I agree with other comments that it's ridiculous to blame "security professionals". By the way, who are security professionals? Aren't they the people who have to try to make existing software secure? He's not talking about software developers, he's talking about IT staff. The reason there's no security is that the OS everyone uses doesn't provide much. He mentions that if you buy a brand new computer off the shelf and plug it in to the Internet, it will immediately get hacked. That's not the "security professional's" fault, that's Microsoft's fault.
The fundamental problem is that the software that underlies the entire infrastructure wasn't designed with security in mind. The security professionals can work as hard as they want and they're never going to fix the problem. The solution is to fix the infrastructure, which means replacing Windows with something built with security in mind.
Windows is too big and complicated to just tack security on somehow. The various products (Mcafee, etc.) that try to filter everything Windows does are too intrusive and cumbersome and half the time when Microsoft tries to fix the OS itself they break something.
Since when does figuring out that someone else's software isn't secure count as "research"? We keep reading about "security researchers" finding this or that exploit, but that doesn't sound like research to me. All these researchers are doing is figuring out that somebody didn't write very good code or didn't think about the security enough. Sure, if you figure out that a widely accepted approach to security had a flaw, that would be research, but finding a problem with a specific case just sounds like QA to me. I'm curious why universities would fund people to tryg to break into any random piece of software.
The press release makes the point that this is "above-ground" oil. The difference is that the carbon in the oil produced this way was already out in the environment, whereas when you get it out of the ground and burn it, your releasing carbon that was locked underground into the above ground environment. The important question is what would have happened to the carbon in this waste material if it were not converted into oil? If it were buried would it stay underground, or would it somehow become CO2 as the waste decomposes? I don't know, but I can see that the source of the oil could make a difference in terms of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
So you're saying that you would rather the U.S. had simply published the engineering specifications for the bombs and related equipment, etc. once they got them working? I don't see how keeping those specifications secret is directly or even indirectly responsible for the cold war or anything else, except maybe that North Korea doesn't quite yet have nuclear weapons. If the specifications had been made available, then we'd be living in some kind of utopia by now, our cities protected by anti nuclear-weapon technology...?
It seems insanely idealistic to assume that all information should be freely available. Keeping the details of how to produce the 99% lethal virus secret is not the same as pretending such a virus cannot be made. It's pretty obvious that if everyone knew how to produce the 99% lethal virus, someone would. What if there's no antidote? What if it takes 10 years to develop the antidote? Shouldn't you wait to release the recipe at least until the antidote is developed?
Your reasoning is basically that "you can't stop progress", whereby no one has any kind of real responsibility for the ideas they bring into the world. Maybe you've just developed a superplague that will wipe out humanity (or just the Internet), but so what, you've added to the sum of human knowledge, so good for you.
How about if you cause your computer to send bits to my computer which, when received and decoded by my computer happen to trick it into retransmitting those bits to other computers, which tricks other computers into sending out more bits, etc., etc. and there you have a credible threat to my basic right not to have you interfere with my personal property, in the form of my computer, and you're also interfering with my use of a service I've paid for, namely the Internet.
Going a step further, how about if I figure out a way to brew a potent bioweapon, along the lines of the 99.99% effective Stephen King virus, using ingredients available at your local supermarket and off-the-shelf kitchen equipment? If I cause my computer to transmit the bits encoding my recipe to someone else's computer (say someone very angry, or bored), might that pose a credible thread to the basic rights and liberties of others?
The article makes a big point of how Monster etc. don't keep statistics of how many people get hired through them, but there's no mention of the fact that most job listings on those sites include a sentence, "send resume to jobs@company.com", and usally there's a mailto link just for that. I don't think anyone applies for a job through the Monster application (I don't even know what it looks like, although I have submitted my resume for many jobs I found on Monster). The article doesn't specify exactly what the statistics for the different job board hiring rates mean. Are those numbers based on jobs that went to people who actually used Monster's application process?
That those figures are thrown out there without more qualification makes it hard to know what to make of the whole article. All I got from it (which I already suspected) is that 40% of jobs are found through word-of-mouth. That doesn't really tell me anything about how effective or ineffective job boards are.
