can you guarantee they won't ever be used in a crime?
The arguement that you can't legalize therapeutic cloniing or that the use of emrbyonic stems cells needs to be made illegal because you can't guarantee that someone will disobey reasonable restrictions (such as using stem cells only from unused IVF embryos--which are discarded anyway, or using therapeutic cloning techniques only for therapy, not for reproduction) is just as specious.
Many useful, legal things can be misused and if we made them all illegal folks wouldn't be able to get out of bed without breaking some law.
It would be more reasonable to treat ESCR and therapeutic cloning the same way: make restrictions that make abuse illegal while allowing the research to go forward.
And recognize that the folks who oppose this research on any terms are doing so because they believe a soul is formed at fertilization & this is an unfalsifiable religious belief, and so should not form the basis of US law.
run amuck, namely that of the East India Corporation.
In fact, after the revolution, American corporations were severely limited in how big they could get and how long they could last by them ol'time laws. For instance:
Corporate charters (licenses to exist) were granted for a limited time and could be revoked promptly for violating laws.
* Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
* Corporations could not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that was not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.
* Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their authority or caused public harm.
* Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.
* Corporations could not make any political or charitable contributions nor spend money to influence law-making.
It wasn't until a SCOTUS clerk (right, not even one judge) declared corporations were people too, in 1886, that the socialist anti-corporate tendancies of our founding fathers were finally over turned, and corporations could once again regain their rightful place as our supreme rulers.
So now you still have your little freedom of speech, but you just don't dare use it, or you'll end up poor, homeless, and alone.
I'm with you, bro!
Any American taxpayer who wants to dress up in a flight suit and land on a Carrier should be able to do so!
It's high time those suits stopped acting like they own the fruits of our labors!
hydrogen fuel takes energy to make, so we'll still buy plenty of oil to make the hydrogen.
Getting the US nuclear power industry going again in a big way is the only (short term, eg decades rather than centuries) way to dramatically reduce our dependency on oil.
PS for those who modded parent troll, where do YOU think most of Al Qaeda's funding for 911 came from?
Hint, it was neither Iraq nor Afghanistan...
if one could examine a black hole close-up, one would before making scientific conclusions & all things being equal, the conclusions of the scientist who had studied a black hole close up would most likely be more valid than observations taken from 100s of light years away.
I think it is likewise valid to say that conclusions drawn from studying the actual source of one OS are not directly comparable to conclusions drawn merely by observing the apparent effects of the other and speculating about the contents of the actual source.
It is somewhat similar to attempting to determine the members of Falconiformes without looking at the DNA
We have been wasting millions trying to get it to work, what fun!
All the restrictiveness of COTS with all the quality and support problems of custom software, it just doesn't get any worse than this.
Rememeber, you don't really need ad hoc searching, and having a shadow system (that actually returns the data you need) running alongside your PoS "database" is good for you.
On the bright side, we now know for sure where Dilbert works!
Ellison would be doing a FAVOR to PS's poor clients if he chucked the whole thing tomorrow!
Is what we've found the best for many purposes.
The problem with custom software is that the users often don't really know what they want before they try it out, meaning many of the hours of development time working from a project description/requirements document are lost as the users realize that what looked right 'on paper' doesn't really meet their needs.
The problem with off the shelf closed source software is that the users spend many hours reforming their needs to meet the limits of the software, and often have little influence on the company to get changes made.
OSS off the shelf offers the benefits of being able to try a working product out before you 'buy' it to find the one that most closely meets your needs and then the ability to modify it so it really does meet your needs (and you can always do a cost v benefit to determine what areas changing practice would be more efficient than changing the software.
The best OSS for this are ones with a solid modular api that allows new features to be added as modules without changing the core.
So obviously the view is doing fine in our schools and society.
However, if society was based on reason, such a view would only be allowed to exist if it could be backed up with fact.
But note that the view was presented by an economist far from his area of knowledge, not by a biologist, which immediatly should cause your inner skeptic to wake up.
As someone who has to contend regularly with it, Peoplesoft is a horrible product. It makes all the worst mistakes of a freshman database project. No Ad hoc queries, data and design joined in horrible union, and perpetually behind delivery of working interfaces so that trainings are months removed from practice.
The best thing Oracle could do is scrap the entire workforce and recode the monster from scratch (based on one of them newfangled relational databases) to meet the requirements of the various contracts this P(o)S is failing miserably to meet every day.
It appears that a staff member posted some interesting info in the comments section of the article, so heck I try to register.
But their reg form says this when I try their suggested reg name (michaelp11):
"Please choose another username which does not contain the word ae"
Is 'ae' some sort of horrible slur in the UK?????
I tried to use their "contact us" link and it sends me to the same broken registration form, nice you need to register to tell them their registration form is broken, way to reduce support cost (and readership, but who cares about readership?)
