Buy Dragonball Z Tenkaichi 2 (or 3.) Haven't had a chance to play the third one yet, but the second one is pretty goddamn awesome and it only costs $30 or so.
Mind you, I'm speaking as someone who usually can't STAND to watch the show. It doesn't matter what your opinion of DBZ or anime in general is--this is simply the finest fighting game ever produced, and the Wii controls really draw you into it. Tenkaichi 3 supposedly has more extensive Wiimote-based controls, plus the ability to play online for free.
And I'm saying it's a silly thing to worry about. We don't want Iran to go nuclear, period. Supercomputers might make the difference between, say, 50 kiloton and 100 kiloton warheads. Who cares? If they can get a decent stockpile of 50 kiloton warhead missiles, it's not like we're going to care if supercomputers turns 'em into 100 kiloton warheads. The deterrent is virtually identical.
Now, what someone else said about being able to simulate tests without actually performing them (thus hiding the fact that they have nukes)... that might be a reason to worry about supercomputers. *Might*. More likely, Iran will want to advertise their nuclear capabilities in order to use it as a bargaining chip or a deterrent.
Hell, I think the whole "nuke simulation" angle is completely bogus. Over 60 years ago, scientists managed to design three bombs, two of which were complicated Plutonium bombs, and all three of which worked perfectly as designed. A few years later, the Hydrogen bomb was designed and successfully tested. During this time period, the collective power of all the computers in the world was less than that of your average modern day cell phone.
The enabling factors here are: raw materials, refining/construction machinery, and smart people to make it work. Supercomputers aren't a viable substitute for any one of these factors.
No, that's "compound interest" you're thinking of. A flat 10% fee is still interest--it's called "simple interest." I have no idea if the GP's description of Islamic banking practices is accurate or not--if so, that's pretty self-delusional of them. From my understanding, loans don't really exist. Instead of getting a loan on your house, the bank buys the house for you and then sells it to you in monthly installments.
I'm pretty damn sure they didn't have supercomputers when they built the Trinity test bomb. In fact, your average cell phone is probably more powerful than the combined computing power of all the computers in existence back in 1945. Hydrogen bombs came not long thereafter (in fact, I believe Teller came up with the basic design while the Manhattan project was still underway), and are therefore similarly non-computationally-expensive to design.
I'm sure there are a few exciting, new complicated nuke designs that require supercomputers, but supercomputers simply are not a factor in determining whether a country can go nuclear or not--raw materials, refining machinery, and scientists are.
If a person says "I give you X now, you give me 2X tomorrow or I kill you", certainly you can say he isn't a christian.
That's not a very good definition of usury (which was what the GP was referring to.) Usury doesn't require the threat of violence to back it up.
And you're deluding yourself if you think that the Christian Bible is any less vicious than the Qur'an. You can't magically say the old testament--especially Leviticus--doesn't count (oh, I'm sorry, was it merely "de-emphasized"?), then selectively take vicious quotes from the Qur'an as proof that Islam is inherently violent. For all you know, Muslims have similar bullshit reasoning that the passage you quoted was similarly "de-emphasized."
Well, it's as you said--the gene they've found might merely be commonly found alongside another gene (like how the blue eyes gene is usually found alongside a light hair gene), and THAT gene is the one is the true cause. Or maybe the gene (if it is the only causative gene) doesn't have a direct effect on "repeated mistakes" at all, but affects some other obscure part of human perception as well which, in combination with certain childhood environmental factors, causes the behavior to arise. Or maybe the gene just happens to be commonly found in certain races or subcultures (be it white collar, blue collar, black, white, hispanic, slavic, whatever--and remember, people *generally* stick with their own when it comes to choosing a mate, and there only needs to be a moderate correlation for this to work) and that particular subculture just happens promotes/tolerates repeated mistakes moreso than the general population. In this scenario, the behavior could be 100% learned and yet a strong genetic correlation could still exist.
