Am I the only participant to this forum who thinks that any admiration on Mitnick is admiration on a crook?
Actually, I haven't really seen too many posts here glorifing Mitnick so I don't know where your incredulous attitude is coming from. I agree that he is not someone to be admired. I'm guessing that a large number of slashdotters do too. However, we are interested in what he has to say, regardless of whether he was a decent person or not. He did manage to pull off quite a few feats. There are a lot of people here saying things like "Oh, that's obvious" and "He has no technical skill." So what? He has shown us that technical skill is really not required. As technical/science/engineering types here, we are interested in discovering the truth -- even if the truth is underwhelming when we finally get to it.
I.e. Mr. Mitnick is a criminal, who may or may not have extraordinary technological savvy; all those years in jail, and post-jail constraints, were surely well-deserved.
True enough. But there is something to be learned from his book (I'm guessing here -- I haven't read it). That's why the review is here on slashdot. That, in an of itself, doesn't imply that we're all Mitnick fanboys around here.
we're researching motion tracking in 3-D using purely computer vision techniques, and using no sensors worn on the body, like traditional mocap techniques require.
I am curious why you are spending time trying to develop motion tracking without using motion-capture sensors. I would guess that trying to develop a computer vision algorithm that can determine what the hell a fast-moving gamer is doing in real time and then converting that into inputs would be a mighty challenging problem. Is there some drawback to using traditional motion-capture approaches? I would think your research dollars would be more wisely spent by leverging off existing technology. Is the computer vision approach going to get confused if the gamer plays in a "noisy" environment like complex wallpaper and lots of furnature? Would the gamer be allowed to wear all black or would that also confuse the computer vision? I would think that requiring gamers to wear a few sensors wouldn't be that big of a problem. Or are the games going to be frantic that there's a danger of the sensors actually falling (or flying) off the gamer when s/he performs a fast move?
Just curious. Sounds interesting but it also sounds like it might take many years before it comes to market.
I've always had the fantasy of using robots with set paths as dog walkers. Can you imagine driving through a residential area, with a bunch of robots leading dogs around?
Oh sure, that's how it starts. Nice and innocently. Then you'll see people using these walking robots to redecorate their house. Other uses for them will be found and, before you know it, evil penquins will be using them to steal priceless jewels from museums!
Stop the madness now! We've got to nip this in the bud before it gets out of hand!
All this does is make it harder for an independent artisan to make a living -- I don't want Intel's stamp of approval. The only approval I need is a legion of satisfied customers who tell their friends and colleagues and word spreads and reputation builds -- like in the old days before you could "buy" a certification.
At the risk of being modded a troll or offtopic, I wanted to draw an analogy here. The statement that you don't want a stamp of approval and that your satisfied customers is all the "proof" of your competance bothers me a little. I see it coming dangerously close to the current state of alternative medicine. Like you, those practioners do not particularly care if they are recognized by the medical community as a legitimate treatment -- they proudly point to their satisfied customers as "proof" that their methods work. I'm not going to go into a long diatribe of how people can be mistaken in their belief that alternative medicine has helped them here (check out QuackWatch for a more detailed explanation). People can be easily fooled. In the process of repairing someone's hard drive, you might actually wipe out the data through your own negligence. Then you simply tell the customer that the hard drive and all the data on board could not be salvaged. Hey, it's not your fault, you tell them, it was simply fried that bad when they brought it to you. Because the customer doesn't know any better, they simply take your word for it. If you do a speedy job of replacing their hard drive, they might very well end up being satisfied customers, completely unaware that YOU were the reason the data was lost.
I'd just like to point out that this attitude that I hear in so many fields about "I don't need credentials. My customers will vouche for me." kind of spooks me a little.
Cindy Crawford is a good example but I think Dolph Lundgren is an even better one. He was an undergrad at MIT (he might have even graduated) but decided to give up science/technology to become a B-movie star. And being a B-movie star is no where near as prestigous as being a supermodel like Cindy. Man, if that isn't a slap in the face to science I don't know what is. Well, I guess he figured he wanted people to know who he is. And let's face it: if you're a scientist the public will never know you. Ask someone on the street who their favorite scientist is and they'll probably say (1) Albert Einstein (dead), (2) Carl Sagan (dead), or (3) "that wheelchair guy".
