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I didn't 'turn it into a straw man' because 1) I used the example provided, and 2) the point was irrelevant to the topic at hand in the first place. However correct it is to say that not anyone should be able to turn an ATM into a jukebox, it's got nothing ot do with the ability of people to turn a home computer into a jukebox, which people can and should be able to do.

Your mischaracterization of my original post, which was available for quoting in its entirety at the cost of a couple of clicks at most, bespeaks trollishness far more than the actual 'straw man' which you offer of a comment I didn't make.

It's absolutely true that 'in many situations' users don't have any need to install software, which I don't and didn't deny, but those typically aren't the cases where Windows is the dominant OS. My comment discussed one of the factors which makes Windows dominant in the sector which was under discussion, viz. home and small office, where the user typically does perform 'admin' functions such as installing software.

In situations where that isn't the case, obviously the lack of easy application installation isn't a factor. I think it's not coincidental that those are the very areas where Windows is losing ground.

I didn't 'turn it into a straw man' because 1) I used the example provided, and 2) the point was irrelevant to the topic at hand in the first place. However correct it is to say that not anyone should be able to turn an ATM into a jukebox, it's got nothing ot do with the ability of people to turn a home computer into a jukebox, which people can and should be able to do.

Your mischaracterization of my original post, which was available for quoting in its entirety at the cost of a couple of clicks at most, bespeaks trollishness far more than the actual 'straw man' which you offer of a comment I didn't make.

It's absolutely true that 'in many situations' users don't have any need to install software, which I don't and didn't deny, but those typically aren't the cases where Windows is the dominant OS. My comment discussed one of the factors which makes Windows dominant in the sector which was under discussion, viz. home and small office, where the user typically does perform 'admin' functions such as installing software.

In situations where that isn't the case, obviously the lack of easy application installation isn't a factor. I think it's not coincidental that those are the very areas where Windows is losing ground.

Oh, so I say Israelis have a right to live, and you accuse me of wanting Israelis in concentration camps? I'm not going to argue with you if you Strawman me.

The difference is that oil consumption numbers have gone UP since 1992 while oil supply numbers have gone DOWN -- and the cost of extraction has nearly doubled.

See? We what you just did a straw man argument, and outside of right wing talk shows it's generally considered poor forensic practice.. Just because one statistic was wrong doesn't mean others, which aren't dependent on it, are wrong as well.

I believe its called the fallacy of the false delemma.

People often accept this sort of "reasoning" because particularly vivid or dramatic cases tend to make a very strong impression on the human mind. For example, if a person survives a particularly awful plane crash, he might be inclined to believe that air travel is more dangerous than other forms of travel. After all, explosions and people dying around him will have a more significant impact on his mind than will the rather dull statistics that a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than killed in a plane crash.

Could it be because they sold about one of them, and that was to the government who buys all kinds of stuff they don't really get their money's worth out of afterwards? (The San Diego Supercomputer Center is another example of having bought a dud or two of research projects that have never worked as promised.)

You may argue that the research was valuable, however before you attempt that your should visit this page on argument fallacies to ensure that you are not using any of the 42 fallacies presented. I especially refer you to the Red Herring.

Point is that Stretch was a miserable failure for its intended market. Renaming it a research effort doesn't change that.

1. God created everything
2. God set everything into motion
3. God knows about everything
4. God knows the future

This equals "no free will." How so? If God knows how things will turn out and He created you, you have no choice in the matter. He created me to be a non-believer who would burn in the eternal fires of hell. He knew that I would take this choice even before I was born. He knew I would do this even before Adam and Eve. If He didn't, God becomes finite. God cannot have His knowledge limited, even by Himself. To do so would limit God: an entity which is by Judeo-Christian definition infinite.

You are probably either going to say, "No it doesn't for God can put things into motion and watch them unfold from our free will," or "God knows how we are going to choose but is still giving us the opportunity to choose without interference," or possibly "God can choose to ignore the events until they transpire."

No dice. If God can put things into motion without knowing how it turns out, the entity is no longer omniscient and thus, no longer the God everyone loves talking about. If God must limit His knowledge -- for whatever reason, it doesn't matter -- then God has limits. If God has limits -- a notion contrary to the Bible -- then how can we be sure that God is not limited in other ways as well? After all, if God can't do that, how do you know God can read your thoughts, hear your prayers, or see you in your bedroom at night? And if God has some sort of limitation, why must God be responsible for the creation of the universe? In for a penny, in for a pound. If God knows how we'll each turn out, it stands to reason that God knew before He created us. If He knew before He created us, then He created me for the expressed purpose of making me suffer eternally in Hell. I have no choice. He made me this way. He could've made me another way, but He chose not to. Gee. Thanks God. You're a swell guy.