By analogy, having very dark skin (genetic) doesn't "cause" someone to become a criminal (behavioral)--even though over 1/3 of black men in America have been convicted of a crime. The causative agent here is clearly environmental (poverty and black subculture)--it's just so happens that those two environmental factors have a strong correlation with the "has dark skin" gene. (In the case of "poverty", this is due to historical slavery/discrimination and the fact that over the generations most people stay in their social/economic class.)
Now, repeat after me--without hard causative evidence, correlation doesn't prove a damn thing.
Is Vista a developer's dream, then? Because I haven't seen any noticeable improvements at the user level, other than the aforementioned superficial and eye candy improvements. I am not a developer, so I can't comment on APIs, kernels, etc. What I can comment on is how it didn't seem any more stable than XP--and yes, XP is significantly less stable than an easy-to-install distro like Ubuntu (I've used both extensively.) Hardware detection wasn't improved, either. And package management is still absent (i.e. a system to upgrade all software on your system simultaneously, via the same frontend, and plus it allows you to remove 100% of an installed package, every time.) And security is a pseudo-Unix joke.
But yeah, I suppose there could be tons of developer-centric (or should I say, developersdevelopersdevelopers-centric) stuff under the hood.
Actually I thought the perfect description of IE 7 was "response to Firefox." Seriously, I don't think IE 7 existed as a serious, active project until Firefox started claiming significant percentages of the browser market, and most of the UI additions are ripped straight from Firefox. But, in the case of IE 8, this time there isn't really anything obvious to rip from Firefox--maybe integrated spellchecker? If they try to offer an easy-to-install plugin system (I'm assuming IE 7 doesn't have one already. If it does, forgive me--I've used IE 7 a grand total of maybe 15 minutes), the results will be a security disaster.
If Vista has taught us anything, it's that Microsoft is laser-focused on superficial and eye-candy improvements, while caring very little about improving (or even fixing) the underlying technologies. From my (thankfully VERY brief) experience with Vista, it looks like the only thing they even remotely attempted to fix or improve was security, and that... well, heh, it reminded me of a maxim I once heard: "Those who do not understand Unix are doomed to reinvent it--badly."
My prediction is that IE 8 will have exactly the same rendering capabilities, but it will have some sort of annoying new UI, plus maybe a few extremely annoying security features that everyone will turn off immediately.
To pretend that preserving a 1000-year-young ecosystem intact is more important than having a wide variety of edible species available is even funnier. I'd lay money on the re-seeded ecosystem being more developed/interesting/stable/whatever, because species that are edible for humans are also generally edible to a very wide variety of other life forms as well. --~~~~
A lot of people don't seem to grasp that evolution is simply a tautology--"Whatever survives, survives." There's no such thing as "fucking things up" or "cheating" or what have you. This is especially true on a evolutionary time scale so ridiculously small as 1000 years. Who the hell are you to say that a mere 1000-year-old ecosystem (which really doesn't hasn't had much of a chance at all to even remotely stabilize) has a better right to exist than the ecosystem that preceded it?
In terms of helpfulness to the human race, I'm pretty sure that the species diversity caused by a re-planting would almost assuredly far outweigh any negatives (*especially* if only food-bearing plants were auto-released.) In terms of protecting the poor, struggling, 1000-year-young, artificially-created (assuming nuclear holocaust) ecosystem--who the fuck cares?
Interesting idea, but if your main concern is nuclear holocaust, you're probably off by an order of magnitude. 100 years would be more than enough. Even Cobalt-60, one of the nastiest and most realistic genocidal isotopes (assuming we're crazy enough to build a bunch of cobalt bombs), has a half -life of only 5 years. That means after 100 years, there will only be ~0.000095% of your original starting amount.
As a rule, most isotopes with half-lives longer than 5 years are pretty harmless--i.e., they're only weakly radioactive, and therefore (UNLIKE cobalt) there simply isn't enough of that element to irradiate the entire surface of the Earth. I'm not saying the background radiation wouldn't be somewhat higher after "only" 100 years, but it would certainly be quite livable. Waiting an extra 900 years for maybe a 10% cancer reduction (yes, I'm pulling numbers out of my ass here, but I think they're a lot closer than the numbers you had in mind) doesn't seem worth it.
