"Scientists in Belgium have studied the movement of antibubbles (the exact opposite of regular bubbles)"
I always get a bit annoyed when I see this type of thing. Calling them 'antibubbles' makes them sound exciting, saying they are 'the exact opposite of bubbles' makes them sound intriguing.
The exact opposite of a bubble would be an airborn droplet.
Well, personally I'm an atheist, but I enjoy the Christmas ritual... al lot more than I enjoy poor, misguided Ayn Rand's screeds.
Given that I enjoy and am indeed proud to live in a multicultural society, I have no problem in attempting to encompass other people's beliefs even if the result is grammatically cumbersome. I've no-indea about martingunnarsson's belief system, and so, anyone with manners (such an passe concept) I was attempting to accomodate him/her/it.
However, since you, Anonymous Coward's belief's are entirely clear, may I wish you a Very Merry 'Fuck You Arshole'.
>but *less* battle scenes wouldn't, in my opinion
arrrgh - *fewer* FEWER - not 'less'.
Sorry, the soltice always unleashes the pedant in me.
Less Fighting
Fewer battles
Less blood
fewer deaths
You make some extremely good points, and you make them cogently and cooly.
Personally, I would set down my concerns; about the possible conflict of interest in the study; about the lack of technical oversight of the reports findings in a letter and send it to the company CEO.
The letter should be couched in such a way to make it clear that you are writing becauase you are concerned about the company's security; not because you are disgruntled. Make that very clear, mention in passing the facts about your recent appraisals, and bonus payments.
Leave the CEO in no doubt that you are a professional and you are concerned that the company may be being set up. Tell the CEO that (s)he should not hestitate to contact you, to discuss the issues.
At the very least it will make you feel better. It may even get the company to rethink its policy.
It seems to me that at these prices, actually making a reasonable profit is going to be... challenging.
Consequently, only the companies that use music sales to drive the sales of an own-brand MP3 player will last long in this game.... So Walmart will help suppress the competition, giving Apple an unintentional boost.
Don't get me wrong, he is a splendid, guy, and lulu is spendid site. But what he has discovered here is a splendid way to get free advertising for his new venture.
This is just so wrong, I don't know where to begin. A cancer colony may get started due to a point mutation in a particular cell, but there is NO reason to think that the subsequent rate of mutation is high, or that that there is much natural selection going on within the population of cancer cells - they are unlikely to be specially genetically diverse - unless it is some rare mutation in the DNA replication machinery, in which case they are likely to be diverse.... and dead.
That's a very good point, and this type of technology does in theory allow ISPs to offer premium, expensive unthrottled P2P accounts for people who want them, or super-cheap Web-only accounts.
You're right though. The ISPs made a mistake. They predicated 'unlimited' offers on a pre P2P Internet. Now they are stuffed. The remedies they have at their disposal are dumb-caps, throttling based on app type or generally raising prices. As I say, I believe throttling (with the potential for differential tariffs for different service types) is the least worst.
Let's face it - hard usage caps annoy users, however with P2P traffic currently taking 60-70% of ISPs bandwidth they have to do something.
A more reasonable solution, that some ISPs are looking at is to throttle P2P traffic so that it never takes up more than say 30% of their bandwidth. They use layer 7 packet inspection from guys like P-Cube and Ellacoya .
The rationale? always-on users want to use their P2P stuff, but are not sensitive about the speeds that they get it - they'll just queue up a load of files and come back next morning.
It seems to me like the least worst approach, and is certainly better than hard caps. One benefit for the customer is Web traffic will usually still fly, even though P2P is crawling. I believe Telenor in Sweden is using this stuff.
Shakespeare wrote plays primarily as material for his theatre troupe - that's how he made money; through performance.
Mozart made his money through the patronage of the rich.
Sigh, you know - this U.N bashing gets old very quickly. The U.N is a forum where sovereign governments can get together to attempt joint decision making. Is it fool-proof? hell no.
