No. The total loss of a species to study and learn from is a loss. That's not neutral. Its not like one species is dying to be replaced by another; right now were are experiencing decreasing bio-diversity.

My entire argument is centered on what is to the ultimate benefit of humanity. And another respondent even (rightfully) called my position "anthropocentric". I'm not sure what to make of your comment; except to say: "swing and a miss".

I can't tell if your suggesting that's good or bad. I think its good.

That's not anthropocentric. That's personal / self-interested / ego-centric.

That's a strange way of looking at it. They are seeking to learn and recover that which is -lost-. I can't see how not finding that which is lost is somehow doing us any good.

Granted the longer we wait to find that which is lost the better our technology for preserving it is but that is offset by
- a how long do we wait? clearly if we wait forever we never benefit from finding it; and anything else is entirely arbitrary. Searching

- some of what is lost is often slowly and sometimes quickly deteriorating. waiting for the future to find it may not leave us anything to find.

Probably not. Perhaps I should have clarified that things going extinct is universally bad for humanity.

And yes, obviously prior extinctions leading to the evolution of humanity were not bad for humanity.

On the other hand, humanity going extinct would be exceedingly bad for humanity.

Other species co-existent with humanity now going extinct, in the sense that it represents a reduction in biodiversity to draw on and study is also bad for humanity.

Right, it is not good or bad relative to the universe; its not "objectively" bad. Its not immoral. But it is still unversally bad from the subjective perspective of the species going extinct, or the species relying on it.

That, in this case, would be us. Granted we aren't dependent on the galapagos iguana the way we are dependent on chickens or corn, but we are dependent on the existing bio-diversity of earth to advance a wide variety of sciences, and the loss of that diversity is a loss to humanity. Particularly the Galapagos. Both due to its scientific value as a long isolated ecosystem; and culturally for its historic significance.

Is that a "for real" reason not to preserve a species, or are you just trolling? In a world where we use oil to make plastic McDonald's happy meal toys in china, and then more oil to ship to the united states, then more oil shipping them to a landfill after kids played with them for exactly 5 minutes once, the argument against using fossile fuels cost of preserving Galapagos species falls pretty flat.

Not moving them, and having them go extinct would have the same effect.

Have we identified anything else that is being threatened by the volcano ?
When did the next to last colony of pink iguana disappear ?
How is it determined if/when the iguana need to be moved ?
Do we understand enough about them to move them ?
How much support are we going to provide them if moved ?

I am not a biologist. Never mind a specialist in the Galapagos. Ask them.
But if a volcano is looking likely to wipe them out, and moving a number to a zoo to try and preserve them seems well worth it to me.

Can not have WHAT both ways?

I'd argue the Galapagos species are priceless. But I would also agree, that even priceless doesn't mean they have infinite value. There must be a reasonable limit on what we'd spend to save them ... but surely we agree its well above 0.

"seems sad"? Did you even read what I wrote? I gave two separate and specific contexts where extinction is a clear loss to humanity: scientific loss in all cases, and cultural loss in more limited cases. Both go well beyond "seems sad".

Along with climate changes, desertification, habitat destruction, food chain collapse,...

Nobody is arguing that point. A meter striking a major city would be totally natural too. "Natural" is hardly a reason to simply let it happen if we see it coming.

It's still a scientific loss. And its a valuable species; all the Galapagos are particularly valuable to science due to their extended isolation and resultant independent evolution.

The question I'm asking is not whether its natural or not, its whether its better or not in the long run for us not to have access to this species to study?

Its hard to make the argument that we gain any advantage from it being extinct.

We have actual scientists who have an actual scientific basis for being concerned about this species status... but you, without any grounds, studies, or special knowledge of the situation, suspect it will be just fine. So ... lets go with that instead. /facepalm

Yes. And?

Can't have what both ways? The premise is that things going extinct is universally bad. Yes, even when its entirely due to natural causes its still in our bests interests to preserve it. Biodiversity is objectively valuable; because we can learn from it.

Letting a species go extinct is like shredding the last copy of a book. The more interesting and unique the species the greater the loss to science.

Finally, and perhaps tangentially, its also rational to put higher value on the larger / famous species -- the extinction of some obscure spider or toad is perhaps just as much a loss as the extinction of tigers scientifically. But tigers are culturally significant in addition to being scientifically significant. So the extra awareness and priority to them is warranted.

1) How will replacing the voting system result in faster or more informed decisions by the voters? That's like suggesting making high tech toilets will get people to make better choices about what they eat.

2) What on earth do we need -faster- decisions for? Because having to wait a few hours a few times a decade is the major problem with our system of government?

Better how? Fewer people would know how it works. Therefore Few people should trust it. Doesn't sound "better" to me. Election systems need to be simple enough that everyone can understand them, everyone can see that hasn't been tampered with.

A show of hands is simple but not anoymous.

