This is a very naive ideology. A nice ideal, but unrealistic. You assume that everyone is the same inside. They have the same potential to either be thin or fat, nice or mean, peaceful or violent. You believe that it is just as easy for me to control my temper as it is for you to control yours. You are wrong.
No, I said "we also need strong social change." My point was that genetics alone won't do it. You do understand the meaning of the word "also," right? You know, "in addition to"? "Alongside with"?:)
But a circle can go through a hole the same size as it, if there's no lip -- it'll just fall straight through. So why did you go to the lengths of pointing it out about triangles, but not circles? Just wondering.
A gambler's fallacy is assuming that the next shuttle will blow up because it is "due". I wasn't saying anything of the sort.
Okay, but you keep saying things that sound like this, like in the next sentence:
The fact that we lost one around this time should not be entirely surprising.
This sounds equivalent to, "The fact that we lost one around this time should be entirely surprising, but if we had lost one at some other time, that *would* be surprising." Maybe the fact that we lost one at all should not be entirely surprising, but the lack of surprise has nothing to do with it being "around this time."
I believe you that you say you don't intend to commit the gambler's fallacy, but then I have to wonder why you keep saying things that make it sound like you do.:) I'm guessing we're just mincing words at this point, though.
I believe that if society can eliminate those horrible genetic diseases from our gene pool, along with reducing obesity and the violent tendencies that produce dangerous criminals (yes, physiological links have been shown), then the sooner society will improve.
I was with you right up until this point. Simply altering our genetic structure to be less violent or less fat is not the solution -- if we're still arrogant and ignorant, we'll just make other dumb mistakes. Genetic modification is not the answer to everything. Certainly, it can help, but don't go too far, too fast. Coupled with anything like this, we also need strong social change, to teach people that eating too much is bad, and that violence is bad.
We certainly should continue with our scientific progress, but not without coincident social progress to match it. (And we've already fallen way behind -- look at guns.)
Probably because genetic therapy like this isn't likely to be a product, but rather a service. At least, not for a long while. At first, if you want to get some kind of retroactive genetic mod, you're going to need a phalanx of doctors monitoring you, testing you, and otherwise making sure that it's working out. Paying all those people is expensive. You won't be able to just take a little red pill and a week or two later, turn into a wolf (or have your heart regenerate itself to that of a 20-year old), or whatever. Each mod will also probably have to be individually tailored to the person, and you'll need someone to do that.
Later on, the technology will (presumably) improve to a point where you can go buy a WolfMod pill at the store (or even roll your own with a home biomedical synthesizer), but that's pretty far off. Until then, it'll be expensive to do this kind of stuff. So at first, it'll be the province of the rich. Later on it'll trickle down. Probably.
The way I usually phrase your original argument is this:
"The only natural laws are the laws of physics. All other laws are social constructs."
Of course, this doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of useful social constructs that help people live happy, civilized lives (and of course some laws are more effective at this than others).
This only works if the lid is exactly the same dimensions as the hole. Actual manhole covers have a lip extending out from the upper edge, so that the cover is always bigger than the hole, no matter which way you turn it. A circular lid only needs a lip of half an inch or so (since it's fairly rigid metal and cannot usually deform), but a triangular lid would need more of a lip.
To exaggerate, imagine an equilateral triangle two feet (24 inches) on a side. Now imagine another triangle 12 inches on a side, centered within the larger one. The hole in the ground is 12 inches across. The shortest line that can cross the larger triangle is 20.78 inches (imagine a line from any point of the largest triangle, that heads straight across to the midpoint of the other side, bisecting the triangle). Since 20.78 is more than 12, there's no way the cover can fall into the hole. (Imagine that each part of the cover is half an inch thick. The "hole" in the ground has two parts: a half-inch deep triangular depression in the asphalt that lets the larger triangle lie flush with the asphalt, and the actual hole itself, also triangular (at least at first, it can widen out to a circle or whatever after another inch or two), centered within the depression.
In reality, a triangular manhole cover's upper triangle would only need sides 20% longer than the lower triangle, rather than the 100% I gave here. So for a 24-inch upper triangle, you could safely have a 19-inch lower triangle. That might not be enough room, but you can make the upper triangle as big as is necessary.
