First, if it is considered human then how can it not be a living human just before it's growth process is stopped.?
I think that this statement can clarify the issue as most of us see it: disposing of human flesh is a medical, not moral issue; killing a 'person' is a moral issue. Note that 'person' has nothing to do with human flesh. Any sapient being can be considered a person. Terry Schiavo was no longer a person. A fetus without consciousness is not a person. A sapient/conscious extraterrestrial would probably be considered a 'person'. Disposing of amputated arms, breasts, fingernails, fetuses, etc. is not a moral issue.
The problem is that we don't want to obey, we just want to feel good.
The problem, you see, is that ethical behavior turns out to be imcompatible with maximizing shareholder value. And those damned activist judges have decided that corporations have a legal responsibilty to maximize shareholder value, so our hands are tied. We would change the system if we could, but those judges are forcing us to compromise our ethics and rake in the billions.
can be equated to murder (read: intentional killing of a human being)
If the definition of murder were that simple, then our President would already have been convicted for the murders of (pick your number, I'll settle for a round number near the middle) 100,000 Iraqis. No, murder is not a simple or natural definition. We as individuals and a society get to define murder. The majority of American individuals believe that abortion should be legal, and is not murder. Our courts have agreed. Our society is divided, but if the 'decision' of society comes from the majority of its members, then our society has decided that abortion and the disposal of unwanted embryos from IVF are not murder.
You're right about who is going to be immediately enriched by this research, and I don't like that fact either. However, after the patents have expired, the results of this research will be part of the body of human knowledge, that our descendents will teach and use for hundreds of thousands of years.
Even before the patents expire, this knowledge will improve our understanding of 'how things work', even if we are not free to create inventions that use this knowledge for the first seventeen years.
Morality is only hard if you think about it, and try to find a basis for it in reality. If you inherit your morality from Bronze Age shepherds and don't think about it, it's easy.
Would it still be considered canibalism if someone ate a fetus that didn't develope a functioning brain?
Yes, for the same reason that it would be cannibalism to eat a human finger that had been cut off in an accident. It doesn't matter that the finger can't think. It doesn't matter that *you* didn't cut it off. What matters in determining cannibalism is whether the tissue is of the same species as the eater. Did your question have a point?
Should they have closed their eyes and ignored it because the atomic bomb was reprehensible?
I don't agree with your characterization of the atomic bombs, or their use. We killed more people in one night by bombing Tokyo with conventional incendiary bombs than we did with either atomic bomb. By ending the war *extremely* quickly, the atomic bombs saved a great many more Japanese than they killed (oh, and yeah it saved a few American lives too). By the way, Plan B was to use nerve gas, which lacking in the shock value of the atomic bombs, probably would have required using it in many cities and towns. That makes the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like a humanitarian mission.
Yes programming languages are tools. That cheap potmetal wrench at the flea market is also a tool. The needle-nosed pliers at the dollar store (whose working surfaces don't quite mesh) are a tool. We are discussing the merits of tools here. Some tools suck. If you don't want to hear from craftsmen who care about their software tools, Slashdot is probably not the site for you.
C, on the other other hand, automagically infuses them with impeccable programming style.
Learning C teaches them that if they don't have the patience and brains to be an excellent developer, then they should find a career that will give them long term satisfaction that doesn't involve an entire team of co-workers covering for their mistakes.
Furthermore, if anything the last Presidential election showed the American public is to apathetic to vote.
John Kerry got the second highest number of votes cast for any presidential candidate, ever. W got the highest number of votes ever (unless Diebold made up a bunch of votes). The 2004 election also had the highest voter participation in terms of percentage since 1968. This means that voter apathy did not keep voters away from the polls.
I'm not happy with the results of that election either, but the problem wasn't apathy. And since Kerry got 'the second highest...', you can't say that the Democrats did a poor job of motivating turnout among their base.
Maybe even a few of them end up in jail until they can exonerate themselves
Silly rabbit, they can't hold you in jail for more than a few days without charging you with something, and you could be 'produced' under a writ of Habeus Corpus. They wouldn't hold you in a jail. They would send you to Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo (if you're lucky enough to avoid a truly secret detention camp).
Except that pimpy neoliberal nerds of America do not make law in Europe (yet). Certain unalienable things cannot be sold, just like you cannot sell yourself to slavery.
