Computerworld is running a 3 page story on what tech skills will be in demand for the coming year. They suggest developers, security experts and project managers are in demand.
I've had a few managers (project or otherwise) who know how to use a computer beyond playing Solitaire and using Outlook, but most haven't...
In the real world, restrictions like this will be used to keep people from running Linux (or *BSD, or anything but Windows).
Mod me down, but you know it's true. They'll say that GNU/Linux systems are not "trusted" (as in "Trusted Computing"), and that will be that. Only niche geek-friendly ISPs like Speakeasy will continue welcome *nix users.
As Libertarian types are fond of pointing out, "your rights end where my rights begin". By definition, your "rights" cannot involve the unconsented participation of others, nor can your "rights" tread upon mine.
You have every right in the world to run an insecure PC. But as soon as you plug that insecure PC into the Internet and it starts spewing spam and viruses to my computer (and my neighbor's, and my company's, and my ISP's...), you've just crossed a line. You've infringed upon everyone else's right to not pay bandwidth fees for your viruses and spam, and you've also infringed upon everyone else's right to not spend their time dealing with viruses sent out by your zombified Winbox.
Saying that one has the "right" to run an insecure PC on the Internet essentially boils down to saying that one has the "right" to spam and send viruses willy-nilly. Since that, of course, is what insecure PCs end up doing!
Dear God, how the hell can anyone justify selling a single CPU to anything approaching the "PC" market for that much nowadays!? Even for the cheapest, slowest one, I could get two Mac Minis, including in many locations the tax as well.
Wouldn't they make a ton more money (on volume) if they sold these chips for half as much?
The United States is going to perceive this as a military move. Or, at least, extreme reactionary war-hawk conservatives will. (i.e. the sorts of people who label all of Europe as Socialist or call Europeans "EUroweenies").
Netflix was responsible for a huge plague of pop-under ads advertising their service. Regardless of whether your (or my) ad-blocking software (or browser) blocked them, they still tried these dirty tricks, and I wouldn't doubt that a large part of their popularity is due to these sneaky advertising methods. (Of course, a large part is also due to word of mouth, but still.)
This sort of plan would probably work well in an ideal (or quasi-ideal, a la Gene Roddenberry's future Earth as seen in Star Trek and ST:TNG). Unfortunately, in reality, those with the power (read: money) to implement such a plan are more interested in money and control than saving lives. Just look at how they (the drug companies) are handling AIDS in Africa. "Waah, no, you can't genericize our antiretroviral drugs, we want our patent fees!" Meanwhile, people are dying.
When HIV first emerged in the human population, unfortunately, it did so among gays. Many people hate gays (or just homosexuality itself) and/or think it's "immoral", so that particular virus forever got branded "a gay thing", and that label is very hard to shake, even to this day. And since most people (and an overwhelming percentage of Congresspeople) are straight, a LOT less has gotten done about HIV than otherwise would have. The prevailing, unspoken opinion seems to be "well, it mostly happens to gays, and I'm straight.".
God help us if a mutated, highly virulent, human-to-human form of bird flu or bird/human flu hybrid strikes poor people first. Or illegal immigrants. Or urban ghetto dwellers. Or any number of other groups who the average WASP in America has little to no connection to *and thus little empathy for*). It'll get tagged as "just some disease people in slums get" (or whatever), and little to nothing will get done until it's too late.
The phenomenal advances made by penicillin and subsequent waves of antibiotics, as well as early vaccination successes like Polio and Smallpox, I think, have given us too much confidence in our ability to combat diseases. Our own technology (e.g. antibiotics applying poewrful selective pressure to develop new 'superbugs', jet travel and massive intercontinental trade helping diseases spread worldwide in the course of days) may yet be our unmaking, and I question whether unfettered capitalism is an appropriate response to the combating of life-threatening (even civilization-threatening) plagues, present (HIV) or future (bird flu).
You people keep modding anything I say about fetal stem cells-- no matter how calm or reasoned-- (-1, Flamebait). Is this a forbidden topic or something? It's relevant to the topic at hand, and I'm bringing up very real questions. What, is nobody allowed to discuss fetal stem cells AT ALL on SlashDot?
