If the company will not or can not spend the money to create offices for its knowledge workers, so they can get into the zone, the odds of it creating a successful software product and capitalizing on it are about the same as you becoming a millionaire by going to Las Vegas, betting fifty on black, and letting it ride all night.
umm... maybe I haven't had enough caffeine yet today, but...
$1,000,000 is less than $50 * 2^16.
at 1.05:1 odds, that's only about 1 in 100,000. I'm thinking the OP meant to imply that the odds are a whole lot worse than that, hmm?
Interestingly, they found evidence of rice, grapes, and honey. In this study, it is identified that the fermentation of grapes may be inferred from a by-product of grape fermentation (i.e., tartaric acid); however, the presence of honey is only inferred from compounds that point to the existence of beeswax.
in other words, although we can show that grapes were probably fermented, we have no way of saying anything other than "honey was present". For all we know, it was a rice mead with grapes!
(OK... I'm a little biased toward mead), but...
the original article (from Italy) assumes that it was "wine", not mead or hard cider that was found... and that it is the "oldest" at 5000 B.C.; no bias toward the wine industry, eh?
Do you have a reference for this? I've always understood hops to have been added first as a flavorant, and then, when its preservative qualities were noted, as a (more effective) source of preservatives (other herbs, etc had been used before this).
On the other hand, I've never heard that it was used either to (a) limit the amount of alcohol of the final product (how would this work, anyway?) or (b) at the request of religious authority.
You guys are missing the point... TiVo isn't agreeing to provide hardware, they're offering access to their service, which, currently, includes software, feature set, and scheduling.
So...
No TiVo "peanut" remotes; the existing DVRs will retain their Comcast remotes.
No carry-over of the lack of responsiveness of Comcast DVR boxen (unfortunately, will it be replaced with the remote control lag of the recent release of TiVoToGo software update?)
No guarantee of availability of TiVoToGo content... when TiVo gets in bed with a content provider, will additional restrictions on what can be downloaded/burned show up?)
No guarantee of CableCard functionality; will TiVo be as anxious to see CableCard mandated, now that they have their deal with a content provider?
if you really think that blastulae with 10 cells are morally-significant, then you need to face up to our nation's biggest medical emergency, the millions of blastulae which are naturally miscarried every year.
Harvard government professor Michael Sandel, also a member of the President's Council on Bioethics once noted that:
"If the embryo loss that accompanies natural procreation were the moral equivalent of infant death, then pregnancy would have to be regarded as a public health crisis of epidemic proportions: Alleviating natural embryo loss would be a more urgent moral cause than abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem-cell research combined."
Actually, you and the good professor are deliberately attempting to muddy the waters by comparing apples and oranges.
You're comparing the natural process of embryo loss due to a variety of factors to the deliberate destruction of life in abortion and the destruction of "unwanted" embryos in IVF.
That's the equivalent of saying, "well, no one should prosecute murderers; after all, millions lose their lives due to natural causes each year, anyway!"
So now you are saying that creation happens at conception? The same thing as saying life begins at conception.
Well... let me ask you, then: is a human created at conception? (if your answer is "no", please follow up by answering what, exactly, is created at conception, and if it is not human, then please identify what it is (genus and species, perhaps, or some other way of identifying what it is and what it is not)...)
Not to mention that the quote as it is written litteraly ment Men and only men not women or children or slaves. We as a more advanced society have overcome the poor implamentation of a good idea and use the word men to mean citizens.
I see. So... the more "advanced", better "implementation" of the Declaration of Independence is "all Citizens are Naturalized equal"...? Are you certain that's what we as Americans believe?
Non citizens do not have the same rights that citizens have. Look at all the noncitizens we kill around the world every day (Iraq is a good example).
Red herring. We believe that all are created equal; however, that doesn't imply that we can impose our view of human rights on sovereign nations. (Although, we certainly can, and do, attempt to influence other nations to hold to certain standards of human rights.)
Moreover, we're not killing Iraqis because their life is intrinsically less valuable than ours; the Iraqis that are being killed are either opposing the American military (enemies), or are individuals who aren't targeted ("collateral damage"; not that I'm defending it -- because we need do all that's possible to eliminate or at least minimize this senseless loss of life).
In either case, no one has ever said, "Iraqis count less -- so let's kill 'em!"... unless they were setting up a straw man. That's not what you were doing... right?
Somehow, the issue of abortion has changed from the actual basis of the Supreme Court decision into something else entirely. The reasoning behind the decision in Roe v. Wade is that what happens between a Doctor and a patient is and ought to be a private matter....
