So let me get this straight. You know this ONE GUY who doesn't understand what the scientific method is about, and you generalise this to ALL SCIENCE??? ("Lover's Arrival, The, is 100% correct about science's attitude to these sort of things").
This ONE INDIVIDUAL that you know isn't a scientist (not at this stage anyway). Not everyone who calls him/herself a scientist is necessarily one (just as most Christians are not Christians). There is a lot of real science out there, and your claim that with the somewhat naive notions of this one individual you can with a brush of the hand ignore the works of thousands of real scientists quite frankly makes me sick.
I can't really agree with 2600's actions here. This doesn't come off as a valid protest of any sort - it comes off as a childish prank, and this is how the general public will see it. This doesn't do anything positive for "the cause", rather, it is only likely to hurt it. Would you (for example) use this incident as an example when trying to convince your mother? There are many far more mature ways to make a statement. This makes h(cr)ackers look really bad to the public, and provides exactly the kind of material organizations such as the FBI love to have for their anti-hacking campaigns to convince the government to give them more power and people less freedom.
I'm sorry, I just can't for the life of me see how pointing a DNS entry "fuckgeneralmotors" at ford's website can be construed as "making a statement" (unless the statement they're trying to make is that the DNS system can be too easily manipulated or something). I think its childish. I can imagine having found this sort of thing funny when I was 14.
Apparently also the most common "last words" of people before they die. I read that somewhere, although I can't imagine that "they" figured this out in any reasonably scientific manner. I can quite easily imagine that it would be true though.
Uh.. duh.. obviously, it wasn't, or this wouldn't have happened. I'd hate to see what happens when they handle a situation badly.
"We don't know why (he committed suicide)"
"Shinjan left a note saying he would rather die than go to jail". Clear that mystery up?
I guess that even if he wanted to, Fitzsimons probably couldn't admit even partial responsibility, or even hint vaguely that they fscked up here.. because, being in the USA, they would get their butts sued for millions. So one has to wonder if he really is a stupid asshole, or if his lawyer told him what to say. The Majumders have probably already started getting solicitations by lawyers telling them they can make a lot of money from this.
Maybe I'm cynical, but does "writing your Congressman" every really work? I'm pretty skeptical myself. US law seems somewhat rampantly out of control, if you ask me.
Sheesh.. and they call the USA "the land of the free"?!?
OK, I know someone's going to reply 'these laws aren't enforced anyway'. But in a properly free country it wouldn't be possible in the first place for such laws to be passed. And what about the entire category of consentual (sp?) crimes? In many states it is still illegal to be gay.
"we have had a permenant base on mars for 30 years"
2050 - 30 = 2020. Somehow, I doubt it. If we're lucky (i.e. no ridiculous budget cuts etc) we may see a small handful of people set foot on the moon by then. But certainly not a permanent base.
Generally your predictions sound fairly accurate to me though, based on what I would also guess - only I would stretch them over the next 100 rather than 50 years.
In general, its relatively easy to extrapolate development trends in specific technologies and make rough predictions from that (e.g. "genetic technology will be...", "computers will be...". The hard part is trying to guess how these technologies will be used together, i.e. the resulting developments when certain technologies are combined in some way. Also its difficult to predict what exactly people will do with new technologies (e.g. what will governments and corporations do when it becomes possible and cheap to produce microscopic cameras which can be embedded into any product? Also, combine advanced AI with video/audio surveillance systems for behaviour analysis and recording.)
It gave me a bit of a fright actually. I'm exactly half of 49 now. I thought "I could well be halfway already".. and I can't say much for the first half.
Well, apparently some people believe in something called an "afterlife". This is the idea that when you die, only your body dies, and that "you" are actually some non-physical "thing" that continues to live despite having no body. Some people also seem to believe that there is this place where all these metaphysical entities go and "hang out" for eternity. In other words, Douglas Adams "may be sitting in heaven right now, reading slashdot". Myself, I don't ascribe to such patently absurd notions.
I see similar things happening with people who inadvertently share their entire c: drive over their cable modem
Accidentally sharing ones C: driver (sometimes even with full rights) seems to be strangely common. Our company's accountants plugged into the LAN recently, and most of them had open shares, some of them entire C: drive. I find it quite bizarre. How do you accidentally share your entire hard disk? It's not exactly a one-click operation.