I can't stop you assholes from modding me down for no real reason, but I do want to know if you think you have a genuine reason for doing so. I'm not flamebaiting. I'm asking questions-- possibly uncomfortable but very genuine questions.
Therefore, killing a fetus for its cells is indistinguishible from killing a three-year-old child for its cells.
This conveniently ignores the fact that nobody is having an abortion just to harvest stem cells. (Of course, it's also conveniently ignoring the difference between a fetus and a three-year-old child, but that's a wholly different moral issue.)
The issue isn't "I want to have an abortion so I can harvest stem cells from my fetus". The issue is "I want to have an abortion, and the doctors say they can take some stem cells from the fetus. Should I let them?" The issue isn't "I want to do X for purposes of Y", it's "I want to do X; should I do Y as well?"
Fetal stem cells are obtained in circumstances when the fetus is going to die anyways. So you have two choices:
1) Fetus dies; its stem cells die with it and help nobody.
2) Fetus dies; its stem cells are harvested and help save a life or cure a disease.
In any situation where one choice has a significant benefit and no significant drawback, that choice is a no-brainer.
And please don't say "you left off the choice of not having an abortion in the first place"; that's out of the scope of this discussion. Stem cells are harvested in situations where there was an abortion, and nobody has an abortion just to harvest stem cells. (And if they did, that would be a wholly separate issue, and I believe would be an ethical issue.)
I'm asking a serious question here, and that question is: Why are people so against using fetal stem cells? So long as nobody is financially compensated for these cells, I see no ethical dilemma; it's not like people are selling their fetuses for the stem cells. It's quite simple: The fetus was going to die either way. Would you let its death be completely in vain, or would you at least derive some good from it by using its stem cells to save lives (of actual born humans, not dead or aborted fetuses)?
You would have to truly be a sick monster to say "No, you mustn't use those cells to save children from horrible diseases." No matter WHAT the reason.
I simply fail to see the great ethical issue with using ANY sort of cells (stem cells, blood cells, sperm cells, cells from cadavers, cells from plants, who gives a care?!) to save lives and cure diseases. Why do others?
WHY is "using embryonic cells is pretty sick [and] unethical"? Please, I'd like a real explanation, not a knee-jerk one like "using embryos as a means to an end". The embryos were going to die anyways. If, through their death, we can save lives and cure diseases, what sort of monster would say "no, don't do it, let the other people suffer"?
As for the cloning remark: Cloning a "whole" sheep really involved working on two cells: A sheep ova and another sheep cell. It could be that stem cells are harder to clone, I don't know. But if there was a simple way out of this "ethical dilemma" like duplicating a kerjillion copies of a stem cell, don't you think scientists would jump on the opportunity? Contrary to what certain hard-line religious conservatives would like to believe, scientists are not sadistic little Dr. Mengeles itching for the chance to slaughter human fetuses.
So what? Why do people get all worked up about those eeeeeevil embryonic stem cells? Nobody's having abortions just so they can sell stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are, unless I'm mistaken, harvested from embryos who died/were aborted for unrelated reasons. If cells from am embryo can save a child (or their brain), I say DO IT!
So are you claiming that you've never produced a typo before?
No, I'm not. However, the problem I was referring to was almost certainly not a typo. It was a symptom of a genuine inability to distinguish between "lose" and "loose".
That on a web forum, where nearly no one actually even bothers to create comments using correct grammer or spelling, you're highly concerned that your sentences are correctly spelled?
You do realize that Mother Fucker is 2 words, one of which is not gramatically correct because it is a slang curse word?
Um, what sort of crack are you smoking? It's in the dictionary, motherfucker. Also, since when is all slang automatically ungrammatical? Is "bit bucket" a grammatical error? How about "hanging chad"?
You do recognize that Capital leters are only gramatically correct when used at the begining of a sentence or when used at the begining of a Noun?
You're German, right? No, we don't capitalize all nouns in English, only the proper nouns. Also, "letters" is spelled "letters", and in a textual medium it is acceptable to use capital letters to simulate yelling. LIKE THIS.
For someone who is being very insulting you've made some very obvious errors yourself; maybe you should return to high-school and take remedial english.