Both the left and the right are talking about things like the "sanctity of life" and "a woman's right to choose," when niether was considered by the Supreme Court in their decision and these issues were not discussed in the opinion and the dissenting opinion.
Irrelevent. The Supreme Court decided that Dred Scott was still a slave, and that the law limiting slavery in new states was unconstitutional. Does that mean that we had no business addressing the morality of the institution of slavery?
...of course not. In the same way, a discussion of the morality of abortion is highly appropriate in the wake of Roe v Wade...
(In fact, it's directly applicable here, too, in the stem-cell research debate: it's the question of the "right to life".)
Now, why is it that the embryos "are going to be flushed or otherwise disposed of soon anyway"? That is, what is the source of these embryos, why were they created, and why are they on the block for disposal?
And it would be nice if people stopped clouding the issue with abortion arguments. While there are some similarities, the analogy breaks down very quickly
It does? Just to clarify, the analogy isn't "embryonic stem-cell research == abortion"; it's that embryonic stem-cell research kills life just as abortion does. How does that argument break down? (I'm not trying to be snarky; I just haven't heard anyone attempt to put forward the argument you mentioned in passing...)
so breakling that down you have 2 questions
1. When is an embryo "life"? Moral Question
2. When and why is it ok to destroy it? Legal Question
since 1 is a moral question its none of the governments buisness
Umm... pardon? morality is exactly what governments legislate!
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary... to assume... the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them.
... We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.
I think you're confusing "morality" with a particular "religion". Morality is the set of guiding principles by which we make decisions; these decisions, as legislated by a government, secure the rights that the Creator endowed us with when we were created.
(Note, by the way, that the philosophical underpinnings of the nation place the endowment of those rights at creation -- not at birth, not at the time that citizenship is attained, but at the creation of the individual...)
So, the fact that any given religion may hold a certain moral position has no bearing on whether the government may assume that position in its legislation. That's not what "separation of church and state" means...
I'm not sure the point you're trying to make, but the only restrictions in the US are on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.
umm... you may be unsure of the point I'm trying to make, if you assume that I was addressing the funding of stem cell research. I wasn't.
You're correct in pointing out the nature of the federal funding restrictions. However, I wasn't addressing that issue. The OP framed up the issue in terms of adult stem cells; I pointed out that the Indian articles weren't discussing adult stem cells -- they reported on the use of umbilical stem cells...!
Your post would have been great if you had left out the ridiculous note at the bottom. No one cares if you're anti-abortion or not.
Well, you may not care about the OP's position on abortion, but the ethical issues s/he raises wrt embryonic stem cell research are the same ethical issues surrounding abortion. (Note that I didn't say political issues... the "right to choose" issues are primarily political, not ethical, in nature.)
By identifying that s/he is not necessarily anti-abortion, the OP simply sought to blunt any knee-jerk reactions like "oh, we can just write off your opinion... you're just one of those anti-abortion folks..."
Sure they are harvesting cells from the bone marrow which do contain some stem cell populations
Although the U.S. article identified the applicability of stem cells harvested from (adult) bone marrow and other sources, the Indian article discusses the successes achieved from utilizing umbilical cord stem cells...
apparently. your threshold is Mach 5, then? looks like my point whizzed past you, leaving you unruffled...
yes, it's bad to suppress potentially good sites about controversial subjects. folks who want to do legitimate research will be unable to get to these legitimate sites.
however, sites with more objectionable content are also worthwhile to certain legitimate research efforts...!
MSN already banned searches for "Adolf Hitler" from it's German search engine, which does of course make a lot of sense, as only Neo-Nazi scum would search for something like this.
People like me who are interested in history would never entertain even the thought to search for "Adolf Hitler" or "Holocaust" on the web.
Of course, people who are interested in sociology are SOL...
But the deal is, the search results are already illegal, so returning them to the user is itself illegal!
so, the search engine folks have the choice of self-censoring, or getting slapped for breaking German law... in other words, they're already responsible for the things they link to, at least as far as "offensive speech" is concerned...
Re:don't have TiVo... Yet
on
Can TiVo be Saved?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
My own (Comcast) offers "On Demand" programming right now for free. I can view programs, store and play later as if it were a movie/DVD. It sounds like the next step is to watch what ever you want, when you want as long as you pay what they want.
Have you actually used on Demand? You only get what Comcast decides to store; you don't get to choose what programs you can time-shift. and, of course, you're not "storing" anything -- you're getting whatever programs are held centrally.
