By the same logic, the Church should oppose all medical advances - if God wanted to save the people with pneumonia, he'd do it directly, or never give them pneumonia in the first place.
I have to admit, while the Church's stance on human cloning and embryonic stem cell research is not surprising (albeit as ridiculous as ever), but I wonder how did artificial insemination make its way to the hate list? I mean, isn't it just following God's degree to "be fruitful and multiply"? Sometimes I think the Church just compiles the list of the most important scientific fields that are likely to provide us with answers about the Universe, and flat-out denies them... for the sake of good old times.
But then I realized that by agreeing to artificial insemination, they agree to extra embryos being created, which would then be used for stem cell research (or they'd have to willingly destroy them). Wow, to go against reason AND God's decree, they must really hate embryonic stem cell a lot... or perhaps they just want to rake in some more donation from crazy people who want to blame ESC for the moral degeneration of our society.
While I think he makes sense, I think something else will be a far more important factor in driving Linux and open-source into the mainstream - the integration of technological products based on linux, across multiple platforms. The Google phone concept, if it is realized successfully by multiple companies, will certainly provide much of the impulse needed to push Linux into the consumer mainstream.
Just the ability to sync your mobile phone with a Linux platform (which I assume it will provide) will be a huge boost for Linux on the desktop, when it comes to small and medium business.
Actually, the slashdot "does it run linux" meme is very much appropriate here. If the devices you want run Linux and are compatible with other Linux devices, it only makes sense to adopt an all-Linux home/shop/business, etc...
FIOS isn't "good" because it's a good service. FIOS is only "good" because this is Verizon's final "fuck you" to the taxpayers that helped fund its infrastructure, and an open attempt to become a totally unregulated monopoly. You see, they HAD TO lease the copper lines, because FCC mandated it. They don't have to share the fiber optics. As a result, they've been busy building the fiber network that would cement them as a monopoly, while completely ignoring troubles with their copper... leveraging the reduction in the quality of service over the copper lines, to attract people to the fiber.
Too bad there are no jobs, and the houses are way too expensive.
Virtually all middle-class job fields are either stalled, or firing... and as far as the real estate market goes, here's a story.
In 1995, about 50% of Nassau county (Long Island, NYC metro area) residents could afford to purchase the homes they were living in, given market price. In 2005, that number was down to about 5%. Yes, we have had spectacular success in destroying the middle class. At least they're scared of being poor, so they keep on working.
As George Carlin noted (albeit a hyperbole): "The middle class pays all the taxes, and does all the work. And the poor are just there to scare the shit out of the middle class".
The telecoms can take the heat for being heartless monopolies, for providing terrible service at a high price, and for leveraging their monopolies to avoid upgrading their taxpayer-financed infrastructure.
They can't, however, be accused of not doing what will profit them the most in the short term.
In this case, they've collectively called Google's bluff. I don't see Google having $4.6B in spare cash, to purchase the spectrum they have no idea how to make money on. This is a tough spot for Google, because not only do they stand to lose their coveted "shared spectrum" rule, but they also stand to lose much of their perceived invulnerability on the market.
Why is it that every single article that references any scientific development in the fields of genetics or molecular biology gets the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag on Slashdot? What does this say about our society, since Slashdot members tend to represent the more educated and successful members to begin with? Have we really become such fat lazy luddites that we will reject anything we do not understand, on the basis of an infinitesmally-small risk to our (relatively) decadent and luxurious life?
Do we really only perceive biologists as madmen who want to do evil experients for the heck of it? I've seen this trend spiral out of control, and frankly, I am ASHAMED.
I can see it now. The Western world is going to take a hint from Mao, and start the wholesale slaughter of scientists and engineers of all sorts. Then they'll remember than many of the Palestinian terrorists were doctors, and add medical professionals to the list.
I think we should all just realize that educated people are dangerous, and must be killed or "re-educated". Then, we will attain the perfectly secure society we all crave.
In that case, we should ban passengers too... because they're rather likely to be more distracting in terms of conversation. When a driver is engaged in conversation with a passenger, he (or she, don't PC me) will turn to glance at the passenger, which won't happen when using a handsfree. Thus, not only is the driver engaged in conversation, but he'll also be looking away from the road periodically.
So, the only "logical" choice in this age of legislation by prohibition, is to prohibit having passengers... or mandate opaque soundproof walls between the driver and the passenger.
Congratulations, we really HAVE reached that point.
New York City's congestion pricing plan will add $9 to the people's daily commute.
Let's see, $9x20 working days/month = $180/month, just for the luxury of not being spat on, cursed at, and not having to sniff someone's armpits for 2 hours a day.
This isn't a free meal for a homeless guy. This is akin to Madonna tossing the homeless guy a free copy of her latest CD.
