Thank goodness Daddy Government is there to protect individuals' rights from people like you who would declare them non-human.
Ignorant troll: Tell me again how Daddy Government has protected your rights.
Those slaves you claim to be so concerned about were *legally* (and under the social mores of the time, legitimately) kept in legalized slavery under that same beneficent government you claim to hold so holy.
If we put any limits on research at all the temptation will be to move to China. I don't understand how we can have a "legal and fiscal framework to control it" without having restrictions on what can be done. The stem cell stuff is childs play compared to what's being contemplated - if that's enough to send it offshore we can give up on having any control at all.
Then we agree more than we disagree. By limiting the number of cell lines, Bush has said that the only lines that will be funded with federal funds has been capped. That appeared to be fine for most researchers until they began to find limits on what could be performed with the current cell lines. Now they wish they could get access to more cell lines.
I prefer set of guidelines, formulated by the scientific community, that would be monitored for compliance by federal funding agencies. Those guidelines, as outlined by Richard Hynes in the Science Friday program I linked, would have prevented many of the ethical dillemias that have been discussed in TFA, and in comments posted here.
But to arbitrarily abandon the research to a few lines that were already being used at the time of the policy change was short sighted and short circuited the very ethical controls you and I would like to see in this type of investigation.
By limiting the cell lines, Bush has nearly assured that someone will fund the research outside of US oversight.
I don't think that even the supporters of Bush's policy would want that.
Unfortunately, ethical problems will only be straightfoward when everybody else gets with it and just agrees that I'm the only one who really knows what is right and wrong...:)
...and that otherwise the experimentation on human beings part was ethically just fine.
We conduct experiments on humans all the time. We call them clinical trials. The difference, other than the fact that the Nazis believed in race supremacy, is that we now require that the test subjects receive full disclosure of the potential side effects and that their participation be entirely voluntary.
The problem with Bush's policy is that willing participants cannot use federal funds to conduct research on donated stem cells from their embryos.
Thank you Daddy Government, for telling me what I can do with my embryos.
I guess they should be shaking in their boots now, eh?
Why do US policy makers assume that every country needs to have the exact policy as we have? One of the founding priciples of US conservatism is the preservation of sovereignty. That principle has meant that the US has ignored the call for a Canadian-style medical system, or the foreign policy goals of the EU. For good or ill, US conservatism demands that countries decide what is in their own best interests and guide their foreign and domestic agendas accordingly.
Now these conservatives are demanding that Canada abandon sovereignty and model all of their intellectual property laws after the US?
US 'conservatives' have the intellectual consistency of baby shit.
Bush doesn't have the power to unilaterally make stem cell research illegal, he just changed the rules under which scientists get money for the research. And no, that's a long way from a prohibition.
(checking back to my original post) Nope, I never said it was a prohibition.
Furthermore, the argument that we should allow something unethical to happen in the US so it doesn't happen somewhere else is specious.
Who made that argument? I just said that it is pointless to make rules to govern stem cell research in the US when it now seems likely that anyone wanting to perform the research will find a pliable country to conduct the work. Then how does US law apply?
Wouldn't it be better, if you prefer to have the research conducted in an ethical or responsible manner, to have it advanced in a nation where you have a legal and fiscal framework to control it?
By dropping funding for stem cell research, the US has just ensured that it will be offshored.
The Nazis...
You lost the argument. Nothing I have written advocates doing research with the brutal ends that the Nazis advanced.
Two researchers were discussing this topic on Science Friday last week.
The thing that kept running through my mind as I listened to the discussion was how someone with enough money could run circles around these ethics panels and produce chimeras off-shore.
Now that Bush has made the political (rather than scientific) decision to limit stem cell lines, this activity will most certainly occur outside of the US and beyond any jurisdiction of American ethics organizations.
3.) I think you seriously need to rethink your definition of "right to know" as it is nothing like what anyone I know uses. See I have a "right to know" MS is dumping toxic waste in my backyard. I don't have a "right to know" anything I want about their unreleased product.
