Too late for Mod Points, but I have wondered about this for a while.
Who owns a clone? The mother? The company that put the sperm and the egg together? The guy that donated the sperm? Is the clone independent from birth? It's an easy question to ignore when a sheep (Dolly) is being cloned - it's just a sheep, after all, and for the sake of argument does not have the same rights as a human being. Can humans BE owned? Not in the U.S., but there are a lot of other countries.
That said, a hopefully accurate quote from Jurassic Park might be relevant:
God Creates Dinosaurs. God Kills Dinosaurs. God Creates Man. Man Creates Dinosaurs. Man Kills God. Dinosaurs Kill Man.
We're not creating dinosaurs, but maybe we're creating our replacement. Would it be ethical to genetically engineer a people _meant_ to take the metaphoric torch? I don't know. I think as long as they didn't decide to genocide us I wouldn't mind.
Relax, pal, and stop telling me what to do:-). I actually like Katz. He doesn't always support his arguments very well, but his intentions are good. My first post was intended to be funny. Next time I'll make sure to use the tags.
Katz says: "It says a lot about the laughable MPAA ratings system that a couple making love can be grounds for an NC-17 rating, while the stuff above only draws an R. The theater where I saw the movie was crammed with little kids. Friends, we live in a loopy country. "
Whoa. Jon Katz is pushing for a stronger rating system? He's telling other parents what he thinks their kids should be allowed to see? (I haven't seen the movie and wouldn't let _my_ kids see it, but I thought the above was worth mentioning.)
...but I wouldn't make the claim that it's RIGHT to watch their content for free. Just because it's digital does't make theft of service (or whatever you want to call it) moral.
"The WAVE Line is strictly for reporting concerns. Threats made to the WAVE Line are considered a federal offense."
A federal offense? If it's a fucking anonymous phone call, how the hell do they plan to prosecute it? Or could it be that it's not actually anonymous? Gee, maybe Pinkerton hasn't heard about *69. Don't tell them, okay?
Interestingly enough, there doesn't seem to be anything on their site about providing misinformation, or just blatantly lying. So if you can do that with a clear conscience (if you can't, well...you probably work for Pinkerton), go ahead and tell them the cheerleaders threatened to kill your puppy if you corrected them in class again.
While I understand that electronics will (for the foreseeable future) generate heat, it seems to me that it is just as important to find ways to make them run cooler as it is to find ways to cool them. Apple's latest iMac line (I think) was convection cooled - but the monitor, processor, and hard drive give off enough heat to make the entire machine very warm. It definitely a step towards a quieter computer, but an iMac won't suffice for your average Slashdot reader.
As for microfans - they're not really even microelectronics. They belong in the region of "mesoscale," which means macroscopic but small. I saw pictures of Apple's latest G4 (which rivals the Pentium in terms of energy consumption) in which Apple had encased the entire processor card in plastic to dampen fan noise.
Anyway, just some thoughts.
First likely use of this...
on
IBMs CMOS 9S
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· Score: 3
...is to pump out 512 MB and 1 GB RAM chips. If the process can be done in a conventional fab facility, it shouldn't take more than year or two. RAM is, as solid state devices go, among the simpler things to make. (It's still complicated as hell, but not compared to processors or whatnot. That's why RAM has a lifetime warranty.) However, I have no clue as to whether or not most mobo's would support a RAM chip of that capacity.
And if I'm way off on the semiconductor stuff, I'd be as interested as anyone to find what's correct.
...is there because a corporation, even a quasi-good one like LucasFilm/Arts/whatever, is controlling the distribution of original content. There are a lot of parallels that could be drawn from this situation, and most of them aren't great.
1. War on Drugs
The war on Drugs has not been as successful as I had hoped, but I believe this is because I did not play a large part in inventing both war and drugs while in Congress.
2. Minority Religions
Minorities should be given special benefits since there are fewer of them. Minorities include the richest 5% of the country.
3. Tax cut
Taxes should be as high as possible, or at least as high as congress will let me make them. After all, a newer, smaller government requires more money.
4. Electoral Reform
The electoral college should be reformed, preferably in such a manner as to make it more confusing and possibly more beneficial to me.