It costs microsoft nothing, they get a tax writeoff, and it's either useless to the target demographic, or will perpetuate microsoft's monopoly and later charge them their left nut.
I hope that this was a sarcastic post, given the amount of ignorance it contained.
We would like to study ebola, so that we can save your sorry ass if you get it. To do that, we've modified it to weaken it, so we don't kill ourselves studying it. We're not really going to put it in your food and air supply!
As far as why Bush hates funding genetic engineering as a whole you're correct. Your post illustrates PRECISELY why people hate funding it - they are ignorant, scared sheet, and content remaining such.
I don't think Ebola has ever had a vital component of the transcription machinery removed before. It's not a very large virus, and I don't think it can find another gene to replace it. Furthermore, I don't think anyone is talking about releasing this virus into the wild, merely making it easier to work with in the lab, as well as safer.
Before everyone panics, just think for a second. Ebola is NOT AIRBORNE. It is transmitted by direct contact and bodily fluids. It's classified as BSL4 because it's so deadly once you actually get it, not due to its ease of transmission.
Currently, only a few groups have access to BSL4 laboratories, and this has been severely hampering Ebola research. If by taking out the VP30 gene they have reduced the pathogenicity of the virus enough to get the authorities to apply the more appropriate BSL3 tag to the mutant strain, they've succeeded in making an important stride towards expanding the field, while introducing a very minimal risk of an outbreak.
I don't think anyone is talking about drinking the recombinant virus, but merely making it BSL3 instead of BSL4... or even just reducing the risk of working with Ebola under BSL4 conditions.
OK, I'm not an expert in biosecurity, but wouldn't the reduced air pressure in the room be accomplished by pumping air out of the room?
Through a controlled path that includes multiple
The idea is that when you take air out of the room, you control the path of the outflow, and thus you can filter the particulates, including viruses. Otherwise, when you open the door, they just tend to diffuse out.
We hear from our customers directly and indirectly. It's a very competitive business, ravenously so. I think our company is very, very sensitive to customer attitude -- we have to consider this
Hearing that hurt my ear. I've been a relatively unwilling AT&T customer 3 times now, due to various mergers and acquisitions, and they've managed to go against the consensus opinions of their customers on every issue that I have encountered, where such a dichotomy existed.
For instance, I purchased my Blackjack from an authorized Cingular dealer, and received unlimited internet for $19.99 per month. I was really happy with the service. After Cingular became AT&T wireless, I began getting service outages, and now it takes me >2 minutes to connect to the internet, and the connection will time out after 2 minutes of being idle, rendering it almost useless. When I called, I was told that AT&T has different internet plans than Cingular, and my Blackjack could only get the $40/month plans, and they wouldn't help me with my service problems. I am still under contract, but it seems that AT&T isn't interested in their part of the deal.
It is perfectly clear that as a part of a government-sanctioned mono- or oligopoly, they have no interest at all in their customer's opinions.
Stop making people take off their shoes, and stop "inspecting" my bottle of fucking sublock, then discussing whether or not it's 0.5g over the allowed size limit.
Warning: From sources I'm too lazy too look up, I hear a very small percentage of people are not susceptible to the HIV virus. Granted the odds are low, but if some resistant bastard takes your money, well that would just suck. Of course if if they all did it...
I am aware of such cases, which is why I emphasized the requirement for a productive infection, thus requiring the virus to replicate efficiently, which isn't the case when CCR5 is mutated.
I often think that rense.com subscribers should sterilize themselves. I now resign from any conversation or debate with anyone who is even remotely associated with that site.
You can't resign from the debate because it's been politicized. You can, however, at least use Occam's Razor to figure out which side has more financial and power-related incentive to skew the facts... you can also look at primary literature to get an idea about the science itself, although it's unlikely you'll understand enough to interpret it - I cannot... I may have a graduate degree, but in a different science.
There was some last-minute "political" editing going on to make things seem more dire, and more certain, than the research actually indicated.
Umm... is that why the Bush administration decided to remove every reference to manmade global warming, as well as projections of all negative effects of global warming from the last NOAA (or whatever it's called) reports? They were just correcting for the bias of the scientists that would receive so much money ($ 0.00) if they falsified the report to say that humans are causing global warming and that it will bite us in the ass?
And I am constantly disheartened when I hear of this bullshit... even more painfully so, given my experience in the field of virology and immunology research.
Actually, I find "AIDS dissent", as you call it, far far more disturbing than the "9-11 Truth" conspiracy. At least in the case of "9-11 Truth", there remains at least SOME possibility for at least SOME of the minor claims of the conspiracy theorists. The case of "AIDS dissent" on the other hand, is rather similar to "gravity dissent".