Hmm.. existing laws may already protect physical property from trespassing, but iI don't I know of any laws that prevent virtual trespassing, not in that sense.
Re:Playing Quake like this causing health problems
on
PanQuake
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· Score: 1
Myself, the refresh rate makes a huge difference. At a low refresh rate (e.g. 70 or less), I'll have a bad headache and eyestrain within 15 minutes of playing. At 75 Hz, maybe an hour. At 85 Hz or more, it takes at least three or four hours before I start to get a headache.
Of course, there are other reasons for the headaches too; I get similar headaches when watching several movies in a row, mainly from low blood pressure and inactivity. Also I need to go for another checkup at the optometrist.
Low frame rates (as opposed to screen refresh rates) also cause problems, your eyes/brain need to do more "work" to "fill in" the information missing between slow frames.
It should probably have read totally solve rather than apply, but there you go
Perhaps, more specifically, it has more to do with solving something on a symptomatic level as opposed to solving the underlying cause. Applying a technological "solution", in this case, would curb cheating to some degree - but it would not "cure" the students' desire to cheat - they would still cheat, if given the chance.
People generally seem to want to treat things symptomatically, usually because its so much easier, but I guess Edwards Law may apply - perhaps you can't. Take school shootings (like Columbine) for instance - many people would loudly proclaim that guns should be banned, because if students could not get hold of guns these things would not happen. True, these things would not happen - however, you haven't solved the problem, only eliminated one possible symptom of an underlying problem (which will usually just manifest itself in some other way, e.g. suicide). Banning guns is much simpler than figuring out why some US kids are so screwed up to begin with. Anyway, this is getting a little off topic here..
Indeed, we've seen many cases here where the person whose work was copied ends up in a situation where they have to prove their own innocence
In one of the departments when I was at University the standard policy was to divide the marks received for a project, by the number of people who handed in the essentially same project. This worked fairly well. In most cases copying was done "by consent", i.e. friends sharing their work amongst each other knowingly, so this system worked reasonably well to help curb copying.
I was a tutor for a while, and I must say, it is extremely easy to pick up when people have copied from each other. Many people fool themselves with the "they'll never notice, they have so many projects to mark" syndrome. Even when people have gone to a reasonable amount of trouble when copying (i.e. changing variable names and indentation) it is still usually quite easy to spot.
This article reminds me of an incident around my 2nd or 3rd year doing CS at univ. We had a project to do for one of our courses; out of about 100 students in the class, roughly three quarters handed in the same work! "A" copies from "B", "C" copies from "A", D copies from "C" etc.. how stupid can you get, anyway? Not even bothering to change the stuff to try look different. Nobody got expelled though, sheesh... we just got a serious talking to from the head of department, and from then on we had to sign standard forms to the effect of "this is my own work blah blah" and hand that in with our projects. As I remember it, I wasn't one of the people who copied, I don't think I even handed anything in.
The BBC loves to stir up the publics' fear... with their own biased tabloid style journalism
And this is different from other media sources how exactly? Publications such as New Scientist come about the closest I've seen to responsible, objective resporting. I can't say I can think of one single mainstream media outlet that does not stoop to fearmongering, propaganda, FUD, sensationalism and preying on ignorance. Least of all CNN, which is probably the US equivalent of BBC.
"Now your personal documents should be fine, I think having freely available unrestricted viewers is a good idea, as is having the specifications open to other programs so they can open and edit the stuff as well. That should suit your needs, don't you agree?"
That would work, yes.. I'm just not convinced, though, that there will always be such a thing as "free viewers". I think free viewers exist mostly only as a result of competitive pressure - if an ASP has a stranglehold on a market, they don't have to provide a free viewer - if they know you're really going to want to view your document, they're going to think "hey, this guy wants to view some documents, and we can make a bit of extra money here".
