Astronomers have long agreed that debris from an object impacting Earth formed the moon.
Is this really the case? Last time I sat through astronomy in college they still seemed to make a lot of the "concurrent development" theory. Has that been shown wrong recently?
Yes, I admit I waited until my own story got posted to put this up, but it's something I have a personal stake in so I feel strongly about it. See, here's what I find interesting about this whole thing. Like this parody says, people are just plain afraid of cloning. I don't understand why. Here's my personal objections to some of the arguements made against research into human cloning.
1. Cloning has too high a failure rate, and the destruction of all the zygotes/embryos and/or the birth defects make it immoral to clone at this time. The problem I have with this is that it runs up into the old pro/anti-abortion argument over when a fetus becomes a person. Since the prevailing legal belief over the status of an unborn fetus in the USA is that it is not a full human being and does not have the rights of a human being, I believe this argument must be rejected.
2. It is not right to decide for the fetus when it will be born. (or some other permutation of the "We shouldn't be playing God" argument). See, here we go again trying to define this little cloned fetus as a person. However, this case is a bit different, since it assumes that the fetus will be carried to term and born. My resonse is that since this is built entirely out of my own DNA, that it is as much my right to decide what to do with it as it is my right to be or to decline to be an organ donor, since those organs are pieces of my body as well. The interesting question is, of course, "then what happens when it's born? Will it be a slave, since it is, in a real sense, yours? Or will it be free, and then what does that mean for people who refuse medical treatments or refuse to be donors?" All of which are, indeed, tricky problems.
3. This research takes us into realms we've never been before and should be stopped. I've actually heard this one. To which I respond, where is the sense of adventure? Of discovery? Sure there will be casulties, but for what good? Imagine if people didn't explore medicine because it was "playing God with who lives and dies" or if they never bothered to see what lay beyond deserts or oceans because it was a place they'd never been before, or if we halted all space exploration because we were afraid of meeting an alien which would make us question our place in the Universe! I say bring it on! These are part of the neverending quest of humanity to discover and explore, and should not, and must not, be denied by the small-minded politicians in Congress.
Imagine the possibilities for being this professor. You could charge the University for a killer server, T3 lines all around, AND copies of Q3A for yourself and your graduate students. Some people were born lucky.
Now, I know that I'll probably be flamed to a crisp for this one, but I really have to say "Who cares?" After all, most people who read/. (I assume) come from the industrialized European countries and the United States. Let's all remember that the standard and style of living enjoyed in those countries is NOT the typical condition of existence for the majority of humanity EVER. Even at the height of Dynastic China and Imperial Rome, two of the most advanced ancient societies, the vast majority of the people lived in absolute squalor and filth, not knowing where their next meal was coming from, if there even was a next meal, etc. Slavery, robbery and murder were all common. Now here comes my admittedly controversial point: the vast majority of the world is still like that. The Congo basin is still like that. The evil greedy capitalist colonial corporations have nothing to do with it. There are all kinds of funky diseases, famines, and ethnic infighting in the area. If anything, the establishment of mining and factories will add stability to the region, since the companies want to protect their money and investment. In short, the next time you feel like whining about the plight of people in the third world, ask yourself "Do I want to live like that?" I suspect the answer is no, and if it is no, please don't stop the wheels of progress from helping them escape.
Man, I wish that I had trolled with this one. No one would believe it. But then again, the truth being more incredible than fiction is something I learned from the fictional Lazarus Long some time ago... bonus points if you get the reference to The Senior.
Just a personal opinion, that's all. I long for the day when I get all the toys of the windows client under linux... each new GAIM release is a moment of joy in my dull instant messaging world.
Has anyone bothered to actually try the official AOL client for Linux? It SUCKS! So developers stepped in and filled the void with the pleasant to use GAIM and others. Instead of wasting so much time and money (if it ever gets to court) on this crap, AOL should just hire some code monkeys and crank out something better. If the Linux client were as good as the windows client, they wouldn't have any problems, since the 3rd party clients are far inferior still (though getting better) to the official version, even though the official one has ads.
You know, all I can say is wow... I had a hard enough time learning how to just deal with Linux, and this guy makes an entire OS pretty much from scratch... think about the system tweaks possible from building an OS specifically for your computer...ooooooo
Re:Prediction of posts here:
on
Mozilla 0.9 Out
·
· Score: 1
You forgot to include all the people who are going to go off on the glories of their desktop manager browser. We've already seen several konqueror posts. I predict that some of the threads will quickly devolve into shouting matches on the old KDE vs. Gnome battle.
That said, it's time to follow up on my prediction- I'm sticking with konqueror for now.
Sony is pretty good about bringing out products in the US eventually, and when they do, the best part will be the compatability with Linux. Look at the Vaio, for example. Almost totally supported, which is pretty rare with notebooks. I'm happy with mine. I'm sure that when the Crusoe shows up on American shores, it'll be in a great product too... gotta love the toys
You know, I wonder if I can get in on some of those repo sales. The silicon valley people have some insanely nice cars. Imagine getting a BMW with a built-in server-class computer? Pennies on the dollar man
Slashdot Mirror
Fujitsu is using the Crusoe in their smaller notebooks too- the 800 Mhz version, too
Astronomers have long agreed that debris from an object impacting Earth formed the moon.
