We still do not have a comprehensive understanding of the risks of transgene introgression. We know that genes can be naturally introgressed between different species, albeit at generally low frequencies and over long periods of time. However, government regulators of transgenic plants are interested in specific transgenes, transgenic events, crops and wild relatives, in time spans of tens of years and beyond. Also, risks must be measured against benefits.
Discussions of the environmental risks and benefits of adopting genetically engineered organisms are highly polarized between pro- and anti-biotechnology groups, but the current state of our knowledge is frequently overlooked in this debate. A review of existing scientific literature reveals that key experiments on both the environmental risks and benefits are lacking. The complexity of ecological systems presents considerable challenges for experiments to assess the risks and benefits and inevitable uncertainties of genetically engineered plants. Collectively, existing studies emphasize that these can vary spatially, temporally, and according to the trait and cultivar modified.
Much of the research that has been done is encouraging, but there are still many unknowns. Conservatism is warranted when it comes to tampering with complex systems.
If both you and your partner were virgins until your first sexual encounter with each other, and have a lifelong, drug-free relationship until both of your natural (or accidental) deaths, the chance of either of you contracting AIDS is statistically zero.
If you never get in a car or walk down a public road, the odds of dying in a collision approaches zero. So unless you walk or bike everywhere you go, it's your own fault if some drunken bastard going 50 over rear-ends you, right?
Car accidents cost the public a lot of money. Shouldn't we be sending your widow the bill for scraping your remains off the highway? After all, you choose to engage in risky behavior (driving), why should I pay to clean up your mess?
So of course we need armed forced and police to uphold our rights. I'm just saying that such taxation is only justified if it is voluntary. Just as you freely choose to pay some amount for insurance against emergencies, you would also freely choose to pay toward upholding your rights (and the rights of everyone else). That doesn't work.
Imagine you are a wealthy landowner in a country where law enforcement is funded voluntarily. Do you get more bang for your buck doing your civic duty by contributing to the police force and national military, or hiring a private army to protect your interests?
The fact that it is built-in and constantly connected physically is a problem, but it can easily be disabled. If your system were compromised, that wouldn't help. All the attacker would have to do is find the file and put it back.
Yeah, I read your last paragraph too. Just saying;-)
There actually is an issue of openness with the existing standards. The Cable industry doesn't allow stand-alone devices to decrypt their signals - which means no CableCard for your home-built PVR.
I don't know what the FCC is proposing, but I would welcome a new standard if it meant opening up the market to third-party hardware manufacturers.
If I was a java coder I'd be hacking Azureus to use UDP instead of TCP I would think that using UDP to actually download chunks would be horribly inefficient; the client wouldn't know if it received the data intact until it does a checksum on the chunk, and then you'd have to re-download the whole chunk if you missed even a single packet.
And, as an extra added bonus, they're tossing in legal DVD-playback capability. That's the real new here as far as I'm concerned. This is what needs to be done if they're going to try to sell these things to the home PC market.
If they're smart, they'll continue on that path and add out-of-the-box support for mp3, aac, and other non-Free multimedia.
his postition on Roe v. Wade - he'd do everything in his power to overturn it, and allow state legislatures to control women's bodies. He has also voted in favor of federal legislation restricting abortion. He's only in favor of "leaving it to the States" when it suites his purposes.
they list exonerees by the year the were exonerated, NOT the yaer they were originally found guilty. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that most of them were found guily in the 70's and 80's. Interesting idea, let's look at the numbers, and no "ancient history". If you go through the tail end of this list, of the prisoners exonerated this century:
1 was convicted in the 60s. 3 were convicted in the 70s. 21 were convicted in the 80s. 14 were convicted in the 90s. 1 was convicted after 2000.
While it's true that the greatest number of these convictions took place during the eighties, more than a third of them happened after, so I still don't buy your original claim that the criminal justice system is near infallible.
I don't make much of only one person convicted in the last 7 years having been exonerated, considering that a good deal of these exonerations seem to take place at least 10 years after conviction.
What number of people whe were put to death in the last 5 years have been Exonerated? I thought you said the important metric was the year of conviction.
What if the verdict was wrong? Rarely happens. Since the death penalty has been reintroduced, there have been 1096 executions in the US. During the same period, there have been 124 exonerations.
Clearly, the verdict is wrong a significant amount of the time.
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Yeah, but that still leaves you vulnerable to brute force attacks. Especially from moose.
I don't see how building useful infrastructure is "pork".
Controlled breeding is time-tested, genetic modification is not. That doesn't mean 'don't do it', it means 'extensive research should be done first'.
"Transgene introgression from genetically modified crops to their wild relatives"(pdf)
"The Ecological Risks and Benefits of Genetically Engineered Plants"
Much of the research that has been done is encouraging, but there are still many unknowns. Conservatism is warranted when it comes to tampering with complex systems.
Food safety is not the issue, that's tested easily enough.
It's a bit more difficult to predict the environmental impact of introducing modified crops on a large scale.
I've heard a bit about that, very nasty. Makes the RIAA look like honest businessmen.
There's nothing wrong with researching GM crops.
When it starts to get more complicated is when you put them into production without sufficient testing.
If both you and your partner were virgins until your first sexual encounter with each other, and have a lifelong, drug-free relationship until both of your natural (or accidental) deaths, the chance of either of you contracting AIDS is statistically zero.
If you never get in a car or walk down a public road, the odds of dying in a collision approaches zero. So unless you walk or bike everywhere you go, it's your own fault if some drunken bastard going 50 over rear-ends you, right?
Car accidents cost the public a lot of money. Shouldn't we be sending your widow the bill for scraping your remains off the highway? After all, you choose to engage in risky behavior (driving), why should I pay to clean up your mess?
Lumping in beer with reality TV and fast food hurts my head. I avoid the later two like the plague. A good ale, on the other hand...
'Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy'.
Imagine you are a wealthy landowner in a country where law enforcement is funded voluntarily. Do you get more bang for your buck doing your civic duty by contributing to the police force and national military, or hiring a private army to protect your interests?
If he loses, it will probably be because he lost the sound-byte war, not due to fundamental policy disagreements.
What about when a stranger posts "kill yourself faggot"?
Yeah, I read your last paragraph too. Just saying
Cool band.
Transmorgafier.
There actually is an issue of openness with the existing standards. The Cable industry doesn't allow stand-alone devices to decrypt their signals - which means no CableCard for your home-built PVR.
I don't know what the FCC is proposing, but I would welcome a new standard if it meant opening up the market to third-party hardware manufacturers.
If they're smart, they'll continue on that path and add out-of-the-box support for mp3, aac, and other non-Free multimedia.
It was the "partial birth abortion" bill.
VNC? Nah. If the attacker wanted control, they'd just replace the ssh server with one that gives them a backdoor.
1 was convicted in the 60s.
3 were convicted in the 70s.
21 were convicted in the 80s.
14 were convicted in the 90s.
1 was convicted after 2000.
While it's true that the greatest number of these convictions took place during the eighties, more than a third of them happened after, so I still don't buy your original claim that the criminal justice system is near infallible.
I don't make much of only one person convicted in the last 7 years having been exonerated, considering that a good deal of these exonerations seem to take place at least 10 years after conviction. What number of people whe were put to death in the last 5 years have been Exonerated? I thought you said the important metric was the year of conviction.
Clearly, the verdict is wrong a significant amount of the time.