5. Intellectual Property
Intellectual property should be protected, even though I did allow several companies to blatantly steal my leg-protection invention. (Those bastards call them "pants," but we know the truth.)
6. Encryption
My cue card says I'm for reducing encryption restrictions, but I voted against it in Congress...::tongue kisses Tipper::
7. Rising Political Protests
I was there with James Lee Witt, so my position on this issue should be clear.
8. Asteroid Defenses
This are should be researched, but I think it will be up to me to invent a "LASER" with which to destroy any incoming asteroids.
9. The Future
The children are our future, but I'm pro choice, so feel free to not have children if you choose.
Wouldn't it make a lot more sense for the headline to read "First day for non-earthbound humans" or something to that effect?
The last time I looked around, there were still plenty of people here on Earth. But then again, it is unreasonable to expect any kind of news medium to put forth sensible headlines. After all, they just want attention.
Think about which bills get the most response on slashdot - the ones where so-and-so has introduced a bill that makes the digital equivalent of something available in a public library illegal. The CDA wasn't local. The DMCA isn't local. Napster and Scour and Gnutella aren't local issues (no server-client puns intended). Mandatory censorware in schools is becoming a federal issue.
These are issues that will be decided, unfortunately, in the Federal government. They may not affect you at the moment, but their effects will definitely be felt down the line.
...to colonize space? The last thing I want is for competing companies to set up rival colonies on Mars or the Moon. I'd also be skeptical about letting NASA take charge of the mission. Poor reliability vs. corporate cost-cutting...it's not a good recipe.
While it's nice to say that in five million years we will have colonized the galaxy, I think it's a little more important to have (and accomplish) short term space exploration goals.
If you can clone an extinct animal...
on
TigerCloning
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· Score: 5
...to what extent do you repopulate the wild? Do you produce three or four for display in zoos, or do you reproduce millions of them (a la the Passenger Pigeon) to put them back into nature at the levels they once were?
This does, of course, assume that the cloning works perfectly. If it does, it'll have a significant impact on the Endangered Species list - don't worry about killing off endangered animals, because "they" can always make more! It might do more harm than good in that respect.
...just take the time to relax. Most people who are "stressed" create the stress for themselves. They skip lunch to work, and often eat fast food for dinner. Studies have shown that the quality of work done beyond 40 hours/week is not very high. If people get to work at 8 am, stay till 6 pm, then feel the need watch Letterman and the 1 am airing of SportsCenter, then they shouldn't complain about lack of sleep. It's fairly obvious where they could cut some things out of their schedule.
Few of us manage to buck this trend, apart from some neo-Luddites. Half of all Americans now own a cell phone, and more than 46 per cent of pleasure travelers take their phones with them when they go away, reports the Travel Inustry Association. More than 18 per cent take their pagers and 6 per cent their laptops, while 10 per cent check e-mail on vacation. Younger Americans are living in a hyperactive information culture.
I'm not sure how Katz went from "10 percent can check email on vacation" to "hyperactive information culture" quite so quickly. 90% of Americans can't check email on vacation. The reason that most people take cell phones and whatnot with them everywhere they go - most people, not all - is because it lets them feel important. "I have a cell phone, because people far away might need me." Riiight...
The cell-phone yuppies are the ones who complain of being stressed out. How many of them have tried to cut back on work, and go for a bike ride a few times per week? A few minutes in a quiet wooded area would eliminate most stress for most people.
The challenge might be finding a wooded area, but that's another topic entirely.
Bungie Software, although not a giant in the PC market, had been making great macingtosh games for nearly ten years. They were the ideal small company - putting out great products because they were willing to make up with hard work what they couldn't do with huge budgets and large development teams. (Their first big title, Marathon, was mailed out in shrinkwrap because they didn't have enough boxes.) It's sad to see a company that made its name by Thinking Different sell out to Microsoft. I can't really blame Microsoft...after all, Halo is one of the most anticipated games around. But to see an independent, multi-platform company like Bungie even consider moving to just one platform (XBox) is tough. While there haven't been official announcements, the following is the word on Halo: "We can't confirm that it will ship for XBox, but if it doesn't we'll eat our hats." - Bungie "We can't confirm Mac or PC for Halo." - Bungie Not exactly equal footing...
