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Slashback: Licensure, Restriction, Cometry
Because not everything is as simple as who signs your paycheck ... cetan writes: "As a follow up to being laid off by AOL from Netscape, Mitchell Baker posted an article on Mozillazine discussing her role within Mozilla.org."
Can you think of a title to help her replace "Chief Lizard Wrangler"? All that wrangling has been a good thing, though, as recent builds make clear. I'd like to suggest "Reptilian Ambassador."
Sometimes, you just have to play. t0qer writes: "This is an update to this story. Originally I said kaillera was a net enabled version of mame, it's actually a free SDK to enable any emulator to have netplay. It was written by Christophe Thibault, of winamp fame. Contrary to some comments that the code was ripped from netmame, it was actually borged from jnetlib which was written by his boss and buddy Justin Frankel. So far kaillera has been adopted by 10 different emulators.
Speaking of games, iphayd writes: "Graeme Devine updated his plan , and released a version of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. While this isn't interesting in itself, he's claiming that he is getting 3x the frame rate on a dual 800 G4 system than his dual P3 800 system."
You shall not convert the news headlines in the MSNBC component into an audio format. MarkedMan writes: "There has been some confusion over Microsoft's Frontpage EULA, with some claiming it prohibited using the software to produce works disparaging Microsoft and some saying it simply prohibited the use of the Frontpage logo on such sites. (The logo restriction actually seemed reasonable to me.) After some searching I found that some versions of the EULA do indeed limit use of the program itself. This from Northwestern University's Microsoft User License: Check out page 2, section 2. http://www.tss.northwestern.edu/select/mspur.pdf"
We have come to terms. bkuhn writes: "The FSF and FSMLabs have an agreement on a GPL-compliant version of the RTLinux Open Patent License. You can read our statement and related press release on the matter."
It's cool to see this sort of conflict work be met and resolved.
Not quite a date with a star. Troodon writes "A brief reminder, JPL and BBCnews report that this Saturday (22/SEP/2001) at 2230 Universal time (3:30 p.m. PDT) Deep Space 1 has a date with the Comet Borrelly"
*sigh* I wish someone would stand up to those greedy FSF lawyers.
Someone who could spell?
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast.
no really. Not only is it plain stupid, but if you are not familiar with the muslim culture there is a saying that only Allah has infinite wisdom, only Allah has INFINATE JUSTICE. Use your imagination and think about if the naming here was a great idea.
If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.
So there you have it:
Terrorist beliefs do not represent Islam.
Bush beliefs do not represent Christianity.
I am still looking for the "holy" in this "holy war."
Sorry! I can't spell. But I am in college so I have an excuse.
If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.
OK I can't spell. Sue me.
If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.
"I pray that this inhuman act will awaken in the hearts of all the world's peoples a firm resolve to reject the ways of violence, to combat everything that sows hatred and division within the human family...resist the temptation to hatred and violence, and to dedicate themselves to the service of justice and peace".
So there you have it:
Terrorist beliefs do not represent Islam.
Bush beliefs do not represent Christianity.
I am still looking for the "holy" in this "holy war."
*falls down laughing*
The Northwestern site appears to be slashdotted.... anybody got the relevant text from that pdf file?
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
(Damn the subject line sounds a bit... well, dirty!)
For a daily dose of quickies, hit: Memepool.com Most of the time it's better than what Slashdot's quickies were back when they posted them :-)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
Why should I care what the Pope has to say about any of this? If it was not for religion, we would not be in this absurd mess. The terrorists died, convinced by their religion that they would go on to live some kind of glorious, joy-filled afterlife.
I'm tired of holy wars, crusades, jihads, fatwas, terrorist acts by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and Jews, bombings of abortion clinics, murders of doctors, torture, murder, mutilation, and oppression by the Taliban, and dying children being denied medical treatment.
I am an atheist, realist, and an adult. I do not need religion to tell me comforting stories about an all-powerful being that watches over us -- but who will allow thousands of innocent people to be murdered by terrorists. I can do without the religious fantasies that say I will never die. I can distinguish right from wrong without ancient works of fiction to provide me with a moral compass.