Or perhaps you were going to go into the fact that something or someone had to create the universe. Who created God? No one? God just is? Then why can't the universe just be? Why can't the universe have winked itself into existence? If metaphysics is to be a player, a intelligent all-powerful Oz... err... God has no standing over the self-actuated universe. Correction: we can see and interact with the universe. We know the universe exists. God needs more support.

Let's assume we're ghosts: That begs the question of origin. Where did all these ghosts come from?

First of all, it doesn't beg the question; It raises the question. I know you may have heard friends, family, or television personalities use the term "beg the question" this way. It is wrong when they use it too.

But I digress. We are not robots. Robots are assumed to be metallic objects made by humanity. We are however machines. Biomechanical machines, but machines nonetheless. Machines that are discussing

I can't wait for some Muslim country to be affected by this same ruling. Then the same hypocritical nitwits that bend over backwards to criticize the US will be besides themselves defending the 'poor third world countries losing their sovereign rights'.

Are you sure?

The second is stripping a former Nazi guard from Treblinka (a concentration camp)

It should perhaps be pointed out that Treblinka wasn't a concentration camp but a death camp. No one was kept alive for any appreciable amount of time in Treblinka, it had only one purpose.

>Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Dirac, Faraday, Planck, Kelvin, Maxwell and Einstein believed in God. So do I.

So did Hitler.

Logical fallacy: appeal to authority

Not to mention scientific cosmology in Galileo's and Kepler's day wasn't even remotely advanced as it is today. You would almost be convincing if you stuck with post-Darwin scientists, but youre suffering from that fallacy.

You quote the very section of copyright law that would allow you to
make three personal copies of an article you had compensated the
copyright holder for. Just in-case you don't realize this, that
quote is not very supportive of your notion that re-printing a copyrighted
article in a public forum is ok to do.

There's your problem! You are equating using english properly with supporting copyright infringement. Well, I shouldn't have to go any further with this (but will, just to be sure); I think it's pretty obvious, even to you, now, where your error is.

Just because I don't think it's the crime of stealing doesn't cause it to necessarialy follow that I think it's right or wrong. In the same way I don't think murder is "stealing" a life, I still believe a murderer is in the wrong. And, if we were to accept your supposition, backing up a game cartridge to use in an emulator would be stealing (it *is* against copyright law), but not morally wrong.

I hope that helps clear this debate up for you.

I expect to be compensated for my efforts. You expect to consume the
efforts of others as though they were your servants.

Again, I must suggest you don't put words into the mouths of others. I invite you to re-read what I have said in the previous comment, and, if you still feel the way you do, I ask that you explain what led you to come to that conclusion.

I also suggest you may wish to read the following debating fallacies; the crux of your argument rests on them, and it's not good (IMHO, of course).

Actually nothing your guys are talking about "begs the question." Begging the question is a logical fallacy. You are both raising the question, not begging it.

Here.

ie: x is of y.
z is of y.

Therefore, x must be of z.

Mathematically:

3 is a factor of 12
4 is also a factor of 12.

Therefore, 3 must be a factor of 4.

Although I do think you're just trying to make a point through absurdity. :-)

"Begs the question" is a technical term, not a solecism.

Nice spin. I liked your post up until the conclusion. Yes, it does strike me as plausible, especially since driving my car around is 50% of my 300 million btu annual energy budget. Did you see the part of the article where it mentions the energy budget for producing a single DRAM chip?

How much of the water used in industrial processing is required to be heated to a specific temperature? As I'm sure you know, the definition of a Btu is the amount of energy required to heat a pound of water 1 degree fahrenheit. I'd imagine lots of the energy is just for pre-heating water and other solutions.

The age of cheap energy is over and this new reality is going to hurt no country more than the good ol' U.S. of A. Other western nations use half the energy per capita that the US does and they have far less reliance on gas, oil and coal then the US.

