Blessed are those who mouth off about a business model while remaining ignroant of the fact that service is a lucrative business model in many instances.
$P$G was set up to be the standard shell in 6+. Trust me, I have way too much experience in DOS for my own good. DOS 5 had C> (or, more importantly, A> on a bootdisk without any autoexec.bat or config.sys), and DOS 6 had C:\(and again, a:\ on a bootdisk with no init files). DOS 7 and 8(9x and ME) are this way be default as well.
Biological weapons are here, and they are quite deadly. I don't see that as a good reason to stop an experiment which might bring us to a better understanding of the functions of a cell and possibly bring us closer to understanding the origins of life.
As for complex multicellular war beasts, we're as far from those now as we are from directly harnessing the kinetic energy of an electron.
I think you've watched too many sci-fi television shows. It simply wouldn't be logical to irradicate the human race. Nor would it be logical to create something more intelligent than humans AND violent enough to get the ambitions to destroy humanity. We aren't THAT stupid.
Moving from genetic engineering to what they're doing right now is like the difference between knowing about radiation and a nuke bomb(which, to be honest, isn't all that complicated -- it's discovering it which is difficult). Moving from a single-celled organism to creating a multicellular organisms DNA from scratch is like the leap from the nuke bomb to creating energy by sapping energy directly from atomic movement(something that won't be possible...probably ever.)
Since we already have biological weapons which are terribly effective, we've gone from knowing about bacteria to having the biological nuke. Creating a multicellular organism(and in this case, a multicellular organism with millitary applications) from this knowlege is a gargantuan step forward, and if we ever achieve it, I will celebrate mankinds advancement and discovery, rather than eye the darkness suspiciously.
Of course, we already have terribly effective biological weapons, so what's the point? Something tells me we're not going to be making farbtontier any time soon.
Yes! What we need to solve the worlds problems is millions of scientists working on something they aren't interested in!
By the way. You're first. I hope you know something about retroviruses and human gene modification, because you're heading straight in. With no training. Oh, you're a scientist, you'll figure it out, even if you *don't* care!
Step back a minute. Are these forces "we" don't comprehend, or forces "YOU" don't comprehend? Just because YOU don't understand the subject, doesn't mean that a genetic scientist doesn't.
More importantly, who cares if we kill a "frankenstien" micro-organism? You seem to be thinking that we're making a multicellular organism here, perhaps with sentience. This is not the case. It's a simple micro-organism. We kill millions of them every day walking down the street, laying in bed, or even floating in space(with a space suit, mind you).
Everybody should stop believing that fiction is somehow a prophecy of what will happen if those "nasty scientists" try treading on something interesting. Do you think that we should hold off a manned expedition to mars because the space creature from planet X will get us? Should we stop using vaccines because someone might slip a mind control drug in there? Doubtful.
"Playing god" always pays off. The only people who would disagree are luddites who are ignorant of the impact of technology on our way of life, especially in terms of humanity's health, well being, security against disaster(natural or otherwise), and general enlightenment of the world around us. It's what sets us apart from the lower forms of life, and what makes us a viable species -- without our various forms of technology(and some of it can be quite scary), humanity would not exist. We're just a weak, clawless, toothless, slow species with very little survival instinct without our technology, and without "playing god" once in a while, we wouldn't have any technology to speak of.
Why do you assume that such life forms would be sentient? Just creating basic micro-organisms is an incredible challenge, and creating a basic micro-organism is what we're trying to do here. Making a sentient, multicellular organism is so far in our future compared to this experiment, it's incredible. It's like saying that Marie Curie was trying to build a cold fusion reactor.
I'm suprised and dissapointed at the number of kneejerk luddites in this thread who automatically make some magical connection between micro-organisms(ie. simple life, the kind which first formed several billion years ago), and human life(ie. complex life, the kind which formed several hundred million years ago), and therefore declare that all experiments of this type are dangerous. Creating simple life forms is merely a means to the end of learning more of our origins -- knowlege which is important in the grand scheme of our understanding of the universe.
Is it ethical or responsible to pretend that micro-organisms have intelligence?
Is it ethical or responsible to present misinformation as facts, such as the genes which "Magically leaped" from corn to soy?
