Umm, you likely already know this, but your boss is probably lying to you, and simply didn't let it slip since that would have given you a stronger position during contract negotiations.
I wonder whether the asking for such pseudonym information is legal with respect to Canada's new privacy legislation.
I don't know much about the act's details, but one thing it states is that a business can't require information which isn't required in order to complete a transaction.
Not exactly the same thing as this, but maybe there is something in the act which does more directly refer to this type of situation.
Hi, I'm in the process of installing gentoo 1.4. I'm at the point where I can install reboot into the new gentoo system, but haven't really built/installed anything else yet(not even X). I was using the athlon-xp stage 2 installation package.
I'm wondering, is it worthwhile to abandon my current install and use a 2004.0 install (which currently does not have packages for athlon xp) or to stick with my 1.4 athlon-xp specific install and then upgrade to the latest packages?
If you add up all of your compile times and your tweaking time, not even over the course of one year will you recover that time with an optimized system.
But that compile time can be done while you're sleeping, so it isn't really lost time at all, whereas time lost during use of an unoptimized system is really lost.
Where do you get this idea that it's free? You think Microsoft is some charitable organization, that just wants to give you a gift? Let me lay it out for you:
Microsoft paid money to develop the antivirus software. The cost of it is included in the cost of Windows. Since windows is the defacto standard OS, your forced to buy the antivirus software which comes with it.
Hence, it is not free. Your right about the "forced down your throat" though.
No, that's a different ep. In the one I'm refering to, "Rimmer world", Rimmer crash lands on a barren planet, and uses a terraforming kit to transform it into an eden-like paradise. He then uses the bio-engineering kit in to create a female from his own DNA.
Classic quote from the episode, with Rimmer Philosophizing on the issue:
'This of course created the most enormous moral dilemma. Technically, she would be my sister, and therefore unable to take me as her lover. After much soul searching, I reluctantly decided, "What the hell", I just wouldn't tell her.'
This reminds me of Hugo Award winning Sci-fi author Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky. In it, a group of space travellers enter a solar system with bewildering astronomical phenomena, one of which was the lack of any asteroids except for mile wide diamonds.
Have people actually grown so used to having pretty NP fonts, with a nice background and internal hyperlinks, that they can't stand what once-upon-a-time existed as the dominant form of text on the PC?
Furthermore, a lot of the research advances made by JPL are presented at conferences and published in journals... So, in an academic sense, there's already a lot of sharing going on.
"in an academic sense" is great and all, but those journals cost a fortune, as does attendance to most of those academic conferences.
Its one thing to be able to find the algorithms in an expensive journal, it's a completely different thing to be able to download the software off the internet.
I understand your argument that you use brain activity as a "threshold", but surely you see that is not the prevailing opinion legally or socially.
When it comes to fundamental rights, it generally does, like whether someone should be alive or not, brain activity is generally the measure. That is why when people determine whether to cut off life support for someone or not, a main determinant is whether or not they are "braindead"
This culture does in alot of ways treat smarter people as superior.
The culture also treats people differently based on how many cells one has(fat/tall vs. skinny/short). So our positions don't differ in that respect.
Again, my main point was to show that "it could save lives" was a weak argument, and that "where a life begins" is the key issue.
Interestingly, in a recent Wired magazing article, Bruce Sterling argues that the best way to popularize genetically modified foods would be to promote them as luxury items:
"if Fortune 500 CEOs sought it out to feed their children, the world would follow"
Does anybody know whatever happened with the research on harvesting real adult stem cells from fat tissue?
I attended a lecture by a big-wig stem cell researcher (sorry, don't recall his name) at my University a few months back, and he addressed the topic of getting stem cells from adult tissues.
He said that the stem cell research community was initially very excited about this line of research when it first made headlines, because it could allow the same research without the ethical issues connected to embryo's.
Unfortunately, though early results looked promising, subsequent investigations cast doubt on how useful adult-derived stem cells would be compared to the unlimited pluripotential of embryonic stem cells to turn into other cell therapeutic cell types.
