Yep, it does seem more accurate to go with a po-mo flavoured view.
I eat pork knowing full-well I don't have a consistent ethical justification for my participation in a cruel industry. Even if it was humane, I can't make a convincing case for why I should be allowed to take a life for my own pleasure (it's not really a need, I could be vegetarian).
Living with that ambiguity is, I believe, more mature than clinging to demonstrably false or partial notions.
Our ability to use violence to kill is precisely what allows us to be on the top of the food chain. It still doesn't prove the lion in any way "superior" to the antelope- they're just different.
So, might makes right? That's exactly the attitude that lets barbarians goths become European nobility.
It's also problematic because a number of historical wrongs have been addressed by non-violent means. I would hope we don't simply tolerate women's vote because they'd be too much of a pain otherwise -- as opposed to considering them our equals because they could kill and maim enough of us.
In fact, in most of the world I would think that a non-violent campaign of persuasion would be seen as more mature, evolved and superior to such an overthrow as you mention.
OK, ok, it's rough using the Nazi reference on a site like slashdot... but you're asking that question on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Thinking about that, I'd have to say I don't want any state telling any parents they can or can not have children. It's just too dangerous- where do we draw the line? Who decides?
For those who want an unconventional point of view on the question, I recommend Beyond Boundaries (Amazon).
Funny how 8 years later, all the arguments in TFA are exactly the lame arguments Noske blasts in that book.
Noske used a neat example of research offered to Amnesty International using pigs to evaluate effects of torture on humans. Pigs make good models, because their skin is so similar -- but wait a second, if they're similar, why don't they have any rights? Oops... from TFA:
What new subhuman combination should be produced and for what purpose? At what point would it be considered human? And what rights, if any, should it have?
Ahem, *Sub*-human says it all: they're below, we're on top. Now don't get me wrong, I had pork for supper. But to assume we're on top for anything besides a food chain is hard to prove (and bible references don't count as proof in my books).
Most of the debate around the ethical problems posed by chimeras assume that distinction, but it never really was there.
This is why Rifkin's attitude makes more sense. What gives us the right to blur the species line in the first place? Why do we insist on splicing fish genes into tomatoes, bacteria into food plants? The risk can not yet be known, and for whose advantage are these apprentice sorcerers working?
OK, I've said my bit, and donned the asbestos underwear. Flame away if you wish:)
Political pressure helps, but right now market solutions are probably the easiest way to deal with the crisis. If you have the means to install solar panels or can invest in renewables, go for it.
The most cost-effective and elegant solutions are conservation oriented. Compact fluorescent light-bulbs, LCD rather than CRT monitors, etc... Hybrid or other efficient cars are better than conventional, mass transit beats any car, and changing lifestyles and city planning to reduce the trips we need to make is most elegant.
Energy use estimates have been wildly inaccurate in the past as we got more efficient in using it. At the same time, better tech is getting cheaper as more people buy it and it reaches commodity status. Buying compact fluorescent bulbs 10 years ago didn't just save the energy of that bulb, it helped set in motion a market dynamic that has made them 4 to 5 times cheaper today, and more widely available. Same with LCDs... we as techies can be advocates for this and emerging technology- stuff that meets the same or more needs with less energy.
Quite right, it's supposed to be a standard. Programs with stored procedures tend to be less maintainable despite what its advocates say.
They have their place though. For certain operations where performance is critical, it makes sense to use a SP. Problem is we often assume certain parts will be performance hazards before actually benchmarking.
Seems to me Hibernate is the closest there is in that field. IIRC its lead is now working on EJB3 specs.
It's a Jboss project, and I've used it with Tomcat without problems.
site:slashdot.org could work better if our archives were more easily crawlable.
If you understand how PageRank works, you'll understand why the boingboing archives beat the hell out of Slashdot archives. One is two links deep for every story, the other insanely deep for older stories.
Re-doing that page we would let Google and other search engines do all the heavy lifting, and it would cost a whole lot less than buying a new server.