Is it ethical or responsible to assume the worst, and rather than viewing this as what it is -- man trying to learn about his origins by creating a micro-organism from basic elements?
The only boxes I've ever seen pounded by spam are hotmail accounts -- just about every other E-mail account I've had recently is spam-free. How? Just don't give your address to assholes(ie. free registration). Even my yahoomail account is fine.
On the hardware side, I havent' been able to get my Geforce 4 (msi G4MX460-VTP)video-in to work yet under Mandrake 9, and my two USB gamepads don't work(at least, not as/dev/joystick). I haven't figured out how to get my MIDI keyboard to work on my SB16 yet either.
On the software side, I have thousands of dollars of software I can't just throw out the window. I still haven't found a MIDI editor which works well(rosegarden is the only one I could even get to run, and it is best described as "ass"(with all due respect to it's authors, it's not nearly as good as something like midisoft's product))
I still have a lot of faith in linux and it's non-MS kin on both the commercial and non-commercial sides of the coin. I have set aside a significant of hard drive space to Mandrake 9(which I can finally use on the internet, thanks to connexants softmodem drivers for linux), and I use Mandrake 9 on my laptop exclusively. Depending on the applications I use, this changes; for instance, when all I did was java programming, I used Linux because it was better for a dev OS than anything else which would run under 32MBs of RAM. When all I did was play simcity 2000 and civ 2(recently -- I only found a copy a few months ago), I had windows on there exclusively. Right now I'm using Linux on my laptop because it has so many apps for it.
On another note, has anybody else tried installing Mandrake 9 on a 32MB machine, and if so, did you find out how to get the other two disks to install? Linux is badly crippled without the rest of the dev stuff, and I'd really like to try blackbox and play some games on the default install(yes, I know how to install programs, but I'd rather not if I can help it)
I'll be ready to sign up for this. Despite their underhanded and definitely unethical practices in trying to stick a wrench in the cogs of peer to peer networks(a laughably foolish concept at best, corporate cyber-terrorism at worst(Ooh! The hippy learned how to use kneejerk phrases in his posts! Washington beware!)), I'd be willing to support the recording industry's first real foray into the digital medium. Naturally(as this is slashdot), I didn't bother reading the article, but I'm sure most people(read:people with money, not whiners without money) would be happy to pay a $50/month charge(about the cost of cable where I live) to use this service at unlimited downloads per month.
It's really nice to see that the recording industry might finally be realizing that there are reasons beyond economic ones for consumers to want an internet based service, such as the convenience of simply typing in a long-forgotten song which wouldn't be available in stores. The only things which might make this even better would be if A)all labels were doing this, creating a library for the rental, and B)enough people stopped using P2P to convince the RIAA to stop their war against it. P2P has applications beyond sharing music -- it can also be used to get a copy of something like Mandrake 9, which was impossible to download through conventional means for weeks after it came out (and with good reason -- it rocks!:) ), or it can be used as a cheap platform for shareware developers to launch their product. It's just a matter of putting the technology to good use.
I never thought I'd say this, but the entire population of slashdot has a message for you!
"Get a fucking life!"
Try to pull yourself out of the unreal world you've painted for yourself, and wen you get back to reality, do us all a favour: kick yourself in the ass a couple times for reading so much into a message which had nothing to do with pornography, and only made a passing reference to the physics thing! I know it's difficult for your 14 year old mind to concieve, but there are things in life other than sex and pornography, and though this may be a difficult concept for such a demonstratably small mind to comprehend, some people watch movies and TV shows for their plots and literary elements, rather than because the female lead has big breasts.
Slashdot Mirror
Blessed are those who mouth off about a business model while remaining ignroant of the fact that service is a lucrative business model in many instances.
Asus already has that for motherboards, and MSI already has that for video cards. I can't speak for other moterboard/video card manufacturers.
$P$G was set up to be the standard shell in 6+. Trust me, I have way too much experience in DOS for my own good. DOS 5 had C> (or, more importantly, A> on a bootdisk without any autoexec.bat or config.sys), and DOS 6 had C:\(and again, a:\ on a bootdisk with no init files). DOS 7 and 8(9x and ME) are this way be default as well.