P.S. As with any AIDS/HIV conspiracy theorist, I have a standing offer: inoculate yourself with 10X ID50 of purified HIV, and if you get a productive infection, but don't get AIDS, you get all my property, and the entire contents of my bank account... and I will quit biological science research. Deal?
Slashdot Mirror
By the same logic, the Church should oppose all medical advances - if God wanted to save the people with pneumonia, he'd do it directly, or never give them pneumonia in the first place.
I never troll normally, but the only acceptable response to this super-troll post of yours is:
PLEASE... PLEASE... KILL YOURSELF...
I have to admit, while the Church's stance on human cloning and embryonic stem cell research is not surprising (albeit as ridiculous as ever), but I wonder how did artificial insemination make its way to the hate list? I mean, isn't it just following God's degree to "be fruitful and multiply"? Sometimes I think the Church just compiles the list of the most important scientific fields that are likely to provide us with answers about the Universe, and flat-out denies them... for the sake of good old times.
But then I realized that by agreeing to artificial insemination, they agree to extra embryos being created, which would then be used for stem cell research (or they'd have to willingly destroy them). Wow, to go against reason AND God's decree, they must really hate embryonic stem cell a lot... or perhaps they just want to rake in some more donation from crazy people who want to blame ESC for the moral degeneration of our society.
While I think he makes sense, I think something else will be a far more important factor in driving Linux and open-source into the mainstream - the integration of technological products based on linux, across multiple platforms. The Google phone concept, if it is realized successfully by multiple companies, will certainly provide much of the impulse needed to push Linux into the consumer mainstream.
Just the ability to sync your mobile phone with a Linux platform (which I assume it will provide) will be a huge boost for Linux on the desktop, when it comes to small and medium business.
Actually, the slashdot "does it run linux" meme is very much appropriate here. If the devices you want run Linux and are compatible with other Linux devices, it only makes sense to adopt an all-Linux home/shop/business, etc...
FIOS isn't "good" because it's a good service. FIOS is only "good" because this is Verizon's final "fuck you" to the taxpayers that helped fund its infrastructure, and an open attempt to become a totally unregulated monopoly. You see, they HAD TO lease the copper lines, because FCC mandated it. They don't have to share the fiber optics. As a result, they've been busy building the fiber network that would cement them as a monopoly, while completely ignoring troubles with their copper... leveraging the reduction in the quality of service over the copper lines, to attract people to the fiber.
Too bad there are no jobs, and the houses are way too expensive.
Virtually all middle-class job fields are either stalled, or firing... and as far as the real estate market goes, here's a story.
In 1995, about 50% of Nassau county (Long Island, NYC metro area) residents could afford to purchase the homes they were living in, given market price. In 2005, that number was down to about 5%. Yes, we have had spectacular success in destroying the middle class. At least they're scared of being poor, so they keep on working.
As George Carlin noted (albeit a hyperbole): "The middle class pays all the taxes, and does all the work. And the poor are just there to scare the shit out of the middle class".
The telecoms can take the heat for being heartless monopolies, for providing terrible service at a high price, and for leveraging their monopolies to avoid upgrading their taxpayer-financed infrastructure.
They can't, however, be accused of not doing what will profit them the most in the short term.
In this case, they've collectively called Google's bluff. I don't see Google having $4.6B in spare cash, to purchase the spectrum they have no idea how to make money on. This is a tough spot for Google, because not only do they stand to lose their coveted "shared spectrum" rule, but they also stand to lose much of their perceived invulnerability on the market.
Why is it that every single article that references any scientific development in the fields of genetics or molecular biology gets the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag on Slashdot? What does this say about our society, since Slashdot members tend to represent the more educated and successful members to begin with? Have we really become such fat lazy luddites that we will reject anything we do not understand, on the basis of an infinitesmally-small risk to our (relatively) decadent and luxurious life?
Do we really only perceive biologists as madmen who want to do evil experients for the heck of it? I've seen this trend spiral out of control, and frankly, I am ASHAMED.
I can see it now. The Western world is going to take a hint from Mao, and start the wholesale slaughter of scientists and engineers of all sorts. Then they'll remember than many of the Palestinian terrorists were doctors, and add medical professionals to the list.
I think we should all just realize that educated people are dangerous, and must be killed or "re-educated". Then, we will attain the perfectly secure society we all crave.
In that case, we should ban passengers too... because they're rather likely to be more distracting in terms of conversation. When a driver is engaged in conversation with a passenger, he (or she, don't PC me) will turn to glance at the passenger, which won't happen when using a handsfree. Thus, not only is the driver engaged in conversation, but he'll also be looking away from the road periodically.
So, the only "logical" choice in this age of legislation by prohibition, is to prohibit having passengers... or mandate opaque soundproof walls between the driver and the passenger.
Congratulations, we really HAVE reached that point.
What happened to personal responsibility?
