I downloaded the Dixie Chicks off Kazaa. Never heard them before but decided to give them a try after hearing about the absurd US boycott of their music.
Loved it so much I bought all their CDs and went to see them live on their Top of The World Tour.
Without MP3 sharing they wouldn't have got a penny of my money and I'd have missed out on a great band. (I dislike country as a rule so wouldn't have bought a country cd on the off-chance I might like it).
Working on my Master's coursework I wrote some documents using Apple Works. Saved them in MSWord format (only format the Univeristy officially accepts - although I later discovered my tutor is also a Mac-head and would accept PDF), anyway, saved it in MSWord format. Came back to edit it later. All the formatting has been lost !!! OK so put it all back, cross fingers, save in Word format again. Come back later to edit, this time AppleWorks crashes each and every time I try to load a file IT HAD WRITTEN! That was the last straw so I went and bought MSOffice- and discovered the Entourage is actually quite a good email client (although now Mail has folders I've switched back to that).
*cough*Until about 100 years ago the US was way behind Europe in general and the UK in particular.
Countries catching up is perfectly normal. In any case - what makes you so special ? Is there something you did that makes you deserve to be "ahead' of Indians, Chinese, whatever ? Or was that just an accident of birth ?
Personally I look forward to the day the whole world is without poverty and want. And there isn't one dominating military super-power.
Zero sum gain (to win someone else has to lose) as an economic theory was discredited a long, long time ago.
I agree that there is a fair comparison between the USA and India. Both are war-mongering Democracies.
Europe is somewhat different. Western Europe is very much a post-modern society, whose power is economic and diplomatic (and in those areas FAR exceeds the US's power). And has little interest in Imperialism of any kind.
Which is strange as the US just over a 100 years ago also lacked imperial ambition - but then post WW2 took
serveral major steps backwards (imo): Vietnam, Panama, Iraq 2003.
So personally I'm relaxed about West European countries (and I include Canada, Australia and New Zealand in that group as culturally they are) having nukes. The US, India and Pakistan owning nukes however scares the crap out of me.
I regularly donate cash to charities to drill wells in India and other such poverty relief measures - and yet their government spends a ton of cash on nuclear weapons and prestige projects.
Zero sum gain was an economic theory followed by the Spanish hundreds of years ago. It's what drove their acquisition of Inca gold and silver (and led to rampant inflation). The Spanish thought there was only so much "value" in the world and if they got some others must lose a corresponding amount.
In contrast the English didn't subscribe to this view at all. They realised you can create value and that both sides in a trade can win.
Wonder how much else of the parent post is just plain wrong?
Well as a good geek I got a Hornby Live Steam trainset - the loco' is a Mallard and it's powered by steam. Digitally controlled. http://www.hornbyrailways.com/pages/livestm_live.a spx The nephews who came around after Mass were suitably impressed.
The world is not the US. Where I work if you've worked somewhere for 2 years or more then they can't just sack you. In mainland Europe they have evn stronger worker's rights.
So please, before submitting, remember that/. has an international audience and the US != The World.
Ok let's answer this from two possible starting points:
IVF and producing more embryos than are needed, "discadring" the excess is OK, but "harvesting" (nice euphemism to hide what's really done), anyway harvesting stem cells from embryos just isn't. Why should the "spare" embryos go to waste ? What's the betting if it was allowed you'd see a big increase in the number of these "spare" embryos ?
Alternatively, that discarding these "spare" human beings is as morally repugnant as abortion, in which case it should be banned and the whole debate about using "spare" humans for experiments goes away. And no this wouldn't prevent IVF. It would simply mean that rather than producing a large excess of embryos and throwing some away, you only fertlilise as many as are planned to be taken to term. Worked for my sister-in-law who had twin girls via IVF, without the morally repugnant process of producing extra babies and discarding the excess
I have to confess I am rather saddened by many of the responses/arguments made by many slashdotters.
They seem to boil down to either a) people are going to do it anyway so it's pointless outlawing it or b) it will inevitably provide a cure for (insert some unpleasant disease here).
The first argument is trivially despatched. Murder is against the law. People still committ murder ergo by the logic presented here, we should make murder legal.
To deal with the second point. Firstly I think I can make the assumption that everyone agrees with the general principle that the ends don't justify the means? Ie it is possible for the price for some benefit to be too high. Where that balance lies certainly can be and is debated.