I had someone get into their BIOS and remove the hard drive settings because they were perplexed by "C:\>" one time.
I think a generic ATAPI CD-ROM driver should work for any modern CD-ROM drive, and possibly DVD-ROM drive.
Dos 5 and below used the C> prompt(no directory). Afterwards they changed to C:\>.
To be fair, it's a command-line. It's pretty hard to make a command-line user freindly, just as it's hard to muck it up too badly.
Biological weapons are here, and they are quite deadly. I don't see that as a good reason to stop an experiment which might bring us to a better understanding of the functions of a cell and possibly bring us closer to understanding the origins of life.
As for complex multicellular war beasts, we're as far from those now as we are from directly harnessing the kinetic energy of an electron.
I think you've watched too many sci-fi television shows. It simply wouldn't be logical to irradicate the human race. Nor would it be logical to create something more intelligent than humans AND violent enough to get the ambitions to destroy humanity. We aren't THAT stupid.
Moving from genetic engineering to what they're doing right now is like the difference between knowing about radiation and a nuke bomb(which, to be honest, isn't all that complicated -- it's discovering it which is difficult). Moving from a single-celled organism to creating a multicellular organisms DNA from scratch is like the leap from the nuke bomb to creating energy by sapping energy directly from atomic movement(something that won't be possible...probably ever.)
Since we already have biological weapons which are terribly effective, we've gone from knowing about bacteria to having the biological nuke. Creating a multicellular organism(and in this case, a multicellular organism with millitary applications) from this knowlege is a gargantuan step forward, and if we ever achieve it, I will celebrate mankinds advancement and discovery, rather than eye the darkness suspiciously.
60 years. That's a long time.
Of course, we already have terribly effective biological weapons, so what's the point? Something tells me we're not going to be making farbtontier any time soon.
I could try reading superman comics or norse mythology as well, but I'm not going to.
If you honestly think that power correlates to intelligence, you're probably not intelligent enough to make that assertion.
Yes! What we need to solve the worlds problems is millions of scientists working on something they aren't interested in!
By the way. You're first. I hope you know something about retroviruses and human gene modification, because you're heading straight in. With no training. Oh, you're a scientist, you'll figure it out, even if you *don't* care!
If we have a problem that big, most organisms have a natural enemy known as "fire". :)
Step back a minute. Are these forces "we" don't comprehend, or forces "YOU" don't comprehend? Just because YOU don't understand the subject, doesn't mean that a genetic scientist doesn't.
More importantly, who cares if we kill a "frankenstien" micro-organism? You seem to be thinking that we're making a multicellular organism here, perhaps with sentience. This is not the case. It's a simple micro-organism. We kill millions of them every day walking down the street, laying in bed, or even floating in space(with a space suit, mind you).
Everybody should stop believing that fiction is somehow a prophecy of what will happen if those "nasty scientists" try treading on something interesting. Do you think that we should hold off a manned expedition to mars because the space creature from planet X will get us? Should we stop using vaccines because someone might slip a mind control drug in there? Doubtful.
AH!!!
...When will man learn that playing god never pays? :)
SCARY!!!
"Playing god" always pays off. The only people who would disagree are luddites who are ignorant of the impact of technology on our way of life, especially in terms of humanity's health, well being, security against disaster(natural or otherwise), and general enlightenment of the world around us. It's what sets us apart from the lower forms of life, and what makes us a viable species -- without our various forms of technology(and some of it can be quite scary), humanity would not exist. We're just a weak, clawless, toothless, slow species with very little survival instinct without our technology, and without "playing god" once in a while, we wouldn't have any technology to speak of.
Why do you assume that such life forms would be sentient? Just creating basic micro-organisms is an incredible challenge, and creating a basic micro-organism is what we're trying to do here. Making a sentient, multicellular organism is so far in our future compared to this experiment, it's incredible. It's like saying that Marie Curie was trying to build a cold fusion reactor.
I'm suprised and dissapointed at the number of kneejerk luddites in this thread who automatically make some magical connection between micro-organisms(ie. simple life, the kind which first formed several billion years ago), and human life(ie. complex life, the kind which formed several hundred million years ago), and therefore declare that all experiments of this type are dangerous. Creating simple life forms is merely a means to the end of learning more of our origins -- knowlege which is important in the grand scheme of our understanding of the universe.
