Encryption does not really come in to play for how Google is handling the service. Once the call is set up it is phone-to-phone, it is NOT through either user's computer. You can start the call through your computer, but then it just calls your phone, when you pick up it calls the other person and takes the end user's computer out of the picture. This is VERY nice since you are not tied to your computer. You can have it call your cell or your land line, and if you have a cordless phone you are free to roam around your house/yard while on free/inexpensive long distance calls. It also adds extra perks such as if someone calls your new Google phone number it can ring your home, cell, and office phones simultaneously. The caller doesn't have to worry about figuring out which one to try to call first and if you aren't by that phone try another one of your numbers. It also lets you get a text message and e-mail when someone leaves voice mail, and you can get a text transcription of it or listen to it on-line. Listening to an voice-mail on-line is the only aspect that I guess could involve any sort of encryption.

I checked out the range of costs charged by this service. It was nice to see that Canada was free, the UK, Japan and most of Europe just $0.02/min. I was surprised that Thuraya was 18.5 times as expensive as remote, war-torn Afghanistan though ($4.99/min vs $0.27/min.) They must be suffering under horrendous political and geographical situations there. I had never heard of Thuraya before, had to look it up on Google.

Why does my responding to your post which ONLY referred to the bit of my original post that involved the Nazi medical tests within a list of things including the question of using organs from death row inmates for transplants make me the one doubling down on the Nazi stuff? You were the one who ONLY referenced that part of my original post, with your only point between embryo research and the Nazi testing being that embryo testing being considered does not involve "creating life in order to destroy it", and in my response all I did was point out that neither did the Nazi tests.

I NEVER equated the Holocaust victims with frozen embryos. What I WAS doing was pointing out that NONE of these situations allow you to merely throw out all religious morality and come to a level headed, logical conclusion. There is HUMAN morality involved. That was my point in each of my posts, since the original post in this thread was basically saying that moral issues were getting in the way of this and useful results, just toss out any consideration of the moral issues and then all would be clear-cut and logical.

I think we are actually fairly close on how we feel about this. Where did I ever mention forcing religious morality upon others, let alone religious fanaticism? Where did I ever say that "there is no difference between and embryo and a human being, period?" I feel that religious fanaticism plays NO useful part in discussions like this. I also feel that trying to say that NO morality of any sort should come into play is just as narrow (closed) minded though. Human morality is involved in ALL societal norms, laws, regulations. Human morality changes as society's knowledge, understanding, preferences change with time and can actually be much muddier than religious morality, but people are NOT being realistic if they feel that ALL moral issues can be removed from the discussion in order to reach a clear, logical, scientific conclusion.

Wow, and what types of things do you figure are not worth living with? Someone with Down Syndrome can not feel they are having a fulfilling life? How about ADD? What genes should be picked and chosen, which avoided, and which not allowed to exist within the human genome anymore?

None of the Nazi experiments involved creating life in order to destroy it either. Those lives were already there, and would have just been tossed away in the gas chambers anyways. I used a range of examples over a range of what people may view as "morally" appropriate, but trying to say that even at the most benign level there IS morality involved, not necessarily religious morality, but HUMAN morality. It is NOT appropriate to say that any of these decisions can be made free of ALL moral thinking.

Actually I see a LOT of truth behind both sides of whether or not already existing embryos that will otherwise be destroyed should be made available for testing, so I am staying out of that. All I am trying to say is that it is FAR too simplistic to just state that the ONLY statements against it are based on religious morality and that therefor the scientific community has no real restrictions aside from the current legal ones not to go ahead.

So why not harvest organs from all death row inmates after euthenizing them in a humane manner that does not damage the organs?

Sperm on their own are not potential human beings. A fertilized egg is. When is it an actual person, and does it have to be a full person before it has any rights? A dog is not a person, yet it has rights protecting it from malicious harm. Is there something magical about a fetus coming through the vaginal opening that instantly makes it a human? Is there something magical about making it to the second trimesters? Is it when a sperm and egg merge DNA? Is it when there are two or more cells that will be brain cells that send the first electrical pulse between them?

Yes, it DOES have to do with morality. That does NOT mean "religious morals", but "human morals" and how we as a society currently understand and interpret them. The logistics of the death penalty are based on morals, how we determine what punishment roughly matches a crime is based on society's view of what is morally correct. How we define the point of life and death are also based on morals and not exact scientific fact. Death is no longer when you no longer have a pulse. People have been revived long after being declared dead by medical professionals.

