You are absolutely right in your assessment that everyone is entitled to be selective in choosing a child for adoption, aborting a child, etc. I don't disagree with this at all. I think any legislation that doesn't allow free will is not a good thing.
One more thing, you are 100% correct in your thinking that these people screaming for other people to adopt aren't exactly following through in their advice/stances. Bet you 90% of them would change their toon if they saw some of the conditions these children are growing up in.
Now, back to my original point, if you know a child will be born with a chance to get alzheimers, then why would you risk it? So, you can change the chance of her/him getting this tragic disease. What about the other diseases out there? Don't care about them? Why stop there? I have blues eyes, but I want my child to have brown? That is what I mean. I would be willing to bet, although I will most likely be dead by the time it happens, that this child STILL gets some other form of disease. Mom Nature don't like being cheated:)
thanks for the thoughtful response...now if we could just teach the rest to not slam someone's opinion but counter it, then the world would be a better place.
From the article: "Without the screening, the newborn would have faced fifty-fifty odds of becoming hopelessly senile by the time she was 40."
This is a terrible thing. I am really sorry to hear that this *might* happen by the time she/he is 40.
Well, IMO, this goes against natural selection. Weaknesses are inherent in all forms of life. And in this case, the weakness is basically being forced out of the child. I don't think this is a good thing, and here is why...
What happens when the governments start screening every child that is born for any inherent form of "weakness"? Will those children never receive the chance to live? Will they be branded "inferior"? This has the potential to be an extremely bad thing.
If you want a child so badly, lady, go ADOPT ONE.
There are literally thousands of unwanted children out there that need and want a family.
What is so wrong about going this route as opposed to paying thousands for a procedure like this? You help a child already alive, and more importantly, you give that child a chance to have a better life, and that is what it's all about.
of course, this is my opinion, and I am sure I will be slammed most heartily....
It's hard to censor something that changes so often. Broad sweeping generalizations will get you no where. Sorta like sterotyping people. It doesn't work.
I believe if a large company, say AOL or MS, starts censoring information, people will do one of two things:
1) complain heavily, gaining the attention of the government
"E-mail advertising, which is relatively inexpensive, is one of the few forms of Internet advertising that is thriving..."
According to whom?
Every single person I know complains about spam. Every single one of them deletes without reading the crap. Almost every one of them uses some sort of filtering/blocking.
And no, these aren't all geek-centric folks. Hotmail, yahoo, etc., all have basic filtering in place. Some UCE gets through, but most get filtered to their spam box.
Where the hell are these numbers coming from?
I realize that 1% of 10000 emails sent out is an acceptable return rate, but I wouldn't call it thriving. Show some solid proof that this is true and I will believe you.
Are people out there really this gullible? For pete sake, if I purchased all the products or services offered in spam, I'd be one highly educated, rich, successful, hung to my knee, always hard, in great shape, sexual tyrannosaurus.
sheesh. Ok, I understand that this is quite nifty and all that. But for the life of me I can't figure out what this has to do with anything.
Seems like a huge waste of .
How the hell do you get funding for something like this? If you know, please tell me, I have an experiment to run to see if beautiful actresses enjoy sleeping with nerds (me). Of course, I would have to recheck my results many, many times.
I am on the middle ground in this issue, however I do a few things to ensure that I am at least trying to make a small difference: (basic stuff of course)
1) I try to car pool as often as I can. Living in Atlanta, our traffic here is so bad that the HOV (High Occupancy Vehicles) lane is a smart choice so I don't have to leave at 5AM to get to work at 7:30.
2) I don't litter. I avoid throwing anything on the ground, and pick stuff up I see when I can.
3) I try to recycle as much as I can reasonably do.
The problem with #3 is that from what I have seen, the apartment complex I live in does a great job with the different containers for recycling, but when the garbage company comes along, they throw EVERYTHING in the back of the garbage truck and take off. So, all our local efforts aren't doing a damned thing. Anyone else seeing this problem?
