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I ain't got a problem with it; seems alright to me.

I ain't got a problem with it; seems alright to me.

Sometimes English is so messed up. See 2 definitions here:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=falsifiab le

By the second definition ID is falsifiable.

n. pl. matrices (mtr-sz, mtr-) or matrixes

Actually, 'irregardless' *is* a word.

It is if you are American, anyway. Have a look at http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=IRREGARDL ESS

...because the urge to correct someone who feels the need to correct people is just too entertaining to pass up!

Actually, "irregardless" is a word according to Dictionary.com. However, even the dictionary has a side-note stating that it's a term still in dispute "for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term."

irregardless ( P ) Pronunciation Key (r-gärdls)
adv. Nonstandard
Regardless.

[Probably blend of irrespective, and regardless.]
Usage Note: Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

If I let you into my house yesterday, you have no right to be here today
While you may be correct WRT US property laws, it seems to me that vampire rules call for a vampire to have free reign over your house in perpetuity if they are ever invited in. Perhaps Sony is operating using Vapire law rather than US law?

BTW - irregardless

Look here dumbass, if you are brainwashed into thinking evolution has anything to do with the big bang, with amino acid formation, with anything relatively close to origins of life issues, you've been had by the fundies and need a bitchslap. I suggest you go to your dictionary and look up the word "Evolution" in the english language. Then come back and see tell me where it says anything about Origins. In case you're just too lame, here is a link for you to click lamo http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=evolution It takes a mental genius to redefine a term and then bash it.

What do you mean? From the exact same dictionary you pointed to:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=kernal

What do you mean? From the exact same dictionary you pointed to:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=kernal

Evolutionary theory attempts to do no such thing (which is one of the reasons why it is largely compatible with most mainstream religions). The scientific theory of how life began is refered to as abiogenesis. As to the origin of matter itself, I'm not sure if there is a widely researched theory to cover it. The theory of evolution covers only how new forms of life came from older forms of life, not life's origin.

"However I also have no problem telling children that some people believe that everything wasn't random in the universe, and as such they believe that a greater power has played a part in it all."

I'm not sure if you are an IDer or not, but this oversimplistic (and wrong) statement (as well as the first statement I quoted) is typical of the style of argument of those who forward ID.

What's wrong with your statement? First, you imply that evolution is a "random" process. This is not true. There is a random component to evolution (mutation), but there are also guided processes (like natural selection, whose result is often dependent on the actions of lifeforms). Second, you imply that ID simply states that a greater power had a "hand" in the development of lifeforms. If this were true, even I could agree with ID because that statement doesn't come into direct conflict with the scientific evidence at hand. The fact is that ID and its propenents are opposed to evolutionary theories.

And therein lies my biggest problem with ID: it is, by its very nature, unscientific and tries to discredit accepted scientific theory, observations and fact. Were it a scientific theory, I wouldn't have a problem with it being taught. The vetting and creation of theories through observation and experimentaion is what science is all about.

Which brings me to the most upsetting piece of the measure of the Kansas school board: their casual redefinition of science. There is a nearly universal agreement on the definition of the word science (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=science) , but the Kansas school board spits in the face of that definition. What makes them think that they are qualified to redefine science, I have no idea.

Taft

The bible doesn't meet that definition. It was written by men who can't be firsthand eye witnesses to their own creation. It also isn't authoritative - its accuracy isn't widely acknowedged. Quite the contrary, that's what this whole story is about.

The bible doesn't meet that definition. It was written by men who can't be firsthand eye witnesses to their own creation. It a authoritative.

No all that article says is that Commodore named one of their products 'KERNAL'. There is no such word as KERNAL in any dictionary, even an American one: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=kernel "(Note: NOT "kernal")"

Look into it, you'll see that is correct.

Unless the poster specifically meant 10,000 ways, there is no 'of'.

REF: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=myriad

-bZj

What exactly is a "primary source"?

primary source: an original fundamental and authoritative document pertaining to an event or subject of inquiry; a firsthand or eyewitness account of an event

The comment about four Rs in "referrer" falls rather flat on humor. The sig is much funnier than the post about spelling.

Incidentally, assuming (hoping the poster didn't miss the point and that they were trying for humor), the sig is correct in that it refers to the two Rs in the middle of HTTP_REFERER (which *should* be spelled HTTP_REFERRER and isn't).

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=referer
  A misspelling of "referrer" which somehow
made it into the HTTP standard. A given web page's
referer (sic) is the URL of whatever web page contains the
link that the user followed to the current page. Most
browsers pass this information as part of a request.