A catastrophic astronomical event (large object hitting us) could potentially mess things up more, but in that case 1000 years is pretty arbitrary--it could easily be too soon. Actually, come to think of it, any collision that could render earth uninhabitable for 1000 years would almost assuredly destroy or contaminate the seed bank as well, so on the whole I'm going to have to say that 1000 years is probably too long under any circumstance. Better to design multiple 10-100 year banks.
Except it's not illegal to resell OEM software. It violates the EULA, but the first-sale doctrine trumps any contract you may or may not have signed, EULAs included.
The onus is (or should be) still on the slander-ee to prove that harm was done.
And there's a difference between a live person talking to you one-on-one on the telephone and yet another drivel-spouting blogger. A person's voice is considerably less anonymous and more personal than a random bit of unverified text drifting in an ocean of crap.
tell me why Google should ignore criminal abuse of its networks and services.
Because if it were truly criminal, a judge could say so and issue a subpoena.
tell me why someone shouldn't have the right to ask Google for help in the prosecution of a crime.
They do. It's called a subpoena. If Google Israel truly respected their customer's rights, they would simply wait for a subpoena. Also, slander/libel isn't typically considered a crime--though the summary says it "probably" was in this case, I can't see how this would ever be a good idea. Malicious/harmful lies are torts and are punishable by civil law--not by people with guns knocking you to the ground, tasering you, dragging you off and locking up up with violent criminals.
tell me when "the right to privacy" became a right to injure others anonymously - safe from any consequences.
As someone else has already said, any reasonable person should judge that no harm was done. Anonymous slander/libel by definition is completely frivolous and unbelievable. Look, watch:
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, RAPES BABIES! HE RAPES THEM UNTIL THEY BLEED TO DEATH AND THEN EATS THEIR CORPSES WITH A SIDE ORDER OF FAVA BEANS!
Now, you see, who here believes me? No one, obviously, because I'm just another vulgar, anonymous, raving lunatic on the internet. With very few exceptions, anonymous slander doesn't cause significant damage in today's rumor-jaded world. The Israeli politician in this case should have to prove that someone actually took the anonymous blogger seriously, and that person somehow took harmful action against himself. Even if he could, I still don't think this should possibly be considered a crime.
"perhaps only resulting in a few 'good samaritan' donations."
Kinda like how Radiohead only got a few 'good samaritan" donations for their latest freely-available album? (Hint: They made many millions. From donations. Average donation was coincidentally around $5, which is pretty much what most people have been saying for over a decade now should be the price of a CD. But the RIAA refused to listen, and the free market cannot work its magic against a stubborn cartel.)
Check out your local thrift store. The ones around here have tons of 17" CRTs for ~$5, and decent ps/2 keyboards for ~$2-$3. Haven't seen any good scrollwheel optical mice, though.
That's precisely my point. Again, putting aside the fact that they were apparently (illegally) acting on behalf of the government, why ISN'T jail time being considered? If I recorded your phone conversation, I would be imprisoned. AT&T does it, and not only is prison out of the question but they're debating whether or not they're even going to let you sue them.
Corporate executives are arrested, tried, convicted and sent to prison are a regular basis.
Yes. Because they commit crimes against other executives, or the government, or their shareholders. As long as they DON'T cost these people money, they can get away with pretty much any non-violent, non-obviously-fraudulent crime against the public at large. They're occasionally caught and sued, or caught and fined, but almost never actually imprisoned.
Even if they aren't granted immunity, I can guarantee you that no one is going to be arrested. No one in a corporation is ever arrested, no matter how many white collar crimes they commit, unless those crimes directly affect the pocketbook of other white collar citizens (e.g. Enron). I realized this the day it came to light that Sony was installing rootkits on people's machines without their permission, and yet no one was even talking about arrests... and yet, if a fourteen year old was installing rootkits on thousands or millions of machines without their owners' permission, he would be arrested in a heartbeat and we'd be subjected to a month of scary and retarded Dateline specials on those evil hackers.
