Go *around* the RIAA quintopoly. Scott McCloud's cartoons "I Can't Stop Thinking" five [scottmccloud.com] and six [scottmccloud.com] have some ideas (which for some reason REALLY anger [penny-arcade.com] some folks).
Don't be too hard on the Penny Arcade boys. Their style often has a very sharp edge to it (the McCloud parody you linked to is one of the softest pieces of satire I've ever seen them done.). Also, I think they personally got burned trying to make a living off their work, so it probably hit them pretty close to home.
A lot of people have brought up the issue of abortion and viability, suggesting that this sort of technology may have an effect on the ethics of aborting a fetus that may be considered viable at any stage.
However, there's another interesting consequence... What if a fetus could be transplated from a natural womb to an artificial one? Let's say a woman wants to have an abortion, and the doctor says, "We can either terminate the fetus, or we can transplant it to an artificial womb and put it up for adoption".
Would it ever be ethical to destroy the fetus in this case? This eliminates the argument of autonomy . Should a woman have the right to decide whether or not to destroy her fetus or simply put it up for adoption?
Colour is the way we interpret different wavelengths of light caused (the differences, not the light) by excited electrons in the material observed. A such, you cannot prove "brown" to be a fact. The table is irrefutably a region of space which causes light which reflects off it to assume the wavelength which humans label brown, but it is not brown as such.
The point I was trying to make is that there are certain things ("observables") which could be considered "facts". Since you claim that there is something irrefutable (your term) that can be said about the table, then you are supporting my general point. The fact that I used a subjective property like colour is just a poor choice of example on my part.
Also, I could define "this table is brown" to mean "The table is irrefutably a region of space which causes light which reflects off it to assume the wavelength which humans label brown".
Now, clearly declaring evolution to be an "observable" is a lot trickier, and I can't personally make that claim because it's not my area. But I'd be happier if the creationists tried to refute the "evolution is an observable" statement (your mention of the missing link is a good example), rather than arguing against current theories about the mechanisms of evolution.
I'm not quite sure that's true. For example, there are observations, which I would say are "facts". For example: "This table is brown". Of course, you could get very philosophical and start discussing what it means to be brown, and so forth, but at that point I think you're nitpicking.
What science tries to do is come up with theories to explain the observables. Let's take gravity, for example. Einstein's theory of gravity is just that, a theory. Conceivably, at one point in time, it may be disproven.
However, just because Einstein's theory is disproven, doesn't mean that gravity doesn't exist! (We won't all start floating off the ground). It just means our explanation is wrong.
Now, the big question is, is evolution a theory or an observable? I don't mean the mechanism, which is a theory to explain things. Is evolution an observable?
Remember, those denying the existence of nanorobots might actually be nanorobots themselves.
Old Glory robot life insurance, right? The one thing that has always stayed great on Saturday Night Live has been their commercials. Even when the show was at its worst.
You can't slow a photon down - they travel at c and no other speed.
They most certainly do travel at other speeds! It may have been a while since I took a physics course, but as I recall, "c" is the speed of light in a vacuum.
Light can (and does) travel slower in other media.
I can't be the only person who gets annoyed at humongous paths like:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office Too
You aren't the only person, but Win2K has filename and directory name completion. To turn it on, add the "/F:ON" flag when you run cmd.exe. Then, Ctrl-F does filename completion, and Ctrl-D does directory name completion. Don't ask me why the couldn't just use Tab like bash does, but it sure helps navigating those large directory names.
Another way to put it is that we hav been endowed by God with the ability to do this sort of work, which can save lives. Therefore, it is quite possible that, even according to the most stringent religious belief, we have the duty to do this research to save people's lives.
I'm reminded of the old joke about the guy who lives in a town that is being flooded. A jeep drives up and somebody tells him, "Come in the jeep. You've got to get out of here before the water levels get too high and you drown", and the guy says "Don't worry, God will save me."
So, the water keeps rising and rising, and later on a boat comes up to his house, and a guy on the boat tells him, "Come onto the boat. You have to leave your house, or you'll drown here", and the guy says, "Don't worry, God will save me".
