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Slashback: Retroaction, Breakeven, Kansas
Pardon me sir, are you going to finish that Apple? Marco van de Voort writes: "MkLinux now has official support for these much sold first Nubus based PowerMac generation, that is rotting away in basements. These machines make excellent X-Terms." And the same models can naturally run NetBSD, too. [Updated 6:26GMT by timothy] Reader vkulkarn corrects me here. Mea culpa, you're right -- only some of the old Nubus PowerMac models actually run NetBSD. But I bet someone, somewhere is plotting to change that.
Garage sales can now support Linux.GigsVT writes "Coollogic has released a new set-top box, this one with Linux already installed. Sounds like ripe hacking material to me. Blurb: The Internet Ready 7200 uses a National Semiconductor MediaGX processor, 16MB of flash memory instead of a hard disk, 32MB of RAM and has the ability to connect to the Internet via DSL, Ethernet or a modem. It uses a TV instead of a monitor and comes with Netscape's Web browser." And MrRobahtsu writes "Want a 64MB diskless 200MHz Linux box cheap? Try egghead. With IDE, USB, 10/100 ethernet, and Linux and Netscape in flash ram, it looks pretty cool. Even says "can be upgraded to a pc." Not bad for $129."
Toto, I don't think we're in the Pleistocene anymore! Claudius writes: "This cnn.com article reports that Kansas voters now support the teaching of evolution in their public schools, as evidenced by recent election results. They have voted to remove two incumbents to the Kansas Board of Education who have supported standards diminishing the importance of evolution, and a third, anti-evolution candidate was unable to defeat an opponent who opposes the current standards. The issue is still far from settled, however, since five of the ten seats on the board remain to be filled in November." For a refresher on the sticky state of evolution in Kansas education, see Hemos' story on it from a while ago.
Ha ha fooled ya good. TeacherReviews.com writes "Gervase just got voted off the Survivor island, meaning that RealWorldBlows discussed in a past story produced a false result and the actual winner of Survivor is still unknown." True enough. What was going through the collective CBS head when they failed to follow the directive of their own Web site?!
Still horrifying after all these days. chaidawg writes: "According to this article in the New York Times (free registration req.), author Stephen King's experiment with payment for e-publishing seems to be working. After the first of three promised chapters he has made back all but $10,000 of the more than $100,000 he spent on advertising." This still doesn't mean Jamie is wrong -- yet.
You said: "The Theory of Evolution is not fact. That is why we say theory of evolution" When will people stop spouting this drivel ? The word theory does not mean something is unproven, for example, I spent 2 years at university studying "Number Theory", including large slabs of mathematical proofs that what we were studying was _known_to_be_true_, and you don't get anyone more finicky about 'proof' than a pure mathematician. In fact, when mathematicians want to make it clear that something is unproven, they usually call it a conjecture. In general, most things in science are called theories, including such well established and uncontroversial things as "the earth revolves around the sun" (Copernican Theory). I went to a debate between a Scientist and Creationist on Evolution, and when the Creationist said "evolution is only a theory" the scientist produced a car-battery and set of jumper leads and said "wanna test the theory of electricity ?"
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
You are totally wrong. The theory of evolution is not a fact, it is just very likely to be true. You are confusing the mathematical, deductive reasoning of Number 'theory' with the inductive reasoning of science. (Event A has always been observed to occur under these conditions, B. Therefore it will always continue to occur under those conditions, regardless when or where those conditions occur. This is the central assumption of science) Go and read Karl Popper. BTW, the Copernican theory is wrong - the Earth does not revolve around the Sun, they both revolve around their common centre of mass.
Is it just me, or was removing the middle-leech supposed to bring down the cost of things like novels?
Looking over the FAQ for this King story, I see that it's $1 a pop (a mere few thousand words each time) for the first three installments, and $2.50 an ep after that, up to seven or eight payments total. That's $13-15.50 US for an approximately 350 page novel (being generous with his wordcount estimates, since King has tended to try and make up for lack of creativity with verbosity in the past, much as I'm doing right now). Plus you have to read the thing in installments (knowing at any point the author might pull the plug), forgo the possession of a nice compact paperback to take on vacation with you, and either bear the costs of printing it yourself (figure $2-10 US more) or make it through an entire novel on Acrobat Reader (meaning you'll probably be buying new corrective lenses later ;).
I do like the concept of electronic distribution and micropayments, but what's "micro" about these? Seems like the reader is paying a lot, and King makes out like a bandit since he no longer has to pay a publisher. If the cost of advertising is the issue, then the experiment is already a failure, since only this precise sort of mediocre bestseller author could ever afford it (King is surely not hurting for cash), and ending the overpopularity of middle-of-the-road crap is supposed to be one of the main benefits ascribed to direct distribution.
Even if it were an author I liked and respected, I can't see why anyone would want to pay these rates. I think this one is just capitalising on the brief novelty most people see here.
-- Life is short. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. ~ Robert Doisneau
I think that Stephen King should have voted for the set-top PowerMac to stay on the island, despite its theological heresay.
and I'm leaning toward the latter. They didn't just let everyone get misled by their website (which they went as far as to take down for a few days after the story broke), they also intentionally mislead the public in at least two other ways. Someone leaked that Gervase would win to MSNBC even before the website thing. Furthurmore, a scene in the introduction shows four people sitting at the tribal council, Gervase among them. CBS now claims that was intentional. So either CBS lucked out and had a number of coincidences fall perfectly into place, or they are master con-artists. They fooled us, didn't they?