I wouldn't call you response cynical, more like paranoid. The real problem is that writing viruses isn't that hard. You don't need to be a Ph.D. in Computer Science to write something that will cause a lot of damage. It should be pretty clear to anyone whose done some programming that this type of thing isn't that hard to do. I think that a big problem is that non-computer people have this idea that the only people who can write viruses or worms are these child-geniuses (or some kind of organized crime). So the problem is that these kids are so smart that they're just moving faster than everyone else, and there's no way to stop them except putting them safely in jail where they can't use their prodigious mental powers for evil anymore. The fact is that these are just clever kids taking advantage of software that wasn't designed with them in mind. It may seem that Microsoft is this huge, powerful company, so only some kind of genius, or a criminal organization (maybe former KGB or something) could ever hope to overcome their mighty software. What needs to happen is for operating systems to be written with viruses and worms in mind. What these clever but not so bright kids don't realize is that their "mischief" might lead us to a world where your ISP runs a firewall on your connection for you, whether you ask for it or not, you're only allowed to connect to certain ports, and the amount of information you can send out to the Internet is strictly limited to what the average person needs for email and web browsing. If you need more upstream bandwidth, maybe you apply for a license. That sort of thing. I don't think there are organized criminals out there writing viruses just to damage people's computers. As the article mentions, organized crime would try to write viruses that aren't noticeable and that have some purpose (to the criminal), rather than just being destructive and annoying. I suppose in that regard, the young hacker virus-writers are useful, because they force the world to confront a problem that would eventually be exploited by real criminals. Sorry this isn't better organized.
It's also important to remember that one of the tricks MyDoom uses is to put a file that looks like message.txt inside of a.ZIP file. First of all, whether or not you open it directly from the email program or save it disk first doesn't seem to make a big difference. But what's clever here is that you see a.ZIP file, so you think, that can't hurt me, it's not an executable, why don't I see what's inside. You open it up, and you find a file called message.txt. Well, even if I double click it, it's not going to run a program, since it's a txt file. Except of course, it's actually message.txt.pif, which somehow runs a program, even though the user can't tell that the icon he's clicking on is an executable. The problem here is that when you click on something, you have no way of knowing what the potential consequences might be. The problem here is that you can make one type of file pretend to be another type. There should be no way to present a file capable of executing instructions as a data file. I wouldn't be surprised if a good number of people who got infected wouldn't normally execute something they knew was executable.
Think about it. Let's imagine that it gets to the point that there are so few good jobs in the U.S., that large numbers of Americans decide to emigate to India to get a call center job answering tech support questions for Dell customers in the U.S. Clearly that couldn't happen, because there wouldn't be anyone left in the U.S. who could afford a Dell at U.S. prices anymore. Before any significant number of worker emigrate to India for jobs, the U.S. economy would have to drop to India's level. If the only jobs in the U.S. were at McDonald's, then the U.S. would no longer be a rich country, and we wouldn't be able to afford to outsorce jobs to India anymore.
I agree that the mere fact of having your picture taken is not something you can prevent in public. Especially when you consider the coming
Age of the Cyborg, it probably won't be long before private individuals are taking more pictures of each other than government and corporations combined. If celebrities can't find a legal way to protect themselves from being photographed and identified, it doesn't seem likely that the rest of us will either. More probable than the government instituting a massive face identifaction system, is for ordinary people to install publicly accessible cameras on themselves and on their homes, and for software to come into being independantly which can sample all these public cameras for information, such as the location of a particular person.
I don't especially like the idea of my location becoming so readily accessible, but it doesn't seem to me that society places any constraint on people knowing that. But, maybe along with all the cameras, we'll also get some kind of mask technology, a-la Arnnie in "Total Recall", or maybe it will become fashionable to wear a bag on your head.
I totally agree. However, I'm not sure I even like the idea of the neighbor checking my front door. Ok, sure if he's really my neighbor, and we're buddies, and he knows I'm on vacation, and maybe he knows I'm forgetfull... But it's pretty weird for some guy to go walking down the street trying out all the doors to see which ones are locked, just so he can be a good samaritan and tell the owners. Either this guy is looking for a house to burglarize, or... he's looking for a house to burglarize. I think we should admit that people who break into other people's homes or computer systems do it for themselves, not to "help out" the owners with unsolicited security advice. If you think about it for more than 2 seconds, it sounds absolutely ridiculous.
