Am in support of using stem-cells to repair organs. It's not really unehical at all. I mean an embryo doesn't have a personality or a self so it's hardly going to miss being alive.
I don't agree with this, but is it really flamebait? According to an ABC poll four out of ten Americans think that therapeutic cloning is OK. In order to support cloning you pretty much have to agree with the parent post.
For my 2c, I don't know if an embryo is a person or not. Since we define the death of a human as the end of brain function, my hunch is that life begins at the start of brain function. This is a can of worms too (what constitutes brain function?), but then so is the parent poster's position (what constitutes a personality or a "self"?). It seems wise to err on the side of not killing humans (or things that might be human). We were all once embryos too!
So they can make money when people forget to send the form on time, or fill it in incorrectly.
Several companies in the UK do the same for extended warranties. They say "pay lots of money and if your machine doesn't break, we'll refund it after five years". You typically get 30 days after the five years to get your money back, and most people will just forget.
At least you're honest enough to state the second part, but where did that "of course" come from? Why is it "of course" a good thing to set price controls when there is an obvious legitimate economic explanation of how this is a bad thing?
Because getting nice coffee isn't the only issue at stake here. Our corporations have encouraged overproduction of coffee beans, which has depressed the price to the extent that many farmers are in big trouble.
The realist in me does want to believe that price controls are bad, but that principle doesn't just apply to coffee. In Europe and the USA we pay farmers subsidies that make their products cheaper than the competition so anyone who goes bust because their coffee isn't worth enough doesn't have many alternatives (except maybe cocaine, but we don't want to go there). Maybe if we stopped our subsidies it would be fair to say that the coffee farmers shouldn't have them either.
I like TeaDirect, but for instant coffee I find that Percol gives a better taste while retaining the warm fuzzies of fair trade.
Be aware if you buy "fairtrade" that they guarantee a fixed minimum price for the coffee growers, which is a good thing (of course) but removes a major incentive to grow the best tasting coffee. So you have to trust the quality control of the company unless you want to drink crap for charity.
Luckily you can get the best of both worlds, if you try a few fairtrade brands and find one you like.
If good guys develop ways to get around spam filters, couldn't they patent them and start prosecuting spammers who copy their methods? Or is that a cure worse than the disease?
There *were* other operating systems with "windows" in the name, both prior to, and during the early history of Microsoft Windows. If you read the legal papers posted at the Lindows.com's website, you'll see lists of such products. Apparently Microsoft bought most of them out, or ran them out of business, *then* registered the standalone "windows" trademark once they had been eliminated. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft deals with this during the trial in March.
I see lots of products that would match if you did "grep windows" but how many are operating systems? A couple of them, eg WinLinux, are (and maybe the "Windows Prank Kit" might be confused with Windows 95) but most suggest immediately that they are third party software for Windows. Still, if even a couple of them are actual OSses, and MS hasn't sued, it will look bad for them.
Note also that for most of its existence, Microsoft Windows was itself "just a component" - an optional window manager on top of DOS, just like X Windows on UNIX.
Yes, but the other OSes are not called Windows or anything similar. *nix has the X-Window system, but that's just a component of an OS distribution that you might want installed on your PC. No chance of confusing Windows XP with Mandrake 9.2. Likewise on Mac, it's not called Windows, though it has them (indeed, didn't they have them before Microsoft?).
Lindows sounds sufficiently similar to Windows to cause confusion, IMHO. Slashdot readers can easily figure out that it is not an MS product, because we know that the "Lin" means Linux and that Hell has not frozen over. But the judge has to consider the public as a whole.
It's a tough break for Lindows because they do actually seem to want to provde people with something that resembles MS Windows. I don't think this is illegal (or it shouldn't be) in itself but it comes with the burden of convincing people that their product is like Windows while making it clear that it is NOT Windows or MS endorsed.
Don't forget the extra $50,000 you gotta pay the driver for hazard pay, and the 2 HumVees and 6 soldiers that have to accompany the tank truck to stop guerillas from rocket launching the truck into oblivion.
