I think many people are missing an important point. WHY is child pornography wrong? Yes, its sick and disgusting (imo), but why? One answer, probably the main one, would be that it exploits a person who is not old enough to understand what is happening. This of course is reason enough.
However, if you take the exploitation out, where does that leave you? It is akin to having sex with your sister; the only real reason is due to the genetic defects that would occur from inbreeding. Yet we consider it twisted and wrong and disgusting, not even considering the real reason it is illegal.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that if people want to make/use virtual child porn, since it is not exploiting anyone (ala real child pornography), then there isn't really a good reason to ban it, free speech or not.
Although I still think it is disgusting, don't get me wrong...
We used to take BIC pens, and take out the insides, leaving only the empty 'white' outside. We would then tape one of those thick rubber bands to the back of it, and insert the 'ink' part of the pen back in. You could fire that baby with quite a bit of punch behind it. The hard core users would take 4 or 5 of these 'pen guns' and tape those together, with just 1 big fat rubber band taped to the back to fire them all. While this was not the most accurate kid gun in the world, it sure put the fear of God into the other classmates. I guess thats better than real guns, though...
I find it interesting that many of these comments that attack my post indicated that I am 'complaining' about this happening. I don't recall anywhere in either of my posts 'complaining' about the default installation. That I merely stated as a fact. Of course I can't complain if something installs 'by default' on a 'default install', and if you somehow read that from my posts than I guess I as a 'fucktard' should tone his wording down to a grade school level.
What I did complain about was how much this slowed down my computer (notice the post topic?) on the default installation, and how the speech recognition tools were the cause of this.
With respect, sir, I did not. I used the default installation of Office XP Professional, rebooted, and the language toolbar appeared upon login. I did not adjust any settings, nor turn anything on (except to load Word to make sure it installed correctly). Yet my system slowed down considerably, and when I checked my process list, two new programs (ctfmon.exe and sapisrv.exe) were running and taking up quite a bit of resources. If this is not indicative of it being turned on by default, then I guess I am mistaken.
Speech recognition did not come installed with my Windows XP, but was installed (and turned 'on' by default) by my Office XP Pro. After which point my computer suffered a major decrease in speed, to the point where it was taking 15 seconds sometimes for the webbrowser to load. I current have a 1.2 Ghz Athlon T-bird with 512 M ram, so it obviously was not from lack of processing power. Then I noticed a little program running the background called 'sapisrv.exe', turned it off, and was back to cruising speed. Perhaps this slowness was just something I experienced due to some oversight, or maybe I need to upgrade (again), but if not I would not suggest anyone to use the MS speech recog. tool (of course, with the/. crowd that is probably inherent)
More than 80 percent of respondents across the country understood how to work a TV better than a computer, something for the computer industry to ponder long and hard.
Perhaps I'm confused here, but doesn't his imply that 20% of those respondents know more about how to use a computer than a TV? I assume by _use_ they mean to operate. If this is the case, well, i never considered 'turning on' a tv or 'changing the channel' to be monumental feats of intellect. Yet these same people understand how to operate a computer better? Perhaps they are referring to 'programming' your TV's special features, and I guess without the little paperclip to help you this might be daunting task for some people.
Another thing I noticed about the article is it that while it breaks up the catagories into age and race, it doesn't really report a 'class' catagory (although it does mention 'may be rich'). I would imagine the middle-class to have the highest tech-savy'ness. The lower-class would not be able to afford much of the newer technology, and the upper class can pay someone to do it for them. The middle class, however, can afford the technology for entertainment, but cannot afford the entertainment the upper-class enjoys, and so are left with the gadgets. In this regard, the midwest (which I assume is more middle-class) would have the more techsavy.
Software modeled on biological systems, we are told, will, "detect crime for us, identify faults,... design new products for us, create art, and compose music."
It will also take out the trash, make your bed, screen calls from your annoying ex-girlfriend, make sure your milk is still good, tell you you're looking skinnier, and reprogram your TV to get all the good channels.
The computer science department at Georgia Tech has had something similar for a couple of years now. Their eclass program, (with this class as an example) would allow the professor to write onto a large screen with an electronic marker. This writing would then be both projected on the screen as well as captured for later review. The room was also set up for audio and video captures. It worked very well, leading me to believe that this will soon become mainstream.
Please remind me, I don't believe I tried to blame anyone. I simply noted, without comment, the hipocrisy in allowed abortion but not stem-cell research. You should allow both or neither, regardless of where my own opinions lie.