The features developed for answering e-comm customer service questions might actually map quite well to help desk services... from letting you transfer to the right person to building a knowledge bank from your responses- letting you avoid unnecessary typing when the nth person that morning asks you about the same bug.
IM also doesn't have to be answered immediately- a response that says your request has been queued would be sufficient for some.
That's not the surprising part - we already knew as much.
The mystery is why they finally clued in. If we understand that and can repeat this feat more often, we might have a real impact on public opinion and policies.
Seeing the number of diseases that can cross the species boundary between fowl and humans, monkeys and humans or pigs and humans, we should wonder about any new technology that makes that crossing easier.
I understand there are benefits to growing replacement organs on monkeys or pigs, or using other animals to produce medicine. The risk may be small, but the consequences could affect tens or hundreds of millions...
I'd much rather exhaust possibilities with stem-cell research than start playing apprentice sorcerers with chimeras. This is not anti-science - we just need to realize there are inherently more risks to certain types of research that may make it unethical.
Get them to commit voting first and they'll learn about the issues. If they already decided to vote, they'll be pissed to learn about Diebold.
However, if you start by telling an 18 year-old kid that hasn't considered voting yet, talk about electronic voting fraud is going to bore and alienate them.
In my long years of activism, if there is one lesson I have learned it is this: mobilization always precedes education. I might not agree with their first vote, but the odds of them becoming responsible voters increase if they realize now how important it is to be involved.
Well, not knowing we can make a difference is no reason not to try. I don't see how that's emotional language.
Nor do I believe the changes would be necessarily expensive- and how that automatically translates into human lives. Windmills instead of coal plants would actually save a few lives (more people still die in coal mines than building and maintaining windmills).
see for yourself whether or not our claim that "There Has Been No Global Warming for the Past 70 Years" is indeed correct, at least as far as the United States is concerned.
Humans don't have to be solely responsible for us to do something. That there are other factors in climate change does not mean we should not change those which we have control over.
There's definitely a grain of truth there. Having seen people be alienated by American tourists the world over, I wonder if a bunch of lower and middle-class Americans will have the social skills and cultural understanding to make this work.
I'd love to be proved wrong. I'm sure many of the folks enrolled are quite decent- but having made a few gaffes myself in such a culture, I don't think their odds are any better.
Exactly. To add to the absurdity, residents regularly put in 70+ hour weeks, with some shifts lasting 24 hours. How on earth we expect to stay healthy or excerise good judgement under those conditions is beyond me.
If we wanted to have more residencies available, we could just stop overworking them and split those jobs.
So, you're saying we canucks pay half as much as you, giving us universal coverage while you have 20% of your population uninsured?
True, it's not perfect, and it does hurt to have 1/3 of my salary going to the tax man every 2 weeks. While I'm not under any illusion that I'm not paying for healthcare, I still think we're getting a much better deal.
There's more to news than just information. I'm not from the US, but I've watched Crossfire a few times, as well as the Daily Show (once live, several torrents).
The humourists can be right or left- it doesn't matter. Their job is that of the court jester, ensuring that the elites' perception of reality always stays in touch with that of the little guy.
I know several people in the US that are very upset about the state of politics- and it can be incredibly frustrating to watch talking heads take seriously obvious spin (WMDs, Kyoto would be bad for the economy, tax breaks are good for the economy, etc.. etc...). Judging from the turn out at elections, American democracy is one of the sickest in the world.
Having someone say out loud what many people are thinking privately is a good thing. If you don't have an outlet, you'll just end up with more conspiracy nuts that note important (real) discrepancies and imagine some dark plot against them. It's not health for people on a personal / mental level, and it's not healthy for the public discourse.
The jesters keep things real- you need them right now. The mainstream shows like Crossfire maintain an illusion that the two party system is not broken, pretending to inform when they merely repeat spin.
What idea of traditional marriage? This is an institution that has been changing for a long time. Our parents no longer arrange marriages to create alliances between families. This isn't just about social welfare or ensuring paternity.