It's "English", and nice troll. Actually, scratch that-- you're a pretty piss-poor troll.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a perfectly cromulent word!
I've heard of Tekken and Soul Calibur (and briefly played the latter), but WTF is/was Animal Crossing?
In the real world, restrictions like this will be used to keep people from running Linux (or *BSD, or anything but Windows).
Mod me down, but you know it's true. They'll say that GNU/Linux systems are not "trusted" (as in "Trusted Computing"), and that will be that. Only niche geek-friendly ISPs like Speakeasy will continue welcome *nix users.
As Libertarian types are fond of pointing out, "your rights end where my rights begin". By definition, your "rights" cannot involve the unconsented participation of others, nor can your "rights" tread upon mine.
You have every right in the world to run an insecure PC. But as soon as you plug that insecure PC into the Internet and it starts spewing spam and viruses to my computer (and my neighbor's, and my company's, and my ISP's...), you've just crossed a line. You've infringed upon everyone else's right to not pay bandwidth fees for your viruses and spam, and you've also infringed upon everyone else's right to not spend their time dealing with viruses sent out by your zombified Winbox.
Saying that one has the "right" to run an insecure PC on the Internet essentially boils down to saying that one has the "right" to spam and send viruses willy-nilly. Since that, of course, is what insecure PCs end up doing!
The real party animals won't be reading SlashDot ;)
Dear God, how the hell can anyone justify selling a single CPU to anything approaching the "PC" market for that much nowadays!? Even for the cheapest, slowest one, I could get two Mac Minis, including in many locations the tax as well.
Wouldn't they make a ton more money (on volume) if they sold these chips for half as much?
As a gamer, you should be more concerned about latency than speed-- at least, if you play "twitch" games (read: FPS games), as opposed to MMORPGs.
Can you provide a link to a (reputable, please) source stating that the US has a kill switch for it?
The United States is going to perceive this as a military move. Or, at least, extreme reactionary war-hawk conservatives will. (i.e. the sorts of people who label all of Europe as Socialist or call Europeans "EUroweenies").
Netflix was responsible for a huge plague of pop-under ads advertising their service. Regardless of whether your (or my) ad-blocking software (or browser) blocked them, they still tried these dirty tricks, and I wouldn't doubt that a large part of their popularity is due to these sneaky advertising methods. (Of course, a large part is also due to word of mouth, but still.)
This sort of plan would probably work well in an ideal (or quasi-ideal, a la Gene Roddenberry's future Earth as seen in Star Trek and ST:TNG). Unfortunately, in reality, those with the power (read: money) to implement such a plan are more interested in money and control than saving lives. Just look at how they (the drug companies) are handling AIDS in Africa. "Waah, no, you can't genericize our antiretroviral drugs, we want our patent fees! " Meanwhile, people are dying.
When HIV first emerged in the human population, unfortunately, it did so among gays. Many people hate gays (or just homosexuality itself) and/or think it's "immoral", so that particular virus forever got branded "a gay thing", and that label is very hard to shake, even to this day. And since most people (and an overwhelming percentage of Congresspeople) are straight, a LOT less has gotten done about HIV than otherwise would have. The prevailing, unspoken opinion seems to be "well, it mostly happens to gays, and I'm straight.".
God help us if a mutated, highly virulent, human-to-human form of bird flu or bird/human flu hybrid strikes poor people first. Or illegal immigrants. Or urban ghetto dwellers. Or any number of other groups who the average WASP in America has little to no connection to *and thus little empathy for*). It'll get tagged as "just some disease people in slums get" (or whatever), and little to nothing will get done until it's too late.
The phenomenal advances made by penicillin and subsequent waves of antibiotics, as well as early vaccination successes like Polio and Smallpox, I think, have given us too much confidence in our ability to combat diseases. Our own technology (e.g. antibiotics applying poewrful selective pressure to develop new 'superbugs', jet travel and massive intercontinental trade helping diseases spread worldwide in the course of days) may yet be our unmaking, and I question whether unfettered capitalism is an appropriate response to the combating of life-threatening (even civilization-threatening) plagues, present (HIV) or future (bird flu).
Cue angry rants from reactionary libertarians about how all taxes are tyranny.
