Ok a couple of comments. When thinking about the ethics of genetic engineering we should first look at why we want to genetic engineer. There has already been cases of gene therapy given to cure disease. If we as a society don't have problems with curing disease, where does it stop?
Our society seems to have a problem with healthy people taking anything, genetic or whatever, to enhance themselves. There isn't, though, a clear cut line between what is a disorder and what is not. Should short people who make up less than 5% of the population be treated with growth enhancing genes at a young age? These questions, I believe should be left to the person or family that is dealing with that decision.
If a treatment doesn't directly harm society as a whole, I just don't think we have the right to make these sorts of decisions for them.
I remember when hopes were very high for Debian. I kind of hit it off as an alternative to Slackware, and did it well, IMO. It had a nice install and seemed to fit together rather well. Since then I haven't heard much.
This is also a good thing because it represents formidable competition to RH. Don't get me wrong, I like RH, but feel that competition is important in any setting.
Gotta make these guys work for there money. Trust me it only makes their products better.
Has anyone seen that Toyota (i think) commercial where the guy slides on a water slide and the (rather long) small print says that water slides are dangerous for adults? Or the Burger King commercials where the claim to be the nations favorite burgers (or something like that) and the small print says: according to preference. Or my favorite, the antacid add where they say you can take the drug (pepsid AC - I think) 1/2 hour before but the other (Zantac - I think) has to be taken 1 hour before and the small print says: according to the labeling. In other words they're probably similar drugs.
The more "hip" hackers become, the more our generation slips. This cannot be a good thing. From over-generalizations to 13 year olds trying to be like the cracker on tv, all MTV is going to do is belittle us and qualify the next line of punks who do nothing more than run scripts posted to ng's.
Its cool to hear, yet another, story of a valley billionare and their more human side. The stock story is especially interesting because at some point one has to realize that any Clark project is envitably going to raise money. Is this a good thing, that single people can have such a profound effect on the economy?
We rejoice about the NM school board making a good decision, but it wasn't always this way. Two years ago, I was working at the Santa Fe Institute and we heard that the school board was going to have a public meeting on a preliminary decision over how to word evolution in the teaching requirements. They wanted to take evolution off. So a bunch of fairly famous SFI researchers, Staurt Kauffman (sp?) and others, along with big name researchers from Sandia Nat'l Labs and Los Alamos Nat'l Labs.
This fairly rural board (mostly conservative religious right types) had no idea the caliber of scientists in the room with them. Many highly regarded physicists, biologists and computer scientists all telling them it would be stupid to take evolution on the board. Anyway, to make a long story less long, after statements from very conservative families and scientists the board vote to keep evolution off.
The good side of the story is that they already had much of evolutionary theory in there without using the words. For example they had statements like: teaching the theory that "The genotype and non-somatic mutations within it are inherited", etc. (paraphrasing rather poorly) They were just offended by, not suprisingly, the theory that modern simians and humans have a common ancestor.
-- Moondog
They left off a point or two...
on
Managing Geeks
·
· Score: 2
The major point, IMO, they left off is dealing with geek group dynamics. Often times there is at least on member of a intelligent and driven group that really works better independently. Some geeks can have huge ego's that can scrape together when working on projects together. I find that you run into a lot of dealing with getting them to work together without biting their heads off.
Remember it only takes 1 or 2 immature, egotistical or all around bad attitudes to really cause a lot of problems. So I would have added look for people that work independently better than with group dynamics and see to it they get challenging projects that they can do on semi-independently, so you don't lose a talented employee.
Look, this is pretty simple. There are two browsers out there with a huge chunk of market share, Navigator and IE. If IE takes over a chunk of market share, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out what M$ is going to do. They are going to start tailoring IE to have lots of little new bells and whistles that will seem fairly benign. After some time occasionally websites will use these bells and whistles and they will make other browsers pages look worse. And then, you know what? Exactly. People will start using IE more and more. Then IE they will do other things that make IE even better on a windows machine than a mac or linux box. And so the cycle goes. Delaying Navigator is a profound mistake.
I think a lack of focus is inherent in the Linux movement. There are no managers running around telling people what to do. I think this is, competitively, a much better strategy for large base software design because so many people want so many different things....
M$ is very focused, they are a company. I might argue that the individual companies within the linux movement (RH, etc) each have goals and management strategies of the same feel as M$'s. I think that all of the companies together make up this so-called lack of focus. I strongly feel this is a good thing and the reason that other OS's have failed in light of M$ (such as OS/2) is because they were very similar to M$. M$ has a hold on the market, the only thing that will change that (IMO) is a radically new philosophy on software development.
Just don't think this is that exciting. I keep my emails around for a while, just so I can look up via archives. Why on earth would I want my email to disappear after a few days? The place I can see this having a big impact is places like M$ that always seem to be giving up their emails in lawsuits and such.