Are there areas where intergovernmental coordination is useful? hell yes. The ITU (a UN body) makes a decent stab of coordinating radio frequency usage worldwide, the world health organization, the UN high commission on refugees are probably responsible for saving millions of lives.
Is the U.N a branch of the illuminati intent on a single world government? No. But yes there is a place for international rules.
"This will mean censorship of the Internet" - you know that right? When you say censorship, you mean like - what- effective controls on Spam, yes? no? you mean something else?
I think you summarise your issues where you say: "the UN is a little too socialist for my likes". Now, I leave it to you to show which aspects of the U.N charter are socialist.
Here's the charter for you... and here is the text of chapter 1:
Article 1
The Purposes of the United Nations are:
To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.
Article 2
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.
The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.
The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.
Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll.
It isn't *that* different. And look how much support those initiatives you mention garnered.
Not...a...lot
Luckily the U.S government is still subject to a little democrating oversight, so some of its nuttier ideas can get filtered out.
I have to say that the online tax system has probably one of the most functional Web interfaces I've ever come across. It almost makes filing a tax return a pleasure, if that is possible.
EDS has commited some heinous crimes, but this isn't one of them.
Your last line states as an axiom that a child created through cloning and a child created by genetic mixing are equivalent in every important respect. The point of this discussion is to look at whether that is true. So - from the top.
1. "if all you can do is speculate about the [mental wellfare of the child]... hen having children by genetic replication (sometimes known as cloning) is neither better nor worse than any other method
Again you state this as an axiom, seemingly missing the points that I was attempting to make in in the initial post. You derive this axiom from the belief that:
2. "Nor, genetic causation being the crap-shoot it is, does it give a much higher level of predictivity of lifespan or disease risk than ordinary reproduction does, so you can simply put that fantasy aside."
I would like to see you stand that up. Separated twins studies (and yes, I know that there have been a number of flawed ones, but there are also recent validated studies) suggests that genetic causation is implicated in everything from disease suspectability, likelihood of suffering depression - to some more surprising ones - such as the likelihood of marrying a man with a moustache.
If on the other hand, you feel that genetic linkage is a fantasy and that 'nurture' is all - do feel free to present some facts.
3. Twins. Yes I exclude them? Can you think why? Becauase having a twin of the same age provides no special predictive aid. Having a twin who is 40 years older than you might.
So. There are a few ethical questions that do need to be though about and which don't have an equivalent in sexually-produced children.
Against that , let's look at the benefits of reproductive cloning. They are... what exactly?
A way for a childless person to have a child when all other means fail? Not a good enough reason, I think personally.
To try and understand the ethical problems with cloning you need to think about it from the child's perspective and think about the practicalities of the child-parent/clone-original relationship.
Is the father-son dynamic, the same as the original-clone dynamic? How will the son feel about being a clone, biologically identical? how will he fit into society.
You say that being appalled at the idea of circumventing meiosis is weird to you. But that is to misunderstand the issue. It's not just meiosis that we are talking about - cross-fertlization also takes a part.
As an individual created through sexual reproduction I can be sure (twins excluded) that I am biologically unique. I'm not sure how I would feel, and what mental strain would be thrust upon me if I were to be able to look at my mother/father and know that I was an exact biological copy, with an overwhelminmg likelihood of getting - say - prostate/ovarian cancer at age 43.
"Think of the children" is an amusing and oft-quoted cliche, but in this case it is spot on.
Slashdot Mirror
"Scientists in Belgium have studied the movement of antibubbles (the exact opposite of regular bubbles)"
I always get a bit annoyed when I see this type of thing. Calling them 'antibubbles' makes them sound exciting, saying they are 'the exact opposite of bubbles' makes them sound intriguing.
The exact opposite of a bubble would be an airborn droplet.
These are 'hollow bubbles' if anything
Well, personally I'm an atheist, but I enjoy the Christmas ritual... al lot more than I enjoy poor, misguided Ayn Rand's screeds.
