to an unsatisfying degree) run on Linux as well as it runs anywhere else. Java is at best a very weak argument for Solaris, especially given the fact that JVMs/JITs are generally faster on Wintel than they are on SPARC/Solaris.
Java is a language, a set of tools and APIs, and a run-time environment which can run on any OS. Linux is just one of the operating systems that can support Java. They are not equivalent in any meaningful way.
The Java model should in principle be warmly accepted by the Linux crowd - why all the hostility to Java? I think we're all agreed that portable apps and code re-use are a good thing, and that complete binary compatibility makes it possible to do things in network computing that aren't otherwise possible. (To the flamers - I realize there are other ways to do some of this, I also recognize none of them has all of Java's strengths. Whether you like it or not, you have to admit that Java is cool technology, and comes closer to realizing the "write once, run anywhere" dream than anything else. (And it's a lot better in that respect now than it was a year ago...))
Why not, instead of flaming, work to make Linux the best darn Java platform out there? It could be.
Personally, I'd love to be able to run the exact same apps on my nextgen Palm, my company-issue Windows laptop, and my home Linux box. We're not all that far away from that now.
Cowpland is Corel.
Gates is Microsoft.
McNealy is Sun.
Ellison is Oracle.
These world respected organisations would not be where they are today if it wasn't for these "personalities".
I disagree strongly, at least in the case of Sun. Sure, Scott is the visible front-man for Sun, a role that he relishes and which suits his brash style - But what Sun is is by no means Scott's vision alone, or even his principally, although he is a key player.
In fact, it's probably quite safe to say that Scott sees his job more as carrying out the vision than defining it. Sun's vision per se (the technical aspect) is far more a product of Bill Joy, John Gage, Eric Schmidt (CEO at Novell for a while now, but his imprint is still on Sun), Greg Papadopoulos (Eric's replacement as CTO), James Gosling and Bud Tribble.
I've worked at a lot of companies, but never seen another where such a strong community of seriously capable people is setting the direction. Scott has the visibility - that's his role - but don't forget the other driving powers behind Sun. I don't think the other companies mentioned above have nearly the strengths that Sun has in comparable roles, which is one of the things that makes sun truly different from nearly every other company in this business.
In most cases, strong CEOs are very controlling. (Quick, who's Ellison's #2?) The interesting thing about Scott is that he (and Sun) really doesn't operate that way...
OK, folks, reality check! Linux is probably NOT the best choice here for some pretty good reasons. Let's forget the advocacy and stick to facts.
Several pretty good reasons to stick with Win98 in this situation:
1. It's already there. This is probably the best reason. Sure, you could show us all your nerdly prowess and turn your Grandfather's really cool new flatscreen PC into a Frankenstein's monster, but would that be better? Everything you need is there now, and there's little to be gained by a move as drastic as ripping out and replacing the OS.
2. Hardware Issues. The Gateway Profile, while not a laptop, uses laptop-ish hardware, and would present similar challenges to Linux on a new laptop. Linux is very good, but it still has a ways to go before it's ready for serious laptop use. Keep in mind that things like ACPI and USB won't work, and things like sound may not work for a long time, if ever. He might really enjoy a USB camera for Christmas!
3. Win98 can do what you need. Win98 can actually be made quite simple and consistent, particularly if you turn on active desktop and point it at a nicely built custom HTML page that contains launchers for the things he'll need. Although it's seldom used well, this is a really powerful feature that offers a lot of power to reside behind the scenes. Another feature of the IE/Win98 desktop can also be quite beneficial here: set it up so that it uses single-click to open things. That way there's no difference between the way the browser and the desktop work, eliminating one of the most confusing and frustrating issues for new users.
4. Suppport. If the other arguments haven't clinched it, this one should. He will actually be able to get the Gateway folks to help him so long as the software bears some resemblance to what they shipped. While quite confident of my skills in setting up a Linux box for this (and there are some benefits to that approach although they're outweighed by the point above), I would leave my own grandfather (if any were left) with the factory config. The OEMs put a LOT of work into making things work as they should (I know, I used to do it for a living), even in the Windows environment. (Why do you think VA Research has a good reason to exist? Sure you can do everythign they do, but it's hard, and it's worth something to have it done by those that know how. Generally, Gateway builds a pretty solid machine. Leverage that.