Physical ballots placed into a physical box. Then removed and counted in full view of everyone is also simple, and you gain anonymity. And a child can understand it and validate it. There is zero reason for an election to ever be more complicated than this.

1) Perhaps you could find some sort of way to carpool or even split a cab... what with the entire district having a reason to go there that same day. Not to mention political parties and volunteer groups all over the place running busses etc.

If only there were some sort of alternative like the ability to mail in a ballot... oh... wait. There is.

2) I agree with you gerrymandering ought to be criminal.

Yeah, "back in the day". Welcome to the new age of gps in trucks, and in company issued phones with fleet tracking.

Yep, I read it the other way.

The fact that the gender wasn't mentioned in the summary at all let alone the sentence he singled out; led me to initially assume he'd just assumed it was a boy. So I read it as:

I read it as:

  "A boy did this, so what?... why wouldn't a girl be able to?"

I realized as the thread developed that he meant:

  "A girl did this; why would we think she couldn't?"

And he originally replied to the thread himself essentially confirming this and also WTFing the fact that the gender he thought was in the summary wasn't actually present. /shrug. one of those cases where I wish I could at least edit posts or add an update to them after the fact...

So they publish their minimum requirements. And then if the user wants to try it on a system older than that or there is hardware in the system no longer officially supported by the OS, then that's up to the user. Windows

And even on phones, all you needed was the option to go back. Its not like there was any reason that you should have had to "live through that hell".

That is not a contradiction.

No more than regulations are "essentially essentially a form of planned economy"

They are; but the presence of some regulations does not mean free market capitalism is all gone.

The world is not black and white.

Which is why civilized nations protect their citizens with import tarifs etc.

And yes, the TPP is an idiotic move that will further erode local industry.

Not really. As 'far as the hardware will allow' is frequently that apple has decided to drop support for a chipset or io controller or something. And the old hardware would run have run the new software just fine if they hadn't simply dropped support for it.

You can't drop support for a chipset from the OS, and then turn around then say your OS doesn't run on it because the hardware won't allow it. Apple does exactly that all the time.

In other cases they've set completely arbitrary limits on old hardware, and I myself have on several occasions used 3rd party shims to get new versions of OSX onto older hardware that apple had decided was no longer supported -- and they ran just fine -- in some cases they ran better (as for a while OSX was becoming faster with successive releases (lepard to snow leopard in particular). And if the older hardware had been a high spec unit (with extra ram from the factory) or had aftermarket ram upgrades they ran just fine.

Apple certainly isn't the worst offender by a long shot. But they are hardly the golden boy here.

No, not quite. Messages on iphone CAN use SMS to communicate with other phones but that's about it. So yes a dumbphone can reason an iphone with sms, and the iphone will display the sms in messages and let the iphone user use messages to reply... but that''s it.

For example, what if the person you are trying to reach from your 'dumb phone' however is NOT using an iphone with an SMS plan? Or what if they are using messages on an iPod touch or macbook pro? These can't "fail over to SMS" to receive messages from an android or dumb phone. And since the android and dumb phone can't use messages native protocol they can't communicate.

I've been up and down this mess several times already. My daughters friends have a mix of hand me down iphones, ipod touches, and ipads that they chat on with messages. If I give my daughter an android, which would be my preference -- she would not be able to chat with her friends unless they ALL moved over to an alternative messaging app (such as skype), which would be difficult for her to make happen. (In some cases the kids are using a 'family' ipad; and would need their parents permission to even install another app... so the whole group is basically captured on messages and ios or lose the ability to talk to these kids.)

Agreed his particular example wasn't great. However you can use skype on everything from smart TVs to blackberries to linux desktops. Yes, it is end to end a microsoft software product, and not truly open, but it runs on pretty much anything.

That's wrong. Microsoft has finanicial incentive not to... they'd prefer you ran windows and xbox and windows phones; you might argue they HAVE to support ios or become irrelevant; but that doesn't explain their support for osx, blackberry, or linux...

Similarly, apple messages+facetime, by being apple only IS hurting it. Lots of people use it on their mac or ipad, but they all have to have something else installed to talk to the other half of the planet who isn't running an apple product. If messages+facetime was x-plat it could well become as ubiquitous as skype; and it would be a good halo product to attract people to the apple hardware. As it is, it's mostly within-family product because no large organization or heterogenous group of people are ever ALL running just Apple products. There's always someone with a Windows computer or Android phone... and usually lots of people like that.

Even in my daughters group; as the kids are getting older and starting to get phones -- i fully expect the 'apple monopoly' on their communications is going to end. Because as they advance in their teens they'll all soon have phones etc. And they'll have permission to install apps etc. They'll all but inevitably shift to hangouts or skype or something as a group. I can already see it beginning; and my daughters next phone won't be an iphone -- none of the upcoming handme downs are iphones so unless she get a job buys it herself but that's still a few years out yet.