If this guy had posted his article to his blog that gets 10 hits a week or some obscure message board, I'd agree with you. But his folly got posted on a major website, with a lot of exposer. So it was good that someone exposed the error of Jones' logic, just in case people without as much technical background as you and I fall for it.
Obviously it didn't take a ton of ink to show this guy was smokin' the chronic, so why not show it? Not to 'dis the response or say it wasn't a great article. On the contrary, nice work Mark Stone! I especially like how he ends, after demolishing Jones' logic, by showing Jones' motives are rightly questioned too. Icing on the cake, and a great job indeed. I'm just saying, there is a difference between feeding trolls on some obscure message board and responding to credible people who totally misunderstand and misrepresent OSS on a large public scale.
"Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes." (Proverbs 26:5, New Internation Version of the Bible)
... they didn't clone an embryo. The issue here isn't the modern religious debate over whether or not an embryo is human. The only thing they did was harvest stem cells from an egg. That is a far cry from cloning an embryo, much less a human.
Note that the definition of "embryo" is a fertilized egg after it has implanted in the womb. That is after weeks of development. These scientists did not create an embryo. Even if they call it an embryo (or the article cited above does), the fact is they admit they let it develop for only 5 or 6 days. At best that could be called a zygote or a blastocyst.
And even if they let it develop for weeks (about the same amount of time before implantation would normally occur and it would be called an "embryo") it still wouldn't technically be an embryo since it wasn't implanted in the womb.
The womb is so important here, because we can't replicate it in a lab. And the womb is necessary for an embryo to exist and develop further into the child that will be born, breath air (instead of fluid), etc. That is why the womb is such an amazing creation, and why Christians emphasize the Bible's references to life existing in the womb in their quest against abortion. If scientists can ever replicate the womb (and they are *very, very* far from being able to do that) we'll need to have this debate in reference to cloning over whether or not embryo's are human.
For now... all they've done is harvest some stem cells.
The article is wrong, if it says what you cite it as saying. "Five to six days of cell division" does not = "embryo". See AtariAmarok post above, Human development definitions, in which he points out that, "An embryo is 'In humans, the prefetal product of conception from implantation through the eighth week of development.'"
Also see this same definition of "embryo" at this NIH site. These scientists did not create an embryo, clone an embryo, or even interact with an embryo in any way. We have no technology to do that... we'd have to create a fake womb... which is impossible for us right now.
You are correct in that, as far as the end user is concerned, functionality is all that matters for a particular device. But as far as encouraging open development, attracting the attention of more developers, and maximizing the benefits of an open source OS... it seems that Linux (GPL) would be the way to go.
Re:Even the mirror is Slashdotted.
on
Review: KDE 3.2
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· Score: 0
I just saw it as a good opportunity to ask about political leanings of/.ers I've noticed. I don't think that such a question is necesarily asking for flames (obvioulsy, some have disagreed and modded me down as "flamebait"). Nonetheless, I don't see a "flame war" going on in this thread... just some generally curtious discussions of political leanings and ideaologies of 'geeks'.
jay
Re:Even the mirror is Slashdotted.
on
Review: KDE 3.2
·
· Score: 0
"The group was Planned Parenthood, and they have pleanty of experience dealing with mailbombs, assissans, etc. Mr. Ashcroft told them to go away and never call him again."
Provide any documentation or any evidence whatsoever supporting this, please.
he himself has stated that whenever he is appointed or elected to a public office he has himself anointed with oil (he specified that he used Wessen cooking oil), just like the ancient Kings of Israel did.
Again, this smells like a unfounded rumor to me. Of course, I'm open to any documentation you might have.
And last time I checked, smoking mari-jane was illegal almost everywhere in this country, even for medicinal purposes. So I don't see how the head of the Justice Department enforcing those laws means his religious beliefs are effecting is enforcement of the law. Whether or not you agree with those laws he's enforcing is another matter entrirely.