The headline claims that the article "makes a solid argument in favor of OSS in general and Linux in particular, from a solidly capitalist perspective". Sort of, not really. The article merely points out that Linux has many more people working on it, who are (it is assumed) more motivated and creative. There isn't really any discussion of capitalism, except to point out that in some cases money may not be the only factor determining the success of a project. Really, the article doesn't point out anything that most people interested in the topic didn't know already. The really interesting question, as regards capitalism, is how Open Source projects (and the people who work on them) will be funded. The author doesn't go into that, except to suggest that Linux is more akin to a charity project, or a religious movement than to a commercial effort. The only thing interesting about the article is that it happens to have been published in Business Week, but that isn't even that exciting, considering that quite a few large, important buisnesses (i.e. IBM), are using Linux these days. The article is basically a Linux cliff notes for executive types.
Actually, the headline of the actual article is "Linux is favourite hacker target: Study", and the first sentence is "Linux, not Microsoft Windows, remains the most-attacked operating system, a British security company reports." So, it was really the author of the original article who chose to "soften the blow". All Slashdot failed to do was to add any additional critical insight in its title.
Why should we expect ordinary computer users to be that sophisticated about their computer? Buying a computer to browse the web do word processing shouldn't be like buying a pet. It gets ridiculous when the amount of time you need to spend keeping your computer protected approaches the amount of time you need to spend taking care of your dog or cat.
Deciding to buy a computer should not be a decision like deciding to buy some exotic pet. Are you ready for the responsibility? Have you read about and studied the care and maintenance requirements for the type of computer you are planning to buy? A computer is a machine, and people who use it for word processing, web browsing etc, are not going to take time out of their lives to nurture it, care for it, take it to the vet, etc. A fix worm may create extra traffic initally, but once it fixes the problem, the extra traffic will go away, and much more severe problems will be averted. As long as operating systems have security flaws of this kind, this seems like a realistic and reasonable way to patch them.
You can use the Internet to find information about things besides the latest NVIDIA chip or whether or not JFK had an affair with an itern. From what I understand, the reasons why developing countries are "developing" instead of "developed" aren't simply that it's physically impossible for them to produce enough food or shelter. It seems to me that Internet access could be more useful than a shipment of grain and medical supplies. As we all know, there's a lot of useful information available on the Internet, not to mention the ability to organize political and social organizations quickly and cheaply. From what I hear a lot of donations of food or medical supplies end up getting stolen or wasted anyway.
I was relieved to see an American flag flying proudly in the trailor. I had been concerned that since the U.S. military is somewhat to blame (at least according to the timeline presented in the first movie) for the near destruction of humankind, this latest installement might have certain unpatriotic overtones. Fortunately, that does not seem to be the case. Thank you Warner Bros for standing up for the U.S of A!
How do we know this is real?
on
Baked Apple
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· Score: 1
Ok, he has pictures, but it wouldn't be that hard to generate those. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it sounds like a really bizarre thing to do, and a bit weird that he didn't try to get an explanation out of her. But, who knows.
The reason pigs are being used is because their anatomy is very similar to human anatomy.
Yeah. I'm not a vet or anything, but aren't horses 3 or 4 times as big as a human being? Wouldn't a horses's heart be about as big as my head?
Hey, I've got an idea, how about transplants from elephants? Finally a profitable way to keep them off the endagered list!
Maybe some Jews will refuse a pig implant. History has shown that the Jewish people are, pretty resourceful though, and I don't think most of them would be dumb enough to turn down down life saving treatment, unless they happen to be suicidal. If there's a religious issue, I'm confident they'll find a way around it.
Is a genetically engineered pig still a pig?