And when i said 'morality', I was referring to the morality of society in general. Surely such ideas exist. To give some examples, genocide? murder? human sacrifice? I guess in each own persons mind what they are doing is moral, but as a society we uphold a number of things as moral. Try and sacrifice a live virgin in your front yard and claim its moral. We'll see how society reacts.
I always thought that it was interesting how the United States can allow abortion (the killing of an unborn embryo) but not embryo cloning/harvesting (the killing of an unborn embryo), especially since embryo cloning can bring some good. While I remain pro-life myself, I could never quite understand this hypocrisy.
I find it also interesting how the one main country with whom the United States has mixed in civil rights with trade agreements is the country that may end up further along in this line of research. Of course, one could say that Hitler had learned a lot through research as well. How far can we allow our morality to stretch to further the advancement of the human race?
One of the fundamental problems in classifying a new species is whether it _is_ in fact a new species. The genetic variability among two close species can be so small that it is hard to find a specific threshold to work from.
One current method of species discrimination is the comparison of the 16s rRNA ribosomal unit, which is used in the translation of genes. This sequence is highly conserved across many species, and is used as a basis for phylogenic analysis. However, this is not a basis for showing if two organisms are the same species, merely a start to show how different they may be.
If you don't choose different species by DNA content, that only leaves thing such as color, number of appendages, and other physical attributes, as well as perhaps behavior. On this basis, how many species can you break up humans into?
I know that at Indiana University, you can get a copy of any Microsoft product for $5.00 a CD. My brother is a student there, and he was able to get the whole Visual Studio Professional package for $25.00 which at the time cost somewhere around $1,000.00. Of course it would be ludicrous to try and get a warez copy, when you can get it so cheap.
Of course, this is assuming that you actually _use_ Microsoft products...
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...
I can't disagree more. The point of natural selection is that some organisms are more prone to survival than others, and for the most part this increase in survival is due to a genetic mutation which somehow made the organism more 'fit' to survive. By screening for 'unfit' genes, we are actually performing natural selection ourselves, instead of relying on random chance mutations which more often than not lead to 'unfit' phenotypes.
Besides, when was the last time natural selection was really evident in humans? We take care of our sick, our unhealthy, those of us who cannot survive on their own. According to natural selection, we should not give charity, should not have nursing homes, should not really do anything that does not benefit ourselves. IMO, applying natural selection to humans is wrong in any case.
I think there is really no _one_ way to design a website. Some websites would be better off with more content, others with more graphics/fluff. It just depends on what audience you are trying to reach. If I go to sears.com and want to find what number to call about repairing my washer (which I do/did), I have to first find and click on the customer service button, which in and of itself is a chore since its a small little button at the top. Then I get bombarded with a page of about 50 links, which I have to hunt through to find the link for the phone number (which isn't under the 'product repair' section like I would have thought).
This is just an example, of course, but perhaps sears (and the like) should think about _why_ people would come to their website. All the fluff in the world won't mean anything if I as a consumer don't find what I am looking for.
Re:The problem behind the problem
on
Biohackathon
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· Score: 1
I admit my use of 'real' work was perhaps unfair, and I agree completely with what you have said. The professor I work for, as an example, never actually sits in front of a computer to code. That is not his training. And _his_ background is not even in biology, but in physics! Yet he has learned to apply what he had learned in physics to biology. However, he reads journals, talks with others in his field, and comes up with ideas which eventually get passed on to me to implement/improve. At this point, in my opinion, the 'real' work begins, at least for me (while he goes on and thinks up new ideas:) ). I admit, however, that the whole process is work, and what I implied above was somewhat akin to defining the factory worker as doing 'real' work while the executive does not, and this is unfair.
Re:Predators and Prey
on
Biohackathon
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· Score: 1
Your dismissal of Ewan Birney (as an example as 'not a top bioinformatics programmer' exposes your ignorance of the subject, no matter what 'bioinformatics company' you work for.
Re:The problem behind the problem
on
Biohackathon
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· Score: 3, Interesting
>>The scientific mindset of the biologist might transfer to computer science much easier than the mindset of the programmer transfer to biology.