What you missed was my point about the larger discussion of what a reporters can report. If all we get is recycled crap from PR releases, we don't get the full picture. As I said (and you neglected to mention), I agree that companies have a right to protect their intellectual property and their trade secrets. But companies are now calling everything they produce (documents, screenshots, etc.) a 'trade secret'. That standard leaves the public in the dark about a whole host of information, some of which can affect public health and safety.
While Microsoft doesn't produce toxic chemicals themselves, the control systems in chemical plants are increasingly using Microsoft software. If you were putting a system together using Microsoft products that affects public safety wouldn't you want to have information about problems/bugs/whistleblower claims in making that decision?
Here's a clue for you: FIFRA already gives pesticide manufacturers the right to refuse you a copy of a material safety data sheet for their products (the document that tells you how toxic it is and the handling requirements for safe use).
Do you want to give Microsoft the same pass from public scrutiny?
The public has a right to know what Microsoft's Longhorn beta looks like?...
Forest for the trees.
What you missed was my point about the larger discussion of what a reporters can report. If all we get is recycled crap from PR releases, we don't get the full picture. As I said (and you forgot to address), companies have a right to protect their intellectual property and their trade secrets, but companies are now calling everything they produce (documents, screenshots, etc.) a 'trade secret'. That standard leaves the public in the dark about a whole host of information, some of which can affect public health and safety.
Do you want your local chemical plant to be able to label the toxicity of the stuff they produce a 'trade secret'
First Apple sues to get the names of the people who leaked the Tiger release and now Microsoft is shitting all over people posting screenshots of Longhorn.
It won't be long until every independant source of information in the US is silenced and/or will only be allowed to publish press releases. Yes, companies have a right to protect their intellectual property and trade secrets, but that right is not universal and must always be weighed against the interests of the public's right to know.
I can't see how these screenshots have harmed Microsoft in any way and this whole affair is beginning to look like a ham-handed approach to a information related to a beta release.
You'd think they would look at this as a cheap customer survey. They could fix or amend any features that the user community thought were less than appealing.
No, Bill and Steve had to reach for the lawyers again.
When asked which software would be best for a certain situation, I reach for the tool that works best. Sometimes that tool is open source, sometimes it is closed source.
I try to help people minimize the cost of running their computers, so open source is often the best route for up-front costs (purchase price). I also recommend shareware and freeware. If the app that provides the best performance is a closed source, for fee package, I will recommend it.
No software evangelism ever single-handedly converted anyone to open source. People who convert usually do so for price; they stay if it works well enough to do their work.
They have done more to market for Apple in the last few weeks than they realize (or maybe they do realized).
Every comparison of features is with something already released under the current OS X, or is a feature that will be in the next release of OS X (slated soon?).
I guess I don't get what Microsoft's strategy is for this campaign. Is this the Microsoft "Me Too" campaign?
I would love to see the sales numbers for the next OS X release. We could see some increase in sales due to Microsoft owners realizing that there is another OS in the market that works at least as well, if not better, than XP.
Maybe Gates owns a bunch of Apple stock and is hedging his bets.
That still doesn't reconcile with the statements made by Perens (published in the Register on April 15) about what he claims Tridgell did:
"There was never a question of copyright infringement, because he did not look at the software, only how it communicated over the wire."
So he just grabbed a telnet connection and started downloading the information from a BK server?
I think that both Register articles leave out a significant amount of detail. They seem to be saying two different things: Tridgell merely opened up a telnet session and logged into a BK repository, or he only looked at how BK communicated "over the wire".
Perhaps there are some informed ACs who can fill in the gaps in our collective knowledge.
There really was no need to reverse engineer it, because the software was made avaiable at no monitary cost.
If my reading of the story is correct, the metadata of the kernel developers contributions was locked in a proprietary system. McVoy had no intention of letting contributors get at the metadata.