I agree that the computer/car parallel is meaningless, but not because of compatibility issues. The difference between what you get with a BWM as opposed to a Neon is just so much greater than the difference between a Mac and Windows that it's just silly to try to relate the two comparisons. A better parallel would be with something like office furniture. Do you buy a $150 office chair, or a $500 office chair? I mean no one is ever going to try to convince you that a Neon is a superior car, even the people who make Neon's. Regardless of whether you think that Mac's or Windows' are better, you can't completely deny that the other side has some argument to make. The Neon/BMW debate does not even exist as a debate among sane people, so I don't see how this can be used as an analogy for Windows/Mac.
Is a Mac really the equivalent of a BMW in computer terms? Everyone keeps pulling up this BMW market share thing, but I've been in a BMW before, and, sure no question I understand why someone would pay 10 times as much to have one. But I've used a Mac, and okay, it has some nice features, it looks nice, but it's not the BMW of computers. There is no equivalence between driving a Neon and driving a BMW and browsing the Web on a PC as opposed to an iMac, even if the iMac looks like a lampshade.
I've seen a few posts discussing how Mac has more market share than BMW and Mercedez-Benz. Well, um, the iMac is cute, but is it really fair to say that having an 800Mhz "Pentium crushing" iMac, with a different looking case, instead of a 1.6Ghz Athalon in a boring box is the same as driving a BMW instead of a Neon? When you sit down in front of a Mac for the first time after using PCs your whole life, it's not like sliding in behind the wheel of a new BWM. The last time I used a Mac (OS 9, I think) it wasn't any easier to use or more reliable than Windows.
As other comments have pointed out, the new iMac is still much more expensive than comparable (or faster) PCs. The main attraction is that we finally have a computer that looks something like what Star Trek and other Sci-Fi has been promising they will look like for so long. I don't think most people will be too surprised if the fancy monitor arm weakens over time, or if the machines all turn into puddles of melted plastic. Most people who buy it will be looking for something cool to put in their room. If you can browse the Internet on it, then all the better. I'm sure that you can spend more than $2000 on a nice designer table or whatever. For designer furniture, the iMac is priced just right. It's just important to recognize that this is not a computer for the masses, it's a computer for well-off people who like cool-looking stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with other comments that it's ridiculous to blame "security professionals". By the way, who are security professionals? Aren't they the people who have to try to make existing software secure? He's not talking about software developers, he's talking about IT staff. The reason there's no security is that the OS everyone uses doesn't provide much. He mentions that if you buy a brand new computer off the shelf and plug it in to the Internet, it will immediately get hacked. That's not the "security professional's" fault, that's Microsoft's fault. The fundamental problem is that the software that underlies the entire infrastructure wasn't designed with security in mind. The security professionals can work as hard as they want and they're never going to fix the problem. The solution is to fix the infrastructure, which means replacing Windows with something built with security in mind. Windows is too big and complicated to just tack security on somehow. The various products (Mcafee, etc.) that try to filter everything Windows does are too intrusive and cumbersome and half the time when Microsoft tries to fix the OS itself they break something.
Since when does figuring out that someone else's software isn't secure count as "research"? We keep reading about "security researchers" finding this or that exploit, but that doesn't sound like research to me. All these researchers are doing is figuring out that somebody didn't write very good code or didn't think about the security enough. Sure, if you figure out that a widely accepted approach to security had a flaw, that would be research, but finding a problem with a specific case just sounds like QA to me. I'm curious why universities would fund people to tryg to break into any random piece of software.
The press release makes the point that this is "above-ground" oil. The difference is that the carbon in the oil produced this way was already out in the environment, whereas when you get it out of the ground and burn it, your releasing carbon that was locked underground into the above ground environment. The important question is what would have happened to the carbon in this waste material if it were not converted into oil? If it were buried would it stay underground, or would it somehow become CO2 as the waste decomposes? I don't know, but I can see that the source of the oil could make a difference in terms of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
So you're saying that you would rather the U.S. had simply published the engineering specifications for the bombs and related equipment, etc. once they got them working? I don't see how keeping those specifications secret is directly or even indirectly responsible for the cold war or anything else, except maybe that North Korea doesn't quite yet have nuclear weapons. If the specifications had been made available, then we'd be living in some kind of utopia by now, our cities protected by anti nuclear-weapon technology...? It seems insanely idealistic to assume that all information should be freely available. Keeping the details of how to produce the 99% lethal virus secret is not the same as pretending such a virus cannot be made. It's pretty obvious that if everyone knew how to produce the 99% lethal virus, someone would. What if there's no antidote? What if it takes 10 years to develop the antidote? Shouldn't you wait to release the recipe at least until the antidote is developed? Your reasoning is basically that "you can't stop progress", whereby no one has any kind of real responsibility for the ideas they bring into the world. Maybe you've just developed a superplague that will wipe out humanity (or just the Internet), but so what, you've added to the sum of human knowledge, so good for you.
