Define sentient. Define special.

So SO stupid.

Do you not see? In your world-view there isn't a difference between an apple, an apple tree, a zygote or an adult human. They are all just patterns of matter. But then you're trying to reach out and say there's something more to a born human than an unborn human - which is wholly arbitrary.

(Plainly this philosphy of yours is contradictory because you DO believe there is something inherantly valuable about a human life, because you have a notion of rights - but anyway).

You can't have it both ways. You want to say the adult's life is special (though they're just matter, so really not any more special than an apple), but the unborn child is not special because it's just matter.

Oh except that you say the adult is self aware.

What about when you've been anaethsetised? or drunk? or concussed? Do you have a right to life then? How about when you were 1-hour old - were you self aware then? You suppose so, but for myself I don't remember being aware of anything. What justification can you offer to give rights-to-life to any of these different examples person but deprive it from the unborn child?

What about a concious adult? You say they're self aware. How do you know? Maybe it's all an illusion - like the turing test. And anyway, who appointed you the one to define this arbitrary litmus test of whether a person has rights to life or not?

Perhaps the fairest way to resolve this would be to allow the baby to gain conciousness in the same way that an anaethsetised person would gain conciousness, then give them a chance to choose for themselves whether they would like to live or not. I certainly am glad I was given that chance, and I suspect you are glad that you were also.

Certainly no-one has the right to deprive a person of such a choice, in the present or in the future.

GP was talking about a person, and so am I. That's why we call them "unborn child", and "baby in the womb". Noone can discard a human life without being a murderer. Therefore to justify themselves - just like in any genocide, those in favour of killing unborn babies, have to label abortion as not killing, and the baby as not human.

What a stupid argument.

Let me ask you a question. Why are you not guilty of magical thinking when you put a living human adult in a different category to a zygote or a dishwasher? Why do you afford adult human cell collections moral rights that you don't afford zygotes or dishwashers. I'll tell you why: It's because your concience tells you that human life is special and must be preserved, and that murder is an outrageous crime, and yet you mock those who believe likewise for unborn children.

Stupid stupid stupid.

Word play. Redefining "person" to suit your own ends. All for a little convenience in your life. Toss the baby in the trash- who cares anyway.

And you don't care about people in the uterus? If not, then why not?

I want Universal Firmware - or at least universal to the CPU architecture (ARM, MIPS etc.). It could be supported right now if Android were to make Kernel Device Trees required or if we had *gasp* discoverable busses as we do on the PC.

Then we would be able to have Android or Linux distributions for mobile like we have Linux distributions for the PC. I could buy all kinds of interesting devices from China, and know that I will be able to upgrade them with my favourite "distro" without having to hack about with some guy's weekend project on the XDA developers forum.

...collaborate and listen. LibreOffice has ~10 times the number of developers involved ( https://www.ohloh.net/p/libreo... , https://www.ohloh.net/p/openof... ), and it's a better project in every possible way. The only thing you have going for you is that name you inherited for Oracle. By carrying on with this project you're just continuing a fork that serves no purpose to the community. In fact it harms the community, because new-comers try AOO and think it's the best that the community can do, when LO has shown we can do so much better.

The only upside, is that LO can import your work and benefit from what little improvements your small team are able to produce.

Dear Ubuntu,

I have had 6 happy years using you every day. You showed me so many things - the world of Linux I never knew. I will never forget the time we've shared.

But you've you've changed. You're not the OS I once loved. I'm sorry to have to tell you this. I don't wish to hurt you. But I have to tell you the truth...

I've switched to Mint.

I guess I hoped Ubuntu would succeed because it was good Free Software not in spite of it. It seems like Ubuntu is cooling off on some of the values that make free software great including openness (secret Mir developments), collaboration (going their own way on new infrastructure), respect for privacy (Amazon Dash) etc.

I wish the Ubuntu guys would stop trying to be another Apple, and instead focus on what they and the community can offer than Apple never could.

On the subject does can anyone make a suggestion about where best to go in terms of other distributions. I want to stay in the Debian family. Debian Stable is too behind the curve. Debian Testing seems rather volatile - a friend told me wine disappeard for a while on his install. Mint seems quite ok, but does it try too much to be a windows clone. Really I want something like debian but with some user polish, and a ~6-month release cycle.

Mod parent up.

RTFA: They have made some good progress on this - but I can't tell if MOC is dead yet.

Did they make any moves towards using standard C++ features rather than the MOC ugliness? What with Boost::Signals, sigcxx and C++11, I see no reason why they have to bastardise the language to provide signals.

Amen to that! One of the first things that got me interested in developing this software was how expensive decent electronic test tools with capable software really are. Unless you're willing to drop some serious cash, you get a device that contains no more than £15 of parts being sold for >£400, with VB6 software than is generally no more than barely usable with each manufacturer reinventing the wheel over and over.

sigrok is cool because we can use the same software to sample from any device, but they can all share the powerful decoding features of the software, no matter how expensive the logic analyser hardware. Then we can begin to do cool stuff by piping the collected data through any script or FOSS tool that we might care to try - even in continuous real time. For example recently I have been working on an IS decoder (digital sound) that can extract the digital data from an audio interconnect, then pipe it into a wav. I can now hear what my DSP chip is producing, and that with a device that costs less than £30.

Bert Vermeulen has been working on adding support for analog sampling for oscillascope devices. Maybe one day soon we will be able to leverage the power of GNU Radio, and have them work as a spectrum anaylser, a demodulator.

The possibilities are endless, and lightyears ahead of anything the proprietory world has to offer.

I don't quite understand the trajectory of the probe. For example in the last shot, it swoops past Mimas zooming straight toward the Saturnian surface, then appears to change direction curving vertically, passing through the rings (why no hail of ice damage?), then swoops back around and turns around heading toward Encledatus at top speed. How is this even possible?