US News and World Report (by no means a "conservative" magazine) did an excellent piece on Ashcroft called "Ashcroft: My Way" a few weeks ago, sorting out public perceptions from the reality. January 26, 2004 p 30-36, 38. You'd probably be a lot more informed and less dependent on unconfirmed sources if you'd give it a read.
jd
Re:Even the mirror is Slashdotted.
on
Review: KDE 3.2
·
· Score: 0
I see your points, thanks.
I guess the little slogans I've seen around/. ("The corporation cannot be ethical, its *only* responsibility is to make a profit.", "fighting for peace is an oxymoron", etc.) tended to look more liberal to me... and have made me think geeks are tending toward liberal "sheep-ism". Such slogans fail to regongize the complixities of those ideas, for instance, corporations that are led by truly ethical people, WWII ending the Nazi's death camps, etc).
As far as "a large chunk of the Republican party being dedicated to religious fanaticism", I'm not sure I see that. Certainly a large chunk of republicans are religious... but does being religious make one a fanatic? I certainly don't think so. If you don't agree with someone's religion, that doesn't give you the right to call him or her a fanatic. For instance, the "king fanatic" opponents of the Rebulican Party often point to is John Ashecroft. Yet this man is an ideal governmental leader, whether or not you agree with his personal convictions, since he doesn't let his religious beliefs dictate his enforcement of the law (for instance, he enforces laws protecting peoples rights to have abortions, even though he likely opposes abortion and perhaps would like to see it criminalized).
In any case, I appreciate your comments, I'm enjoying being introduced to "geekdom". I just figured I'd ask about this little culture I'm being introduced to. Most "geeks" I know are conservative, but that's probably because I tend to meet and hang around conservative people (be it through my church, or whatever).
PKI authentication is a good idea, but I doubt it would work. As you acknowledge, spammers will create "throw away identities". As far as your idea of countering their "throw away identities" with a reputation system for the sender's domain.... we could do that right now, could we not? We currently have the ability to filter out ip addy's or even entire domains that send a lot of spam. But we can't just kill off yahoo.com if a few spammers happen to break whatever scheme they've devised to prohibit spammers from creating identites. That is, even under an authentication system, if spammers were able to create some throw away identities on yahoo, somehow, we couldn't just decide not to listen to yahoo.com anymore. And spammers will always think of ingenious ways around yahoo's or any other providers schemes.
I think the warranty system (or something similar) makes sense. Here's what would work: Everyone who has an e-mail account would have a "accept e-mail from" list. Ideally, a sender who is not on the recipients "accept e-mail from" list would have to pay to send a recipient an e-mail if both the recipient and the sender acknowledge the transaction. All it would do is force "initial e-mailers" (people who don't know you, haven't e-mailed you before, but have a legitimate concern) to be specific in the subject line so as to get your attention and convince you to not charge them. And if you do choose to charge them, they can opt out of the deal. Something like 25 or 50 cents would totally ruin spammers business model.
Sure, you'd still get the "Hey, its donna, wanna fuck" e-mails, but soon we'd all wise up and quit opening them.;-) (jk, I've never opened one of those silly things)
Re:OT: Geek Power! (was: the mirror is Slashdotted
on
Review: KDE 3.2
·
· Score: 0
Thanks Anonymous Coward, that explained a lot. And good points about if the Nazi's had won, and also about African-American soldiers had turned against White America.
I tend to try to question things a lot too (whenever I can step out of my sheeple-ness), so maybe I'm more of a geek then I thought. I guess I'm an introspective geek today...
take care,
Re:Even the mirror is Slashdotted.
on
Review: KDE 3.2
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Hehe... the mirror is even more slashdotted then the site itself, that's nuts. As far as the original site, just give it time, and it'll load fine.