"There's a reason we don't tie disparate types of hardware together unless they're cheap"
You mean, like, the industry is heading more for multi-socket motherboards than multi-core CPUs?

I'm not sure what your objection is but I think it comes down to a reading comprehension issue.

disparate (adj.) Fundamentally distinct or different in kind; entirely dissimilar.

The cores are [so far] identical, except in extreme cases like the Cell processor - which has one SPE and several PPEs which are all the same, unless I have that backwards.

Return to English class, please. Thank you.

...only to be twarted by some sort of sonic weapon

Did you mean thwarted?

Haydn.

Actually it is.

Start with abiogenesis = a-bio-genesis, "non-biological origin".
According to this source, abiogenesisis "The supposed development of living organisms from nonliving matter. Also called autogenesis, spontaneous generation."

It seems to me that the plain ordinary meaning of this term implies more than you suggest in your post above. Now we agree that there was a time when life did not exist, and I hope that we agree that it does now. :)

So, it follows that life came from somewhere. The question is through natural processes, or something other than natural processes. Science is simply unable to speak on the issue of a non-natural cause, because science is constrained to things natural.

That's precisely the question that the theory of evolution addresses.
And ID proponents might suggest that it's the question addressed by ID as well. Frankly we'd be fools to believe that adaptation does not happen. It is observable, and it is repeatable. There is no question that evolution is the explanation of the differences within a species.

Where you and I diverge is in the question of speciation. Evolution is an answer - something like an 80% answer. There are gaps, and the hope is that they will be filled in when more information is available. This was precisely the situation with the epicyclic theory of the solar system some years ago. I'm waiting for a modern-day Kepler to blow the doors off of speciation via evolution. I'm not saying that evolution is bankrupt - I'm just saying that it's a poor explanation of speciation. I believe that scientists have an a priori commitment to naturalism and refuse to consider anything that does not fit their philosophical model.

WRT complexity, I'm not saying that no complexity can arise naturally, I'm saying that it's not the most likely explanation of what we observe. Here are some thoughts:
Why didn't the universe equilibrate an eternity ago? It seems to me that all energy should have been equally dispersed, and it should be a LOT colder than it is.

What about irrreducible complexity?
How can it be that a structure like the eye exists when in order to have been favorable, many of the parts must have appeared at the same time, in the right order. Seems unlikely to me.
How does the calcium in the bones of a bird make it through the process to form the shell of the egg, and then stop doing the process kills the mother bird? Talk about complex!

How hard is it for the body to heal a cut? There are something like seven different processes involved in starting, then stopping the clotting process before the person dies from either bleeding out or lack of blood flow because it's all solid in their veins.

Most mutations are NOT beneficial. Yet, naturalistic speciation depends on this process, pluse time. This simply seems implausible to me.

According to a mathematical expert, Dr. James Coppedge, "giving evolutionists every possible concession, postulating a primordial sea with every single component necessary, and speeding up the rate of bonding a trillion times: The probability of a single protein^34 molecule being arranged by chance is 1 in 10^161, using all atoms on earth and allowing all time since the world began... For a minimum set of the required 239 molecules for the smallest theoretical life, the probability is 1 in 10^119,841 years on the average to get a set of such protiens" (James F. Coppedge, Evolution: Possible or impossible, p218)

According to occam's razor, doesn't it seem likely that something outside natural processes is most likely for the existance of life here?

- The Bible is not a text book on where we came from and how everything works.... It is a guide/law to how you live your life.

Right on! Unfortunately, the vast majority of the world seems to think that various "religious" texts such as the Bible are commands from God/etc on how to live life.

Modern civilization has overlooked the glaring possibility that these texts are little more than a "Boy Scout Handbook" on life. (i.e. don't eat Pork, since you will likely get sick). Since the authors of these texts were aiming for a large audience who didn't know them personally (multitudes, generations to come,etc ), they wrote as if "God" told them what to write. This gives a powerful (but false) legitamacy to their writings.

Stories of creation, such as Genesis were probably written more as "folk lore"/"bedtime story" for entertainment. Hundreds of years time plus misguided beliefs caused "religions" based on these texts. The consequences of which include an externalization of responsibility and over-reliance on "God".

Science has also suffered similar perils (Possibily due to political motovation). ["God didn't create evolution", "God wouldn't allow the world to be flat", "Recombining DNA in a lab is 'playing God'"].

Look up "cult" in a dictionary http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=cult. Then ask yourself how (insert religion here) cannot fit all definitions of "cult". I seem to recall a charismatic leader (The Pope) giving orders for us to live in an unconventional manner (no eating meat during Fridays on Lent).