I'm not saying that we should celebrate scientists and engineers as rock stars, but a little more public exposure would probably help the field become a little more attractive and would also help the public understand what the hell scientists do as a bonus.
"In general relativity, one learns that any "information" cannot travel faster than light"
What about quantum pairs? Move them apart, and a change in one is reflected intantly in the other.
That's why I specifically said "In general relativity...". Quantum pairs are from the theory of quantum mechanics, not general relativity. Physicists have been working hard to try to combine relativity and quantum into a single unified theory. However, problems arise when the two theories predict different things -- such as the quantum pairs example you listed. According to relativity, there would be a finite time lag for the change to be reflected in the second entity of the pair whereas quantum would say that the change is instantaneous.
Incidently, I heard that a few years ago an experiment was performed on quantum pairs and, sure enough, the change was indeed instantaneous. Can anyone else corroborate this?
Yeah, that's the real trick. For those who aren't aware, getting gravity to "play nice" with both general relativity and quantum mechanics is pretty tough. Relativity models gravity is a warping of space. But coming up with a quantum theory of gravity is mighty difficult. There are theories that gravity acts through particles (the so-called gravitons you always hear about on ST:TNG) but I don't believe this has been proven yet.
You're confusion arises because you were taught elementary Newtonian physics. In general relativity, one learns that any "information" cannot travel faster than light. Gravity is considered information because if you feel a gravitational force on you, you know that there is a body out there acting on you. That is, you have information about it (you could even estimate its mass by measuring the tug it exerts on you).
In Newtonian physics, lots of things are assumed to happen instantaneously (like gravity) so they don't have a speed per se. But in general relativity, everything has a speed -- and that speed is no greater than the speed of light.
The new planet, OGLE-TR-56b, is 0.9 times the mass of our own Jupiter and 1.3 times Jupiter's radius.
My favorite heavenly body is the girl who lives across the street. I've named her OGLE-T&A-36DD. The best thing is that I don't even need a telescope to see her: binoculars work fine for seeing into her bedroom!
Star Wars nostalgia buffs: X-E just added a fairly long feature detailing some of the many mail-away offers made by the Kenner company to keep kids interested in SW action figures in the 80s.
Thank God! I'm tired of all those disbelieving stares I get from the neighborhood kids when I regail them with tales of my treasured Walrus Man action figure I had as a wee tyke! Kids today have no respect for the classics!
Actually, I'm still kinda spooked visualizing nerds in trenchcoats down in their mother's basement busy hacking their kernel, unaware that their doodle is hanging out...
I'm not sure what frustrates me more: the fact that the media has been hyping the Raelians' claim of a human clone without any evidence whatsoever, or the fact that the media even seems to realize that they're being silly reporting this BUT DO IT ANYHOW! If the media had any self-respect, they would have learned from the previous hoax and not be covering this new Raelian claim so much. However, they seem perfectly content to give this UFO cult a world stage to prance around on. It's almost as though the media is a semi-willing participant in this (what I assume will be a) clone fraud. Oh sure, they claim they're just reporting "important news". But let's face it: it's really just a bunch of UFO nuts who have made an incredible claim without any evidence whatsoever. This is news? I think the media is just happy to cover this because they know they can milk this for awhile regardless of whether the story is true or not. So sad that our media is willing to whore themselves like this just to entertain the masses.
I just pray they'll be able to restart the core spinning. Man, those superstorms really look dangerous!
GMD
You'll be missing face-to-face contact
on
Online Tutoring?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I'm wondering how much thought has been put into this project. All the people who I tutored really appreciated someone sitting down with them and helping them out. A lot of the time, they are actually smart enough to work things out themselves, they just need some moral support and hand-holding to reassure them. I think that kind of personal contact is going to be missing if you do this online.
I'm also wondering what the point of doing this online is? What is the expected benefit? Is a tutor going to be helping multiple student clients at a single session? If so, then you'll probably have the problem that more shy students won't get a chance to ask their questions. Is it to help people who can't -- for whatever reason -- attend regular tutoring hours on campus? Well, these people have to decide how serious they are about getting help. I see drawbacks to online tutoring and don't see any immediate advantages over the normal means.