So what's marriage about today? Romance? That's pretty much failed miserably, don't you think? Gays aren't destroying marriage as we know it: heteros that can't make them last are.
In fact, the people that are most vocal about wanting marriage, our best hope for rebuilding this long-ailing institution... are gays and lesbians.
That does it. I'm switching to Linux- Ubuntu, *noppix- or even *BSD, anything but Windows.
Installing today's updates, it asked me if I wanted more information about a vulnerability- and proceeded to open a page with Internet Explorer. How many times do I have to tell the computer that Firefox is my default browser? Whose machine is this, anyway?
With SP2, XP has been annoyingly telling me I may not be protected (I run without anti-virus but am locked down regardless and still scan regularly- with no virus or reinstall in 2 years). In today's update, it keeps nagging me to reboot.
And why do I have to sign yet another goddamned EULA to install critical patches?
There isn't any windows only software I need anymore. OO.org, Firefox, Thunderbird... and now GAIM (which I've gotten used to at work, working on FC1). I'll miss some of the usability features of XP, but I just can't handle it anymore. So long, Windows!
Legislation would quickly follow if companies made a mockery of the whole patent system.
I have suggested one group could coordinate a campaign that would require companies to do two things to obtain membership: -renounce using their patents aggressively -allow said organization to use their patents to counter-attack any third party that was to sue a member company.
A more aggressive version would use patents to recruit more members and/or raise money for lobbying.
An object-relational mapping framework that's quickly become very popular in the Java world.
But please, don't let me stop you from sharing your theories about alien accountants:)
Re:Flaws in both Languages
on
Java 1.5 vs C#
·
· Score: 1
Neither are open source.
Yeah, so?
Both require virtual machines.
Again, so what? How is that a flaw?
Despite being marketed as portable, but have portability issues
Look in particular at MS for that. As for backwards compatibility, it's not that big a deal.
We don't really need them.
YOU don't believe you need them, and you may be right at that. Come do some server-side work in my workplace and see if you can do what we do with Perl or PHP. You remind me of MySQL 3.23 fanboys that have never actually needed a stored proc or sub-selects.
They're closely tied to their respective companies.
What? How is that a flaw in the language? And have you any idea how many other big companies (say, oh, IBM) have invested heavily in Java?
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, it does seem more accurate to go with a po-mo flavoured view.
I eat pork knowing full-well I don't have a consistent ethical justification for my participation in a cruel industry. Even if it was humane, I can't make a convincing case for why I should be allowed to take a life for my own pleasure (it's not really a need, I could be vegetarian).
Living with that ambiguity is, I believe, more mature than clinging to demonstrably false or partial notions.
Our ability to use violence to kill is precisely what allows us to be on the top of the food chain. It still doesn't prove the lion in any way "superior" to the antelope- they're just different.
So, might makes right? That's exactly the attitude that lets barbarians goths become European nobility.
It's also problematic because a number of historical wrongs have been addressed by non-violent means. I would hope we don't simply tolerate women's vote because they'd be too much of a pain otherwise -- as opposed to considering them our equals because they could kill and maim enough of us.
In fact, in most of the world I would think that a non-violent campaign of persuasion would be seen as more mature, evolved and superior to such an overthrow as you mention.
OK, ok, it's rough using the Nazi reference on a site like slashdot... but you're asking that question on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Thinking about that, I'd have to say I don't want any state telling any parents they can or can not have children. It's just too dangerous- where do we draw the line? Who decides?
Funny how 8 years later, all the arguments in TFA are exactly the lame arguments Noske blasts in that book.
Noske used a neat example of research offered to Amnesty International using pigs to evaluate effects of torture on humans. Pigs make good models, because their skin is so similar -- but wait a second, if they're similar, why don't they have any rights? Oops... from TFA:
Ahem, *Sub*-human says it all: they're below, we're on top. Now don't get me wrong, I had pork for supper. But to assume we're on top for anything besides a food chain is hard to prove (and bible references don't count as proof in my books).