They may be "PCPros" but their site was clearly designed by a "WebAmateur".
the next century.
If that isn't an impending tradgedy to you, than you are a pretty major misanthropist.
This is much more likely than getting cancer from smoking or dying in a car wreck, and of course the sea level will rise a good deal, the % is over how much (1m,.5m, 2m, etc.).
If you can't explain it in layman's terms, then you don't understand it. It's just that simple.
The reason scientists use all them big words is because we are talking about concepts that can't be described in ordinary english. Once you actually try reading some real science (as in Nature, not Popular Mechanics) maybe you'll get it.
If the general public doesn't get global warming, and won't trust the scientists, and won't learn enough of the science to figure it out for themselves, then it will take a major disaster to convince them that something is going on and them climatological eggheads have something to say.
most folks have an attitude like yours "prove it to me, but don't ask me to learn anything new".
Can't be done, if you won't learn the science, you won't, and it's pointless to argue with you. Oil addiction is like drug addiction, you have to want to change, and you have to work at it and you'd deny and defend and hide from what's happening, until something happens that really knocks you in the head.
We'll start making real steps to reduce carbon emmisions when major cities start being flooded.
Of course it will be too late by then to save much of the coastal communities, but that's the way people generally operate.
See you on the dark side of the moon...
but that it had aready happened wasn't being claimed here:
the sea level rise and more violent storms are being caused by God to punish us and the solutions are religious ones, not ones based on reason.
Please pay more when you are reading, often one sentence builds on an idea initiated in the previous one. The science predicts the sea levels will rise and storms will get more violent, and the statement was discussing what people will blame it on if they reject the science.
Sea level rise Beware, there are some scientifical terminalogies here.
If you can't do that, then you're just fucked, eh?
What an odd statement.
Scientists are urging people to get ready for the effects of and perhaps try to reduce the pace of global warming because we're all "fucked" if we don't.
The public should care because a 3 foot sea level rise and increasingly powerful and damaging storms will cost alot more than building a nationwide network of pebble bed reactors and hydrogen power stations.
But you can't make that argument if you "don't CARE about the science" because then the sea level rise and more violent storms are being caused by God to punish us and the solutions are religious ones, not ones based on reason.
If you leave the science out, then there is no argument, we should just keep playing until God comes back and cleans up our mess.
That meathod relies on experimentation and observation. Both show us that more CO2 and hydrocarbons in the atmosphere of a planet lead to a rise in temperatures.
If you applied the same criteria for "proof" to other areas of science, you wouldn't have ok'd the money spent on the Manhatten project, either.
Regarding the "spending billions" red herring, we are already spending billions dealing with the predictable effects of a rise in global temperatures and sea levels, and we will be spending trillions more.
>> you need to prove it TO THEM
Otto, you and others like you can;t be convinced by science on this issue, as you reject the scientific method. Historical observation can't convince you, laboratory experiments can't convince you, and observation of other systems can't convince you.
I have no doubt that as sea levels rise and we need to build dikes or abandon them, you will be claiming its being caused by sunspots or goddidit, not SUVs, not even when a billion chinese are driving them.
I was just pointing out that the science for human effects on global warming (really the effects of rising atmospheric carbon levels) is as solid as the science for relativity, as the grandparent raised that as some sort of standard, I'm not trying to convince you to spend billions on prevention rather than spending trillions on clean-up.
I have little doubt that given the current anti-science human climate, you folks in the political majority won't start listening to them snooty egg-heads on this issue until the seas have risen at least 1m.
they seem convincing, that is the point.
Of course no one's stock values depends on relativity being right or wrong.
People who clamor for "proof" of a "theory" before "believing" in the theory don't understand the scientific method (or are oversimplifying it to the point of non-sense for political or religious reasons).
Controlled experiments are always subject to the criticism that natural systems are uncontrolled. However, the principle that adding CO2 and hydrocarbons to a system that is warmed by radiant heat source will result in an increase in the overall temperature of that system is a "fact", it is "proven", it is "true".
Increasing the carbon load in the earth's system will increase global temperatures so long as the energy from the sun remains the same or increases, that is "proven" by controlled experiments as well as historical observation. Just how that will effect day to day life (whether it will in the long run be "good" or "bad" for human population), of course is a much complex question.
Yeah, that was my point, the "can't be proved in a controlled experiment" argument against human affects on climate change sounds alot more scientifical than it is:-).
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe they'll be like the US Air Force (B-60 to B-1) and restart after Lion with OS X--Puddy Tat!
hitting the center of the screen is easy. Hitting any pixel on the screen is easy.
I hate using a mouse now (even an optical with 5 buttons and a scroll wheel:-(), it feels so 90s.
