"Own initiative reports are drafted by individual MEPs and are not proposals for EU laws."
Please, mod the parent up. If we are to blame each and every government/organisation for a couple of their crazy members/affiliates/MEPs, we really are doomed! This mad proposal does NOT come from the EU commission or any EU government.
I have had this debate with people for a couple of years already (I work in bioinformatics). My simple opinion is that laws should be made to make it illegal to analyse other people's DNA without their consent, but it is (will be) simply impossible to stop people from having their own DNA analysed. It will in 3 to 5 years become so easy to do that you will just need to send some saliva to some company in, say, Hong Kong or Morocco and get the results in a few weeks. How can you possibly stop that from happening? Governments should be prepared to protect and help people, so that their DNA is not "stolen" and people get access to good education regarding what it all means.
Why can't God and Evolution co-exist? Because an alledged god is totally irrelevant to science. Science is about observations and theories, not about myth.
Science theorizes what happened from about 10(-43) seconds after the Big Bang, what came before? Your god? What came before him/her/it? It is not because we do not yet know something that an old man in the sky did it.
Morality or helping the poor is only a facade/marketing trick.
As opposed to you seeking Slashdot karma by just simply outright lying. My karma was capped a very long time ago. Don't be silly.
Firstly, how about scoping this--does this apply to martyrs as well, or just a particular subset you have in mind? You know, beyond the absurd universal you have to express, even though you yourself know it's false as you say it. What kind of martyr? The one that blows himself up to get 70 virgins in paradise, the one the died in Roman arena or the one that is now in a psychiatric hospital. They look all the same to me. Medical cases.
Secondly, I'd like to compare hard numbers between churches' charitable giving, corporations, and you personally. The first two I can get--and relatively speaking, churches compare positively. As for the last, I suppose we'll have wait on that--unless you care to volunteer it. Absurd argument. Give to charities to go to paradise. Is that the kind of selfish charity you are talking about? I know many people who give to non-religious charity organisations without hoping one second it will help them going to some illusory eden. Anyways, I was talking about organisations, not people. People can be deluded into thinking that by giving money to churches they do good.
I haven't heard of a whole genome being inside another species. Many insects have complete bacteria living in each of their cells. These are called endosymbiont.
One of the worst movies for science must be Mission to Mars. The woman looking at a short double helix on a computer screen and saying "It looks like human DNA!", got me crying. There are countless other insulting things in this movie (calling nucleotides chromosomes or freely rotating candies in space). Do not watch it!
The worst thing is that this movie is in many ways based on science. Brian de Palma is an idiot.
> "One topic that is evidently too hot to handle: How do you cope with sexual desire among healthy young men and women during a mission years long?" What about:
One topic that is evidently too disgusting to handle: How do you cope with sexual desire among OLD men and women during a mission years long?
Your system could work, but could an 85 year old use it? Would a member of the poll station in a rural area need 3 month training to troubleshoot the machines? I frankly cannot see the point of using such a complex system when a simple paper based one works perfectly well (and I call myself a geek!).
It works exactly the same way as before, except that after checking that your name is on the voter list, you have to walk around the table where the people are seated, stand in front of the machine, press a couple of buttons to vote and confirm your vote, walk back to stand in front of the voter list and finally sign next to your name. During that time no voter can approach the table. Since there can be only one voter list and thus one machine (by law), I can't see any other legal way of doing this. As I mentioned before, with paper voting, you just have to drop the envelop in the ballot box, which takes 1 second. Now you have to walk, and vote on a machine which takes around 15 to 30 seconds. It is slow as hell. Email me if you want some more info.
>The major time consumer when waiting is, as always, the verification of the voting rolls which is done by reading a long listing of registered voters. It can take them up to a minute to find your name when you forgot your voters registration card.
Not anymore! While queuing on sunday to vote on one of those stupid machines, I noticed that people took from 15 to 45 seconds to vote on them. That compared to 1sec to drop an envelop in a box! So it takes longer to vote for everyone, it is less safe, costs more, and all that so that the results are known in less than 5 minutes instead of 45 minutes with the paper voting.
For some reason, I had misread "...a thorny issue ever since Jeff Johnson, the original maintainer of RPM, left Red Hat." as Horny issue. So I did a google image search on Jeff Johnson, and I can confirm it was horny (in a homo-erotic way).
A very rich man is asked by a journalist how he made his first million dollar. The rich man answered that he started off with just a few pennies, put them in a phone box and made a phone call: "Dad, can you lend me a million dollar, please?".
