Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was unpopular for her views on eugenics. Too soon after Nazi Germany and their experiments with eugenics. But, to some degree, eugenics might be unavoidable.
We already have genetic counselors. How is that different from eugenics, I don't know. Perhaps a matter of degree. Many of us already deliberately avoid childbearing to avoid transmission of a wide variety of congenital diseases.
This genetics testing helps to improve detection of more subtle defects, and it can give the 'all clear' for other potential issues. Imagine that some dread disease appeared in your family tree and you feared transmitting it. Getting tested could give you the 'all clear' to have children.
I know of a case where a couple had a child that couldn't sweat. It was congenital. They had another child. I don't recall if that additional child also had the issue. But I can assure you that if I knew of this problem in my genetic makeup, I would be seeking donor genetic material to substitute for my evidently dangerous material.
I actually studied this as part of my Master's. IIRC, the number is around 13 watts per square meter overall (this is a net loss of energy, aka cooling). This number includes the net heat gain from the clouds at night. (Clouds at night prevent IR radiation from escaping into space, thereby warming the Earth.)
Alrighty, crank up those machines after the night air has cooled, stop them before sundown.
What Gates is funding is research. All the hypothetical problems suggested here are valid, but will be tested during the research.
Could be interesting; microscopic salt crystals from the ocean are a major source of the nuclei that precipitation condenses around. Deliberately throwing more could have some unexpected results.
How's about an expected result? It cools the atmosphere as water condenses and forms rain? Do this out at sea and you get cooled zones. Certain cooled zones, part of a process known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), alter the weather over the U.S.
Believe it or not, the concept is based upon observations of ongoing, present-day phenomenon.
I left something off. Do not talk politics or religion. If asked, try to play dumb.
I work with a bunch of rednecks; Rush Limbaugh types. I'm a leftie and proud of it, and it's hard to refrain from pointing out the silliness of many of Rush's rants, repeated verbatim.
Basically, be modest. Never complain. Two ears, one mouth, use in proportion. Don't criticize other people's code because there's often a reason for something looking hacked. And even if something is hacked without a good reason, don't belabor the obvious. Remember people's names. Dress conservatively. Smile.
Software is a team effort, so there's a lot of importance in getting along with teammates. If you end up in a dysfunctional group, don't bitch about it, get another job.
Don't take blame or blame yourself. When things go wrong, you usually don't know why at first. Wait it out to see what the real matter was. Good luck.
Only now are we seeing computing start to reach its potential. And, of course, it's Apple that's bringing it to us. Applications that run on little devices held in your hand, applications that do the things you want done. The desktop computer has become a web-browsing device. An iPhone, iPad, and Apple laptop do much more than a PC. Why is that?
America's slow internet backbone is party the result of Big Brother wanting to be able to see everything we do. Big Media, along with Big Brother, wants to keep it slow otherwise they will get swamped by the volume of traffic and won't be able to snoop on our activities. Other countries have better and cheaper internet access, but Big Brother, with Big Media's help, is choking us off.
Unfortunately, choking the internets and the googles is adversely affecting the progress of technology in the country that is do dependent upon technology to keep its economic world domination. (BTW, China will also self-limit their growth this way just to be able to keep its population under control.)
First off, you make an ASSumption that IBM is trying for a desktop operating system. Bad assumption.
I spent years working as a test technician and test engineer installing operating systems and testing hardware. I have experience with AIX, SunOS, Solaris, Novell NetWare 2.1, 2.2, 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 4.0, 5.0, etc., IBM OS/2 1.31, 2.0, Microsoft OS/2 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.31, MS DOS 2.0, 2.1...6.1.?, Microsoft Windows NT 3.51, 4.0,..., HP-UX 9.?, 10.*, 11.*, SCO Unix, Linux Slackware, SCO Unix and others. I also have exposure to MS Xenix, HP 3000, HP 1000, and others.
Of the lot, I liked IBM OS/2 2.0 the best. Most stable, easiest to use, powerful. You would have had to be there at the time to understand why IBM OS/2 2.0 didn't do better; Microsoft waged a marketing war to prevent OS/2 2.0's success. The irony is that Microsoft had rights to the IBM source code and used much of the OS/2 2.0 source code to improve its products. You could find copyright and version strings with IBM's copyright in areas such as file system code.