The "VCR-style" buttons are a joke -- there's a 4-5 second delay between your remote control button press and the response (good luck trying to stop a program at a given location!).
And, it may "seem" that the next step is full on-demand access to programming, but that's quite naive. keep in mind -- this "on demand" functionality only appeared as a response to DVR feature sets; if DVR competition were to disappear from the marketplace, and their chokehold on content distribution restored, do you really expect them to expand this functionality?!?!
There are 300 million Americans. Most of them are inbred fucktard morons...
How, exactly, do you expect a small minority of us to convince the vast hordes of morons that inhabit this country to vote for someone who actually cares about people?
Dear AC,
I'm guessing that not calling them "inbred fucktard morons" would be a good start..
Doesn't this bill make the MS "Genuine Advantage" program illegal?
Section 2(a)(5) says:
(It is unlawful for any person, who is not the owner or authorized user of a protected computer, to engage in deceptive acts or practices that involve(s))...
Misrepresenting... that installing a separate software component is necessary to open, view, or play a particular type of content
So... since MS claims that it's necessary to run Windows in order to run Office components, and since WINE amply demonstrates that it's not...
then any MS claim that Windows is necessary in order to run Office (or to access documents created in Office components) violates this bill...!?!?!
I have Outlook and can access my hotmail through it currently. That's been a feature for a while.
Guess what's going away, then, hmm? They've been testing this in the wild for a number of months now. a couple of months back, I got an error message in Outlook identifying Hotmail download as a premium subscription service; the message lasted a coupla days, and then it went away. (I'm a M$ beta tester! woot!)
Slashdot Mirror
umm... maybe I haven't had enough caffeine yet today, but...
$1,000,000 is less than $50 * 2^16.
at 1.05:1 odds, that's only about 1 in 100,000. I'm thinking the OP meant to imply that the odds are a whole lot worse than that, hmm?
Interestingly, they found evidence of rice, grapes, and honey. In this study, it is identified that the fermentation of grapes may be inferred from a by-product of grape fermentation (i.e., tartaric acid); however, the presence of honey is only inferred from compounds that point to the existence of beeswax.
in other words, although we can show that grapes were probably fermented, we have no way of saying anything other than "honey was present". For all we know, it was a rice mead with grapes!
(OK... I'm a little biased toward mead), but...
the original article (from Italy) assumes that it was "wine", not mead or hard cider that was found... and that it is the "oldest" at 5000 B.C.; no bias toward the wine industry, eh?
On the other hand, I've never heard that it was used either to (a) limit the amount of alcohol of the final product (how would this work, anyway?) or (b) at the request of religious authority.
Thanks!
So...
You're comparing the natural process of embryo loss due to a variety of factors to the deliberate destruction of life in abortion and the destruction of "unwanted" embryos in IVF.
That's the equivalent of saying, "well, no one should prosecute murderers; after all, millions lose their lives due to natural causes each year, anyway!"
What's that mean?
Just a guess, but I'm thinking it's gonna mean that 2/3 of the /. audience won't get the reference.
Now, if it were a reference to "Dimebag"...
wouldn't it be interesting if this were to cause a groundswell of support for the recently proposed RFID credit cards? ack...
Well... let me ask you, then: is a human created at conception? (if your answer is "no", please follow up by answering what, exactly, is created at conception, and if it is not human, then please identify what it is (genus and species, perhaps, or some other way of identifying what it is and what it is not)...)
Not to mention that the quote as it is written litteraly ment Men and only men not women or children or slaves. We as a more advanced society have overcome the poor implamentation of a good idea and use the word men to mean citizens.
I see. So... the more "advanced", better "implementation" of the Declaration of Independence is "all Citizens are Naturalized equal"...? Are you certain that's what we as Americans believe?
Non citizens do not have the same rights that citizens have. Look at all the noncitizens we kill around the world every day (Iraq is a good example).
Red herring. We believe that all are created equal; however, that doesn't imply that we can impose our view of human rights on sovereign nations. (Although, we certainly can, and do, attempt to influence other nations to hold to certain standards of human rights.)
Moreover, we're not killing Iraqis because their life is intrinsically less valuable than ours; the Iraqis that are being killed are either opposing the American military (enemies), or are individuals who aren't targeted ("collateral damage"; not that I'm defending it -- because we need do all that's possible to eliminate or at least minimize this senseless loss of life).
In either case, no one has ever said, "Iraqis count less -- so let's kill 'em!" ... unless they were setting up a straw man. That's not what you were doing... right?