Plus the losses you incur when the guerillas succeed. I reckon a lot of the cost would be in air cover for the fuel convoys. Flying planes and helicopters not only costs large amounts of fuel, it also costs a lot in aircraft maintenance. That's before you consider the loss of any multi-million dollar aircraft.
I'm sure Haliburton (or whoever) is making money on this (otherwise they wouldn't be doing it). I don't know what the convoy protection cost is but I'd be careful about concluding that most of the $40 is going to their bank account.
Also, let's not forget that fewer trucks means fewer targets for the guerillas and therefore hopefully less casualties, so maybe this fuel cell idea isn't so bad.
Re:At least there's one thing it fixes ...
on
iCal 1.5.2 Released
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· Score: 1
iCal 1.5.1 also broke the alarm system for me under 10.2.8. The latest upgrade makes them work again. Yay!
Stupid? Hardly. He's managed to steal the Presidency, enrich himself and his wealthy friends, illegally invade two countries (whilst fooling most of the US population)
Following on from our earlier SPEWS discussions, is the official Slashdot position that it's OK to block ISPs who host spammers but not OK to invade countries that host the organizers of 9/11?
The reason domestic guns could be prevalent then and yet not used is becaused a large proportion of the adult population had just seen the horrors of what happens when guns really get out of control.
So gun crime should have fallen after Vietnam. But I don't think it did.
There is no argument that can explain why this should only apply to couple made up of a man and a woman.
Nor is there an argument that says it should apply to couples. If gay marriage is OK, why not polygamy? After all, it's only some religions that say marriage has to be between two people.
And to clarify, before any confusion, I'm not a Muslim, or a Mormon outcast. I do have some Muslim friends.
You mean 12-year-old girls? This isn't going to help either, the only way to solve the p2p piracy thing is to provide better ways for the customers to get music without them feeling robbed, buying a CD with 1 good song, and 10 fillers doesn't make the customer feel right at all, so customers use p2p instead.
If you don't like Windows or Mac OS, for whatever reason, does that make it OK to use a pirated version? Shouldn't you use Linux instead? If people stuck to legal software, Linux would probably be much more widely used right now.
I don't like this idea that because the RIAA provides poor value for money, it entitles people to violate the copyright law. If you don't like the licensing terms, don't use the product. We complain if GPL code gets ripped off. If that copyright should be respected, why should others be ignored?
Wow. Evidence? Does the UN routinely "bash" Israel?
A UN committee recently approved a draft resolution condeming the killing of Palestinian children in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Some delegates at the committee expressed concern that the resolution seemed to ignore the plight of Israeli children killed in the fighting, and in response Israel introduced a similar resolution for their own children, which they later withdrew in the face of opposition. So yes, I'd say there was an anti-Israel bias in the UN, at least in the General Assembly. That's not to say that Israel can do no wrong. Even a biased assembly gets it right from time to time.
Oh My God. A health system where you will be treated regardless, where you can get a heart bypass, a kidney transplant, cancer therapy or IVF treatment without someone first asking for your health insurance details or your credit card number and you choose to dismiss it because it's egalitarian?
True, they don't ask for your credit card number in the NHS. They ask for your postcode. This "postcode lottery" applies to IVF probably more strongly than to any other treatment. A government advisory body has recommended that this be changed, but there are fears about the cost.
Like the US, you get much better care in the UK if you can afford private insurance. If you can't, then you can get treated for free, but you will probably have to wait for months and you might get second-rate treatment (not because the doctors and nurses are crap but because they are overstretched and lack drugs and equipment).
Having lived in both the UK and US I honestly can't tell which system is better. Uninsured friends of mine in the US have managed to find healthcare they can afford, but they've had to endure the waiting times that are the norm in Britain's NHS. One thing that often happens in the US system (on TV at least, I've not seen it happen but I'm sure it does) is that patients without insurance but with assests (eg savings, own home, etc) are forced to give up everything to get the treatment, before any kind of government assistance kicks in. This doesn't generally happen in the UK, unless you need permanent care (eg, in a nursing home for the elderly), or you have a deadly disease and are too scared to wait for the NHS to treat you.
