As for intelligence, Romney got 47% in the popular vote. Probably can't remember that far back, can you, fatty? That's assuming you even understand what the fuck I'm talking about.

You obviously don't have a fscking clue about the ways scientists commonly define intelligence; as your statement is totally irrelevent, and Romney would of course pass as intelligent, as would a 1st grader, or a human baby of certain age pass as intelligent. There are some basic tests for certain aspects of intelligence, but the ability to learn human language would be the first and most important one. An organism that can learn human spoken language has intelligence.

If an organism is capable of learning human spoken language, written language, and identify itself (self-awareness) -- for example, if the organism can look at itself in a mirror and recognize itself, and show itself as having a theory of mind (eg ability to recognize or identify beliefs, desires, pretend, knowledge of itself and others), then it is sentient and intelligent, and a person.

If it can do those things, and it's been denied the resources required - such as social exposure to other humans, or materials to learn, then that's not non-intelligence, but abuse.

What a load of emotive flag-waving platitudinous shite. Desire for freedom isn't a prerequisite - how the fuck do you test for that? With a libertometer?

Desire for freedom is very easy to measure -- as soon as an organism has shown to have a desire or attempt to get something or do something, or that it is shown conditioning or training would be required to prevent the organism doing something or attempting to do something, and that desire or effort has been shown to have been obstructed , then that organism was shown to have desired freedom.

Most animals, including pets have a desire for freedom of movement. They express behaviors consistent with a desire not to be caged.

Humans desire other freedoms, such as freedom of thought, freedom of expression. These desires can also be demonstrated, even if measuring level of desire is not possible.

All that means is that they won't become the norm, but they'll always be there - a group of people burdened with this defect for a fully avoidable reason.

OK.. so you've in essence also made the argument for genetic testing of embryos as soon as pregnancy is detected, and mandatory early abortion of babies that have genetic defects, as their conditions are avoidable - by not allowing these humans to be produced :)

None of your phone numbers are changed every 30/60/90 days, while some of your passwords are.

My recommendation for such passwords, is to memorize a "base" password; and define a rule to increment the base password, so all you need to remember is the original password, and which number you are at, and do a mental transformation; this is far more secure than writing down the password, or picking easy to guess passwords.

eg

Password 0 helloworld0

Password 1 ifmmpxpsme1

Password 2 jgnnqyqtnf2

Password 3 khoorzruog3

Password 4 lippsasvph4

Password 5 mjqqtbtwqi5

Password 6 nkrrucuxrj6

Password 7 olssvdvysk7

Password 8 pmttwewwtl8

Password 9 qnuuxfxxum9

It would be better to have no grammar structure at all in passwords, good or bad. Select a random assortment of words, not words that can be strung together using conventional grammar rules, or even distortions of conventional grammar rules.

And transform any words in such a way, that no word used is a legitimate word.

3hav-ayekatkitt-ees

Every site should allow any password if they just hash it like they should.

I consider restricting the character set a lesser crime than sites like Amazon, Blizzard that make passwords case-insensitive

However if you have to buy the songs, you'll only buy those which you intend to listen to repeatedly.

Whether you buy a song you won't necessarily listen to repeatedly -- does depend on how well your curiosity about the song is satisfied by the 30 second preview, or what other means you might have available to "try out" a song you don't know about, to decide if you might like to listen to it repeatedly. :)

For example, most humans alive today bear some resistance to the plague and influenza H1N1 because they killed such a large portion of our population.

They would have the advantage that -- plague and H1N1 are not prevalent. Things humans are highly resistant/immune to are not likely to be floating around for the neanderthal to catch. Flu bugs are things a neanderthal could be vaccinated against as well.

Bringing back a Neanderthal would subject them to diseases 30,000 years more advance in the evolutionary arms race.

It's also entirely possible, that it doesn't matter much, seeing as humans have been around for a million years or more. 30,000 years is not that long; it's only a few hundred generations. Viruses evolve very rapidly, and humanoids' resistance to infection evolves very slowly.

The Neanderthals differences are potentially more of an advantage than a disadvantage.

A human child gets sick very frequently, and builds up resistance as a child, and some resistances and allergies may be transferred from biological parent to child in the womb, I expect a Neanderthal baby would not be extremely different.

Secondly, a lot of viruses embed themselves in our genome. It's almost guaranteed that if a Neanderthal caught the virus, so could modern humans.

If the virus is in the Neanderthal's genome, chances are fairly good the Neanderthal did not die from it.

When an endogenous retrovirus gets incorporated to DNA, it very quickly loses infectiousness and becomes deactivated due to mutations, deletions, recombinant deletions that occur.

