"So what's the difference between getting some kid's organs and killing an embryo to harvest them?"
Because getting some kids organs will lead to complications for the rest their lives.
"Also, doesn't it sound a little ackward to dispose an all-new human life just to improve the quality of an old one."
I don't know. Should we lock up all the women who have miscarriages for murder? Should we haul away all those who work in the fertility treatment industry for killing thousands everyday?
"Do you see any difference between somebody intentionally destroying an embryo and an event in nature resulting in that destruction?"
Fertility treatments regularly destroy many embryos, yet I don't see you saying that people trying to have a baby are evil.
What about a miscarriage from a woman who did not know she was pregnant and kept up her party lifestyle? Should she be regarded as a murderer? Would that be considered "criminal negligence"?
Now, what if stem cells from an embryo from a mother could be used to save her other two kids from a painful debilitating disease that will eventually be fatal?
If every embryo is a human life then we better start funding research into the biggest killer of our time, the miscarriage.
But somehow, I don't think we'll see a headline for that anytime soon.
"But don't ask people who are firmly opposed to such research to help pay for it."
The government does shit everyday I don't support, and I still have to pay for it.
I'd rather have my cash support researh that will help improve people's lives instead funding weapons research to find new and inventive ways to kill people.
You know, the **AA runs around screaming and crying about how we're stealing their property. I find this amusing considering that according to the liscense agreement we don't actually own anything.
If all the megacorps are running around bitching about how their precious intellectual property is being stolen, that's fine.
If it is real property, then it is subject to real property laws. They need to pay a tax on it, just like any other property. If someone buys a piece of their intellectual property, then they own it.
It's that simple.
But considering how the US is rapidly becoming fascist, I seriously doubt we'll ever see anything reasonable go through congress to this effect.
When it comes to an event that has immediate consequences, people band together, pool resources, and address the problem (911 though misguided).
If people can't see a problem immediately nor th effects, most times little if anything will be done about it.
Case and point: The pollution of Lake Eerie. Everyone knew Lake Eerie was in bad shape, but nobody did anything until it actually caught on fire.
Maybe this is a problem of society at large (instant gratification) or maybe it's just that we are fundamentally lazy creatures who don't want to expend the resources until the problem is imminent.
There are scientist now that believe that it's already too late.
IN some places you don't even need to be a scientist to see the changes. Just look at before and after pictures of the Andes glaciers or Kilamanjaro.
May the price of our ignorance and arrogance not be too high.
A con trail from a jet can block up to 15% of sunlight in the area it crosses. When they expand that's quite a bit of area. Look up global dimming.
I'm not so sceptical. I look at the numbers. Small changes (as in parts per million) in CO2 cause the atmosphere to retain a larger amount of heat. The more CO2, the more energy is trapped on Earth instead of being radiated away.
At 379 ppm, the CO2 levels are at their highest levels that we have knowledge of (ice core samples and such). Earth is retaining more heat. We're contributing CO2 at a rate of 3 PPM a year or so (estimates used from factories and such).
The best case scenario is that we are just contributing to problem.
I'm more amused by the fact that people who are skeptical of global warming think it's still okay to dump billions of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere.
Ironically though, your fears in high school are somewhat correct. Global warming would end up leading to an ice age.
"That is far greater change than anything humans could possibly contribute to."
In the course of the past 200 years or so, we've wiped out countless species, set lake Eerie on fire, destroyed 20% of the rainforests, and have polluted millions of gallons of fresh water with lovely materials such as chemicals involved in rocket fuel.
We're currently outpacing natural CO2 production.
And we have drastically increased the amount of pollutants in our atmosphere. To the point where in cities they actually recommend you stay indoors on some days.
Yeah. We couldn't possibly influence anything on this planet.
This patent applies to all methods of kicking Jeff Bezos in the scrotum in an effort to progenerate irreversible damage to the reproductive system. Heretofore the scrotum may be referred to as balls, nuts, jangles, hairy walnut,twig'n'berries, groin, nads, scroties, scroticles, bushdongles, daddybag, teabag, chin wipers, swigglers, tom&jerry, or whatever other term one can conjure for that region of the body.