How about if you cause your computer to send bits to my computer which, when received and decoded by my computer happen to trick it into retransmitting those bits to other computers, which tricks other computers into sending out more bits, etc., etc. and there you have a credible threat to my basic right not to have you interfere with my personal property, in the form of my computer, and you're also interfering with my use of a service I've paid for, namely the Internet. Going a step further, how about if I figure out a way to brew a potent bioweapon, along the lines of the 99.99% effective Stephen King virus, using ingredients available at your local supermarket and off-the-shelf kitchen equipment? If I cause my computer to transmit the bits encoding my recipe to someone else's computer (say someone very angry, or bored), might that pose a credible thread to the basic rights and liberties of others?
The article makes a big point of how Monster etc. don't keep statistics of how many people get hired through them, but there's no mention of the fact that most job listings on those sites include a sentence, "send resume to jobs@company.com", and usally there's a mailto link just for that. I don't think anyone applies for a job through the Monster application (I don't even know what it looks like, although I have submitted my resume for many jobs I found on Monster). The article doesn't specify exactly what the statistics for the different job board hiring rates mean. Are those numbers based on jobs that went to people who actually used Monster's application process? That those figures are thrown out there without more qualification makes it hard to know what to make of the whole article. All I got from it (which I already suspected) is that 40% of jobs are found through word-of-mouth. That doesn't really tell me anything about how effective or ineffective job boards are.
I wouldn't call you response cynical, more like paranoid.
The real problem is that writing viruses isn't that hard. You don't need to be a Ph.D. in Computer Science to write something that will cause a lot of damage. It should be pretty clear to anyone whose done some programming that this type of thing isn't that hard to do. I think that a big problem is that non-computer people have this idea that the only people who can write viruses or worms are these child-geniuses (or some kind of organized crime). So the problem is that these kids are so smart that they're just moving faster than everyone else, and there's no way to stop them except putting them safely in jail where they can't use their prodigious mental powers for evil anymore. The fact is that these are just clever kids taking advantage of software that wasn't designed with them in mind. It may seem that Microsoft is this huge, powerful company, so only some kind of genius, or a criminal organization (maybe former KGB or something) could ever hope to overcome their mighty software.
What needs to happen is for operating systems to be written with viruses and worms in mind. What these clever but not so bright kids don't realize is that their "mischief" might lead us to a world where your ISP runs a firewall on your connection for you, whether you ask for it or not, you're only allowed to connect to certain ports, and the amount of information you can send out to the Internet is strictly limited to what the average person needs for email and web browsing. If you need more upstream bandwidth, maybe you apply for a license. That sort of thing.
I don't think there are organized criminals out there writing viruses just to damage people's computers. As the article mentions, organized crime would try to write viruses that aren't noticeable and that have some purpose (to the criminal), rather than just being destructive and annoying.
I suppose in that regard, the young hacker virus-writers are useful, because they force the world to confront a problem that would eventually be exploited by real criminals. Sorry this isn't better organized.
It's also important to remember that one of the tricks MyDoom uses is to put a file that looks like message.txt inside of a .ZIP file. First of all, whether or not you open it directly from the email program or save it disk first doesn't seem to make a big difference. But what's clever here is that you see a .ZIP file, so you think, that can't hurt me, it's not an executable, why don't I see what's inside. You open it up, and you find a file called message.txt. Well, even if I double click it, it's not going to run a program, since it's a txt file. Except of course, it's actually message.txt .pif, which somehow runs a program, even though the user can't tell that the icon he's clicking on is an executable. The problem here is that when you click on something, you have no way of knowing what the potential consequences might be. The problem here is that you can make one type of file pretend to be another type. There should be no way to present a file capable of executing instructions as a data file. I wouldn't be surprised if a good number of people who got infected wouldn't normally execute something they knew was executable.