The north slope has peaked, the north sea has peaked, and the prize of prizes, Saudi Arabia's largest field, the North Ghawar has been declining at over 5% per year for years now. They've been pumping sea water into it to keep it pressurized and it's getting more and more expensive to extract it.

Q: What percent of the USA's energy needs were imported last year (2003)?
A: 66%

Q: Who was the largest oil exporter to the US last year?
A: Canada

Q: How many barrels of oil did the USA burn each and every day last year?
A: twenty million

Q: From how many countries does the USA import oil?
A: fifty and climbing

Q: Where does the USA get all this energy?
A: well, from these countries (Courtesy of the CIA)

Before starting in on the tin-foil hat boy ad hominem attacks check out the following:

In Google News search for "new oil discovery" do some reading.
Then, also in Google News search for "oil depletion OR peak" and do some more reading.

Also look up Matthew Simmons he was part of the Bush administrations energy task force. You know, the one we're not allowed to know about.

The next time you're in the shower do a little calculation in your head about how much energy is going down the drain every time you shower.

Regards,
JSMS II

Industry tips:
Shell recently announced that based on current production, it is reducing its proved reserve life to 10.6 years from 13.4 years. Shell also warned that it would replace only 70%-90% of its 2003 oil and gas with new finds.

To meet expected demand, by 2015, we will need to find, develop and produce a volume of new oil and gas that is equal to 80% being produced today (industry experts call this a dream). In addition, the cost associated with providing this additional oil and gas is expected to be considerably more than what industry is now spending.
-- Exxon-mobil

"I was reading somewhere the other day, where we can get out of this crisis by more wind. That's an interesting thought, except our technology isn't enough to capture enough wind to be able to make sure our economy continues to grow. And so I strongly believe in conservation. I believe we made great progress in conservation. But I know if we don't find more product, we're going to have a problem."
-- George W. Bush

See the Fallacy of Spite. HTH.

Rather than slinging personal attacks and attacking the character of the ACLU, you may wish to actually attack their arguments next time. See the description of the Ad Homeniem fallacy to understand why. See also the special case of Ad Homeniem Circumstantial.

Rather than slinging personal attacks and attacking the character of the ACLU, you may wish to actually attack their arguments next time. See the description of the Ad Homeniem fallacy to understand why. See also the special case of Ad Homeniem Circumstantial.

Slipper slope fallacy - actually, one doesn't necessarily lead to the other. Therapeutic cloning can be done without us having to do reproductive cloning.

"In my opinion, and that of the majority of the Council, the only way to prevent this from happening here is for Congress to enact a comprehensive ban or moratorium on all human cloning."

False Dillema fallacy. Kass is saying that we either completely ban all cloning, or we'd have to deal with and accept all types of cloning. In actuality, we can allow cloning for therapeutic purposes(you know, to save lives), while disallowing, or greatly limiting it for reproductive purposes(eg allow it for people who have no other way to reproduce, but disallow it for people who want to clone a legion of duplicates to satisfy their vanity/megalomaniacal ambitions).

Slipper slope fallacy - actually, one doesn't necessarily lead to the other. Therapeutic cloning can be done without us having to do reproductive cloning.

"In my opinion, and that of the majority of the Council, the only way to prevent this from happening here is for Congress to enact a comprehensive ban or moratorium on all human cloning."

False Dillema fallacy. Kass is saying that we either completely ban all cloning, or we'd have to deal with and accept all types of cloning. In actuality, we can allow cloning for therapeutic purposes(you know, to save lives), while disallowing, or greatly limiting it for reproductive purposes(eg allow it for people who have no other way to reproduce, but disallow it for people who want to clone a legion of duplicates to satisfy their vanity/megalomaniacal ambitions).

You're ad hominem attacks are a sign of weakness, you should restrain yourself.

Now I'll attempt to address your questions and remove some of your ignorance.

If you had clicked on the link to the Boeing Solar Power Tower and read for even a couple of minutes it would have answered most of your questions.

1. It doesn't use solar panels, it uses concentrated solar heat at roughly 70% efficiency
2. It stores the heat in a reservoir of molten salt so it can continue to generate electricity under cloudy conditions and at night.
3. The basic infrastructure is exactly the same as a coal or gas fired plant. The cost today of a coal or gas plant is about $1/watt. The pilots of the power towers are running about $1.5/watt and are easily reduced to $1/watt under greater economies of scale.

Yes, I have taken business courses, and electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and software engineering.