Similarly, if a fourteen year old phreaker records people's calls without their consent, he is arrested immediately. If a corporation does it, it at best merits a class-action lawsuit (which is the most we're going to see here... IF immunity isn't granted.) The fact that the corporations in this case were doing the bidding of the state certainly doesn't hurt them, but it's foolish to suppose to begin with that corporations are ever held to the same standard of justice as non-affiliated individuals.
No, the objection isn't bullshit because research in mice IS relevant to humans. Period. The question is merely HOW relevant this particular piece of research is.
Even a casual glance at immunology from a layman's perspective reveals your statement to be utter bullshit; there are many, many diseases and afflictions that are species specific, sometimes highly so.
He stated that it's "not true" that animal tests don't apply to humans at all (true), that almost every major medical advance has been tested or researched on animals like mice first (true, at least since the mid-twentieth century), and that mammal bodies work in very similar ways (true).
What you said is also true--that despite the huge similarities there are also significant differences--but that doesn't make his statement "bullshit"... perhaps merely "incomplete."
I support your point in general, especially because brains is obviously one of the organs in which humans differ the most, but I don't think that gives you the right to call a bunch of essentially truthful statements "bullshit."
Or maybe young people are smart enough not to clog up their brains with information that can be more easily and accurately recorded elsewhere. If all our fancy devices somehow stopped working, there would definitely be a period of confusion, but people would adapt. They'd go back to using their memories (or pen and paper.)
Technology isn't conflicting with our brain's evolution; it's extending and enhancing it. One less phone number to remember is who knows how many neurons that don't have to waste time storing and retrieving it. You might question whether young people are using this freed memory space to good use (for the love of all that's holy, I do NOT care about who won the latest reality show or what celebrities do in their spare time), but I think that it's a mistake to view this phenomenon as a fault.
Slashdot Mirror
Buy Dragonball Z Tenkaichi 2 (or 3.) Haven't had a chance to play the third one yet, but the second one is pretty goddamn awesome and it only costs $30 or so.
Mind you, I'm speaking as someone who usually can't STAND to watch the show. It doesn't matter what your opinion of DBZ or anime in general is--this is simply the finest fighting game ever produced, and the Wii controls really draw you into it. Tenkaichi 3 supposedly has more extensive Wiimote-based controls, plus the ability to play online for free.
And I'm saying it's a silly thing to worry about. We don't want Iran to go nuclear, period. Supercomputers might make the difference between, say, 50 kiloton and 100 kiloton warheads. Who cares? If they can get a decent stockpile of 50 kiloton warhead missiles, it's not like we're going to care if supercomputers turns 'em into 100 kiloton warheads. The deterrent is virtually identical.
Now, what someone else said about being able to simulate tests without actually performing them (thus hiding the fact that they have nukes)... that might be a reason to worry about supercomputers. *Might*. More likely, Iran will want to advertise their nuclear capabilities in order to use it as a bargaining chip or a deterrent.
Hell, I think the whole "nuke simulation" angle is completely bogus. Over 60 years ago, scientists managed to design three bombs, two of which were complicated Plutonium bombs, and all three of which worked perfectly as designed. A few years later, the Hydrogen bomb was designed and successfully tested. During this time period, the collective power of all the computers in the world was less than that of your average modern day cell phone.
The enabling factors here are: raw materials, refining/construction machinery, and smart people to make it work. Supercomputers aren't a viable substitute for any one of these factors.
No, that's "compound interest" you're thinking of. A flat 10% fee is still interest--it's called "simple interest." I have no idea if the GP's description of Islamic banking practices is accurate or not--if so, that's pretty self-delusional of them. From my understanding, loans don't really exist. Instead of getting a loan on your house, the bank buys the house for you and then sells it to you in monthly installments.
Nuke design? Psssh.