Think about it. Let's imagine that it gets to the point that there are so few good jobs in the U.S., that large numbers of Americans decide to emigate to India to get a call center job answering tech support questions for Dell customers in the U.S. Clearly that couldn't happen, because there wouldn't be anyone left in the U.S. who could afford a Dell at U.S. prices anymore. Before any significant number of worker emigrate to India for jobs, the U.S. economy would have to drop to India's level. If the only jobs in the U.S. were at McDonald's, then the U.S. would no longer be a rich country, and we wouldn't be able to afford to outsorce jobs to India anymore.
I agree that the mere fact of having your picture taken is not something you can prevent in public. Especially when you consider the coming Age of the Cyborg, it probably won't be long before private individuals are taking more pictures of each other than government and corporations combined. If celebrities can't find a legal way to protect themselves from being photographed and identified, it doesn't seem likely that the rest of us will either. More probable than the government instituting a massive face identifaction system, is for ordinary people to install publicly accessible cameras on themselves and on their homes, and for software to come into being independantly which can sample all these public cameras for information, such as the location of a particular person. I don't especially like the idea of my location becoming so readily accessible, but it doesn't seem to me that society places any constraint on people knowing that. But, maybe along with all the cameras, we'll also get some kind of mask technology, a-la Arnnie in "Total Recall", or maybe it will become fashionable to wear a bag on your head.
I totally agree. However, I'm not sure I even like the idea of the neighbor checking my front door. Ok, sure if he's really my neighbor, and we're buddies, and he knows I'm on vacation, and maybe he knows I'm forgetfull... But it's pretty weird for some guy to go walking down the street trying out all the doors to see which ones are locked, just so he can be a good samaritan and tell the owners. Either this guy is looking for a house to burglarize, or... he's looking for a house to burglarize. I think we should admit that people who break into other people's homes or computer systems do it for themselves, not to "help out" the owners with unsolicited security advice. If you think about it for more than 2 seconds, it sounds absolutely ridiculous.
The headline claims that the article "makes a solid argument in favor of OSS in general and Linux in particular, from a solidly capitalist perspective". Sort of, not really. The article merely points out that Linux has many more people working on it, who are (it is assumed) more motivated and creative. There isn't really any discussion of capitalism, except to point out that in some cases money may not be the only factor determining the success of a project. Really, the article doesn't point out anything that most people interested in the topic didn't know already. The really interesting question, as regards capitalism, is how Open Source projects (and the people who work on them) will be funded. The author doesn't go into that, except to suggest that Linux is more akin to a charity project, or a religious movement than to a commercial effort. The only thing interesting about the article is that it happens to have been published in Business Week, but that isn't even that exciting, considering that quite a few large, important buisnesses (i.e. IBM), are using Linux these days. The article is basically a Linux cliff notes for executive types.
Actually, the headline of the actual article is "Linux is favourite hacker target: Study", and the first sentence is "Linux, not Microsoft Windows, remains the most-attacked operating system, a British security company reports." So, it was really the author of the original article who chose to "soften the blow". All Slashdot failed to do was to add any additional critical insight in its title.
Why should we expect ordinary computer users to be that sophisticated about their computer? Buying a computer to browse the web do word processing shouldn't be like buying a pet. It gets ridiculous when the amount of time you need to spend keeping your computer protected approaches the amount of time you need to spend taking care of your dog or cat.
Deciding to buy a computer should not be a decision like deciding to buy some exotic pet. Are you ready for the responsibility? Have you read about and studied the care and maintenance requirements for the type of computer you are planning to buy? A computer is a machine, and people who use it for word processing, web browsing etc, are not going to take time out of their lives to nurture it, care for it, take it to the vet, etc. A fix worm may create extra traffic initally, but once it fixes the problem, the extra traffic will go away, and much more severe problems will be averted. As long as operating systems have security flaws of this kind, this seems like a realistic and reasonable way to patch them.