5. Software availability. This may not be an issue, but the fact is that today, I can go down to CompUSA or the like and buy a gazillion Windows apps for every Linux equivalent. Free (beer) software is nice, but we pay a knowledge tax to use it. Sometimes cheap commercial software is cheaper - autorun of setup.exe is a whole lot easier than even installing RPMs or tarballs. Also, don't forget games - my wife's grandfather, who passed away last year at nealy 102, spent all afternoon a few years back playing my brother-in law's new sub warfare game. Windows has the edge in this regard for the time being.
In general, don't change things unless there's a *good* reason, and figure out how *he* would like it to work before you start the serious twiddling.
Sure, you can do this with Linux, but unless you're trying to make a statement, where's the payback? Now if Gateway *sold* the Profile with Linux, then I might change my tune...
However, if you don't have the listed hardware, or you're trying to do something a little unusual (like use the VGA out port on a Dell Latitude CPi), it can get challenging quickly.
Not really. If you've got video working at all, then it makes no difference whether you're going to the screen or the VGA port. Once the X server is on good terms with the NeoMagic controller in the CPi, then you're set. Just use the BIOS hot key (Fn-F7 I think - anyway, it's the one with the little picture of the CRT on it) to toggle display output from screen to CRT to both. The only thing that might be tricky is finding a way to switch from LCD to CRT under software control, but this is problematic even under Windows and still requires custom software for each particular machine, since there's no standard API for making the call to change that. The BIOS hot-key is handier anyway.
Oh, and I speak with some authority on this as I was Dell's Program Manager for Software for Latitude and Inspiron when the CPi was released. So far as I know, I was the first person to ever install Linux on a CPi (a few months before it went on sale), and as a matter of fact, it was Caldera!
Then I doubt seriously that you've been following the tech media for more than two months.
/. have either never tried Caldera, or they tried it quite some time ago. Give it a fair try now, and I think you'll see it's the only distro at the moment that can even attempt to seriously challenge Microsoft.
I've been following Caldera's progress for several years now (since it was a rogue project in Novell, even), and if you'd been paying any attention, you might even have found several of the posts I made right here about the surprising quality, stability, and incredible ease of installation of the 2.2 release. It's not perfect, and Caldera (as do other Linuxes) has a long way to go, but it's really quite good, and a very solid product.
Although it's anathema to those here who take their distro choices religiously rather than seriously, a very good case can be made that Caldera is the best Linux distro for corporate deployment on either the server or desktop side.
Caldera seems to rub some folks here the wrong way because it's a well-integrated distro rather than the Linux Construction Kits favored by some of the developer community. Caldera is not for everyone (that's why we have multiple distros!), but they have an excellent chance of becoming one of (if not the) predominant mainstream distros.
Finally, I find that most of the Caldera-haters here on
C'mon, folks, this entire post is wild speculation. The Dragonball family is used in many things other than the Palm/Visor devices, and has a number of capabilities that are not currently being leveraged.
Heck the EZ supports 640x512 LCD's, so is it reasonable to expect a big-screen Palm out soon just because the chip supports it? IRIC, the Dragonball also supports PCMCIA, but we've never seen that, either.
Just because the VZ supports color displays doesn't mean anyone's going to build a color PalmOS device. (Especially 3Com or Handspring, both of which seem to correctly recognize that color has a negative value in this application due to cost and power usage concerns.)
It's hard to have a rational and valuable discussion about entirely hypothetical flamebait.
Now,instead, if someone were to post an informative and well-researched article on the challenges involved in extending the PalmOS graphics model to support larger screens and color, we might have something worthy of News for Nerds...
t is worth noting that they do make a CDMA version, so you're not limited to PCS.
Sorry, but you seem a bit confused here. PCS (Personal Communications Service) is a generic name for the "new" 1900 MHz band authorized by the FCC for (what else?) digital personal communications services.