The pics are/.'d. I had absolutely no idea they could do anything like this. If this is true as presented, this could nearly be Nobel material. I went to a couple of neuro conferences at the Santa Fe Institute, and all they showed there was simple experiments measuring potentials on individual neurons when monkeys were fed apple juice. This is a huge leap.
I think this could be a very cool way to get points accross and to explore new subjects. Although I think it is pretty commendable that many of the users answered so well. Usually, there are so many flames (ala M$ vs Linux debates) that the readers tend to just turn it all off.
Perhaps the/. guys could learn something from all this.
Sure, comments can be used against you, so make sure you say what you mean (or you say it anonymously:) ).
I once (in '94) posted a funny message to a usenet group. Last year, I found someone who had taken that message and put it on their website. It was no big deal, of course, because I don't care where my usenet posts go, but it was kind of an eye opener.
I've thought the show was going to end this season anyway, I hope they put it to death. I don't think this will be the end of the movies, though. Carter has said he plans more.
Hope they don't do the law and order thing, to replace the only leading woman character on the show every 2 years.
2005 - Internet voting begins in a number of European countries. At least one of them has to hold a new election because of fraudulent votes.
2020 - Wars increase when governments begin to try to retain power lost to large multinational corporations and the internet. Five students are shot at CmdrTaco High School protesting America's involvement in Brazil's revolution.
2030 - The world begins to realize that interplanetary manned space flight may be too expensive (for any technology)
2040 - Mt Rainier erupts and buries, yes you guessed it, Redmond, WA.
I really can't believe that it can be done, yet. A number of groups have claimed to solve the problem. The computer that writes short stories, etc. But the Turing test requires interaction, learning, and a number of other talents that we just don't have the space, technology, or developmental resources to produce.
I (rather arrogantly) believe that today's computer may be able to fool one persone but cannot fool multiple people.
The Linux community continues to promise major SMP and performance improvements....since...1996
#begin rant
How dare they use the waiting for promises card. Geez, this ticks me off. When I was 15 years old I had to wait 2 frigging years for Windows 3.1 so I could use all 4 megs of ram on my machine. They tried to make me wait for Win95, NT and 32 bit pre-emptive multitasking. (at this point I went to OS/2 which built a 32bit OS around windows 3.1 before M$ could go 32 bit). Now they want us to wait for windows 2k. What a crock.
Myth: Linux is more reliable that NT Reality: Linux needs real world proof points rather than anecdotal stories
You know I actually agree with some of these points but this one is just ridiculous. I'm not saying Linux is more reliable than NT, just that the answer doesn't make any claims about the fact. A lack of evidence on the subject doesn't mean M$ wins by default.
(isn't proof points something marketing types say to look smart? )
After Ma Bell got ripped apart, the phone companies were definately not in a better position. This country still smarts a bit from that ruling, so I think it is safe to say that MS probably won't be broken up. (IMO) Guilty or not.
As another reader pointed out, breakup may be good for M$, and certainly good for William. But I think it is interesting that M$ made huge public market shifts during the trial to more internet and service company. I think we all know that privately M$ is just doing the same thing and made the market shifts so it will be harder to argue in court that M$ is the same company that is on trial. Same company, same market plan.
Just wanted to drop a line that we used to use the Ultra 5 at work (the micro sparc's -- I think) and they really weren't anything special. They remind me a lot of the little Alpha's that used to be sold very inexpensively.
The must be targeting the developer market to attract new customers, but I really can't see that happening because many of their other machines are so much more expensive.
Just wanted to push my belief that we need to see another python movie and this is the perfect opportunity. Once I was satiated by Terry Gilliam's movies, Baron Munchausen, Brazil, etc., but now his movies are much more serious and don't have that comic edge they used to. Now Idle being on a sitcom with Brooke Shields (?), I just don't know what we are going to do.
Happy anniversary boys. Your movies are still funnier than the Naked Gun movies.
So how will the sledgehammer compare to the 21264 or the Itanium (snicker)? The 21264 (Compaq) are very fast chips, and are only getting faster. Any theoretical specs out there? -- Moondog
After CNN reported that Bell South (I think) had made an offer, I thought this might fall through. This probably has to get gov't approval first, but they don't seem to mind big banks merging, so why should they care here? Wonder what this is going to mean for long distance prices.
Talking about banks again, remember that studies have shown that, contrary to popular belief, bigger banks charge higher prices for services. Will this hold in the telecommunications arena? Hope not.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok a couple of comments. When thinking about the ethics of genetic engineering we should first look at why we want to genetic engineer. There has already been cases of gene therapy given to cure disease. If we as a society don't have problems with curing disease, where does it stop?
