I worked briefly in a lab with a MEG (magnetoencephalogram, less common than fMRI) machine. Not only did it run on Windows, it was set up in Japanese, so only the Japanese guy in our lab (who did not quite speak good enough English for me to communicate effectively with him) could actually run the machine. Sometimes for experiments he'd come in, get it going then leave. If it crashed after that, I was screwed and the experiment was over. Thank goodness that thing was in a university lab and not a hospital where someone might want to try to use it for something medical!
Hey, if there is another theory for how life came to be as it is today that meets basic criteria to be a true scientific theory and that has ample and rigorous evidence to support it - I'm all for teaching it alongside evolution in science classrooms. Intelligence design, however, does NOT meet those criteria. It is NOT a scientific theory. It does NOT belong in a science classroom.
Part of the problem is that we don't teach what a theory actually IS, so it's easy to think that every hypothesis, every idea, is (or can be viewed as) a scientific theory. If we did a better job of teaching the process of science maybe it would be obvious to kids that ID isn't science, whether they believe it or not.
I'm also a bit of a font snob, I'll admit. I posted about my favorites on my blog, and someone replied with "I love Comic Sans MS, it's so cute!" And I was like... um... sure, that's a perfectly fine font. It's just a little... overused, y'know?
I am a total font geek. Garamond and Futura are two of my favorites. I will spend longer perfecting the fonts on a presentation than on entering the text. My husband thinks I'm crazy.
I would add to this that kids are much more likely to enjoy the Ender's Shadow line of sequels that focus on Bean rather than the actual Ender sequels like Speaker of the Dead. Hell, I couldn't even get through that whole series - Xenocide was bad enough, I still haven't bothered to pick up Children of the Mind. The Ender's Shadow series, on the other hand, keeps a lot of the pacing and feel of the first book instead of plodding into endless philosophical discussion.
Something legal in person should be legal on the Internet, regardless of the inadvertent side effect of driving some kid to suicide.
It's kind of hard to argue that she would have been able to do nearly the same thing without the internet, though. Let's say that, through some elaborate scheme, she could have gotten Megan to become pen pals with "Josh." No part of those conversations (or Josh's existence) would have automatically been publicly available to all of Megan's friends. She could have, say, photocopied the letters and mailed them to Megan's friends, but that would probably be seen by them as more creepy than anything Megan said. And none of it would have happened in realtime - Megan would have had significant cooling-off periods between letters. She could have gotten a guy to pretend to be Josh and talk to Megan on the phone, but getting a teenager to act convincingly for long conversations and not either blow his cover or actually start to feel bad for Megan would be difficult.
All around, it seems VERY unlikely that she could have pulled off anything near what she managed to without the internet. And at that point, it probably could be considered mail fraud at least.
I'm not saying they charged her with the right thing, or that there's a law in existence to cover what she did. Or even that there should be. But I don't think the issue is JUST that she did it over the internet instead of in real life. It's that this is a new kind of... crime? rude/bad behavior?... that may have existed in some form before the internet, but is so changed and enhanced and extended because of the internet that dealing with it is entirely different than dealing with whatever the non-internet version would be. So now that this kind of misbehavior has been taken to new heights thanks to the internet, is that new kind of misbehavior covered by the existing laws? Does it need new laws? Has it crossed the line into "things that should be illegal"? Asking those questions doesn't necessarily mean you're saying "Oh, this is bad now because it's on the internet."
I think you mean that they have never bled in your car *without* something to contain the bleeding and keep it off the car itself. Because trust me, at some point in the past twenty years your wife bled in your car.
My husband is a mathematician, and he gets emails weekly from crackpots claiming to have disproved the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem or having proven the Riemann hypothesis or whatever. You can submit anything to the ArXiv, this shouldn't have even been news in the first place until it was confirmed.
I think perhaps there is a false dichotomy going on here. The world is not divided into "luxuries" and "needs." A third category that immediately comes to mind to describe many of the things you're talking about "convenience." My grandparents are around 80, and do not have cable or the internet. I wish they did, because yes, it would make life easier for them in many ways. But they have no interest in learning new technology - they still claim to be unable to operate their DVD player, despite having written instruction left there by my sister and owning hundreds of unopened DVDs.
The internet and cable are definitely not "needs" to them - they are getting by without it. You're right, though, "luxury" is taking it a bit too far, because I think the internet WOULD allow them to stay independent than they may be able to without it. It would definitely be a convenience, though.