As someone who works in a small business, I must disagree with you - I think that subscriptions are more likely to appeal to large companies. The reason is, in a small company (ours at any rate), a lot of the software that gets used is only used fairly intermittently - sometimes a piece of software only needs to be "pulled off the shelf" maybe once or twice a year. For example, we developed a Windows CE application for a client. That requires the Windows CE toolkit. The project has long since been delivered, but needs the odd bit of maintenance maybe once or twice a year for a day or two. This may be even less frequent in the years to come. Subscription would be deadly. Do we keep subscribed and pay continually for software we essentially don't use, just because we once in a while need to fix some tiny bug? What if we don't need to use the software for the next five years, but then suddenly need to? Do we resubscribe if we've unsubscribed? Chances are the version we used won't even be compatible anymore. Right now its easy - I have a hard disk with the toolkit installed and when I need to do maintenance, I just plug it in and go. Under subscription, I would most likely have to download the new version, and spend days (possibly weeks) trying to just get my project to compile.
A lot of other software is also used far more sporadically than it would be in a large company. We have a legit copy of Adobe photoshop, for example, for doing the company web page. But we only update the company web page two or three times a year maybe. The rest of the time the software is not being used. Should we pay every month we don't use it? What if we stop our subscription for some reason, but need to open the.psd files six months later for some reason? At least with "owned" software, you just reinstall the software and open the documents, no problem.
What if I have some personal documents saved in some format, but don't actively use the software anymore? What if I want to open those documents ten years from now? Do I shell out for a new subscription? I'm sure most of us have documents backed up on CDs from years ago for software we don't really use anymore.
Lets face it, the only groups who will find the subscription model appealing are the application providers. They are the only ones who will greatly benefit from the model, and the only reason they'll be able to push it on people in the medium term is that currently the software industry is controlled by the vendors, not the clients, i.e. "what Microsoft says, goes".
I always find this so amazing about standard business practices these days - these execs will come up with every possible technique in the book to gain an advantage - except "make a better product". I can just picture all these middle aged execs in a huge boardroom worriedly trying to come up with ways in which they can gain market share, coming up with hundreds of suggestions (massive marketing campaigs, grassroots campaigns, FUD/spin campaigns, exclusivity deals, "strategic" partners, "make AOL the default" type technique etc) - yet not once during days of meetings will it cross the minds of even one of those execs to even consider building a better product. The closest they have there is "think different", which involves some development at least, but still places more emphasis on OEM partnerships. The saddest part of the whole thing is that they probably have to do this sort of thing just because most users are too clueless to choose the better product - number one reason people "choose" IE over NN has always been "it came installed with the computer".
I was wondering something about this type of technique the other day. Most "african americans" descend from slaves captured and carried over from various places in africa. I was wondering to what extent you would be able to use these techniques to try determine in which part(s) of Africa an individual's ancestors might have lived.
Hmm... Nope. I don't see it in the old testament anywhere. There's no evidence that it's unethical
You seem to somehow have made a connection here between "the Christian Bible" and "determining what is ethical", I don't quite get it. I'm sure that billions of the other non-Christians on this planet may also find the idea that the Christian Bible is the rule book for global society, just a little arrogant.
The Christian Bible has some really bizarre and completely arbitrary ideas about what is ethical.
What other problems are lurking in that 'bad' DNA along with infertility? A tendancy toward cancer? Schizophrenic or psychotic behavior?
You are right that this is a problem now, nonetheless I doubt that this is a problem that is worth worrying about. Sure, we're becoming more and more inbred right now, but within the next 50 years or so, as mankind masters genetic technologies, those same types of problems (schizophrenia, diabetes, tendency toward cancer, poor eyesight etc etc) will very likely be quickly and easily removed by genetic manipulation.
Something is wrong with those genes if they're not being passed on
Thats precisely the problem these genetic manipulation techniques are ultimately out to solve; their purpose is to fix the problems with those genes.
Anyway, who are you to make judgments on who is allowed to have kids or not? If you're going to be deciding that some infertile woman must be denied access to a technique that allows her to have children simply because 'she has poor genes and shouldn't be breeding', then why shouldn't I be deciding that you should not be allowed to breed for some other genetic weaknesses, e.g. poor eyesight, diabetes etc etc. A huge percentage of the population has at least one "serious" such problem that "modern" medicine works around.
we'll have lots and lots of perfectly healthy, long-lived, incredibly weak and fragile human beings walking this planet
I thought the same thing at first, then it occurred to me that the self-same technology (genetic modification) may easily rid us of those weaknesses and problems in the future.
