History isn't traditionally decided by random, anonymous, lunatics either. Perhaps the voting system would be an improvement.
BTW, I am not slamming Wikipedia; it is the first (but not always the last) place that I turn for information that ought to be found in an encyclopedia.
But this is a different kind of anonymity. This blogger wasn't anonymous like an AC, he was anonymous like Pieroxy. He had published his blog consistently under one name at one address (ok, so I am assuming this), and his track record of writings was available for review, just like a non-AC/. user. The only reason that we consider him anonymous, is because we don't have his meat-space name, and couldn't find him in the big blue room.
There is just that feeling of having your toys taken away.
Not to mention the ecological angle. They are going to manufacture a disc, probably made out of petrochemical based plastic. They are going to manufacture the packaging. They are going to ship all of this stuff. And it is going to last for 90 minutes and then be thrown-away? WTF?
Perhaps it is the fact that we don't fling poo at each other that causes our discontentment, so both answers are correct. {No, I'm not looking for volunteers to test this hypothesis.}
in a commercial environment, defining the spec is really writing a contract, which protects both the customer and the editor
But since the spec is almost certainly incomplete, and likely wrong in several spots, what you have is a contract that means that a judge is likely to rule in your favor, but a customer who hates your guts and a lot of industry buzz about how you are being sued by one of your customers. Get in bed with your customer and discover which of their needs you can meet on a continuing basis. That's a better recipe for success that being 'technically correct'.
Ooooh, bad example. HTML is one of the examples that proves Linus' point. If you are a web developer who programs to the HTML spec, and ignores the idiosyncracies of the browsers that exist in the real world, you will probably have a short, unhappy career. It's really cool that we have an HTML spec, and hopefully most (>50%) of the world's browsers will follow that spec. Until then, you must develop your websites to the reality of the browsers, spec be damned.
Re:Linus has limited engineering future vision
on
Linus Says No to 'Specs'
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· Score: 3, Insightful
computing is still a human-driven craft instead of the extremely precise arm of engineering that it could so easily have become
I agree with Linus. And the problem that I see is people like you who insist that the above statement is true, all evidence to the contrary. No company has ever demonstrated a methodology that is guaranteed (or even very likely) to deliver high quality, maintainable software in a predictable amount of time. Software development is still an art, and may always be one.
The individual cells have metabolisms, and 'respond' to a few crude stimuli, but there is no organism-level metabolism or stimulus/response. But you're right about my confusing RU-486 with a morning-after pill.
It grows, has the potential to reproduce(species requirement), posesses a metabolism, responds to some stimuli, and posesses mecahnisms for controlled (internal) motion. Yup, that would be life.
An early-stage embryo that is a mass of say, 200 cells does not possess a metabolism or respond to stimuli or possess mechanisms for controlled (internal) motion. Thus by your definition it is not life, so any drug or device that prevents implantation should certainly be allowed (RU-486).
BTW, the 'potential to reproduce' is not a requirement for an indiviual to be a member of a species. That is a tool for biologists to divide populations of organisms into different species. A human child, born without gonads is still a human, and it is not legal or ethical to kill them just because they have no potential to reproduce.
Correction: frozen 'eggs' are never thrown-out from infertility clinics, because eggs cannot be frozen for the purpose of fertility. Only sperm and already-fertilized embryos can be frozen. Very early-stage embryos are the things being thrown away.
We are made of living cells, but what makes us human ethically, and often legally, is not the cells, but our minds. A doctor can amputate or remove a person's: hand, foot, arm, leg, teeth, eyes, internal organs (many), etc. Even part of a person's brain can be removed (as in the case of brain tumors) without ethical or legal problems. But in most jurisdictions, a doctor is not allowed to deliberately kill a patient. So what is the difference here? It is the killing of an individual's mind that constitutes murder, not the killing of any set of billions of cells.
Look at the case of Terri Schiavo; she had no mind, so allowing all of her cells to die was allowed. Even many of those fighting to keep her alive tacitly agreed on this point. Sen. Bill Frist (who is also an M.D.) opined that she did not appear to be in a 'persistent vegitative state'. He did not stand-up and say that a mindless mass of cells must be kept alive. He felt a need to say that there was a mind present. In general, once 'brain death' occurs, a person is legally dead and life support can be removed.
If an embryo has a mind (not just a brain, but a mind), then the ethics of dealing with a human individual should be considered.
We should also pay money to the postal office every time we use email since they lose money on every email sent.
Poor analogy. Try: if the ISPs start charging $2 per email sent, then it would be in the public interest for our Post Office to start offering a free or very cheap email service.
If the drug companies insist on making 700% profit on drugs that they develop, then our government should step-in and conduct/finance "open source" drug development. And before anyone says that the drug companies need to charge high prices to fund further research, an NPR report talked about one of the large drug companies (Merck? Pfizer?) spending in one year (2003?) $7B on research, and making a net profit of $48B.
I really hate to break it to you, but IT people make poor businessmen.
And businessmen make *really* bad IT people (and IT decisions).
You _are_ a PIMP for making $65k a year
If you have to choose between being the pimp and being the hooker, go with pimp (hookers, like sales weasles, tend lose their dignity early in their careers).
there isn't much technically in the way of starting an egg bank
Bzzzz...try again. They can freeze sperm, they can freeze fertilized eggs (embryos), but they haven't quite figured out how to freeze human eggs so that they are still usable after thawing. Thanks for playing.
Voting for the lesser of two evils is 'doing something'. And if more Naderites had understood that in either of the last two elections, our country would be a loss less broke and a lot less screwed-up right now. Throwing-away your vote on some who has zero change of winning, that's not 'doing something'.
Slashdot Mirror
If you are accessing it from a public school that can't afford to subscribe to Britannica, then Wikipedia is much better. More accurate? Maybe not.