Whether you or I think it was worth the effort to reverse engineer the protocol to get the metadata beside the point. The kernel developers who felt that they were forced to use a product they disagreed with may have felt the effort worthwhile.
Anyone who wanted to develop on the kernel could get a bk license.
But not without strings attached. How their data was handled by BK hopelessly locked into the system.
Is accepting that license giving up more than you gain? Probably not.
As I said: I want to personally thank Larry for helping Linus get more productivity from the kernel developers. I have benefitted greatly from Linus' choice. Would Linus have gotten more productivity from another SCM? That is a question that only Linus can answer.
But there is no need to make up stories about what must have really happened, when it is pretty clear what did happen.
I respectfully disagree.
We are missing the commments of one other person in this saga: Tridgell's.
Unless you have some insight into what Tridgell did or didn't do specifically, then your assertion that we know everything is just one more speculative comment.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank goodness Daddy Government is there to protect individuals' rights from people like you who would declare them non-human.
Ignorant troll: Tell me again how Daddy Government has protected your rights.
Those slaves you claim to be so concerned about were *legally* (and under the social mores of the time, legitimately) kept in legalized slavery under that same beneficent government you claim to hold so holy.
Perhaps you should google Jim Crow.
I think it's hilarious that someone with a link to Cato in his profile is arguing that we should spend more federal money on stem cell research.
Who said I did?
I just commented on the viability of proposed guidelines on research that will now probably be exported abroad.
Maybe you should read my original comments again, as well as subsequent comments to other readers.
If we put any limits on research at all the temptation will be to move to China. I don't understand how we can have a "legal and fiscal framework to control it" without having restrictions on what can be done. The stem cell stuff is childs play compared to what's being contemplated - if that's enough to send it offshore we can give up on having any control at all.
Then we agree more than we disagree. By limiting the number of cell lines, Bush has said that the only lines that will be funded with federal funds has been capped. That appeared to be fine for most researchers until they began to find limits on what could be performed with the current cell lines. Now they wish they could get access to more cell lines.
I prefer set of guidelines, formulated by the scientific community, that would be monitored for compliance by federal funding agencies. Those guidelines, as outlined by Richard Hynes in the Science Friday program I linked, would have prevented many of the ethical dillemias that have been discussed in TFA, and in comments posted here.
But to arbitrarily abandon the research to a few lines that were already being used at the time of the policy change was short sighted and short circuited the very ethical controls you and I would like to see in this type of investigation.
By limiting the cell lines, Bush has nearly assured that someone will fund the research outside of US oversight.
I don't think that even the supporters of Bush's policy would want that.
Unfortunately, ethical problems will only be straightfoward when everybody else gets with it and just agrees that I'm the only one who really knows what is right and wrong... :)
;)
I can see we agree on this one.
...and that otherwise the experimentation on human beings part was ethically just fine.
We conduct experiments on humans all the time. We call them clinical trials. The difference, other than the fact that the Nazis believed in race supremacy, is that we now require that the test subjects receive full disclosure of the potential side effects and that their participation be entirely voluntary.
The problem with Bush's policy is that willing participants cannot use federal funds to conduct research on donated stem cells from their embryos.
Thank you Daddy Government, for telling me what I can do with my embryos.
I guess they should be shaking in their boots now, eh?
Why do US policy makers assume that every country needs to have the exact policy as we have? One of the founding priciples of US conservatism is the preservation of sovereignty. That principle has meant that the US has ignored the call for a Canadian-style medical system, or the foreign policy goals of the EU. For good or ill, US conservatism demands that countries decide what is in their own best interests and guide their foreign and domestic agendas accordingly.
Now these conservatives are demanding that Canada abandon sovereignty and model all of their intellectual property laws after the US?
US 'conservatives' have the intellectual consistency of baby shit.
Bush doesn't have the power to unilaterally make stem cell research illegal, he just changed the rules under which scientists get money for the research. And no, that's a long way from a prohibition.