Let me explain it to you a little more slowly. If you're only discovering 1 of something while comsuming 4 of something that would be a clear indication that you're rapidly heading towards a resource crunch wouldn't it? I've done my research on this, have you?

Either oil is a finite resource or it's not. If it is, and we claim to know what are global reserves are, then knowing our current burn and growth rates combined with well understood economic models of what happens once you pass the half way point, we have a very good idea of what is going to happen in the next ten to twenty years.

Also, let's not forget:
To pump the water for our highly industrialized agriculture your need quite a bit of energy
You need petrochemicals to create the fertilizers
You need lots and lots of diesel for the massive combines, other equipment and transportation to market

It's not a question of running out completely or getting down to 1/3 of reserves left. It's a question of getting to 1/2 of reserves left (where we are today) and what effect that has on the price (as you are fond of pointing out).

Many economists of the '80s and '90s (and still today) argue that for the United States to have a robust economy the price of a barrel of oil must stay at or below US$25. Well, how long has it been at $28, $30, $35? How long has this recession been going on? This is a cake-walk compared to what's coming.

I don't know what black helicopters have to do with this discussion.

Shh. We don't like to use the word conspiracy, we prefer to call it business-as-usual.

No cover up is necessary, the credulity and ignorance of the populace is enough.

I apologize but the rest of your so called arguments don't warrant any comment.

regards,
jsms iii

Morality and ethics aside - this is done everyday by both sides and is old news. It always surprises me how liberal the average Slashdot reader appears to be. Such a waste.

1) People say a lot of things here. Welcome to slashdot, #602408

2) He didn't say he wasn't concerned about morality and ethics. He was pointing out something else ("it's done everyday by both sides"). You've managed to spend an entire post venting on morality w/out actually confirming or denying his point. Classic red herring.

No. I suppose I could have been clearer on the point. Fallacy isn't error in deduction, which is always suspect. Fallacy is applying rules which are known to be in error. What you're suggesting is an interesting and subtle misinterpretation of what I said, and something I'm going to need to be a lot more careful about specifying in the future.

Induction and deduction are implicitly guesses, and therefore suspect. More specifically, they're best guesses; you go with the available evidence, and if something new crops up that replaces it, well, great, let's all jump ship. Common sense was replaced by classical physics was replaced by newtonian physics was replaced by relativistic physics was replaced by quantuum mechanics; we'll probably be adding something to that list in the next 30 years or so (strings and branes are the horse i'm putting my money on.) Herbalism to Alchemy to Phlogiston to Oxidation to Modern Chemistry to Materials Science. The list for math is obscene. Computer science is already doing pretty well for lists itself, but that's my field, so that may just reflect my better understanding of its history than the other topics.

None of that is fallacy. It's falsehood. Granted, history of science is /also/ peppered with fallacy, but on the whole, that list represents a revealing of and refinement of knowledge, not (in any real sense) the undoing of bad logic. We weren't cavement because we believed quantuum mechanics due to the teachings of our parents/elders (argumentum ad verecundiam,) out of appeal to furce (ad baculum,) or because all the other cavemen believed in QM (ad populum;) it was simply because we didn't know not only about QM, but about physics, or in most cases fire.

The issue here is that they've been given a good explanation, and facts which support it. At that point, no amount of re-explanation is a fallacy; if it were the case that the glass had been flat and then that the glass after N years was thicker at the bottom, then the explanation they were giving would in fact be both logical and sound. The issue is that their supporting facts are false - the glass was never univorm, and therefore there is a question of whether significant flow has in fact occurred, which it has not.

Arguments topple due to both fallacies and falsehoods. The germane difference is whether it's the initial facts or the logic which led to a result which is in error. This would be fallacy if this guy had said "it's true because Bill Nye said so," or "It's obviously true because everybody knows it," or "It's been known since such-and-such ancient book, so clearly it's true" (This kills me - one of my favorite comics, Lewis Black, indulged in argumentum ad lazarum when mocking the Atkins Diet, questioning whether we'd in fact been eating exactly the wrong thing since the dawn of civilization. Though it left me in tears laughing, which is probably the important part, that is in fact fallacy.)

