Go a step further - read a book.

Go a step beyond that - read a book about your destination at home, and save yourself the trip.

Regardless, we have now wasted 6 years of research, and are thus 6 years further away from treatments had we not done so. No lives may have been savable as yet, but in 14 years when the treatments would have been ready (instead of the 20 years when they now will be,) people will start dying who could have been saved.

And yes, you can make the argument that the research will proceed more quickly when we are more technologically advanced, but there will nonetheless have been a significant amount of time that was lost, which will ultimately correspond with lost lives.

While I am very sorry to learn of your condition, if the criteria by which you evaluate this issue are inherently self-interested, then I think you're missing the whole ethical portion of the debate.

You're missing the point. The point isn't that this fear is sensible (I agree, it isn't.) The point is that we as individuals should have access to the information required to perform our own risk assessments when we want to do so, rather than just having to accept somebody else's opinion that something (that in this case many of us have to make use of, e.g. for business flights,) is safe. The point doesn't just apply to airplanes and autopilot; rather, it derives from a more general belief that information should be as transparent as possible where its transparency is not detrimental (something that in turn derives from basic liberal theory.)

Not only is the second answer feel-good bullshit, but, given that passengers are ultimately just consumers (who are attempting to ascertain whether they wish to purchase a service,) it's also fraud. Yes, it is a sad fact that fraud sometimes happens, but, given that airlines are the kind of respectable corporation that can easily be sued (as opposed to say, that guy who's trying to sell you magic beans,) I think we can deal with such a problem.

At a more abstract level, I don't think I even need to provide any of the reductio ad absurdums that could be performed on your argument (your argument, so far as I understand it, ultimately being: "there's no point in allowing somebody to ask a question to which the person they are asking will be inclined to give a false answer.")

While I see the rational behind your knee-jerk reaction (being a response to ignorant fear mongers who don't understand that letting a computer fly a plane is probably as safe if not more safe than letting a human do it in some situations) I still could not disagree with it more.

All issues regarding the safety of autopilot aside, of course passengers should have the right to make this sort of inquiry; "Who or what is responsible for my safety while I am receiving your service?" seems like a pretty reasonable question for any consumer to ask (irrespective of how irrational their fears may be, or what they will decide to do when they receive an answer.)

I don't think I have ever laughed so hard while reading a slashdot comment.

Kudos.

Personally, I am a bit concerned - not for myself (a healthy 21 year old male,) but rather for some of my loved ones, who have compromised immune systems. After SARS and bird flu, though, both of which (thankfully) amounted to relatively little, just because the media is fear mongering once again, I'm not exactly going to have a heart attack.

Attempting to ratify an incredibly strong intuition (or, if you prefer a less philosophical and more scientific term, 'hypothesis') isn't a good way to do science? Certainly, scientists should be open to all possibilities, and shouldn't be so tendentious as to ignore a conclusion because they want to believe the contrary, but can it honestly be said that scientists don't have a hunch (or 'intuition' or 'hypothesis,') that they attempt to confirm or disconfirm via scientific experiments? Moreover, if something coincides with said intuition, doesn't that at least prima facie give it more credibility than a position that does not?

The fact that quantum mechanics even has such a credible indeterministic interpretation certainly does say something about philosophical determinism: viz. it gives the position a level of credibility that was precluded by classical mechanics. Granted, indeterminism is insufficient for free will; nevertheless, it certainly seems to be necessary. Thus, since quantum mechanics at this point seems to have revealed that one of the necessary conditions for free will is not necessarily false, it has to that extent said something about free will. This isn't to say that quantum mechanics has all of the answers, nor is it to say that it can at this point be used to unequivocally demonstrate the truth of indeterminism or the existence of free will (as a matter of fact, my intuitions are deterministic, but that's neither here nor there;) regardless, to say that quantum mechanics says nothing about free will or determinism is less than charitable.

In conclusion: your physics knowledge is excellent, but don't beat up on us humble philosophers!

Correlation is not causation. Presumably, it is not the mere presence of the books, shooting off their "bookly cosmic rays," that is the causal force which leads to children doing better on tests. Rather, there are two presumable possibilities, both of which probably work concurrently:

1. The kind of parents who own a lot of books are generally of above-average intelligence, and hence produce offspring that are as well.

2. The kind of parents who own a lot of books are likely to either read books to their children, encourage their children to read themselves.

The medium through with the information is conveyed likely matters very little, if at all, and so long as the children receive adequate instruction on how to access materials to read, and encouragement to actually do so, they will fare just fine.

I'm a little surprised this was modded up so high.. the answer is presumably because they consider piracy to be wrong, but don't want shell out money for the full version.

I know that most slashdotters don't consider piracy to be immoral, but has it really gotten to the point where you can't even fathom why or that people would?

*Awaits karma burn...*

Or, to be cynical, perhaps so that they wouldn't have to rewrite it if they wanted to do any major overhauls of suse?