Bad how? That this unnatural "experiment" could find its way out of labs, end up fucking (or fucked by) humans, and then unknown genes be introduced into the human gene pool?

It would be an increase in genetic diversity, which could be a plus.

If the genes reintroduced are useful, then they might spread far down the generations. If they are extremely bad, then they statistically won't get very far.

Does the article say if he also plans to clone a bride for him?

He may need to clone a few of each gender, so that they have spouse candidates to pick from.

Otherwise, it would seem like an unfairly pre-arranged marriage.

It is fitting to see this on the weekend before Martin Luther King Day. No, they won't just "get them"... everything worthwhile is fought for. A Neanderthal born today will not see "human(ish) rights" applied in his lifetime.

This would depend entirely on what the Neanderthal's mental capabilities are.

In the US, though, rights are afforded to persons regardless of race; if they are born by a human parent, they have self-awareness and intelligence, desire for freedom, and they can be recognized as a person, then they will have certain rights.

They might be too passive or too aggressive, or simply have incompatible responses to situations to live with modern humans.

Many responses are learned, including aggression, so it's unlikely.

In that case, special arrangements might need to be made to see to the neanderthal's well-being and happiness.

This should be a documented obligation of whoever sets out on this 'experiment'.

Ask yourself just some simple preliminary questions such as: If the resulting semi-human is self aware, what rights will it/he/she have?

Should have the same rights as any person born by a human mother.

A ramification of this should be... whoever volunteers, better be prepared to parent this child, and deal with certain difficulties which might occur.

Or else, in case of a surrogacy, whatever person the mother has this child for, better be prepared to parent the child as any other human child.

And no, a lab does not have a right to own, imprison, or enslave a sentient being.

Which is worth approximately ( $0.0017 / 3 / 0.0000102669)*(1-1/(1+0.0000102669)^4870) = $2.69

Or rather, 5% at 365 days a year = of the 14610 days, that's actually 0.0001 per interval, and there are 14610 intervals, (so the above is actually an underestimate, of the worth to the label, of you subscribing) -- but the story is still the same, it's still more profitable to the label if you subscribe for 2 years, and then it's potentially several times as profitable, if you keep subscribing.

( 0.0017 / 3 / 0.0001)*(1-1/(1+0.0001)^14610)

On the other hand, the iTunes thing was a one-time purchase.

And the iTunes thing gave you a digital file, so you'd never need to buy it again (Owch). The whole "Sell a CD", put the songs on multiple CDs, "Then make them buy a DRM encoded version from iTunes later" to have to rebuy the song multiple times, of course, was still better for the labels.

But subscription isn't that bad.

For every track played on spotify, the "label" gets $.0017. Buying through iTunes is vastly more beneficial to content producers.

OK... but what happens when the track is in your playlist, and you listen to it every day on a subscription service, for 2 years (assume about once a day); in other words 365 x 2 = 730 times spread out over 2 years?

OK, discounted ~5%/Year = 0.0137%/Day , the present value of that stream of revenue for the label would be:
( $0.0017 / 0.000137)*(1-1/(1+0.000137)^730) = $1.18

And despite them having gotten $1.24 from you worth $1.18 today..... you still don't own the sound track. You have to continue the subscription, if you want to keep hearing it :)

So... the question becomes... what happens, if you keep listening to the track once a day one third of the days of the rest of your life? Assuming you are age 30, and live until age 70, that's 4870 listens, or $0.017 * 4870 = $82.79

Which is worth approximately ( $0.0017 / 3 / 0.0000102669)*(1-1/(1+0.0000102669)^4870) = $2.69

In today's dollars, and $2.69 is a heck of a lot more money for the label than $0.70, hell, it's over 3 times as much.

For you to subscribe to the service, and listen to your music through that, as long as they get their little .17 cents every time :)

Maybe not, but who says that has to be the case? We know of actual cases where corporations -- with the full knowledge of their leaders -- sold arms to countries that were on the government's prohibited list; that drove other corporations out of business via nefarious (rather then market) means; and so on. And most people would call those things evil.

How do you determine when that actually makes the corporation evil versus, it just being fallible leaders entrusted with duties improperly directing people in the corporation to do things that are in effect evil?

It seems like you are absolving people working for the corporation of doing evil, and trying to blame the organizational structure itself.

However, nothing about the way a corporation is organized, dictates anything, that causes people in it to inherently do evil things.

The board and leaders are entrusted with care for the assets, but them directing people in the organization to do evil things doesn't make the organization itself evil; it's still just the people.