You can use the Internet to find information about things besides the latest NVIDIA chip or whether or not JFK had an affair with an itern. From what I understand, the reasons why developing countries are "developing" instead of "developed" aren't simply that it's physically impossible for them to produce enough food or shelter. It seems to me that Internet access could be more useful than a shipment of grain and medical supplies. As we all know, there's a lot of useful information available on the Internet, not to mention the ability to organize political and social organizations quickly and cheaply. From what I hear a lot of donations of food or medical supplies end up getting stolen or wasted anyway.
I was relieved to see an American flag flying proudly in the trailor. I had been concerned that since the U.S. military is somewhat to blame (at least according to the timeline presented in the first movie) for the near destruction of humankind, this latest installement might have certain unpatriotic overtones. Fortunately, that does not seem to be the case. Thank you Warner Bros for standing up for the U.S of A!
Ok, he has pictures, but it wouldn't be that hard to generate those. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it sounds like a really bizarre thing to do, and a bit weird that he didn't try to get an explanation out of her. But, who knows.
The reason pigs are being used is because their anatomy is very similar to human anatomy.
Yeah. I'm not a vet or anything, but aren't horses 3 or 4 times as big as a human being? Wouldn't a horses's heart be about as big as my head?
Hey, I've got an idea, how about transplants from elephants? Finally a profitable way to keep them off the endagered list!
Maybe some Jews will refuse a pig implant. History has shown that the Jewish people are, pretty resourceful though, and I don't think most of them would be dumb enough to turn down down life saving treatment, unless they happen to be suicidal. If there's a religious issue, I'm confident they'll find a way around it. Is a genetically engineered pig still a pig?
I think he should issue a personal apology to the good people of Cardiff.
I agree that the computer/car parallel is meaningless, but not because of compatibility issues. The difference between what you get with a BWM as opposed to a Neon is just so much greater than the difference between a Mac and Windows that it's just silly to try to relate the two comparisons. A better parallel would be with something like office furniture. Do you buy a $150 office chair, or a $500 office chair? I mean no one is ever going to try to convince you that a Neon is a superior car, even the people who make Neon's. Regardless of whether you think that Mac's or Windows' are better, you can't completely deny that the other side has some argument to make. The Neon/BMW debate does not even exist as a debate among sane people, so I don't see how this can be used as an analogy for Windows/Mac.
Is a Mac really the equivalent of a BMW in computer terms? Everyone keeps pulling up this BMW market share thing, but I've been in a BMW before, and, sure no question I understand why someone would pay 10 times as much to have one. But I've used a Mac, and okay, it has some nice features, it looks nice, but it's not the BMW of computers. There is no equivalence between driving a Neon and driving a BMW and browsing the Web on a PC as opposed to an iMac, even if the iMac looks like a lampshade.
I've seen a few posts discussing how Mac has more market share than BMW and Mercedez-Benz. Well, um, the iMac is cute, but is it really fair to say that having an 800Mhz "Pentium crushing" iMac, with a different looking case, instead of a 1.6Ghz Athalon in a boring box is the same as driving a BMW instead of a Neon? When you sit down in front of a Mac for the first time after using PCs your whole life, it's not like sliding in behind the wheel of a new BWM. The last time I used a Mac (OS 9, I think) it wasn't any easier to use or more reliable than Windows.
As other comments have pointed out, the new iMac is still much more expensive than comparable (or faster) PCs. The main attraction is that we finally have a computer that looks something like what Star Trek and other Sci-Fi has been promising they will look like for so long. I don't think most people will be too surprised if the fancy monitor arm weakens over time, or if the machines all turn into puddles of melted plastic. Most people who buy it will be looking for something cool to put in their room. If you can browse the Internet on it, then all the better. I'm sure that you can spend more than $2000 on a nice designer table or whatever. For designer furniture, the iMac is priced just right. It's just important to recognize that this is not a computer for the masses, it's a computer for well-off people who like cool-looking stuff.