His Grace that allows us to be saved from eternal damnation. Eternal damnation that he created, just to torture us, unbelievers/sinners/people he does not like, for eternity. That's sick, not perfect!
Thank you, that was excatly my point and you put it better than I tried to. A French satirical newspaper is subtitled as: "Press freedom disapears when it is not used".
The UK is 27th, that's not in the top 10 as I was mentioning. And I don't deny that there are problems with the freedom of the press in the UK or the US or anywhere else.
A national culture that encourages a rational atmosphere does not make irrational behaviour impossible, just less probable. If a government imposes their own vision of rational thought, then there is no freedom!
You are right, but journalists are in danger when they investigate dangerous situations. (With only a slight exaggeration) nothing is EVER happening in the top 10 countries! Or at least was happening last year. That should be taken into account.
The problem with RSF ranking of countries is that it does not make a difference between institutions (basically, the government) threatening journalists and individuals or groups not linked to the government. So if some islamist group threatens, say, danish journalists/cartoonists, the ranking of Danemark will go down. That does not mean Danish journalists are not free to report on whatever they want. So what you see in this country ranking is that countries that are not involved in "world affairs" have a high ranking, while countries that are rather large, with numerous minorities and a voice in world affairs are lower. I think RSF (which has an important role to play) should provide a more sophisticated ranking than this all-in-one rubbish.
Let's not bundle the whole of Europe in one basket. There are large birth rate differences between European countries and religion (or catholicism as you mentionned) seems to have little to do with it: Italy very catholic, low birth rate, France, mostly atheist high birth rate. The main differences in Europe seems to come from different state/employer benefits for women and cultural attitudes. For instance in Germany or the Netherlands, a woman with a young child is frowned upon if she goes to work, whereas in France it's the reverse.
Good luck with your ipod carrying wallet or metal wallet when you go through airport security. You might end up carrying your passport in a transparent plastic bag.
It's a good thing you will never work in the computer business. I work in the computer business since 1990, the unix computer business, that is. MS and windows are not the only game in town.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you miss this bit of that page?
"Own initiative reports are drafted by individual MEPs and are not proposals for EU laws."
Please, mod the parent up. If we are to blame each and every government/organisation for a couple of their crazy members/affiliates/MEPs, we really are doomed!
This mad proposal does NOT come from the EU commission or any EU government.
I have had this debate with people for a couple of years already (I work in bioinformatics). My simple opinion is that laws should be made to make it illegal to analyse other people's DNA without their consent, but it is (will be) simply impossible to stop people from having their own DNA analysed. It will in 3 to 5 years become so easy to do that you will just need to send some saliva to some company in, say, Hong Kong or Morocco and get the results in a few weeks. How can you possibly stop that from happening?
Governments should be prepared to protect and help people, so that their DNA is not "stolen" and people get access to good education regarding what it all means.
As opposed to you seeking Slashdot karma by just simply outright lying. My karma was capped a very long time ago. Don't be silly. Firstly, how about scoping this--does this apply to martyrs as well, or just a particular subset you have in mind? You know, beyond the absurd universal you have to express, even though you yourself know it's false as you say it. What kind of martyr? The one that blows himself up to get 70 virgins in paradise, the one the died in Roman arena or the one that is now in a psychiatric hospital. They look all the same to me. Medical cases. Secondly, I'd like to compare hard numbers between churches' charitable giving, corporations, and you personally. The first two I can get--and relatively speaking, churches compare positively. As for the last, I suppose we'll have wait on that--unless you care to volunteer it. Absurd argument. Give to charities to go to paradise. Is that the kind of selfish charity you are talking about? I know many people who give to non-religious charity organisations without hoping one second it will help them going to some illusory eden. Anyways, I was talking about organisations, not people. People can be deluded into thinking that by giving money to churches they do good.
Churches are institutions. They try to grow. They try to get more money to grow even more.
Religion is one way (could be the best way) to instill institution membership to people and from a very young age (indoctrination).
Morality or helping the poor is only a facade/marketing trick.
I haven't heard of a whole genome being inside another species.
Many insects have complete bacteria living in each of their cells. These are called endosymbiont.
One of the worst movies for science must be Mission to Mars. The woman looking at a short double helix on a computer screen and saying "It looks like human DNA!", got me crying. There are countless other insulting things in this movie (calling nucleotides chromosomes or freely rotating candies in space). Do not watch it!