This patent covers all forms of kinetic energy tranfer to Jeff Bezos scrotum via forward pedaltic motion. This includes the standard square on kick to the balls, reveresed spiked heel kick to the balls, and the ever popular double mule kick to the nut sack.
This patent does not cover other methods patented by other members of slashdot, such as the swing cinder block to the scroties or the jackhammer to the Bezos grunties.
The shotgun to the balls will not be used as that is patented by Quentin Tarintino.
Only in western societies (or "advanced") societies is teen sex known as a "bad thing".
Teen sex was quite the norm not all that long ago, mainly due to the fact that you'd be lucky to make it to 30 before you died.
Young marriage was quite common. You were considered an old maid if you weren't married by 20. So on and so forth.
The problem, as you put it, is the fact that our society is so puritanical about anything dealing with sex. Frank discussions about sex are still something very rare in this country.
Mix this with the media with the "sex sells" mentality and you've got a few million horny teenagers who think that scoring is the next best thing to having their own car for their rep.
If their parents don't talk to them, their TV will.
Comments are essential to maintaining any project.
It's annoying when I go to the person who wrote a chunk of code fom a couple months ago to ask them some questions, they look at the code and have no idea why they were doing what they were doing.
I've always followed the philosphy that I should write and comment code so that someone who wasn't a programmer could read it and understand what was going on. This makes it very easy to go back even years and know exactly what the code was doing and why it was doing it.
But you need to write good comments and good code. I've actually seen this in code:/** Gets an array. @return An array. */
Array GetArray()...
The other one I live seeing is data structures containing non-descriptive field names://Holds temporary data struct TmpData { int a; int b; float c; };
Completely useless.
Good code and good comments makes everyone's life easier. I've seen a lot of good code, I'd like to see a lot more good comments as well.
Pop quiz hotshot. There's a bomb in a computer in Redmond. The computer is protected by 1024-bit encryption, and guarded by a crazy code troll on 6 gallons of expresso and a tazer gun.
"Just like MS Word, the Nikon NEF format is a proprietary format."
NEF is NOT proprietary. It is a TIFF v6.0 file that they relable as an NEF. The only differences are a handful of tags they use to store additional data. The tags are defined according to the TIFF v6.0 spec.
But you don't need to take my word for it. If you open up the file with a hex editor you'll see it for yourself.
"NEF is stated in the specs. You DON'T have to use NEF format."
You're right. But this camera is marketed as a pro/semi-pro camera. Any pro expects that their camera exports a RAW format. Any pro also expects to use any tool they want to modify their image.
If this is clearly and explicitly stated then there is no problem. Pros simply won't buy the camera. The problem here is that people are finding out the hard way. And it also pisses them off that the camera encrypts the users copyrighted data (white balance data gathered from the environemnt when the picture was snapped).
This truly is not cool.
"But you have no right to deman they open up their technologies."
Your right. I have no right to ask them to open up their technologies. And I'm not asking them to. I'm saying that white balance data is image data, which belongs to the photographer. Their is absolutely nothing proprietary about white balance data. The method to get it? Sure. But the data itself is necessary for proper exposure compensation in the image.
What their doing would be akin to them locking up the image data itself under the auspices of "protecting" their CCD imaging algorithms. It makes no sense and is at best an insult to the intelligence of people who use their products.
"You can use their tools to access the files, and companies are free to use the SDK."
Try and get it as an individual. You'll be lucky if you even get a rejection email. However, with all the stink this is causing, they may be softening their stance on that.
Also, from what I've read from some individuals who have used it, the SDK is limited. You can't get the white balance data. You can only get the white balanced image, which defeats the whole purpose of a RAW photo.
"The extra information in Nikon's proprietary file format is useless unless you use something like Photoshop anyways."