I wish Apple would get with the tablet program already (or once again:-().
Their version of theocracy. But when the terrans finally get to vote, they vote for a secular democracy...
can you guarantee they won't ever be used in a crime?
The arguement that you can't legalize therapeutic cloniing or that the use of emrbyonic stems cells needs to be made illegal because you can't guarantee that someone will disobey reasonable restrictions (such as using stem cells only from unused IVF embryos--which are discarded anyway, or using therapeutic cloning techniques only for therapy, not for reproduction) is just as specious.
Many useful, legal things can be misused and if we made them all illegal folks wouldn't be able to get out of bed without breaking some law.
It would be more reasonable to treat ESCR and therapeutic cloning the same way: make restrictions that make abuse illegal while allowing the research to go forward.
And recognize that the folks who oppose this research on any terms are doing so because they believe a soul is formed at fertilization & this is an unfalsifiable religious belief, and so should not form the basis of US law.
run amuck, namely that of the East India Corporation.
In fact, after the revolution, American corporations were severely limited in how big they could get and how long they could last by them ol'time laws. For instance:
Corporate charters (licenses to exist) were granted for a limited time and could be revoked promptly for violating laws.
* Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
* Corporations could not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that was not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.
* Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their authority or caused public harm.
* Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.
* Corporations could not make any political or charitable contributions nor spend money to influence law-making.
It wasn't until a SCOTUS clerk (right, not even one judge) declared corporations were people too, in 1886, that the socialist anti-corporate tendancies of our founding fathers were finally over turned, and corporations could once again regain their rightful place as our supreme rulers.
So now you still have your little freedom of speech, but you just don't dare use it, or you'll end up poor, homeless, and alone.
How about them Mets?
(see the below post about what would happen to a person falling into this system...)
With one child yelling "Is so!", and the other child, left with open mouth, tragically silenced by this patent...
Yet another core component of American culture lies destroyed by one company's greed...
I'm with you, bro! Any American taxpayer who wants to dress up in a flight suit and land on a Carrier should be able to do so! It's high time those suits stopped acting like they own the fruits of our labors!
hydrogen fuel takes energy to make, so we'll still buy plenty of oil to make the hydrogen. Getting the US nuclear power industry going again in a big way is the only (short term, eg decades rather than centuries) way to dramatically reduce our dependency on oil. PS for those who modded parent troll, where do YOU think most of Al Qaeda's funding for 911 came from? Hint, it was neither Iraq nor Afghanistan...
I think it is likewise valid to say that conclusions drawn from studying the actual source of one OS are not directly comparable to conclusions drawn merely by observing the apparent effects of the other and speculating about the contents of the actual source.
It is somewhat similar to attempting to determine the members of Falconiformes without looking at the DNA
you don't teach someone something just by telling them about it, you have to give them a chance to practice it, or they won't really learn it.
We have been wasting millions trying to get it to work, what fun!
All the restrictiveness of COTS with all the quality and support problems of custom software, it just doesn't get any worse than this.
Rememeber, you don't really need ad hoc searching, and having a shadow system (that actually returns the data you need) running alongside your PoS "database" is good for you.
On the bright side, we now know for sure where Dilbert works!
Ellison would be doing a FAVOR to PS's poor clients if he chucked the whole thing tomorrow!
Try a simple search at http://sourceforge.net/search/ for Oracle, for instance (try LDAP, AD, 'web service' J2EE, and so on.
Is what we've found the best for many purposes. The problem with custom software is that the users often don't really know what they want before they try it out, meaning many of the hours of development time working from a project description/requirements document are lost as the users realize that what looked right 'on paper' doesn't really meet their needs. The problem with off the shelf closed source software is that the users spend many hours reforming their needs to meet the limits of the software, and often have little influence on the company to get changes made. OSS off the shelf offers the benefits of being able to try a working product out before you 'buy' it to find the one that most closely meets your needs and then the ability to modify it so it really does meet your needs (and you can always do a cost v benefit to determine what areas changing practice would be more efficient than changing the software. The best OSS for this are ones with a solid modular api that allows new features to be added as modules without changing the core.
So obviously the view is doing fine in our schools and society.
However, if society was based on reason, such a view would only be allowed to exist if it could be backed up with fact.
But note that the view was presented by an economist far from his area of knowledge, not by a biologist, which immediatly should cause your inner skeptic to wake up.
As someone who has to contend regularly with it, Peoplesoft is a horrible product. It makes all the worst mistakes of a freshman database project. No Ad hoc queries, data and design joined in horrible union, and perpetually behind delivery of working interfaces so that trainings are months removed from practice. The best thing Oracle could do is scrap the entire workforce and recode the monster from scratch (based on one of them newfangled relational databases) to meet the requirements of the various contracts this P(o)S is failing miserably to meet every day.
beware don't open it, that could lead to a whole world of ptavvs!