As much as bioinformatics tries to combine biology, computer science, and mathematics (which no has metioned yet but which has as much importance as the other 2 disciplines), they do stay quite seperate with regards to actual the actual programs written. Imagine a biologist running a bioinformatics lab. He may come up with a problem for which computers would work well in solving. So, does this biologist write the program himself? No. He tells the computer scientist who either works for him or is in collaboration with him what he wants, and the programmer programs it. Perhaps he has a mathematition there somewhere too to help out with the algorithms, but in the end he does no 'real' work himself except to come up with the idea.
Computer sciencists, as you say, don't really care about the data and, per their training, are not able to think about biological processes with the same expertise a biologist is. Vice versa with the biologist. So, at some point you still need experts in each individual field, as opposed to trying to merge 3 disciplines into one.
I say this as a Ph.D. student in bioinformatics with a BS in biology and a very good computer science background. To be honest, my cs background is of much more use to me than my biology degree, since the biology we work in is specific (and thus easy to learn), as with most bioinformatics laboratories. Many people can write scripts to get the data they need, but where a good cs background comes in is the difference between a program running 3 weeks or 3 hours.
I've read a lot of comments about Ford's age and how that will fit in with his playing 'Indiana'. It will be interesting to see how they handle this. A logical solution would be to say that Indiana had a son, but that really doesn't fit too well with the 'gung-ho no ties' attitude that people assign to Indiana Jones.
Then, of course, is the idea of having Sean Connery in another Jones film. I think there are very few people who do no acknowledge Connery as a great actor, and IMO would go just because of that. That may help the age thing, too, since relatively Ford IS young with regards to Connery.
I am just glad that they took their time to find the right screenplay. Nothing is more disappointing than a crappy sequal to an otherwise great series. Lets just hope they live up to our expectations...
I think the question here should not be "are we becoming less social", but "what is social"? 3000 years ago being social meant only being around the people in your village, since modern transportation was a long way off. Horse/buggies helped with this a bit, but there was still some limiting distance the average person would go. With the invention of automobiles, you could expand your social network to include people from further locations. Now, with the internet, you can consider people all over the world as your social group.
The internet is just one more step in the evolution of being social. Thus, you cannot say that we are less social than before, since it is all relative. More than likely, this definition will evolve again, probably within the next 50 years.
I can see people from/. and other geeks downloading it just to see how it works, but this is as a novelty, IMO. You download it, get it working, say "this is cool I am gaming on Linux" and get back to work never to touch it again
How else is Linux Gaming going to get popular, then? I too am someone who only uses Windows for the games, and would definitely like to see Linux with a stronger video game selection. However, the only way this will ever happen is through support, and part of that support comes from downloading demos, giving feedback to the developers, and passing it on. It will only remain a noveltly as long as people let it.
It says in the article that they were going to charge him per diem for the estimated bandwidth he used at a state college/institute. I am curious how much bandwidth the average state university/college student uses in some set period of time like a year. Where does the money come from to pay for that? Does it come from tuition? Room and Board? And if they charge $.59/sec, how much would it cost a college student to host a game server like Tribes2, or surf the internet?
In the end, of course, at a state institution it is the state paying for it, since if the average student spends even 5 hrs browsing the internet a week we are talking $177 a week, and that adds up to most state school's tuition for the year. And with so many students costing the state a large amount of money on bandwidth, why make such a fuss over one person, even if he is not a student?
If all the cars are the about the same size and shape, how would people with money show off how rich they are? Also, if these automatically take people to where they want, there would be no need for chauffeurs, once again robbing wealthy people of thier importances.
I don't know about others, but if I go to a company's website I expect their URL to be, in some form or another, the company's name. How much faith can you put in a company when they cannot acquire their own name for a URL? For instance, wouldn't it make you think a little if instead of www.microsoft.com its www.itsmicrosoft.com? When I see URL's that instead of being either the _name_ or _abbreviation_ of a company, i start to wonder how good of a company they really are. First Impressions are still important, even with GOOGLE.
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I think many people are missing an important point. WHY is child pornography wrong? Yes, its sick and disgusting (imo), but why? One answer, probably the main one, would be that it exploits a person who is not old enough to understand what is happening. This of course is reason enough.
However, if you take the exploitation out, where does that leave you? It is akin to having sex with your sister; the only real reason is due to the genetic defects that would occur from inbreeding. Yet we consider it twisted and wrong and disgusting, not even considering the real reason it is illegal.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that if people want to make/use virtual child porn, since it is not exploiting anyone (ala real child pornography), then there isn't really a good reason to ban it, free speech or not.
