...this is a very unsound decision. So, someone points some weird code out in a comment, and all of a sudden linux is crap based soley on that? "Right then I knew it was time to switch"... wtf. So, I guess no openBSD developer ever writes code that another openBSD developer doubts should be there, or at least they stick to a BS hide-our-dirty-laundry commenting scheme.
I don't think he ever said that a vegetarian civilization can't survive, just that we evolved as hunters. From what I've seen/read/learned, I agree. Obviously we're no longer cave people and are advanced enough to be able to take full advantage of our role as omnivores, all the way up to making the decision to be vegetarians. As a vegetarian, I'm more comforted by the fact that I choose my lifestyle in spite of my evolutionary history, rather than to suit it.
I actually don't see this as a troll... Personally, I think linking to foxnews for nearly any reason other than to point out how poor of journalists they are is pretty silly.
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yes, this definition doesn't slide or wriggle much, but it also doesn't say much. We're concerned about the function, which is why we use functional definitions.
Humanity is not special because it has some arbitrary gene encoding and is alive. Humanity is special because of the function associated with it. People kill bugs and eat animals because they're not regarded as being "special" in the same way humanity is. Thus, in these ethical debates, a definition lacking any information about function is completely worthless.
It's intellectually lazy to simplify things past the point of effectiveness.
Sentient means responding to stimulus. This happens long before birth.
This also happens with most robots and computer programs.
As the dictionary agrees with your description, are you suggesting that people use a different word in these arguments, or that "responding to stimulus" is a good metric for determining when rights are due?
I dunno. I could best be described as "liberal", and I definately wouldn't want anyone to force people to participate in any kind of scientific research. I sincerely doubt any of my liberal friends would either. So... um, I guess your talking about other liberals.
This is why I really hate to apply labels like that to myself. People tend to generalize over me and make up really weird acusations if I do. In general, I'd be careful about that.
I'm uncomfortable with drawing arbitrary lines on this. It just seems intrinsically wrong to experiment on a living cell with human potential.
Then don't draw *an* arbitrary line, just do what every other computer scientist / mathematician does when they can't find a tight bound on something: draw 2 arbitrary lines!
If you believe that it's obvious that a small hunk of cells is decidedly not human, and if it will be flushed and will thus not become a human, then that's ok for research.
A newborn baby is obviously already human and has the potential to develop further so we'll say no killing newborns.
There. No single arbitrary line. The trick is, to me, to just go with what is definately OK, and leave the more questionable stuff alone. That way you have no absolute declaration of when life/dignity begins/becomes valuable and thus no slippery slope.
uh, he never implied he wasn't a "First Amendment" ACLU-type. It would only be ironic if he would "respond in insulting, hostile and/or crass terms, proving [their] moral superiority." In fact, that statement implied he was an ACLU-type, and that contrary to the original poster's expectations, he was not going to lose his nerve.
From what I've read of fuel cells, the conversion from hydrogen to electricity is very efficient when compared with batteries (as high as 80-90% compared to 40-50%, last I heard), and batteries are very very heavy for a given amount of energy storage when compared with hydrogen. So those are both smart reasons to store energy as hydrogen.
I actually don't know how efficient the conversion from water to hydrogen is, though, so if you have some facts on that, I'd like to hear them. I know that charging batteries is not very efficient.
if it's not sustainable under these ideal circumstances, there's not even any reason to further pursue the idea.
Huh? If you can save gallons of fuel by using this technology to boost your efficiency, or you can store up as much energy as you want while your car isn't even monving, how is this not worth further pursuing?? I could see how the idea of running a car solely off of solar power received while driving isn't worth further pursuing, but everyone knows that's an insane idea anyway. You don't even need to work out your math to know there's not that much energy in sunlight, otherwise we'd all be fried the moment we walk out the door.
So, if you're trying to save up $500 and someone offers you a $20 for nothing, do you turn it down?
no, *stronger* point if all material is copyrighted. Obviously you can distribute something you created freely if you want to. IANAL, but I assume that if it can be distributed freely, the first amaendment garuntees we can do it anonymously.
In particular he argues that the choice of desktop between KDE, Gnome, IceWM etc, is not one that a former windows user, even a fairly technically competent one, is going to able to make an informed choice on, and that they should not be forced to make that choice in order to get good use out of any applications they might want to use."
