There are certain assumptions made, however, when one is dealing with white males. Alumni? My parents had a high school education. Family business? My father drives a semi for a living. My mother was a HoJo's waitress for years. Golfing buddy? Regularly working 80-hour weeks left my father with little time for leisurely activities at all, let alone an entire day set aside for golfing.
Pull your head out of the sand. Not every black or Latino is poor and uneducated; nor is every white male affluent or handed opportunity on a silver platter.
Package management is meant to make maintenance tasks easier. Source installs are nice, but again you face the task of tracking down sources and keeping tabs on the version of each installed program, and whether it has changed. I'm sorry, but I just can't find the time to monitor Freshmeat and upgrade.
My goal is NOT to install everything from source. My goal is to have a system which has the programs I need and is fairly current.
I've briefly used RedHat, but package management became too much of a headache. Debian has been wonderful in that area; one command will upgrade every.deb I have installed.
No searching, no need to watch Freshmeat, no hassle.
apt-get upgrade.
I have a few complaints, such as the fact that Debian does not yet support XFree86 3.3.3.1 (I have a G200, and had to find.debs elsewhere), but I'd rather install one or two packages from source than all of them.
pollination of 'resistant' plants
on
Gene Leakage
·
· Score: 1
I have no idea what I'm talking about.
That disclaimer aside, has anyone really thought about what would have to occur for this to happen?
Let's examine the good Professor's prediction; ie, that genetically modified plants, for example, cotton, will spread their genes to flowers and prevent them from interbreeding.
"Okay," say the scientists, "Let's make some cotton these little buggers don't like to eat!"
So, they pull out their tweezers and magnifying glasses and tweak a gene or three. A wee bit later another plant grows to full height, this time resistant to nasty moths and bugs and whatever else might want to eat a nice innocent lil' cotton plant.
Now, let's examine the dandelion. Not necessarily a precious, sweet-smelling flower, but it came to mind and I can spell it. So there.
Anyways, think of how many healthy dandelions you've seen in your lifetime. Have you seen any that looked as though they'd been eaten by insects? Well, I haven't. So, the bees which pollinate dandelions don't eat them?!?
Well, now, let's see here . . . we are assuming, now, that a gene will jump ship from one species to another (note: species cannot interbreed, preventing infestation by insects in the original species, and making bees go away in the recipient? Huh?
Now, let's extend our imaginations a bit further. Flowers newly offensive due to renegade genes are produced alongside their original counterparts. What does basic evolution theory tell us? The good Professor would have us think that the strain which, by slight extension of his own statements, will not be assisted by insects in the pollination process is going to not only become more abundant than but will overtake and eradicate what remains of the original, unmodified strain of flower.
Hmmm . . . so now, a gene which does something in one plant jumps ship and does something totally different in another plant, which is unable to breed due to characteristics not conducive to reproductive success yet overruns plants better suited to the environment, in effect killing off the original plant and dying off in one generation, leaving the world starving.
Right. Let's compare. I, after standing next to someone with, say, sickle-celled anemia, am rendered sterile (random side effect caused by sickle-cell gene), then produce enough offspring to choke anyone not descended from me, then, since my childen are obviously sterile, the entire human population dies.
I agree that Linux hardware support is a beautiful thing. However, let us keep in mind that CmdrTaco is only trying to keep./'ers aware of (arguably) cool, (again, arguably) new technology. Asking about Linux support is fine; however, saying, for example, that DVD writers suck simply because the specs aren't available yet is stupid. We are hopefully all aware that vendor support for alternative operating systems would be great; however, don't knock hardware for software problems. Winmodems suck because the hardware is crippled; DVD-RAMs rule because they write DVDs.
Be nice to the hardware! The Matrox G200 is a good card. The kernel fb driver supports it. The G400 is cooler. Does the kernel support it? Does the answer make the card more or less cool?
I'm saying, knock the companies for not providing drivers. Not the hardware.
Any inaccuracies, inconsistencies, spelling or grammatical errors are purely the fault of your perception.