Is this really the case? Last time I sat through astronomy in college they still seemed to make a lot of the "concurrent development" theory. Has that been shown wrong recently?
Yes, I admit I waited until my own story got posted to put this up, but it's something I have a personal stake in so I feel strongly about it. See, here's what I find interesting about this whole thing. Like this parody says, people are just plain afraid of cloning. I don't understand why. Here's my personal objections to some of the arguements made against research into human cloning.
1. Cloning has too high a failure rate, and the destruction of all the zygotes/embryos and/or the birth defects make it immoral to clone at this time. The problem I have with this is that it runs up into the old pro/anti-abortion argument over when a fetus becomes a person. Since the prevailing legal belief over the status of an unborn fetus in the USA is that it is not a full human being and does not have the rights of a human being, I believe this argument must be rejected.
2. It is not right to decide for the fetus when it will be born. (or some other permutation of the "We shouldn't be playing God" argument). See, here we go again trying to define this little cloned fetus as a person. However, this case is a bit different, since it assumes that the fetus will be carried to term and born. My resonse is that since this is built entirely out of my own DNA, that it is as much my right to decide what to do with it as it is my right to be or to decline to be an organ donor, since those organs are pieces of my body as well. The interesting question is, of course, "then what happens when it's born? Will it be a slave, since it is, in a real sense, yours? Or will it be free, and then what does that mean for people who refuse medical treatments or refuse to be donors?" All of which are, indeed, tricky problems.
3. This research takes us into realms we've never been before and should be stopped. I've actually heard this one. To which I respond, where is the sense of adventure? Of discovery? Sure there will be casulties, but for what good? Imagine if people didn't explore medicine because it was "playing God with who lives and dies" or if they never bothered to see what lay beyond deserts or oceans because it was a place they'd never been before, or if we halted all space exploration because we were afraid of meeting an alien which would make us question our place in the Universe! I say bring it on! These are part of the neverending quest of humanity to discover and explore, and should not, and must not, be denied by the small-minded politicians in Congress.
Imagine the possibilities for being this professor. You could charge the University for a killer server, T3 lines all around, AND copies of Q3A for yourself and your graduate students. Some people were born lucky.
Is it only me who's noticed the irony that on an article about punishing spammers, the /. equivalent of them is out in force?
Now, I know that I'll probably be flamed to a crisp for this one, but I really have to say "Who cares?" After all, most people who read /. (I assume) come from the industrialized European countries and the United States. Let's all remember that the standard and style of living enjoyed in those countries is NOT the typical condition of existence for the majority of humanity EVER. Even at the height of Dynastic China and Imperial Rome, two of the most advanced ancient societies, the vast majority of the people lived in absolute squalor and filth, not knowing where their next meal was coming from, if there even was a next meal, etc. Slavery, robbery and murder were all common. Now here comes my admittedly controversial point: the vast majority of the world is still like that. The Congo basin is still like that. The evil greedy capitalist colonial corporations have nothing to do with it. There are all kinds of funky diseases, famines, and ethnic infighting in the area. If anything, the establishment of mining and factories will add stability to the region, since the companies want to protect their money and investment. In short, the next time you feel like whining about the plight of people in the third world, ask yourself "Do I want to live like that?" I suspect the answer is no, and if it is no, please don't stop the wheels of progress from helping them escape.
Man, I wish that I had trolled with this one. No one would believe it. But then again, the truth being more incredible than fiction is something I learned from the fictional Lazarus Long some time ago... bonus points if you get the reference to The Senior.
Just a personal opinion, that's all. I long for the day when I get all the toys of the windows client under linux... each new GAIM release is a moment of joy in my dull instant messaging world.
Has anyone bothered to actually try the official AOL client for Linux? It SUCKS! So developers stepped in and filled the void with the pleasant to use GAIM and others. Instead of wasting so much time and money (if it ever gets to court) on this crap, AOL should just hire some code monkeys and crank out something better. If the Linux client were as good as the windows client, they wouldn't have any problems, since the 3rd party clients are far inferior still (though getting better) to the official version, even though the official one has ads.
Sorry, I couldn't resist the question. Feel free to kick me down to -1
You know, all I can say is wow... I had a hard enough time learning how to just deal with Linux, and this guy makes an entire OS pretty much from scratch... think about the system tweaks possible from building an OS specifically for your computer...ooooooo
You forgot to include all the people who are going to go off on the glories of their desktop manager browser. We've already seen several konqueror posts. I predict that some of the threads will quickly devolve into shouting matches on the old KDE vs. Gnome battle. That said, it's time to follow up on my prediction- I'm sticking with konqueror for now.
Sony is pretty good about bringing out products in the US eventually, and when they do, the best part will be the compatability with Linux. Look at the Vaio, for example. Almost totally supported, which is pretty rare with notebooks. I'm happy with mine. I'm sure that when the Crusoe shows up on American shores, it'll be in a great product too... gotta love the toys
You know, I wonder if I can get in on some of those repo sales. The silicon valley people have some insanely nice cars. Imagine getting a BMW with a built-in server-class computer? Pennies on the dollar man