This is true, that with a luxury good reducing sales initially could help the brand as a status symbol which would result in greater sales to the very rich later. The question is a) how long it would take to trickle down that way and b) whether the very rich would buy enough to make up for the lost sales.
Although designer handbags are a luxury good, from what I've heard from those who actually purchase them it sounds like numbers-wise a majority of them are NOT sold to people who can afford to buy one and never resell it. Increasing your brand as a status symbol only helps your bottom line if it prompts the people who can really afford it to buy enough to make up for all those lost sales.
Another example: Collectible dolls. Although many lose value very quickly, a lot of people still justify their purchases mentally by telling themselves (and their spouse) that it's an investment. I know many women who would suddenly see much of their doll funds diverted to other places in the family budget if their husband found out they couldn't ever legally resell the dolls. Sure, in reality they'll only ever sell them for a fraction of the purchase price, but mentally it makes them feel less guilty for spending money on a luxury item.
Very true, and I"m sure Toyota wouldn't make it obvious - but you can sure as hell bet that Honda would make sure EVERYONE knew they couldn't resell their Toyota.
Actually, some areas of the US do have cel-phone-only area codes. But generally it's only the big cities that already needed more area codes anyhow. It just wouldn't make sense to split every single area code into one landline and one mobile code. I'm not sure we'd actually run out of area codes, but it wouldn't be too far off if the big cities kept needing more while Wyoming was taking up two when it only needed one. Especially since we share area codes with Canada, plus some are reserved for emergency numbers, toll-free, etc.
My point (which I realized after I hit post I never stated directly) was that it can directly affect the bottom line because people are more likely to buy something they can resell than something they can't.
The example you give is an extreme case where it sounds like the market was flooded with used items due to the company screwing over their resellers, plus those people could have afforded new ones if the used ones hadn't been available.
People buy cars with the intention of selling them after a few years. People who buy older used cars often can't afford the new ones anyhow. If a car manufacturer suddenly stopped allowing their cars to be sold used, they would get far fewer new purchases because of it. Same for these people and their handbags - all the people who buy designer items BECAUSE they can then sell them at a consignment shop later. The people who then buy them on consignment could never afford them new. Cutting off any sale of a used handbag would result in fewer new sales, because the people who had been buying then selling would stop AND the people who had been buying used couldn't afford to start buying new.
3rd party sales while doesn't direcly effect the bottom line it does get product awarenes of your goods.
I would say it DOES affect the bottom line. Let's say I'm choosing between a Toyota and a Honda, pretty much equivalent models for $20,000 each. If I know I can resell the Toyota five years from now for $10,000 but that Honda won't let me resell the Honda ever, well, the Toyota just became a lot cheaper than the Honda in the long run!
Now, some people may not think this way when it comes to designer bags - but a LOT do. There are many women who can only afford to carry around a collection of $500-1000 bags because they keep one for a couple of months then sell it to a consignment shop for half price to help buy the next one. Still an expensive hobby, but suddenly within the reach of someone who's upper-middle-class instead of only celebrities.
Uh, given my student loans and mortgage, I'm pretty sure the high school class of 2008 currently has a higher net worth than I do. So they get a vote but I don't?
For those looking for the Profiles feature, he says in the blog (linked to in some comment above) that they had already deactivated adding new Profiles for anyone who didn't have them already, and it will be back up in a couple weeks.
For those who have them already, the rest of us don't have an "Account Profiles" link in on our Your Account page. I guess we'll get one in a couple weeks.
You're saying the average NFCG is less competent than my little sister? She fell for a paypal phishing scheme, yet she still managed to upgrade her own RAM on her Mac.
This sounds a lot like the "X-treme" fad of yesteryear. Take a few quizzes and be rewarded with shoot-em-ups between exams.
Did you actually read/view anything beyond the summary? This looks nothing like those. Absolutely nothing. It IS more of a first-person puzzle game than a first-person "shooter." In fact, if you look at the controls, there's not even anything to "shoot." You go through and find the necessary chemicals to activate the various parts of the immune system.
I think it's odd that some commenters are treating this as a "is killing a clump of cells ethical" issue. In IVF, some of the embryos will be implanted and some won't. The ones that won't are (usually) disposed of. Embryos will be disposed of either way, whether you pick which ones to dispose based on genetic defects or not. If you have a problem killing a clump of cells, you will have a problem with this no matter what.