Microsoft isn't the biggest because it writes the best code. Only a Microsoft bigot would believe that.
And people who believe that Microsoft will continue to dominate clearly don't remember how it used to be that IBM dominated the market. IBM is still important, but it's turn as being number one is over. Microsoft, too, will fade. Its importance as a operating system is waning as the use of computers becomes network focused. Even with all its experience with writing operating systems, and its dominance of the operating system market, Microsoft couldn't make inroads into new markets such as cell phones and mobile devices.
Microsoft is a one-trick pony and that trick is being upstaged by actors who are far better.
@ dnaumov, who writes If exposure to mobile carrier antenna radio waves was of any danger to public health, there is no way you would be seeing these antennas anywhere near apartment complexes, the FCC or whatever is the appropriate authority is in your country would be all over this.
Cigarettes causes cancer and a host of other health problems, yet they are still sold over the counter. Alcohol is known to cause grave birth defects and it is widely available. People are still allowed to talk and text on cell phones despite the knowledge that they are at higher risk to cause serious traffic accidents. Guns are protected by politicians despite the obvious daily evidence the the consequences of ownership.
Republicans are allowed to vote despite the knowledge that they have lower IQs and less education.
Get the apartment, and then create a resonant chamber that creates interference for the transmitters/receivers. If the equipment can get interference from something you're doing in the apartment, then it is clear that the microwaves are penetrating the walls of the unit.
BTW, why did the previous owner leave the apartment? Died of brain cancer?
This, to me, is implicit proof that global warming deniers don't actually doubt global warming, they are just advancing ideas that benefits a corporate agenda.
Bill Gates is someone who understands the need to 'stay on message', regardless of the truthiness of his facts. His performance on a deposition during the big Microsoft trial, showing obvious hostility to the questioner, but staunchly defending his company's actions, is proof that Gates practices corporate spin. Corporate PR flaks are allowed to 'testify' despite the apparent self-interest of their testimony.
Somehow, corporate Amerika has as much, or more, power than the citizens of this country.
A large percentage of older programmers are unable to learn a new programming model. For example: Object Oriented coding.
I don't think that relates to age at all. I watched in horror as college new-hires in the 90's, who had learned to program in C, make a hash out of a new project written in C++. They were younger. And they just didn't get it. But they did work long hours and hacked the code until management said, 'ship it'.
And they had shiny programming degrees, so they ruled.
Experience is key. The issue is that new applicants coming out school have more experience with.NET, Java and they key technologies that many industries are looking for today.
Arrant crap. The best programmer I know is in his 60's and got his start on IBM mainframes. He's the go-to guy when you're writing a new OS for your next imbedded application. As others have already said, once you've been through a few languages, JCL, Cobol, Fortran, C, C++, Java, TCL, the next language doesn't even register as a 'new' language.
The reluctance of younger managers to hire older programmers has less to do with skill and ability, and more to do with psychological factors such as an older programmer's ability to instantly see the folly of what a younger manager wants to try. Been there, tried that, fuggetaboutit.
Just because you, yourself, might not see the benefit of 100mb internets, doesn't mean you won't enjoy its benefits.
Think of the interstate highway system. You might never drive on the interstates, (I seldom do), but everything you buy gets transported on the interstates. Same-same for the internets; if you go to the store and swipe your card to pay, if you do business with a bank, broker, insurance company, etc., they will be using the internets to lower the cost of your service and improve the quality. Every daily activity is influenced by the internets.
My wife had another heart attack like this three weeks ago. It was her third. She was out of the hospital the next day. She's recovering rapidly. Previously she had been diagnosed as having 'Cardiac Syndrome X'. Sheesh.
I often think that medicine still hasn't progressed very far. People in the future will look back on the days when Americans spent 16% of GDP on health and still suffered in ignorance of what ails them.
Prepaid cellphone, new laptop, internet cafe for going online, and use cash. Frickin' Saudi's are probably pretty good at staying below the radar. Pick one of them.
I agree that until they have a very specific reason to be looking at my data, they have no business with my data. But I also acknowledge that, starting soon after 9/11, they started looking at my data despite laws that were supposed to prevent that.