Are you sure that you didn't mean 'Libertarian' instead of neoliberal? Some Libertarians argue that you, as a sovereign individual, should be allowed to sell yourself into slavery. American Liberals care about the outcomes that would result from their policies, and most are opposed to even renting yourself out as a prostitute. Liberals and Libertarians have very little in common, and if Libertarians are neo-anything, they are not neoliberal.
Brilliance and creativity are everywhere, and California is one of the most unionized states I've ever lived in
I've lived in two states in the midwest, and two in the deep south. There are some brilliant people in those locations, and we are usually punished for it. Local business leaders, political leaders, and culture leaders are at best indifferent to brilliance, often hostile to it.
The culture in California seems to idolize brilliance and creativity. As a result, a lot of brilliant and creative people in California came from other places. Somebody wakes up in the south and says "I'm tired of being treated like crap by anti-intellectuals. Let me find someplace that wants me." (As in a Melissa Etheridge interview, she said that when she realized that she was gay, the first thing she said was "I gotta get to a city.")
California is one of the big targets for people fleeing a dumbed-down middle America. It has gotten to the point, that if there wasn't a real IQ difference between regions in the past, there will be soon. As smart people California, Boston, New York, etc, and have their children there. The averages of the IQs for the different regions will diverge. Note that there are a few hotspots around Chicago (midwest) and the research triangle around Raleigh-Durham (south).
As for the unionization, not too many of us are looking for brilliance and creativity in having our carpets installed or our trash hauled. Unions might impose an economic penalty on business (by paying a living wage), but they don't tend to hamper the brilliant and creative work.
I think that you ignore cultural factors. SV couldn't have happened in Texas, because they don't cotton to no damn hippies (or intellectuals). Upstate New York had a strong business culture, dominated by *old* companies and old money.
Perhaps California got a leg-up from their history as a gold rush location. Anybody can come and strike it rich (which required some hard work, but luck was a major factor; somewhat in opposition to the SmithBarney "we *earn* it" mindset).
On Windows Vista, you run everything as an administrator by default, but you can't do anything even vaguely administrator-like without clicking "Yes" to loads of warnings (and they even pop up for silly things, apparently).
If I wanted to respond 'Yes' to a bunch of warnings, I wouldn't have specified " -rf ". Some people think that they are servants of their computers; the rest of us use Linux (or some slightly less popular, but equally satisfying, UNIX clone).
Slashdot Mirror
I think that this statement can clarify the issue as most of us see it: disposing of human flesh is a medical, not moral issue; killing a 'person' is a moral issue. Note that 'person' has nothing to do with human flesh. Any sapient being can be considered a person. Terry Schiavo was no longer a person. A fetus without consciousness is not a person. A sapient/conscious extraterrestrial would probably be considered a 'person'. Disposing of amputated arms, breasts, fingernails, fetuses, etc. is not a moral issue.
The problem, you see, is that ethical behavior turns out to be imcompatible with maximizing shareholder value. And those damned activist judges have decided that corporations have a legal responsibilty to maximize shareholder value, so our hands are tied. We would change the system if we could, but those judges are forcing us to compromise our ethics and rake in the billions.
Bashing jingoism and hawks is not the same thing as bashing the US.
That depends on the spineless of the bootlickers in Congress.
If the definition of murder were that simple, then our President would already have been convicted for the murders of (pick your number, I'll settle for a round number near the middle) 100,000 Iraqis. No, murder is not a simple or natural definition. We as individuals and a society get to define murder. The majority of American individuals believe that abortion should be legal, and is not murder. Our courts have agreed. Our society is divided, but if the 'decision' of society comes from the majority of its members, then our society has decided that abortion and the disposal of unwanted embryos from IVF are not murder.
Even before the patents expire, this knowledge will improve our understanding of 'how things work', even if we are not free to create inventions that use this knowledge for the first seventeen years.
Morality is only hard if you think about it, and try to find a basis for it in reality. If you inherit your morality from Bronze Age shepherds and don't think about it, it's easy.
Yes, for the same reason that it would be cannibalism to eat a human finger that had been cut off in an accident. It doesn't matter that the finger can't think. It doesn't matter that *you* didn't cut it off. What matters in determining cannibalism is whether the tissue is of the same species as the eater. Did your question have a point?