Most of the debate around the ethical problems posed by chimeras assume that distinction, but it never really was there.
This is why Rifkin's attitude makes more sense. What gives us the right to blur the species line in the first place? Why do we insist on splicing fish genes into tomatoes, bacteria into food plants? The risk can not yet be known, and for whose advantage are these apprentice sorcerers working?
OK, I've said my bit, and donned the asbestos underwear. Flame away if you wish
I'm in Halifax now, and getting sick of this series of storms we've been having.
There's a few things we can do. All Canadians by now have probably heard of the one-ton challenge- even Rick Mercer's helping promote it.
For a bit more comprehensive fare, you can try David Suzuki's solutions.
Political pressure helps, but right now market solutions are probably the easiest way to deal with the crisis. If you have the means to install solar panels or can invest in renewables, go for it.
The most cost-effective and elegant solutions are conservation oriented. Compact fluorescent light-bulbs, LCD rather than CRT monitors, etc... Hybrid or other efficient cars are better than conventional, mass transit beats any car, and changing lifestyles and city planning to reduce the trips we need to make is most elegant.
Energy use estimates have been wildly inaccurate in the past as we got more efficient in using it. At the same time, better tech is getting cheaper as more people buy it and it reaches commodity status. Buying compact fluorescent bulbs 10 years ago didn't just save the energy of that bulb, it helped set in motion a market dynamic that has made them 4 to 5 times cheaper today, and more widely available. Same with LCDs... we as techies can be advocates for this and emerging technology- stuff that meets the same or more needs with less energy.
Quite right, it's supposed to be a standard. Programs with stored procedures tend to be less maintainable despite what its advocates say.
They have their place though. For certain operations where performance is critical, it makes sense to use a SP. Problem is we often assume certain parts will be performance hazards before actually benchmarking.
Seems to me Hibernate is the closest there is in that field. IIRC its lead is now working on EJB3 specs. It's a Jboss project, and I've used it with Tomcat without problems.
site:slashdot.org could work better if our archives were more easily crawlable.
If you understand how PageRank works, you'll understand why the boingboing archives beat the hell out of Slashdot archives. One is two links deep for every story, the other insanely deep for older stories.
Re-doing that page we would let Google and other search engines do all the heavy lifting, and it would cost a whole lot less than buying a new server.
The features developed for answering e-comm customer service questions might actually map quite well to help desk services... from letting you transfer to the right person to building a knowledge bank from your responses- letting you avoid unnecessary typing when the nth person that morning asks you about the same bug.
IM also doesn't have to be answered immediately- a response that says your request has been queued would be sufficient for some.
That's not the surprising part - we already knew as much.
The mystery is why they finally clued in. If we understand that and can repeat this feat more often, we might have a real impact on public opinion and policies.
Seeing the number of diseases that can cross the species boundary between fowl and humans, monkeys and humans or pigs and humans, we should wonder about any new technology that makes that crossing easier.
I understand there are benefits to growing replacement organs on monkeys or pigs, or using other animals to produce medicine. The risk may be small, but the consequences could affect tens or hundreds of millions...
I'd much rather exhaust possibilities with stem-cell research than start playing apprentice sorcerers with chimeras. This is not anti-science - we just need to realize there are inherently more risks to certain types of research that may make it unethical.
Get them to commit voting first and they'll learn about the issues. If they already decided to vote, they'll be pissed to learn about Diebold.
However, if you start by telling an 18 year-old kid that hasn't considered voting yet, talk about electronic voting fraud is going to bore and alienate them.
In my long years of activism, if there is one lesson I have learned it is this: mobilization always precedes education. I might not agree with their first vote, but the odds of them becoming responsible voters increase if they realize now how important it is to be involved.
Well, not knowing we can make a difference is no reason not to try. I don't see how that's emotional language.