Also unfortunately, the prospect of using adult stem cells in place of embryonic stem cells is still ceased upon by opponents of embryonic stem research to win over those who don't know the science, and to cast the scientists as being unethical in the face of perfect alternatives. But the science doesn't back this position up.
No, the only logical point to say life has started is at the very beginning.
Every sperm is sacred, eh?
That's the problem bud, where's the beginning? I say it's not before your capable of thinking, a prerequisite for which is nervous cells, of which these embryos have none
If they had implanted the egg into a uterus instead of extracting the stem cells it would have developed into a more or less normal human.
Not necessarily. Just because it was healthy enough to produce stem cells (of yet untested quality), does not mean it could have developed into a healthy human, or anything resembling a human.
Dr. Leon R. Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics: "The age of human cloning has apparently arrived: today, cloned blastocysts for research, tomorrow cloned blastocysts for babymaking,"
Slipper slope fallacy - actually, one doesn't necessarily lead to the other. Therapeutic cloning can be done without us having to do reproductive cloning.
"In my opinion, and that of the majority of the Council, the only way to prevent this from happening here is for Congress to enact a comprehensive ban or moratorium on all human cloning."
False Dillema fallacy. Kass is saying that we either completely ban all cloning, or we'd have to deal with and accept all types of cloning. In actuality, we can allow cloning for therapeutic purposes(you know, to save lives), while disallowing, or greatly limiting it for reproductive purposes(eg allow it for people who have no other way to reproduce, but disallow it for people who want to clone a legion of duplicates to satisfy their vanity/megalomaniacal ambitions).
The way your statements are positions, it appears that you're suggesting AI isn't popular because of widespread resistance to its adoption (which I know your not, cuz that would be preposterous).
A better analogy, already made upstream, would be with nuclear power (not that nuclear power is necessarily safe).
What you need to understand is that IBM's commercials aren't aimed towards computer experts, they're aimed at PHBs.
They're meant to generate interest in a product, not explain it, so that the PHBs then go to IBM and ask them about it, and IBM happily gives them the whole sales pitch.
Pretentious? You bet! They're fscking IBM! They do their best to look even bigger than the 800 pound gorilla that they are so, that the PHBs, who are business people, are sure that IBM is the winning team; cuz that is who the PHBs go with: the ones they consider to be the winning team.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm, you likely already know this, but your boss is probably lying to you, and simply didn't let it slip since that would have given you a stronger position during contract negotiations.
I don't know much about the act's details, but one thing it states is that a business can't require information which isn't required in order to complete a transaction.
Not exactly the same thing as this, but maybe there is something in the act which does more directly refer to this type of situation.
Maybe that means it's extra important for an open source project to have a good design from the start: few will want to fix it after it's done.
I'm wondering, is it worthwhile to abandon my current install and use a 2004.0 install (which currently does not have packages for athlon xp) or to stick with my 1.4 athlon-xp specific install and then upgrade to the latest packages?
But that compile time can be done while you're sleeping, so it isn't really lost time at all, whereas time lost during use of an unoptimized system is really lost.
Where do you get this idea that it's free? You think Microsoft is some charitable organization, that just wants to give you a gift? Let me lay it out for you:
Microsoft paid money to develop the antivirus software. The cost of it is included in the cost of Windows. Since windows is the defacto standard OS, your forced to buy the antivirus software which comes with it.
Hence, it is not free. Your right about the "forced down your throat" though.
Classic quote from the episode, with Rimmer Philosophizing on the issue:
'This of course created the most enormous moral dilemma. Technically, she would be my sister, and therefore unable to take me as her lover. After much soul searching, I reluctantly decided, "What the hell", I just wouldn't tell her.'
This reminds me of Hugo Award winning Sci-fi author Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky. In it, a group of space travellers enter a solar system with bewildering astronomical phenomena, one of which was the lack of any asteroids except for mile wide diamonds.
That's covered in an episode of red dwarf.