The worst thing is that this movie is in many ways based on science. Brian de Palma is an idiot.
The japanese governement is, for now, waiting for the release of Ubuntu Tantalizing Tentacles.
> "One topic that is evidently too hot to handle: How do you cope with sexual desire among healthy young men and women during a mission years long?"
What about:
One topic that is evidently too disgusting to handle: How do you cope with sexual desire among OLD men and women during a mission years long?
(Why did I think of that?)
Your system could work, but could an 85 year old use it? Would a member of the poll station in a rural area need 3 month training to troubleshoot the machines? I frankly cannot see the point of using such a complex system when a simple paper based one works perfectly well (and I call myself a geek!).
It works exactly the same way as before, except that after checking that your name is on the voter list, you have to walk around the table where the people are seated, stand in front of the machine, press a couple of buttons to vote and confirm your vote, walk back to stand in front of the voter list and finally sign next to your name. During that time no voter can approach the table. Since there can be only one voter list and thus one machine (by law), I can't see any other legal way of doing this. As I mentioned before, with paper voting, you just have to drop the envelop in the ballot box, which takes 1 second. Now you have to walk, and vote on a machine which takes around 15 to 30 seconds. It is slow as hell. Email me if you want some more info.
>The major time consumer when waiting is, as always, the verification of the voting rolls which is done by reading a long listing of registered voters. It can take them up to a minute to find your name when you forgot your voters registration card.
Not anymore! While queuing on sunday to vote on one of those stupid machines, I noticed that people took from 15 to 45 seconds to vote on them. That compared to 1sec to drop an envelop in a box!
So it takes longer to vote for everyone, it is less safe, costs more, and all that so that the results are known in less than 5 minutes instead of 45 minutes with the paper voting.
I agree with you 100%, but your first paragraph is in disagreement with your sig. Time to find a new one I guess!
For some reason, I had misread "...a thorny issue ever since Jeff Johnson, the original maintainer of RPM, left Red Hat." as Horny issue. So I did a google image search on Jeff Johnson, and I can confirm it was horny (in a homo-erotic way).
This reminds me of a joke.
A very rich man is asked by a journalist how he made his first million dollar. The rich man answered that he started off with just a few pennies, put them in a phone box and made a phone call: "Dad, can you lend me a million dollar, please?".
His Grace that allows us to be saved from eternal damnation.
Eternal damnation that he created, just to torture us, unbelievers/sinners/people he does not like, for eternity. That's sick, not perfect!
And by the way, who created this perfect being?
Thank you, that was excatly my point and you put it better than I tried to. A French satirical newspaper is subtitled as: "Press freedom disapears when it is not used".
The UK is 27th, that's not in the top 10 as I was mentioning. And I don't deny that there are problems with the freedom of the press in the UK or the US or anywhere else.
A national culture that encourages a rational atmosphere does not make irrational behaviour impossible, just less probable. If a government imposes their own vision of rational thought, then there is no freedom!
You are right, but journalists are in danger when they investigate dangerous situations. (With only a slight exaggeration) nothing is EVER happening in the top 10 countries! Or at least was happening last year. That should be taken into account.
The problem with RSF ranking of countries is that it does not make a difference between institutions (basically, the government) threatening journalists and individuals or groups not linked to the government. So if some islamist group threatens, say, danish journalists/cartoonists, the ranking of Danemark will go down. That does not mean Danish journalists are not free to report on whatever they want. So what you see in this country ranking is that countries that are not involved in "world affairs" have a high ranking, while countries that are rather large, with numerous minorities and a voice in world affairs are lower. I think RSF (which has an important role to play) should provide a more sophisticated ranking than this all-in-one rubbish.
Let's not bundle the whole of Europe in one basket. There are large birth rate differences between European countries and religion (or catholicism as you mentionned) seems to have little to do with it: Italy very catholic, low birth rate, France, mostly atheist high birth rate. The main differences in Europe seems to come from different state/employer benefits for women and cultural attitudes. For instance in Germany or the Netherlands, a woman with a young child is frowned upon if she goes to work, whereas in France it's the reverse.
Good luck with your ipod carrying wallet or metal wallet when you go through airport security. You might end up carrying your passport in a transparent plastic bag.
It's a good thing you will never work in the computer business.
I work in the computer business since 1990, the unix computer business, that is. MS and windows are not the only game in town.
You can be MS free and play games on a console (except xbox exclusives)