BTW, I am not slamming Wikipedia; it is the first (but not always the last) place that I turn for information that ought to be found in an encyclopedia.
You can pee on him while singing Ring Around the Rosy or Greensleeves, but Mary had a Little Lamb and Happy Birthday are copyrighted. Good luck.
A politician.
But this is a different kind of anonymity. This blogger wasn't anonymous like an AC, he was anonymous like Pieroxy. He had published his blog consistently under one name at one address (ok, so I am assuming this), and his track record of writings was available for review, just like a non-AC /. user. The only reason that we consider him anonymous, is because we don't have his meat-space name, and couldn't find him in the big blue room.
Not to mention the ecological angle. They are going to manufacture a disc, probably made out of petrochemical based plastic. They are going to manufacture the packaging. They are going to ship all of this stuff. And it is going to last for 90 minutes and then be thrown-away? WTF?
Why is the DOD even working with iRobot? Their only mass-market product sucks!
Perhaps it is the fact that we don't fling poo at each other that causes our discontentment, so both answers are correct. {No, I'm not looking for volunteers to test this hypothesis.}
But since the spec is almost certainly incomplete, and likely wrong in several spots, what you have is a contract that means that a judge is likely to rule in your favor, but a customer who hates your guts and a lot of industry buzz about how you are being sued by one of your customers. Get in bed with your customer and discover which of their needs you can meet on a continuing basis. That's a better recipe for success that being 'technically correct'.
Ooooh, bad example. HTML is one of the examples that proves Linus' point. If you are a web developer who programs to the HTML spec, and ignores the idiosyncracies of the browsers that exist in the real world, you will probably have a short, unhappy career. It's really cool that we have an HTML spec, and hopefully most (>50%) of the world's browsers will follow that spec. Until then, you must develop your websites to the reality of the browsers, spec be damned.
I agree with Linus. And the problem that I see is people like you who insist that the above statement is true, all evidence to the contrary. No company has ever demonstrated a methodology that is guaranteed (or even very likely) to deliver high quality, maintainable software in a predictable amount of time. Software development is still an art, and may always be one.
Has the RIAA commissioned a study to see if young people are more likely to hijack ocean-going vessels? After all, piracy is piracy.
Sorry, I didn't catch that in the original posts.
I find them tasty, and consider it rather gauche to consume ones diety.
Shhhh, you might offend the Catholics.
The individual cells have metabolisms, and 'respond' to a few crude stimuli, but there is no organism-level metabolism or stimulus/response. But you're right about my confusing RU-486 with a morning-after pill.
No, that's BSD. Linux is a penguin worshiping cult.
An early-stage embryo that is a mass of say, 200 cells does not possess a metabolism or respond to stimuli or possess mechanisms for controlled (internal) motion. Thus by your definition it is not life, so any drug or device that prevents implantation should certainly be allowed (RU-486).
BTW, the 'potential to reproduce' is not a requirement for an indiviual to be a member of a species. That is a tool for biologists to divide populations of organisms into different species. A human child, born without gonads is still a human, and it is not legal or ethical to kill them just because they have no potential to reproduce.
Correction: frozen 'eggs' are never thrown-out from infertility clinics, because eggs cannot be frozen for the purpose of fertility. Only sperm and already-fertilized embryos can be frozen. Very early-stage embryos are the things being thrown away.
We are made of living cells, but what makes us human ethically, and often legally, is not the cells, but our minds. A doctor can amputate or remove a person's: hand, foot, arm, leg, teeth, eyes, internal organs (many), etc. Even part of a person's brain can be removed (as in the case of brain tumors) without ethical or legal problems. But in most jurisdictions, a doctor is not allowed to deliberately kill a patient. So what is the difference here? It is the killing of an individual's mind that constitutes murder, not the killing of any set of billions of cells.
Look at the case of Terri Schiavo; she had no mind, so allowing all of her cells to die was allowed. Even many of those fighting to keep her alive tacitly agreed on this point. Sen. Bill Frist (who is also an M.D.) opined that she did not appear to be in a 'persistent vegitative state'. He did not stand-up and say that a mindless mass of cells must be kept alive. He felt a need to say that there was a mind present. In general, once 'brain death' occurs, a person is legally dead and life support can be removed.
If an embryo has a mind (not just a brain, but a mind), then the ethics of dealing with a human individual should be considered.
That's it! We genetically engineer sheep with electronically controllable ink-resevoirs in their pores. e-Vellum!
Poor analogy. Try: if the ISPs start charging $2 per email sent, then it would be in the public interest for our Post Office to start offering a free or very cheap email service.
If the drug companies insist on making 700% profit on drugs that they develop, then our government should step-in and conduct/finance "open source" drug development. And before anyone says that the drug companies need to charge high prices to fund further research, an NPR report talked about one of the large drug companies (Merck? Pfizer?) spending in one year (2003?) $7B on research, and making a net profit of $48B.
And businessmen make *really* bad IT people (and IT decisions).
You _are_ a PIMP for making $65k a year
If you have to choose between being the pimp and being the hooker, go with pimp (hookers, like sales weasles, tend lose their dignity early in their careers).
Bzzzz...try again. They can freeze sperm, they can freeze fertilized eggs (embryos), but they haven't quite figured out how to freeze human eggs so that they are still usable after thawing. Thanks for playing.
You want to date a 50 year-old chef?
Aw, come on! Paris Hilton's father is sooo proud of her. Don't you wish you had a daughter like that?
Voting for the lesser of two evils is 'doing something'. And if more Naderites had understood that in either of the last two elections, our country would be a loss less broke and a lot less screwed-up right now. Throwing-away your vote on some who has zero change of winning, that's not 'doing something'.