The problem isn't that morality back in the day was different (i.e. more primitive). The problem is that, faithheads think that what's written in the book is absolute. So the example of Mohammed sleeping with a 9 year old, or the bible advocating slavery, genocide etc. are examples to prove that modern morality is far better than the obviously flawed "absolute" morality advocated in those books.

That is why this Aisha story comes up so often.

I don't think even that's the problem. I find that many things that work reasonably well in Windows and Mac OS X do not work properly on many Linux distributions. There may be understandable reasons for this, but in practical terms, it's a really big problem.

For example, I have a docking station for my Lenovo X201. When I put my laptop on the docking station, it should automatically switch to the external display - at the correct resolution. When I open my laptop lid, it should activate both. When I boot up while docked and lid closed, only external display should come on at the correct resolution. About an year ago (which is when I tested last), it didn't do any of these things perfectly, It kept forgetting the resolution of the external display, and I had to keep readjusting it. Opening and closing the lid was a slow and unbearable affair.

This is apart from the fact that the graphics are pretty sluggish, with occasional tearing etc. Scrolling and panning were also fairly slow. Intel drivers are correctly installed. The UI just doesn't have the polish and smoothness that Android, Windows and OS X do. The fonts are also pretty ugly by default, The buttons and layouts look squished or otherwise disproportionate. There are many many similar hiccups as the ones outlined above. As a point of comparison, I'll point out that I started using Mac OS X only recently, and have found it instantly more pleasant and intuitive to use, although I still find Windows to provide the most flexibility, especially when it comes to multi-monitor support.

Android is a testament to the fact that fluid and beautiful desktops on Linux are entirely possible, on a range of hardware. I think KDE (my favourite) and Gnome just need to stop worrying about new features, and just polish their existing experience. Alternatively, maybe the trick to finally having Linux on the Desktop, is to have Android on the Desktop.

What you said is interesting. Is this a personal opinion or are there any papers/sources you can refer me to? cheers!

To clarify further, it's not just targeted advertising that will be possible with this data. It is very likely that one's political affiliations, sexual orientation, religious beliefs and other hidden thoughts and opinions etc. can be predicted with this data. In the hands of some ideally benevolent government, all data may be benign. In the hands of a despotic one, it can be used to detect and eliminate any and all opposition - a witch hunt to end all witch hunts.

Shneier explains it well: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/05/the_value_of_pr.html

Amazon only has access to a certain restricted aspect of your social life - your purchase preferences for certain internet goods. But if Amazon's info could be combined with facebook's database, your location information from google maps, your browsing history from your ISP, your supermarket profile, your movie preferences, your medical history etc. etc. (basically, the Database of Ruin the author is talking about) and I'd wager those Amazon recommendations are going to be a whole lot more accurate.

Umm... Would the name calling gentleman be so kind as to explain, why incidents like this are very rare in countries which do not provide ready access to guns to the general public?

Oops, forgot to log-in.

I might add, the writing has been on the wall for sometime now, and Google is still wasting time preparing for an all-cloud future with Chrome OS, although I recall hearing about plans to merge with Android. Still, local storage + processing isn't going away any-time soon, not till internet connections are uniformly 100mbps+ or something. So I don't see the point in preparing for a future cloud-only battle if you lose the current tablet battle and aren't relevant any more for the future.

Of course, Google can still reign in the mobile phone market, because Microsoft isn't going to be able to break into that market any time soon.

People who subscribe to primitive taboo morality, cannot reason ethically by definition.

Oh well, should have known better than to respond to a troll! Good bye!

I recommend that you read his views, and rationale, straight from the source and gain a proper appreciation of his position, rather than sensationalist news blurbs written by reporters who never bothered to. Singer is a pretty amazing guy, and you'll find that he's a more ethical person than most. There's a reason he's a professor of bioethics at Princeton, and the people doing the reporting, are not.

My mind has been changed on the ethics of that and it was Peter Singer who convinced me of the fact. It's an argument rooted not only in minimizing harm to sentient creatures (and avoiding speciesism), but also on the arguably more distasteful issue another poster mentioned, that of how animals are treated in farms.

Singer's article here provides the latter argument, but I can't recall sources for his former argument. Perhaps here.

I am looking forward to the wide availability of lab-grown meat. It'll be an altogether more humane alternative to what we are engaging in now. Plus, on a personal note, it'll make me less of a hypocrite, because I still eat meat. As they say, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

If something can be virally adopted, it can be virally killed.

I won't call this a debate, because a debate implies a particular position, and I don't have one. Let's just call it being the devil's advocate.

However, I will point out that the abstract nature of an algorithm, vs an engineered product has not really been established. By this I mean, a recipe for creating an engineering product is also abstract. For example, a sequence of steps A, B, C in manufacturing product X is abstract, until it is implemented in some concrete product.

Therefore, the "abstract nature" of software (also a recipe) provide no distinguishable difference from an industrial process (also abstract).

So all I'm saying is, there needs to be something more evident here which establishes the difference. Personally, I dislike that idea of any kind of recipe being patented, because I think they are all ideas at the end of the day, and attempts to claim rights to those are attempts to claim rights to thoughts, and ultimately, to police thought. However, I also see the need to compensate inventors. I just don't see a clear solution.