Now I could make the theist point of view about life being sacred, procreation being a sacred act etc etc, and whilst I'm largely sympathetic to that view point, I'm not a theist and I realise it's too open to bigoted attacks. So I'll restrict my arguments to a more limited, humanist line.
I think I can safely say that if these much-touted claims for the benefits of experimenting on foetuses/clones (and there is no concrete evidence to support the claim that such experiements will result in these cures, but leaving that aside). If these cures instead required experimenting on hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands Mexicans/Jews/Muslims/Poor people then there we wouldn't even be having this debate. The people arguing for it would be ejected from their cosy academic posts and justly reviled.
So what's different about embryos/clones? In my opinion there is no difference - they're simply another group of powerless humans that can be exploited. The difference is that some people have convinced themselves that embryos are not humans. OK so, for the purposes of this argument let's assume that's the case.
However at some point the embryo becomes a human. No argument there I assume. But when is that ? Is it after the baby is born ? (As the the Chinese might argue - as they perform abortions on the baby as it is born by injecting the formaldehyde into the child's brain). Is it at 20 weeks ? (Despite late term abortions, where the doctor crushes the baby's skull with his hand and the baby is then delivered normally, but dead) ? Or is it sometime earlier? When does that vital spark appear ?
The bottom line is, no-one knows. And in any case, as everyone develops at different speeds, its likely that if it's not at the moment of conception (my own personal belief) then it's at some variable time over the next 9months (or so). Given all that uncertainty - when is the embryo not a human? The answer is nobody knows. Therefore the only safe assumption is to assume that it's from the moment of conception.
The ONLY reason that we're even considering the option of experimenting on powerless human beings (who differ from poor-people/Mexicans/Jews/Muslims etc only in the depth of their lack of power) is because it's easy to ignore the simple fact that either an embryo is a human being right from conception, or becomes a human being at some unknown (and in my opinion unknowable, see Prof Penrose's book 'The Emperors New Mind' for the arguments) moment in time.
Abortion at any time is wrong. Experimenting on humans without their informed and explicit consent - whether Jews in a concentration camp or babys in a lab - is wrong. In fact I would go further than that and state that they are both evil acts.
Insightful ? Rubbish! The poster's just another keyboard monkey diving in with an irrelevant and meaningless point of view.
Yeah go ahead, mod this as a troll, I have spare Karma gushing out of my arse.
I was astonished to be a victim of precisely "cop didn't like my looks". I was driving my big, expensive BMW wearing jeans and a geek T-shirt. Pulled onto the Motorway (Highway) behind a police car and over take him. Next thing I know, I'm being pulled over. The reason I was pulled over ? Because, and this is what the cop said, if the police car hadn't been there I would have been speeding !!! Not that I had been speeding (I didn't) but because if he hadn't been there I would have been.
I regret to this day not taking his number and complaining to the Chief Constable and the Police Authority.
One of my colleagues at work reported he had set up his wlan at home and accidentally stumbled across a neighbours wlan.
This made me turn on WEP for the first time as soon as I got home (sure it isn't perfect, but neither is the lock on your front door).
Both my Macs noticed my wlan was now WEP protected and prompted for the key/passphrase and were immediately up and running.
After some digging, research on the 'net and much frustration I've managed to manually tell my two PCs that the network is now encrypted - but I'll be damned if I can find anywhere to tell it what the key is!
Yet another reason I am so glad to be moving to Macs (although I have a number of legacy games to finish before the move is complete;-)
Copyright is subject to international treaties. Unlike the US, the EU has shown itself willing to participate and maintain such multilateral agreemets.
1. Apple is a *hardware* company. OSX helps sell their hardware.
2. A big factor in the superior stability of Mac OSX over Windows PC is that Apple have a known hardware target to develop OSX for. Microsoft have to develop an OS to cover all kinds of crap. From home built machines that their owners evolve (like every PC I've ever owned) to cheap as chips Dells through to the top of the range Alienware boxes.
Slashdot Mirror
I downloaded the Dixie Chicks off Kazaa. Never heard them before but decided to give them a try after hearing about the absurd US boycott of their music.
Loved it so much I bought all their CDs and went to see them live on their Top of The World Tour.
Without MP3 sharing they wouldn't have got a penny of my money and I'd have missed out on a great band. (I dislike country as a rule so wouldn't have bought a country cd on the off-chance I might like it).
I tried and it is AWFUL!