...but that should obviously read "13 billion" years old. The age of the universe is roughly 14 billion years - which begs the question, what's really the farthest away?
...are we going to see "But seriously..." in this discussion? I've seen at least five in twenty-three comments...
It wouldn't surprise me if astronauts have already had sex on the shuttle or in some space station. I've read female accounts describing how nice it is to be free from gravity's effects for a few weeks. Fat leaves the hips and deposits itself in the breasts, which takes care of two issues that many women worry about. Admittedly, it is less important for an astronaut to have nice breasts than, say, a Baywatch lifeguard, but there you go.
As for sex in space in general, I think that it's an eventuality. (Can you imagine going six months - forget two years - without any kind of sexual release?) It would be wise of NASA to establish a policy, publicly or privately, before the public starts talking about it.
From bacteria to Frankenstein...
on
Planet Gattaca
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· Score: 1
....is quite a leap. The objective of the debate should be whether it is moral to create life of any kind. If no one protests until scientists have the technology to recreate people, then scientists will go right ahead creating people. There was an uproar when Dolly was cloned, but had Dolly been a bacteria, the uproar would have been far less - humans have much more of a connection with woolly, friendly animals than with tiny bacteria. If scientists were discussing whether or not they should create Lassie from a puddle of goo, the debate would be much more intense.
Somewhere in his ravings about punch-drunk venture capitalists, Katz makes a decent point. Creating life - playing God, literally - is something that modern religions don't really discuss. While I assume that most Western religions view it as a bad thing(TM), I am just as interested in seeing what Eastern religions have to say about it. While we may not hear about it until scientists clone Abraham Lincoln, it promises to be interesting.
Take a look at what you're saying. There is little value in personal wealth, values, and inherent personality. What else is there in the world? Additionally, what do you mean when you say that community and society are degenerating? Technology has improved my communications skills, and opened up new communities for me - both online and IRL.
Additionally, I'd be perfectly happy if my TV suddenly only had 20 channels instead of 75. It's the shows that make me happy - the one that excite me, entertain me, or inform me. I couldn't care less about the rest of them.
The principal quoted at the end of the article says "The kids we are all beginning to look at are those that play violent video games, who are on the Internet all the time..."
Where in the FBI guidelines does it mention video games or the Internet? It doesn't. Perhaps the FBI is slow to update its guidelines, or perhaps they just realize something about video games that the world hasn't quite grasped yet...
is that teh software company apparently claims to know (and be able to enforce) the manner in which its software is used. "'School administrators would use Mosaic-2000,' the company asserts, 'only in situations that reach a certain threshold (e.g., a student makes a threat, brings a weapon to school, teachers or students are concerned a student might act out violently).'" It may be that the software works best (or only works) when dealing with people who are at a high risk for violent behavior. However, if I was a school administrator, I would be tempted to test every student. That way, even students with no past history of violence could be found and helped. (Whether or not they'd really be helped is beside the point.) Just my $.02.
A roll up monitor might be nifty, but it will take years and years for technology to yield something as useful and practical as a piece of paper.
A sheet of paper has infinite resolution, is virtually weightless, is double sided, can be highlighted, bent, folded, creased, crumpled up into a ball, and erased. Nothing computerized can come close to the practicality of paper. Also, two sheets of paper can be laid side by side, and can be used to make comparisons. In order to do so on a computer, it is necessary to get a second monitor, or shrink the size of the pages. Shrinking pages often makes text unreadable.
As for printing everything, many people probably don't realize how wasteful they are being. At my college, each student gets 110 pages for free each semester. After that they cost money. Having that limit really makes people count what they are printing, and most people print everything but final drafts on both sides of the page.
Not to mention how much easier it is to read text off a page. Ever try reading a book online? It's damn near impossible.
Macs have had PCI since the introduction of the Power Macintosh back in the early-mid 90's. IDE was introced in low-end power macs, and developments in IDE technology made it fast enough to be the main drive on G3 systems. Current ATA/66 drives can put a whoopin' on most SCSI drives; only ultra-wide drives can beat its transfer rates.