Back in my day, we didn't have erector sets or robots. We had rocks, sticks and dirt. Rocks were easy to take a part and tinker with. Dirt was a little harder, needed water. It was good enough for me, it is damned sure good enough for your kids!
my karma at the time of this posting is 50, thank you very much. I don't whore, I give an opinion. My comment on Linux versus MS is that if the role was reversed, and some company everyone LIKED did this, it wouldn't recieve any comment what so ever, but since it's MS, it's oh so horrible. thanks for sharing.
"Just curious, but why do you think it will drive the prices DOWN?"
Well, my reasoning goes something like this:
MS would be stupid to charge an outrageous price for a spare controller in a market which they "own". The reason I say this is because if they do, then more and more people will look to alternatives, which will in turn decrease sales of MS's controller. So, by lowering prices, they effectively make it not worth hacking.
That's my reasoning, but it's been a long day, so please take it for what it's worth;-)
well, I might get flamebaited for this, but here we go....
If Linux did the same sort of thing to MS, people would laud Linux for taking a stand against MS.
Well, MS is taking a stand against foreign competition in their controller market. Big deal, other than the oh so conspicuous fact that it's MS doing it.
No matter what your take on MS, remember, they are a business, and it MAKES BUSINESS sense for them to do this.
One good thing from all this, I believe this will drive the prices down for individual controllers for the X-box, which is a good thing.
"A federal appeals court yesterday nullified two long-standing government rules limiting the size of the world's largest media companies, opening the door to a new wave of mergers among cable television conglomerates and broadcast companies."
I can think of only one reason why this would occur, well several, but they are all related.
1) Political pressure. 2) Money 3) Wash my back I wash yours-type activities.
"I mean, honestly, for a site that bitches about MS so much, slashdot gives them a helluva lot of free press."
Amen brotha. You know why? More people love to bitch about MS that anything else. So far I have seen about 15 posts talking about BSOD's, Ctrl-Alt-Delete, viruses, etc...not a SINGLE ONE talks about the technology or the phone.
this would be cool for airline use for those long flights. Bringing a couple spare batteries would be better, since I can see the annoyed faces of the other passengers around you. Kinda like that stupid airline commercial where the cattl..er passengers all cross their legs at the same time...
How bout not sending anything that could get you in trouble? Common sense should prevail here. But in the wake on Enron, I am sure they will do well.
One thing I did not see in the article, what happens if the person on the other end saves the email as an attachment, or saves it? I doubt it would be able to "shred" that. This is a very niche market item imo. Once again, DON'T SEND IT IF IT COULD GET YOU IN TROUBLE.
Why does everything have to be so damned complicated? The lawyer speak is definitely tremendous in these proceedings. I actually tried to read a few of them...mainly Novell's and Redhat's, but I couldn't because it was so watered down that I couldn't see into the underlying message of Bill is devil, Microsoft is hell, and we are tired of burning!
Man, could you imagine what it would have been like if these responses were written using common everyday english?
I think one major thing that will be lost in all the flaming about how MS sucks and is so unsecure is this:
They are making an effort now. I firmly believe that this is a good thing. Of course, there will be the usual rebuttals:
what took them so long
why are they caring about security now, etc.
Hey who cares why or how, just consider this a good thing that they are more involved in security now. Btw, remember the last time MS went after something with a vengeance? I do.
Slashdot Mirror
You are absolutely right in your assessment that everyone is entitled to be selective in choosing a child for adoption, aborting a child, etc. I don't disagree with this at all. I think any legislation that doesn't allow free will is not a good thing.
:)
One more thing, you are 100% correct in your thinking that these people screaming for other people to adopt aren't exactly following through in their advice/stances. Bet you 90% of them would change their toon if they saw some of the conditions these children are growing up in.
Now, back to my original point, if you know a child will be born with a chance to get alzheimers, then why would you risk it? So, you can change the chance of her/him getting this tragic disease. What about the other diseases out there? Don't care about them? Why stop there? I have blues eyes, but I want my child to have brown? That is what I mean. I would be willing to bet, although I will most likely be dead by the time it happens, that this child STILL gets some other form of disease. Mom Nature don't like being cheated
thanks for the thoughtful response...now if we could just teach the rest to not slam someone's opinion but counter it, then the world would be a better place.
From the article:
"Without the screening, the newborn would have faced fifty-fifty odds of becoming hopelessly senile by the time she was 40."
