Science, despite claims of objectivity, does not operate in a vacuum. It must operate in the social realm, subject to ethical obligations. Religion is a common source of ethical rules. I assume that most readers here come from a background that values the Old Testament book of Exodus (whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim).
The pro-life arguments that I've heard are all based on the religious notion of the sanctity of all human life in whatever form or stage of development. The "flamebait" appearing in this thread is similarly constructed.
For your pro-choice consideration, however, I offer the book of Exodus, Chapter 21:
Verse 22: "If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine."
Meaning that the fetus is property, not humanity. Injury to it is repaid like other property damages.
Verses 23-25: "And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."
Meaning that the mother is humanity, not property. Injury to her is repaid like other human loss.
Now, these verses suggest that intentionally causing harm is still a wrong deed, but it does prove false (in religious context) the claim that a fetus is a human.
Personally, I'm willing to allow a woman the choice to sell her own property. *shrug* That's not the same thing as suggesting that stem cell research requires murder.
Not necessarily. The claim is that these stem cells are actually repairing damaged tissue in the mother. Removing those cells from her body presents a different ethical problem: taking away something that's thought to be beneficial. At least it's an issue that the mother can make an informed decision about. That's an improvement but not a replacement for the persistent question about whether an embryo is a human with legal rights.
Re:Only to recognize where faces are...but good
on
The Face Detector
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· Score: 1
I'm glad that somebody else identified this distinction. Persons with prosopagnosia ("face blindness") are unable to identify a particular face. They are perfectly capable of identifying where a face is; they just don't know whose name that face belongs to.
It's a simple developmental process: blow it up before trying to contain it. Same with the internal combustion engine. You have to know how stuff combusts ("blows up") before you can properly harness it. Disappointing, I agree, but true. Same with nuclear fission. I really don't want an electricity generation plant built from the stuff unless the engineers know just what it takes to make it produce energy in an uncontrolled "mushroom cloud" kind of way. It's the simplest beginner step in gaining knowledge about the energy release process. More refined methods come later.
I don't think the parent question was intended to be funny. I think it's a serious question. I will rephrase:
These new probe imagers have impressive resolution. Any chance that they can be used to identify lost landers and determine what happened to them? It might be useful to somebody to know if a lander ended up in one big piece or thousands of smaller pieces.
The article is interesting, and they are right to point out the many dangers of relying on environment variables. Where I work (unidentified to protect the incompetent), programmers are not allowed access to the unix command line. Instead, all user exits are trapped, and programmers are forced to navigate through a homegrown menu system.
This menu system relies on an environment variable ${WHATCANIDO} to store a list of permissions available to that user. Of course, I changed my.profile to add my own extension to the permission list. I even nicely dated, initialed, and described my change.;)
export WHATCANIDO=world_domination:$WHATCANIDO # 2000/10/31 tw Too easy
So now when I get frustrated with the absurdity of this arrangement, I just take echo the environment variable to remind myself why I'm right and they're wrong.
I like the idea in theory, but I don't think that it would be beneficial in practice. I'm a programmer for a mid-sized business, and I'm already hugely annoyed by bureaucratic red tape. Why create more?
Instead, what if there was a review body similar to the Consumers Union? They could test and review a variety of software (business, home productivity, entertainment) and produce their reviews similar to the magazine Consumer Reports.
Supposedly, this is what the magazine shelves are already filled with. In practice, those magazines are concerned only with following whatever is hyped as "the hot new thing", instantly forgotten after its release. Or sometimes recalled in the December-issue "year in review".
Consumers Union, on the other hand, is not concerned with "sneak previews" of new products. Instead it reviews stuff over the long haul, bringing the name of the manufacturer back into discussion with each new review. It asks the same review questions (does the reality match the marketing), but after the product has already been in use by consumers. They pool their member's money in order to purchase actual products, which they then test to the point of destruction.
This kind of review is very useful to people who aren't addicted to buying the latest gadget on its release day. For people who are addicted, they don't have the moral authority to blame the manufacturer for the bad stuff they're selling. Stop buying it first, then complain so that neophytes aren't suckered into becoming new addicts. (For instance, I never paid George Lucas one red cent for his Clown Wars. I boycotted after the disaster that was Episode I. If it's garbage, then stop buying it.)