Within the PCS band, there are two common modulation methods, TDMA and CDMA. Qualcomm invented CDMA and only makes CDMA phones. All other CDMA phone manufacturers (Sony, Denso, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung) license the technology from Qualcomm.
TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access), allocates each user small time slice during which their phone may operate at full power to send intermittent blips of data. Note that although this can provide low-power usage (long battery life), it is not a low-power transmission.
CDMA is completely different and lets all users talk at once by relying on a "Pseudo-Noise" (PN) sequence mixed with the digital data stream to allow the reciever to separate it out, much like we can easily separate out a particular conversation in a crowded room. The PN codes within a cell are a set of "gold codes" designed to ensure that they are all orthogonal to one another - there's some cool and hairy math in there. CDMA does not use time slices, but rather transmits as needed while dynamically adjusting power to the lowest practicable level to avoid stepping on other signals. (It is this "power-agile" nature of CDMA that proved to be the hardest engineering problem, and delayed its deployment by several years.)
CDMA has several distinct advantages over TDMA: It has been shown to offer the highest bandwidth usage of any system (this was true a few years ago, I don't know if it's still true with the new pulse position/wavelet systems or not), and most importantly for mobile digital data, it offers "Soft Handoff". This is a slick byproduct of the way CDMA works: since only your code differentiates your signal, not the frequency, it's possible to be in contact with two (or even more) cell stations simultaneously, and the network has the ability to dynamically choose the best signal. This provides very smooth handoffs since there is not a single "cutover" point at which you are talking only to the "new" cell, even though a moment later, you may again have the best connectivity through the "old" one. For voice, this doesn't much matter, because we have these really cool giga-neuron analog signal processors between our ears to plug the gaps, but it's very important for data streams, where there are just finicky computers listening.
CDMA's excellent support for mobile data connectivity is the reason I and many ohters believe that CDMA must ulitmately triumph, and why Qualcomm's stock went through the roof last year, to the point that it now has a P/E of 300 - unheard of for a comms company (Cisco's is only a little over 100!)
(Incidentally, the very sharp rise-time/fall-time edges of TDMA (and GSM, which uses TDMA modulation at a different frequency and much higher power) are suspected to have a far greater impact on biological systems than the pseudo-noise signal of CDMA. Most of the studies showing a linkage between cellphone usage and biological effects involve TDMA or GSM phones. This also may ultimately have an impact on CDMA's success, especially the next-generation broadband CDMA systems.)
I suppose I sound like a cheerleader here, but CDMA *is* cool technology.
I recently narrowly decided on the Qualcomm Thin Phone over the TouchPoint (actually made by Denso, but since no one here knows that name, they don't volunteer it.) Came down to thinness and cost (~$80 less) on the plus side, and smaller display and no vibrator on the minus side.
It also has a built-in web browser and optional data cable, which seems to be hard to get at the moment, but appears to have a DB-9 serial cable on the other end. What I'm curious about is what this thing looks like to the software - a direct serial link for PPP or CSLIP? A modem that ignores the dailing stuff? Is Sprint my wireless ISP now?
To the point, what do I have to do to get a wireless inet link through the ThinPhone working on my Caldera-powered Libretto?
If anyone out there's done this, I'd love to hear about it.
Actually, I've found GHOST to be quite valuable for duplicating and relocating Linux images, too - it's much easier and faster than a clean install and rebuild. GHOST is a cool program - there's really nothing else out there that does what it does at that level of competency.
Also, it's not even a MS product, so I fail to see the relevance of your point.
I find it quite interesting that the same people who spout, "Just don't buy it, then!" when the discussion is about pornography in general, get so upset when the mayor of New York simply decides he isn't going to buy a pornographic and overtly offensive museum exhibit.
Not buying something is not censorship. Mayor Giuliani is simply not buying.
This infringes no ones rights. Forcing the taxpayers to support something they generally find repugnant definitely infringes their rights, though.
I have a problem with your arugement here. I don't belive that if God doesn't exist then all things are permissable. Also, you might want to find out what different societies feel is "right and wrong". Trust me, its not universal, as much as we'd like it to be.