More bad news for the religious among us: the Easter bunny, tooth fairy, and Santa Claus aren't real either. Grow up.
Atheism is a religion, too. It is a concrete belief that is held without any conclusive proof one way or another. Some atheists are more dogmatic and hate-filled than your average churchgoer. Ask Russians what life is like under an 'enlightened' atheistic government. Belief or disbelief in universal principles is no guarantee of morality.
You need to draw a distinction between the positive philosophies espoused by most major religions and the self-serving hypocrisy of those who would use noble concepts to their own ends.
Just because you don't 'need' the myths of organised religion doesn't give you the right to get pointlessly aggressive with those who do. In a lot of ways, the myths of eternal life or reincarnation/karma are a lot like parents using Santa Claus as a way of teaching children the benefits of being good. It is explained to the immature in language they can understand and identify with. By the time they are old enough to see through the stories, the value of the underlying message will hopefully have made some impact on them. The fact that a lot of people misinterpret the message and stay stuck in a juvenile fantasy world indicates that it is not a foolproof methodology, but secular humanism doesn't have a 100% strike rate either.
Perhaps you should examine your own belligerent tone of phrase before you start accusing others of intolerance.
For the record, I consider myself an agnostic.
Maybe there isn't anything good to mod up. It isn't like any of the subjects are all that explosive, and most people (atleast in the US) are probably watching Bush's address to Congress and the nation about this "war" called Operation: Infinite Justice.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
If one uses "religion" as you define it, the word becomes watered-down and is essentially just a synonym for belief. So after we convince everyone of your definition, someone else will have to come along and create a word which means "a set of beliefs which are accepted on faith and usually involve some sort of deity." What word do you suggest we use?
Theism, perhaps?
Okay, I was making a glib point, but the word is 'watered down' anyway. Buddhism and Confucianism have few or no positive references to God/gods, but most people, particularly in the West, would consider them religions.
"Atheism is a religion, too. It is a concrete belief that is held without any conclusive proof one way or another."
Atheism is a default position. We all start out atheists when we are born. We have no idea of a god until someone tries to tell us about one or we hypothesize one. We are "a-" without "theos" god belief. There are no rituals, no songs, no dogma. Is someone who has never heard of the god idea atheist? They have no belief in god. They don't even know what a god is. The belief in a god is absent. They are a-theos.
What does the word "god" even mean exactly? If I can't conceive of a god, then even the question is meaningless. How can I have a belief one way or the other if the concept itself seem unintelligible? This is the position of many atheists.
As to your statement about being agnostic, that is an answer to another question about what can be known. That isn't that same as what is believed. Are you an agnostic theist or agnostic athiest?
"Ask Russians what life is like under an 'enlightened' atheistic government."
Well, there are plenty of atheists who are skeptical of the communism idea as well as the god idea.
Atheism is a religion, too. It is a concrete belief that is held without any conclusive proof one way or another.
Atheism is not a religion. It is the rejection of "faith" -- which is the term for believing in something without real evidence. If you are unwilling to reject the notion of "God", why would you reject the notion of the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, or the tooth fairy? Would you feel that someone who believed there was no tooth fairy was closed-minded or intellectually inferior to those who said "there could be a tooth fairy"?
You need to draw a distinction between the positive philosophies espoused by most major religions and the self-serving hypocrisy of those who would use noble concepts to their own ends.
I don't care about the positive philosophies of religion. It's time for man to grow up and take responsibility for his own behavior, thoughts, and morals. Christianity led to the Crusades. There was no weird splinter group that had perverted Christianity to that purpose. And religion brainwashes its practitioners into believing that they are doing the right thing, whether it's murdering abortion providers or crashing planes into skyscrapers.
Perhaps you should examine your own belligerent tone of phrase before you start accusing others of intolerance.
I never accused anyone of intolerance and I never claimed to be tolerant of religion. I am not and do not wish to be. Why should I be tolerant of something that has caused so much death and suffering? You act like intolerance is, by definition, bad. Are you tolerant of child molestors, muggers, rapists, murderers, and neo-nazis?