Easy, they don't have to make a choice. They can just use whatever default GUI their distro installs. What is the problem with that?
Species of Hitler: Human Species of Mother Theresa: Human
Chances of one of them stealing your lunch money: Equal?!?!
While all humans have faults, some humans have faults that are more severe, so it pays not to generalize. I'm not saying your conclusion is true or false, but it wouldn't be right to just assume that all programmers are created equal.
when you get a receipt, tear out your credit card number and tear it into smaller pieces. People can pick them out of the trash. I'm always careful to do this, many places put your number on your receipt.
Maybe they're suckers, or maybe they just don't exist.
So an undisclosed company has bought thier license because SCO claims an undisclosed segment of the linux kernel source is their IP. This sounds like crap to me, for reasons I won't disclose.
And did you read the article? Christ, it sounds liek an SCO commercial. I'm not sure how "The SCO Group helps millions of customers in more than 82 countries to grow their businesses everyday" when it seems all they do is tax them on free software.
A basic computer competency test should be *compulsory* before anyone is allowed to purchase a computer.
Heck, sporks can be pretty dangerous too! A spork competency test should be compulsory before using such a potentialy dangerous tool. Said test should include the following areas:
Basic form of spork (stops the old "is this a fork or is it a spork" question in the lunchline)
Basic application of spork to lunch (by basic I mean VERY basic. "This is a porkchop. You insert the pointy parts into it first.")
Basic spork skills (Don't insert the spork into your eye. Remove the food from the spork using your teeth, not your hand)
Basic spork security (in fact, don't even include the word "security". Include this in the basic application section. Cover topics such as "don't share your spork, you might get cooties")
How to report a problem (if there is a school chef or cafeteria supervisor available)
Hmm... actually, we could solve all of this and have a slashdot moderating competency test. Basically, whenever some short-sighted elitist suggests an insane reduction of basic freedoms for absolutely no reason, a mod of "insightful" will result in instant failure. Yeah, I think that would do it.
Linux 2.4 license with 1 cpu : $699 Linux 2.4 license with 2 cpu's: $1,149 Linux 2.4 license with 3 cpu's: $2,499 Charging money for a product you didn't create without offering any evidence as to why you own it: priceless
There are some things that hard work and honesty can buy. For everything else, there's threat of litigation.
Slashdot Mirror
...this is a very unsound decision. So, someone points some weird code out in a comment, and all of a sudden linux is crap based soley on that? "Right then I knew it was time to switch"... wtf. So, I guess no openBSD developer ever writes code that another openBSD developer doubts should be there, or at least they stick to a BS hide-our-dirty-laundry commenting scheme.
I don't think he ever said that a vegetarian civilization can't survive, just that we evolved as hunters. From what I've seen/read/learned, I agree. Obviously we're no longer cave people and are advanced enough to be able to take full advantage of our role as omnivores, all the way up to making the decision to be vegetarians. As a vegetarian, I'm more comforted by the fact that I choose my lifestyle in spite of my evolutionary history, rather than to suit it.
I actually don't see this as a troll... Personally, I think linking to foxnews for nearly any reason other than to point out how poor of journalists they are is pretty silly.
I dunno, that response left me less than floored.
it's limey-english for "line"
yes, this definition doesn't slide or wriggle much, but it also doesn't say much. We're concerned about the function, which is why we use functional definitions.
Humanity is not special because it has some arbitrary gene encoding and is alive. Humanity is special because of the function associated with it. People kill bugs and eat animals because they're not regarded as being "special" in the same way humanity is. Thus, in these ethical debates, a definition lacking any information about function is completely worthless.
It's intellectually lazy to simplify things past the point of effectiveness.
Sentient means responding to stimulus. This happens long before birth.
This also happens with most robots and computer programs.
As the dictionary agrees with your description, are you suggesting that people use a different word in these arguments, or that "responding to stimulus" is a good metric for determining when rights are due?
I dunno. I could best be described as "liberal", and I definately wouldn't want anyone to force people to participate in any kind of scientific research. I sincerely doubt any of my liberal friends would either. So... um, I guess your talking about other liberals.
This is why I really hate to apply labels like that to myself. People tend to generalize over me and make up really weird acusations if I do. In general, I'd be careful about that.
Then don't draw *an* arbitrary line, just do what every other computer scientist / mathematician does when they can't find a tight bound on something: draw 2 arbitrary lines!