Slashdot Mirror
Too late for Mod Points, but I have wondered about this for a while.
Who owns a clone? The mother? The company that put the sperm and the egg together? The guy that donated the sperm? Is the clone independent from birth? It's an easy question to ignore when a sheep (Dolly) is being cloned - it's just a sheep, after all, and for the sake of argument does not have the same rights as a human being. Can humans BE owned? Not in the U.S., but there are a lot of other countries.
That said, a hopefully accurate quote from Jurassic Park might be relevant:
God Creates Dinosaurs. God Kills Dinosaurs. God Creates Man. Man Creates Dinosaurs. Man Kills God. Dinosaurs Kill Man.
We're not creating dinosaurs, but maybe we're creating our replacement. Would it be ethical to genetically engineer a people _meant_ to take the metaphoric torch? I don't know. I think as long as they didn't decide to genocide us I wouldn't mind.
Relax, pal, and stop telling me what to do :-). I actually like Katz. He doesn't always support his arguments very well, but his intentions are good. My first post was intended to be funny. Next time I'll make sure to use the tags.
Katz says: "It says a lot about the laughable MPAA ratings system that a couple making love can be grounds for an NC-17 rating, while the stuff above only draws an R. The theater where I saw the movie was crammed with little kids. Friends, we live in a loopy country. "
Whoa. Jon Katz is pushing for a stronger rating system? He's telling other parents what he thinks their kids should be allowed to see? (I haven't seen the movie and wouldn't let _my_ kids see it, but I thought the above was worth mentioning.)
...but I wouldn't make the claim that it's RIGHT to watch their content for free. Just because it's digital does't make theft of service (or whatever you want to call it) moral.
Evan
what the hell is this:
"The WAVE Line is strictly for reporting concerns. Threats made to the WAVE Line are considered a federal offense."
A federal offense? If it's a fucking anonymous phone call, how the hell do they plan to prosecute it? Or could it be that it's not actually anonymous? Gee, maybe Pinkerton hasn't heard about *69. Don't tell them, okay?
Interestingly enough, there doesn't seem to be anything on their site about providing misinformation, or just blatantly lying. So if you can do that with a clear conscience (if you can't, well...you probably work for Pinkerton), go ahead and tell them the cheerleaders threatened to kill your puppy if you corrected them in class again.
Solution: Find ways to cool them.
While I understand that electronics will (for the foreseeable future) generate heat, it seems to me that it is just as important to find ways to make them run cooler as it is to find ways to cool them. Apple's latest iMac line (I think) was convection cooled - but the monitor, processor, and hard drive give off enough heat to make the entire machine very warm. It definitely a step towards a quieter computer, but an iMac won't suffice for your average Slashdot reader.
As for microfans - they're not really even microelectronics. They belong in the region of "mesoscale," which means macroscopic but small. I saw pictures of Apple's latest G4 (which rivals the Pentium in terms of energy consumption) in which Apple had encased the entire processor card in plastic to dampen fan noise.
Anyway, just some thoughts.
...is to pump out 512 MB and 1 GB RAM chips. If the process can be done in a conventional fab facility, it shouldn't take more than year or two. RAM is, as solid state devices go, among the simpler things to make. (It's still complicated as hell, but not compared to processors or whatnot. That's why RAM has a lifetime warranty.) However, I have no clue as to whether or not most mobo's would support a RAM chip of that capacity.
And if I'm way off on the semiconductor stuff, I'd be as interested as anyone to find what's correct.
Evan
...is there because a corporation, even a quasi-good one like LucasFilm/Arts/whatever, is controlling the distribution of original content. There are a lot of parallels that could be drawn from this situation, and most of them aren't great.
1. War on Drugs
The war on Drugs has not been as successful as I had hoped, but I believe this is because I did not play a large part in inventing both war and drugs while in Congress.
2. Minority Religions
Minorities should be given special benefits since there are fewer of them. Minorities include the richest 5% of the country.
3. Tax cut
Taxes should be as high as possible, or at least as high as congress will let me make them. After all, a newer, smaller government requires more money.