I'm pretty damn sure they didn't have supercomputers when they built the Trinity test bomb. In fact, your average cell phone is probably more powerful than the combined computing power of all the computers in existence back in 1945. Hydrogen bombs came not long thereafter (in fact, I believe Teller came up with the basic design while the Manhattan project was still underway), and are therefore similarly non-computationally-expensive to design.
I'm sure there are a few exciting, new complicated nuke designs that require supercomputers, but supercomputers simply are not a factor in determining whether a country can go nuclear or not--raw materials, refining machinery, and scientists are.
If a person says "I give you X now, you give me 2X tomorrow or I kill you", certainly you can say he isn't a christian.
That's not a very good definition of usury (which was what the GP was referring to.) Usury doesn't require the threat of violence to back it up.
And you're deluding yourself if you think that the Christian Bible is any less vicious than the Qur'an. You can't magically say the old testament--especially Leviticus--doesn't count (oh, I'm sorry, was it merely "de-emphasized"?), then selectively take vicious quotes from the Qur'an as proof that Islam is inherently violent. For all you know, Muslims have similar bullshit reasoning that the passage you quoted was similarly "de-emphasized."
There are plenty of possibilities that do NOT involve causation. See my post here: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=383655&cid=21630831
Well, it's as you said--the gene they've found might merely be commonly found alongside another gene (like how the blue eyes gene is usually found alongside a light hair gene), and THAT gene is the one is the true cause. Or maybe the gene (if it is the only causative gene) doesn't have a direct effect on "repeated mistakes" at all, but affects some other obscure part of human perception as well which, in combination with certain childhood environmental factors, causes the behavior to arise. Or maybe the gene just happens to be commonly found in certain races or subcultures (be it white collar, blue collar, black, white, hispanic, slavic, whatever--and remember, people *generally* stick with their own when it comes to choosing a mate, and there only needs to be a moderate correlation for this to work) and that particular subculture just happens promotes/tolerates repeated mistakes moreso than the general population. In this scenario, the behavior could be 100% learned and yet a strong genetic correlation could still exist.
By analogy, having very dark skin (genetic) doesn't "cause" someone to become a criminal (behavioral)--even though over 1/3 of black men in America have been convicted of a crime. The causative agent here is clearly environmental (poverty and black subculture)--it's just so happens that those two environmental factors have a strong correlation with the "has dark skin" gene. (In the case of "poverty", this is due to historical slavery/discrimination and the fact that over the generations most people stay in their social/economic class.)
Now, repeat after me--without hard causative evidence, correlation doesn't prove a damn thing.
Is Vista a developer's dream, then? Because I haven't seen any noticeable improvements at the user level, other than the aforementioned superficial and eye candy improvements. I am not a developer, so I can't comment on APIs, kernels, etc. What I can comment on is how it didn't seem any more stable than XP--and yes, XP is significantly less stable than an easy-to-install distro like Ubuntu (I've used both extensively.) Hardware detection wasn't improved, either. And package management is still absent (i.e. a system to upgrade all software on your system simultaneously, via the same frontend, and plus it allows you to remove 100% of an installed package, every time.) And security is a pseudo-Unix joke.
But yeah, I suppose there could be tons of developer-centric (or should I say, developersdevelopersdevelopers-centric) stuff under the hood.
Actually I thought the perfect description of IE 7 was "response to Firefox." Seriously, I don't think IE 7 existed as a serious, active project until Firefox started claiming significant percentages of the browser market, and most of the UI additions are ripped straight from Firefox. But, in the case of IE 8, this time there isn't really anything obvious to rip from Firefox--maybe integrated spellchecker? If they try to offer an easy-to-install plugin system (I'm assuming IE 7 doesn't have one already. If it does, forgive me--I've used IE 7 a grand total of maybe 15 minutes), the results will be a security disaster.
If Vista has taught us anything, it's that Microsoft is laser-focused on superficial and eye-candy improvements, while caring very little about improving (or even fixing) the underlying technologies. From my (thankfully VERY brief) experience with Vista, it looks like the only thing they even remotely attempted to fix or improve was security, and that... well, heh, it reminded me of a maxim I once heard: "Those who do not understand Unix are doomed to reinvent it--badly."