It appears that a staff member posted some interesting info in the comments section of the article, so heck I try to register.
But their reg form says this when I try their suggested reg name (michaelp11):
"Please choose another username which does not contain the word ae"
Is 'ae' some sort of horrible slur in the UK?????
I tried to use their "contact us" link and it sends me to the same broken registration form, nice you need to register to tell them their registration form is broken, way to reduce support cost (and readership, but who cares about readership?)
They may be "PCPros" but their site was clearly designed by a "WebAmateur".
the next century. If that isn't an impending tradgedy to you, than you are a pretty major misanthropist. This is much more likely than getting cancer from smoking or dying in a car wreck, and of course the sea level will rise a good deal, the % is over how much (1m, .5m, 2m, etc.).
If you can't explain it in layman's terms, then you don't understand it. It's just that simple.
The reason scientists use all them big words is because we are talking about concepts that can't be described in ordinary english. Once you actually try reading some real science (as in Nature, not Popular Mechanics) maybe you'll get it.
If the general public doesn't get global warming, and won't trust the scientists, and won't learn enough of the science to figure it out for themselves, then it will take a major disaster to convince them that something is going on and them climatological eggheads have something to say.
most folks have an attitude like yours "prove it to me, but don't ask me to learn anything new". Can't be done, if you won't learn the science, you won't, and it's pointless to argue with you. Oil addiction is like drug addiction, you have to want to change, and you have to work at it and you'd deny and defend and hide from what's happening, until something happens that really knocks you in the head. We'll start making real steps to reduce carbon emmisions when major cities start being flooded. Of course it will be too late by then to save much of the coastal communities, but that's the way people generally operate. See you on the dark side of the moon...
the sea level rise and more violent storms are being caused by God to punish us and the solutions are religious ones, not ones based on reason.
Please pay more when you are reading, often one sentence builds on an idea initiated in the previous one. The science predicts the sea levels will rise and storms will get more violent, and the statement was discussing what people will blame it on if they reject the science.
Sea level rise Beware, there are some scientifical terminalogies here.
If you can't do that, then you're just fucked, eh?
What an odd statement.
Scientists are urging people to get ready for the effects of and perhaps try to reduce the pace of global warming because we're all "fucked" if we don't.
But you can't make that argument if you "don't CARE about the science" because then the sea level rise and more violent storms are being caused by God to punish us and the solutions are religious ones, not ones based on reason.
If you leave the science out, then there is no argument, we should just keep playing until God comes back and cleans up our mess.
Woohoo, pass me a Duff!
Because you have rejected the scientific method.
That meathod relies on experimentation and observation. Both show us that more CO2 and hydrocarbons in the atmosphere of a planet lead to a rise in temperatures.
If you applied the same criteria for "proof" to other areas of science, you wouldn't have ok'd the money spent on the Manhatten project, either.
Regarding the "spending billions" red herring, we are already spending billions dealing with the predictable effects of a rise in global temperatures and sea levels, and we will be spending trillions more.
>> you need to prove it TO THEM
Otto, you and others like you can;t be convinced by science on this issue, as you reject the scientific method. Historical observation can't convince you, laboratory experiments can't convince you, and observation of other systems can't convince you.
I have no doubt that as sea levels rise and we need to build dikes or abandon them, you will be claiming its being caused by sunspots or goddidit, not SUVs, not even when a billion chinese are driving them.
I was just pointing out that the science for human effects on global warming (really the effects of rising atmospheric carbon levels) is as solid as the science for relativity, as the grandparent raised that as some sort of standard, I'm not trying to convince you to spend billions on prevention rather than spending trillions on clean-up.
I have little doubt that given the current anti-science human climate, you folks in the political majority won't start listening to them snooty egg-heads on this issue until the seas have risen at least 1m.
they seem convincing, that is the point. Of course no one's stock values depends on relativity being right or wrong. People who clamor for "proof" of a "theory" before "believing" in the theory don't understand the scientific method (or are oversimplifying it to the point of non-sense for political or religious reasons). Controlled experiments are always subject to the criticism that natural systems are uncontrolled. However, the principle that adding CO2 and hydrocarbons to a system that is warmed by radiant heat source will result in an increase in the overall temperature of that system is a "fact", it is "proven", it is "true". Increasing the carbon load in the earth's system will increase global temperatures so long as the energy from the sun remains the same or increases, that is "proven" by controlled experiments as well as historical observation. Just how that will effect day to day life (whether it will in the long run be "good" or "bad" for human population), of course is a much complex question.
Yeah, that was my point, the "can't be proved in a controlled experiment" argument against human affects on climate change sounds alot more scientifical than it is:-).