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." -Richard Feynman
Theism of some kind _can_ be a very useful 'meme' when you have the tendency to behave as though you have to control the world and everything around you. You can call that codependency, you can call it typical of drug addicts, you could call it a very common trait that _creates_ drug addicts, but the fact is there are many people who are neither cowardly or stupid, yet who habitually interact with the world in a controlling, manipulative way that just doesn't produce helpful results.
There's a hell of a lot of evidence that, for people whose heads are wired that way, developing a faith in some kind of God is a very helpful 'mental judo' that gets them out of their own way- whether or not this faith is at all logical or provable or justifiable. As a result you get into a situation like this:
- I don't know whether there's a guiding power greater than people (i.e. me)
- When I act on the basis that I must master my fate, I get hung up and tangled in my own schemes and cause chaos
- When I act _as_ _if_ there is a 'God', I cause less chaos, and things mysteriously work out better than when I was mucking them up
- When I do this without belief, it's like walking a razorblade and I'm fighting my instincts to muck things up all the time
- When I do this with the trick of the mind called 'belief', I likewise avoid mucking things up, but I sleep better and worry less about stuff.
Just how valuable is your pride, anyhow? It may be that controlling your surroundings with cold rationality works dandy for you. Some people don't have the knack of that, which doesn't mean they're dumb- they might be overly stressed, or too perfectionistic, or kind of obsessive- which aren't always bad traits. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that 'theistic faith' can be quite an advantage in these cases- even the humility of accepting that 'the pattern of life' is too complex for one person to grasp can be a real breakthrough, and once you've accepted that you can no longer 'disprove God' any more than you can disprove space aliens or galactic wormholes or anything else that you wouldn't be expected to understand.It always kind of annoys me to see these fervent attacks on any form of theism. Usually I let it pass. This time, though it's 4 AM and I should be heading to bed, I felt like speaking up just a bit. Yeah, I have vague theistic notions. I consider it an intrinsic quality of my relation to this God that I can't possibly understand it- it is by definition (my definition) entirely beyond my ability to comprehend. It is, however, a pretty good reason for me to leave some things to it, and concentrate on just trying to do the best I can with what I have. I know that this works better than my previous need to be the master of my fate- I do _not_ know that this is because there's an old guy with a beard 'up there'. I could be wrong- I could be looking at pure chaos and projecting an order that doesn't exist (on the other hand, look at the scientific definition of chaos....). But the bottom line is, my relation to the world is saner and less dogmatic when I _do_ have faith in whatever the heck my God is.
If you don't like that, sux to be you ;) because your arguments will not change the fact that when I believed as you did, I was _miserable_ and pretty dysfunctional at life. Sorry- atheism didn't work well for me. It didn't tend to make me good at patience or tolerance- never mind peace. I'd rather not know and quietly expect some higher order in the universe, than convince myself that I'm _it_.
Kansas voters now support the teaching of evolution in their public schools, as evidenced by recent election results.
FUCK! i figured if one state, out of all our glorious fifty, could hold on their illusions about life on this planet...it was going to be Kansas!
damn this rationality! That state is going to burn in hell with all their new fangled scientific idears! Next they'll probably remove all board members who belong to the flat earth society! (yeah right...like the earth is ROUND?!?!) that's when the whores and the crack move in!
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Timothy wrote:
:)
This still doesn't mean Jamie is wrong -- yet.
Jamie wrote:
I predict King's return rate will be something like 15%. Maybe it will go as much as twice as high, thanks to his deal with Amazon to let people use credit cards -- much more convenient.
Looks to me like Jamie *was* wrong. See Monday's news on Stephen King's site, in which he reports 76.38% payment. Now, 19.8% of the 116,200 that he counts as having paid have actually just promised to pay, but haven't actually paid. 80.2% of them paid via credit card. That means that at least 61.3% of downloads have been paid for, which is more than twice Jamie's most optimistic estimate.
King goes on. In response to the question "Are you go for Part 3 in September?", he replies, simply, "Yes."
Sorry, Jamie.
-Waldo
-------------------
Although I agree with your (and many others) posts on the principal that religious teachings have no place in a faith-neutral place like a public school, I do take exception to this statement. I personally do not partake in religion anymore, but it certainly does have a place in public life, to the extent that it does not intrude upon my rights. Kids should have moral guidance, preferably instilled in them by their parents, but religious institutions in general do a good job as well.
That's a load of crap. Religions instill a system of morals that they approve of, not ones that necessarily society approves of. And who decides what the difference is between moral 'guidance' and 'subversion'. I mean, hell, even on Slashdot, we see the constant battle between people with morals that say, "Be a law-abiding citizen" and people with morals that say, "You must do what you want and if it means breaking the law, so be it." Who's right? Who's wrong?
It's not even that clear. But what is clear is that the 'moral guidance' of religious institutions has led to more hatred and human suffering than any other factor in history. 'Moral guidance' (and those that tried to counter it) brought us such heavenly moments as the Crusades, forced conversion of Christians to Islam in Spain and south France, the Salem witchhunt, the house-arrest of Galileo, the decimation of American Indian culture, and our current little squabble in the Mideast.
As far as I'm concerned, religious institutions can stick to providing the masses with something to look forward to and stop telling people how to live their lives.