Nor do I believe the changes would be necessarily expensive- and how that automatically translates into human lives. Windmills instead of coal plants would actually save a few lives (more people still die in coal mines than building and maintaining windmills).
Seems to me it's you doing the knee-jerking.
Humans don't have to be solely responsible for us to do something. That there are other factors in climate change does not mean we should not change those which we have control over.
There's definitely a grain of truth there. Having seen people be alienated by American tourists the world over, I wonder if a bunch of lower and middle-class Americans will have the social skills and cultural understanding to make this work.
I'd love to be proved wrong. I'm sure many of the folks enrolled are quite decent- but having made a few gaffes myself in such a culture, I don't think their odds are any better.
Exactly. To add to the absurdity, residents regularly put in 70+ hour weeks, with some shifts lasting 24 hours. How on earth we expect to stay healthy or excerise good judgement under those conditions is beyond me.
If we wanted to have more residencies available, we could just stop overworking them and split those jobs.
So, you're saying we canucks pay half as much as you, giving us universal coverage while you have 20% of your population uninsured?
True, it's not perfect, and it does hurt to have 1/3 of my salary going to the tax man every 2 weeks. While I'm not under any illusion that I'm not paying for healthcare, I still think we're getting a much better deal.
There's more to news than just information. I'm not from the US, but I've watched Crossfire a few times, as well as the Daily Show (once live, several torrents).
The humourists can be right or left- it doesn't matter. Their job is that of the court jester, ensuring that the elites' perception of reality always stays in touch with that of the little guy.
I know several people in the US that are very upset about the state of politics- and it can be incredibly frustrating to watch talking heads take seriously obvious spin (WMDs, Kyoto would be bad for the economy, tax breaks are good for the economy, etc.. etc...). Judging from the turn out at elections, American democracy is one of the sickest in the world.
Having someone say out loud what many people are thinking privately is a good thing. If you don't have an outlet, you'll just end up with more conspiracy nuts that note important (real) discrepancies and imagine some dark plot against them. It's not health for people on a personal / mental level, and it's not healthy for the public discourse.
The jesters keep things real- you need them right now. The mainstream shows like Crossfire maintain an illusion that the two party system is not broken, pretending to inform when they merely repeat spin.
What idea of traditional marriage? This is an institution that has been changing for a long time. Our parents no longer arrange marriages to create alliances between families. This isn't just about social welfare or ensuring paternity.
So what's marriage about today? Romance? That's pretty much failed miserably, don't you think? Gays aren't destroying marriage as we know it: heteros that can't make them last are.
In fact, the people that are most vocal about wanting marriage, our best hope for rebuilding this long-ailing institution... are gays and lesbians.
That does it. I'm switching to Linux- Ubuntu, *noppix- or even *BSD, anything but Windows.
Installing today's updates, it asked me if I wanted more information about a vulnerability- and proceeded to open a page with Internet Explorer. How many times do I have to tell the computer that Firefox is my default browser? Whose machine is this, anyway?
With SP2, XP has been annoyingly telling me I may not be protected (I run without anti-virus but am locked down regardless and still scan regularly- with no virus or reinstall in 2 years). In today's update, it keeps nagging me to reboot.
And why do I have to sign yet another goddamned EULA to install critical patches?
There isn't any windows only software I need anymore. OO.org, Firefox, Thunderbird... and now GAIM (which I've gotten used to at work, working on FC1). I'll miss some of the usability features of XP, but I just can't handle it anymore. So long, Windows!
Legislation would quickly follow if companies made a mockery of the whole patent system.
I have suggested one group could coordinate a campaign that would require companies to do two things to obtain membership:
-renounce using their patents aggressively
-allow said organization to use their patents to counter-attack any third party that was to sue a member company.
A more aggressive version would use patents to recruit more members and/or raise money for lobbying.
What do you think?
Google cache of hibernate.org
An object-relational mapping framework that's quickly become very popular in the Java world. But please, don't let me stop you from sharing your theories about alien accountants :)