Another important aspect of offline tutoring is that you will get some idea as to whether any of your help is sinking in. When you explain something, you want to look that person in the eye (or at least look at their face if they are reluctant to make eye contact) and look for clues that they are actually understanding or are just claiming that they understand to avoid looking dumb. I don't see how you are going to get these clues online. If you type "Do you understand?" and they type back "Yeah.", it's not at all clear whether they actually do or are just saying that.
Since the university seems to have dumped this in your lap, it's an opportunity for you to think through some of these issues and report back to them, possibly with suggestions. First you should run some of these concerns by them to see if they have any answers. If not, then you will have pointed out to them some of the difficulties and potential drawbacks of their approach. About now you may be feeling "Hey, I just wanted to tutor. I didn't sign up to develop some new teaching methodology." While that's true, if you can provide some guidance to the tutoring organization to help them improve their methods (and they are suitably impressed with your inputs), you may be able to use them as references for job hunting or grad student applications. Never pass up an opportunity to show someone how smart you can be!
This doesn't help you at all but I've always wished that people would fill out the "description" field of mp3's they trade on p2p services like KaZaA with suggestions of similiar artists. After all, there's not much need for a description field for an mp3 file anyhow -- it's just free space to write something. I'd personally love it if people would take the time to write something along the lines of "Very similiar in style to Band1, Band2 and Band3" or Song1, Song2, etc.
What I've resorted to is using Amazon.com to look at what other bands could be similiar and then search KaZaA and seeing for myself. You know how Amazon lists "people who bought this item also bought albums by Artist1, Artist2, etc.", right? Of course, this method wouldn't work for artists so obscure that amazon doesn't feature them.
I'm interested to see what other suggestions people come up with here. But I think filling out those description fields for mp3s on p2p services would really help a lot.
If you really don't feel like giving advice, shut up. People "ask slashdot" because they may find advice from someone who has found answers to the same question and knows the pitfalls and benefits of individual approaches.
No, people "ask slashdot" because they are too fucking lazy to find the info themselves. The fact that the poster is asking for any information at all (books, URLs, etc) indicates that they haven't even done the most basic step of information gathering. If they were interested in "advice from someone who has found answers to the same question" they would post their question to a bulletin board that specializes in computer graphics. You know, the boards that they would have found in their initial search for information.
When a friend asks you if you know any good pizza places, do you say "Here's the yellow pages."?
No, I'd be more helpful. Because they are my friend. If, on the other hand, an anonymous coward walked up to me on the street and asked me, I might very well blow them off with a snide comment.
I think it was the submitter who made the goof rather than Michael. Monkeys have tails and apes do not. And there are only four ape species in the world: chimps, orangs, gorillas and bonobos.
"Population control is about trying to reduce the number of births."
I find one thing aggravating about this. When people make this statement, they often neglect to mention that this applies only in countries where the birth rate is way out of control (e.g. Kenya which used to have avrg. 8 kids/woman). In other, developed countries (e.g. Europe, N. America) there is no harm in having 2-3 children/couple to maintain a sustainable population.
I'm not sure where you get the idea that population control is only necessary for 3rd world countries. Many environmentalists are very concerned about overpopulation in developed countries. Why? Simply because a single person in a developed country uses way more natural resources than a single person in a 3rd world country. Overpopulation is a problem for EVERYONE, not just those unfortunate enough to live in China or India.
Personally, I agree with you that allowing everyone 2-3 kids/couple to sustain the population is fine. What I'm less pleased about is couples that have more than this, regardless of what country they live in.
All of our medical technology has basically pulled us out of the Darwinian game of life. If it weren't for modern medicine, hemophilia would likely have been (nearly) eradicated by natural selection already.
I realize with a name like "I'm a racist" that you're obviously a troll. But I'm going to reply for the benefit of others who might actually be swayed by your words.
We haven't pulled out of the Darwinian game of life, as you put it. We're simply replacing natural selection with artifical selection. We, as a society, have decided that advancing our species solely on the basis of physical fitness is not in our best interest. So we're tipping the balance so that physical characteristics don't play such a dominant role in who gets to pass their genes on. Intelligent people who may be physically weak will still get a chance to live and pass on their genes. Don't give me this "that's not the way Nature intended" crap, either. It's our species and we certainly deserve the right to modify a system that, while successful in developing robust animals, doesn't really fit the needs of our civilization without a little help from us.
