I can't think of a better way to drive a mammal crazy. Honestly, could you imagine yourself living in such a place as you describe?!
How about some dirt, vegetation, and some social interaction? At least something like a zoo enclosure that vaguely attempts to imitate the animals' natural environment.
I've been in rooms of hundreds of mice caged 3 to a feederbox and sorted by age and sex. The behaviors mentioned are few and far between...
Well that's what this scientist thought too, until he put cameras on them during the night, when mice are active by nature. When you were in the room, they just wanted to go back to sleep!
Re:Maybe they're bored out of their little skulls?
on
Psychotic Lab Mice
·
· Score: 1
These mice aren't crazy. They just need some entertainment!
That prisoner clawing at the wall in solitary confinement isn't crazy, he just needs some entertainment!
When I worked in the animal facility at my college, they had many small rooms instead of one large room. I don't know how sensitive to overcrowding mice and rats are, but we usually had no more than 40 rats in any given room (1 large or 2 small per cage...)
I can't help finding it odd that you would describe a room full of cages a "pleasant environment".
Mice are like any common pet-- they react to pain, can be scared, can be stressed and need some private space.
I apreciate the point you're making, but wouldn't it be more effective to compare mice with US? Us humans. We, too, react to pain, can be scared, can be stressed and need some private space. We mammals are all pretty similar in those ways.
How much further along would X be if Y didn't exist?
The question seems to rely on the premise that X would be further if only more developers, time, and resources were put into it. I would argue that X in many cases has progressed further than it would have without Y. Technologies are shared, healthy competitions are developed, different companies fund different projects (and would avoid funding the same project for political reasons, etc)... It's not zero-sum.
You may have a point, in general, but as far as I know, GNOME 2.0/2.2 development has progressed even faster than GNOME itself anticipated. Did GNOME promise HP that 2.0 would be "stable" by the end of 2002? If not, then it's really not GNOME's fault, it's HP's. [I haven't read the article.]
Oh, and drop the "if robots came alive" thing. That's like teaching a philosophy class and asking "What if garfield came out of the newspaper and he was real".
How so?
At what point do we call something a "person" for purposes of rights?
I would agree that this is a good ethical issue, but I would probably reword it slightly: At what point do we call something "sentient" for purposes of rights? In fact, this is an issue of ethics even today.
Should scientists live in fear of upsetting the established "order of nature?" Why?
An interesting question.
Say you find an anonymous binary executable lying around on your hard drive. You want to find out what it's for, so you fire up a hex editor to reverse engineer it. You successfully decipher pieces of the program, here and there, but some of it is left unknown. Based on what you do know about it, and assuming that much is safe, do you execute the program (as root), running the risk of it destroying data on the drive?
Perhaps the question could be reworded: Should scientists have faith that they're not interfering with any yet-unknown balances of nature?
Both cities were major production sites for weapons and military vehicles.
Calling an entire city a "production site" seems rather broad to me. I wonder what percentage of the cities' resources were used for military production.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't think of a better way to drive a mammal crazy. Honestly, could you imagine yourself living in such a place as you describe?!
How about some dirt, vegetation, and some social interaction? At least something like a zoo enclosure that vaguely attempts to imitate the animals' natural environment.
I've been in rooms of hundreds of mice caged 3 to a feederbox and sorted by age and sex. The behaviors mentioned are few and far between...
Well that's what this scientist thought too, until he put cameras on them during the night, when mice are active by nature. When you were in the room, they just wanted to go back to sleep!
These mice aren't crazy. They just need some entertainment!
That prisoner clawing at the wall in solitary confinement isn't crazy, he just needs some entertainment!
When I worked in the animal facility at my college, they had many small rooms instead of one large room. I don't know how sensitive to overcrowding mice and rats are, but we usually had no more than 40 rats in any given room (1 large or 2 small per cage ...)
I can't help finding it odd that you would describe a room full of cages a "pleasant environment".
Mice are like any common pet-- they react to pain, can be scared, can be stressed and need some private space.
I apreciate the point you're making, but wouldn't it be more effective to compare mice with US? Us humans. We, too, react to pain, can be scared, can be stressed and need some private space. We mammals are all pretty similar in those ways.
Well he's snapping at you, but as his fellow vegetarian (level 5 here), I must say I was also amused by his nonsensical comment. :)
Well they won't be starving after doing gigs like this for the MPAA.
I prefer my starving artists indie, thank you.
How much further along would X be if Y didn't exist?
The question seems to rely on the premise that X would be further if only more developers, time, and resources were put into it. I would argue that X in many cases has progressed further than it would have without Y. Technologies are shared, healthy competitions are developed, different companies fund different projects (and would avoid funding the same project for political reasons, etc)... It's not zero-sum.
I know they test-fire birds at the fuselage ...
What?! Could you point me to a reference?
This speaks to gaming [mis-]conceptions. Aired last night on the NPR program Sound Print. It's good. Funny too!
You may have a point, in general, but as far as I know, GNOME 2.0/2.2 development has progressed even faster than GNOME itself anticipated. Did GNOME promise HP that 2.0 would be "stable" by the end of 2002? If not, then it's really not GNOME's fault, it's HP's.
[I haven't read the article.]
Oh, and drop the "if robots came alive" thing. That's like teaching a philosophy class and asking "What if garfield came out of the newspaper and he was real". How so?
At what point do we call something a "person" for purposes of rights?
I would agree that this is a good ethical issue, but I would probably reword it slightly: At what point do we call something "sentient" for purposes of rights? In fact, this is an issue of ethics even today.
Should scientists live in fear of upsetting the established "order of nature?" Why?
An interesting question.
Say you find an anonymous binary executable lying around on your hard drive. You want to find out what it's for, so you fire up a hex editor to reverse engineer it. You successfully decipher pieces of the program, here and there, but some of it is left unknown. Based on what you do know about it, and assuming that much is safe, do you execute the program (as root), running the risk of it destroying data on the drive?
Perhaps the question could be reworded: Should scientists have faith that they're not interfering with any yet-unknown balances of nature?
Both cities were major production sites for weapons and military vehicles.
Calling an entire city a "production site" seems rather broad to me. I wonder what percentage of the cities' resources were used for military production.
You make good points of course. But the question remains: Could a similar effect have been achieved by dropping the bombs on less inhabited areas?
> > These were cities full of civilians that got nuked
> Technically they were military support infrastructure.
How so?