New York City's congestion pricing plan will add $9 to the people's daily commute.
Let's see, $9x20 working days/month = $180/month, just for the luxury of not being spat on, cursed at, and not having to sniff someone's armpits for 2 hours a day.
This isn't a free meal for a homeless guy. This is akin to Madonna tossing the homeless guy a free copy of her latest CD.
It costs microsoft nothing, they get a tax writeoff, and it's either useless to the target demographic, or will perpetuate microsoft's monopoly and later charge them their left nut.
I hope that this was a sarcastic post, given the amount of ignorance it contained.
We would like to study ebola, so that we can save your sorry ass if you get it. To do that, we've modified it to weaken it, so we don't kill ourselves studying it. We're not really going to put it in your food and air supply!
As far as why Bush hates funding genetic engineering as a whole you're correct. Your post illustrates PRECISELY why people hate funding it - they are ignorant, scared sheet, and content remaining such.
* was meant to say "multiple <.22 micron HEPA filters"
I don't think Ebola has ever had a vital component of the transcription machinery removed before. It's not a very large virus, and I don't think it can find another gene to replace it. Furthermore, I don't think anyone is talking about releasing this virus into the wild, merely making it easier to work with in the lab, as well as safer.
Why wouldn't you support that?
Before everyone panics, just think for a second. Ebola is NOT AIRBORNE. It is transmitted by direct contact and bodily fluids. It's classified as BSL4 because it's so deadly once you actually get it, not due to its ease of transmission.
Currently, only a few groups have access to BSL4 laboratories, and this has been severely hampering Ebola research. If by taking out the VP30 gene they have reduced the pathogenicity of the virus enough to get the authorities to apply the more appropriate BSL3 tag to the mutant strain, they've succeeded in making an important stride towards expanding the field, while introducing a very minimal risk of an outbreak.
I don't think anyone is talking about drinking the recombinant virus, but merely making it BSL3 instead of BSL4... or even just reducing the risk of working with Ebola under BSL4 conditions.
The idea is that when you take air out of the room, you control the path of the outflow, and thus you can filter the particulates, including viruses. Otherwise, when you open the door, they just tend to diffuse out.
Hearing that hurt my ear. I've been a relatively unwilling AT&T customer 3 times now, due to various mergers and acquisitions, and they've managed to go against the consensus opinions of their customers on every issue that I have encountered, where such a dichotomy existed.
For instance, I purchased my Blackjack from an authorized Cingular dealer, and received unlimited internet for $19.99 per month. I was really happy with the service. After Cingular became AT&T wireless, I began getting service outages, and now it takes me >2 minutes to connect to the internet, and the connection will time out after 2 minutes of being idle, rendering it almost useless. When I called, I was told that AT&T has different internet plans than Cingular, and my Blackjack could only get the $40/month plans, and they wouldn't help me with my service problems. I am still under contract, but it seems that AT&T isn't interested in their part of the deal.
It is perfectly clear that as a part of a government-sanctioned mono- or oligopoly, they have no interest at all in their customer's opinions.
It's time that all large campuses configured their systems hibernate automatically, if left unused for 30 minutes.
Really, there is no reason NOT to use the power management settings built into the OS.
Stop making people take off their shoes, and stop "inspecting" my bottle of fucking sublock, then discussing whether or not it's 0.5g over the allowed size limit.
Can I get my $500'000 now please?
I often think that rense.com subscribers should sterilize themselves. I now resign from any conversation or debate with anyone who is even remotely associated with that site.
You can't resign from the debate because it's been politicized. You can, however, at least use Occam's Razor to figure out which side has more financial and power-related incentive to skew the facts... you can also look at primary literature to get an idea about the science itself, although it's unlikely you'll understand enough to interpret it - I cannot... I may have a graduate degree, but in a different science.
Umm... is that why the Bush administration decided to remove every reference to manmade global warming, as well as projections of all negative effects of global warming from the last NOAA (or whatever it's called) reports? They were just correcting for the bias of the scientists that would receive so much money ($ 0.00) if they falsified the report to say that humans are causing global warming and that it will bite us in the ass?
And I am constantly disheartened when I hear of this bullshit... even more painfully so, given my experience in the field of virology and immunology research.
Actually, I find "AIDS dissent", as you call it, far far more disturbing than the "9-11 Truth" conspiracy. At least in the case of "9-11 Truth", there remains at least SOME possibility for at least SOME of the minor claims of the conspiracy theorists. The case of "AIDS dissent" on the other hand, is rather similar to "gravity dissent".
P.S. As with any AIDS/HIV conspiracy theorist, I have a standing offer: inoculate yourself with 10X ID50 of purified HIV, and if you get a productive infection, but don't get AIDS, you get all my property, and the entire contents of my bank account... and I will quit biological science research. Deal?