So, the water still keeps going higher and higher, and the guy has to sit on the roof, and eventually a helicopter comes along, and the pilot yells "You've got to get onto the helicopter. Soon the water level will get too high, and you'll drown", and the guy says, "Don't worry, God will save me".
So the helicopter leaves, and the water eventually rises too high, and the guy drowns. So the guy arrives in heaven, and asks God, "Why didn't you save me?"
And God says, "What are you talking about? I sent you a jeep, a boat, and a helicopter!"
(And is the plural of "walkman" walkmans or walkmen?)
That very question is answered in "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker. If I recall correctly, the official plural according to Sony is "Walkman Personal Stereos".
Terrible API Documentation? Hello? Microsoft's documentation is of *very* high quality! Have you ever used the MSDN Library? It rocks! Feel free to diss MS where they do things wrong, but documentation is one of the few things they're great at!
On the other hand, their STL documentation sucks rocks. I find it pretty much unusable. Luckily, SGI has some excellent docs on the STL.
--
Could this sort of thing wipe out the video rental business?
I never watch pay-per-view movies (and I don't know anybody who does), because I like being able to watch a movie at a time that's convinient for me, pause it to go to the bathroom, etc. These outweighs the disadvantages of actually having to go to the rental store.
But, with video on demand, these disadvantages are gone. Bye bye, Blockbuster?
--
Technology made the fast food industry possible, and without any real national discussion and consideration, retailing, health, work and the ability of individuals to operate farms or small businesses was altered for good.
Let's veer off topic a bit here. I don't think a "national discussion" on the topic would've been realistic. As long as products are produced in a way that isn't illegal, there is no obligation for a company to consider sociological consequences.
My question is: what are the ethical responsibilities of those creating the technologies? I'd wager that a big chunk of the Slashdot population is in the business of creating technology in some sense, whether they're software developers or engineers or what have you. What responsibility do we have for the impact of the technology we create? I'm not talking about immediate health risks that exposure to radiation or things like that. I'm talking about long-term sociological effects.
I'm not blaming the guy who developed the McDonalds french fry machine for the McDonaldization of society. But I am suggesting that somebody's got to consider these consequences.
Should we technologists bear responsibility for our actions? We cannot use the scientist's excuse of "science for science's sake". Technology is purely utilitarian. What responsibilities do we have in developping technologies to ensure that we don't do harm to society by the development?
I think this article is interesting in that it gives some rare insights into language design. You always hear people complaining about why didn't x (where x is C++, Java, Perl, etc) do this or that? Why this feature or syntax? Here Larry points out some trade off that may not be obvious to "end user". And all written in a easy to understand language called English too;-)
I'd recommend that you read "The Design and Evolution of C++" by (who else?) Bjarne Stroustrup if you're interested in this kind of non-academic language design. The book's a bit old, so it's missing some of C++'s newer features, but it's a fun read if you like that sort of thing.
(Geez, I've got a +1 Bonus, and I haven't had a chance to use it yet. This is too off-topic to waste a +1 on).
That's a reference to the "Monkey Island" adventure game from Lucasarts. They had an adventure game before that called "Loom", and in "Monkey Island" one of the pirates wears a pin that says, "Ask me about Loom".
the Germans carried Nietzsche's text like Canadians do the Bible
Woah. Like Canadians do the Bible? When did Canada become so religious? I don't think we're nearly as religious as our American neighbours. We certainly don't have the same amount of "Bible thumpers". Look at the general public reaction to the fact that Stockwell Day is a young-earth creationist.
Of course, there's a lot of variation based on where you are in geography (a la US). Admittedly, I'm from Quebec, where religion took a very sharp nosedive somewhere in 60's. So, I come from the least religious part of the country.
Unfortunately, I've never studied linguistics, so my comments will be completely unsubstantiated. But here goes...
English is destined to fail, much like Latin, as a 'universal language'.
Agreed. However...
1) Your argument doesn't preclude English from being a universal written language, even if the spoken dialects are so different that they are incomprehensible to others. I think there is precedent here (I'm under the impression that this is the case with Chinese dialects and Arabic dialects, where the spoken languages are completely different but the written ones are the same).