Working on my Master's coursework I wrote some documents using Apple Works. Saved them in MSWord format (only format the Univeristy officially accepts - although I later discovered my tutor is also a Mac-head and would accept PDF), anyway, saved it in MSWord format. Came back to edit it later. All the formatting has been lost !!! OK so put it all back, cross fingers, save in Word format again. Come back later to edit, this time AppleWorks crashes each and every time I try to load a file IT HAD WRITTEN! That was the last straw so I went and bought MSOffice- and discovered the Entourage is actually quite a good email client (although now Mail has folders I've switched back to that).
Edward
One word: PayPal.
*cough*Until about 100 years ago the US was way behind Europe in general and the UK in particular.
Countries catching up is perfectly normal. In any case - what makes you so special ? Is there something you did that makes you deserve to be "ahead' of Indians, Chinese, whatever ? Or was that just an accident of birth ?
Personally I look forward to the day the whole world is without poverty and want. And there isn't one dominating military super-power.
Zero sum gain (to win someone else has to lose) as an economic theory was discredited a long, long time ago.
I agree that there is a fair comparison between the USA and India. Both are war-mongering Democracies.
Europe is somewhat different. Western Europe is very much a post-modern society, whose power is economic and diplomatic (and in those areas FAR exceeds the US's power). And has little interest in Imperialism of any kind.
Which is strange as the US just over a 100 years ago also lacked imperial ambition - but then post WW2 took serveral major steps backwards (imo): Vietnam, Panama, Iraq 2003.
So personally I'm relaxed about West European countries (and I include Canada, Australia and New Zealand in that group as culturally they are) having nukes. The US, India and Pakistan owning nukes however scares the crap out of me.
Why ?
I regularly donate cash to charities to drill wells in India and other such poverty relief measures - and yet their government spends a ton of cash on nuclear weapons and prestige projects.
Time to redirect my charity I think.
So it's your birthday today. So what. On average 1/365.25 slashdot readers will have their birthday today.
Please don't bore us with your pathetic "it's my birthday too" posts. NOBODY CARES!
I've got a pair of his shoes!
He never owned or wore them - and I bought them in Marks & Spencer last week - but wow!
Crypto-hawk? Is that a bird-of-prey that catches it's pigeons by deciphering their coo-ing?
What utter rubbish.
Zero sum gain was an economic theory followed by the Spanish hundreds of years ago. It's what drove their acquisition of Inca gold and silver (and led to rampant inflation). The Spanish thought there was only so much "value" in the world and if they got some others must lose a corresponding amount.
In contrast the English didn't subscribe to this view at all. They realised you can create value and that both sides in a trade can win.
Wonder how much else of the parent post is just plain wrong?
Edward
Been done: Peter Molyneux's crap throwing sim Black and White.
Well as a good geek I got a Hornby Live Steam trainset - the loco' is a Mallard and it's powered by steam. Digitally controlled. http://www.hornbyrailways.com/pages/livestm_live.a spx The nephews who came around after Mass were suitably impressed.
Uhm excuse me but that's not true.
The world is not the US. Where I work if you've worked somewhere for 2 years or more then they can't just sack you. In mainland Europe they have evn stronger worker's rights.
So please, before submitting, remember that /. has an international audience and the US != The World.
Yes. Go become an accountant and leave programming to those of us who do it for the love of it rather than the cash.
Rather like your post then. I guess you must think spelling is some fictional invention of JK Rowling's?
Ok let's answer this from two possible starting points:
IVF and producing more embryos than are needed, "discadring" the excess is OK, but "harvesting" (nice euphemism to hide what's really done), anyway harvesting stem cells from embryos just isn't. Why should the "spare" embryos go to waste ? What's the betting if it was allowed you'd see a big increase in the number of these "spare" embryos ?
Alternatively, that discarding these "spare" human beings is as morally repugnant as abortion, in which case it should be banned and the whole debate about using "spare" humans for experiments goes away. And no this wouldn't prevent IVF. It would simply mean that rather than producing a large excess of embryos and throwing some away, you only fertlilise as many as are planned to be taken to term. Worked for my sister-in-law who had twin girls via IVF, without the morally repugnant process of producing extra babies and discarding the excess
Edward
I have to confess I am rather saddened by many of the responses/arguments made by many slashdotters.
They seem to boil down to either a) people are going to do it anyway so it's pointless outlawing it or b) it will inevitably provide a cure for (insert some unpleasant disease here).
The first argument is trivially despatched. Murder is against the law. People still committ murder ergo by the logic presented here, we should make murder legal.
To deal with the second point. Firstly I think I can make the assumption that everyone agrees with the general principle that the ends don't justify the means? Ie it is possible for the price for some benefit to be too high. Where that balance lies certainly can be and is debated.