Irrelevent. The Supreme Court decided that Dred Scott was still a slave, and that the law limiting slavery in new states was unconstitutional. Does that mean that we had no business addressing the morality of the institution of slavery?
...of course not. In the same way, a discussion of the morality of abortion is highly appropriate in the wake of Roe v Wade...
(In fact, it's directly applicable here, too, in the stem-cell research debate: it's the question of the "right to life".)
Now, why is it that the embryos "are going to be flushed or otherwise disposed of soon anyway"? That is, what is the source of these embryos, why were they created, and why are they on the block for disposal?
It does? Just to clarify, the analogy isn't "embryonic stem-cell research == abortion"; it's that embryonic stem-cell research kills life just as abortion does. How does that argument break down? (I'm not trying to be snarky; I just haven't heard anyone attempt to put forward the argument you mentioned in passing...)
since 1 is a moral question its none of the governments buisness
Umm... pardon? morality is exactly what governments legislate!
I think you're confusing "morality" with a particular "religion". Morality is the set of guiding principles by which we make decisions; these decisions, as legislated by a government, secure the rights that the Creator endowed us with when we were created.
(Note, by the way, that the philosophical underpinnings of the nation place the endowment of those rights at creation -- not at birth, not at the time that citizenship is attained, but at the creation of the individual...)
So, the fact that any given religion may hold a certain moral position has no bearing on whether the government may assume that position in its legislation. That's not what "separation of church and state" means...
umm... you may be unsure of the point I'm trying to make, if you assume that I was addressing the funding of stem cell research. I wasn't.
You're correct in pointing out the nature of the federal funding restrictions. However, I wasn't addressing that issue. The OP framed up the issue in terms of adult stem cells; I pointed out that the Indian articles weren't discussing adult stem cells -- they reported on the use of umbilical stem cells...!
Well, you may not care about the OP's position on abortion, but the ethical issues s/he raises wrt embryonic stem cell research are the same ethical issues surrounding abortion. (Note that I didn't say political issues... the "right to choose" issues are primarily political, not ethical, in nature.)
By identifying that s/he is not necessarily anti-abortion, the OP simply sought to blunt any knee-jerk reactions like "oh, we can just write off your opinion... you're just one of those anti-abortion folks..."
Although the U.S. article identified the applicability of stem cells harvested from (adult) bone marrow and other sources, the Indian article discusses the successes achieved from utilizing umbilical cord stem cells...
Well... you could always claim that your MP3 was a collection of 5 seconds snippets of the "tune", and plead Fair Use...
apparently. your threshold is Mach 5, then? looks like my point whizzed past you, leaving you unruffled...
yes, it's bad to suppress potentially good sites about controversial subjects. folks who want to do legitimate research will be unable to get to these legitimate sites.
however, sites with more objectionable content are also worthwhile to certain legitimate research efforts...!
Of course, people who are interested in sociology are SOL...
so, the search engine folks have the choice of self-censoring, or getting slapped for breaking German law... in other words, they're already responsible for the things they link to, at least as far as "offensive speech" is concerned...
Have you actually used on Demand? You only get what Comcast decides to store; you don't get to choose what programs you can time-shift. and, of course, you're not "storing" anything -- you're getting whatever programs are held centrally.
The "VCR-style" buttons are a joke -- there's a 4-5 second delay between your remote control button press and the response (good luck trying to stop a program at a given location!).
And, it may "seem" that the next step is full on-demand access to programming, but that's quite naive. keep in mind -- this "on demand" functionality only appeared as a response to DVR feature sets; if DVR competition were to disappear from the marketplace, and their chokehold on content distribution restored, do you really expect them to expand this functionality?!?!
Dear AC,
I'm guessing that not calling them "inbred fucktard morons" would be a good start..
but that Genuine Advantage deal is sticking in my craw, and that's what I typed out, when thinking of Office...
Section 2(a)(5) says:
(It is unlawful for any person, who is not the owner or authorized user of a protected computer, to engage in deceptive acts or practices that involve(s))...
So... since MS claims that it's necessary to run Windows in order to run Office components, and since WINE amply demonstrates that it's not...
then any MS claim that Windows is necessary in order to run Office (or to access documents created in Office components) violates this bill...!?!?!
erm..
I'm on a diet, you insensitive...
uhh..
FP?
*sigh* ... I got nothin'...
Guess what's going away, then, hmm? They've been testing this in the wild for a number of months now. a couple of months back, I got an error message in Outlook identifying Hotmail download as a premium subscription service; the message lasted a coupla days, and then it went away. (I'm a M$ beta tester! woot!)