2)As a previous poster mentioned, technology is a factor now that it wasn't before. You gave the following example:
Look no further than the US. Take that South Dakotan and place him in the South Side of Chicago. Do you think he is going to understand a word of English spoken there? Hell no. It's english, but it's an entirely different dialect.
I can guarantee you that both the South Dakotan and the...um...guy from Chicago can both understand "The Simpsons", even if they can't understand each other. If American movies and television become popular all over the world, this might somehow help keep English more mutually comprehensible.
The coolest obfuscated C program I ever saw was a tic tac toe program. Basically, each time you ran it, it outputted source code in the form of a tic tac toe board. To get it to play the next move, you compiled the current board and ran it again.
(At least, this is how I remember it. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong).
People keep saying "alcohol is worse than marijuana, and yet it's legal and marijuana isn't".
Isn't the reason obvious? Alcohol is legal today because it's always been legal. When they tried to make it illegal, look what happened: it simply didn't work. The alcohol genie is out of the bottle. They can tighten DUI laws, they can get really tough on underage drinking, but practically speaking they cannot make alcohol illegal because it just wouldn't work.
On the other hand, keeping marijuana illegal does reduce the use of marijuana in the population. If you don't believe this, you're fooling yourself. Why do you think tobacco is used so much more than marijuana? It's infinitely easier to acquire and smoke tobacco than marijuana. If marijuana was legal, a lot more people would probably use it.
I'm not passing judgement on alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana here. I'm just saying that the reasoning "marijuana should be legal because alcohol is legal" will never work on the people upstairs. They'd make alcohol illegal if they though it would work.
Slashdot Mirror
Go *around* the RIAA quintopoly. Scott McCloud's cartoons "I Can't Stop Thinking" five [scottmccloud.com] and six [scottmccloud.com] have some ideas (which for some reason REALLY anger [penny-arcade.com] some folks).
Don't be too hard on the Penny Arcade boys. Their style often has a very sharp edge to it (the McCloud parody you linked to is one of the softest pieces of satire I've ever seen them done.). Also, I think they personally got burned trying to make a living off their work, so it probably hit them pretty close to home.
A lot of people have brought up the issue of abortion and viability, suggesting that this sort of technology may have an effect on the ethics of aborting a fetus that may be considered viable at any stage.
However, there's another interesting consequence... What if a fetus could be transplated from a natural womb to an artificial one? Let's say a woman wants to have an abortion, and the doctor says, "We can either terminate the fetus, or we can transplant it to an artificial womb and put it up for adoption".
Would it ever be ethical to destroy the fetus in this case? This eliminates the argument of autonomy . Should a woman have the right to decide whether or not to destroy her fetus or simply put it up for adoption?
Way back when I took a course in biomedical ethics, I learned about the "double effect" principle, which (I believe) is used by the Catholic church.
A quick search on Google led me to this site which has a good summary of it.
Oh, whoops, misstook your intent. Thanks for clarifying.
Colour is the way we interpret different wavelengths of light caused (the differences, not the light) by excited electrons in the material observed. A such, you cannot prove "brown" to be a fact. The table is irrefutably a region of space which causes light which reflects off it to assume the wavelength which humans label brown, but it is not brown as such.
The point I was trying to make is that there are certain things ("observables") which could be considered "facts". Since you claim that there is something irrefutable (your term) that can be said about the table, then you are supporting my general point. The fact that I used a subjective property like colour is just a poor choice of example on my part.
Also, I could define "this table is brown" to mean "The table is irrefutably a region of space which causes light which reflects off it to assume the wavelength which humans label brown".
Now, clearly declaring evolution to be an "observable" is a lot trickier, and I can't personally make that claim because it's not my area. But I'd be happier if the creationists tried to refute the "evolution is an observable" statement (your mention of the missing link is a good example), rather than arguing against current theories about the mechanisms of evolution.
In science there is no fact.
I'm not quite sure that's true. For example, there are observations, which I would say are "facts". For example: "This table is brown". Of course, you could get very philosophical and start discussing what it means to be brown, and so forth, but at that point I think you're nitpicking.