(checking back to my original post) Nope, I never said it was a prohibition.
Furthermore, the argument that we should allow something unethical to happen in the US so it doesn't happen somewhere else is specious.
Who made that argument? I just said that it is pointless to make rules to govern stem cell research in the US when it now seems likely that anyone wanting to perform the research will find a pliable country to conduct the work. Then how does US law apply?
Wouldn't it be better, if you prefer to have the research conducted in an ethical or responsible manner, to have it advanced in a nation where you have a legal and fiscal framework to control it?
By dropping funding for stem cell research, the US has just ensured that it will be offshored.
The Nazis...
You lost the argument. Nothing I have written advocates doing research with the brutal ends that the Nazis advanced.
Isn't it possible that there are more than two sets of criteria upon which to base a decision such as this? Ethical, perhaps?
Sure. There are probably financial reasons as well.
But Bush didn't make the decision for purely ethical reasons. He made his decision as a nod to the conservative wing of his party.
What ethical reason would there be for denying individuals the medical advances that come from stem cell research?
Did you RTFA?
Yep.
This work is being done with adult stem cells, just like all the other useful stem cell research that has been done.
And there are limits to what can be done with the existing stem cell lines.
That is why private foundations and the State of California have started funding their own stem cell research.
Two researchers were discussing this topic on Science Friday last week.
The thing that kept running through my mind as I listened to the discussion was how someone with enough money could run circles around these ethics panels and produce chimeras off-shore.
Now that Bush has made the political (rather than scientific) decision to limit stem cell lines, this activity will most certainly occur outside of the US and beyond any jurisdiction of American ethics organizations.
Truly, I'm astounded.
Clueless would be a better description.
I'm at a loss for words.
Obviously you have an abundance of hot air, but have little to add other than criticism.
No wonder you posted AC.
3.) I think you seriously need to rethink your definition of "right to know" as it is nothing like what anyone I know uses. See I have a "right to know" MS is dumping toxic waste in my backyard. I don't have a "right to know" anything I want about their unreleased product.
What you missed was my point about the larger discussion of what a reporters can report. If all we get is recycled crap from PR releases, we don't get the full picture. As I said (and you neglected to mention), I agree that companies have a right to protect their intellectual property and their trade secrets. But companies are now calling everything they produce (documents, screenshots, etc.) a 'trade secret'. That standard leaves the public in the dark about a whole host of information, some of which can affect public health and safety.
While Microsoft doesn't produce toxic chemicals themselves, the control systems in chemical plants are increasingly using Microsoft software. If you were putting a system together using Microsoft products that affects public safety wouldn't you want to have information about problems/bugs/whistleblower claims in making that decision?
Here's a clue for you: FIFRA already gives pesticide manufacturers the right to refuse you a copy of a material safety data sheet for their products (the document that tells you how toxic it is and the handling requirements for safe use).
Do you want to give Microsoft the same pass from public scrutiny?
The public has a right to know what Microsoft's Longhorn beta looks like?...
Forest for the trees.
What you missed was my point about the larger discussion of what a reporters can report. If all we get is recycled crap from PR releases, we don't get the full picture. As I said (and you forgot to address), companies have a right to protect their intellectual property and their trade secrets, but companies are now calling everything they produce (documents, screenshots, etc.) a 'trade secret'. That standard leaves the public in the dark about a whole host of information, some of which can affect public health and safety.
Do you want your local chemical plant to be able to label the toxicity of the stuff they produce a 'trade secret'
You have a very skewed idea of rights, my friend.
First Apple sues to get the names of the people who leaked the Tiger release and now Microsoft is shitting all over people posting screenshots of Longhorn.
It won't be long until every independant source of information in the US is silenced and/or will only be allowed to publish press releases. Yes, companies have a right to protect their intellectual property and trade secrets, but that right is not universal and must always be weighed against the interests of the public's right to know.