My prediction is that IE 8 will have exactly the same rendering capabilities, but it will have some sort of annoying new UI, plus maybe a few extremely annoying security features that everyone will turn off immediately.
To pretend that preserving a 1000-year-young ecosystem intact is more important than having a wide variety of edible species available is even funnier. I'd lay money on the re-seeded ecosystem being more developed/interesting/stable/whatever, because species that are edible for humans are also generally edible to a very wide variety of other life forms as well. --~~~~
A lot of people don't seem to grasp that evolution is simply a tautology--"Whatever survives, survives." There's no such thing as "fucking things up" or "cheating" or what have you. This is especially true on a evolutionary time scale so ridiculously small as 1000 years. Who the hell are you to say that a mere 1000-year-old ecosystem (which really doesn't hasn't had much of a chance at all to even remotely stabilize) has a better right to exist than the ecosystem that preceded it?
In terms of helpfulness to the human race, I'm pretty sure that the species diversity caused by a re-planting would almost assuredly far outweigh any negatives (*especially* if only food-bearing plants were auto-released.) In terms of protecting the poor, struggling, 1000-year-young, artificially-created (assuming nuclear holocaust) ecosystem--who the fuck cares?
Interesting idea, but if your main concern is nuclear holocaust, you're probably off by an order of magnitude. 100 years would be more than enough. Even Cobalt-60, one of the nastiest and most realistic genocidal isotopes (assuming we're crazy enough to build a bunch of cobalt bombs), has a half -life of only 5 years. That means after 100 years, there will only be ~0.000095% of your original starting amount.
As a rule, most isotopes with half-lives longer than 5 years are pretty harmless--i.e., they're only weakly radioactive, and therefore (UNLIKE cobalt) there simply isn't enough of that element to irradiate the entire surface of the Earth. I'm not saying the background radiation wouldn't be somewhat higher after "only" 100 years, but it would certainly be quite livable. Waiting an extra 900 years for maybe a 10% cancer reduction (yes, I'm pulling numbers out of my ass here, but I think they're a lot closer than the numbers you had in mind) doesn't seem worth it.
A catastrophic astronomical event (large object hitting us) could potentially mess things up more, but in that case 1000 years is pretty arbitrary--it could easily be too soon. Actually, come to think of it, any collision that could render earth uninhabitable for 1000 years would almost assuredly destroy or contaminate the seed bank as well, so on the whole I'm going to have to say that 1000 years is probably too long under any circumstance. Better to design multiple 10-100 year banks.
Except it's not illegal to resell OEM software. It violates the EULA, but the first-sale doctrine trumps any contract you may or may not have signed, EULAs included.
The onus is (or should be) still on the slander-ee to prove that harm was done.
And there's a difference between a live person talking to you one-on-one on the telephone and yet another drivel-spouting blogger. A person's voice is considerably less anonymous and more personal than a random bit of unverified text drifting in an ocean of crap.
tell me why Google should ignore criminal abuse of its networks and services.
Because if it were truly criminal, a judge could say so and issue a subpoena.
tell me why someone shouldn't have the right to ask Google for help in the prosecution of a crime.
They do. It's called a subpoena. If Google Israel truly respected their customer's rights, they would simply wait for a subpoena. Also, slander/libel isn't typically considered a crime--though the summary says it "probably" was in this case, I can't see how this would ever be a good idea. Malicious/harmful lies are torts and are punishable by civil law--not by people with guns knocking you to the ground, tasering you, dragging you off and locking up up with violent criminals.
tell me when "the right to privacy" became a right to injure others anonymously - safe from any consequences.
As someone else has already said, any reasonable person should judge that no harm was done. Anonymous slander/libel by definition is completely frivolous and unbelievable. Look, watch:
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, RAPES BABIES! HE RAPES THEM UNTIL THEY BLEED TO DEATH AND THEN EATS THEIR CORPSES WITH A SIDE ORDER OF FAVA BEANS!