Yes.
"in an academic sense" is great and all, but those journals cost a fortune, as does attendance to most of those academic conferences.
Its one thing to be able to find the algorithms in an expensive journal, it's a completely different thing to be able to download the software off the internet.
When it comes to fundamental rights, it generally does, like whether someone should be alive or not, brain activity is generally the measure. That is why when people determine whether to cut off life support for someone or not, a main determinant is whether or not they are "braindead"
This culture does in alot of ways treat smarter people as superior.
The culture also treats people differently based on how many cells one has(fat/tall vs. skinny/short). So our positions don't differ in that respect.
Again, my main point was to show that "it could save lives" was a weak argument, and that "where a life begins" is the key issue.
I agree that that is the key issue.
No, it doesn't. We can consider it a threshold, above which all things are equal.
Those with more brain function are "more alive".
One could make the same case with your argument: that if one cell means alive, then people with more cells, tall and/or fat people, are more alive.
By your measure plants and single-celled organisms would not constitute life.
No, they just don't count as people. Sure they are alive, just like my skin cells are alive, but I don't consider scratching my skin as murder.
If the algorithm is worth it's salt, it will quickly adjust its suggestions upon learning of the change in habits.
The stores which implement such intelligent algorithms should be more successful(unless there is a benefit to giving a customer bad suggestions).
"if Fortune 500 CEOs sought it out to feed their children, the world would follow"
I attended a lecture by a big-wig stem cell researcher (sorry, don't recall his name) at my University a few months back, and he addressed the topic of getting stem cells from adult tissues.
He said that the stem cell research community was initially very excited about this line of research when it first made headlines, because it could allow the same research without the ethical issues connected to embryo's.
Unfortunately, though early results looked promising, subsequent investigations cast doubt on how useful adult-derived stem cells would be compared to the unlimited pluripotential of embryonic stem cells to turn into other cell therapeutic cell types.
Also unfortunately, the prospect of using adult stem cells in place of embryonic stem cells is still ceased upon by opponents of embryonic stem research to win over those who don't know the science, and to cast the scientists as being unethical in the face of perfect alternatives. But the science doesn't back this position up.
Every sperm is sacred, eh?
That's the problem bud, where's the beginning? I say it's not before your capable of thinking, a prerequisite for which is nervous cells, of which these embryos have none
Are we supposed to just wait around diseased and dying contently?
Also, it's still rather uncertain how versatile cord stem cells are compared to embryonic stem cells.
Not necessarily. Just because it was healthy enough to produce stem cells (of yet untested quality), does not mean it could have developed into a healthy human, or anything resembling a human.
Slipper slope fallacy - actually, one doesn't necessarily lead to the other. Therapeutic cloning can be done without us having to do reproductive cloning.
"In my opinion, and that of the majority of the Council, the only way to prevent this from happening here is for Congress to enact a comprehensive ban or moratorium on all human cloning."
False Dillema fallacy. Kass is saying that we either completely ban all cloning, or we'd have to deal with and accept all types of cloning. In actuality, we can allow cloning for therapeutic purposes(you know, to save lives), while disallowing, or greatly limiting it for reproductive purposes(eg allow it for people who have no other way to reproduce, but disallow it for people who want to clone a legion of duplicates to satisfy their vanity/megalomaniacal ambitions).
Where's the semantic web when you need it?
I hope the irony isn't lost on you.
By the way, 44 is considered advanced age for a mathematician
Come winter time the gorillas simply freeze to death. - Principal Skinner
A better analogy, already made upstream, would be with nuclear power (not that nuclear power is necessarily safe).
They're meant to generate interest in a product, not explain it, so that the PHBs then go to IBM and ask them about it, and IBM happily gives them the whole sales pitch.
Pretentious? You bet! They're fscking IBM! They do their best to look even bigger than the 800 pound gorilla that they are so, that the PHBs, who are business people, are sure that IBM is the winning team; cuz that is who the PHBs go with: the ones they consider to be the winning team.