I'll let Dostoevsky speak for himself. Numerous other philosophers (even atheists) have reached essentially the same conclusion. There is little difference of opinion between civilized societies about major points such as the wrongness of taking another's life.
I can come up with a stable society that allowed for the killing of children. The Roman society allowed for this through most of its rise and into its high point. That practice did decline as the years passed but it was known to happen.
Infanticide has been practiced to some degree in all societies, as has other kinds of murder. I believe your timeline is backwards. It was rare in Rome until just before the decline and fall of the empire. I maintain that the moral decay brought on by such practices hastened the demise of Rome, thus my qualifier of "stable".
Singer is niether brave nor brilliant, but I will give him credit for one thing: He points out quite clearly the conclusion a nihilistic worldview must reach. A traditional Judeo-Christian worldview has a quite different take on things. This is the real clash here - a culture clash - one of conflicting worldviews that by their very nature cannot be reconciled.
The religious argument is quite appropriate here in light of the worldview conflict. Dostoevsky said it best: "If God does not exist, then all things are permissable." But we *know* deep down in our souls and bones, that right and wrong DO exist and all things are not permissable. And that in turn demands the existence of God. And if God exists, then perhaps we should listen to what He has to say about killing. (For those of you that ask, "Which god?", I suggest you search for the one which corresponds to truth - that one will be God, not god.)
Singer's argument is perfectly logical, but that points out its fallacy, and the fact that his logical conclusions are based on false premises. If one does not believe in God, then it does not much matter what one does. Many would claim that we should all be free to do whatever we want so long as we don't hurt others, but why should even this restriction exist in the abscence of God? If it pleases me to say, kill Peter Singer because I disagree with him, and there is no God, no objective right and wrong, why shouldn't I do it? I have never found a satisfactory answer to this question outside the conclusion that the question is invalid and God must exist.
On the issue of America losing its freedom because Singer feels threatened: America is a free country, and Singer is free to speak in marked and unguarded classrooms. He has chosen instead to act as a coward. Those that proclaim truth seldom do so with cowardice, those that believe it never do.
Katz further falls victim to the idea that all ideas are created equal. They are not. Singer's ideas devalue humanity and are not equal in value to say, Mother Theresa's. The press, society, and yes, even discussion groups are working properly when they supress the propagation of ideas and values that are evil or harmful.
Jesse Ventura did not "question religion" in any intelligent way, he simply exposed his bigotry and prejudice. This is not something to be celebrated whether or not you agree with the man. (And despite what the community here may think, many, if not most, Christians have thought deeply and logically about their faith and its implications.)
Furthermore, the use of terms like murder are not at all incorrect in this circumstance, and certainly do not prohibit a dialog. A quick check with m-w.com shows a definition of murder as "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought". I think most would go further and say that a component of murder would be that the person killed (and it must be a person, despite what Singer says) is not maliciously endangering the life of the person doing the killing - thus the "self-defense" exception. Disabled infants or inconvenient elders (remember, you may be one some day, especially if you haven't taught your children the value of life) may indeed cause extreme hardship and inconvenience, but there is certainly no malice in their hearts driving their condition, and so killing them would, by any reasonable standard, be murder. Killing simply for the convenience of the killer is never justifiable.
Killing another person is generally (but not always) deemed to be justified in cases of war (which can be morally defended only if one is sure one is on the right side or forced into service), self defense against a life-threatening attack, or in certain cases and within well-prescribed bounds, to enforce the law.
The killing of deformed infants, the infirm, the physically disabled, the elderly, the currently out-of-favor religious/ethnic group, and yes, even the unborn clearly do not fall into that category. Every stable (and that's a *very* important qualifier) society in history has proscribed such behavior. Many here dismiss the "slippery slope" argument, but history shows that societies that start down it inevitably wind up at the bottom.
Finally, I thought it was interesting that even Katz seems to leave open the question of knowing "whether any of these ideas have legitimacy and are worth exploring, or whether some deserve to be roundly rejected." Interestingly, Katz seems to think that only he or those that agree with him can assert that an idea should be roundly rejected.