And I also acknowledge that they will construe my information in ways that will put me at a disadvantage because I supported such-and-so politician, or because I looked into the side-effects of medication X. This manner of data-mining is already happening. Outlawing it is fruitless, but we can make laws that disclose who has looked at my data.
Until we have a sort of reciprocity wrt searching data, until we know who has been doing it, we will be at a disadvantage. The searching is already happening. But who is watching the watch-birds? That's what I want to know.
Hey, they can look at my data. It will bore them to death.
Seriously, the internet has enabled a range of new criminal activity. This move to preserve data and mine it is to be expected. As time goes on, it will get worse.
I'm reminded of how people used to live in small towns and everybody knew everybody else's business. The only difference is that, now, police agencies and other spying organizations can conceal their activities. I vote that ISP's must reveal who asked for what.
I do accept risk, but I weigh the risk against the 'reward'. For example, I paddle a kayak. It's hard to explain how sitting in your kayak on a river can clear your mind of all the detritus of daily life. For an hour or more, you can be involved in an activity where you and your cohorts only think and talk about paddling.
One of the mothers of a young paddler is a nurse in the ER of the local trauma center. She believes that her daughter is more at risk driving to and from the river than actually paddling in the river. On a trip to a river, I was a passenger in a car that had a head-on collision on a road in one of the most remote places in this country. So there's something to what that mom thinks.
Back to Carlin and his spike, I think the point remains that making cars safer will have the unintended consequence of making drivers more dangerous. There was a head-on collision recently on a four-lane road a mile from where I live. I suspect the offending driver was texting. I now drive in the right lane when I can in case some inattentive driver crosses the line.
Truly, it needed to fail, and fail very publicly. If it were to succeed we would end up in a missile/anti-missile arms race. This way, we can publicly claim (again) that the cost of the program is too much and that we're cutting back on the program.
Meanwhile, they move to the next phase of the program - countermeasures for anti-missile systems.
Don't you hate it when you post something really stupid on slashdot and you can't unpost it?
Right back at 'cha.
How is it that some people just don't get into accidents? Ever. Not having accidents, including the ones that aren't your fault, happens all the time. No pun intended, but it's no accident that certain people don't have accidents.
You and all the other slow-witted types can posit all sorts of scenarios where you were in an accident that "wasn't your fault". That's fine. Knock yourself out. No, I don't have precognitive powers. Here are some of the things that I do;
I don't drive on New Year's eve/night, on Superbowl Sunday, or on any other holiday where there's going to be drinking. I avoid rush hour when I can. I minimize and combine trips. I live near my job. I sometimes walk to work. If I had good public transportation where I lived, I'd use it.
And when I do drive, I apply lessons that were taught to me when I was trained as a bus driver in the City of Seattle. Look for traffic that isn't going to stop in an intersection. Wait a beat before starting up when the light turns green. Don't tailgate. Watch the mirrors. Don't get in a hurry. Lots more.
Did I ever get hit while driving a bus? Yes. Sideswiped once, and rear-ended once. The rear-ender was a drunk driver. I'll never know what happened in the side-swipe, but the road was narrow and winding, so there's mitigating circumstances. Considering how many miles I drove while a bus driver, my record was pretty good.
You can claim that accident's 'aren't your fault' all you want. You can also try avoiding dangerous situations. Or if you accept that you are willing to risk an accident to drive on a certain road, at a certain time of day, on a certain day, you have put yourself into a situation where accidents will happen. You then share responsibility for the accident when it happens.
Here's a recent example of how I avoid an accident; driving through an area of 'open range' where cattle roam at night. I slowed down well below the speed limit to see the cows in time, and when it became clear that there were too many cattle roaming the roads, I stopped for the night. You pays your money and you makes your choice.
"When half the accidents will be through no fault of your own..."
This is exactly George's point. Some people, such as you, get focused on fault instead of responsibility. You are the type of person who deserves to get impaled.
Accidents, including accidents that are not your fault, can be avoided. If you failed to avoid an accident, including the ones the ones that are not your fault, you get weeded from the gene pool.
Slashdot Mirror
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was unpopular for her views on eugenics. Too soon after Nazi Germany and their experiments with eugenics. But, to some degree, eugenics might be unavoidable.
