... and while I see your argument about choosing according to "what's hot this week", I think you are walking on a fine line there. for example, what about choosing to abort because of down syndrom? because of possible bodily problems? where does the line go between "what's hot" and a legitimate reason, and who are we to say so?
Well, as I pointed out in another reply, screening out sickle cell anemia genes could result in having an increased chance of infection by, death from, and damage from malarial parasites, and similar impacts for sleeping sickness.
Additionally, we already see the results of permitting - conscious or by inaction - genetic selection on a gross scale by gender as evidenced in many asian and adjacent countries, where the inbalance between boys and girls is starting to have very negative impacts on those societies.
Sometimes, free choice is not the best choice. It's better not to be able to choose certain things - for example, while it might be ok to have screening for genes that indicate DEFINITE early childhood death (or alteration thereof), it is not true that screening out carriers of only one gene for that disease is a good thing, as those genes can be there for a reason - see malaria, etc - and thus permission to eliminate - or lack of enforcement not to eliminate - can have very negative consequences beyond one's ken.
Most societies, due to popularized western media such as films, even now have some selection towards blond hair and blue eyes, but these adaptive mutations were created/selected to permit humans to survive in low-light near-arctic conditions, just as nose structures were.
If people choose narrow noses and few nose hairs, they may have problems surviving the coming glacial impacts on Northern Europe from the gulf stream shift due to global warming, for example. And nose hairs are useful in reducing pollutants, which is an increasing problem in much of the world.
Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it. "Oh Brave New World..."
And how are you going to do that? The technology is not that complicated. Are you going to prohibit people from owning a PCR machine (which is really just a precisely controlled hotplate)? Or make thermostable polymerase an illicit substance? Pretty soon, anybody will be able to test for any gene sequence they choose.
Choice is resulting in massive skews towards boys in certain cultures, based on genetic testing (at a grosser level) and ultrasound, with anticipated negative impacts on those selfsame cultures.
Again, just because we can all jump in a well or off a bridge onto the rocks below, doesn't make it a good choice or a wise choice.
Darwinian selection should cause those societies which encourage/permit such uses to become extremely fragile and likely to become infected and wiped out thru... oh, I don't know, HN51 avian bird flu let's say... nah, that would never happen, biology adapting to weed out the less diverse and less resistant groups, would it?
Now, now... as the great Maddox has said, jocks also make sure we get our fries piping hot and our pizza delivered in under 30 minutes. So, many jocks do serve a purpose.
They also do great jobs washing our cars. But do we want a society filled with a surfeit of jocks, and a few rebel geeks, or one with balance?
What I'm afraid of, is, no more lefties. ( that's me looking around scared )
And at some point in the future, humanity will come up against something that left-handedness provides a natural advantage for, or at least ambidextrousness.
I was voted most athletic in my highschool and still play soccer every week for the last 15 years. Does this somehow lower my IQ? I also managed to ace my way though a math degree, a computer science degree and a finance degree. In my free time I dable in advanced mathematics and physics.
Hey, when I went back to my high school reunion it was tons of pictures of me setting records for marathons and other long-distance races. And I'm a geek.
But my point was what people will choose if given free reign without constraints - they'll go for Jennifer Aniston's hair and face, even if that has no evolutionary advantage.
Those (African Americans) who have the sickle cell gene do not get malaria. And those of us who aren't African American are not prone to sickle cell but are more than capable of dying from malaria.
I think you mean who have one copy of the gene don't get malaria. Or in actual practice are less susceptible to dying from it, and less likely to get infected by it, not absolute immunity.
Those who get two copies don't have a very good time, though, so a screen that reduced two copies would be useful, whereas a screen that reduced anyone with any copies would be counter-survival.
I'm sure we need captians of the football team to build our houses and geeks to design them.
As a geek who has built houses - and designed them - I point out that captains of the football team may once have been well-suited for construction jobs 100 years ago, but nowadays tend to be less well-suited than geeks are.
That is why selecting for traits is a hideous idea. Isn't it a form of genocide?
The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.