- Terry, The Mellow Tigger
Re:Ants are attracted to electricity
on
Ant Farm PC
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· Score: 1
No, I don't think so. I grew up in Texas, where the fire ants have taken over. I remember reading that fire ants sometimes entered the transformer in electrical equipment. The article mentioned something about ozone being responsible for luring the ants there, although I remember nothing about why transformers should generate ozone. (Mother Nature generates ozone from lightning strikes, but transformers should not normally generate sparks.)
Indeed. I had a pet rat once that grew ill. I took it to the vet for treatment. He told me that he didn't see people bring in their pet rats. (Cheap rat, expensive medicine.) He also said that there's not much he can do for them because they know a lot about how to make rats ill but not very much about how to make them well again. It was an interesting opinion to hear from a veterinarian. (He helped my rat that day, but she died soon afterward.)
I am tremendously amused that neurotypicals find themselves as difficult to understand (emotional, illogical, unpredictable) as autistics have been claiming all along. And yet you get to define what is "normal" behavior for humans.
Wood is not art. Paint is not art. Iron is not art. String is not art. HTML is not art.
What someone produces after deliberately arranging them in a design intended to provoke a reaction... that product is art. (I'm not arguing good versus bad. I'm just saying that it's art.)
I have a question for the people who are mourning the decline in salaries. Have you considered moving to where the same job would be more profitable?
I ask this question because I am considering it myself. I am a programmer specialized on a platform that is practically dead. (Natural/Adabas, if you're curious.) A search 2 weeks ago on monster.com showed that there were more jobs for this platform available in India than in the rest of the world combined. Here, there were only 8 jobs posted across the nation. (Did I mention that this platform was practically dead?)
Yes, I realize that these Indian jobs are probably just contracted back here to the U.S., but I will apply next week for a passport. When I receive it, I will then begin checking on these Indian jobs. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." Ya know? I'm assuming that the relative pay in India will still be better than taking a lower-paid job here in the U.S. on a modern platform. I intend to talk with an Indian programmer soon to get his opinions.
Have other people pushed this option out of their minds? I just wanted to point out that it may still be valid.
I agree with your points, but I would add that no two people learn at the same pace. I object to having every classroom across the nation teaching the same subject material at the same rate. I propose having "subject matter proficiency tests" rather than lesson plans. A student could learn any range of subjects at any pace. You've passed 7th grade when you've passed certain proficiency tests, whether you pass them at age 8 or age 18.
Even college classes suffer from this same basic problem. The "slow" students are bewildered by the pace of the class, while the "fast" students are bored by it. In my opinion, all of these students are capable of learning the material. I suggest allowing them to learn at their natural pace. "Fast" learners would spend less calendar time in school and therefore pay less total tuition. "Slow" learners would require more calendar time (and tuition) but perhaps pass their proficiency test with the same high score as the fast learner.
My 6th grade math class was organized this way. It was wonderful. But no other class and no other grade level had such an education program. *sigh*
Triage is unavoidable. I base this conclusion on the observation that the universe itself seems to function with only limited supplies of matter and energy. Given this restriction, it is impossible to satisfy every want. In the broadest sense, there will never be enough resources (food, fuel, material, medicine).
You will die. The energy you would have consumed will be used to feed other forms of life. The materials that have been used in your construction will be disassembled and reused for other constructions. You are impermanent, and no part of the universe holds any obligation to extend your presence beyond the current moment. Get used to it. No ethical argument can countermand this fundamental operation of the universe. Limited resources, therefore limited courses of action.
Ethical arguments are appropriate, however, when deciding how to perform the triage. All arguments being made in this thread so far seem to support the opinion that our capitalist economy is unethical in how it doles out limited resources or rewards risky-but-successful investments in research.
Perhaps it would help to propose changes that would develop into a new, ethical system for performing this necessary triage, rather than arguing that triage itself is offensive. I repeat, triage is unavoidable.
Could an escrow email system be a helpful service improvement over current SMTP email, assuming that participation is a voluntary addition to normal SMTP traffic?
By "escrow", I mean that licensed businesses would be responsible for storing and delivering email under specially defined rules (which are open for debate on ways that would improve security and reduce unsolicited items). Servers could refuse to accept or deliver email that did not meet the established rules. Subscribers could refuse to accept email from non-escrow servers (or hopefully more specific arrangements could be made depending on the "rules" of escrow service). Email service would be a legal contract, so the identity of subscribers when they submit emails would always be known.
The standard unregulated email system should still be available to all internet users to provide for free (beer) and free (speech) usage, but the escrow method would be a voluntary subscription service.