Our society seems to have a problem with healthy people taking anything, genetic or whatever, to enhance themselves. There isn't, though, a clear cut line between what is a disorder and what is not. Should short people who make up less than 5% of the population be treated with growth enhancing genes at a young age? These questions, I believe should be left to the person or family that is dealing with that decision.
If a treatment doesn't directly harm society as a whole, I just don't think we have the right to make these sorts of decisions for them.
-- Moondog
I remember when hopes were very high for Debian. I kind of hit it off as an alternative to Slackware, and did it well, IMO. It had a nice install and seemed to fit together rather well. Since then I haven't heard much.
This is also a good thing because it represents formidable competition to RH. Don't get me wrong, I like RH, but feel that competition is important in any setting.
Gotta make these guys work for there money. Trust me it only makes their products better.
-- Moondog
Has anyone seen that Toyota (i think) commercial where the guy slides on a water slide and the (rather long) small print says that water slides are dangerous for adults? Or the Burger King commercials where the claim to be the nations favorite burgers (or something like that) and the small print says: according to preference. Or my favorite, the antacid add where they say you can take the drug (pepsid AC - I think) 1/2 hour before but the other (Zantac - I think) has to be taken 1 hour before and the small print says: according to the labeling. In other words they're probably similar drugs.
-- Moondog
So what were you planning to do with your life before you got into video games? Did you have another career choice lined up?
-- Moondog
The more "hip" hackers become, the more our generation slips. This cannot be a good thing. From over-generalizations to 13 year olds trying to be like the cracker on tv, all MTV is going to do is belittle us and qualify the next line of punks who do nothing more than run scripts posted to ng's.
(I'm really not a fan of mtv...)
-- Moondog
Its cool to hear, yet another, story of a valley billionare and their more human side. The stock story is especially interesting because at some point one has to realize that any Clark project is envitably going to raise money. Is this a good thing, that single people can have such a profound effect on the economy?
Wonder...
-- Moondog
We rejoice about the NM school board making a good decision, but it wasn't always this way. Two years ago, I was working at the Santa Fe Institute and we heard that the school board was going to have a public meeting on a preliminary decision over how to word evolution in the teaching requirements. They wanted to take evolution off. So a bunch of fairly famous SFI researchers, Staurt Kauffman (sp?) and others, along with big name researchers from Sandia Nat'l Labs and Los Alamos Nat'l Labs.
This fairly rural board (mostly conservative religious right types) had no idea the caliber of scientists in the room with them. Many highly regarded physicists, biologists and computer scientists all telling them it would be stupid to take evolution on the board. Anyway, to make a long story less long, after statements from very conservative families and scientists the board vote to keep evolution off.
The good side of the story is that they already had much of evolutionary theory in there without using the words. For example they had statements like: teaching the theory that "The genotype and non-somatic mutations within it are inherited", etc. (paraphrasing rather poorly) They were just offended by, not suprisingly, the theory that modern simians and humans have a common ancestor.
-- Moondog
The major point, IMO, they left off is dealing with geek group dynamics. Often times there is at least on member of a intelligent and driven group that really works better independently. Some geeks can have huge ego's that can scrape together when working on projects together. I find that you run into a lot of dealing with getting them to work together without biting their heads off.
Remember it only takes 1 or 2 immature, egotistical or all around bad attitudes to really cause a lot of problems. So I would have added look for people that work independently better than with group dynamics and see to it they get challenging projects that they can do on semi-independently, so you don't lose a talented employee.
-- Moondog
Look, this is pretty simple. There are two browsers out there with a huge chunk of market share, Navigator and IE. If IE takes over a chunk of market share, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out what M$ is going to do. They are going to start tailoring IE to have lots of little new bells and whistles that will seem fairly benign. After some time occasionally websites will use these bells and whistles and they will make other browsers pages look worse. And then, you know what? Exactly. People will start using IE more and more. Then IE they will do other things that make IE even better on a windows machine than a mac or linux box. And so the cycle goes. Delaying Navigator is a profound mistake.
-- Moondog
I think a lack of focus is inherent in the Linux movement. There are no managers running around telling people what to do. I think this is, competitively, a much better strategy for large base software design because so many people want so many different things....
M$ is very focused, they are a company. I might argue that the individual companies within the linux movement (RH, etc) each have goals and management strategies of the same feel as M$'s. I think that all of the companies together make up this so-called lack of focus. I strongly feel this is a good thing and the reason that other OS's have failed in light of M$ (such as OS/2) is because they were very similar to M$. M$ has a hold on the market, the only thing that will change that (IMO) is a radically new philosophy on software development.
-- Moondog
Just don't think this is that exciting. I keep my emails around for a while, just so I can look up via archives. Why on earth would I want my email to disappear after a few days? The place I can see this having a big impact is places like M$ that always seem to be giving up their emails in lawsuits and such.