Given that I enjoy and am indeed proud to live in a multicultural society, I have no problem in attempting to encompass other people's beliefs even if the result is grammatically cumbersome. I've no-indea about martingunnarsson's belief system, and so, anyone with manners (such an passe concept) I was attempting to accomodate him/her/it.
However, since you, Anonymous Coward's belief's are entirely clear, may I wish you a Very Merry 'Fuck You Arshole'.
Please accept my apologies, I shouldn't post after drinking strong coffee :-)
I hope you have a very Merry Christmas, or whatever equivalent festivity you will be celebrating.
Chris
>but *less* battle scenes wouldn't, in my opinion arrrgh - *fewer* FEWER - not 'less'. Sorry, the soltice always unleashes the pedant in me. Less Fighting Fewer battles Less blood fewer deaths
Canada, Europe, Oz ... would be my bet.
Exactly the same here - using the Mac OS X version
You make some extremely good points, and you make them cogently and cooly.
Personally, I would set down my concerns; about the possible conflict of interest in the study; about the lack of technical oversight of the reports findings in a letter and send it to the company CEO.
The letter should be couched in such a way to make it clear that you are writing becauase you are concerned about the company's security; not because you are disgruntled. Make that very clear, mention in passing the facts about your recent appraisals, and bonus payments.
Leave the CEO in no doubt that you are a professional and you are concerned that the company may be being set up. Tell the CEO that (s)he should not hestitate to contact you, to discuss the issues.
At the very least it will make you feel better. It may even get the company to rethink its policy.
It seems to me that at these prices, actually making a reasonable profit is going to be... challenging.
... So Walmart will help suppress the competition, giving Apple an unintentional boost.
Consequently, only the companies that use music sales to drive the sales of an own-brand MP3 player will last long in this game.
Is "please visit Lulu.com".
Don't get me wrong, he is a splendid, guy, and lulu is spendid site. But what he has discovered here is a splendid way to get free advertising for his new venture.
Trouble is; we're talking about cold viruses here, not bacteriophages capable of infecting bacteria. It's why you never see E.coli with a runny nose.
This is just so wrong, I don't know where to begin. A cancer colony may get started due to a point mutation in a particular cell, but there is NO reason to think that the subsequent rate of mutation is high, or that that there is much natural selection going on within the population of cancer cells - they are unlikely to be specially genetically diverse - unless it is some rare mutation in the DNA replication machinery, in which case they are likely to be diverse.... and dead.
Yes, well, but...
Since
1. The cold virus is a virus
2. Antibiotics are effective against bacteria
This is not an issue
Putting antibiotic resistence markers in a virus would be like giving cough medicine to an oak tree
I'm not usually one to call 'Troll', but...
That's a very good point, and this type of technology does in theory allow ISPs to offer premium, expensive unthrottled P2P accounts for people who want them, or super-cheap Web-only accounts.
You're right though. The ISPs made a mistake. They predicated 'unlimited' offers on a pre P2P Internet. Now they are stuffed. The remedies they have at their disposal are dumb-caps, throttling based on app type or generally raising prices. As I say, I believe throttling (with the potential for differential tariffs for different service types) is the least worst.
A more reasonable solution, that some ISPs are looking at is to throttle P2P traffic so that it never takes up more than say 30% of their bandwidth. They use layer 7 packet inspection from guys like P-Cube and Ellacoya .
The rationale? always-on users want to use their P2P stuff, but are not sensitive about the speeds that they get it - they'll just queue up a load of files and come back next morning.
It seems to me like the least worst approach, and is certainly better than hard caps. One benefit for the customer is Web traffic will usually still fly, even though P2P is crawling. I believe Telenor in Sweden is using this stuff.
Shakespeare wrote plays primarily as material for his theatre troupe - that's how he made money; through performance. Mozart made his money through the patronage of the rich.
"I don't know if the Iraq decision was right or not, but what the UN did was wrong"
Point 2 -
Sigh, you know - this U.N bashing gets old very quickly. The U.N is a forum where sovereign governments can get together to attempt joint decision making. Is it fool-proof? hell no.