The start of life is just one of the issues involved in this. Another is when is it viable, valuable, when does a new life equal or outweigh the value of an older life. Is life kept in a perpetually frozen, inert state without a reasonable likelihood of existing in any other manner truly life anymore? I don't see how you can answer any of those without involving morals of one form or another.

And why does that override moral concerns? Since you may face the same, why now allow doctors to stick your mother with probes, take core samples of her brain while still alive, test for levels of chemicals, amino acids, level of fat vs protein etc, which would be MUCH more accurate while still alive vs hours/days after death. Surely this would help gain insight and move forward scientific studies on how to detect Alzheimer's in a much earlier stage and more precise treatment for future sufferers. Why not re-open Nazi style medical tests on twins and fetuses, and why not lift all restrictions on live animal testing? How about using those on death row for medical research so they can at least be productive in death or force them to be organ donors? They will be dead anyways, those organs would just go to waste otherwise.

Alzheimer's has occurred on both sides of my family (grandfather on the one side, great-grandfather on the other), my mom's cousin suffered from ALS for over 10 years and even wrote a book by using nothing but moving his eyebrows, and I have already suffered a viral infection that will remain with me the rest of my life. Every time it comes out of remission (I'm currently fighting my fourth bout) it causes the lining of my brain to swell, causing a good chunk of my synapses to get destroyed, and taking years for my brain to recover to about 80-90% of where it had been before. Maybe stem cell research would find a way to fully recover from each bout and keep me from having to drop out of school/work for a handful of years each time, and having to settle for a less effective brain after each occurrence. I still don't see that as a reason to try to lessen the moral implications involved in order to try to tilt the balance in a way that could possibly improve my life of the lives of my loved ones.

I don't mean to say that the morals in stem cell research are clear cut, they definitely are not. I see NO reason though to purposely try to tilt the balance one way or another and fudge the morals and facts due to personal fears of potential illnesses, illnesses of friends and relatives, etc.

"How did the pea roots deal with the patient's immune system? What would have happened if the situation had continued un-treated? I bet the guy has a career awaiting him in PR for a pea-growing company." I highly doubt any company wants to use him for PR, but Monsanto may be looking into how to sue him for patent infringement, since he apparently took their patented herbicide resistant strains and modified them to be antibody resistant.

Well, as far as I was aware John/Jane Doe cases are filed for crimes already committed, but by people whose exact identity is not yet known. This goes a LARGE step farther since the crime has not yet been committed, and is not even guaranteed to be committed. This is a slick trick to get the taxpayers to provide the extra security and snooping for them. I understand John/Jane Doe cases where it is clear a crime has been committed, but to file a lawsuit before the supposed crime can even be committed let alone proven to have occurred seems to go well beyond the intent of any law and should not be permitted. Planning to commit a felony is against the law in itself, so those sorts of situations are already covered, as long as it can be proved that the plans were actually in place.

Yes, I'm sure that professional trolls infiltrated Slashdot accounts with IDs spanning the last several years, back before WikiLeaks even existed, laying in wait until just such a moment as this to come out and show fake support of the government against WikiLeaks. It can't have anything to do with people having issues with both the US government and the way WikiLeaks handled the massive amounts of documents that were posted, reading up on both sides of the issues, and deciding that although both sides handled the issue poorly that it is the way WikiLeaks handled the situation that is unnecessarily putting yet more lives at immediate risk, that enough voices are already up in arms over how the government is handling things, but that voices also need to be raised against WikiLeaks before they feel emboldened to post even more documents with even less concern as to what should be redacted first.

Option 7 is the option not to participate in the poll.

Quite a few customers would be upset if their USB stick/memory card was mounted as Read-Only. Many people who use those kiosks do not have their own photo editing software at home. They do their cropping, red-eye reduction, contrast adjustment, color correction, etc at the kiosk and want to save the changes.

A "friend" of mine used to always stick a copy of LoveDOS on anyone's computer in college that was left unattended. The ending comment of "Call me crazy but I love DOS" brought these "fond" memories back. It looks like someone has actually archived a copy of it, as well as putting together some screen shots and info about it: http://jeff.rainbow-100.com/?p=100 Ever since being inflicted with LoveDOS I have set up every computer I own to use a BIOS password.