What science tries to do is come up with theories to explain the observables. Let's take gravity, for example. Einstein's theory of gravity is just that, a theory. Conceivably, at one point in time, it may be disproven.
However, just because Einstein's theory is disproven, doesn't mean that gravity doesn't exist! (We won't all start floating off the ground). It just means our explanation is wrong.
Now, the big question is, is evolution a theory or an observable? I don't mean the mechanism, which is a theory to explain things. Is evolution an observable?
Remember, those denying the existence of nanorobots might actually be nanorobots themselves.
Old Glory robot life insurance, right? The one thing that has always stayed great on Saturday Night Live has been their commercials. Even when the show was at its worst.
You can't slow a photon down - they travel at c and no other speed.
They most certainly do travel at other speeds! It may have been a while since I took a physics course, but as I recall, "c" is the speed of light in a vacuum.
Light can (and does) travel slower in other media.
I can't be the only person who gets annoyed at humongous paths like:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office Too
You aren't the only person, but Win2K has filename and directory name completion. To turn it on, add the "/F:ON" flag when you run cmd.exe. Then, Ctrl-F does filename completion, and Ctrl-D does directory name completion. Don't ask me why the couldn't just use Tab like bash does, but it sure helps navigating those large directory names.
Another way to put it is that we hav been endowed by God with the ability to do this sort of work, which can save lives. Therefore, it is quite possible that, even according to the most stringent religious belief, we have the duty to do this research to save people's lives.
I'm reminded of the old joke about the guy who lives in a town that is being flooded. A jeep drives up and somebody tells him, "Come in the jeep. You've got to get out of here before the water levels get too high and you drown", and the guy says "Don't worry, God will save me."
So, the water keeps rising and rising, and later on a boat comes up to his house, and a guy on the boat tells him, "Come onto the boat. You have to leave your house, or you'll drown here", and the guy says, "Don't worry, God will save me".
So, the water still keeps going higher and higher, and the guy has to sit on the roof, and eventually a helicopter comes along, and the pilot yells "You've got to get onto the helicopter. Soon the water level will get too high, and you'll drown", and the guy says, "Don't worry, God will save me".
So the helicopter leaves, and the water eventually rises too high, and the guy drowns. So the guy arrives in heaven, and asks God, "Why didn't you save me?"
And God says, "What are you talking about? I sent you a jeep, a boat, and a helicopter!"
(And is the plural of "walkman" walkmans or walkmen?)
That very question is answered in "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker. If I recall correctly, the official plural according to Sony is "Walkman Personal Stereos".
I'd love to write my perl code in a really snappy IDE that has a code folding, chromatic editor that offers command completion, the way Kylix does.
Have you tried Komodo?
--
adobe (-db)
n.
A sun-dried, unburned brick of clay and straw.
The clay or soil from which this brick is made.
A structure built with this type of brick.
Ah... this explains that great SNL fake commercial about the Mexican car.
"Hey look, we're Adobe. The little car that's made out of clay..."
--
Terrible API Documentation? Hello? Microsoft's documentation is of *very* high quality! Have you ever used the MSDN Library? It rocks! Feel free to diss MS where they do things wrong, but documentation is one of the few things they're great at!
On the other hand, their STL documentation sucks rocks. I find it pretty much unusable. Luckily, SGI has some excellent docs on the STL.
--
Could this sort of thing wipe out the video rental business?
I never watch pay-per-view movies (and I don't know anybody who does), because I like being able to watch a movie at a time that's convinient for me, pause it to go to the bathroom, etc. These outweighs the disadvantages of actually having to go to the rental store.
But, with video on demand, these disadvantages are gone. Bye bye, Blockbuster?
--
Technology made the fast food industry possible, and without any real national discussion and consideration, retailing, health, work and the ability of individuals to operate farms or small businesses was altered for good.
Let's veer off topic a bit here. I don't think a "national discussion" on the topic would've been realistic. As long as products are produced in a way that isn't illegal, there is no obligation for a company to consider sociological consequences.
My question is: what are the ethical responsibilities of those creating the technologies? I'd wager that a big chunk of the Slashdot population is in the business of creating technology in some sense, whether they're software developers or engineers or what have you. What responsibility do we have for the impact of the technology we create? I'm not talking about immediate health risks that exposure to radiation or things like that. I'm talking about long-term sociological effects.