White balance is not extra information. It is necessary information. It is standard information. And any pro digital photographer will tell you the same.
And there are plenty of open source imageing apps who use this information, as well as a number of closed source apps.
"If you use Photoshop, then demand a decent plugin from Adobe. It's not like they have no access to Nikon's technology."
Well, not from some of the PR stints I've been reading lately. Apparently there is some bad blood forming between the two. I'm not sure why, but this seems to be the latest barb (both sides seem to be guilty to some extent here).
"Did you ever think that there might be trade secrets and IP in the method that the data is stored in NEF files..."
Yep. But there isn't, nor should there be as that would be an incredibly insane risk to take. Nor is there any engineering reason to ever do so.
They use the TIFF standard. They use all the normal TIFF tags. They define a couple of tags for some additional info (mainly camera strings), all of which adheres to the TIFF standard.
Regardless, the data is yours. You have every right to have access to your data. If they have proprietary info (which would be incredibly stupid) in the file, they can encrypt that all they want. But your image data, tone curve, white balance, etc. is all yours and no one should have the ability to keep you from it.
"However, I do concede that the Nikon software should be included free of charge, instead of as an optional extra."
And now you see why they encrypted the data. Yes, I agree. If you buy a product from a company and they lock your data up in some draconian file structure, they should give you the damn key for free.
"Have you tried, or are you talking out of your ass?"
Damn dude. You went from stranger to asshole in a single line. I hope your social skills are a little more robust than that in real life.
But I'll answer your question. There's a reason why I'm contribiuting to an open source project dealing with Nikon's proprietary files.
Of course, you don't need to take my word for it. The link to try and get it has been posted several times. Give it try. Maybe after this public furor you'll actually get a response.
Your image data is NOT their property. It is your property. You own the copyrights to your images, not them.
Do you think it is within the rights of Nikon to get a royalty for every image you snap?
Your comparison of drivers is completely irrelevant. The printer is hardware. Drivers are software necessary to operate the hardware. The image data is not hardware. It's data. More to the point, it is data captured from an environment that you were in at the time of the photo. You framed it, you set it up, you took it. It's yours. All of it, from tonality to exposure compensation.
And that's all white balance is. It's just data that can be used to compensate for the lighting of a given shot. There's nothing proprietary about it. It's the lighting adjustment.
Their method for obtaining it (akin to your driver analogy) can be secret. I don't care. But the data itself is from my image, and they have no right to lock up something that is copyright by me.
Would you agree with them if they wanted to lock up the image data itself? That's the next step.
Slashdot Mirror
They used stem cells to get rats with spinal injuries to walk again. I'd say that's a pretty good step in the right direction.
~X~
"So what's the difference between getting some kid's organs and killing an embryo to harvest them?"
Because getting some kids organs will lead to complications for the rest their lives.
"Also, doesn't it sound a little ackward to dispose an all-new human life just to improve the quality of an old one."
I don't know. Should we lock up all the women who have miscarriages for murder? Should we haul away all those who work in the fertility treatment industry for killing thousands everyday?
Oh wait...that's different?
~X~
"Do you see any difference between somebody intentionally destroying an embryo and an event in nature resulting in that destruction?"
Fertility treatments regularly destroy many embryos, yet I don't see you saying that people trying to have a baby are evil.
What about a miscarriage from a woman who did not know she was pregnant and kept up her party lifestyle? Should she be regarded as a murderer? Would that be considered "criminal negligence"?
Now, what if stem cells from an embryo from a mother could be used to save her other two kids from a painful debilitating disease that will eventually be fatal?
If every embryo is a human life then we better start funding research into the biggest killer of our time, the miscarriage.
But somehow, I don't think we'll see a headline for that anytime soon.
~X~
"But don't ask people who are firmly opposed to such research to help pay for it."
The government does shit everyday I don't support, and I still have to pay for it.
I'd rather have my cash support researh that will help improve people's lives instead funding weapons research to find new and inventive ways to kill people.
~X~
Damn it!