Are there areas where intergovernmental coordination is useful? hell yes. The ITU (a UN body) makes a decent stab of coordinating radio frequency usage worldwide, the world health organization, the UN high commission on refugees are probably responsible for saving millions of lives.
Is the U.N a branch of the illuminati intent on a single world government? No. But yes there is a place for international rules.
"This will mean censorship of the Internet" - you know that right? When you say censorship, you mean like - what- effective controls on Spam, yes? no? you mean something else?
I think you summarise your issues where you say: "the UN is a little too socialist for my likes". Now, I leave it to you to show which aspects of the U.N charter are socialist.
Here's the charter for you... and here is the text of chapter 1:
Article 1
The Purposes of the United Nations are:
To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.
Article 2
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.
The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.
The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.
Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll.
It isn't *that* different. And look how much support those initiatives you mention garnered. Not...a...lot Luckily the U.S government is still subject to a little democrating oversight, so some of its nuttier ideas can get filtered out.
Absolutely. And lets keep out of public libraries too. Damn poor people
I have to say that the online tax system has probably one of the most functional Web interfaces I've ever come across. It almost makes filing a tax return a pleasure, if that is possible.
EDS has commited some heinous crimes, but this isn't one of them.
The point you are missing though is that your are not paying to play a game. You are paying for a slice of nostalgia.
You didn't play Space Invaders in college, therefore you Aren't The Target Demographic, you young whippersnapper.
Damn!
If indeed the only unusual feature were "a startling resemblance to daddy in the looks department" there would be little or no problem at all.
Let's go through that point by point, shall we?
... what exactly?
Your last line states as an axiom that a child created through cloning and a child created by genetic mixing are equivalent in every important respect. The point of this discussion is to look at whether that is true. So - from the top.
1. "if all you can do is speculate about the [mental wellfare of the child]... hen having children by genetic replication (sometimes known as cloning) is neither better nor worse than any other method
Again you state this as an axiom, seemingly missing the points that I was attempting to make in in the initial post. You derive this axiom from the belief that:
2. "Nor, genetic causation being the crap-shoot it is, does it give a much higher level of predictivity of lifespan or disease risk than ordinary reproduction does, so you can simply put that fantasy aside."
I would like to see you stand that up. Separated twins studies (and yes, I know that there have been a number of flawed ones, but there are also recent validated studies) suggests that genetic causation is implicated in everything from disease suspectability, likelihood of suffering depression - to some more surprising ones - such as the likelihood of marrying a man with a moustache.
If on the other hand, you feel that genetic linkage is a fantasy and that 'nurture' is all - do feel free to present some facts.
3. Twins. Yes I exclude them? Can you think why? Becauase having a twin of the same age provides no special predictive aid. Having a twin who is 40 years older than you might.
So. There are a few ethical questions that do need to be though about and which don't have an equivalent in sexually-produced children.
Against that , let's look at the benefits of reproductive cloning. They are
A way for a childless person to have a child when all other means fail? Not a good enough reason, I think personally.
To try and understand the ethical problems with cloning you need to think about it from the child's perspective and think about the practicalities of the child-parent/clone-original relationship.
Is the father-son dynamic, the same as the original-clone dynamic? How will the son feel about being a clone, biologically identical? how will he fit into society.
You say that being appalled at the idea of circumventing meiosis is weird to you. But that is to misunderstand the issue. It's not just meiosis that we are talking about - cross-fertlization also takes a part.
As an individual created through sexual reproduction I can be sure (twins excluded) that I am biologically unique. I'm not sure how I would feel, and what mental strain would be thrust upon me if I were to be able to look at my mother/father and know that I was an exact biological copy, with an overwhelminmg likelihood of getting - say - prostate/ovarian cancer at age 43.
"Think of the children" is an amusing and oft-quoted cliche, but in this case it is spot on.