Now, you see, who here believes me? No one, obviously, because I'm just another vulgar, anonymous, raving lunatic on the internet. With very few exceptions, anonymous slander doesn't cause significant damage in today's rumor-jaded world. The Israeli politician in this case should have to prove that someone actually took the anonymous blogger seriously, and that person somehow took harmful action against himself. Even if he could, I still don't think this should possibly be considered a crime.
"perhaps only resulting in a few 'good samaritan' donations."
Kinda like how Radiohead only got a few 'good samaritan" donations for their latest freely-available album? (Hint: They made many millions. From donations. Average donation was coincidentally around $5, which is pretty much what most people have been saying for over a decade now should be the price of a CD. But the RIAA refused to listen, and the free market cannot work its magic against a stubborn cartel.)
Check out your local thrift store. The ones around here have tons of 17" CRTs for ~$5, and decent ps/2 keyboards for ~$2-$3. Haven't seen any good scrollwheel optical mice, though.
That's precisely my point. Again, putting aside the fact that they were apparently (illegally) acting on behalf of the government, why ISN'T jail time being considered? If I recorded your phone conversation, I would be imprisoned. AT&T does it, and not only is prison out of the question but they're debating whether or not they're even going to let you sue them.
Corporate executives are arrested, tried, convicted and sent to prison are a regular basis.
Yes. Because they commit crimes against other executives, or the government, or their shareholders. As long as they DON'T cost these people money, they can get away with pretty much any non-violent, non-obviously-fraudulent crime against the public at large. They're occasionally caught and sued, or caught and fined, but almost never actually imprisoned.
Even if they aren't granted immunity, I can guarantee you that no one is going to be arrested. No one in a corporation is ever arrested, no matter how many white collar crimes they commit, unless those crimes directly affect the pocketbook of other white collar citizens (e.g. Enron). I realized this the day it came to light that Sony was installing rootkits on people's machines without their permission, and yet no one was even talking about arrests... and yet, if a fourteen year old was installing rootkits on thousands or millions of machines without their owners' permission, he would be arrested in a heartbeat and we'd be subjected to a month of scary and retarded Dateline specials on those evil hackers.
Similarly, if a fourteen year old phreaker records people's calls without their consent, he is arrested immediately. If a corporation does it, it at best merits a class-action lawsuit (which is the most we're going to see here... IF immunity isn't granted.) The fact that the corporations in this case were doing the bidding of the state certainly doesn't hurt them, but it's foolish to suppose to begin with that corporations are ever held to the same standard of justice as non-affiliated individuals.
No, the objection isn't bullshit because research in mice IS relevant to humans. Period. The question is merely HOW relevant this particular piece of research is.
Even a casual glance at immunology from a layman's perspective reveals your statement to be utter bullshit; there are many, many diseases and afflictions that are species specific, sometimes highly so.
He stated that it's "not true" that animal tests don't apply to humans at all (true), that almost every major medical advance has been tested or researched on animals like mice first (true, at least since the mid-twentieth century), and that mammal bodies work in very similar ways (true).
What you said is also true--that despite the huge similarities there are also significant differences--but that doesn't make his statement "bullshit"... perhaps merely "incomplete."
I support your point in general, especially because brains is obviously one of the organs in which humans differ the most, but I don't think that gives you the right to call a bunch of essentially truthful statements "bullshit."
Or maybe young people are smart enough not to clog up their brains with information that can be more easily and accurately recorded elsewhere. If all our fancy devices somehow stopped working, there would definitely be a period of confusion, but people would adapt. They'd go back to using their memories (or pen and paper.)
Technology isn't conflicting with our brain's evolution; it's extending and enhancing it. One less phone number to remember is who knows how many neurons that don't have to waste time storing and retrieving it. You might question whether young people are using this freed memory space to good use (for the love of all that's holy, I do NOT care about who won the latest reality show or what celebrities do in their spare time), but I think that it's a mistake to view this phenomenon as a fault.