This is a terrible thing. I am really sorry to hear that this *might* happen by the time she/he is 40.
Well, IMO, this goes against natural selection. Weaknesses are inherent in all forms of life. And in this case, the weakness is basically being forced out of the child. I don't think this is a good thing, and here is why...
What happens when the governments start screening every child that is born for any inherent form of "weakness"? Will those children never receive the chance to live? Will they be branded "inferior"? This has the potential to be an extremely bad thing.
If you want a child so badly, lady, go ADOPT ONE.
There are literally thousands of unwanted children out there that need and want a family.
What is so wrong about going this route as opposed to paying thousands for a procedure like this? You help a child already alive, and more importantly, you give that child a chance to have a better life, and that is what it's all about.
of course, this is my opinion, and I am sure I will be slammed most heartily....
*cracks open a beer and waits*
Keep it simple
To the point
Searchable
Flash-non flash versions
no unnecessary plugins
no popups/unders, etc.
two versions of the same website is cool.
Not everyone has a blazing net connection, so remember the little guy sucking on a 33.6 dialup connection.
that's it.
It's hard to censor something that changes so often. Broad sweeping generalizations will get you no where. Sorta like sterotyping people. It doesn't work.
I believe if a large company, say AOL or MS, starts censoring information, people will do one of two things:
1) complain heavily, gaining the attention of the government
2) not care.
I am betting on #2.
"E-mail advertising, which is relatively inexpensive, is one of the few forms of Internet advertising that is thriving..."
According to whom?
Every single person I know complains about spam. Every single one of them deletes without reading the crap. Almost every one of them uses some sort of filtering/blocking.
And no, these aren't all geek-centric folks. Hotmail, yahoo, etc., all have basic filtering in place. Some UCE gets through, but most get filtered to their spam box.
Where the hell are these numbers coming from?
I realize that 1% of 10000 emails sent out is an acceptable return rate, but I wouldn't call it thriving. Show some solid proof that this is true and I will believe you.
Are people out there really this gullible? For pete sake, if I purchased all the products or services offered in spam, I'd be one highly educated, rich, successful, hung to my knee, always hard, in great shape, sexual tyrannosaurus.
And we know that ain't gonna happen.
Because the more machine types it's used on, the better it will become, and the more people will use it.
/.ers are gonna say? Linux sucks? Come on ;)
Beautiful in principle, but we will see how the sheeple react.
btw, what do you think the majority of
"According to HIS WIFE, Mr. Richardson withdrew a total of $220,000 from various business bank accounts in the days before his disappearance."
there you have it...
yes folks, this is a joke.
If it offends you, get out more.
sheesh. Ok, I understand that this is quite nifty and all that. But for the life of me I can't figure out what this has to do with anything.
Seems like a huge waste of .
How the hell do you get funding for something like this? If you know, please tell me, I have an experiment to run to see if beautiful actresses enjoy sleeping with nerds (me). Of course, I would have to recheck my results many, many times.
I am on the middle ground in this issue, however I do a few things to ensure that I am at least trying to make a small difference: (basic stuff of course)
1) I try to car pool as often as I can. Living in Atlanta, our traffic here is so bad that the HOV (High Occupancy Vehicles) lane is a smart choice so I don't have to leave at 5AM to get to work at 7:30.
2) I don't litter. I avoid throwing anything on the ground, and pick stuff up I see when I can.
3) I try to recycle as much as I can reasonably do.
The problem with #3 is that from what I have seen, the apartment complex I live in does a great job with the different containers for recycling, but when the garbage company comes along, they throw EVERYTHING in the back of the garbage truck and take off. So, all our local efforts aren't doing a damned thing. Anyone else seeing this problem?
Back in my day, we didn't have erector sets or robots. We had rocks, sticks and dirt. Rocks were easy to take a part and tinker with. Dirt was a little harder, needed water. It was good enough for me, it is damned sure good enough for your kids!
It's a joke, don't laugh.
"Researchers at CERN think they have created and stored thousands of antiatoms in a particle trap."
:)
Ok, they THINK they have? How can you tell?