I should point out that making a misstep during reasoning is not the same thing as a fallacy. A fallacy is using one of a concrete series of logical errors; an error in reasoning is an error in reasoning. If you neglect to take an issue into account, or go through a complex series of reasoning and accidentally swap two individuals leading to error, or if you make a judgement based on a misimpression regarding an individual or situation, that's not a fallacy; that's an error, which leads to a falsehood. Fallacies are using mechanisms which are in error in justification. Whereas this list isn't complete, there's a good primer at each of these links.

Therefore:
- I killed the queen because she was an alien, so she'll ruin us all.
Action on false

Strange, I'd say that's an example of poor reasoning on the part of the lawyers.

Just because someone is willing to sell a domain now, doesn't mean that they weren't legitimately planning on using it when they registered.

Oh wait, that's not strange at all. It's just what we expect from lawyers. bleh
Post Hoc

If you would explain, I would be happy to read it.

I'm not entirely sure I could explain. I can do the mathematics but putting it into layman's terms is beyond me. My textbooks couldn't state the idea in layman's terms, and those books were written by people who really know the material.

Attacking the least relevant part of my post really looks like a strawman argument anyway.

That's not what a strawman argument is.

Witness! Fellow slashdotters; the Ad hominem attack!

ooohhh aaahhh

See for yourself, marvel at the absence of reason as our frind John Jorsett uses the tools of Propaganda101 to amaze and influence, decieve and misdirect.

Accept no substitutes!

And don't tell me about the Cerfs defense of Al Gore, he is an VP at WorldCom how has huge goverment contracts. He will not piss off those that write his checks.

Please read this page on the appeal to circumstance.

Two books which may help one become a more logical thinker are Attacking Faulty Reasoning and Asking the Right Questions.

HTH

1. Well I guess that's the main difference between say France and USA. US constitution guarantees free speech without exception. French constitution does make exception. Racists, for instance.
2. Fact: About 6 millions jews died during WW2. So you're not only a racist, you're also a holocaust denier? Lemme guess, holocaust is not what we learnt in history class right? Not that big a deal, even? Geez.
3. Bullshit. You're probably trying to confuse people regarding a law recently voted in France (link in french) which applies to schools, where everyone will be forbidden to display any visible religious symbol (one pillar of scholar system in France is laicite). That applies to all religions.

Of course the left wing in academia got to write the history books after WW II. So "Fascism" is now defined as "extreme right-wing-ism".

Well, you could also look into works written by Fascists before the end of WW2. Benito Mussolini has some interesting things to say about the term which he coined. In many ways, Fascism as a philosophy was a denial of Socialism. The American Heritage dictionary defines Fascism as "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Another point for the right-wing is the complicity of many German companies in the seizure of power by the Nazis in Germany. As Hitler sold it to the conspirators, "Private enterprise cannot be maintained in the age of democracy; it is conceivable only if the people have a sound idea of authority and personality." In other words, Hitler was of the opinion like Mussolini that democracy led inevitably to socialism and the two must be stopped together.

Similarly the militarists in Japan were heavily in bed with the nation's major monopolies, the zaibatsu. No contract was exclusive, though, and many of the companies had to compete with each other including fending off or losing to newcomers who weren't owned by family dynasties like Nissan. The militarists behind Showa Japan were virulently anti-Communist and rejected international law as a European/American invention. The late '20s and early '30s saw waves of arrests of leftist thinkers in Japan.

You red herring you!

You cannot be anti-invasion and anti-Saddam

Description of False Dilemma

# Either 1+1=4 or 1+1=12.
# It is not the case that 1+1=4.
# Therefore 1+1=12.

You are either with George W. Bush, or you are with the terrorists.
(Many of whom were directly supported by multiple members of GWB's administration durring the 1980s)

Sorry, I'm not with GWB or the terrorists. They are all assholes.

Bush comes out on top because he was in favor of having one less dictator than you and willing to act on it.

Funny how his father was unwilling to act on it back in 1991. The infrastructure of Iraq was already destroyed. Saddam's troops were not loyal to him. You would almost think that politicians supported dictators who rule with an Iron Fist.

Not to mention, Saddam was a bad guy long before he invaded Kuwait. The radical-left and others were against Saddam long before he offically became the enemy of the United States. Just listen to the song VX Gas Attack by Skinny Puppy, released in 1988.

1) CDs are expensive
2) Record make profits selling CDs
3) I don't like paying money for CDs or giving profits to the record companies
4) By downloading 1/2 of the music I listen to I am happy and the record companies still make profits from the 1/2 of the CDs that I do buy
5) Since the world does not end by the actions of (4), downloading 1/2 of the music I listent to is justified

In a discussion debating the lack of originality of a given work, a black letter red herring could be introducing how hollywood lawyers adversely affect the quality of the work. Look it up.