Just because the expected number of failures is 2.26 per 113 doesn't mean that every 50th flight will be a failure (i.e. 49 ok flights, 1 disaster, 49 ok flights, 1 disaster, etc.). 2 out of 100 will fail, but it could be the first two, the last two, the fifteenth and forty-eighth, etc. Nobody "should have expected to lose a shuttle around this time". This is also known as the gambler's fallacy.
At least, from what you wrote, it sounds like you're making this mistake. I could be misunderstanding what you mean.
Well, the whole point of "matching campaign funds" is that if your party garners a large enough percentage of the vote in an election (5-10%), then you're eligible for matching funds from the government, to help your campaign, for the next election. Basically they'll match any money you spend up to a point. The idea is to help small parties have a chance.
The problem is that in, for example, the national Presidential election, a party has to get 5% of the vote to get matching funds. Since that almost never happens -- except for the Democrats and Republicans, of course -- other parties almost never get a chance for matching funds, so they stay small.
A better method would be to give the top 5 parties matching funds, so that if the Dems get 48%, the Repubs get 48%, and then you've got (e.g.) the Libertarians with 3%, the Greens with 2%, and the Slightly Silly Party with 1% (and all other parties with less than 1%), now the Dems, Reps, Libs, Greens, and SSP all get matching funds. Now the smaller guys have a chance to break in to the big-time.
Alas, the DemoPubs have no interest in that happening, so it probably won't for quite a while. (And before a dear reader jumps to conclusions, I'm not a Libertarian, either.)
If the point is to use your skills, read up on it, and build your army of whatever and come up with a strategy, then why are you asking some clerk about it?
You're not asking some minimum-wage clerk about it; you're asking, for example, the owner and chief employee of a little, local, indepedent gaming store, like Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica, or Legacy in Glendale. These guys own these stores because they love gaming, so they are great resources of information about not just product and purchase info, but also game strategy and lore.
And even the guys in a GameWorks or Games Workshop or other "big" chain store usually work there because they like games. They may not be as die-hard about it as the owner of a little independent store, but they are usually good sources of info. Yeah, you could just go to some online messageboard, but what's wrong with face-to-face socialization? And what if you're 14, don't have a credit card, and can't convice Mom or Dad to buy stuff online for you? You take your cash and you go to the store after school with your friends. You hang out, talk about stuff, buy whatever's new, and talk to the owner, since he is the local All-Knowing, All Seeing Oz.
I was under the impression that the patents aren't for the gene sequences themselves, but rather for methods of detecting them... and there's a separate patent involved for each allele for each gene. Effectively, you've "patented the gene" because you're the only one with the right to test for its presence, but I can still copy my genome en masse and distribute it (i.e. reproduce) because I'm not testing for the gene, therefore not violating the patent.
Re:The less one makes declarative statements...
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Genome Surprise
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Here, at least, is a page indicating that LadyLucky is correct. Snopes doesn't appear to have an entry about this quote, but this page makes a decent case that it's a myth.
This helps explain how dreck like Kangaroo Jack makes it to theaters
Bullshit. Dreck has been splattered across movie screens for as long as there's been movie screens. Retarded executives surrounded by yes-men are why dreck like Kangaroo Jack makes it to theaters.
Ok, you're right, I tested it out, and this certainly does seem to be a bug. Although I might wonder why you would need to see the source of a 404 page, and what would change from one 404 page to another;) But nonetheless, it's still a bug. I searched on bugzilla.mozilla.org for any View Source bugs like this, and found a couple that mentioned the reloading problem... but none seemed to mention the fact that it only happens on error headers (I was running Ethereal; it showed me the headers, and only when a 404 returns does this happen). So, I added my two cents to the bug:
Virtually every contract out there states that you are obligated to fulfill its terms. This is no different.
Yeah, nobody sane is saying otherwise -- what we are saying is that it's a bad contract to begin with, and is likely to lose MS customers in the long run.
We DO have a right to do so. The guy was convicted of copyright infringement, not modifying hardware. A modified version of Microsoft's (copyrighted) BIOS was on the mod chips he sold. He was distributing copyrighted software he didn't have a right to sell. He was breaking the law.