I may sound like a horrible person here, but I really think that as soon as we start screwing around with nature, we throw the balance out the window. The human population is already way too large as it is. Much like developing cures for disease, stopping hurricanes from hitting population centers is just another way to screw over any form of population control. We may save more lives now, but I bet you its going to cost us in the end.
As a big supporter of population control, I feel I must respond to this. Population control is not about finding ways to kill existing people or even turning a blind eye to ways to save existing people from being killed. Population control is about trying to reduce the number of births. Once a person living their life, I don't think anyone in their right mind would say its in the best interest of humanity to let them die (and, please, let's not get into an abortion discussion here). The way to curb the population explosion is through economic, societial and educational reform.
You don't favor weather control? Fine. But please don't wrap yourself in the cloak of population control. You make us look like monsters. Population control is very humane. It has nothing to do with letting people die.
"The system is designed to preserve the status quo as opposed to bringing forward innovations," Temme said. "We're fighting inertia."
Well, the system is designed to maintain the status quo because it works pretty darn well. All the statistics indicate that flying is the safest form of transportation. Perhaps if (a) Temme was able to show that cockpit confusion was a problem serious enough to warrant a solution and (b) they showed with scientific studies that their new-fangled system improved the situation by a significant amount, perhaps people would listen to them. But just to claim that the reason everyone doesn't drop a system that has worked well for decades and adopt a radically new instrumentation panel is due to bureaucracy is pretty presumptuous of them.
Actually, the article suggests that the potential markets for this technology is the Navy or NASA. I doubt that he's even going to try to get this in jetliners so you won't have to worry about it affecting your airline seat price.
However, I agree that this article does fail to make any cost/benefit analysis, which is the point I think you are trying to make.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only participant to this forum who thinks that any admiration on Mitnick is admiration on a crook?
Actually, I haven't really seen too many posts here glorifing Mitnick so I don't know where your incredulous attitude is coming from. I agree that he is not someone to be admired. I'm guessing that a large number of slashdotters do too. However, we are interested in what he has to say, regardless of whether he was a decent person or not. He did manage to pull off quite a few feats. There are a lot of people here saying things like "Oh, that's obvious" and "He has no technical skill." So what? He has shown us that technical skill is really not required. As technical/science/engineering types here, we are interested in discovering the truth -- even if the truth is underwhelming when we finally get to it.
I.e. Mr. Mitnick is a criminal, who may or may not have extraordinary technological savvy; all those years in jail, and post-jail constraints, were surely well-deserved.
True enough. But there is something to be learned from his book (I'm guessing here -- I haven't read it). That's why the review is here on slashdot. That, in an of itself, doesn't imply that we're all Mitnick fanboys around here.
GMD
we're researching motion tracking in 3-D using purely computer vision techniques, and using no sensors worn on the body, like traditional mocap techniques require.
I am curious why you are spending time trying to develop motion tracking without using motion-capture sensors. I would guess that trying to develop a computer vision algorithm that can determine what the hell a fast-moving gamer is doing in real time and then converting that into inputs would be a mighty challenging problem. Is there some drawback to using traditional motion-capture approaches? I would think your research dollars would be more wisely spent by leverging off existing technology. Is the computer vision approach going to get confused if the gamer plays in a "noisy" environment like complex wallpaper and lots of furnature? Would the gamer be allowed to wear all black or would that also confuse the computer vision? I would think that requiring gamers to wear a few sensors wouldn't be that big of a problem. Or are the games going to be frantic that there's a danger of the sensors actually falling (or flying) off the gamer when s/he performs a fast move?
Just curious. Sounds interesting but it also sounds like it might take many years before it comes to market.
GMD
I've always had the fantasy of using robots with set paths as dog walkers. Can you imagine driving through a residential area, with a bunch of robots leading dogs around?
Oh sure, that's how it starts. Nice and innocently. Then you'll see people using these walking robots to redecorate their house. Other uses for them will be found and, before you know it, evil penquins will be using them to steal priceless jewels from museums!
Stop the madness now! We've got to nip this in the bud before it gets out of hand!