My right to free speech ends when I exercise that right contrary to the purposes of the U.N. The U.N. holds all kinds of conferences where they condemn racism and sexism
So what constitutes racism? In 1975 (resolution 33/79) the UN General Assembly decided that Zionism was racism, but that changed in 1991 (resolution 46/86).
Some people still think that Zionism is racism. I don't want to argue that here. I want both sides of the argument to be free to make their points so everyone can decide for themselves. Can we trust the UN to do that?
You're right, bugs could still get in if the source is open. So what happens if a bug is found way after the election?
Imagine if you were elected President, and two years into your term some hacker found a bug that had changed the result of the election. Your administration would be undermined big time. You could claim the bug got there by accident and you acted in good faith, but not everybody is going to believe you. The Al Frankens (if you are Republican) and Sean Hannitys (if you're a Democrat) would have a field day. What would we do about this? New elections (if that's constitutional)? This isn't an argument for closed source, ignorance isn't bliss, not with so much potential for abuse. But it's an issue we need to deal with.
On that 404 page it tells you to report broken links, and gives an address for that purpose. They also ask you to paste the non-functioning URL into the message.
\begin{tongueInCheek}
The death penalty, according to the liberals, is no deterrent because if you are crazy enough to kill, you won't be deterred by the threat of execution.
Fair enough, but that's not going to be the case with spam. A few spammer executions would tilt the risk-benefit calculation hugely against spamming, thus eliminating the problem and saving millions of dollars (which will help the economy and therefore improve standards of living and therefore improve life expectancy -- thus saving lives).
Next up, the death penalty for people who stuff bubble gum in coin slots so I can't buy my bus tickets...
\end{tongueInCheek}
I grew up in England. I lived there for 23 years. At no point during that time was owning a gun legal, unless you were using it for hunting, and even then, only under very specific rules and regulations.
Before the amendments to the Firearms Act in 1988, you didn't need a licence to own a double-barrel shotgun.
People argue that society is non-trivial and chain effect of actions, most chain actions stop and celestial bodies are impacted on a minimal level...if you wanted to be non-trivial perhaps you could exist as a sun, comet, nebula, or some other celestial body.
Trivial vs non-trivial is all relative. Even the stars won't live forever. According to the currently popular theories, the universe will eventually become a very dark, cold, boring place. Furthermore, since there are an estimated 10^22 stars, doesn't that make the Sun a bit trivial too? As a piece of the Universe, it could be argued, it's not so important. Would the rest of the Universe miss the Sun if it went away?
Although it goes one layer closer to the source, fMRI has the same flaw as any other lie-detector system (which this basically acts as, except that instead of detecting lies, they want to detect the far less tangible "appeal" of a given advertisement).
But are people who volunteer for fMRI studies going to try to screw the results? This reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where Calvin fills in a marketing survey for bubble gum, and requests something weird like "curry flavor" just because he likes to mess with the marketing people.
Internal repression was going on in Egypt as well as South Africa. I'm not denying or condoning that, just asking if it is accurate so say that US weapons supplies "set the stage" for the wars in Africa.
Over the past fifteen years, thirty-two of the fifty-three African countries experienced violent conflict. During the cold war years (1950-1989), the U.S. sent $1.5 billion in arms and training to Africa thus setting the stage for the current round of conflicts.
But did the US send the weapons to the countries that fought the wars? Could anyone with access to the numbers tell us how much of this $1.5 billion went to Egypt and South Africa?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't agree with this, but is it really flamebait? According to an ABC poll four out of ten Americans think that therapeutic cloning is OK. In order to support cloning you pretty much have to agree with the parent post.
For my 2c, I don't know if an embryo is a person or not. Since we define the death of a human as the end of brain function, my hunch is that life begins at the start of brain function. This is a can of worms too (what constitutes brain function?), but then so is the parent poster's position (what constitutes a personality or a "self"?). It seems wise to err on the side of not killing humans (or things that might be human). We were all once embryos too!