The whole point is that if genetic testing is used to minimize the genetic variations based on What's Hot Now we'll end up without certain genes and sequences needed to create the next evolutionary adaptations. Having anemic blood seems really bad, unless you live in certain regions of the world where it gives you a survival bonus against certain diseases we still have no cures for.
Likewise with geekiness.
Society will most likely choose the jocks, but as indicated, it's highly probable their genes are less well suited to long-term survival of the species, so that form of selection can be dangerous for our long-term survival.
Parents will tend to choose the jocks with five year lifetime careers who contribute nothing to humanity instead, dooming us to a world of know-nothings and really really boring parties - I've been at a bunch of them, and let me tell you, they'll bore the paints off you...
Genetic testing will probably cause more harm than good - we need to have it screened for medical uses only, such things as fatal diseases, not What's Hot This Week...
That's supposed to happen in 2010 too, just like it was supposed to happen in 2000, 1990, 1980, and before that 1970 I think (but I was a baby in 60, so I don't know that one for sure).
I'll believe it when:
a. They work; b. They keep working; c. They perform as promised; d. They are mass produced in sufficient quality; e. They can be repaired and maintained when Stuff Happens - which it always does.
We have separate Student ID and Employee ID and we use those for everything except tax forms.
But my sister works at UCSB and she says a lot of colleges and universities in the UC system still use SSN, at least just a while ago when she was working on a task force for data interchange.
0.5 percent of all web browser market share agree!
Plus, by turning off all those nasty things and having a non-standard browser, it's a lot harder to become infected - unless you actually click that link and save the file...
In my observations, a vast majority of people do most of their memorable and interesting things in their 20s and 30s, and the rest of their lives they simply refine and do the same that they established by then. Sure there are exceptions, but I have never heard of anyone complain about being dead, but I've heard a number of people complain about being alive.
Seriously, while I was in Who's Who by the time I was 29, I've done just as many things since then.
Why not go volunteer for the Peace Corps? Lot's of people your age decide to do that when life loses meaning, and it's always helped them get perspective in their lives.
You're talking theory, and I'm talking engineering (practical).
What I'm saying is there are methods - using intervening DEVICES with both table sets - to send packets and packet streams between IPv4 and IPv6.
However, they require concentrators and the lag in translation would probably disrupt the packet flow severely, so it's useful for rerouting email (which is not normally time-sensitive) and applications, but would fail under broadcast stream conditions.
This is good - if you are on an IPv6 network, you should be getting the IPv6 version of the stream, not the IPv4 version, and vice versa. Some of the IPv6 header is helpful in optimizing the flow and reassembly of IPv6 streams and setting traffic priorities, and thus it should NOT be optimized for IPv4 traffic, but treat it as an awkward cousin.
You call that a bug. I call that an evolutionary selection feature.
They said that Saturday morning works a bit, but trying to catch up on Sunday as well was a waste of time, and you'd be better off maintaining regular hours. They did it here at the UW.
whatever, it's a technical solution that's not that hard to do. You either maintain both tables on the same device and translate from one to the other:
IPv6 FE.FI.FO.FU.MM.UK
equals IPv4 179.1.0.0
or such like.
I leave the example to the coder. It's not a big deal. Now, if you're on IPv4 and want to send to IPv6, the easiest way is have a name.address server which has the following table
IPV4 email address FROM: iamlam3ipv4@lowtech.org TO: "ToodlesTehCat" FEFIFOFUMMUK@givemeipv6.org SUBJECT: oh pity me
IPV6 email header repackaged FROM: "iamlam3ipv4 lowtech.org" 186001002003@givemeipv4.org TO: ToodlesTehCat@FE.FI.FO.FU.MM.UK SUBJECT: [IPv4 lowtech] oh pity me
Or somesuch.
Geesh, we did it before, we can do it again. Eventually, people get tired of using IPv4 because it's so hard to reach the billions of users on IPv6, and all the cool stuff is on IPv6 anyway.
How do you think we switched to color TV from black and white? Some stations broadcast in color spectra, even showing black and white in color, and if you didn't have color, too bad.