Since you consider it to be "one of the most famous works of literature in the history of civilization," and obviously a work of value when measuring "creativity, social commentary, meaningful culture or literary achievement," Hamlet and the non-Shakespearean origins of the story are certainly germane to your objections to the origins of the latest Battlestar Galactica.

Let me put it to you another way:

There should be little difference in evaluating a retelling of Norse legend and criticizing a retelling of a retelling of Mormon mythology, whether it's in television, film, or theater, especially in when one of the litmus tests is making "something original."

A remake, by definition, is not original.

Nor is a retelling.

Hollywood complains at exhausting length about how expensive and risky it is to make these stumbling multi-million dollar white elephant productions, yet they absolutely refuse to hire even one writer to make even one original script that isn't designed by a marketing formula.

Putting aside your hyperbole for a moment, honestly, I have to ask--Did you even watch the mini-series?

People are sick and tired of remade, reconstituted crap. The low television ratings are proof.

Well, obviously...

The Red Herring argument.

You're absolutely right :) their statement is akin to saying "we haven't spoken to a single farmer who has said that cheese grows on the moon" (sounds ridiculous, eh?) He doesn't define what is 'better', as you said. He throws around this umbrella term -- that's the strawman part of his argument. He sets up some vague idea and then sets out to defeat it in an attempt to give weight his previous assertions. For more argumentation fallacies, please see the the Nizkor Project

>The strawman that you use: The "weapon that could destroy every person in the country including the wielder", if it existed today, would most likely be in the possession of the Federal Government... and that would have horrified them even more, I am certain.

Calling out the "straw man" is always an easy way to avoid arguments you don't like.

However, you're wrong on this.

I do not distort the picture. The Bill of Rights says "arms". It does not define what type. The original poster feels that the idea of arms ownership and "militia regulation" should be wholly separate, and completely enforced, as separate items. Since the BoR lacks an arms definition, it's logical to extend it to include all arms, which would clearly include WMD-type arms.

To support only one form of arms, and not all, is really not to support that section of the constituion whatsoever, is it?

The fact is the "regulation" and "militia" section of the sentence is there to prevent crazed individuals (and there's more of them on earth than any of us think, just surf slashdot at -1 one day) from owning such horrible arms.

Certainly, I think the US founding fathers would not want the US citizen to be less armed than the country, but at the same time, they wouldn't not want a crazed individual (which exsited even in their time) from being able to destroy us all.

That's the idea of the "well regulated militia". And, if a group of well regulated citizens were to gain themselves access to such technology, I'd be somewhat scared as a non-American myself, but it would be their right.

However, there's no way at all the founding fathers would want the Unabomber (for example) to have had any arms at all. He, as an example I'm just pulling out of thin air, isn't covered by this section of the constitution, as he was neither well-regulated, nor a militia. Just a crazed individual with a really insane agenda.

>The idea of restrictions on arms in general at the Federal level would have horrified them, I think (as would the size and power of the US Federal government today, I am sure).

Perhaps so, but, unfortunately, from what we've heard of many a badly organized, unregulated militia being able to arm themselves to the teeth, I think they'd be doubly scared.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man .html

From the article:

Stillman has gone whole-hog for radio-frequency technology, which his year-old Enterprise Charter School started using last month to record the time of day students arrive in the morning.

In my highschool, teachers took attendance, including noting if the student was late. So, now the teachers don't have to do that, because a device scans all the tags as students enter.

In the next months, he plans to use RFID to track library loans,

You can bet that the library was completely aware of which student had which book at my school. Really, what sort of libraries don't keep track of this info? Otherwise, you could just keep the damned book and no one would ever know. I can see how it would make things easier if the librarian could just scan your tag rather than take down your name.

disciplinary records,

When students in my school were "written up" for misbehavior, this included writing down their names. So now, I guess, the hall monitors can just scan their tags instead.

cafeteria purchases

I suppose these weren't recorded for me when I paid in cash. Many students, though, used prepaid accounts, for which of course you needed identification. Now they can just use the tags.

and visits to the nurse's office.

Yep, I'm pretty my name was recorded when I went to the nurse's office.