Now the problem is that copyright infringement should in absolutely no way be a criminal offense. It should be a civil matter, but alas, our laws are fucked. Yeah, he broke the law, but at worst he should have been fined or forced to pay restitution to Microsoft. Being incarcerated for copyright infringement (computer "crimes" are becoming more punitive in this country than violent crimes are) is fucking insane.
How exactly does Mozilla know whether a returned page is "faulty" or not? Maybe you can give me a more explicit example of what causes this, but I've been developing a heavily form-based PHP game for the last several months and haven't seen this bug come up since I was using 1.0. Also, what exactly do you mean by a "server error"? A bug in your PHP code? A bug in Apache?
It seems to be that nobody'd be complaining if they just required the entire payment for three years up-front and said"It's non-transferrable. Cope." People are pissed because Microsoft offers a payment plan, but they won't automatically transfer that plan.
No, people are pissed because Microsoft is saying that if you transfer the licenses to someone else, you have to pay Microsoft for support that you will never receive. If you sell the licenses after a year, you have to pay up front for the rest of that support contract -- and you (nor anyone else) ever gets any of the support you paid for. Yeah, if your big company bought the licenses without carefully analyzing the contract, then it sucks to be you -- but you sure aren't going to do business with MS again if you can avoid it. I know I wouldn't want to do business with a company that expects to get my money without providing me with anything in return.
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But a circle can go through a hole the same size as it, if there's no lip -- it'll just fall straight through. So why did you go to the lengths of pointing it out about triangles, but not circles? Just wondering.
I believe you that you say you don't intend to commit the gambler's fallacy, but then I have to wonder why you keep saying things that make it sound like you do. :) I'm guessing we're just mincing words at this point, though.
We certainly should continue with our scientific progress, but not without coincident social progress to match it. (And we've already fallen way behind -- look at guns.)
Probably because genetic therapy like this isn't likely to be a product, but rather a service. At least, not for a long while. At first, if you want to get some kind of retroactive genetic mod, you're going to need a phalanx of doctors monitoring you, testing you, and otherwise making sure that it's working out. Paying all those people is expensive. You won't be able to just take a little red pill and a week or two later, turn into a wolf (or have your heart regenerate itself to that of a 20-year old), or whatever. Each mod will also probably have to be individually tailored to the person, and you'll need someone to do that.
Later on, the technology will (presumably) improve to a point where you can go buy a WolfMod pill at the store (or even roll your own with a home biomedical synthesizer), but that's pretty far off. Until then, it'll be expensive to do this kind of stuff. So at first, it'll be the province of the rich. Later on it'll trickle down. Probably.
*shakes head* Whoa, sorry, got carried away there a second.
The way I usually phrase your original argument is this:
"The only natural laws are the laws of physics. All other laws are social constructs."
Of course, this doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of useful social constructs that help people live happy, civilized lives (and of course some laws are more effective at this than others).
This only works if the lid is exactly the same dimensions as the hole. Actual manhole covers have a lip extending out from the upper edge, so that the cover is always bigger than the hole, no matter which way you turn it. A circular lid only needs a lip of half an inch or so (since it's fairly rigid metal and cannot usually deform), but a triangular lid would need more of a lip.
To exaggerate, imagine an equilateral triangle two feet (24 inches) on a side. Now imagine another triangle 12 inches on a side, centered within the larger one. The hole in the ground is 12 inches across. The shortest line that can cross the larger triangle is 20.78 inches (imagine a line from any point of the largest triangle, that heads straight across to the midpoint of the other side, bisecting the triangle). Since 20.78 is more than 12, there's no way the cover can fall into the hole. (Imagine that each part of the cover is half an inch thick. The "hole" in the ground has two parts: a half-inch deep triangular depression in the asphalt that lets the larger triangle lie flush with the asphalt, and the actual hole itself, also triangular (at least at first, it can widen out to a circle or whatever after another inch or two), centered within the depression.
In reality, a triangular manhole cover's upper triangle would only need sides 20% longer than the lower triangle, rather than the 100% I gave here. So for a 24-inch upper triangle, you could safely have a 19-inch lower triangle. That might not be enough room, but you can make the upper triangle as big as is necessary.