So they can make money when people forget to send the form on time, or fill it in incorrectly.
Several companies in the UK do the same for extended warranties. They say "pay lots of money and if your machine doesn't break, we'll refund it after five years". You typically get 30 days after the five years to get your money back, and most people will just forget.
Because getting nice coffee isn't the only issue at stake here. Our corporations have encouraged overproduction of coffee beans, which has depressed the price to the extent that many farmers are in big trouble.
The realist in me does want to believe that price controls are bad, but that principle doesn't just apply to coffee. In Europe and the USA we pay farmers subsidies that make their products cheaper than the competition so anyone who goes bust because their coffee isn't worth enough doesn't have many alternatives (except maybe cocaine, but we don't want to go there). Maybe if we stopped our subsidies it would be fair to say that the coffee farmers shouldn't have them either.
Be aware if you buy "fairtrade" that they guarantee a fixed minimum price for the coffee growers, which is a good thing (of course) but removes a major incentive to grow the best tasting coffee. So you have to trust the quality control of the company unless you want to drink crap for charity.
Luckily you can get the best of both worlds, if you try a few fairtrade brands and find one you like.
If good guys develop ways to get around spam filters, couldn't they patent them and start prosecuting spammers who copy their methods? Or is that a cure worse than the disease?
I see lots of products that would match if you did "grep windows" but how many are operating systems? A couple of them, eg WinLinux, are (and maybe the "Windows Prank Kit" might be confused with Windows 95) but most suggest immediately that they are third party software for Windows. Still, if even a couple of them are actual OSses, and MS hasn't sued, it will look bad for them.
Note also that for most of its existence, Microsoft Windows was itself "just a component" - an optional window manager on top of DOS, just like X Windows on UNIX.
Good point.
Lindows sounds sufficiently similar to Windows to cause confusion, IMHO. Slashdot readers can easily figure out that it is not an MS product, because we know that the "Lin" means Linux and that Hell has not frozen over. But the judge has to consider the public as a whole.
It's a tough break for Lindows because they do actually seem to want to provde people with something that resembles MS Windows. I don't think this is illegal (or it shouldn't be) in itself but it comes with the burden of convincing people that their product is like Windows while making it clear that it is NOT Windows or MS endorsed.
Plus the losses you incur when the guerillas succeed. I reckon a lot of the cost would be in air cover for the fuel convoys. Flying planes and helicopters not only costs large amounts of fuel, it also costs a lot in aircraft maintenance. That's before you consider the loss of any multi-million dollar aircraft.
I'm sure Haliburton (or whoever) is making money on this (otherwise they wouldn't be doing it). I don't know what the convoy protection cost is but I'd be careful about concluding that most of the $40 is going to their bank account.
Also, let's not forget that fewer trucks means fewer targets for the guerillas and therefore hopefully less casualties, so maybe this fuel cell idea isn't so bad.
iCal 1.5.1 also broke the alarm system for me under 10.2.8. The latest upgrade makes them work again. Yay!
Following on from our earlier SPEWS discussions, is the official Slashdot position that it's OK to block ISPs who host spammers but not OK to invade countries that host the organizers of 9/11?
So gun crime should have fallen after Vietnam. But I don't think it did.
No, that's part of the BOINC process, you do everything twice to make sure it's right.
Nor is there an argument that says it should apply to couples. If gay marriage is OK, why not polygamy? After all, it's only some religions that say marriage has to be between two people.
And to clarify, before any confusion, I'm not a Muslim, or a Mormon outcast. I do have some Muslim friends.
If you don't like Windows or Mac OS, for whatever reason, does that make it OK to use a pirated version? Shouldn't you use Linux instead? If people stuck to legal software, Linux would probably be much more widely used right now.