4. Electoral Reform
The electoral college should be reformed, preferably in such a manner as to make it more confusing and possibly more beneficial to me.
5. Intellectual Property
Intellectual property should be protected, even though I did allow several companies to blatantly steal my leg-protection invention. (Those bastards call them "pants," but we know the truth.)
6. Encryption
My cue card says I'm for reducing encryption restrictions, but I voted against it in Congress...::tongue kisses Tipper::
7. Rising Political Protests
I was there with James Lee Witt, so my position on this issue should be clear.
8. Asteroid Defenses
This are should be researched, but I think it will be up to me to invent a "LASER" with which to destroy any incoming asteroids.
9. The Future
The children are our future, but I'm pro choice, so feel free to not have children if you choose.
Wouldn't it make a lot more sense for the headline to read "First day for non-earthbound humans" or something to that effect?
The last time I looked around, there were still plenty of people here on Earth. But then again, it is unreasonable to expect any kind of news medium to put forth sensible headlines. After all, they just want attention.
Evan
Think about which bills get the most response on slashdot - the ones where so-and-so has introduced a bill that makes the digital equivalent of something available in a public library illegal. The CDA wasn't local. The DMCA isn't local. Napster and Scour and Gnutella aren't local issues (no server-client puns intended). Mandatory censorware in schools is becoming a federal issue.
These are issues that will be decided, unfortunately, in the Federal government. They may not affect you at the moment, but their effects will definitely be felt down the line.
Evan
...to colonize space? The last thing I want is for competing companies to set up rival colonies on Mars or the Moon. I'd also be skeptical about letting NASA take charge of the mission. Poor reliability vs. corporate cost-cutting...it's not a good recipe.
While it's nice to say that in five million years we will have colonized the galaxy, I think it's a little more important to have (and accomplish) short term space exploration goals.
...to what extent do you repopulate the wild? Do you produce three or four for display in zoos, or do you reproduce millions of them (a la the Passenger Pigeon) to put them back into nature at the levels they once were?
This does, of course, assume that the cloning works perfectly. If it does, it'll have a significant impact on the Endangered Species list - don't worry about killing off endangered animals, because "they" can always make more! It might do more harm than good in that respect.
Evan
...just take the time to relax. Most people who are "stressed" create the stress for themselves. They skip lunch to work, and often eat fast food for dinner. Studies have shown that the quality of work done beyond 40 hours/week is not very high. If people get to work at 8 am, stay till 6 pm, then feel the need watch Letterman and the 1 am airing of SportsCenter, then they shouldn't complain about lack of sleep. It's fairly obvious where they could cut some things out of their schedule.
Few of us manage to buck this trend, apart from some neo-Luddites. Half of all Americans now own a cell phone, and more than 46 per cent of pleasure travelers take their phones with them when they go away, reports the Travel Inustry Association. More than 18 per cent take their pagers and 6 per cent their laptops, while 10 per cent check e-mail on vacation. Younger Americans are living in a hyperactive information culture.
I'm not sure how Katz went from "10 percent can check email on vacation" to "hyperactive information culture" quite so quickly. 90% of Americans can't check email on vacation. The reason that most people take cell phones and whatnot with them everywhere they go - most people, not all - is because it lets them feel important. "I have a cell phone, because people far away might need me." Riiight...
The cell-phone yuppies are the ones who complain of being stressed out. How many of them have tried to cut back on work, and go for a bike ride a few times per week? A few minutes in a quiet wooded area would eliminate most stress for most people.
The challenge might be finding a wooded area, but that's another topic entirely.
Bungie Software, although not a giant in the PC market, had been making great macingtosh games for nearly ten years. They were the ideal small company - putting out great products because they were willing to make up with hard work what they couldn't do with huge budgets and large development teams. (Their first big title, Marathon, was mailed out in shrinkwrap because they didn't have enough boxes.) It's sad to see a company that made its name by Thinking Different sell out to Microsoft. I can't really blame Microsoft...after all, Halo is one of the most anticipated games around. But to see an independent, multi-platform company like Bungie even consider moving to just one platform (XBox) is tough. While there haven't been official announcements, the following is the word on Halo: "We can't confirm that it will ship for XBox, but if it doesn't we'll eat our hats." - Bungie "We can't confirm Mac or PC for Halo." - Bungie Not exactly equal footing...