I can't see how these screenshots have harmed Microsoft in any way and this whole affair is beginning to look like a ham-handed approach to a information related to a beta release.
You'd think they would look at this as a cheap customer survey. They could fix or amend any features that the user community thought were less than appealing.
No, Bill and Steve had to reach for the lawyers again.
When asked which software would be best for a certain situation, I reach for the tool that works best. Sometimes that tool is open source, sometimes it is closed source.
I try to help people minimize the cost of running their computers, so open source is often the best route for up-front costs (purchase price). I also recommend shareware and freeware. If the app that provides the best performance is a closed source, for fee package, I will recommend it.
No software evangelism ever single-handedly converted anyone to open source. People who convert usually do so for price; they stay if it works well enough to do their work.
For Apple.
They have done more to market for Apple in the last few weeks than they realize (or maybe they do realized).
Every comparison of features is with something already released under the current OS X, or is a feature that will be in the next release of OS X (slated soon?).
I guess I don't get what Microsoft's strategy is for this campaign. Is this the Microsoft "Me Too" campaign?
I would love to see the sales numbers for the next OS X release. We could see some increase in sales due to Microsoft owners realizing that there is another OS in the market that works at least as well, if not better, than XP.
Maybe Gates owns a bunch of Apple stock and is hedging his bets.
Um, many (most?) scientists argue that cooperation is more common than competition in nature.
Really?
Here is at least one scientist who disagrees with you.
I have not read one scientific paper that refutes his original thesis.
You win by being good.
Apple motto, circa 1985.
Forget the competition.
Digital Equipment Corporation motto, circa 1985.
Just do the best you can.
My mom's motto, circa 1965.
That still doesn't reconcile with the statements made by Perens (published in the Register on April 15) about what he claims Tridgell did:
"There was never a question of copyright infringement, because he did not look at the software, only how it communicated over the wire."
So he just grabbed a telnet connection and started downloading the information from a BK server?
I think that both Register articles leave out a significant amount of detail. They seem to be saying two different things: Tridgell merely opened up a telnet session and logged into a BK repository, or he only looked at how BK communicated "over the wire".
Perhaps there are some informed ACs who can fill in the gaps in our collective knowledge.
+conribution Is that better?
Thank you. You guys are (sniff!) too great for words.
There really was no need to reverse engineer it, because the software was made avaiable at no monitary cost.
If my reading of the story is correct, the metadata of the kernel developers contributions was locked in a proprietary system. McVoy had no intention of letting contributors get at the metadata.
Whether you or I think it was worth the effort to reverse engineer the protocol to get the metadata beside the point. The kernel developers who felt that they were forced to use a product they disagreed with may have felt the effort worthwhile.
Anyone who wanted to develop on the kernel could get a bk license.
But not without strings attached. How their data was handled by BK hopelessly locked into the system.
Is accepting that license giving up more than you gain? Probably not.
As I said: I want to personally thank Larry for helping Linus get more productivity from the kernel developers. I have benefitted greatly from Linus' choice. Would Linus have gotten more productivity from another SCM? That is a question that only Linus can answer.
Others obviously disagree.
All the makings of a good argument.
But there is no need to make up stories about what must have really happened, when it is pretty clear what did happen.
I respectfully disagree.
We are missing the commments of one other person in this saga: Tridgell's.
Unless you have some insight into what Tridgell did or didn't do specifically, then your assertion that we know everything is just one more speculative comment.
As an aside, I never claimed to be insightful.
That's almost as bad as reading one of those "Hollywood Gossip" columns in a supermarket tabloid.
How nice. Thanks for your positive contribution.
"hell this is so going to completely mislead idiots."
Why worry about misleading idiots?
Can you avoid misleading idiots?
Isn't being easily mislead one of the defining qualities of an "idiot"?
No.
"Recycled Comment" refers to the fact that I've submitted it before on this topic.
Thanks for the benefit of the doubt.