Slashdot Mirror
There are certain assumptions made, however, when one is dealing with white males. Alumni? My parents had a high school education. Family business? My father drives a semi for a living. My mother was a HoJo's waitress for years. Golfing buddy? Regularly working 80-hour weeks left my father with little time for leisurely activities at all, let alone an entire day set aside for golfing.
Pull your head out of the sand. Not every black or Latino is poor and uneducated; nor is every white male affluent or handed opportunity on a silver platter.
Package management is meant to make maintenance tasks easier. Source installs are nice, but again you face the task of tracking down sources and keeping tabs on the version of each installed program, and whether it has changed. I'm sorry, but I just can't find the time to monitor Freshmeat and upgrade.
.deb I have installed.
.debs elsewhere), but I'd rather install one or two packages from source than all of them.
My goal is NOT to install everything from source. My goal is to have a system which has the programs I need and is fairly current.
I've briefly used RedHat, but package management became too much of a headache. Debian has been wonderful in that area; one command will upgrade every
No searching, no need to watch Freshmeat, no hassle.
apt-get upgrade.
I have a few complaints, such as the fact that Debian does not yet support XFree86 3.3.3.1 (I have a G200, and had to find
That disclaimer aside, has anyone really thought about what would have to occur for this to happen?
Let's examine the good Professor's prediction; ie, that genetically modified plants, for example, cotton, will spread their genes to flowers and prevent them from interbreeding.
"Okay," say the scientists, "Let's make some cotton these little buggers don't like to eat!"
So, they pull out their tweezers and magnifying glasses and tweak a gene or three. A wee bit later another plant grows to full height, this time resistant to nasty moths and bugs and whatever else might want to eat a nice innocent lil' cotton plant.
Now, let's examine the dandelion. Not necessarily a precious, sweet-smelling flower, but it came to mind and I can spell it. So there.
Anyways, think of how many healthy dandelions you've seen in your lifetime. Have you seen any that looked as though they'd been eaten by insects? Well, I haven't. So, the bees which pollinate dandelions don't eat them?!?
Well, now, let's see here . . . we are assuming, now, that a gene will jump ship from one species to another (note: species cannot interbreed, preventing infestation by insects in the original species, and making bees go away in the recipient? Huh?
Now, let's extend our imaginations a bit further. Flowers newly offensive due to renegade genes are produced alongside their original counterparts. What does basic evolution theory tell us? The good Professor would have us think that the strain which, by slight extension of his own statements, will not be assisted by insects in the pollination process is going to not only become more abundant than but will overtake and eradicate what remains of the original, unmodified strain of flower.
Hmmm . . . so now, a gene which does something in one plant jumps ship and does something totally different in another plant, which is unable to breed due to characteristics not conducive to reproductive success yet overruns plants better suited to the environment, in effect killing off the original plant and dying off in one generation, leaving the world starving.
Right. Let's compare. I, after standing next to someone with, say, sickle-celled anemia, am rendered sterile (random side effect caused by sickle-cell gene), then produce enough offspring to choke anyone not descended from me, then, since my childen are obviously sterile, the entire human population dies.
Anyone else not worried?
Comments? -hankaholic
I agree that Linux hardware support is a beautiful thing. However, let us keep in mind that CmdrTaco is only trying to keep ./'ers aware of (arguably) cool, (again, arguably) new technology. Asking about Linux support is fine; however, saying, for example, that DVD writers suck simply because the specs aren't available yet is stupid. We are hopefully all aware that vendor support for alternative operating systems would be great; however, don't knock hardware for software problems. Winmodems suck because the hardware is crippled; DVD-RAMs rule because they write DVDs.
Be nice to the hardware! The Matrox G200 is a good card. The kernel fb driver supports it. The G400 is cooler. Does the kernel support it? Does the answer make the card more or less cool?
I'm saying, knock the companies for not providing drivers. Not the hardware.
Any inaccuracies, inconsistencies, spelling or grammatical errors are purely the fault of your perception.
Go see Matrix.