Because code is the most direct way to communicate wisdom between geeks?
Yes.
Consider the parallel example of the American legal system. Legislators (system designers) craft highly detailed specifications (laws) in English (English, you insist?!) resulting in bills ("spec" documents) that neither citizens (end users) nor law enforcers (programmers) are familiar with as their primary language, requiring a whole new creature, the lawyer, to interpret for both of them.
If I were crafting a parallel system in Cobol (created so that business users could understand it as well as technical users, unlike English) as my specification but using Java as my implementation, and I was expecting both of them to agree with each other 100% of the time, then it would obviously be an insane duplication of effort. But when we craft the parallel system in English and then call it documentation, suddenly it's a proper and helpful effort.
Similarly, why would I want to use a Spanish translation of an outline in order to draft an English novel? Isn't it vastly more efficient to craft both drafts and final product in the same language?
Improvements in the recognition of errors (by both programmers and end users while working in the familiar landscape of actual screens/reports) offsets the supposed improvements of reliability espoused by management schools. If you want plain English translations of source code for middle management that has no familiarity with a system like users and programmers do, then write a utility to extract the translations automatically (javadoc, anyone?) just for them.
Yes, looking at prior "good art" is the best way to learn good programming. Relying on documentation and other minutiae (especially when you know that it's wrong), amounts to professional negligence. All of the best-functioning systems that I have seen were all created by programmers working directly with end users, preparing sample reports and screens together, recording minimal documentation outside of the system itself. "Why" is a question typically absent from source code, so it should be recorded elsewhere, but "how", "when", and "what" are detailed explicitly in source code and should not be duplicated.
I tried to install Solaris 8 for Intel. I really wanted to make it work, but I simply ran into a dead-end trying to find any graphics or network cards available locally that would work with it. I finally gave up and shelved my cd's.
Someone already posted the Hardware Compatibility List, noting that it doesn't seem to be updated. That was my same problem with Solaris 8, the equipment all seemed to be too many years old.
Are there any rumors that Solaris 9 includes new drivers for more recent equipment? Has anyone successfully installed it with modern video/ network equipment? I'd like to hear a success story before I try again.
Slashdot Mirror
Science, despite claims of objectivity, does not operate in a vacuum. It must operate in the social realm, subject to ethical obligations. Religion is a common source of ethical rules. I assume that most readers here come from a background that values the Old Testament book of Exodus (whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim).
The pro-life arguments that I've heard are all based on the religious notion of the sanctity of all human life in whatever form or stage of development. The "flamebait" appearing in this thread is similarly constructed.
For your pro-choice consideration, however, I offer the book of Exodus, Chapter 21:
Meaning that the fetus is property, not humanity. Injury to it is repaid like other property damages.
Meaning that the mother is humanity, not property. Injury to her is repaid like other human loss.
Now, these verses suggest that intentionally causing harm is still a wrong deed, but it does prove false (in religious context) the claim that a fetus is a human.
Personally, I'm willing to allow a woman the choice to sell her own property. *shrug* That's not the same thing as suggesting that stem cell research requires murder.
Not necessarily. The claim is that these stem cells are actually repairing damaged tissue in the mother. Removing those cells from her body presents a different ethical problem: taking away something that's thought to be beneficial. At least it's an issue that the mother can make an informed decision about. That's an improvement but not a replacement for the persistent question about whether an embryo is a human with legal rights.
I'm glad that somebody else identified this distinction. Persons with prosopagnosia ("face blindness") are unable to identify a particular face. They are perfectly capable of identifying where a face is; they just don't know whose name that face belongs to.
It's a simple developmental process: blow it up before trying to contain it. Same with the internal combustion engine. You have to know how stuff combusts ("blows up") before you can properly harness it. Disappointing, I agree, but true. Same with nuclear fission. I really don't want an electricity generation plant built from the stuff unless the engineers know just what it takes to make it produce energy in an uncontrolled "mushroom cloud" kind of way. It's the simplest beginner step in gaining knowledge about the energy release process. More refined methods come later.
I don't think the parent question was intended to be funny. I think it's a serious question. I will rephrase:
These new probe imagers have impressive resolution. Any chance that they can be used to identify lost landers and determine what happened to them? It might be useful to somebody to know if a lander ended up in one big piece or thousands of smaller pieces.
The article is interesting, and they are right to point out the many dangers of relying on environment variables. Where I work (unidentified to protect the incompetent), programmers are not allowed access to the unix command line. Instead, all user exits are trapped, and programmers are forced to navigate through a homegrown menu system.