Weirdly enough, a recent article indicated that you actually want the alcohol; probably as a solvent, though possibly as a vascodialator.
However, you want only the minimal amount, as above that level you increase your chance of death from clumsiness.
Probably the latter, which is why the aspirin (yes ASA) is almost as good for women, since the alcohol has downsides. Additionally, the red wine is for the other effects, which is where the other guy talked about the Pomegranete juice.
7. Do crossword puzzles or something that engages your brain most every day. You meet a lot of cute girls that way...
What am I missing here? Doing crossword puzzles is a solitary activity that you usually do in your own home. How does cute girls figure into it? Unless you're taking the crossword puzzles somewhere that a lot of cute girls are, in which case what do you need the puzzles for?
Ok, this is/., so we assume the target audience is (mostly) male geeks.
First, doing crossword puzzles is only solitary if you do it at home or someplace where you're walled off from other people (table in corner). If you do it at a cafe, you choose a table near the line for coffee or with open chairs next to you. Curiosity will provide the cute girls, or maybe you'll ask them if they know what 5 Down is.
If at a park bench, do it near where people retie their skates, get a drink, etc. Same procedure.
Slashdot Mirror
... and while I see your argument about choosing according to "what's hot this week", I think you are walking on a fine line there. for example, what about choosing to abort because of down syndrom? because of possible bodily problems? where does the line go between "what's hot" and a legitimate reason, and who are we to say so?
..."
Well, as I pointed out in another reply, screening out sickle cell anemia genes could result in having an increased chance of infection by, death from, and damage from malarial parasites, and similar impacts for sleeping sickness.
Additionally, we already see the results of permitting - conscious or by inaction - genetic selection on a gross scale by gender as evidenced in many asian and adjacent countries, where the inbalance between boys and girls is starting to have very negative impacts on those societies.
Sometimes, free choice is not the best choice. It's better not to be able to choose certain things - for example, while it might be ok to have screening for genes that indicate DEFINITE early childhood death (or alteration thereof), it is not true that screening out carriers of only one gene for that disease is a good thing, as those genes can be there for a reason - see malaria, etc - and thus permission to eliminate - or lack of enforcement not to eliminate - can have very negative consequences beyond one's ken.
Most societies, due to popularized western media such as films, even now have some selection towards blond hair and blue eyes, but these adaptive mutations were created/selected to permit humans to survive in low-light near-arctic conditions, just as nose structures were.
If people choose narrow noses and few nose hairs, they may have problems surviving the coming glacial impacts on Northern Europe from the gulf stream shift due to global warming, for example. And nose hairs are useful in reducing pollutants, which is an increasing problem in much of the world.
Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it. "Oh Brave New World
And how are you going to do that? The technology is not that complicated. Are you going to prohibit people from owning a PCR machine (which is really just a precisely controlled hotplate)? Or make thermostable polymerase an illicit substance? Pretty soon, anybody will be able to test for any gene sequence they choose.
... oh, I don't know, HN51 avian bird flu let's say ... nah, that would never happen, biology adapting to weed out the less diverse and less resistant groups, would it?
...
Choice is resulting in massive skews towards boys in certain cultures, based on genetic testing (at a grosser level) and ultrasound, with anticipated negative impacts on those selfsame cultures.
Again, just because we can all jump in a well or off a bridge onto the rocks below, doesn't make it a good choice or a wise choice.
Darwinian selection should cause those societies which encourage/permit such uses to become extremely fragile and likely to become infected and wiped out thru
Where's the grin button on my keyboard
Now, now... as the great Maddox has said, jocks also make sure we get our fries piping hot and our pizza delivered in under 30 minutes. So, many jocks do serve a purpose.
They also do great jobs washing our cars. But do we want a society filled with a surfeit of jocks, and a few rebel geeks, or one with balance?
What I'm afraid of, is, no more lefties. ( that's me looking around scared )
And at some point in the future, humanity will come up against something that left-handedness provides a natural advantage for, or at least ambidextrousness.
Probably in space.