...but that should obviously read "13 billion" years old. The age of the universe is roughly 14 billion years - which begs the question, what's really the farthest away?
...are we going to see "But seriously..." in this discussion? I've seen at least five in twenty-three comments...
It wouldn't surprise me if astronauts have already had sex on the shuttle or in some space station. I've read female accounts describing how nice it is to be free from gravity's effects for a few weeks. Fat leaves the hips and deposits itself in the breasts, which takes care of two issues that many women worry about. Admittedly, it is less important for an astronaut to have nice breasts than, say, a Baywatch lifeguard, but there you go.
As for sex in space in general, I think that it's an eventuality. (Can you imagine going six months - forget two years - without any kind of sexual release?) It would be wise of NASA to establish a policy, publicly or privately, before the public starts talking about it.
....is quite a leap. The objective of the debate should be whether it is moral to create life of any kind. If no one protests until scientists have the technology to recreate people, then scientists will go right ahead creating people. There was an uproar when Dolly was cloned, but had Dolly been a bacteria, the uproar would have been far less - humans have much more of a connection with woolly, friendly animals than with tiny bacteria. If scientists were discussing whether or not they should create Lassie from a puddle of goo, the debate would be much more intense.
Somewhere in his ravings about punch-drunk venture capitalists, Katz makes a decent point. Creating life - playing God, literally - is something that modern religions don't really discuss. While I assume that most Western religions view it as a bad thing(TM), I am just as interested in seeing what Eastern religions have to say about it. While we may not hear about it until scientists clone Abraham Lincoln, it promises to be interesting.
Take a look at what you're saying. There is little value in personal wealth, values, and inherent personality. What else is there in the world? Additionally, what do you mean when you say that community and society are degenerating? Technology has improved my communications skills, and opened up new communities for me - both online and IRL.
Additionally, I'd be perfectly happy if my TV suddenly only had 20 channels instead of 75. It's the shows that make me happy - the one that excite me, entertain me, or inform me. I couldn't care less about the rest of them.
The principal quoted at the end of the article says "The kids we are all beginning to look at are those that play violent video games, who are on the Internet all the time..."
Where in the FBI guidelines does it mention video games or the Internet? It doesn't. Perhaps the FBI is slow to update its guidelines, or perhaps they just realize something about video games that the world hasn't quite grasped yet...
is that teh software company apparently claims to know (and be able to enforce) the manner in which its software is used. "'School administrators would use Mosaic-2000,' the company asserts, 'only in situations that reach a certain threshold (e.g., a student makes a threat, brings a weapon to school, teachers or students are concerned a student might act out violently).'" It may be that the software works best (or only works) when dealing with people who are at a high risk for violent behavior. However, if I was a school administrator, I would be tempted to test every student. That way, even students with no past history of violence could be found and helped. (Whether or not they'd really be helped is beside the point.) Just my $.02.
A roll up monitor might be nifty, but it will take years and years for technology to yield something as useful and practical as a piece of paper.
A sheet of paper has infinite resolution, is virtually weightless, is double sided, can be highlighted, bent, folded, creased, crumpled up into a ball, and erased. Nothing computerized can come close to the practicality of paper. Also, two sheets of paper can be laid side by side, and can be used to make comparisons. In order to do so on a computer, it is necessary to get a second monitor, or shrink the size of the pages. Shrinking pages often makes text unreadable.
As for printing everything, many people probably don't realize how wasteful they are being. At my college, each student gets 110 pages for free each semester. After that they cost money. Having that limit really makes people count what they are printing, and most people print everything but final drafts on both sides of the page.
Not to mention how much easier it is to read text off a page. Ever try reading a book online? It's damn near impossible.
Macs have had PCI since the introduction of the Power Macintosh back in the early-mid 90's. IDE was introced in low-end power macs, and developments in IDE technology made it fast enough to be the main drive on G3 systems. Current ATA/66 drives can put a whoopin' on most SCSI drives; only ultra-wide drives can beat its transfer rates.