This menu system relies on an environment variable ${WHATCANIDO} to store a list of permissions available to that user. Of course, I changed my .profile to add my own extension to the permission list. I even nicely dated, initialed, and described my change. ;)
export WHATCANIDO=world_domination:$WHATCANIDO # 2000/10/31 tw Too easy
So now when I get frustrated with the absurdity of this arrangement, I just take echo the environment variable to remind myself why I'm right and they're wrong.
> echo $WHATCANIDO
world_domination: [deleted]
The movie has been out for a whole 48 hours already. Why is it MillionthMonkey's fault that you haven't seen it yet? ;)
I like the idea in theory, but I don't think that it would be beneficial in practice. I'm a programmer for a mid-sized business, and I'm already hugely annoyed by bureaucratic red tape. Why create more?
Instead, what if there was a review body similar to the Consumers Union? They could test and review a variety of software (business, home productivity, entertainment) and produce their reviews similar to the magazine Consumer Reports.
Supposedly, this is what the magazine shelves are already filled with. In practice, those magazines are concerned only with following whatever is hyped as "the hot new thing", instantly forgotten after its release. Or sometimes recalled in the December-issue "year in review".
Consumers Union, on the other hand, is not concerned with "sneak previews" of new products. Instead it reviews stuff over the long haul, bringing the name of the manufacturer back into discussion with each new review. It asks the same review questions (does the reality match the marketing), but after the product has already been in use by consumers. They pool their member's money in order to purchase actual products, which they then test to the point of destruction.
This kind of review is very useful to people who aren't addicted to buying the latest gadget on its release day. For people who are addicted, they don't have the moral authority to blame the manufacturer for the bad stuff they're selling. Stop buying it first, then complain so that neophytes aren't suckered into becoming new addicts. (For instance, I never paid George Lucas one red cent for his Clown Wars. I boycotted after the disaster that was Episode I. If it's garbage, then stop buying it.)
- Terry, The Mellow TiggerNo, I don't think so. I grew up in Texas, where the fire ants have taken over. I remember reading that fire ants sometimes entered the transformer in electrical equipment. The article mentioned something about ozone being responsible for luring the ants there, although I remember nothing about why transformers should generate ozone. (Mother Nature generates ozone from lightning strikes, but transformers should not normally generate sparks.)
Indeed. I had a pet rat once that grew ill. I took it to the vet for treatment. He told me that he didn't see people bring in their pet rats. (Cheap rat, expensive medicine.) He also said that there's not much he can do for them because they know a lot about how to make rats ill but not very much about how to make them well again. It was an interesting opinion to hear from a veterinarian. (He helped my rat that day, but she died soon afterward.)
I am tremendously amused that neurotypicals find themselves as difficult to understand (emotional, illogical, unpredictable) as autistics have been claiming all along. And yet you get to define what is "normal" behavior for humans.
You might also be amused to view this discussion from our perspective. A good introduction is available here at the parody site for the Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical".
Wood is not art. Paint is not art. Iron is not art. String is not art. HTML is not art.
What someone produces after deliberately arranging them in a design intended to provoke a reaction... that product is art. (I'm not arguing good versus bad. I'm just saying that it's art.)
I have a question for the people who are mourning the decline in salaries. Have you considered moving to where the same job would be more profitable?
I ask this question because I am considering it myself. I am a programmer specialized on a platform that is practically dead. (Natural/Adabas, if you're curious.) A search 2 weeks ago on monster.com showed that there were more jobs for this platform available in India than in the rest of the world combined. Here, there were only 8 jobs posted across the nation. (Did I mention that this platform was practically dead?)
Yes, I realize that these Indian jobs are probably just contracted back here to the U.S., but I will apply next week for a passport. When I receive it, I will then begin checking on these Indian jobs. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." Ya know? I'm assuming that the relative pay in India will still be better than taking a lower-paid job here in the U.S. on a modern platform. I intend to talk with an Indian programmer soon to get his opinions.
Have other people pushed this option out of their minds? I just wanted to point out that it may still be valid.
I agree with your points, but I would add that no two people learn at the same pace. I object to having every classroom across the nation teaching the same subject material at the same rate. I propose having "subject matter proficiency tests" rather than lesson plans. A student could learn any range of subjects at any pace. You've passed 7th grade when you've passed certain proficiency tests, whether you pass them at age 8 or age 18.