I'm not blaming the guy who developed the McDonalds french fry machine for the McDonaldization of society. But I am suggesting that somebody's got to consider these consequences.
Should we technologists bear responsibility for our actions? We cannot use the scientist's excuse of "science for science's sake". Technology is purely utilitarian. What responsibilities do we have in developping technologies to ensure that we don't do harm to society by the development?
(Yes, XEmacs is an OS/Desktop!)
I think this article is interesting in that it gives some rare insights into language design. You always hear people complaining about why didn't x (where x is C++, Java, Perl, etc) do this or that? Why this feature or syntax? Here Larry points out some trade off that may not be obvious to "end user". And all written in a easy to understand language called English too ;-)
I'd recommend that you read "The Design and Evolution of C++" by (who else?) Bjarne Stroustrup if you're interested in this kind of non-academic language design. The book's a bit old, so it's missing some of C++'s newer features, but it's a fun read if you like that sort of thing.
(Geez, I've got a +1 Bonus, and I haven't had a chance to use it yet. This is too off-topic to waste a +1 on).
That's a reference to the "Monkey Island" adventure game from Lucasarts. They had an adventure game before that called "Loom", and in "Monkey Island" one of the pirates wears a pin that says, "Ask me about Loom".
the Germans carried Nietzsche's text like Canadians do the Bible
Woah. Like Canadians do the Bible? When did Canada become so religious? I don't think we're nearly as religious as our American neighbours. We certainly don't have the same amount of "Bible thumpers". Look at the general public reaction to the fact that Stockwell Day is a young-earth creationist.
Of course, there's a lot of variation based on where you are in geography (a la US). Admittedly, I'm from Quebec, where religion took a very sharp nosedive somewhere in 60's. So, I come from the least religious part of the country.
S
This is certainly a major factor of "mondialisation" (don't know the word in English).
;)
En englais, on dit "globalization".
--
Unfortunately, I've never studied linguistics, so my comments will be completely unsubstantiated. But here goes...
English is destined to fail, much like Latin, as a 'universal language'.
Agreed. However...
1) Your argument doesn't preclude English from being a universal written language, even if the spoken dialects are so different that they are incomprehensible to others. I think there is precedent here (I'm under the impression that this is the case with Chinese dialects and Arabic dialects, where the spoken languages are completely different but the written ones are the same).
2)As a previous poster mentioned, technology is a factor now that it wasn't before. You gave the following example:
Look no further than the US. Take that South Dakotan and place him in the South Side of Chicago. Do you think he is going to understand a word of English spoken there? Hell no. It's english, but it's an entirely different dialect.
I can guarantee you that both the South Dakotan and the...um...guy from Chicago can both understand "The Simpsons", even if they can't understand each other. If American movies and television become popular all over the world, this might somehow help keep English more mutually comprehensible.
--
IE: anything you produce, someone else will release for free and put you out of buisness. can you say Netscape?
;)
Was that a pun?
The coolest obfuscated C program I ever saw was a tic tac toe program. Basically, each time you ran it, it outputted source code in the form of a tic tac toe board. To get it to play the next move, you compiled the current board and ran it again.
(At least, this is how I remember it. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong).
People keep saying "alcohol is worse than marijuana, and yet it's legal and marijuana isn't".
Isn't the reason obvious? Alcohol is legal today because it's always been legal. When they tried to make it illegal, look what happened: it simply didn't work. The alcohol genie is out of the bottle. They can tighten DUI laws, they can get really tough on underage drinking, but practically speaking they cannot make alcohol illegal because it just wouldn't work.
On the other hand, keeping marijuana illegal does reduce the use of marijuana in the population. If you don't believe this, you're fooling yourself. Why do you think tobacco is used so much more than marijuana? It's infinitely easier to acquire and smoke tobacco than marijuana. If marijuana was legal, a lot more people would probably use it.
I'm not passing judgement on alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana here. I'm just saying that the reasoning "marijuana should be legal because alcohol is legal" will never work on the people upstairs. They'd make alcohol illegal if they though it would work.