GMD
All this does is make it harder for an independent artisan to make a living -- I don't want Intel's stamp of approval. The only approval I need is a legion of satisfied customers who tell their friends and colleagues and word spreads and reputation builds -- like in the old days before you could "buy" a certification.
At the risk of being modded a troll or offtopic, I wanted to draw an analogy here. The statement that you don't want a stamp of approval and that your satisfied customers is all the "proof" of your competance bothers me a little. I see it coming dangerously close to the current state of alternative medicine. Like you, those practioners do not particularly care if they are recognized by the medical community as a legitimate treatment -- they proudly point to their satisfied customers as "proof" that their methods work. I'm not going to go into a long diatribe of how people can be mistaken in their belief that alternative medicine has helped them here (check out QuackWatch for a more detailed explanation). People can be easily fooled. In the process of repairing someone's hard drive, you might actually wipe out the data through your own negligence. Then you simply tell the customer that the hard drive and all the data on board could not be salvaged. Hey, it's not your fault, you tell them, it was simply fried that bad when they brought it to you. Because the customer doesn't know any better, they simply take your word for it. If you do a speedy job of replacing their hard drive, they might very well end up being satisfied customers, completely unaware that YOU were the reason the data was lost.
I'd just like to point out that this attitude that I hear in so many fields about "I don't need credentials. My customers will vouche for me." kind of spooks me a little.
GMD
Cindy Crawford is a good example but I think Dolph Lundgren is an even better one. He was an undergrad at MIT (he might have even graduated) but decided to give up science/technology to become a B-movie star. And being a B-movie star is no where near as prestigous as being a supermodel like Cindy. Man, if that isn't a slap in the face to science I don't know what is. Well, I guess he figured he wanted people to know who he is. And let's face it: if you're a scientist the public will never know you. Ask someone on the street who their favorite scientist is and they'll probably say (1) Albert Einstein (dead), (2) Carl Sagan (dead), or (3) "that wheelchair guy".
I'm not saying that we should celebrate scientists and engineers as rock stars, but a little more public exposure would probably help the field become a little more attractive and would also help the public understand what the hell scientists do as a bonus.
GMD
"In general relativity, one learns that any "information" cannot travel faster than light"
What about quantum pairs? Move them apart, and a change in one is reflected intantly in the other.
That's why I specifically said "In general relativity...". Quantum pairs are from the theory of quantum mechanics, not general relativity. Physicists have been working hard to try to combine relativity and quantum into a single unified theory. However, problems arise when the two theories predict different things -- such as the quantum pairs example you listed. According to relativity, there would be a finite time lag for the change to be reflected in the second entity of the pair whereas quantum would say that the change is instantaneous.
Incidently, I heard that a few years ago an experiment was performed on quantum pairs and, sure enough, the change was indeed instantaneous. Can anyone else corroborate this?
GMD
Yeah, that's the real trick. For those who aren't aware, getting gravity to "play nice" with both general relativity and quantum mechanics is pretty tough. Relativity models gravity is a warping of space. But coming up with a quantum theory of gravity is mighty difficult. There are theories that gravity acts through particles (the so-called gravitons you always hear about on ST:TNG) but I don't believe this has been proven yet.
GMD
You're confusion arises because you were taught elementary Newtonian physics. In general relativity, one learns that any "information" cannot travel faster than light. Gravity is considered information because if you feel a gravitational force on you, you know that there is a body out there acting on you. That is, you have information about it (you could even estimate its mass by measuring the tug it exerts on you).
In Newtonian physics, lots of things are assumed to happen instantaneously (like gravity) so they don't have a speed per se. But in general relativity, everything has a speed -- and that speed is no greater than the speed of light.
GMD
The new planet, OGLE-TR-56b, is 0.9 times the mass of our own Jupiter and 1.3 times Jupiter's radius.
My favorite heavenly body is the girl who lives across the street. I've named her OGLE-T&A-36DD. The best thing is that I don't even need a telescope to see her: binoculars work fine for seeing into her bedroom!
GMD
Star Wars nostalgia buffs: X-E just added a fairly long feature detailing some of the many mail-away offers made by the Kenner company to keep kids interested in SW action figures in the 80s.
Thank God! I'm tired of all those disbelieving stares I get from the neighborhood kids when I regail them with tales of my treasured Walrus Man action figure I had as a wee tyke! Kids today have no respect for the classics!