-- Moondog
How do these processors compare to the compaq alpha 21264's. This is the real 64 bit competition. Hope their price structure is reasonable as well.
-- Moondog
The pics are /.'d. I had absolutely no idea they could do anything like this. If this is true as presented, this could nearly be Nobel material. I went to a couple of neuro conferences at the Santa Fe Institute, and all they showed there was simple experiments measuring potentials on individual neurons when monkeys were fed apple juice. This is a huge leap.
-- Moondog
I think this could be a very cool way to get points accross and to explore new subjects. Although I think it is pretty commendable that many of the users answered so well. Usually, there are so many flames (ala M$ vs Linux debates) that the readers tend to just turn it all off.
/. guys could learn something from all this.
Perhaps the
-- Moondog
Sure, comments can be used against you, so make sure you say what you mean (or you say it anonymously :) ).
I once (in '94) posted a funny message to a usenet group. Last year, I found someone who had taken that message and put it on their website. It was no big deal, of course, because I don't care where my usenet posts go, but it was kind of an eye opener.
-- Moondog
I've thought the show was going to end this season anyway, I hope they put it to death. I don't think this will be the end of the movies, though. Carter has said he plans more.
Hope they don't do the law and order thing, to replace the only leading woman character on the show every 2 years.
-- Moondog
2005 - Internet voting begins in a number of European countries. At least one of them has to hold a new election because of fraudulent votes.
2020 - Wars increase when governments begin to try to retain power lost to large multinational corporations and the internet. Five students are shot at CmdrTaco High School protesting America's involvement in Brazil's revolution.
2030 - The world begins to realize that interplanetary manned space flight may be too expensive (for any technology)
2040 - Mt Rainier erupts and buries, yes you guessed it, Redmond, WA.
-- Moondog
I really can't believe that it can be done, yet. A number of groups have claimed to solve the problem. The computer that writes short stories, etc. But the Turing test requires interaction, learning, and a number of other talents that we just don't have the space, technology, or developmental resources to produce.
I (rather arrogantly) believe that today's computer may be able to fool one persone but cannot fool multiple people.
-- Moondog
The Linux community continues to promise major SMP and performance improvements....since...1996
#begin rant
How dare they use the waiting for promises card. Geez, this ticks me off. When I was 15 years old I had to wait 2 frigging years for Windows 3.1 so I could use all 4 megs of ram on my machine. They tried to make me wait for Win95, NT and 32 bit pre-emptive multitasking. (at this point I went to OS/2 which built a 32bit OS around windows 3.1 before M$ could go 32 bit). Now they want us to wait for windows 2k. What a crock.
#end rant
-- Moondog
Myth: Linux is more reliable that NT
Reality: Linux needs real world proof points rather than anecdotal stories
You know I actually agree with some of these points but this one is just ridiculous. I'm not saying Linux is more reliable than NT, just that the answer doesn't make any claims about the fact. A lack of evidence on the subject doesn't mean M$ wins by default.
(isn't proof points something marketing types say to look smart? )
-- Moondog
After Ma Bell got ripped apart, the phone companies were definately not in a better position. This country still smarts a bit from that ruling, so I think it is safe to say that MS probably won't be broken up. (IMO) Guilty or not.
As another reader pointed out, breakup may be good for M$, and certainly good for William. But I think it is interesting that M$ made huge public market shifts during the trial to more internet and service company. I think we all know that privately M$ is just doing the same thing and made the market shifts so it will be harder to argue in court that M$ is the same company that is on trial. Same company, same market plan.
-- Moondog
Just wanted to drop a line that we used to use the Ultra 5 at work (the micro sparc's -- I think) and they really weren't anything special. They remind me a lot of the little Alpha's that used to be sold very inexpensively.
The must be targeting the developer market to attract new customers, but I really can't see that happening because many of their other machines are so much more expensive.
-- Moondog
Just wanted to push my belief that we need to see another python movie and this is the perfect opportunity. Once I was satiated by Terry Gilliam's movies, Baron Munchausen, Brazil, etc., but now his movies are much more serious and don't have that comic edge they used to. Now Idle being on a sitcom with Brooke Shields (?), I just don't know what we are going to do.
Happy anniversary boys. Your movies are still funnier than the Naked Gun movies.
-- Moondog
So how will the sledgehammer compare to the 21264 or the Itanium (snicker)? The 21264 (Compaq) are very fast chips, and are only getting faster. Any theoretical specs out there?
-- Moondog
After CNN reported that Bell South (I think) had made an offer, I thought this might fall through. This probably has to get gov't approval first, but they don't seem to mind big banks merging, so why should they care here? Wonder what this is going to mean for long distance prices.
Talking about banks again, remember that studies have shown that, contrary to popular belief, bigger banks charge higher prices for services. Will this hold in the telecommunications arena? Hope not.
-- Moondog