I was voted most athletic in my highschool and still play soccer every week for the last 15 years. Does this somehow lower my IQ? I also managed to ace my way though a math degree, a computer science degree and a finance degree. In my free time I dable in advanced mathematics and physics.
Hey, when I went back to my high school reunion it was tons of pictures of me setting records for marathons and other long-distance races. And I'm a geek.
But my point was what people will choose if given free reign without constraints - they'll go for Jennifer Aniston's hair and face, even if that has no evolutionary advantage.
and let me tell you, they'll bore the paints off you ...
if you're at parties where it's possible to lose your paints, then you should never, ever, be bored! lol
Well, yes, I frequently attend such parties. Hence my comments about the boring parties where such things are not likely to be considered.
Those (African Americans) who have the sickle cell gene do not get malaria. And those of us who aren't African American are not prone to sickle cell but are more than capable of dying from malaria.
I think you mean who have one copy of the gene don't get malaria. Or in actual practice are less susceptible to dying from it, and less likely to get infected by it, not absolute immunity.
Those who get two copies don't have a very good time, though, so a screen that reduced two copies would be useful, whereas a screen that reduced anyone with any copies would be counter-survival.
I'm sure we need captians of the football team to build our houses and geeks to design them.
As a geek who has built houses - and designed them - I point out that captains of the football team may once have been well-suited for construction jobs 100 years ago, but nowadays tend to be less well-suited than geeks are.
But we need both.
That is why selecting for traits is a hideous idea. Isn't it a form of genocide?
The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.
The whole point is that if genetic testing is used to minimize the genetic variations based on What's Hot Now we'll end up without certain genes and sequences needed to create the next evolutionary adaptations. Having anemic blood seems really bad, unless you live in certain regions of the world where it gives you a survival bonus against certain diseases we still have no cures for.
Likewise with geekiness.
Society will most likely choose the jocks, but as indicated, it's highly probable their genes are less well suited to long-term survival of the species, so that form of selection can be dangerous for our long-term survival.
Parents will tend to choose the jocks with five year lifetime careers who contribute nothing to humanity instead, dooming us to a world of know-nothings and really really boring parties - I've been at a bunch of them, and let me tell you, they'll bore the paints off you ...
...
Genetic testing will probably cause more harm than good - we need to have it screened for medical uses only, such things as fatal diseases, not What's Hot This Week
where they pay university students $3500 to write open source code over the summer.
But, hey, that's just my opinion.
I've heard this promise every year since 1974. And I've believed it every time. Now, I'm off to the Moonbase on my personal jetpack. -Eric
...
Well, we are extending the Monorail in Seattle, which was promised about the same time as jetpacks, so maybe by 2050 we'll have service robots in mass quantities
That's supposed to happen in 2010 too, just like it was supposed to happen in 2000, 1990, 1980, and before that 1970 I think (but I was a baby in 60, so I don't know that one for sure).
I'll believe it when:
a. They work;
b. They keep working;
c. They perform as promised;
d. They are mass produced in sufficient quality;
e. They can be repaired and maintained when Stuff Happens - which it always does.
So I have to go broke buying Software and Hardware I will never use, just to keep this tech writer's poor feewings from being hurt?
Nope. If it has specs and those specs indicate a specific thing, it's fair game.
That said, I love both, so you probably won't see me griping either way.
We have separate Student ID and Employee ID and we use those for everything except tax forms.
But my sister works at UCSB and she says a lot of colleges and universities in the UC system still use SSN, at least just a while ago when she was working on a task force for data interchange.
0.5 percent of all web browser market share agree!
...
Plus, by turning off all those nasty things and having a non-standard browser, it's a lot harder to become infected - unless you actually click that link and save the file
Dude, you're 35 and you say ...
In my observations, a vast majority of people do most of their memorable and interesting things in their 20s and 30s, and the rest of their lives they simply refine and do the same that they established by then. Sure there are exceptions, but I have never heard of anyone complain about being dead, but I've heard a number of people complain about being alive.
Seriously, while I was in Who's Who by the time I was 29, I've done just as many things since then.