But anyway, since most posts in this thread aren't on topic yet anyway...your sig: Fighting for peace like screwing for virginity? I'm new to slashdot, but I've been amazed by how much blatant liberalism is floating around this place. I don't mean to troll... your sig of course applies in some situations, but there are actually some people out there who take it to the extreme. Are you seriously saying that in situations like WWII, fighting in self defense cannot bring about peace?
I don't really care if you are saying that, but I'm wondering if there really are as many extreme liberals around here as there seems to be. I'm not really a geek by nature, but recently my job has forced me to be more of one. So is "geekdom" an extremely liberal place, as its starting to seem to me? Or perhaps conservatives are just in the closet in slashdot, like usual.
jd
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously it didn't take a ton of ink to show this guy was smokin' the chronic, so why not show it? Not to 'dis the response or say it wasn't a great article. On the contrary, nice work Mark Stone! I especially like how he ends, after demolishing Jones' logic, by showing Jones' motives are rightly questioned too. Icing on the cake, and a great job indeed. I'm just saying, there is a difference between feeding trolls on some obscure message board and responding to credible people who totally misunderstand and misrepresent OSS on a large public scale.
"Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes." (Proverbs 26:5, New Internation Version of the Bible)
http://macgamefiles.com/detail.php?item=18034
Note that the definition of "embryo" is a fertilized egg after it has implanted in the womb. That is after weeks of development. These scientists did not create an embryo. Even if they call it an embryo (or the article cited above does), the fact is they admit they let it develop for only 5 or 6 days. At best that could be called a zygote or a blastocyst. And even if they let it develop for weeks (about the same amount of time before implantation would normally occur and it would be called an "embryo") it still wouldn't technically be an embryo since it wasn't implanted in the womb.
The womb is so important here, because we can't replicate it in a lab. And the womb is necessary for an embryo to exist and develop further into the child that will be born, breath air (instead of fluid), etc. That is why the womb is such an amazing creation, and why Christians emphasize the Bible's references to life existing in the womb in their quest against abortion. If scientists can ever replicate the womb (and they are *very, very* far from being able to do that) we'll need to have this debate in reference to cloning over whether or not embryo's are human.
For now... all they've done is harvest some stem cells.
Also see this same definition of "embryo" at this NIH site. These scientists did not create an embryo, clone an embryo, or even interact with an embryo in any way. We have no technology to do that... we'd have to create a fake womb... which is impossible for us right now.
You are correct in that, as far as the end user is concerned, functionality is all that matters for a particular device. But as far as encouraging open development, attracting the attention of more developers, and maximizing the benefits of an open source OS... it seems that Linux (GPL) would be the way to go.
I just saw it as a good opportunity to ask about political leanings of /.ers I've noticed. I don't think that such a question is necesarily asking for flames (obvioulsy, some have disagreed and modded me down as "flamebait"). Nonetheless, I don't see a "flame war" going on in this thread... just some generally curtious discussions of political leanings and ideaologies of 'geeks'.
jay
"The group was Planned Parenthood, and they have pleanty of experience dealing with mailbombs, assissans, etc. Mr. Ashcroft told them to go away and never call him again." Provide any documentation or any evidence whatsoever supporting this, please. he himself has stated that whenever he is appointed or elected to a public office he has himself anointed with oil (he specified that he used Wessen cooking oil), just like the ancient Kings of Israel did. Again, this smells like a unfounded rumor to me. Of course, I'm open to any documentation you might have. And last time I checked, smoking mari-jane was illegal almost everywhere in this country, even for medicinal purposes. So I don't see how the head of the Justice Department enforcing those laws means his religious beliefs are effecting is enforcement of the law. Whether or not you agree with those laws he's enforcing is another matter entrirely. US News and World Report (by no means a "conservative" magazine) did an excellent piece on Ashcroft called "Ashcroft: My Way" a few weeks ago, sorting out public perceptions from the reality. January 26, 2004 p 30-36, 38. You'd probably be a lot more informed and less dependent on unconfirmed sources if you'd give it a read. jd
I see your points, thanks.