All ideas are clearly NOT equal. If we begin to treat them as if they are, we will make some very bad choices indeed. Some ideas are worthy of a serious discussion. Peter Singer's are not that kind.
One item I've not seen raised here is a vital one, which so far as I know is not addressed in the HIPAA/Kassebaum-Kennedy legislation. (Although I have not studied it, and I could be wrong.)
* * * *
In order to prevent abuses of patient data it is *absolutely essential* that it be made completely clear and unambiguous in the law that *any* data about a patient's health is the *property* of that person. If this is not done, then all the other "security" assurances are meaningless. Information should be released to providers or payers *only* with the permission of the patient, on a transaction-by-transaction basis. That means that even your own doc should not be able to go pawing through your record without your consent, unless he is willing to certify that an emergency situation exists and you are incapacitated. Even then, an non-repudiatable entry should be made in the audit log to show that access.
Not only is this not clear in the federal legislation so far as I know, but few states have any sort of law stating that patients own thier information, either. It's easier to get your medical records in many places than your credit report, and we all know that's not too difficult.
BTW: Think not only of how information on you might be misused against you, but also how it could be misused against your offspring, since it will all be available on some big server somewhere. There's really no reason to expect that your records won't still be around long after you're gone, but they could be dangerous for quite a while: Hmm, his great-grandfather had cancer, eh? "I'm sorry, we don't have any positions that are a good fit for you at this time, but we'll keep your resume (and family health history) on file."
If the patient *doesn't* own their own data, then who does? It's likely some presently powerful entity that stands to benefit greatly from the serindipitous discoveries that doubtless lay waiting to be discovered in all that data. The data *is* quite valuable, and that's the problem - it's unlikely that the insurance companies, HMOS, pharma companies, etc. would let the patient own this data, they all want to control it themselves. The new federal directions on ownership of databaases make this even scarier.
At the same time, an ideal setup would allow anonymous searching across populations, but it's notoriously hard to prevent information about a single patient from being retrieved by data mining tools. (Show me the abstracted claim info for all female VPs at XYZ Corp that live in Yuma. Oops, there's only one? Well, that abstracting didn't hide much, now did it?)
Oh, and not to be alarmist, but as a former heatlhcare IT consultant, I can say that although most hospitals and docs are sincere in their intent to provoide privacy, in reality there is nearly none. The most secure systems you'll find in a hospital are the ones based on paper, and a big hospital loses thousands of charts and x-rays every year. Not like it really matters since all the most damaging info gets shuffled directly to the HMOs or insurance companies in already coded and classified form where it can *really* get misused behind closed doors. In my mind, the payers pose a far greater risk than the providers.
***********************************************
Patients must own patient data, and the providers and payers must realize they have a
fiduciary responsibility to maintain the privacy
of that data.
***********************************************
MPEG-2 is fancy compression. :-)
Actually, a full broadcast-quality MPEG-2 video stream is only 4Mbps. You actually don't even need broadband spectrum to do full-quality TV delivery if you're OK with the idea of having your "tuner" live in the network back at the head-end/CO/etc. Some of the xDSL guys are starting to realize this (Newbridge and others showed this at N+I.) The only downside is a slightly longer than normal delay when switching channels, but then people with DSS boxes have already been conditioned to think this is normal.
Note that this means even wireless can be a real competitor to cable and especially telco copper in the future. A 6 Mbps LMDS derivative or Wideband CDMA could easily provide enough pipe to deliver a movie at full MPEG-2 resolution (even without VBR), a half dozen phone/voice/control connections, and still leave more than a T-1 available for surfing the net.
There's really very little you can do in the foreseeable future that would require more bandwidth than that, and 6Mbps bidirectional may well prove to offer a customer experience superior to a lopsided cable-like system with choked down upstream bandwidth. In the end, latency and bandwidth availability are more important than bandwidth per se. The ability to provide high bandwidth availability through a switched infrastructure is the only thing that keeps me from writing off the RBOCs entirely - now if they can just figure out how to pay for the switch upgrades as a regulated utility...
In short, a good set-top can provide serious TV quality in a reasonable amount of bandwidth. It's not going to happen with a 56K modem, though. (Has anyone ever gotten a 56K connection with one of those things? I never have...)