Now I could make the theist point of view about life being sacred, procreation being a sacred act etc etc, and whilst I'm largely sympathetic to that view point, I'm not a theist and I realise it's too open to bigoted attacks. So I'll restrict my arguments to a more limited, humanist line.
I think I can safely say that if these much-touted claims for the benefits of experimenting on foetuses/clones (and there is no concrete evidence to support the claim that such experiements will result in these cures, but leaving that aside). If these cures instead required experimenting on hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands Mexicans/Jews/Muslims/Poor people then there we wouldn't even be having this debate. The people arguing for it would be ejected from their cosy academic posts and justly reviled.
So what's different about embryos/clones? In my opinion there is no difference - they're simply another group of powerless humans that can be exploited. The difference is that some people have convinced themselves that embryos are not humans. OK so, for the purposes of this argument let's assume that's the case.
However at some point the embryo becomes a human. No argument there I assume. But when is that ? Is it after the baby is born ? (As the the Chinese might argue - as they perform abortions on the baby as it is born by injecting the formaldehyde into the child's brain). Is it at 20 weeks ? (Despite late term abortions, where the doctor crushes the baby's skull with his hand and the baby is then delivered normally, but dead) ? Or is it sometime earlier? When does that vital spark appear ?
The bottom line is, no-one knows. And in any case, as everyone develops at different speeds, its likely that if it's not at the moment of conception (my own personal belief) then it's at some variable time over the next 9months (or so). Given all that uncertainty - when is the embryo not a human? The answer is nobody knows. Therefore the only safe assumption is to assume that it's from the moment of conception.
The ONLY reason that we're even considering the option of experimenting on powerless human beings (who differ from poor-people/Mexicans/Jews/Muslims etc only in the depth of their lack of power) is because it's easy to ignore the simple fact that either an embryo is a human being right from conception, or becomes a human being at some unknown (and in my opinion unknowable, see Prof Penrose's book 'The Emperors New Mind' for the arguments) moment in time.
Abortion at any time is wrong. Experimenting on humans without their informed and explicit consent - whether Jews in a concentration camp or babys in a lab - is wrong. In fact I would go further than that and state that they are both evil acts.
Edward
Insightful ? Rubbish! The poster's just another keyboard monkey diving in with an irrelevant and meaningless point of view. Yeah go ahead, mod this as a troll, I have spare Karma gushing out of my arse.
I was astonished to be a victim of precisely "cop didn't like my looks". I was driving my big, expensive BMW wearing jeans and a geek T-shirt. Pulled onto the Motorway (Highway) behind a police car and over take him. Next thing I know, I'm being pulled over. The reason I was pulled over ? Because, and this is what the cop said, if the police car hadn't been there I would have been speeding !!! Not that I had been speeding (I didn't) but because if he hadn't been there I would have been.
I regret to this day not taking his number and complaining to the Chief Constable and the Police Authority.
"from some sig, can't remember who's" Made me laugh out loud, so I'm stealing it ;-)
One of my colleagues at work reported he had set up his wlan at home and accidentally stumbled across a neighbours wlan.
This made me turn on WEP for the first time as soon as I got home (sure it isn't perfect, but neither is the lock on your front door).
Both my Macs noticed my wlan was now WEP protected and prompted for the key/passphrase and were immediately up and running.
After some digging, research on the 'net and much frustration I've managed to manually tell my two PCs that the network is now encrypted - but I'll be damned if I can find anywhere to tell it what the key is!
Yet another reason I am so glad to be moving to Macs (although I have a number of legacy games to finish before the move is complete ;-)
Edward
Bollocks.
Copyright is subject to international treaties. Unlike the US, the EU has shown itself willing to participate and maintain such multilateral agreemets.
No way should the parent have been modded 5 insightful.
More like -1 Flamebait or -1 Doesn't-understand-what-Sony-are-actually-doing.
Oh dear, the obligatory 'port it to x86' post.
1. Apple is a *hardware* company. OSX helps sell their hardware.
2. A big factor in the superior stability of Mac OSX over Windows PC is that Apple have a known hardware target to develop OSX for. Microsoft have to develop an OS to cover all kinds of crap. From home built machines that their owners evolve (like every PC I've ever owned) to cheap as chips Dells through to the top of the range Alienware boxes.
Apple would be insane to port OSX to PCs.
The difference is that Apple's point releases actually *improve* the OS and make it *faster*.