If you believe that it's obvious that a small hunk of cells is decidedly not human, and if it will be flushed and will thus not become a human, then that's ok for research.
A newborn baby is obviously already human and has the potential to develop further so we'll say no killing newborns.
There. No single arbitrary line. The trick is, to me, to just go with what is definately OK, and leave the more questionable stuff alone. That way you have no absolute declaration of when life/dignity begins/becomes valuable and thus no slippery slope.
Comfy?
uh, he never implied he wasn't a "First Amendment" ACLU-type. It would only be ironic if he would "respond in insulting, hostile and/or crass terms, proving [their] moral superiority." In fact, that statement implied he was an ACLU-type, and that contrary to the original poster's expectations, he was not going to lose his nerve.
bada BING
From what I've read of fuel cells, the conversion from hydrogen to electricity is very efficient when compared with batteries (as high as 80-90% compared to 40-50%, last I heard), and batteries are very very heavy for a given amount of energy storage when compared with hydrogen. So those are both smart reasons to store energy as hydrogen.
I actually don't know how efficient the conversion from water to hydrogen is, though, so if you have some facts on that, I'd like to hear them. I know that charging batteries is not very efficient.
Huh? If you can save gallons of fuel by using this technology to boost your efficiency, or you can store up as much energy as you want while your car isn't even monving, how is this not worth further pursuing?? I could see how the idea of running a car solely off of solar power received while driving isn't worth further pursuing, but everyone knows that's an insane idea anyway. You don't even need to work out your math to know there's not that much energy in sunlight, otherwise we'd all be fried the moment we walk out the door.
So, if you're trying to save up $500 and someone offers you a $20 for nothing, do you turn it down?
I'd think giving them a feeling of accomplishment would only encourage them. "Hey, wow! You *can* buy a law!"
no, *stronger* point if all material is copyrighted. Obviously you can distribute something you created freely if you want to. IANAL, but I assume that if it can be distributed freely, the first amaendment garuntees we can do it anonymously.
no joke! I still use mine all the time! It still does exactly what I need it to do, and it's one of the few (relatively) small items I've never lost.
Personally, I subscribed to the theory that the ending might actually be...... good! I guess that was the most nutso theory of all.
In particular he argues that the choice of desktop between KDE, Gnome, IceWM etc, is not one that a former windows user, even a fairly technically competent one, is going to able to make an informed choice on, and that they should not be forced to make that choice in order to get good use out of any applications they might want to use."
Easy, they don't have to make a choice. They can just use whatever default GUI their distro installs. What is the problem with that?
Species of Hitler: Human
Species of Mother Theresa: Human
Chances of one of them stealing your lunch money: Equal?!?!
While all humans have faults, some humans have faults that are more severe, so it pays not to generalize. I'm not saying your conclusion is true or false, but it wouldn't be right to just assume that all programmers are created equal.
your robot kicks ass! was it a lot of work to build?
You mean there's a project to create bender? Sweet! That's much cooler than that weak-ass blender project!
when you get a receipt, tear out your credit card number and tear it into smaller pieces. People can pick them out of the trash. I'm always careful to do this, many places put your number on your receipt.
Maybe they're suckers, or maybe they just don't exist.
So an undisclosed company has bought thier license because SCO claims an undisclosed segment of the linux kernel source is their IP. This sounds like crap to me, for reasons I won't disclose.
And did you read the article? Christ, it sounds liek an SCO commercial. I'm not sure how "The SCO Group helps millions of customers in more than 82 countries to grow their businesses everyday" when it seems all they do is tax them on free software.
Heck, sporks can be pretty dangerous too! A spork competency test should be compulsory before using such a potentialy dangerous tool. Said test should include the following areas:
Hmm... actually, we could solve all of this and have a slashdot moderating competency test. Basically, whenever some short-sighted elitist suggests an insane reduction of basic freedoms for absolutely no reason, a mod of "insightful" will result in instant failure. Yeah, I think that would do it.
Linux 2.4 license with 1 cpu : $699
Linux 2.4 license with 2 cpu's: $1,149
Linux 2.4 license with 3 cpu's: $2,499
Charging money for a product you didn't create without offering any evidence as to why you own it: priceless
There are some things that hard work and honesty can buy. For everything else, there's threat of litigation.