GMD
Actually, I'm still kinda spooked visualizing nerds in trenchcoats down in their mother's basement busy hacking their kernel, unaware that their doodle is hanging out...
GMD
I'm not sure what frustrates me more: the fact that the media has been hyping the Raelians' claim of a human clone without any evidence whatsoever, or the fact that the media even seems to realize that they're being silly reporting this BUT DO IT ANYHOW! If the media had any self-respect, they would have learned from the previous hoax and not be covering this new Raelian claim so much. However, they seem perfectly content to give this UFO cult a world stage to prance around on. It's almost as though the media is a semi-willing participant in this (what I assume will be a) clone fraud. Oh sure, they claim they're just reporting "important news". But let's face it: it's really just a bunch of UFO nuts who have made an incredible claim without any evidence whatsoever. This is news? I think the media is just happy to cover this because they know they can milk this for awhile regardless of whether the story is true or not. So sad that our media is willing to whore themselves like this just to entertain the masses.
GMD
I just pray they'll be able to restart the core spinning. Man, those superstorms really look dangerous!
GMD
I'm wondering how much thought has been put into this project. All the people who I tutored really appreciated someone sitting down with them and helping them out. A lot of the time, they are actually smart enough to work things out themselves, they just need some moral support and hand-holding to reassure them. I think that kind of personal contact is going to be missing if you do this online.
I'm also wondering what the point of doing this online is? What is the expected benefit? Is a tutor going to be helping multiple student clients at a single session? If so, then you'll probably have the problem that more shy students won't get a chance to ask their questions. Is it to help people who can't -- for whatever reason -- attend regular tutoring hours on campus? Well, these people have to decide how serious they are about getting help. I see drawbacks to online tutoring and don't see any immediate advantages over the normal means.
Another important aspect of offline tutoring is that you will get some idea as to whether any of your help is sinking in. When you explain something, you want to look that person in the eye (or at least look at their face if they are reluctant to make eye contact) and look for clues that they are actually understanding or are just claiming that they understand to avoid looking dumb. I don't see how you are going to get these clues online. If you type "Do you understand?" and they type back "Yeah.", it's not at all clear whether they actually do or are just saying that.
Since the university seems to have dumped this in your lap, it's an opportunity for you to think through some of these issues and report back to them, possibly with suggestions. First you should run some of these concerns by them to see if they have any answers. If not, then you will have pointed out to them some of the difficulties and potential drawbacks of their approach. About now you may be feeling "Hey, I just wanted to tutor. I didn't sign up to develop some new teaching methodology." While that's true, if you can provide some guidance to the tutoring organization to help them improve their methods (and they are suitably impressed with your inputs), you may be able to use them as references for job hunting or grad student applications. Never pass up an opportunity to show someone how smart you can be!
Good luck,
GMD
This doesn't help you at all but I've always wished that people would fill out the "description" field of mp3's they trade on p2p services like KaZaA with suggestions of similiar artists. After all, there's not much need for a description field for an mp3 file anyhow -- it's just free space to write something. I'd personally love it if people would take the time to write something along the lines of "Very similiar in style to Band1, Band2 and Band3" or Song1, Song2, etc.
What I've resorted to is using Amazon.com to look at what other bands could be similiar and then search KaZaA and seeing for myself. You know how Amazon lists "people who bought this item also bought albums by Artist1, Artist2, etc.", right? Of course, this method wouldn't work for artists so obscure that amazon doesn't feature them.
I'm interested to see what other suggestions people come up with here. But I think filling out those description fields for mp3s on p2p services would really help a lot.
GMD
If you really don't feel like giving advice, shut up. People "ask slashdot" because they may find advice from someone who has found answers to the same question and knows the pitfalls and benefits of individual approaches.
No, people "ask slashdot" because they are too fucking lazy to find the info themselves. The fact that the poster is asking for any information at all (books, URLs, etc) indicates that they haven't even done the most basic step of information gathering. If they were interested in "advice from someone who has found answers to the same question" they would post their question to a bulletin board that specializes in computer graphics. You know, the boards that they would have found in their initial search for information.
When a friend asks you if you know any good pizza places, do you say "Here's the yellow pages."?