"Modern" technology has resulted in widespread inbreeding of humans (how many people do you know could survive "in the wild" without some help? Think diabetics, asthmatics, short-sightedness, mental illness - those categories alone probably account for a good percentage of the population) But modern technology (once we master genetics, in the next 50 years or so) could potentially rid us of those self-same problems.
OK EVERYONE!! You can all stop complaining about Dell now!! Because this ONE guy here has had only good experiences with them! So naturally everyone else must also have had only good experiences with them! So lets all stop complaining about Dell, OK? Its all lies, its just unfair.
Are you crazy? If one of them caught on fire (because of a known, acknowledged product defect) then others will catch on fire. This is very serious product defect - its quite possible that one of these laptops left unattended for a few minutes could burn down an entire building (millions of $$ damage, not to mention possibility of dozens of people being killed). What if you had bought one of these laptops, put it on your bed at home and turned it on, gone out for ten minutes to go buy some milk or something, and came back to find your home half burnt down already? What if you had small children or a baby in the home? Would you still feel the same?
This is not just a "defective product", its a defective product that can potentially kill people and cause large property damage. A recall is the least they should do.
This isn't like a heater or a stove, which people know to be dangerous, and expect that they can cause fires, and thus (mostly) keep away from curtains, beds etc. This is a laptop computer.
Whether or not the batteries were manufactured elsewhere is irrelevant. Its Dell's system, therefore the responsibility is on them to test the product and make sure it works. Most of the parts in most PCs have been manufactured by 3rd parties. So what? A seller is responsible for what he/she sells to his/her client. To the end user, Dell is responsible for a broken product. Likewise, the battery manufacturer is responsible toward Dell. The battery manufacturer has no obligation to Dell's clients, they have an obligation to their own client, which is Dell. I mean come on, if you had bought one of these defective notebooks, and you called Dell to change it and they said "look, this isnt our fault, its the battery manufacturers fault, so take it up with them", would you feel that was acceptable?
These batteries were completely manufactured by another company
Excuse me, but SO WHAT??? Almost every product you buy these days (and especially PCs) is built up of numerous components all manufactured by various 3rd parties. Warranty obligations exist between a seller and a buyer. Thats the way it works.
Slashdot Mirror
So let me get this straight. You know this ONE GUY who doesn't understand what the scientific method is about, and you generalise this to ALL SCIENCE??? ("Lover's Arrival, The, is 100% correct about science's attitude to these sort of things").
This ONE INDIVIDUAL that you know isn't a scientist (not at this stage anyway). Not everyone who calls him/herself a scientist is necessarily one (just as most Christians are not Christians). There is a lot of real science out there, and your claim that with the somewhat naive notions of this one individual you can with a brush of the hand ignore the works of thousands of real scientists quite frankly makes me sick.
I can't really agree with 2600's actions here. This doesn't come off as a valid protest of any sort - it comes off as a childish prank, and this is how the general public will see it. This doesn't do anything positive for "the cause", rather, it is only likely to hurt it. Would you (for example) use this incident as an example when trying to convince your mother? There are many far more mature ways to make a statement. This makes h(cr)ackers look really bad to the public, and provides exactly the kind of material organizations such as the FBI love to have for their anti-hacking campaigns to convince the government to give them more power and people less freedom.
I'm sorry, I just can't for the life of me see how pointing a DNS entry "fuckgeneralmotors" at ford's website can be construed as "making a statement" (unless the statement they're trying to make is that the DNS system can be too easily manipulated or something). I think its childish. I can imagine having found this sort of thing funny when I was 14.
Apparently also the most common "last words" of people before they die. I read that somewhere, although I can't imagine that "they" figured this out in any reasonably scientific manner. I can quite easily imagine that it would be true though.
Uh .. duh .. obviously, it wasn't, or this wouldn't have happened. I'd hate to see what happens when they handle a situation badly.
"Shinjan left a note saying he would rather die than go to jail". Clear that mystery up?
I guess that even if he wanted to, Fitzsimons probably couldn't admit even partial responsibility, or even hint vaguely that they fscked up here .. because, being in the USA, they would get their butts sued for millions. So one has to wonder if he really is a stupid asshole, or if his lawyer told him what to say. The Majumders have probably already started getting solicitations by lawyers telling them they can make a lot of money from this.
Thats the USA for you.