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=burgled Burgle (v): To burglarize

Chambers English dictionary: standardise, standardisation, standardising - to make, or keep, of uniform size shape etc.

Dictionary.com is full of crap, that's why I never use it. Quite apart from that, if you done a bit more checking you'll find that dictionary.com does in fact have an entry, under standardise, which just goes to show what a poorly organised piece of crap it is.

As for this being an American site (other reply) -- yes, but then my submission wasn't written by an American, was it? Edit the title if you wish, but not *my* text. The story says "Motor writes:"...

No entry found for standardising.

Did you mean standardizing?
Suggestions:
standardizing
Standard-wing
standardise
standardisation
standardiser
standardised
standard nine
standards
standard's
standards'
standardize

Looking at the words, one would thing that would be the case. I'm guessing you must be British. Amazing how much difference an ocean and a couple hundred years can have on a language. Burglarize defined in the U.S. I happen to like burgle better though. It seems much truer to the meaning of the word+suffix.

You misspelled grammar and grammatical, d00d.

Sincerely,

Grammar Cop

You misspelled grammar and grammatical, d00d.

Sincerely,

Grammar Cop

Merkin=Pubic Wig http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=merkin

Er, forceps? I don't think you meant to use that word.

Maybe you meant to use the word parsec.

Or maybe it's something to do with half of the Bible.

Or maybe it's something to do with half of the Bible.

According to the dictionary, fishes is an acceptable plural of fish also. If you're going to be pedantic, rule #1 is to be correct :^)

These photographs taken by one of my colleagues, which have been linked elsewhere from this topic

Sorry, but before you blast dictionary.com with such vitriol, you may want to check your own post.

Seperate?

Indeed.

Make lobbying illegal, punishable by hanging in front of the Capitol Building. Problem solved.

lobby: A group of persons engaged in trying to influence legislators or other public officials in favor of a specific cause: the banking lobby; the labor lobby.

In other words, any group of people trying to get the law changed can be called a lobby. Including the people who are in favor of some kind of reasonable copyright reform.

Or in other other words: Most of slashdot would have to be strung up.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=hallowe'e n

Hallowe'en, short for All Hallow Even, so the apostrophe is to symbolise the missing letter. I see this spelling all the time.

What's the apostrophe for in Hawai'i ?

"faze".

I read your post and I think it is rated at 1 for good reason. You don't offer and evidence to support your point "There Is No China Market". You talk about injustices, but nothing that has to do with the size or existence of the Chinese market. Frankly your post is incredibly flawed at so many levels I really can't address them all in a post. I'll try to just highlight the absurdity of your statement.

You are incredibly short sited to think that 1 billion people don't represent an enormous potential for revenue. They are in fact an enormous MARKET that is growing at staggering rates. China is what the world refers to as a developing nation. They are not quite the level of the US or Britain, but they are far from Zimbabwe.

Here are two definitions for market (China fits them perfectly):
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=market

"A geographic region considered as a place for sales: grain for the foreign market; the West Coast market"

"The opportunity to buy or sell; extent of demand for merchandise: a big market for gourmet foods."

Now to one of your most ridiculous points; Red China requiring Chinese trained employees at China based offices doesn't mean Google, Yahoo, or MSN can't make money. It means that China is investing in their people and developing their nation. It's smart. For both China and Businesses that want to make money in China. The more money the Chinese people have, the more they spend/buy, and the larger the market becomes. Many people also believe this is what will lead to the downfall of the Red Party, but that is an entirely new topic.

Just because all of the Chinese don't drive BMW's that doesn't mean the Chinese don't buy things. They do. and they also buy lots of things on the internet. They have a higher percentage of broadband users then the US. Now follow this tricky train of thought... those people see click ads, and click on them! Guess what that is. Revenue! In the Chinese Market! It didn't matter that Chinese workers worked at the datacenters hosting Google or MSN's websites. Google and MSN still make a profit off of the clicks.

Now as far as the questionable things those companies do for china... I tend to agree they are morally wrong. However getting in at the ground floor offers amazing potential for MS, Google, and Yahoo. They have the opportunity to shape the impressions of a billion people. Create brand recognition for generations. There is lots of money to be made.

The Chinese government (to date) is not in the business of building search engines (really no software at all for that matter). That is why they allow US companies to provide those services. They do have some rules, but it's still a profitable business for the big three. The profit margins will grow astronomically as more and more people in china connect. In other words, as their existing MARKET grows, the companies will see larger profit margins.

I'd continue to point out the absurdity of your other points, but I think this should suffice. No offense but maybe you should take an economics class or something.