Is it ethical or responsible to pretend that micro-organisms have intelligence?
Is it ethical or responsible to present misinformation as facts, such as the genes which "Magically leaped" from corn to soy?
Is it ethical or responsible to assume the worst, and rather than viewing this as what it is -- man trying to learn about his origins by creating a micro-organism from basic elements?
The only boxes I've ever seen pounded by spam are hotmail accounts -- just about every other E-mail account I've had recently is spam-free. How? Just don't give your address to assholes(ie. free registration). Even my yahoomail account is fine.
On the hardware side, I havent' been able to get my Geforce 4 (msi G4MX460-VTP)video-in to work yet under Mandrake 9, and my two USB gamepads don't work(at least, not as /dev/joystick). I haven't figured out how to get my MIDI keyboard to work on my SB16 yet either.
On the software side, I have thousands of dollars of software I can't just throw out the window. I still haven't found a MIDI editor which works well(rosegarden is the only one I could even get to run, and it is best described as "ass"(with all due respect to it's authors, it's not nearly as good as something like midisoft's product))
I still have a lot of faith in linux and it's non-MS kin on both the commercial and non-commercial sides of the coin. I have set aside a significant of hard drive space to Mandrake 9(which I can finally use on the internet, thanks to connexants softmodem drivers for linux), and I use Mandrake 9 on my laptop exclusively. Depending on the applications I use, this changes; for instance, when all I did was java programming, I used Linux because it was better for a dev OS than anything else which would run under 32MBs of RAM. When all I did was play simcity 2000 and civ 2(recently -- I only found a copy a few months ago), I had windows on there exclusively. Right now I'm using Linux on my laptop because it has so many apps for it.
On another note, has anybody else tried installing Mandrake 9 on a 32MB machine, and if so, did you find out how to get the other two disks to install? Linux is badly crippled without the rest of the dev stuff, and I'd really like to try blackbox and play some games on the default install(yes, I know how to install programs, but I'd rather not if I can help it)
I'll be ready to sign up for this. Despite their underhanded and definitely unethical practices in trying to stick a wrench in the cogs of peer to peer networks(a laughably foolish concept at best, corporate cyber-terrorism at worst(Ooh! The hippy learned how to use kneejerk phrases in his posts! Washington beware!)), I'd be willing to support the recording industry's first real foray into the digital medium. Naturally(as this is slashdot), I didn't bother reading the article, but I'm sure most people(read:people with money, not whiners without money) would be happy to pay a $50/month charge(about the cost of cable where I live) to use this service at unlimited downloads per month.
:) ), or it can be used as a cheap platform for shareware developers to launch their product. It's just a matter of putting the technology to good use.
It's really nice to see that the recording industry might finally be realizing that there are reasons beyond economic ones for consumers to want an internet based service, such as the convenience of simply typing in a long-forgotten song which wouldn't be available in stores. The only things which might make this even better would be if A)all labels were doing this, creating a library for the rental, and B)enough people stopped using P2P to convince the RIAA to stop their war against it. P2P has applications beyond sharing music -- it can also be used to get a copy of something like Mandrake 9, which was impossible to download through conventional means for weeks after it came out (and with good reason -- it rocks!
Most optical mice seem to have parts which glow from the LED. My logitech, for example, is made mostly of clear plastic.
True, Heavy Metal 2000 wasn't the best... ...But Ironicall,y it's soundtrack rocks! :)
I never thought I'd say this, but the entire population of slashdot has a message for you!
"Get a fucking life!"
Try to pull yourself out of the unreal world you've painted for yourself, and wen you get back to reality, do us all a favour: kick yourself in the ass a couple times for reading so much into a message which had nothing to do with pornography, and only made a passing reference to the physics thing! I know it's difficult for your 14 year old mind to concieve, but there are things in life other than sex and pornography, and though this may be a difficult concept for such a demonstratably small mind to comprehend, some people watch movies and TV shows for their plots and literary elements, rather than because the female lead has big breasts.