Maybe I'm cynical, but does "writing your Congressman" every really work? I'm pretty skeptical myself. US law seems somewhat rampantly out of control, if you ask me.
Sheesh .. and they call the USA "the land of the free"?!?
OK, I know someone's going to reply 'these laws aren't enforced anyway'. But in a properly free country it wouldn't be possible in the first place for such laws to be passed. And what about the entire category of consentual (sp?) crimes? In many states it is still illegal to be gay.
set foot on the moon
Did I say moon? I meant mars. Doh.
"we have had a permenant base on mars for 30 years"
2050 - 30 = 2020. Somehow, I doubt it. If we're lucky (i.e. no ridiculous budget cuts etc) we may see a small handful of people set foot on the moon by then. But certainly not a permanent base.
Generally your predictions sound fairly accurate to me though, based on what I would also guess - only I would stretch them over the next 100 rather than 50 years.
In general, its relatively easy to extrapolate development trends in specific technologies and make rough predictions from that (e.g. "genetic technology will be ...", "computers will be ...". The hard part is trying to guess how these technologies will be used together, i.e. the resulting developments when certain technologies are combined in some way. Also its difficult to predict what exactly people will do with new technologies (e.g. what will governments and corporations do when it becomes possible and cheap to produce microscopic cameras which can be embedded into any product? Also, combine advanced AI with video/audio surveillance systems for behaviour analysis and recording.)
It gave me a bit of a fright actually. I'm exactly half of 49 now. I thought "I could well be halfway already" .. and I can't say much for the first half.
"He's dead, he won't see that"
Well, apparently some people believe in something called an "afterlife". This is the idea that when you die, only your body dies, and that "you" are actually some non-physical "thing" that continues to live despite having no body. Some people also seem to believe that there is this place where all these metaphysical entities go and "hang out" for eternity. In other words, Douglas Adams "may be sitting in heaven right now, reading slashdot". Myself, I don't ascribe to such patently absurd notions.
I see similar things happening with people who inadvertently share their entire c: drive over their cable modem
Accidentally sharing ones C: driver (sometimes even with full rights) seems to be strangely common. Our company's accountants plugged into the LAN recently, and most of them had open shares, some of them entire C: drive. I find it quite bizarre. How do you accidentally share your entire hard disk? It's not exactly a one-click operation.
Hmm .. existing laws may already protect physical property from trespassing, but iI don't I know of any laws that prevent virtual trespassing, not in that sense.
Myself, the refresh rate makes a huge difference. At a low refresh rate (e.g. 70 or less), I'll have a bad headache and eyestrain within 15 minutes of playing. At 75 Hz, maybe an hour. At 85 Hz or more, it takes at least three or four hours before I start to get a headache.
Of course, there are other reasons for the headaches too; I get similar headaches when watching several movies in a row, mainly from low blood pressure and inactivity. Also I need to go for another checkup at the optometrist.
Low frame rates (as opposed to screen refresh rates) also cause problems, your eyes/brain need to do more "work" to "fill in" the information missing between slow frames.
It should probably have read totally solve rather than apply, but there you go
Perhaps, more specifically, it has more to do with solving something on a symptomatic level as opposed to solving the underlying cause. Applying a technological "solution", in this case, would curb cheating to some degree - but it would not "cure" the students' desire to cheat - they would still cheat, if given the chance.
People generally seem to want to treat things symptomatically, usually because its so much easier, but I guess Edwards Law may apply - perhaps you can't. Take school shootings (like Columbine) for instance - many people would loudly proclaim that guns should be banned, because if students could not get hold of guns these things would not happen. True, these things would not happen - however, you haven't solved the problem, only eliminated one possible symptom of an underlying problem (which will usually just manifest itself in some other way, e.g. suicide). Banning guns is much simpler than figuring out why some US kids are so screwed up to begin with. Anyway, this is getting a little off topic here ..
Indeed, we've seen many cases here where the person whose work was copied ends up in a situation where they have to prove their own innocence
In one of the departments when I was at University the standard policy was to divide the marks received for a project, by the number of people who handed in the essentially same project. This worked fairly well. In most cases copying was done "by consent", i.e. friends sharing their work amongst each other knowingly, so this system worked reasonably well to help curb copying.