This issue presented HERE is the ethics involved in picking and choosing which embryos to implant rather than choosing at random, which would most closely (as far as we know) mimic the random selection of an egg to release and a sperm to make it to the egg. Totally different issue, with totally different ramifications - like the evolutionary path of our species. (You could argue that legalizing abortion also affects our evolutionary path b/c certain populations are now less likely to give birth - but the fact is that abortions happen whether they're legal or not. Genetic engineering of this sort is likely to be extremely rare if illegal.)
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I worked briefly in a lab with a MEG (magnetoencephalogram, less common than fMRI) machine. Not only did it run on Windows, it was set up in Japanese, so only the Japanese guy in our lab (who did not quite speak good enough English for me to communicate effectively with him) could actually run the machine. Sometimes for experiments he'd come in, get it going then leave. If it crashed after that, I was screwed and the experiment was over. Thank goodness that thing was in a university lab and not a hospital where someone might want to try to use it for something medical!
Hey, if there is another theory for how life came to be as it is today that meets basic criteria to be a true scientific theory and that has ample and rigorous evidence to support it - I'm all for teaching it alongside evolution in science classrooms. Intelligence design, however, does NOT meet those criteria. It is NOT a scientific theory. It does NOT belong in a science classroom.
Part of the problem is that we don't teach what a theory actually IS, so it's easy to think that every hypothesis, every idea, is (or can be viewed as) a scientific theory. If we did a better job of teaching the process of science maybe it would be obvious to kids that ID isn't science, whether they believe it or not.
I'm also a bit of a font snob, I'll admit. I posted about my favorites on my blog, and someone replied with "I love Comic Sans MS, it's so cute!" And I was like... um... sure, that's a perfectly fine font. It's just a little... overused, y'know?
that someone would have a "favorite."
I am a total font geek. Garamond and Futura are two of my favorites. I will spend longer perfecting the fonts on a presentation than on entering the text. My husband thinks I'm crazy.
I would add to this that kids are much more likely to enjoy the Ender's Shadow line of sequels that focus on Bean rather than the actual Ender sequels like Speaker of the Dead. Hell, I couldn't even get through that whole series - Xenocide was bad enough, I still haven't bothered to pick up Children of the Mind. The Ender's Shadow series, on the other hand, keeps a lot of the pacing and feel of the first book instead of plodding into endless philosophical discussion.
It's kind of hard to argue that she would have been able to do nearly the same thing without the internet, though. Let's say that, through some elaborate scheme, she could have gotten Megan to become pen pals with "Josh." No part of those conversations (or Josh's existence) would have automatically been publicly available to all of Megan's friends. She could have, say, photocopied the letters and mailed them to Megan's friends, but that would probably be seen by them as more creepy than anything Megan said. And none of it would have happened in realtime - Megan would have had significant cooling-off periods between letters. She could have gotten a guy to pretend to be Josh and talk to Megan on the phone, but getting a teenager to act convincingly for long conversations and not either blow his cover or actually start to feel bad for Megan would be difficult.
All around, it seems VERY unlikely that she could have pulled off anything near what she managed to without the internet. And at that point, it probably could be considered mail fraud at least.
I'm not saying they charged her with the right thing, or that there's a law in existence to cover what she did. Or even that there should be. But I don't think the issue is JUST that she did it over the internet instead of in real life. It's that this is a new kind of... crime? rude/bad behavior?... that may have existed in some form before the internet, but is so changed and enhanced and extended because of the internet that dealing with it is entirely different than dealing with whatever the non-internet version would be. So now that this kind of misbehavior has been taken to new heights thanks to the internet, is that new kind of misbehavior covered by the existing laws? Does it need new laws? Has it crossed the line into "things that should be illegal"? Asking those questions doesn't necessarily mean you're saying "Oh, this is bad now because it's on the internet."
I think you mean that they have never bled in your car *without* something to contain the bleeding and keep it off the car itself. Because trust me, at some point in the past twenty years your wife bled in your car.
Mine *just* sent me the update to 2.0.0.15, on both my laptop and desktop machines. I guess I won't wait around for it to get to 3.0 then.
Yeah, the AC is a member of a previously uncontacted Amazon tribe, you insensitive clod!
My husband is a mathematician, and he gets emails weekly from crackpots claiming to have disproved the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem or having proven the Riemann hypothesis or whatever. You can submit anything to the ArXiv, this shouldn't have even been news in the first place until it was confirmed.
The internet and cable are definitely not "needs" to them - they are getting by without it. You're right, though, "luxury" is taking it a bit too far, because I think the internet WOULD allow them to stay independent than they may be able to without it. It would definitely be a convenience, though.