I don't agree with your characterization of the atomic bombs, or their use. We killed more people in one night by bombing Tokyo with conventional incendiary bombs than we did with either atomic bomb. By ending the war *extremely* quickly, the atomic bombs saved a great many more Japanese than they killed (oh, and yeah it saved a few American lives too). By the way, Plan B was to use nerve gas, which lacking in the shock value of the atomic bombs, probably would have required using it in many cities and towns. That makes the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like a humanitarian mission.
Threshing doesn't have to separate *all* of the wheat from the chaff.
Yes programming languages are tools. That cheap potmetal wrench at the flea market is also a tool. The needle-nosed pliers at the dollar store (whose working surfaces don't quite mesh) are a tool. We are discussing the merits of tools here. Some tools suck. If you don't want to hear from craftsmen who care about their software tools, Slashdot is probably not the site for you.
Learning C teaches them that if they don't have the patience and brains to be an excellent developer, then they should find a career that will give them long term satisfaction that doesn't involve an entire team of co-workers covering for their mistakes.
You've never had a LAPP DANCE.
And break the fingers of those idiots (novice and grizzled alike, unforunately) who start every PHP script with error_reporting(0);
John Kerry got the second highest number of votes cast for any presidential candidate, ever. W got the highest number of votes ever (unless Diebold made up a bunch of votes). The 2004 election also had the highest voter participation in terms of percentage since 1968. This means that voter apathy did not keep voters away from the polls.
I'm not happy with the results of that election either, but the problem wasn't apathy. And since Kerry got 'the second highest...', you can't say that the Democrats did a poor job of motivating turnout among their base.
They'll be charging by the minute, and getting that MilliVanilli or SpiceGirls song stuck in your head "all day" is going to cost you $43.
*Do not try this at home.
Silly rabbit, they can't hold you in jail for more than a few days without charging you with something, and you could be 'produced' under a writ of Habeus Corpus. They wouldn't hold you in a jail. They would send you to Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo (if you're lucky enough to avoid a truly secret detention camp).
Instead of switching to FireFox, why didn't you just load a FireFox-ish theme into IE?
Sorry, we already have one babbling, incoherent politician. I hear Dell tech support is hiring.
Are you sure that you didn't mean 'Libertarian' instead of neoliberal? Some Libertarians argue that you, as a sovereign individual, should be allowed to sell yourself into slavery. American Liberals care about the outcomes that would result from their policies, and most are opposed to even renting yourself out as a prostitute. Liberals and Libertarians have very little in common, and if Libertarians are neo-anything, they are not neoliberal.
I've lived in two states in the midwest, and two in the deep south. There are some brilliant people in those locations, and we are usually punished for it. Local business leaders, political leaders, and culture leaders are at best indifferent to brilliance, often hostile to it.
The culture in California seems to idolize brilliance and creativity. As a result, a lot of brilliant and creative people in California came from other places. Somebody wakes up in the south and says "I'm tired of being treated like crap by anti-intellectuals. Let me find someplace that wants me." (As in a Melissa Etheridge interview, she said that when she realized that she was gay, the first thing she said was "I gotta get to a city.")
California is one of the big targets for people fleeing a dumbed-down middle America. It has gotten to the point, that if there wasn't a real IQ difference between regions in the past, there will be soon. As smart people California, Boston, New York, etc, and have their children there. The averages of the IQs for the different regions will diverge. Note that there are a few hotspots around Chicago (midwest) and the research triangle around Raleigh-Durham (south).
As for the unionization, not too many of us are looking for brilliance and creativity in having our carpets installed or our trash hauled. Unions might impose an economic penalty on business (by paying a living wage), but they don't tend to hamper the brilliant and creative work.
I think that you ignore cultural factors. SV couldn't have happened in Texas, because they don't cotton to no damn hippies (or intellectuals). Upstate New York had a strong business culture, dominated by *old* companies and old money.
Perhaps California got a leg-up from their history as a gold rush location. Anybody can come and strike it rich (which required some hard work, but luck was a major factor; somewhat in opposition to the SmithBarney "we *earn* it" mindset).
If I wanted to respond 'Yes' to a bunch of warnings, I wouldn't have specified " -rf ". Some people think that they are servants of their computers; the rest of us use Linux (or some slightly less popular, but equally satisfying, UNIX clone).
Postgres also supports "set transaction read only". Thanks for mentioning it, I never knew that it existed.