Eventually he'd like to expand the system to track students' punctuality (or lack thereof) for every class

See item 1.

and to verify the time they get on and off school buses.

I suppose my bus driver didn't always keep track of when I got on and off the bus, but I don't see the problem here. Many school busses have security cameras on them which have the same effect. Why would you not want your school to know when you get on or off a bus?

So, where is the invasion of privacy? How is any of this any different than it ever was? RFID's don't allow anyone to track your exact position as you move around the world. They are just tags which can be scanned like security cards, but easier.

Really, I wonder about people who look at this and say "OH MY GOD THEY'RE TRACKING PEOPLE!" without thinking about it.

(Please, no slippery slope crap.)

begging the question

But let's skip the Latin and look at Hickson's actual arguments. They're a little convoluted, so maybe I'm not reading him correctly. As far as I can tell, he's mostly saying that correct XHTML is hard to prepare. Well, yeah, that's the whole point of using a tight-assed XML document type like XHTML instead of a tolerant, laid-back SGML document type like HTML: you're embracing restrictions that promote a well structured document. Following all the XML rules in XHTML is hard, and it's supposed to be. That's why I never prepare an XHTML document by hand. It's not that I don't believe in the goals of XHTML (structure, separating content and presentation), I just don't find it practical to manually touch all the bases that an XML document type requires me to touch. I use HTML 4, and avoid deprecated legacy tags and attributes. If you ever need a proper XML document, it's not that hard to do the conversion, probably using some kind of standard utility that will remember all the little details I'd forget.

There are souls brave enough to prepare XHTML or other XML documents by hand. That's not a mistake in and of itself, but it's foolish to do so without passing the document through a validator. Actually, the best XML editors validate your document on the fly.

Hickson also criticizes XHTML for its inconsistent browser support. Well, that's an issue with HTML as well, and something we need to take up with the browser vendors, not the XHTML advocates.

Hickson makes the assumption (one I once shared) that XHTML is primarily for delivering web content. As I said in a previous post, that's not correct.

I'm a nerd: "begging the question"

Stop misusing technical terms. Begging the question is the logical fallacy of using circular reasoning and that is all.

You are the one making the assertion that they are the defacto standard, the burden of proof is on you. Douche-bag.

The GPL relies on restrictive copyright laws to work.

No, the GPL relies on copyright law to work. The GPL would work just fine under far less restrictive copyright law.

Your error is that you are arguing in support of bad and oppressive copyright law because you think that is better than eliminiating copyright law entirely. Perhaps bad and oppressive copyright law is better than eliminating copyright entirely. You are still wrong because your argument is a fallacy. In particular you used fallacy #24:False Dilemma.

There are actually four possibilities. (1) Eliminating copyright law. (2) Less restrictive copyright law. (3) Current copyright law. (4) More oppressive copyright law. An argument against (1) is invalid against someone suggesting (2). And then there are the real idiots who think that any argument against (4) equals an argument for (1).

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The GPL relies on restrictive copyright laws to work.

No, the GPL relies on copyright law to work. The GPL would work just fine under far less restrictive copyright law.

Your error is that you are arguing in support of bad and oppressive copyright law because you think that is better than eliminiating copyright law entirely. Perhaps bad and oppressive copyright law is better than eliminating copyright entirely. You are still wrong because your argument is a fallacy. In particular you used fallacy #24:False Dilemma.

There are actually four possibilities. (1) Eliminating copyright law. (2) Less restrictive copyright law. (3) Current copyright law. (4) More oppressive copyright law. An argument against (1) is invalid against someone suggesting (2). And then there are the real idiots who think that any argument against (4) equals an argument for (1).

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Raises the question, raises it. Not begs, raises. To beg the question is to engage in circular reasoning. To raise a question is to bring one up. This error crops up all the fsckin' time on /.; I figure some fanboy saw the phrase `beg the question' and thought it sounded cool.

Incidentally, the Skeptic's Dictionary is a poor reference for examples of begging the question. But the Nizkor Project is a good one.

It's a hell of a lot more steps than just one, and slippery slope is a logical fallacy.

I better back off?

Yes. I've been very restrained in not pointing out how your social beliefs are in line with those of Hitler.

Some of them (certainly not Catholics exclusively) don't believe in birth control as a matter of doctrine. Orthodox Christians, for example, permit it only on the basis of a special pleading that it's just too hard. But you don't go after pro-life sentiment, you go after Catholics. What an ignorant bigot you are.