This is true, that with a luxury good reducing sales initially could help the brand as a status symbol which would result in greater sales to the very rich later. The question is a) how long it would take to trickle down that way and b) whether the very rich would buy enough to make up for the lost sales.
Although designer handbags are a luxury good, from what I've heard from those who actually purchase them it sounds like numbers-wise a majority of them are NOT sold to people who can afford to buy one and never resell it. Increasing your brand as a status symbol only helps your bottom line if it prompts the people who can really afford it to buy enough to make up for all those lost sales.
Another example: Collectible dolls. Although many lose value very quickly, a lot of people still justify their purchases mentally by telling themselves (and their spouse) that it's an investment. I know many women who would suddenly see much of their doll funds diverted to other places in the family budget if their husband found out they couldn't ever legally resell the dolls. Sure, in reality they'll only ever sell them for a fraction of the purchase price, but mentally it makes them feel less guilty for spending money on a luxury item.
Very true, and I"m sure Toyota wouldn't make it obvious - but you can sure as hell bet that Honda would make sure EVERYONE knew they couldn't resell their Toyota.
Actually, some areas of the US do have cel-phone-only area codes. But generally it's only the big cities that already needed more area codes anyhow. It just wouldn't make sense to split every single area code into one landline and one mobile code. I'm not sure we'd actually run out of area codes, but it wouldn't be too far off if the big cities kept needing more while Wyoming was taking up two when it only needed one. Especially since we share area codes with Canada, plus some are reserved for emergency numbers, toll-free, etc.
Ok, you go lock up the parents of every teenage boy (or girl) who possesses some form of pornography.
Let's see how well our economy continues to function once 80-90% of our citizens age 35-55 are in jail...
The example you give is an extreme case where it sounds like the market was flooded with used items due to the company screwing over their resellers, plus those people could have afforded new ones if the used ones hadn't been available.
People buy cars with the intention of selling them after a few years. People who buy older used cars often can't afford the new ones anyhow. If a car manufacturer suddenly stopped allowing their cars to be sold used, they would get far fewer new purchases because of it. Same for these people and their handbags - all the people who buy designer items BECAUSE they can then sell them at a consignment shop later. The people who then buy them on consignment could never afford them new. Cutting off any sale of a used handbag would result in fewer new sales, because the people who had been buying then selling would stop AND the people who had been buying used couldn't afford to start buying new.
I would say it DOES affect the bottom line. Let's say I'm choosing between a Toyota and a Honda, pretty much equivalent models for $20,000 each. If I know I can resell the Toyota five years from now for $10,000 but that Honda won't let me resell the Honda ever, well, the Toyota just became a lot cheaper than the Honda in the long run!
Now, some people may not think this way when it comes to designer bags - but a LOT do. There are many women who can only afford to carry around a collection of $500-1000 bags because they keep one for a couple of months then sell it to a consignment shop for half price to help buy the next one. Still an expensive hobby, but suddenly within the reach of someone who's upper-middle-class instead of only celebrities.
Uh, given my student loans and mortgage, I'm pretty sure the high school class of 2008 currently has a higher net worth than I do. So they get a vote but I don't?
For those who have them already, the rest of us don't have an "Account Profiles" link in on our Your Account page. I guess we'll get one in a couple weeks.
Well, at least you're saving $2/month this way, anyhow, right?
You're saying the average NFCG is less competent than my little sister? She fell for a paypal phishing scheme, yet she still managed to upgrade her own RAM on her Mac.
Did you actually read/view anything beyond the summary? This looks nothing like those. Absolutely nothing. It IS more of a first-person puzzle game than a first-person "shooter." In fact, if you look at the controls, there's not even anything to "shoot." You go through and find the necessary chemicals to activate the various parts of the immune system.
This issue presented HERE is the ethics involved in picking and choosing which embryos to implant rather than choosing at random, which would most closely (as far as we know) mimic the random selection of an egg to release and a sperm to make it to the egg. Totally different issue, with totally different ramifications - like the evolutionary path of our species. (You could argue that legalizing abortion also affects our evolutionary path b/c certain populations are now less likely to give birth - but the fact is that abortions happen whether they're legal or not. Genetic engineering of this sort is likely to be extremely rare if illegal.)
...Because you were so likely to accidentally get involved in IVF??
This is like saying humans are "more evolved" than other animals.
Ask a kangaroo rat how desirable deserts are.