We already have genetic counselors. How is that different from eugenics, I don't know. Perhaps a matter of degree. Many of us already deliberately avoid childbearing to avoid transmission of a wide variety of congenital diseases.
This genetics testing helps to improve detection of more subtle defects, and it can give the 'all clear' for other potential issues. Imagine that some dread disease appeared in your family tree and you feared transmitting it. Getting tested could give you the 'all clear' to have children.
I know of a case where a couple had a child that couldn't sweat. It was congenital. They had another child. I don't recall if that additional child also had the issue. But I can assure you that if I knew of this problem in my genetic makeup, I would be seeking donor genetic material to substitute for my evidently dangerous material.
The cost of putting enough water into the air though.... is a different matter. Not sure if that's a cost-effective way of going about it.
Heat pump. Cold deep water, warm surface water.
I actually studied this as part of my Master's. IIRC, the number is around 13 watts per square meter overall (this is a net loss of energy, aka cooling). This number includes the net heat gain from the clouds at night. (Clouds at night prevent IR radiation from escaping into space, thereby warming the Earth.)
Alrighty, crank up those machines after the night air has cooled, stop them before sundown.
What Gates is funding is research. All the hypothetical problems suggested here are valid, but will be tested during the research.
Could be interesting; microscopic salt crystals from the ocean are a major source of the nuclei that precipitation condenses around. Deliberately throwing more could have some unexpected results.
How's about an expected result? It cools the atmosphere as water condenses and forms rain? Do this out at sea and you get cooled zones. Certain cooled zones, part of a process known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), alter the weather over the U.S.
Believe it or not, the concept is based upon observations of ongoing, present-day phenomenon.
I left something off. Do not talk politics or religion. If asked, try to play dumb.
I work with a bunch of rednecks; Rush Limbaugh types. I'm a leftie and proud of it, and it's hard to refrain from pointing out the silliness of many of Rush's rants, repeated verbatim.
Basically, be modest. Never complain. Two ears, one mouth, use in proportion. Don't criticize other people's code because there's often a reason for something looking hacked. And even if something is hacked without a good reason, don't belabor the obvious. Remember people's names. Dress conservatively. Smile.
Software is a team effort, so there's a lot of importance in getting along with teammates. If you end up in a dysfunctional group, don't bitch about it, get another job.
Don't take blame or blame yourself. When things go wrong, you usually don't know why at first. Wait it out to see what the real matter was. Good luck.
Only now are we seeing computing start to reach its potential. And, of course, it's Apple that's bringing it to us. Applications that run on little devices held in your hand, applications that do the things you want done. The desktop computer has become a web-browsing device. An iPhone, iPad, and Apple laptop do much more than a PC. Why is that?
America's slow internet backbone is party the result of Big Brother wanting to be able to see everything we do. Big Media, along with Big Brother, wants to keep it slow otherwise they will get swamped by the volume of traffic and won't be able to snoop on our activities. Other countries have better and cheaper internet access, but Big Brother, with Big Media's help, is choking us off.
Unfortunately, choking the internets and the googles is adversely affecting the progress of technology in the country that is do dependent upon technology to keep its economic world domination. (BTW, China will also self-limit their growth this way just to be able to keep its population under control.)
First off, you make an ASSumption that IBM is trying for a desktop operating system. Bad assumption.
I spent years working as a test technician and test engineer installing operating systems and testing hardware. I have experience with AIX, SunOS, Solaris, Novell NetWare 2.1, 2.2, 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 4.0, 5.0, etc., IBM OS/2 1.31, 2.0, Microsoft OS/2 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.31, MS DOS 2.0, 2.1...6.1.?, Microsoft Windows NT 3.51, 4.0,..., HP-UX 9.?, 10.*, 11.*, SCO Unix, Linux Slackware, SCO Unix and others. I also have exposure to MS Xenix, HP 3000, HP 1000, and others.
Of the lot, I liked IBM OS/2 2.0 the best. Most stable, easiest to use, powerful. You would have had to be there at the time to understand why IBM OS/2 2.0 didn't do better; Microsoft waged a marketing war to prevent OS/2 2.0's success. The irony is that Microsoft had rights to the IBM source code and used much of the OS/2 2.0 source code to improve its products. You could find copyright and version strings with IBM's copyright in areas such as file system code.