The New Scientist has an article about how the earth is losing water much faster than thought possible - and 5x faster than it's being replenished. I thought this was an interesting discovery when I came upon it the other day. (For those that weren't properly educated, Genesis says the waters came from the "deep" within the earth.)
The fact that they appear to be going back there is enough to make one ponder a bit. I wonder what impact this has on our conjectures about the earth's history when the effect is projected back in time? Does the effect vary with time? Is there a good way to tell?
You said: "...and then build an entirely extra particle accelerator to funnel a beam of pure neutrons at your target."
Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a particle physicist, but how would one accelerate neutrons?
Electrons: No problem, positive things atrract them, negative things repulse them.
Protons: Again no problem, just the inverse.
Neutrons: Dang! How the heck do you grab one of these things, anyway?
I know how neutrons can be generated by a nuclear reaction, etc., but fail to see how you could ever beam-ize the little turkeys once you've made them...
If this is possible, I'd love to know how it's done.
I'm not a database expert, but I've done a fair amount of healthcare IT consulting over the years, and run across Intersystems' Caché database quite often.
Most people aren't familiar with Caché from Intersystems, but if you're building a very large, sparsely populated transactional database (like an electronic medical record, for instance), it's at least an order of magnitude faster than Oracle, even after doing unnatural things with Oracle. (This info came directly from a major EMR vendor that benchmarked Cache and all the usual suspects and found nothing in the same league for this application. According to his tests, Caché was 30x faster than Oracle out of the box - Intersystems' website claims Caché is 20x faster than RDBMS competitors.)
The technology is quite interesting in some regards: It is very mature, having its roots in the old MUMPS or "M" system (about as old as Unix), but has been updated quite nicely as time has passed to provide quite capable SQL and object-oriented interfaces, even though it is neither an RDBMS or an OODB internally.
Another nice feature is its distributed caching protocol, which allows you to build a logically huge database server piecewise from a number of distributed servers. A number of large installations, including Boston Children's Hospital (IIRC), use this for their EMR - last I heard, BCH's database was spread over 100-150 servers. This would seem to fit nicely with the Linux way of doing things.
It runs on Linux and a free download is even available on thier website, or they'll send you a CD for the asking if you're one of the unfortunates stuck on the end of a phone line.
You can find Intersystems at http://www.intersys.com, not exactly the world's most intuitive URL, so I thought I should include it here...
I am amazed at the number of people here who seem to think that moral decisions are influenced by economic or other concerns. Allow me to ilustrate:
/. is also revealed in another way - the numerous attempts to detract from Singer's ridiculous proposition through arguments such as, "what about Hawking?" While I have great respect for the contributions of this theorist (so far as I am able to understand his thinking), his contributions to society (and many would argue his contributions are minor) are entirely irrelevant.
My killing you would be wrong. (I think we are all in agreement here.)
My killing you would be just as wrong if I were paid $10 million for the act. (Some would claim this is worse, since I am now guilty of covetous greed as well as murder.)
The act would *still* be just as wrong if it netted the entire wealth of the planet, to be used solely for the purpose of helping others and eliminating human suffering worldwide. (Any disagreement on this point is an implicit agreement that "the end justifies the means", and ultimately nullifies any claim of the existence of right and wrong.)
The "unclear on the concept" problem prevalent here at
From the only logically consistent moral point of view, Hawking has no more or less worth than you, I, a German Jew, a Sudanese Christian, or even a deformed infant. (I would argue, counter to Singer, that all of the above have sustantially more worth than, say, a cat or a porpoise.) If you do not believe this, then I respectfully request that you reevaluate your value system, at least to the point that you admit you are a bigot and do not hold all men to be created equal, for that is the only logical conclusion that can be reached.
Slashdot is a funny place: despite all the "expertise" in computers and logic, a logical, well-thought-out argument is quite hard to find, but wooly thinking abounds, especially if wrapped in the latest trendiness.
THINK, people!