No we don't. That's like saying that we all start out with centrist political views. The whole notion of concepts like politics and religion is so alien to a newborn that to say they have any position at all is fallacious. Stricly speaking, from an etymological point of view, your interpretation of the word is correct, but "English as she is spoke " has a more restrictive, belief-based meaning.
No, that's the position of an agnostic. An atheist actively disbelieves in the existence of the divine.
Neither. Try not to be so binary.
Which has nothing to do with my original argument. Theist governments can be socialist, totalitarian, capitalist or any other -ist.
There are positive examples of 'atheistic' societies that are not repressive, but they tend to be centered around some defining philosophy like Buddhism. My point was that an overtly atheistic culture is not necessarily free of the type of repression that theistic cultures are.
Rob realized that a "quickie" can be something unrelated to computers.
This would be inappropriate for those poor guys who can't get none.
Atheism is not a religion. It is the rejection of "faith" -- which is the term for believing in something without real evidence. If you are unwilling to reject the notion of "God", why would you reject the notion of the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, or the tooth fairy?
Actually, the other guy is right. The only intellectually pure stance is Agnosticism, when you believe that the existence of God can neither be proven or disproven. Atheism takes it as an article of faith that God doesn't exist, without any proof. Certainly you can make intellectual cases for the non-existence, but you can also make the same cases for the existence.
As for Santa Claus et al, it's actually not the same. We have evidence for the non-existence of Santa Claus, since we can trace the myth and see where it came from. As for God, he's been around since the dawn of writing, particularly the Judeo-Christian God (at least 8000 years, I believe). Not to mention that there is at least some "documented" evidence (the resurrection of Christ).
Anyway, if you want to intellectually clean, pick Agnosticism. :)
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Or open up the list of rejected articles someplace for everyone to poke at. /. is getting all these submissions for free, follow the open source spirit and post them someplace.
Rate of spontaneous healing at Lourdes: 1/75,000
Rate of spontaneous healing anywhere else: 1/50,000
You have faith that your disbelief is true. Any logical system is built on unprovable axioms that must be believed in despite being unprovable.
A totally specious line of reasoning. Just because someone believes one thing, they are not compelled to believe in everything.
And all those whose societies are still too immature to deal with that can just implode for all you care. Perhaps they need to eveolve toward enlightenment by being shown positive examples of how to live without God. Insulting them will do that admirably, of course.
Actually, there was. Landless nobles used the crusade as an excuse to steal land from other Christians, not just Moslems or Jews. The calling of the Western crusade was misguided, but was at least partially in response to the foreign threat to the like-minded Byzantine Empire. It can be viewed as a political decision. How is it different to the formation of a Western coalition to fight Communism in Vietnam?
Or it can be used to teach 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. The vast majority of religious bvelievers are peaceful, if occasionally misguided. It's often a few bad apples that spoil the whole barrel.
Yes, you did:
That's an implicit assumption of intolerance.
Perhaps because you have an overly simplistic view of one of the most (if not the most) influential elements of human thought over the course of recorded history.
Religion has both good and bad elements. It is a notion that we are (in my opinion) evolving away from, but to scapegoat it for all the bad things that humanity has done ignores the fact that it is often a hypocritical excuse for bad behaviour rather than a cause.
Why should I care what you have to say about any of this?
I don't know, but you clearly do as evidenced by your lengthy response.
The victims died, convinced by their upbringing that these terrorists would go straight to hell.
The terrorists thought they would go to heaven, the Christians thought they would go to hell, and neither side has a shred of evidence to support their beliefs.
I am a Christian, realist, and an adult.
That is simply contradictory.
I do not need athiesm to tell me comforting stories about how I'm supposedly statistically smarter
Where did that come from? An atheist is someone who does not hold religious beliefs. It is not based on statistics about intelligence.
-- but who think that morality is subjective and bend it to whatever they want to believe in.