Microsoft isn't the biggest because it writes the best code. Only a Microsoft bigot would believe that.
And people who believe that Microsoft will continue to dominate clearly don't remember how it used to be that IBM dominated the market. IBM is still important, but it's turn as being number one is over. Microsoft, too, will fade. Its importance as a operating system is waning as the use of computers becomes network focused. Even with all its experience with writing operating systems, and its dominance of the operating system market, Microsoft couldn't make inroads into new markets such as cell phones and mobile devices.
Microsoft is a one-trick pony and that trick is being upstaged by actors who are far better.
@ dnaumov, who writes If exposure to mobile carrier antenna radio waves was of any danger to public health, there is no way you would be seeing these antennas anywhere near apartment complexes, the FCC or whatever is the appropriate authority is in your country would be all over this.
Cigarettes causes cancer and a host of other health problems, yet they are still sold over the counter. Alcohol is known to cause grave birth defects and it is widely available. People are still allowed to talk and text on cell phones despite the knowledge that they are at higher risk to cause serious traffic accidents. Guns are protected by politicians despite the obvious daily evidence the the consequences of ownership.
Republicans are allowed to vote despite the knowledge that they have lower IQs and less education.
Get the apartment, and then create a resonant chamber that creates interference for the transmitters/receivers. If the equipment can get interference from something you're doing in the apartment, then it is clear that the microwaves are penetrating the walls of the unit.
BTW, why did the previous owner leave the apartment? Died of brain cancer?
Second attempt at a link; Dark Star
Do you remember Dark Star?
This, to me, is implicit proof that global warming deniers don't actually doubt global warming, they are just advancing ideas that benefits a corporate agenda.
Bill Gates is someone who understands the need to 'stay on message', regardless of the truthiness of his facts. His performance on a deposition during the big Microsoft trial, showing obvious hostility to the questioner, but staunchly defending his company's actions, is proof that Gates practices corporate spin. Corporate PR flaks are allowed to 'testify' despite the apparent self-interest of their testimony.
Somehow, corporate Amerika has as much, or more, power than the citizens of this country.
And, Gates is a complex person.
A large percentage of older programmers are unable to learn a new programming model. For example: Object Oriented coding. I don't think that relates to age at all. I watched in horror as college new-hires in the 90's, who had learned to program in C, make a hash out of a new project written in C++. They were younger. And they just didn't get it. But they did work long hours and hacked the code until management said, 'ship it'.
And they had shiny programming degrees, so they ruled.
Experience is key. The issue is that new applicants coming out school have more experience with .NET, Java and they key technologies that many industries are looking for today.
Arrant crap. The best programmer I know is in his 60's and got his start on IBM mainframes. He's the go-to guy when you're writing a new OS for your next imbedded application. As others have already said, once you've been through a few languages, JCL, Cobol, Fortran, C, C++, Java, TCL, the next language doesn't even register as a 'new' language.
The reluctance of younger managers to hire older programmers has less to do with skill and ability, and more to do with psychological factors such as an older programmer's ability to instantly see the folly of what a younger manager wants to try. Been there, tried that, fuggetaboutit.
Just because you, yourself, might not see the benefit of 100mb internets, doesn't mean you won't enjoy its benefits.
Think of the interstate highway system. You might never drive on the interstates, (I seldom do), but everything you buy gets transported on the interstates. Same-same for the internets; if you go to the store and swipe your card to pay, if you do business with a bank, broker, insurance company, etc., they will be using the internets to lower the cost of your service and improve the quality. Every daily activity is influenced by the internets.
Jeepers, people are such Luddites.
My wife had another heart attack like this three weeks ago. It was her third. She was out of the hospital the next day. She's recovering rapidly. Previously she had been diagnosed as having 'Cardiac Syndrome X'. Sheesh.
I often think that medicine still hasn't progressed very far. People in the future will look back on the days when Americans spent 16% of GDP on health and still suffered in ignorance of what ails them.
Nah, you're making it hard.
Prepaid cellphone, new laptop, internet cafe for going online, and use cash. Frickin' Saudi's are probably pretty good at staying below the radar. Pick one of them.