Finally, has it occured to none of the morallly challenged here that because of the gravity of the issues at debate, it might be best to fall on the "safe" side, and grant life the benfit of the doubt? Surely those who are not entirely sure (and I think if they are honest, most of Singer's supporters fall into this camp) should realize that life and death decisions are final, and if there is even the slightest chance they are wrong, the only morally correct thing to do is to support the position that grants and affirms life, for there is no reprieve from death.
This is the most immature point of view possible. What you are saying is that you are unwilling to be responsible for your imperfect offspring unless someone else foots the bill. Which is to say, really, that you just refuse to be responsible for your actions at all.
I have it on good authority that He was at Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth recently:
Despite several "attempts" to walk up the aisles to where most of the people were, the gunman by all reports was unable to do so. Police claim this is responsible for the much smaller number of deaths that would ordinarily be expected in such a circumstance.
porkchop wrote: People are getting really upset with this professor, but that just begs the question: What, exactly, is the difference between abortion and infanticide?
Well, that's kind of the point. There isn't any. Nor is is possible to draw any sort of meaningful distiction. Partial Birth abortion makes this abundantly clear: the baby is completely viable, but abortionists stretch legality to ridiculous extremes by letting the baby be "mostly born" and then suctioning out its brain while the head is still inside the mother. What exactly *is* the difference between this and sucking the brains out of a baby after it's born? Nothing at all, and any claims to the contrary do not stand up to even the most cursory examination, but are reduced to "It's OK for me to kill this other person because I simply want to". The absurdity of that claim falls on its own.
At issue here is not simply Singer's complete disregard for the value of human life (which should be enough in itself, and should greatly concern everyone here), but also the fact that Princeton still (in claim if not in fact) is a Presbyterian institution, and Singer's views are anathema with the stated goals and values of Princeton and the Presbyterian reformed theology worldview it ostensibly represents.
It is completely right and appropriate to protest Singer and his appointment, and Princeton should be ostracized as an aberration because of Singer's hideous views. Furthermore, it is *completely* appropriate to fund "higher learning" and place bounds on what is consistent with the values of the institution. Under your logic, the *only* thing that can be taught is that there are no values at all (no objective truth, or as Dostoevsky put it, "If God does not exist, then all things are permissable"), which of course points out the implicit logical fallacy: It cannot be objectively true that there is no objective truth.
It's amazing to me that the folks here are so willing to bash Sun mercilessly for taking a bold and quite significant step here.
Most people here act as if Sun wanted to control everything - look at their history:
- Bill Joy wrote Bekeley Unix, the first widespread implementation of a "source available" modern OS. One can make a good argument that without this impetus, Unix (and yes, Linux is a Unix) could not possibly exist as we know it today.
- Sun built and promoted NFS, which created the entire modern concept of reading/wrinting files over the network as if they were local. Then they did not try to make this proprietary, but made licenses available to all comers, even their competitors - unheard of at the time. This last time around, they made sure to involve many people from outside Sun in setting the NFS v3 standards.
- After falling into proprietary-think with NeWS and OpenLook/OpenWin, they realized their mistake (to their credit) and returned to the NFS model with the introduction of Java. Even that license has recently been opened up significantly, and now no longer requires improvements to be returned to Sun. (The only reason for that provision in the first place was to ensure the the entire community benefited from what anyone added, and was not a proprietary lock, but a non-proprietary lock.)
- Now, Sun is opening the source to very significant software products, Solaris and StarOffice.
It's true that Sun retains some control, but their motive, as shown repeatedly over time, is one of promoting consistency, not control. (Although the rise of Microsoft has pushed them back towards control - reasonably enough, they don't want competitors to take Sun's IP and club them over the head with it.)
In general, there may be some reasons to be wary of Sun, but their past actions show that they have been good stewards. Perhaps they should be given a chance before bashing them.
Sun's desire for "control" in each and every case can be shown to be a desire to ensure that their vision of computing can be carried out, and not co-opted by others with more proprietary intentions. Sun almost single-handedly revolutionized the computer industry by opening things up. unfortunately, most of the objectors I see speaking here are doing so from a position of arrogance and ignorance. Bother to learn the facts before you flame, and keep an open mind, for open source is no good without one.