IAECOTT--I am extremely clueless on this topic, so please someone out there give a newbie a little help with this....
thanks, and I hope to god I am not the only clueless one on this subject here.
"from the please...no-more-beowulf-jokes dept."
too late
my karma at the time of this posting is 50, thank you very much. I don't whore, I give an opinion. My comment on Linux versus MS is that if the role was reversed, and some company everyone LIKED did this, it wouldn't recieve any comment what so ever, but since it's MS, it's oh so horrible. thanks for sharing.
"Just curious, but why do you think it will drive the prices DOWN?"
;-)
Well, my reasoning goes something like this:
MS would be stupid to charge an outrageous price for a spare controller in a market which they "own". The reason I say this is because if they do, then more and more people will look to alternatives, which will in turn decrease sales of MS's controller. So, by lowering prices, they effectively make it not worth hacking.
That's my reasoning, but it's been a long day, so please take it for what it's worth
well, I might get flamebaited for this, but here we go....
If Linux did the same sort of thing to MS, people would laud Linux for taking a stand against MS.
Well, MS is taking a stand against foreign competition in their controller market. Big deal, other than the oh so conspicuous fact that it's MS doing it.
No matter what your take on MS, remember, they are a business, and it MAKES BUSINESS sense for them to do this.
One good thing from all this, I believe this will drive the prices down for individual controllers for the X-box, which is a good thing.
"A federal appeals court yesterday nullified two long-standing government rules limiting the size of the world's largest media companies, opening the door to a new wave of mergers among cable television conglomerates and broadcast companies."
I can think of only one reason why this would occur, well several, but they are all related.
1) Political pressure.
2) Money
3) Wash my back I wash yours-type activities.
Why would this suddenly be changed?
"I mean, honestly, for a site that bitches about MS so much, slashdot gives them a helluva lot of free press."
Amen brotha. You know why? More people love to bitch about MS that anything else. So far I have seen about 15 posts talking about BSOD's, Ctrl-Alt-Delete, viruses, etc...not a SINGLE ONE talks about the technology or the phone.
sad ain't it?
this would be cool for airline use for those long flights. Bringing a couple spare batteries would be better, since I can see the annoyed faces of the other passengers around you. Kinda like that stupid airline commercial where the cattl..er passengers all cross their legs at the same time...
How bout not sending anything that could get you in trouble? Common sense should prevail here. But in the wake on Enron, I am sure they will do well.
One thing I did not see in the article, what happens if the person on the other end saves the email as an attachment, or saves it? I doubt it would be able to "shred" that. This is a very niche market item imo. Once again, DON'T SEND IT IF IT COULD GET YOU IN TROUBLE.
The article said the earliest microdot was made (i think) in 1854. Anyone know how this was done? Kinda light on details there.
On a side note, where's the sharks with frickin' laser beams? They had Dr. Evil's ring, but not the sea bass? What gives?
Why does everything have to be so damned complicated? The lawyer speak is definitely tremendous in these proceedings. I actually tried to read a few of them...mainly Novell's and Redhat's, but I couldn't because it was so watered down that I couldn't see into the underlying message of Bill is devil, Microsoft is hell, and we are tired of burning!
Man, could you imagine what it would have been like if these responses were written using common everyday english?
I can dream I guess....
"The Department of Justice is arguing that there are simply too many comments to publish on paper, despite the legal requirement to do so.)"
:)
Naah, the real reason is who wants to see a printed version of the goat sex dude 600 times?
Although, what ever floats your boat
I think one major thing that will be lost in all the flaming about how MS sucks and is so unsecure is this:
They are making an effort now. I firmly believe that this is a good thing. Of course, there will be the usual rebuttals:
what took them so long
why are they caring about security now, etc.
Hey who cares why or how, just consider this a good thing that they are more involved in security now. Btw, remember the last time MS went after something with a vengeance? I do.
*shudder*
"John Sperling, an 81-year-old financier who formed Genetic Savings & Clone Inc."
Good grief. Talk about lame ass naming pun.
At least he didn't name it CowboyNeal
Is it the 5th grade dance hall shuffle you did? Or is it the sexy-stripper-on-a-pole-get-your-$20-out style?
Geeks wanna know!