/. ("The corporation cannot be ethical, its *only* responsibility is to make a profit.", "fighting for peace is an oxymoron", etc.) tended to look more liberal to me... and have made me think geeks are tending toward liberal "sheep-ism". Such slogans fail to regongize the complixities of those ideas, for instance, corporations that are led by truly ethical people, WWII ending the Nazi's death camps, etc).
I guess the little slogans I've seen around
As far as "a large chunk of the Republican party being dedicated to religious fanaticism", I'm not sure I see that. Certainly a large chunk of republicans are religious... but does being religious make one a fanatic? I certainly don't think so. If you don't agree with someone's religion, that doesn't give you the right to call him or her a fanatic. For instance, the "king fanatic" opponents of the Rebulican Party often point to is John Ashecroft. Yet this man is an ideal governmental leader, whether or not you agree with his personal convictions, since he doesn't let his religious beliefs dictate his enforcement of the law (for instance, he enforces laws protecting peoples rights to have abortions, even though he likely opposes abortion and perhaps would like to see it criminalized).
In any case, I appreciate your comments, I'm enjoying being introduced to "geekdom". I just figured I'd ask about this little culture I'm being introduced to. Most "geeks" I know are conservative, but that's probably because I tend to meet and hang around conservative people (be it through my church, or whatever).
peace,
jd
PKI authentication is a good idea, but I doubt it would work. As you acknowledge, spammers will create "throw away identities". As far as your idea of countering their "throw away identities" with a reputation system for the sender's domain.... we could do that right now, could we not? We currently have the ability to filter out ip addy's or even entire domains that send a lot of spam. But we can't just kill off yahoo.com if a few spammers happen to break whatever scheme they've devised to prohibit spammers from creating identites. That is, even under an authentication system, if spammers were able to create some throw away identities on yahoo, somehow, we couldn't just decide not to listen to yahoo.com anymore. And spammers will always think of ingenious ways around yahoo's or any other providers schemes. I think the warranty system (or something similar) makes sense. Here's what would work: Everyone who has an e-mail account would have a "accept e-mail from" list. Ideally, a sender who is not on the recipients "accept e-mail from" list would have to pay to send a recipient an e-mail if both the recipient and the sender acknowledge the transaction. All it would do is force "initial e-mailers" (people who don't know you, haven't e-mailed you before, but have a legitimate concern) to be specific in the subject line so as to get your attention and convince you to not charge them. And if you do choose to charge them, they can opt out of the deal. Something like 25 or 50 cents would totally ruin spammers business model. Sure, you'd still get the "Hey, its donna, wanna fuck" e-mails, but soon we'd all wise up and quit opening them. ;-) (jk, I've never opened one of those silly things)
Thanks Anonymous Coward, that explained a lot. And good points about if the Nazi's had won, and also about African-American soldiers had turned against White America. I tend to try to question things a lot too (whenever I can step out of my sheeple-ness), so maybe I'm more of a geek then I thought. I guess I'm an introspective geek today... take care,
Hehe... the mirror is even more slashdotted then the site itself, that's nuts. As far as the original site, just give it time, and it'll load fine. But anyway, since most posts in this thread aren't on topic yet anyway...your sig: Fighting for peace like screwing for virginity? I'm new to slashdot, but I've been amazed by how much blatant liberalism is floating around this place. I don't mean to troll... your sig of course applies in some situations, but there are actually some people out there who take it to the extreme. Are you seriously saying that in situations like WWII, fighting in self defense cannot bring about peace? I don't really care if you are saying that, but I'm wondering if there really are as many extreme liberals around here as there seems to be. I'm not really a geek by nature, but recently my job has forced me to be more of one. So is "geekdom" an extremely liberal place, as its starting to seem to me? Or perhaps conservatives are just in the closet in slashdot, like usual. jd