I thought I was safe using the left-handed mouse at your house...
~X~
Eventually, all sentient intelligent beings will reach apoint where they can enhance themselves faster than the natural process.
Survival of the species. If nature won't do it then we will.
~X~
You know, the **AA runs around screaming and crying about how we're stealing their property. I find this amusing considering that according to the liscense agreement we don't actually own anything.
If all the megacorps are running around bitching about how their precious intellectual property is being stolen, that's fine.
If it is real property, then it is subject to real property laws. They need to pay a tax on it, just like any other property. If someone buys a piece of their intellectual property, then they own it.
It's that simple.
But considering how the US is rapidly becoming fascist, I seriously doubt we'll ever see anything reasonable go through congress to this effect.
~X~
I believe what they were referring to as a DoS attack was nothing more than the /. effect. The first time, anyway.
~X~
Smoke detectors typically use Americium, a low grade radioactive element (typically about a microcurie or so).
Nuclear batteries would probably house something a little more substantial, but it still wouldn't be a grade of material that could cause any harm.
For instance, you never hear of anyone constructing dirty bombs or nukes out of old smoke detectors.
~X~
When it comes to an event that has immediate consequences, people band together, pool resources, and address the problem (911 though misguided).
If people can't see a problem immediately nor th effects, most times little if anything will be done about it.
Case and point: The pollution of Lake Eerie. Everyone knew Lake Eerie was in bad shape, but nobody did anything until it actually caught on fire.
Maybe this is a problem of society at large (instant gratification) or maybe it's just that we are fundamentally lazy creatures who don't want to expend the resources until the problem is imminent.
There are scientist now that believe that it's already too late.
IN some places you don't even need to be a scientist to see the changes. Just look at before and after pictures of the Andes glaciers or Kilamanjaro.
May the price of our ignorance and arrogance not be too high.
~X~
A con trail from a jet can block up to 15% of sunlight in the area it crosses. When they expand that's quite a bit of area. Look up global dimming.
I'm not so sceptical. I look at the numbers. Small changes (as in parts per million) in CO2 cause the atmosphere to retain a larger amount of heat. The more CO2, the more energy is trapped on Earth instead of being radiated away.
At 379 ppm, the CO2 levels are at their highest levels that we have knowledge of (ice core samples and such). Earth is retaining more heat. We're contributing CO2 at a rate of 3 PPM a year or so (estimates used from factories and such).
The best case scenario is that we are just contributing to problem.
I'm more amused by the fact that people who are skeptical of global warming think it's still okay to dump billions of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere.
Ironically though, your fears in high school are somewhat correct. Global warming would end up leading to an ice age.
~X~
"That is far greater change than anything humans could possibly contribute to."
In the course of the past 200 years or so, we've wiped out countless species, set lake Eerie on fire, destroyed 20% of the rainforests, and have polluted millions of gallons of fresh water with lovely materials such as chemicals involved in rocket fuel.
We're currently outpacing natural CO2 production.
And we have drastically increased the amount of pollutants in our atmosphere. To the point where in cities they actually recommend you stay indoors on some days.
Yeah. We couldn't possibly influence anything on this planet.
~X~
Patent #625354434436563653
Title: The Jeff Bezos Scrotum Destroying Kick
Scope:
This patent applies to all methods of kicking Jeff Bezos in the scrotum in an effort to progenerate irreversible damage to the reproductive system. Heretofore the scrotum may be referred to as balls, nuts, jangles, hairy walnut,twig'n'berries, groin, nads, scroties, scroticles, bushdongles, daddybag, teabag, chin wipers, swigglers, tom&jerry, or whatever other term one can conjure for that region of the body.
This patent covers all forms of kinetic energy tranfer to Jeff Bezos scrotum via forward pedaltic motion. This includes the standard square on kick to the balls, reveresed spiked heel kick to the balls, and the ever popular double mule kick to the nut sack.