No, I'd be more helpful. Because they are my friend. If, on the other hand, an anonymous coward walked up to me on the street and asked me, I might very well blow them off with a snide comment.
GMD
I'd like some recommendations on how to get her started: Books, URLs, software packages.
Here's a recommended URL that may prove useful: www.google.com
Always happy to help you Ask Slashdot people,
GMD
There are also two other "lesser apes", the gibbon and the siamang, I believe.
Interesting. I guess it's my turn to be corrected. I guess I was confused between "apes" and "great apes".
GMD
I think it was the submitter who made the goof rather than Michael. Monkeys have tails and apes do not. And there are only four ape species in the world: chimps, orangs, gorillas and bonobos.
GMD
The experts shared observations and spent hours reviewing videotape of orang behavior.
Man, and I thought my job sucked the big one...
GMD
"Population control is about trying to reduce the number of births."
I find one thing aggravating about this. When people make this statement, they often neglect to mention that this applies only in countries where the birth rate is way out of control (e.g. Kenya which used to have avrg. 8 kids/woman). In other, developed countries (e.g. Europe, N. America) there is no harm in having 2-3 children/couple to maintain a sustainable population.
I'm not sure where you get the idea that population control is only necessary for 3rd world countries. Many environmentalists are very concerned about overpopulation in developed countries. Why? Simply because a single person in a developed country uses way more natural resources than a single person in a 3rd world country. Overpopulation is a problem for EVERYONE, not just those unfortunate enough to live in China or India.
Personally, I agree with you that allowing everyone 2-3 kids/couple to sustain the population is fine. What I'm less pleased about is couples that have more than this, regardless of what country they live in.
GMD
All of our medical technology has basically pulled us out of the Darwinian game of life. If it weren't for modern medicine, hemophilia would likely have been (nearly) eradicated by natural selection already.
I realize with a name like "I'm a racist" that you're obviously a troll. But I'm going to reply for the benefit of others who might actually be swayed by your words.
We haven't pulled out of the Darwinian game of life, as you put it. We're simply replacing natural selection with artifical selection. We, as a society, have decided that advancing our species solely on the basis of physical fitness is not in our best interest. So we're tipping the balance so that physical characteristics don't play such a dominant role in who gets to pass their genes on. Intelligent people who may be physically weak will still get a chance to live and pass on their genes. Don't give me this "that's not the way Nature intended" crap, either. It's our species and we certainly deserve the right to modify a system that, while successful in developing robust animals, doesn't really fit the needs of our civilization without a little help from us.
GMD
I may sound like a horrible person here, but I really think that as soon as we start screwing around with nature, we throw the balance out the window. The human population is already way too large as it is. Much like developing cures for disease, stopping hurricanes from hitting population centers is just another way to screw over any form of population control. We may save more lives now, but I bet you its going to cost us in the end.
As a big supporter of population control, I feel I must respond to this. Population control is not about finding ways to kill existing people or even turning a blind eye to ways to save existing people from being killed. Population control is about trying to reduce the number of births. Once a person living their life, I don't think anyone in their right mind would say its in the best interest of humanity to let them die (and, please, let's not get into an abortion discussion here). The way to curb the population explosion is through economic, societial and educational reform.
You don't favor weather control? Fine. But please don't wrap yourself in the cloak of population control. You make us look like monsters. Population control is very humane. It has nothing to do with letting people die.
GMD
"The system is designed to preserve the status quo as opposed to bringing forward innovations," Temme said. "We're fighting inertia."
Well, the system is designed to maintain the status quo because it works pretty darn well. All the statistics indicate that flying is the safest form of transportation. Perhaps if (a) Temme was able to show that cockpit confusion was a problem serious enough to warrant a solution and (b) they showed with scientific studies that their new-fangled system improved the situation by a significant amount, perhaps people would listen to them. But just to claim that the reason everyone doesn't drop a system that has worked well for decades and adopt a radically new instrumentation panel is due to bureaucracy is pretty presumptuous of them.
GMD
Actually, the article suggests that the potential markets for this technology is the Navy or NASA. I doubt that he's even going to try to get this in jetliners so you won't have to worry about it affecting your airline seat price.
However, I agree that this article does fail to make any cost/benefit analysis, which is the point I think you are trying to make.
GMD