Even college classes suffer from this same basic problem. The "slow" students are bewildered by the pace of the class, while the "fast" students are bored by it. In my opinion, all of these students are capable of learning the material. I suggest allowing them to learn at their natural pace. "Fast" learners would spend less calendar time in school and therefore pay less total tuition. "Slow" learners would require more calendar time (and tuition) but perhaps pass their proficiency test with the same high score as the fast learner.
My 6th grade math class was organized this way. It was wonderful. But no other class and no other grade level had such an education program. *sigh*
Why doesn't education work this way fulltime?
The United Nations treaty information is very interesting. But how does that reconcile with this government which offers lunar citizenship?
Triage is unavoidable. I base this conclusion on the observation that the universe itself seems to function with only limited supplies of matter and energy. Given this restriction, it is impossible to satisfy every want. In the broadest sense, there will never be enough resources (food, fuel, material, medicine).
You will die. The energy you would have consumed will be used to feed other forms of life. The materials that have been used in your construction will be disassembled and reused for other constructions. You are impermanent, and no part of the universe holds any obligation to extend your presence beyond the current moment. Get used to it. No ethical argument can countermand this fundamental operation of the universe. Limited resources, therefore limited courses of action.
Ethical arguments are appropriate, however, when deciding how to perform the triage. All arguments being made in this thread so far seem to support the opinion that our capitalist economy is unethical in how it doles out limited resources or rewards risky-but-successful investments in research.
Perhaps it would help to propose changes that would develop into a new, ethical system for performing this necessary triage, rather than arguing that triage itself is offensive. I repeat, triage is unavoidable.
Could an escrow email system be a helpful service improvement over current SMTP email, assuming that participation is a voluntary addition to normal SMTP traffic?
By "escrow", I mean that licensed businesses would be responsible for storing and delivering email under specially defined rules (which are open for debate on ways that would improve security and reduce unsolicited items). Servers could refuse to accept or deliver email that did not meet the established rules. Subscribers could refuse to accept email from non-escrow servers (or hopefully more specific arrangements could be made depending on the "rules" of escrow service). Email service would be a legal contract, so the identity of subscribers when they submit emails would always be known.
The standard unregulated email system should still be available to all internet users to provide for free (beer) and free (speech) usage, but the escrow method would be a voluntary subscription service.
Because code is the most direct way to communicate wisdom between geeks?
Yes.
Consider the parallel example of the American legal system. Legislators (system designers) craft highly detailed specifications (laws) in English (English, you insist?!) resulting in bills ("spec" documents) that neither citizens (end users) nor law enforcers (programmers) are familiar with as their primary language, requiring a whole new creature, the lawyer, to interpret for both of them.
If I were crafting a parallel system in Cobol (created so that business users could understand it as well as technical users, unlike English) as my specification but using Java as my implementation, and I was expecting both of them to agree with each other 100% of the time, then it would obviously be an insane duplication of effort. But when we craft the parallel system in English and then call it documentation, suddenly it's a proper and helpful effort. Similarly, why would I want to use a Spanish translation of an outline in order to draft an English novel? Isn't it vastly more efficient to craft both drafts and final product in the same language?
Improvements in the recognition of errors (by both programmers and end users while working in the familiar landscape of actual screens/reports) offsets the supposed improvements of reliability espoused by management schools. If you want plain English translations of source code for middle management that has no familiarity with a system like users and programmers do, then write a utility to extract the translations automatically (javadoc, anyone?) just for them.
Yes, looking at prior "good art" is the best way to learn good programming. Relying on documentation and other minutiae (especially when you know that it's wrong), amounts to professional negligence. All of the best-functioning systems that I have seen were all created by programmers working directly with end users, preparing sample reports and screens together, recording minimal documentation outside of the system itself. "Why" is a question typically absent from source code, so it should be recorded elsewhere, but "how", "when", and "what" are detailed explicitly in source code and should not be duplicated.
I tried to install Solaris 8 for Intel. I really wanted to make it work, but I simply ran into a dead-end trying to find any graphics or network cards available locally that would work with it. I finally gave up and shelved my cd's.
Someone already posted the Hardware Compatibility List, noting that it doesn't seem to be updated. That was my same problem with Solaris 8, the equipment all seemed to be too many years old.
Are there any rumors that Solaris 9 includes new drivers for more recent equipment? Has anyone successfully installed it with modern video/ network equipment? I'd like to hear a success story before I try again.