I was a tutor for a while, and I must say, it is extremely easy to pick up when people have copied from each other. Many people fool themselves with the "they'll never notice, they have so many projects to mark" syndrome. Even when people have gone to a reasonable amount of trouble when copying (i.e. changing variable names and indentation) it is still usually quite easy to spot.
This article reminds me of an incident around my 2nd or 3rd year doing CS at univ. We had a project to do for one of our courses; out of about 100 students in the class, roughly three quarters handed in the same work! "A" copies from "B", "C" copies from "A", D copies from "C" etc .. how stupid can you get, anyway? Not even bothering to change the stuff to try look different. Nobody got expelled though, sheesh ... we just got a serious talking to from the head of department, and from then on we had to sign standard forms to the effect of "this is my own work blah blah" and hand that in with our projects. As I remember it, I wasn't one of the people who copied, I don't think I even handed anything in.
The BBC loves to stir up the publics' fear ... with their own biased tabloid style journalism
And this is different from other media sources how exactly? Publications such as New Scientist come about the closest I've seen to responsible, objective resporting. I can't say I can think of one single mainstream media outlet that does not stoop to fearmongering, propaganda, FUD, sensationalism and preying on ignorance. Least of all CNN, which is probably the US equivalent of BBC.
"Now your personal documents should be fine, I think having freely available unrestricted viewers is a good idea, as is having the specifications open to other programs so they can open and edit the stuff as well. That should suit your needs, don't you agree?"
That would work, yes .. I'm just not convinced, though, that there will always be such a thing as "free viewers". I think free viewers exist mostly only as a result of competitive pressure - if an ASP has a stranglehold on a market, they don't have to provide a free viewer - if they know you're really going to want to view your document, they're going to think "hey, this guy wants to view some documents, and we can make a bit of extra money here".
As someone who works in a small business, I must disagree with you - I think that subscriptions are more likely to appeal to large companies. The reason is, in a small company (ours at any rate), a lot of the software that gets used is only used fairly intermittently - sometimes a piece of software only needs to be "pulled off the shelf" maybe once or twice a year. For example, we developed a Windows CE application for a client. That requires the Windows CE toolkit. The project has long since been delivered, but needs the odd bit of maintenance maybe once or twice a year for a day or two. This may be even less frequent in the years to come. Subscription would be deadly. Do we keep subscribed and pay continually for software we essentially don't use, just because we once in a while need to fix some tiny bug? What if we don't need to use the software for the next five years, but then suddenly need to? Do we resubscribe if we've unsubscribed? Chances are the version we used won't even be compatible anymore. Right now its easy - I have a hard disk with the toolkit installed and when I need to do maintenance, I just plug it in and go. Under subscription, I would most likely have to download the new version, and spend days (possibly weeks) trying to just get my project to compile.
A lot of other software is also used far more sporadically than it would be in a large company. We have a legit copy of Adobe photoshop, for example, for doing the company web page. But we only update the company web page two or three times a year maybe. The rest of the time the software is not being used. Should we pay every month we don't use it? What if we stop our subscription for some reason, but need to open the .psd files six months later for some reason? At least with "owned" software, you just reinstall the software and open the documents, no problem.
What if I have some personal documents saved in some format, but don't actively use the software anymore? What if I want to open those documents ten years from now? Do I shell out for a new subscription? I'm sure most of us have documents backed up on CDs from years ago for software we don't really use anymore.
Lets face it, the only groups who will find the subscription model appealing are the application providers. They are the only ones who will greatly benefit from the model, and the only reason they'll be able to push it on people in the medium term is that currently the software industry is controlled by the vendors, not the clients, i.e. "what Microsoft says, goes".
"Make a better product".
I always find this so amazing about standard business practices these days - these execs will come up with every possible technique in the book to gain an advantage - except "make a better product". I can just picture all these middle aged execs in a huge boardroom worriedly trying to come up with ways in which they can gain market share, coming up with hundreds of suggestions (massive marketing campaigs, grassroots campaigns, FUD/spin campaigns, exclusivity deals, "strategic" partners, "make AOL the default" type technique etc) - yet not once during days of meetings will it cross the minds of even one of those execs to even consider building a better product. The closest they have there is "think different", which involves some development at least, but still places more emphasis on OEM partnerships. The saddest part of the whole thing is that they probably have to do this sort of thing just because most users are too clueless to choose the better product - number one reason people "choose" IE over NN has always been "it came installed with the computer".