This patent does not cover other methods patented by other members of slashdot, such as the swing cinder block to the scroties or the jackhammer to the Bezos grunties.
The shotgun to the balls will not be used as that is patented by Quentin Tarintino.
~X~
I would just like to remind people that this is COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT, not THEFT.
Big difference.
~X~
"His motivation for creating is love."
Sunamis? Volcanoes? Hurricanes? Cancer? AIDS?
Are you talking about the same angry, full-of-wrath God that destroyed the planet with a flood?
The loving God the fire-and-brimstoned entire cities merely because the ticked him off?
Would this be the same God who killed the first-born in all of Egypt?
The very same God who came up with the 10 plagues?
Is this the same loving caring creator that sits idly by while millions suffer and die across the globe?
You must be talking about someone else.
~X~
My biggest problem with ID people is that at some point their arguments become little more than:
"Because it's made of MAGIC!"
I had a hard time believing that when I was 6.
~X~
Only in western societies (or "advanced") societies is teen sex known as a "bad thing".
Teen sex was quite the norm not all that long ago, mainly due to the fact that you'd be lucky to make it to 30 before you died.
Young marriage was quite common. You were considered an old maid if you weren't married by 20. So on and so forth.
The problem, as you put it, is the fact that our society is so puritanical about anything dealing with sex. Frank discussions about sex are still something very rare in this country.
Mix this with the media with the "sex sells" mentality and you've got a few million horny teenagers who think that scoring is the next best thing to having their own car for their rep.
If their parents don't talk to them, their TV will.
~X~
Better yet, send them an executable that will allow you to be r00t on their computer, force isntall anti-virus software, and reboot.
Better yet, write an automated program to do it for you.
Ahhh....too much effort. Send them an antivirus program labeled as SupErHotNekKedChiks.exe.
~X~
They were going to sing songs, but the RIAA owns them all.
They were going to roast marshmallows, but someone patented the technique.
They were going to show movies, but the MPAA took them away.
They were going to take pictures, but all the signs were trademarked and copyrighted.
They were going to go out to pizza, but they couldn't pay royalties to the guy who patented the wheel.
They were going to show research but all the reports were copyrighted.
So they just sat in plain beige room all in gray jumpsuits and flip flops espousing the greatness of intellectual property.
Great future.
~X~
Comments are essential to maintaining any project.
/**
...
//Holds temporary data
It's annoying when I go to the person who wrote a chunk of code fom a couple months ago to ask them some questions, they look at the code and have no idea why they were doing what they were doing.
I've always followed the philosphy that I should write and comment code so that someone who wasn't a programmer could read it and understand what was going on. This makes it very easy to go back even years and know exactly what the code was doing and why it was doing it.
But you need to write good comments and good code. I've actually seen this in code:
Gets an array.
@return An array.
*/
Array GetArray()
The other one I live seeing is data structures containing non-descriptive field names:
struct TmpData
{
int a;
int b;
float c;
};
Completely useless.
Good code and good comments makes everyone's life easier. I've seen a lot of good code, I'd like to see a lot more good comments as well.
~X~
Pop quiz hotshot. There's a bomb in a computer in Redmond. The computer is protected by 1024-bit encryption, and guarded by a crazy code troll on 6 gallons of expresso and a tazer gun.
WHAT DO YOU DO!?!?
~X~
"Just like MS Word, the Nikon NEF format is a proprietary format."
NEF is NOT proprietary. It is a TIFF v6.0 file that they relable as an NEF. The only differences are a handful of tags they use to store additional data. The tags are defined according to the TIFF v6.0 spec.
But you don't need to take my word for it. If you open up the file with a hex editor you'll see it for yourself.
"NEF is stated in the specs. You DON'T have to use NEF format."
You're right. But this camera is marketed as a pro/semi-pro camera. Any pro expects that their camera exports a RAW format. Any pro also expects to use any tool they want to modify their image.
If this is clearly and explicitly stated then there is no problem. Pros simply won't buy the camera. The problem here is that people are finding out the hard way. And it also pisses them off that the camera encrypts the users copyrighted data (white balance data gathered from the environemnt when the picture was snapped).