Just because the expected number of failures is 2.26 per 113 doesn't mean that every 50th flight will be a failure (i.e. 49 ok flights, 1 disaster, 49 ok flights, 1 disaster, etc.). 2 out of 100 will fail, but it could be the first two, the last two, the fifteenth and forty-eighth, etc. Nobody "should have expected to lose a shuttle around this time". This is also known as the gambler's fallacy.
At least, from what you wrote, it sounds like you're making this mistake. I could be misunderstanding what you mean.
Well, the whole point of "matching campaign funds" is that if your party garners a large enough percentage of the vote in an election (5-10%), then you're eligible for matching funds from the government, to help your campaign, for the next election. Basically they'll match any money you spend up to a point. The idea is to help small parties have a chance.
The problem is that in, for example, the national Presidential election, a party has to get 5% of the vote to get matching funds. Since that almost never happens -- except for the Democrats and Republicans, of course -- other parties almost never get a chance for matching funds, so they stay small.
A better method would be to give the top 5 parties matching funds, so that if the Dems get 48%, the Repubs get 48%, and then you've got (e.g.) the Libertarians with 3%, the Greens with 2%, and the Slightly Silly Party with 1% (and all other parties with less than 1%), now the Dems, Reps, Libs, Greens, and SSP all get matching funds. Now the smaller guys have a chance to break in to the big-time.
Alas, the DemoPubs have no interest in that happening, so it probably won't for quite a while. (And before a dear reader jumps to conclusions, I'm not a Libertarian, either.)
And even the guys in a GameWorks or Games Workshop or other "big" chain store usually work there because they like games. They may not be as die-hard about it as the owner of a little independent store, but they are usually good sources of info. Yeah, you could just go to some online messageboard, but what's wrong with face-to-face socialization? And what if you're 14, don't have a credit card, and can't convice Mom or Dad to buy stuff online for you? You take your cash and you go to the store after school with your friends. You hang out, talk about stuff, buy whatever's new, and talk to the owner, since he is the local All-Knowing, All Seeing Oz.
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Oh come on. Just go to Western Union and be done with it.
I was under the impression that the patents aren't for the gene sequences themselves, but rather for methods of detecting them... and there's a separate patent involved for each allele for each gene. Effectively, you've "patented the gene" because you're the only one with the right to test for its presence, but I can still copy my genome en masse and distribute it (i.e. reproduce) because I'm not testing for the gene, therefore not violating the patent.
Here, at least, is a page indicating that LadyLucky is correct. Snopes doesn't appear to have an entry about this quote, but this page makes a decent case that it's a myth.
It appears they already went to Mars, and returned with a member of a species that lacks a sense of humor. ;)
Then you'll probably like this ;)
http://matt.waggoner.com/pants.html
Ok, you're right, I tested it out, and this certainly does seem to be a bug. Although I might wonder why you would need to see the source of a 404 page, and what would change from one 404 page to another ;) But nonetheless, it's still a bug. I searched on bugzilla.mozilla.org for any View Source bugs like this, and found a couple that mentioned the reloading problem... but none seemed to mention the fact that it only happens on error headers (I was running Ethereal; it showed me the headers, and only when a 404 returns does this happen). So, I added my two cents to the bug:
4
:)
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15388
So, hey, there you go.
We DO have a right to do so. The guy was convicted of copyright infringement, not modifying hardware. A modified version of Microsoft's (copyrighted) BIOS was on the mod chips he sold. He was distributing copyrighted software he didn't have a right to sell. He was breaking the law.
Now the problem is that copyright infringement should in absolutely no way be a criminal offense. It should be a civil matter, but alas, our laws are fucked. Yeah, he broke the law, but at worst he should have been fined or forced to pay restitution to Microsoft. Being incarcerated for copyright infringement (computer "crimes" are becoming more punitive in this country than violent crimes are) is fucking insane.
I find your lack of pants disturbing.
How exactly does Mozilla know whether a returned page is "faulty" or not? Maybe you can give me a more explicit example of what causes this, but I've been developing a heavily form-based PHP game for the last several months and haven't seen this bug come up since I was using 1.0. Also, what exactly do you mean by a "server error"? A bug in your PHP code? A bug in Apache?