Although I still think it is disgusting, don't get me wrong...
We used to take BIC pens, and take out the insides, leaving only the empty 'white' outside. We would then tape one of those thick rubber bands to the back of it, and insert the 'ink' part of the pen back in. You could fire that baby with quite a bit of punch behind it. The hard core users would take 4 or 5 of these 'pen guns' and tape those together, with just 1 big fat rubber band taped to the back to fire them all. While this was not the most accurate kid gun in the world, it sure put the fear of God into the other classmates. I guess thats better than real guns, though...
What I did complain about was how much this slowed down my computer (notice the post topic?) on the default installation, and how the speech recognition tools were the cause of this.
With respect, sir, I did not. I used the default installation of Office XP Professional, rebooted, and the language toolbar appeared upon login. I did not adjust any settings, nor turn anything on (except to load Word to make sure it installed correctly). Yet my system slowed down considerably, and when I checked my process list, two new programs (ctfmon.exe and sapisrv.exe) were running and taking up quite a bit of resources. If this is not indicative of it being turned on by default, then I guess I am mistaken.
Speech recognition did not come installed with my Windows XP, but was installed (and turned 'on' by default) by my Office XP Pro. After which point my computer suffered a major decrease in speed, to the point where it was taking 15 seconds sometimes for the webbrowser to load. I current have a 1.2 Ghz Athlon T-bird with 512 M ram, so it obviously was not from lack of processing power. Then I noticed a little program running the background called 'sapisrv.exe', turned it off, and was back to cruising speed. Perhaps this slowness was just something I experienced due to some oversight, or maybe I need to upgrade (again), but if not I would not suggest anyone to use the MS speech recog. tool (of course, with the /. crowd that is probably inherent)
Perhaps I'm confused here, but doesn't his imply that 20% of those respondents know more about how to use a computer than a TV? I assume by _use_ they mean to operate. If this is the case, well, i never considered 'turning on' a tv or 'changing the channel' to be monumental feats of intellect. Yet these same people understand how to operate a computer better? Perhaps they are referring to 'programming' your TV's special features, and I guess without the little paperclip to help you this might be daunting task for some people.
Another thing I noticed about the article is it that while it breaks up the catagories into age and race, it doesn't really report a 'class' catagory (although it does mention 'may be rich'). I would imagine the middle-class to have the highest tech-savy'ness. The lower-class would not be able to afford much of the newer technology, and the upper class can pay someone to do it for them. The middle class, however, can afford the technology for entertainment, but cannot afford the entertainment the upper-class enjoys, and so are left with the gadgets. In this regard, the midwest (which I assume is more middle-class) would have the more techsavy.
It will also take out the trash, make your bed, screen calls from your annoying ex-girlfriend, make sure your milk is still good, tell you you're looking skinnier, and reprogram your TV to get all the good channels.
The computer science department at Georgia Tech has had something similar for a couple of years now. Their eclass program, (with this class as an example) would allow the professor to write onto a large screen with an electronic marker. This writing would then be both projected on the screen as well as captured for later review. The room was also set up for audio and video captures. It worked very well, leading me to believe that this will soon become mainstream.
And when i said 'morality', I was referring to the morality of society in general. Surely such ideas exist. To give some examples, genocide? murder? human sacrifice? I guess in each own persons mind what they are doing is moral, but as a society we uphold a number of things as moral. Try and sacrifice a live virgin in your front yard and claim its moral. We'll see how society reacts.
I find it also interesting how the one main country with whom the United States has mixed in civil rights with trade agreements is the country that may end up further along in this line of research. Of course, one could say that Hitler had learned a lot through research as well. How far can we allow our morality to stretch to further the advancement of the human race?
One current method of species discrimination is the comparison of the 16s rRNA ribosomal unit, which is used in the translation of genes. This sequence is highly conserved across many species, and is used as a basis for phylogenic analysis. However, this is not a basis for showing if two organisms are the same species, merely a start to show how different they may be.
If you don't choose different species by DNA content, that only leaves thing such as color, number of appendages, and other physical attributes, as well as perhaps behavior. On this basis, how many species can you break up humans into?
Of course, this is assuming that you actually _use_ Microsoft products...
I can't disagree more. The point of natural selection is that some organisms are more prone to survival than others, and for the most part this increase in survival is due to a genetic mutation which somehow made the organism more 'fit' to survive. By screening for 'unfit' genes, we are actually performing natural selection ourselves, instead of relying on random chance mutations which more often than not lead to 'unfit' phenotypes.