I agree that until they have a very specific reason to be looking at my data, they have no business with my data. But I also acknowledge that, starting soon after 9/11, they started looking at my data despite laws that were supposed to prevent that.
And I also acknowledge that they will construe my information in ways that will put me at a disadvantage because I supported such-and-so politician, or because I looked into the side-effects of medication X. This manner of data-mining is already happening. Outlawing it is fruitless, but we can make laws that disclose who has looked at my data.
Until we have a sort of reciprocity wrt searching data, until we know who has been doing it, we will be at a disadvantage. The searching is already happening. But who is watching the watch-birds? That's what I want to know.
Hey, they can look at my data. It will bore them to death.
Seriously, the internet has enabled a range of new criminal activity. This move to preserve data and mine it is to be expected. As time goes on, it will get worse.
I'm reminded of how people used to live in small towns and everybody knew everybody else's business. The only difference is that, now, police agencies and other spying organizations can conceal their activities. I vote that ISP's must reveal who asked for what.
I do accept risk, but I weigh the risk against the 'reward'. For example, I paddle a kayak. It's hard to explain how sitting in your kayak on a river can clear your mind of all the detritus of daily life. For an hour or more, you can be involved in an activity where you and your cohorts only think and talk about paddling.
One of the mothers of a young paddler is a nurse in the ER of the local trauma center. She believes that her daughter is more at risk driving to and from the river than actually paddling in the river. On a trip to a river, I was a passenger in a car that had a head-on collision on a road in one of the most remote places in this country. So there's something to what that mom thinks.
Back to Carlin and his spike, I think the point remains that making cars safer will have the unintended consequence of making drivers more dangerous. There was a head-on collision recently on a four-lane road a mile from where I live. I suspect the offending driver was texting. I now drive in the right lane when I can in case some inattentive driver crosses the line.
Truly, it needed to fail, and fail very publicly. If it were to succeed we would end up in a missile/anti-missile arms race. This way, we can publicly claim (again) that the cost of the program is too much and that we're cutting back on the program.
Meanwhile, they move to the next phase of the program - countermeasures for anti-missile systems.
Don't you hate it when you post something really stupid on slashdot and you can't unpost it?
Right back at 'cha.
How is it that some people just don't get into accidents? Ever. Not having accidents, including the ones that aren't your fault, happens all the time. No pun intended, but it's no accident that certain people don't have accidents.
You and all the other slow-witted types can posit all sorts of scenarios where you were in an accident that "wasn't your fault". That's fine. Knock yourself out. No, I don't have precognitive powers. Here are some of the things that I do;
I don't drive on New Year's eve/night, on Superbowl Sunday, or on any other holiday where there's going to be drinking. I avoid rush hour when I can. I minimize and combine trips. I live near my job. I sometimes walk to work. If I had good public transportation where I lived, I'd use it.
And when I do drive, I apply lessons that were taught to me when I was trained as a bus driver in the City of Seattle. Look for traffic that isn't going to stop in an intersection. Wait a beat before starting up when the light turns green. Don't tailgate. Watch the mirrors. Don't get in a hurry. Lots more.
Did I ever get hit while driving a bus? Yes. Sideswiped once, and rear-ended once. The rear-ender was a drunk driver. I'll never know what happened in the side-swipe, but the road was narrow and winding, so there's mitigating circumstances. Considering how many miles I drove while a bus driver, my record was pretty good.
You can claim that accident's 'aren't your fault' all you want. You can also try avoiding dangerous situations. Or if you accept that you are willing to risk an accident to drive on a certain road, at a certain time of day, on a certain day, you have put yourself into a situation where accidents will happen. You then share responsibility for the accident when it happens.
Here's a recent example of how I avoid an accident; driving through an area of 'open range' where cattle roam at night. I slowed down well below the speed limit to see the cows in time, and when it became clear that there were too many cattle roaming the roads, I stopped for the night. You pays your money and you makes your choice.
"When half the accidents will be through no fault of your own..."
This is exactly George's point. Some people, such as you, get focused on fault instead of responsibility. You are the type of person who deserves to get impaled.
Accidents, including accidents that are not your fault, can be avoided. If you failed to avoid an accident, including the ones the ones that are not your fault, you get weeded from the gene pool.