This truly is not cool.
"But you have no right to deman they open up their technologies."
Your right. I have no right to ask them to open up their technologies. And I'm not asking them to. I'm saying that white balance data is image data, which belongs to the photographer. Their is absolutely nothing proprietary about white balance data. The method to get it? Sure. But the data itself is necessary for proper exposure compensation in the image.
What their doing would be akin to them locking up the image data itself under the auspices of "protecting" their CCD imaging algorithms. It makes no sense and is at best an insult to the intelligence of people who use their products.
"You can use their tools to access the files, and companies are free to use the SDK."
Try and get it as an individual. You'll be lucky if you even get a rejection email. However, with all the stink this is causing, they may be softening their stance on that.
Also, from what I've read from some individuals who have used it, the SDK is limited. You can't get the white balance data. You can only get the white balanced image, which defeats the whole purpose of a RAW photo.
"The extra information in Nikon's proprietary file format is useless unless you use something like Photoshop anyways."
White balance is not extra information. It is necessary information. It is standard information. And any pro digital photographer will tell you the same.
And there are plenty of open source imageing apps who use this information, as well as a number of closed source apps.
"If you use Photoshop, then demand a decent plugin from Adobe. It's not like they have no access to Nikon's technology."
Well, not from some of the PR stints I've been reading lately. Apparently there is some bad blood forming between the two. I'm not sure why, but this seems to be the latest barb (both sides seem to be guilty to some extent here).
"Did you ever think that there might be trade secrets and IP in the method that the data is stored in NEF files..."
Yep. But there isn't, nor should there be as that would be an incredibly insane risk to take. Nor is there any engineering reason to ever do so.
They use the TIFF standard. They use all the normal TIFF tags. They define a couple of tags for some additional info (mainly camera strings), all of which adheres to the TIFF standard.
Regardless, the data is yours. You have every right to have access to your data. If they have proprietary info (which would be incredibly stupid) in the file, they can encrypt that all they want. But your image data, tone curve, white balance, etc. is all yours and no one should have the ability to keep you from it.
"However, I do concede that the Nikon software should be included free of charge, instead of as an optional extra."
And now you see why they encrypted the data. Yes, I agree. If you buy a product from a company and they lock your data up in some draconian file structure, they should give you the damn key for free.
~X~
"Have you tried, or are you talking out of your ass?"
Damn dude. You went from stranger to asshole in a single line. I hope your social skills are a little more robust than that in real life.
But I'll answer your question. There's a reason why I'm contribiuting to an open source project dealing with Nikon's proprietary files.
Of course, you don't need to take my word for it. The link to try and get it has been posted several times. Give it try. Maybe after this public furor you'll actually get a response.
But I wouldn't hold my breath on that.
~X~
"Why not? It's their property."
ARE YOU ON CRACK?!?!?!?!
Your image data is NOT their property. It is your property. You own the copyrights to your images, not them.
Do you think it is within the rights of Nikon to get a royalty for every image you snap?
Your comparison of drivers is completely irrelevant. The printer is hardware. Drivers are software necessary to operate the hardware. The image data is not hardware. It's data. More to the point, it is data captured from an environment that you were in at the time of the photo. You framed it, you set it up, you took it. It's yours. All of it, from tonality to exposure compensation.
And that's all white balance is. It's just data that can be used to compensate for the lighting of a given shot. There's nothing proprietary about it. It's the lighting adjustment.
Their method for obtaining it (akin to your driver analogy) can be secret. I don't care. But the data itself is from my image, and they have no right to lock up something that is copyright by me.
Would you agree with them if they wanted to lock up the image data itself? That's the next step.
~X~
"Their NEF format is only for highly specialzed pro applications."
Your new to digital photography, aren't you?
I use NEFs so later on, if I need to, I can retouch the photos using the original data.
And I'm far from being a pro.
~X~