Besides, when was the last time natural selection was really evident in humans? We take care of our sick, our unhealthy, those of us who cannot survive on their own. According to natural selection, we should not give charity, should not have nursing homes, should not really do anything that does not benefit ourselves. IMO, applying natural selection to humans is wrong in any case.
This is just an example, of course, but perhaps sears (and the like) should think about _why_ people would come to their website. All the fluff in the world won't mean anything if I as a consumer don't find what I am looking for.
I admit my use of 'real' work was perhaps unfair, and I agree completely with what you have said. The professor I work for, as an example, never actually sits in front of a computer to code. That is not his training. And _his_ background is not even in biology, but in physics! Yet he has learned to apply what he had learned in physics to biology. However, he reads journals, talks with others in his field, and comes up with ideas which eventually get passed on to me to implement/improve. At this point, in my opinion, the 'real' work begins, at least for me (while he goes on and thinks up new ideas :) ). I admit, however, that the whole process is work, and what I implied above was somewhat akin to defining the factory worker as doing 'real' work while the executive does not, and this is unfair.
Your dismissal of Ewan Birney (as an example as 'not a top bioinformatics programmer' exposes your ignorance of the subject, no matter what 'bioinformatics company' you work for.
As much as bioinformatics tries to combine biology, computer science, and mathematics (which no has metioned yet but which has as much importance as the other 2 disciplines), they do stay quite seperate with regards to actual the actual programs written. Imagine a biologist running a bioinformatics lab. He may come up with a problem for which computers would work well in solving. So, does this biologist write the program himself? No. He tells the computer scientist who either works for him or is in collaboration with him what he wants, and the programmer programs it. Perhaps he has a mathematition there somewhere too to help out with the algorithms, but in the end he does no 'real' work himself except to come up with the idea.
Computer sciencists, as you say, don't really care about the data and, per their training, are not able to think about biological processes with the same expertise a biologist is. Vice versa with the biologist. So, at some point you still need experts in each individual field, as opposed to trying to merge 3 disciplines into one.
I say this as a Ph.D. student in bioinformatics with a BS in biology and a very good computer science background. To be honest, my cs background is of much more use to me than my biology degree, since the biology we work in is specific (and thus easy to learn), as with most bioinformatics laboratories. Many people can write scripts to get the data they need, but where a good cs background comes in is the difference between a program running 3 weeks or 3 hours.
You missed one... (one article talked about Indy and space aliens from area-52) Indiana Jones and the attack of the clones
Then, of course, is the idea of having Sean Connery in another Jones film. I think there are very few people who do no acknowledge Connery as a great actor, and IMO would go just because of that. That may help the age thing, too, since relatively Ford IS young with regards to Connery.
I am just glad that they took their time to find the right screenplay. Nothing is more disappointing than a crappy sequal to an otherwise great series. Lets just hope they live up to our expectations...
The internet is just one more step in the evolution of being social. Thus, you cannot say that we are less social than before, since it is all relative. More than likely, this definition will evolve again, probably within the next 50 years.
I think a better question is, how did the bug on the headboard get there?
How else is Linux Gaming going to get popular, then? I too am someone who only uses Windows for the games, and would definitely like to see Linux with a stronger video game selection. However, the only way this will ever happen is through support, and part of that support comes from downloading demos, giving feedback to the developers, and passing it on. It will only remain a noveltly as long as people let it.
In the end, of course, at a state institution it is the state paying for it, since if the average student spends even 5 hrs browsing the internet a week we are talking $177 a week, and that adds up to most state school's tuition for the year. And with so many students costing the state a large amount of money on bandwidth, why make such a fuss over one person, even if he is not a student?
If all the cars are the about the same size and shape, how would people with money show off how rich they are? Also, if these automatically take people to where they want, there would be no need for chauffeurs, once again robbing wealthy people of thier importances.
I don't know about others, but if I go to a company's website I expect their URL to be, in some form or another, the company's name. How much faith can you put in a company when they cannot acquire their own name for a URL? For instance, wouldn't it make you think a little if instead of www.microsoft.com its www.itsmicrosoft.com? When I see URL's that instead of being either the _name_ or _abbreviation_ of a company, i start to wonder how good of a company they really are. First Impressions are still important, even with GOOGLE.