Personal insults about my morality are both inappropriate and baseless. You don't know me. You don't know how I lead my life, whether I help people in need, donate to charities, or have a strict moral code. Since you brought up the supposedly superior morality of Christians, I'll throw out a couple of names: Jimmy Swaggert and Jim Baker.
I can distinguish right from wrong without just making it up as I go along.
Right. You have such divine guidance as:
Exodus 21:20 And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.
Great. You can beat servants as long as you do not kill them.
Deuteronomy 15:12 [And] if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee.
And you can only keep slaves for six years. Boy, that is some great moral guidance.
1 Corinthians 14:34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but [they are commanded] to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
More declarations of right and wrong. Women are not to speak in church.
Exodus 31:15 Six days may work be done; but in the seventh [is] the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth [any] work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
More clear-cut moral guidance: Capital punishment for those who work on the sabbath.
The more I learn about the Bible, the more proud I am to be an atheist.
You have faith that your disbelief is true.
A lack of belief is not the same as disbelief. This is an important, though subtle, distinction. My beliefs are based on logic and reasoning, not faith. I have been provided no credible evidence of a god, therefore I do not believe that there is one. That is not the same as believing that there could not be a god.
A totally specious line of reasoning. Just because someone believes one thing, they are not compelled to believe in everything.
It is not at all specious. My point was that you are holding religious beliefs to a different standard of evidence than you would other beliefs. You implied that my lack of religious belief was akin to being closed-minded. Would you characterize a lack of belief in the tooth fairy the same way?
Yes, you did:
I'm tired of holy wars, crusades, jihads, fatwas, terrorist acts by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and Jews
That's an implicit assumption of intolerance.
I don't view those things as "intolerance." Denying medical care to a sick child due to religious beliefs is not intolerance and that was another example I provided. I view those things as heinous acts done in the name or religion. Intolerance is far too tame a word.
Perhaps because you have an overly simplistic view of one of the most (if not the most) influential elements of human thought over the course of recorded history.
Now show me that it's positive influence outweighs the negative. When you do that, I will be more tolerant.
The only intellectually pure stance is Agnosticism, when you believe that the existence of God can neither be proven or disproven. Atheism takes it as an article of faith that God doesn't exist, without any proof.
Atheism means "without religious beliefs." It does not mean an absolute conviction that it is impossible for God to exist.
I agree that the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven. Neither can the existence of ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster, the tooth fairy, or Bigfoot be proven, but that does not mean that you must mentally give each one a 50/50 chance of existing in order to be intellectually pure. If I went into a room full of cosmologists and claimed that the universe was populated with invisible, massless, giant warthogs, I doubt that they would be "agnostic" about the subject -- even though they could not disprove my claim.
Not to mention that there is at least some "documented" evidence (the resurrection of Christ).
Just as there is "documented evidence" of the Greek gods, the Roman gods, and the Norse gods? Evidence is more than something written anonymously in a book.
Sounds like agnosticism to me. Also, you did implicitly state that you believed that God wasn't real:
Sounds like a belief in nonexistence to me.
Then it was a poorly argued point. All matters of faith are not logically equivalent. A belief in the existence of extraterrestrial life (based on the size of the universe, or whatever) does not compell me to place that faith in the same basket as belief in UFO abductions.
Another problem is that you seem to have just as immature a notion of God as the people you slag off. I suspect that a lot of smart religious people do not believe in a bearded guy sitting on a cloud, but have a more sophisticated notion of a universal principle. The fact that a lot of people don't have this maturity does not invalidate the basic premise.
Choosing the one element of that list that I would not classify as rooted in intolerance (except of ideas) does not alter the basic nature of my point. You're being a bit semantically slippery, here. Let's use other words: bigotry, chauvinism, fanaticism. You say potayto, I say potaato.
Prove to me that the positive benefits of capitalism, secular humanism, Taoism, etc, etc outweigh the negative. What a pointless challenge.
Okay, here's some positive things that organised religion does: foundation of socially inclusive charitable institutions, political activism such as liberation theology, safekeeping of secular knowledge during the dark ages. If you want to claim that such activities could carry on separate from religion, then you have to accept that murderous hatred and fanaticism could as well.