I was wondering something about this type of technique the other day. Most "african americans" descend from slaves captured and carried over from various places in africa. I was wondering to what extent you would be able to use these techniques to try determine in which part(s) of Africa an individual's ancestors might have lived.
Hmm... Nope. I don't see it in the old testament anywhere. There's no evidence that it's unethical
You seem to somehow have made a connection here between "the Christian Bible" and "determining what is ethical", I don't quite get it. I'm sure that billions of the other non-Christians on this planet may also find the idea that the Christian Bible is the rule book for global society, just a little arrogant.
The Christian Bible has some really bizarre and completely arbitrary ideas about what is ethical.
What other problems are lurking in that 'bad' DNA along with infertility? A tendancy toward cancer? Schizophrenic or psychotic behavior?
You are right that this is a problem now, nonetheless I doubt that this is a problem that is worth worrying about. Sure, we're becoming more and more inbred right now, but within the next 50 years or so, as mankind masters genetic technologies, those same types of problems (schizophrenia, diabetes, tendency toward cancer, poor eyesight etc etc) will very likely be quickly and easily removed by genetic manipulation.
Something is wrong with those genes if they're not being passed on
Thats precisely the problem these genetic manipulation techniques are ultimately out to solve; their purpose is to fix the problems with those genes.
Anyway, who are you to make judgments on who is allowed to have kids or not? If you're going to be deciding that some infertile woman must be denied access to a technique that allows her to have children simply because 'she has poor genes and shouldn't be breeding', then why shouldn't I be deciding that you should not be allowed to breed for some other genetic weaknesses, e.g. poor eyesight, diabetes etc etc. A huge percentage of the population has at least one "serious" such problem that "modern" medicine works around.
we'll have lots and lots of perfectly healthy, long-lived, incredibly weak and fragile human beings walking this planet
I thought the same thing at first, then it occurred to me that the self-same technology (genetic modification) may easily rid us of those weaknesses and problems in the future.
"Modern" technology has resulted in widespread inbreeding of humans (how many people do you know could survive "in the wild" without some help? Think diabetics, asthmatics, short-sightedness, mental illness - those categories alone probably account for a good percentage of the population) But modern technology (once we master genetics, in the next 50 years or so) could potentially rid us of those self-same problems.
OK EVERYONE!! You can all stop complaining about Dell now!! Because this ONE guy here has had only good experiences with them! So naturally everyone else must also have had only good experiences with them! So lets all stop complaining about Dell, OK? Its all lies, its just unfair.
Whatever happened to "YMMV" anyway? Sheesh.
Are you crazy? If one of them caught on fire (because of a known, acknowledged product defect) then others will catch on fire. This is very serious product defect - its quite possible that one of these laptops left unattended for a few minutes could burn down an entire building (millions of $$ damage, not to mention possibility of dozens of people being killed). What if you had bought one of these laptops, put it on your bed at home and turned it on, gone out for ten minutes to go buy some milk or something, and came back to find your home half burnt down already? What if you had small children or a baby in the home? Would you still feel the same?
This is not just a "defective product", its a defective product that can potentially kill people and cause large property damage. A recall is the least they should do.
This isn't like a heater or a stove, which people know to be dangerous, and expect that they can cause fires, and thus (mostly) keep away from curtains, beds etc. This is a laptop computer.
Whether or not the batteries were manufactured elsewhere is irrelevant. Its Dell's system, therefore the responsibility is on them to test the product and make sure it works. Most of the parts in most PCs have been manufactured by 3rd parties. So what? A seller is responsible for what he/she sells to his/her client. To the end user, Dell is responsible for a broken product. Likewise, the battery manufacturer is responsible toward Dell. The battery manufacturer has no obligation to Dell's clients, they have an obligation to their own client, which is Dell. I mean come on, if you had bought one of these defective notebooks, and you called Dell to change it and they said "look, this isnt our fault, its the battery manufacturers fault, so take it up with them", would you feel that was acceptable?
These batteries were completely manufactured by another company
Excuse me, but SO WHAT??? Almost every product you buy these days (and especially PCs) is built up of numerous components all manufactured by various 3rd parties. Warranty obligations exist between a seller and a buyer. Thats the way it works.