Why not go volunteer for the Peace Corps? Lot's of people your age decide to do that when life loses meaning, and it's always helped them get perspective in their lives.
You're underestimating the power of inertia in the US. Remember that this is a country that still doesn't recognize the metric system!
Doesn't matter. We already converted over in science, in manufacturing, and in retail.
Why do you think it's 8.5 ounces when you buy a carton? It's actually a metric measurement - we just pretend it isn't for the consumer.
You're talking theory, and I'm talking engineering (practical).
What I'm saying is there are methods - using intervening DEVICES with both table sets - to send packets and packet streams between IPv4 and IPv6.
However, they require concentrators and the lag in translation would probably disrupt the packet flow severely, so it's useful for rerouting email (which is not normally time-sensitive) and applications, but would fail under broadcast stream conditions.
This is good - if you are on an IPv6 network, you should be getting the IPv6 version of the stream, not the IPv4 version, and vice versa. Some of the IPv6 header is helpful in optimizing the flow and reassembly of IPv6 streams and setting traffic priorities, and thus it should NOT be optimized for IPv4 traffic, but treat it as an awkward cousin.
You call that a bug. I call that an evolutionary selection feature.
it really doesn't matter how slow NAm and EU are in changing, because most of humanity will be using IPv6 regardless.
.-/
You either surf the wave or it crashes over you.
They said that Saturday morning works a bit, but trying to catch up on Sunday as well was a waste of time, and you'd be better off maintaining regular hours. They did it here at the UW.
whatever, it's a technical solution that's not that hard to do. You either maintain both tables on the same device and translate from one to the other:
IPv6
FE.FI.FO.FU.MM.UK
equals
IPv4
179.1.0.0
or such like.
I leave the example to the coder. It's not a big deal. Now, if you're on IPv4 and want to send to IPv6, the easiest way is have a name.address server which has the following table
IPV4 email address
FROM: iamlam3ipv4@lowtech.org
TO: "ToodlesTehCat" FEFIFOFUMMUK@givemeipv6.org
SUBJECT: oh pity me
IPV6 email header repackaged
FROM: "iamlam3ipv4 lowtech.org" 186001002003@givemeipv4.org
TO: ToodlesTehCat@FE.FI.FO.FU.MM.UK
SUBJECT: [IPv4 lowtech] oh pity me
Or somesuch.
Geesh, we did it before, we can do it again. Eventually, people get tired of using IPv4 because it's so hard to reach the billions of users on IPv6, and all the cool stuff is on IPv6 anyway.
How do you think we switched to color TV from black and white? Some stations broadcast in color spectra, even showing black and white in color, and if you didn't have color, too bad.
You could just write the phone number on the puppy.
The puppy's collar might work better. Of course, then you might need to buy collars in large quantities.
Writing it on the crossword puzzle makes it a keepsake, to be pulled out as a cheap gift at the Paper Anniversary.
Plus, having a puppy may add to stress and/or injuries, which might not be good.
Weirdly enough, a recent article indicated that you actually want the alcohol; probably as a solvent, though possibly as a vascodialator.
However, you want only the minimal amount, as above that level you increase your chance of death from clumsiness.
Probably the latter, which is why the aspirin (yes ASA) is almost as good for women, since the alcohol has downsides. Additionally, the red wine is for the other effects, which is where the other guy talked about the Pomegranete juice.
7. Do crossword puzzles or something that engages your brain most every day. You meet a lot of cute girls that way ...
/., so we assume the target audience is (mostly) male geeks.
What am I missing here? Doing crossword puzzles is a solitary activity that you usually do in your own home. How does cute girls figure into it? Unless you're taking the crossword puzzles somewhere that a lot of cute girls are, in which case what do you need the puzzles for?
Ok, this is
First, doing crossword puzzles is only solitary if you do it at home or someplace where you're walled off from other people (table in corner). If you do it at a cafe, you choose a table near the line for coffee or with open chairs next to you. Curiosity will provide the cute girls, or maybe you'll ask them if they know what 5 Down is.
If at a park bench, do it near where people retie their skates, get a drink, etc. Same procedure.
Here endeth the lesson.