Definition of a fish"

1. Any of numerous cold-blooded aquatic vertebrates of the superclass Pisces, characteristically having fins, gills, and a streamlined body and including specifically: 1. Any of the class Osteichthyes, having a bony skeleton. 2. Any of the class Chondrichthyes, having a cartilaginous skeleton and including the sharks, rays, and skates.

Since the poster never claimed sharks were bony fish, your point is moot. No mistake was made.

"Of course, since chondrichythes (cartilaginous fish) and osteichythes (bony fish) still contain the word chythes (fish), sharks are still refered to as 'fish' but biologically, they're just as different as the other classes."

No, sharks and bony fish are much more closely related than sharks and mammals, birds and mammals, or even amphibians and modern day reptiles. Just because two pairs of animals are the same distance from each other in a taxonomic classificiation does not mean they are the same distance from each other in terms of relation.

format

tr.v. formatted, formatting, formats

google wants to correct the horrible misspelling that formating is too

In the context of the issue, I don't see a problem with them pointing out that evolution is just a theory and that theories are always challenged. I think they should push for further exploration of the matter.

I agree that people should back their word of something reasonable - that makes sense *real sense*, which explains why the above used a qoute with REINDEER as the subject (good point made, but use a better qoute and get better responses next time). http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=reindeer They dont fly man, do you still believe in Santa too? I hit him with my car tonight...

Jesus H. Christ in a handbasket are you ignorant.

The theory of evolution is just that, a theory. For the lazy, a link to the word's definition http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=theory. For the stupid, what this means is that the Theory of Evolution is the best scientific explaination that we as humans have devised based upon the evidence available to us.

Your claim of the "obvious lack" of "millions" of fossil records is ignorant at best (I call it disingenious). It is based on the supposition that all mutations beget viable forms of life, which is provably false.

Having a training in science, and having therefore worked and studied with scientists, I feel safe to say that informed, rational debate concerning the "origin of life" is what most of us want of our public schools. Sure there are holes in our current explainations or maybe even they are way off, but science, in the end, will rectify that. The arguments put forward by Creationists concerning Intelligent Design are akin to sprinkling faery dust over the Theory of Evolution and saying that fills in the gaps. This is patently unacceptable to a mind that wishes to know how we, as organisms, came about and operate. This is why "Evolutionists" reject the teaching of Intelligent Design along-side of Evolution--because it is not science, it is some mysticism piggy-backing on science to explain the deficiences in said scientific reasoning.

As to the Thomas Kuhn quotation; human nature being what it is, can you not fathom how an individual responisble for one or more lives may make the mistake of ignoring pure scientific reason and allow concerns for reputation, or one's livelyhood to cloud one's judgement? When all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.

For all you ID'ers out there I pose this question (based upon my understanding of ID): if ID were proved to be true, not by the existence of a God or somesuch, but by the fact that all forms of life on this planet were seeded with genetic material from some extra-terrestrial agent (presumably intelligent life forms), would that be vindication of your "theory" or would it cause some religious indigestion and encourage some evangelicals to leap off of tall structures (we can hope!) ? And before you say "thats ridiculous, we aren't the spawn of aliens!" I would point you back to your own "theory". That the core genetic matieral of all life on this planet was seeded by aliens is as belivable and provable as if it were done by a "God".

ass.

"jingoistic"
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=jingoisti c%20

Seriously, go to hell. Its a funny twist on a painfully realistic problem the world faces. Terrorism doesn't exist because of "belligerent foreign policy" it exists because of fanatical extremists, at present almost entirely fanatical Muslims. They are religious zealots. And the societies affected by the terrorists are victims... not victims of "chauvinistic patriotism".

The more I think about it, the bigger an ass I think you are for that comment. I'm sure I'll be flamed to shit on /. for this, but you are a prick.

Sure looks to me like the Bush Administration knows what the definition is and you and Zonk don't. Nothing perverted or twisted here, except by yourself.

When you eliminate threats, whether provoked or not, you are protecting yourself. Nothing about being provoked or sovereign stands in the way of protection.

You don't have a leg to stand on. Go back to school, boy.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ideology

The latter, more than likely.

Just because you say someone is magically not a Christain doesn't mean they are not. Check out http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=Chris tian, and you'll see that the "belief that animals do not have souls" is not a requirement to Christianity, merely "Professing belief in Jesus as Christ or following the religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus." Your understanding (or that of your pastor or whatever) of Biblical passages does not make you the authoritative judge of who is Christian and who is not. You'd best be leaving that decision to God.