How come I can get moderated (-1, Flamebait) for making relatively innocuous comments, but we can't moderate stories (-1, Flamebait)?
You people keep modding anything I say about fetal stem cells-- no matter how calm or reasoned-- (-1, Flamebait). Is this a forbidden topic or something? It's relevant to the topic at hand, and I'm bringing up very real questions. What, is nobody allowed to discuss fetal stem cells AT ALL on SlashDot?
I can't stop you assholes from modding me down for no real reason, but I do want to know if you think you have a genuine reason for doing so. I'm not flamebaiting. I'm asking questions-- possibly uncomfortable but very genuine questions.
No they don't! This time, Canadians can buy them too!
This conveniently ignores the fact that nobody is having an abortion just to harvest stem cells. (Of course, it's also conveniently ignoring the difference between a fetus and a three-year-old child, but that's a wholly different moral issue.)
The issue isn't "I want to have an abortion so I can harvest stem cells from my fetus". The issue is "I want to have an abortion, and the doctors say they can take some stem cells from the fetus. Should I let them?" The issue isn't "I want to do X for purposes of Y", it's "I want to do X; should I do Y as well?"
Fetal stem cells are obtained in circumstances when the fetus is going to die anyways. So you have two choices:
1) Fetus dies; its stem cells die with it and help nobody.
2) Fetus dies; its stem cells are harvested and help save a life or cure a disease.
In any situation where one choice has a significant benefit and no significant drawback, that choice is a no-brainer.
And please don't say "you left off the choice of not having an abortion in the first place"; that's out of the scope of this discussion. Stem cells are harvested in situations where there was an abortion, and nobody has an abortion just to harvest stem cells. (And if they did, that would be a wholly separate issue, and I believe would be an ethical issue.)
I'm asking a serious question here, and that question is: Why are people so against using fetal stem cells? So long as nobody is financially compensated for these cells, I see no ethical dilemma; it's not like people are selling their fetuses for the stem cells. It's quite simple: The fetus was going to die either way. Would you let its death be completely in vain, or would you at least derive some good from it by using its stem cells to save lives (of actual born humans, not dead or aborted fetuses)?
You would have to truly be a sick monster to say "No, you mustn't use those cells to save children from horrible diseases." No matter WHAT the reason.
I simply fail to see the great ethical issue with using ANY sort of cells (stem cells, blood cells, sperm cells, cells from cadavers, cells from plants, who gives a care?!) to save lives and cure diseases . Why do others?
WHY is "using embryonic cells is pretty sick [and] unethical"? Please, I'd like a real explanation, not a knee-jerk one like "using embryos as a means to an end". The embryos were going to die anyways. If, through their death, we can save lives and cure diseases, what sort of monster would say "no, don't do it, let the other people suffer"?
As for the cloning remark: Cloning a "whole" sheep really involved working on two cells: A sheep ova and another sheep cell. It could be that stem cells are harder to clone, I don't know. But if there was a simple way out of this "ethical dilemma" like duplicating a kerjillion copies of a stem cell, don't you think scientists would jump on the opportunity? Contrary to what certain hard-line religious conservatives would like to believe, scientists are not sadistic little Dr. Mengeles itching for the chance to slaughter human fetuses.
So what? Why do people get all worked up about those eeeeeevil embryonic stem cells? Nobody's having abortions just so they can sell stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are, unless I'm mistaken, harvested from embryos who died/were aborted for unrelated reasons. If cells from am embryo can save a child (or their brain), I say DO IT!
HO HO HO! Merrrrrrrrrry Christmas!
(Finally, a reason for me to say that!)
(Or where did you steal them from?)
Um, what sort of crack are you smoking? It's in the dictionary, motherfucker. Also, since when is all slang automatically ungrammatical? Is "bit bucket" a grammatical error? How about "hanging chad"?
You're German, right? No, we don't capitalize all nouns in English, only the proper nouns. Also, "letters" is spelled "letters", and in a textual medium it is acceptable to use capital letters to simulate yelling. LIKE THIS. It's "English", and nice troll. Actually, scratch that-- you're a pretty piss-poor troll.
I'm sorry if my rant wasn't "blind-friendly".