I don't like this idea that because the RIAA provides poor value for money, it entitles people to violate the copyright law. If you don't like the licensing terms, don't use the product. We complain if GPL code gets ripped off. If that copyright should be respected, why should others be ignored?
A UN committee recently approved a draft resolution condeming the killing of Palestinian children in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Some delegates at the committee expressed concern that the resolution seemed to ignore the plight of Israeli children killed in the fighting, and in response Israel introduced a similar resolution for their own children, which they later withdrew in the face of opposition. So yes, I'd say there was an anti-Israel bias in the UN, at least in the General Assembly. That's not to say that Israel can do no wrong. Even a biased assembly gets it right from time to time.
True, they don't ask for your credit card number in the NHS. They ask for your postcode. This "postcode lottery" applies to IVF probably more strongly than to any other treatment. A government advisory body has recommended that this be changed, but there are fears about the cost.
Like the US, you get much better care in the UK if you can afford private insurance. If you can't, then you can get treated for free, but you will probably have to wait for months and you might get second-rate treatment (not because the doctors and nurses are crap but because they are overstretched and lack drugs and equipment).
Having lived in both the UK and US I honestly can't tell which system is better. Uninsured friends of mine in the US have managed to find healthcare they can afford, but they've had to endure the waiting times that are the norm in Britain's NHS. One thing that often happens in the US system (on TV at least, I've not seen it happen but I'm sure it does) is that patients without insurance but with assests (eg savings, own home, etc) are forced to give up everything to get the treatment, before any kind of government assistance kicks in. This doesn't generally happen in the UK, unless you need permanent care (eg, in a nursing home for the elderly), or you have a deadly disease and are too scared to wait for the NHS to treat you.
So what constitutes racism? In 1975 (resolution 33/79) the UN General Assembly decided that Zionism was racism, but that changed in 1991 (resolution 46/86).
Some people still think that Zionism is racism. I don't want to argue that here. I want both sides of the argument to be free to make their points so everyone can decide for themselves. Can we trust the UN to do that?
Imagine if you were elected President, and two years into your term some hacker found a bug that had changed the result of the election. Your administration would be undermined big time. You could claim the bug got there by accident and you acted in good faith, but not everybody is going to believe you. The Al Frankens (if you are Republican) and Sean Hannitys (if you're a Democrat) would have a field day. What would we do about this? New elections (if that's constitutional)? This isn't an argument for closed source, ignorance isn't bliss, not with so much potential for abuse. But it's an issue we need to deal with.
On that 404 page it tells you to report broken links, and gives an address for that purpose. They also ask you to paste the non-functioning URL into the message.
The death penalty, according to the liberals, is no deterrent because if you are crazy enough to kill, you won't be deterred by the threat of execution. Fair enough, but that's not going to be the case with spam. A few spammer executions would tilt the risk-benefit calculation hugely against spamming, thus eliminating the problem and saving millions of dollars (which will help the economy and therefore improve standards of living and therefore improve life expectancy -- thus saving lives).
Next up, the death penalty for people who stuff bubble gum in coin slots so I can't buy my bus tickets... \end{tongueInCheek}
Before the amendments to the Firearms Act in 1988, you didn't need a licence to own a double-barrel shotgun.
Trivial vs non-trivial is all relative. Even the stars won't live forever. According to the currently popular theories, the universe will eventually become a very dark, cold, boring place. Furthermore, since there are an estimated 10^22 stars, doesn't that make the Sun a bit trivial too? As a piece of the Universe, it could be argued, it's not so important. Would the rest of the Universe miss the Sun if it went away?
But are people who volunteer for fMRI studies going to try to screw the results? This reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where Calvin fills in a marketing survey for bubble gum, and requests something weird like "curry flavor" just because he likes to mess with the marketing people.
Internal repression was going on in Egypt as well as South Africa. I'm not denying or condoning that, just asking if it is accurate so say that US weapons supplies "set the stage" for the wars in Africa.
But did the US send the weapons to the countries that fought the wars? Could anyone with access to the numbers tell us how much of this $1.5 billion went to Egypt and South Africa?