Go f*** yourself, you stupid, ignorant, bigoted, homophobic, right-wing zealot. The Catholics are the best known religious group that preaches birth control and, by way of effect, in favor of the spread of STDs. You may not like that because of your emotional crutch that religion provides to you, but that's fact.

Europe, not generally considered a hellhole of overpopulation has approximately 10x the population density of the US.

So if we breed until our population density matches that of Europe, how will that affect air pollution, water pollution, depletion of world oil reserves, and deforestation? You don't seem to get that the environment is global. Let's say that we could manage to cut energy consumption and pollution per person in half. If out population increased by a factor of ten, pollution would go up by a factor of five as would consumption of energy. The world needs forested areas. Cut down the forests and you cripple nature's ability to convert CO2 into oxygen. Mankind has depleted the edible species of fish in the ocean to the point that it is a crisis.

To put it into a more manageable scale for you, suppose that there was a two-bedroom apartment with 10 people living in it. Would you assume that the plumbing and hot water for the building could cope with ten people in every apartment? Would you think that the laundry facilities were up to the task? Would you assume that the dumpsters had adequate capacity to have 10 people in each apartment?

The only way out of imminent collapse was invasion and resource stripping.

So as long as we don't invade, resource stripping is okay? We sure don't have enough oil reserves in this country to sustain a population doubling every 54 years. So we strip the world's oil reserves. We strip the oceans. We strip the forests and import wood from all over the world. Depleting resources, whether through theft or through trade, is still a problem.

The heart of the problem was substituting government judgement for private judgement over what should be funded, what should not be.

That makes as much sense and condemning all forms of private investment because of the Great Depression of the 1930's.

But, again, you're just making a straw man argument. I never suggested that the government judgement about what should be funded. I suggested that the government allow private firms to invest Social Security. So that is not the government deciding what should be funded at all, in any way, shape, or form.

People have two hands as well as a mouth and in a free society produce more than they consume on average.

So why do we have to import oil? Why do we have to import lumber? Why do we have to import fish? The reason is because we can't produce oil reserves. We can't produce old-growth forests. We can't produce fish in the ocean. The only thing that I am convinced we will overproduce is pollution.

Perhaps you simply have never listened to an audiophile system, so therefore, you simply don't realize how much more detail and depth can be heard from even a ordinary CD and don't even get me started about SACD quality.

Perhaps I own a high-end system that could embarass yours. Don't be too quick to assume that my dislike of the audiophile mentality means that I have a poor-performing system.

Personally, I find it incredible that anyone could dismiss the entire audiophile domain out of hand.

I don't dismiss it out of hand. Years ago, after being an active participant, I got fed up with the ignorance and superstition. I wasted incalculable hours arguing with people who made, and believed, absurd statements that had no basis in science or reality.

Have you ever considered that the millions of people who are involved in high end audio may know something you simply haven't gotten to yet?

No. I know something that they don't: science and engineering. If they 'knew something', they would not be paying $20 for green magic markers to color the edges of their CDs, $100 for a "Waveguide" which clamps on to every kind of cable from speaker to power, and hundreds of dollars for AC line cords.

You make a logical flaw by arguing an appeal to belief. That is where one makes the argument that something must be true because many people believe it. There are more people who believe in astrology than people who are audiophiles. Does that mean that astrology is somehow even more credible than the beliefs of audiophiles?

In this regard, I respect those who have spent their precious time developing knowledge and mastery of a subject, however, I have no respect for those who dis others out of simple ignorance.

Most so-called audiophiles have not spent a lot of time developing knowledge. They have spent their time reading advertising pseudo-science babble. Their time wasn't "precious." It was wasted. "Simple ignorance" is believing that some kind of $500 power cord will magically improve the sound of your system rather than just learning enough about engineering to recognize that as a bunch of crap.

Please, do yourselves a favor, go to the local audio hackers hang-out and listen to a real stereo.

My VMPS Super Tower/R speakers sold for about $3600 per pair. My amp is a Hafler PRO2400 MOSFET model which was sold to the professional recording studio industry. My preamp is one that I designed and built myself using a class A BUF-03 unity gain video buffer. My cables are all hand-built to length using a stranded 8259 cable with exceedingly low capacitance. So don't tell me about high-end audio.